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Written by Revista EgoPHobia

A philosophical inquiry and expansion on the types of the Post-modern Informational Societies and their dynamics, as presented in Andrei Marga’s “Dignoses, articles and essays”

by Ormeny Francisc-Norbert

In his most recent book, “Diagnoses, Articles and Essays”(Diagnoze, Articole şi Eseuri) Professor Andrei Marga, when approaching the mediatic culture, draws our attention upon the necessity of making as clear as possible the following distinction:
-the society of communications
-the society of cognition(also known as “a society which fosters knowledge-sharing”)
-the society of communication
-the society of transparency
-the mediatic society
These five types of society re in fact, five dangerous “false-friends”.

The Society of Communications is seen by Andrei Marga as a society of information; more precisely of raw data…of data flowing bluntly, like a river toward the sea/ocean. What counts here is the circulation of data(if possible, at the fastest achievable speed ). Here a consesnsus, or some other types of agreement upon the transmitted information out of the agenda.
It is the natural consequence of consistently applying the basic fundamentals of
cybernetics in the civil sphere. It managed to develop a highly sophisticated and consolidated infrastructure for spreading the data. But the civilians, in the absence of some appropriate techniques for processing/ analyzing/using such big waves and mountains of data, see themselves in an utter impossibility of giving the slightest (real)“use-value” to any of such piece of information they constantly receive. It is as if being thirsty in an ocean of water from which they are unable to drink as they lake the appropriate techniques for the desalting of ocean/sea water.
Here, within such a society, communication is reduced to the very act of broadcasting news(and never goes an inch further than this). The unavoidable consequence of this is the fact that the mechanical news, as heard on tv, slowly but surely becomes but a noise – like the electrical whizzing sound produced by neon.
Andrei Marga’s final conclusion related to this type of society is that a society of communications does not necessarily imply/denote/equal a communicational society (too). A communicational society is supposed to be based on the exchange of thoughts, messages, or information, as by speech, signals, writing, or behavior…in short, on a real interpersonal rapport. Within a society of communication one finds only the raw circulation of data, without any concern for feed-back; for its proper assimilation; or for achieving its envisaged target. In order to obtain a real feed-back(which would be able to place you in a true society of communication), one needs, first and foremost a correct assimilation of information. That is, one cannot go/evolve straight from a society of communications to a society of communication-he needs an intermediary phase. This intermediary and necessary phase in the transition from a society of communications to a society of communication is what Andrei Marga calls “a society of cognition”.

The Society of Cognition

The question arises: Why is a society of cognition needed in order for us to be able to successfully evolve from a society of communications to a society of communication? The answer is: BECAUSE, IN ORDER TO TRULY EVOLVE, FIRST AND FOREMOST, A CORRECT ANDCOMPLETE ASSIMILATION ON THE PART OF THE RECEIVER MUST TAKE PLACE. Such assimilation will find its most complete and fertile processing within the Society of Cognition. Here I am talking about the possibility to put „the matter” through the correct steps of the bestly contextualized procedure; about the possibility to prepare, treat, or convert “the matter” (in order to o gain an understanding or acceptance of something; to come to ideal terms with something) by subjecting it to the most desirable process; about the possibility to perform appropriate operations on data.
Should we consult The Free Dictionary by Farlex for the word “cognition” at the following location on the Internet http://www.thefreedictionary.com/cognition, , we are to find the following definitions:
“1. The mental process of knowing, including aspects such as awareness, perception, reasoning, and judgment.
2. That which comes to be known, as through perception, reasoning, or intuition; knowledge.”
By simply regarding the above given definitions one could see that within cognition one no longer simply absorbes information(like a sponge); that, within cognition one also develops some techniques by means of which he filters and processes that very information. For this reason, Andrei Marga calls such societies “societies nurtured by diversity and its capacities.”
Communities are based on shared concepts. In Andrei Marga’s vision, cognition equals a community’s capacity to generate/produce concepts:”While the <<society of communications>> simply demanded us to further spread the infrastructure on which the information circulates, the <<society of cognition>> requires, the absorption, the spreading but also the production of cognition.” By replacing the necessity to spread knowledge with the necessity to produce knowledge(even while absorbing it), such societies gave the decisive impulse for economic and cultural developments, in the sense that such impulses found their expression in proactive politics. The proactive politics are project-based politics having as prime engine resourceful initiatives, pensiveness as resulted from an authentic process of knowledge-sharing, and a fertile collaboration with the public interest(instead of simply subordinating it to some immutable patterns of absorption). In Andrei Marga’s view, Cognition should be regarded as the very engine behind social activities and not as some sort of auxiliary element within the equation of such actions. Professor Marga speaks of Singapore as being illustrative for the success of such a theory: in 1965 it was known as an underdeveloped country, but, by means of proactive politics targeted at cultivating abilities with high social applicability, it managed to turn itself into an emblematical country for what the idea of modern development should stand for. When all these requirements are met successfully, we nter the Society of Communication…a sort of utopia in matters of fertile political feed-back.

The Society of Communication
Such a society will, first and foremost, systematize the concord among the participants at the social dialogue ; it will make sure that such participants understand what is being said and that they filter through their own personalities the message and then re-release it into society in a Hegelian manner ( but not as they received/absorbed it but embellished with their inner creative subjectivity).It is based on RATIONALITY, ON COMMUNICATION AND ON ARGUMENTATION. The intersecting point of these three elements should be the CONCORD among the participants at the conversational act. Such a concord will evolve on four distinct flexible (shape-shifting) patterns: “intelligibility of messages, the conformity to fact or truth-on the part of the speakers, the veracity of assertions, the participants’ righteous interaction to communication.” Such a vision upon human relations clearly carries the scent of Utopia, and as any Utopia, it is heavily inclined to remain a pure theoretical concept, devoid of actual substance and with no relation to reality(future/past/present) whatsoever.
In order to make this “society of communication” work for us, we must carefully and wisely purge it of Idealism while impregnating it with the most invigorating because rigorous Pragmatism. To better illustrate this first thesis of mine, I will use Mihail Bakunin’s heavy critique of Idealism together with William James’s vision on Pragmatism, as inspired from that of Charles Sanders Peirce.
a) Bakunin’s main point in his masterpiece “God and the State” is that, should one want to efficiently manipulate the masses into following his credo, what he has to do is to first and foremost impregnate those masses with Idealism, The more exuberant and juvenile the Idealism sown in the brains of the followers, the more fluent their obedience. Religion and the State understood this principle and, in their times of absolute tyranny, they gained a tremendous amount of power by assuming their mission and persona as divine guiding lights, as absolute principles with an unquestionable authority over this life as well as over the life beyond.
Ştefan Bolea in his “Ontology of Negation” observes that “Idealism (an appellation for religion and theological metaphysics) taken as a drug, is an instrument for control.”
In order to better illustrate his theory, Bakunin quotes Proudhon: “The ideal is but a flower, whose root lies in the material conditions of existence.”
Concerning poets, poetry and the social implications of their art, Bakunin notes:” The more sincere these believers and poets of heaven, the more dangerous they become.”
Now, speaking of poets and literature, one can’t fail to notice that the comparison between Idealism and Flowers is a technique very dear to literature; a technique more dear to literature than to philosophy:
– Nikos Kazantzakis in his “Alexis Zorba” makes a similar point: the main character, after remarking the wild beauty of a flower, asks himself vexed, why that flower needs dirt and blood and filth in order to rise and shine; why does beauty grow only out of swampy filth.
– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s flower which embellishes an entire desolated planet, still has thorns: ” The flowers have been growing thorns for millions of years(…)And it’s not serious, trying to understand why flowers go to such trouble produce thorns that are good for nothing?(…) The thorns are of no use at all. Flowers have thorns just for spite!”
In order to become freethinkers (the only way to evolve, or as Bakunin puts it, the only way to achieve “the development and realization of all the natural laws in the world”[a long euphemism for evolution]; the only context in which a real dialogue could e established ) we must start by abolishing all forms of idealism.
If we take or example nowadays radicalized terrorism and inflamed jingoism(both heavily broadcasted through media channels…and even in the form of negative publicity, they can’t fail to produce a strong impact ), we can’t fail to see that Idealism, ultimately results into desperate and violent behaviour, and is an excellent fuel for hatred and social maladaptation.
The Society of Cognition should be a society where a healthy assimilation of concepts would take place in order to prepare the emergence of the Society of Communication. Yet, Idealism appears within this equation of assimilation as the most evil and perfidious possible catalyst: it sabotages the healthy assimilation of concepts by facilitating some mental and emotional processes while utterly inhibiting others(or dissolving them, like a solvent) and thus manipulating the course of assimilation to the advantage of some well disguised interest groups.
Andrei Marga praises RATIONALITY as the basis for COMMUNICATION AND ARGUMENTATION(argumentation being seen as a superior level within communication; a level below innovation but above the ordinary/daily speech acts) and, he further praises these two elements(COMMUNICATION AND ARGUMENTATION) as the ultimate basis for the CONCORD among the participants at the conversational act.
But without a scientifically correct and a humanely healthy assimilation of concepts, there is no RATIONALITY.
The question arises: WHY IS RATIONALISM WEAKER THAN IDEALISM?(as the Inquisition, the Totalitarian Systems and nowadays Media Manipulation have proved)
My answer is the following: because humans are, first and foremost spiritual and spiritualized creatures and this translates itself into an immutable propensity for mysticism. Ideals and Idealism (as a state of mind) are dangerous sirens/mermaids and an overwhelming percentage of people still fall for their seductive chants. We have an inborn impulse to become lunatic when faced with a skillful rhetoric…to fall for words(Adolf Hitler is maybe the best illustration in this sense). When this impulse gets combined with a taste for fancy, the overall process will fire the insanity. Within the very same psychological pattern, the endurance to madness by means of reason occupies a lower and weaker level (that is why we are fascinated by robots and we try to create them as soon as possible – hoping that they will live at a more effective level of existence by minimizing emotions to the advantage of reason and functionality). Rationalism and judgement don’t have the same energy to mobilize our spirits, as madness does. This happens because reasoning rejects the fancy and takes its refuge in a cold Cartesian equation. Thus, rationalism plays foul against itself. In order to become successful once again and in order to be able o prevail over madness, it has to be deeply re-humanized, on the basis of philosophies such as William James’s.
The final point to be made here is inquire ourselves into the ways by means of which we could find the precise location of that fatal point-of-no-return where a conviction degenerates into a prejudice(thing which happens most of the time because of the evil catalyst-solvent called “idealism”). We also have to inquire ourselves into the techniques by means of which we could recognize and later on avoid stepping into the trap of this point-of-no-return … In order to be able to do this, we’ll have to regard the process of assimilation of information and building of concepts(within the society of cognition) and the process of valorization of knowledge through dialogue and collective mobilization(within the society of communication) not with prefabricated and inherited(in the sense of taken for granted) enthusiasm and idealism BUT with a humanized rationality and with constructive criticism. The place where such humanized rationality and constructive criticism coagulate into a healthy and fluctuant pragmatism(within which valorization equals capitalization) is William James’s concept of cash-value.
b) William James’s pragmatism can be interpreted as a form of radical empiricism or as a “practicalism” obsessed by physical results that can reflect the value of a person, action or idea in “cash” terms (the cash-value concept):
– “The great English way of investigating a conception is to ask yourself right off, <<What is it known as? In what facts does it result? What is its cash-value, in terms of particular experience? And what special difference would come into the world according as it were true or false?>> Thus does Locke treat the conception of personal identity”.
– “The cash-value of matter is our physical sensations”.
Those who have comprehended Kant’s “Critic of practical reason”, remained with the impression that, in Greek, there is a huge difference between the terms “praktikos” and “pragmatikos”. This difference can be compared with the Earth’s two opposing poles.
James saw efficiency as an aim in itself and made his philosophy a cult of efficiency. He managed to demonstrate that the two Greek terms are in fact not that entirely different as it was previously thought. A necessary link should exists between the two for the “whole” to be able to function properly. James connected the concepts through a genial castling: within pragmatism he shifted the focus from rationality (Peirce) to perception and extreme personalization of experience. This becomes obvious if one analyses the definition of pragmatism from both sides:
– Peirce: “Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object(…)In order to ascertain the meaning of an intellectual conception one should consider what practical consequences might conceivably result by necessity from the truth of that conception; and the sum of these consequences will constitute the entire meaning of the conception.”
– James reformulating Peirce’s maxim: “Thus, in order to bring full clarity to our ideas upon an object we must consider the practical repercussions that the object could include-what to expect to on what concerns perceptions and reactions. Our conception on these repercussions, be they un-mediated and delayed, constitutes for us the entire conception on the object, as far as it has a positive significance.”
Whoever compares these two passages can quickly remark that James accentuated the role of perception as terrain for identification of the significance.
James’s philosophy fits itself in the pattern of Bismarck’s Realpolitik: “the aim must be achieved with a maximum of efficiency, and in order to do so, one must not stumble upon issues of morals and sentimentalism”. Here we enter the sphere of the Nietzschean concept of “ubermensch”(* superman)- the man who lives beyond morality, beyond good and evil and who values the community correctly precisely because he managed to value himself firstly. James’s thesis according to which the true ideas are those that function and can be verified, doesn’t have to be interpreted as a thesis that excludes morality but one that is based on liberty and creativity. The latter is necessary in the individual’s process of appropriation of the concepts of Good and of God. The man’s relationship with God and with his Inner-Self must function as a burning torch fueled by inspiration and by the desire to know the divine beauty (unlike a mirror that merely reflects, or even worst, deforms God’s image). To this end, the American philosopher has decided “to construct the human spirit in the model of a torch not that of a mirror” .
The “Cash-value” concept, in matter of dialogue, would express itself, at the level of the individual, in the will to read between the lines(if necessary) in order to find and to valorize the slightest element which could be somehow useful for you and for your community; in the will to replace manipulation and despotic orders with PERSUATION ; in the will to try to help an eternal “other” improve his communicational skills(within an honestly well-intentioned team-work – because this is precisely what James says, namely that the “cash-value”concept is desirable only when it is backed by a positive/well-intentioned/benevolent attitude towards society and life in general) – because only when communication fluctuates freely between both sides(receiver and transmitter), will the transition from words to actual facts be an easy-achievable one(that is, only then, the putting of ideas into real-life practice will come naturally). This, I suppose, could be considered the definition of an adaptable mental equilibrium.

The society of transparency

Transparency should imply openness and communication. It is a metaphorical extension of the meaning used in the physical sciences: a “transparent” object is one that can be seen through.
In government, politics, business and law the concept of transparency must be understood as the ultimate opposite of privacy. An activity can be called “transparent” only if all information about it is open to the public and, preferably – freely available.
The army is by tradition the social sphere where transparency feels least at home Military men would often classify their operations and projects as secret or confidential. From the point of view of national security it could be accepted as an unpleasant but necessary must. Yet, in time, such attitudes will most surely result into malevolent secrecy and corruption. Privacy opens an irresistible opportunity for the authorities to abuse the system in their own interest. Transparency, as a political concept, was introduced as a means of holding public officials accountable and fighting corruption.
In the social daily routine, transparency usually appears in the form of government meetings open to the press and the public. Within such meetings, where the participation of citizens and of media is allowed and even encouraged, laws, rules and decisions are open to discussion. In this way, Transparency creates an everyday participation in the political processes. This kind of participation is a basic principle within Modern Democracies, in the sense that it gave birth to collocations such as “participative democracy” – one of the most closely connected to the will of the people type of democracy.

Unfortunately, as Madame Bovary(Gustave Flaubert) put it, there is a darker and abyssal side in every achievement and reason for happiness. Every use is cursed to have an abuse. The abuse and the reversed side of Transparency is the Panopticon.
Mass Media is involved in both the Transparency and the Panopticon.
In order to be able to provide its consumers with the most complete possible general image of truth, the media would often unethically intrude the private sphere of the individual. The State will encourage such a behaviour on the side of the Media as it hels Him to better monitor its citizens – the best example in this sense is provided by Orwell’s “1984”, where TV monitors are ever-present in order to erase the slightest privacy(and thus possibility of freedom).
Foucault politicized the technological gaze(metaphorically assimilating the general concept of media to Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon ) and he stated that such a gaze comes at us through the official ideologies of truth which verify the realities of everyday life. These ideologies are present in systems of discourse and centered in those institutional formation which produce truth, including the universities. Taken to new heights by the advanced technological societies, these ideologies of truth are implemented through ever more sophisticated systems of surveillance.
The ubiquitous presence of the media is realized not just through the classical mediatic channels ( TV, cinema , radio and newspapers), but, as Norman K. Denzin observes(in his book entitled “The Cinematic Society”, London, SAGE Publications, 1995), by other smaller but not less malevolent in what concerns the nature of their usages, devices.
We live in an “Information Age” filled with databases, electronic spreadsheets, desk-top publishing, automated tellers, computer-assisted instruction, virtual realities and artificial intelligence. Denzin explains the phenomenon more clearly: “not only aerial viewing and listening devices, but also radar and contact microphones, hidden transmitters, satellite monitoring systems, body microphones, data surveillance systems, computer monitors, hidden cameras, international detective agencies, wiretaps, electronic intelligence kits, intercom systems, personality tests, lip-reading, miniature surveillance devices, two-way mirrors, credit card monitoring systems, undercover agents, parabolic and shotgun microphones, photochrimic micro-images, television-eye monitoring, public opinion polls, managed news releases, subliminal suggestion methods, radio-detection and frequency probes, radioactive tagging, faked documents, scrambling and signalling devices, sniperscopes, sonic-wave devices, spectograms, super-spy devices, video-tapes, high powered telescopes, voice-prints, DNA prints, X-rays, and ultra-violet surveillance techniques.” And I would add to this list the zodiac-readings, that are also a part of the strategy of total monitorization(reminiscences if not even a continuation and a persistence Marx’s “maximum-security society”).
The citizen of such a society has internalized this type of gaze(the gaze which unveils the private and makes it public) to the point where he turns himself into an agent of surveillance; a miniaturized terminal located somewhere on the tentacles of the octopus(the maximum security society is a society which tries to embrace us all, like a Leviathan-Octopus): “In this society, each individual has interiorized the hearing and visual gaze of an <<>objectified> external, generalized, nameless, often faceless, other. This technological other is everywhere and nowhere, in hidden cameras and recording devices, in telephone answering machines, electronic mail systems and home burglar alarm systems(…) A pornography of the visible is now everywhere. Nothing is any longer hidden.”
We live on a broad horizon of “voyeuristic otherness”, where the other’s presence is variously disguised, hidden, obtrusive and taken into account and noticed: “I buy gas at my local service station and watch myself on a video camera paying for my purchase, I check my E-mail and find dirty messages from an angry student”(observes Denzin out of his personal daily experience)
Doctors, anthropologists, tourists, space-observers are, in Denzin’s view, “disguised voyeurs” and hidden journalists and he asserts that “disguised research is unethical”
The State, in implementing such a Devilish all-intrusive technological dimension, played heavily on the paranoia of its subjects ( more precisely on their fear of remaining uncovered/unbacked in front of the unknown) and thus defeated and subjected them with their own weapons(by turning their needs[for protection] against them): “Guilt connected to illicit[here Denzin speaks about the voyeur], secret looking has all but disappeared. It has been replaced and displaced by the fear that if one’s personal surveillance system is not in place, he or she will be attacked by the hidden, invisible other.”
Denzin’s main thesis and conclusion is that “there is a subtle and sudden switching of surveillance codes, from Foucault’s panopticon to a system of detrerrence where the person gazed upon is the person doing the gazing” – that is, the once gazed upon one, inevitably becomes a gazer, a perfect agent of the system. The harder the “re-education of the heretic”, the loyal the re-educated one gets to be – as George Orwell has demonstrated with his character- Winston.
The collocation “ a mass-mediated society” makes the perfect junction between Marxism and the Media.
In this context, the Western per excellence ideal and project of an “Autonomous Individual”(self-initiating and self-determinig human agent) becomes highly problematic.
The beautiful English first personal pronoun written with capital letter-“I” becomes highly questionable in matters of what it stands for nowadays…should it really stand for something and not be just an abstract and weird-looking sign on the paper. The real question arises in the following terms: “Is there still a sense of Individuality and Sacred Privacy lurking in the Western atmosphere, somewhere underneath the heavy shadows filled with uranium clouds of guilt left behind by The Nazi unpardonable mistakes…or, this sacred sense gets more and more devoid of substance, wit and inventiveness, every day which passes by, approaching extinction(understood as “A gradual decrease in the excitability of a nerve to a previously adequate stimulus, usually resulting in total loss of excitability” ). At best and most desirable, it undergoes a process of transformation – as the German pronoun did after the Second World – War, when, because of the political pressure, it had to make room for the English and the French equivalent pronouns. This subtle aspect is brilliantly rendered by Martin Amis in his novel – “Time’s Arrow”. In this book, Martin Amis makes a brilliant remark on the philosophy of this first personal pronoun singular, showing us how, after what happened with Hitler, the German variant was forced to give free way to the French and to the English ones: ” <<I>> in English sounds noble and vertical, <<Je>> in French has a certain power and intimacy…while the German <<Ich>> resembles the sound of disgust produced by a kid when looking at his shit from the toilet.”
The failure of the Nazi Germany also meant the rise to power of Marxism and of other doctrines of equality. The worse consequence of this was the socialist industrialization and monitoring/constant surveillance through technological devices(installed in order to increase[so they said] the efficiency of the Overall System; and in order to provide social safety and unmistakable and safe patterns of evolution). This constant surveillance and, more or less, forced-integration into the technological(and later computerized) society, brought about leveling down of standards; of expectations; and induced a general and irresistible trend toward social conformism(trend which opened new horizons for manipulation).
But, in the very middle of all this Argus-hysteria, the Western society must surely have asked itself many questions among which the following: “Whenever we see an ant-hill what really scares us ? The fact that they have long antennas, tens of legs, bodies covered with scales and hair, that they secrete incessantly all kinds of disgusting substances-or the total lack of individuality that reigns in there?” Nobody has a personal life, each and every individual sacrifices all his life and energy for the sake of the community, a perfect communist society. Sexual difference between two warrior-ants, for the eye of an amateur is a catch 22 dilemma. It is like in a communist utopia where the woman is strongly masculinized, turned into a hard worker, a true comrade if not even a brother at arms for the man.
The power of our machines assures our mastery over the natural environment. Unfortunately, they also turn our society into a programmed society where rationalization(planning, organization, automation) leave little room for independent actions and spontaneity.
The concept of “self” has a whole history behind, is a lifelong project: for instance, the Socratic maxim said “know yourself” and Rousseau spoke of “amour de soi”. Also, carring for the self also provided many professionals with their work: psychologists attempt to heal the self and priests want to save the self from evil influences. This also happens because the self always needs validation, nurturing and realization in order to feel itself alive.
Norman K. Denzin says that this problem can only be solved by means of a new pragmatism; a totally re-conceptualized pragmatism:
“A new global politics of identity is upon us, a new public culture that no one understands. This is the complex, global, negotiated order that post-pragmatism addresses. A radical, re-conceptualized theory of democracy, the state and society must find its way inside these gendered, culturally and ethnically complex spaces, and their international arenas and structural domains. This post-pragmatism will critically attach itself to the post-modern family, the media and popular culture, cyberspace, science, protest movements, national identities and race and gender as the critical sites for interpretative-political work. It will push harder at the boundaries and intersections of public science and the media, seeing science and the media as the dominant discourses of power and control in contemporary life .”
Denzin’s message is clear: post-pragmatism must not be regarded as a mere philosophy but as a global project, a project above all opened to experiment and innovation so as to gain constant adaptive power/resources. That is why he states that the new pragmatism “will be a media and communication centered pragmatism; it will accept the proposition that the image of reality has replaced reality ; it will assume that communication is more than face-to-face interaction and no longer the natural site of cooperation and consensus. Violence, dissent and dispute are the cultural givens in today’s multi-ethnic social order.”
Unlike previous social theories , it will(or at least should) be based on “fully dialogic conceptions which are simultaneously reflexive, interpretive and grounded in some sense of internal solidarity that connects the person to a larger moral community .”
The final irony about this transparent society is that it is not at all transparent.

The mediatic society
The above diatribe directed against the “opaque transparency” of the transparent society is, more or less(and this, without being untrue or exaggerated in any way!!!), an example of what Andrei Marga calls an “intellectual inertia”, that is, an intellectual’s inability to see both the pros and the cons of an issue; his painful feeble heartedness when it comes to be able to resist the temptation of an enthusiastic but very subjective and perversely narcissistic criticism(in the sense that it is a criticism constructed with a highly premeditated subtlety) in favor of an objective criticism(dedicated not only to his personal gain but to the evolution of the whole community).
This aspect is rendered by Andrei Marga as well, when he states that we live “in a <<culture>> within which subjective opinions pass as veritable ideas; where moods believe themselves to be liberties; where desires are taken for concepts and where, obviously, people talk more than they read.”
Professor Marga goes even further with his pinch criticism:
“However, it must be noticed that today, conveniences are more attractive than the pleasure of striving to include various fields of activity, and than, intellectual inertia – are among the reasons which determine today’s philosophers to remain within the sphere of limited experiences, too narrow for the pretension of their concepts. “
In such a dangerously confuse intellectual environment, “ the crumbling down of culture in the multitude of opinions without horizon(which forced, for instance, the President Of Harvard University to argue that there are many possible opinions, but not all of them represent valid perspectives! ) and the magnifying of the production of books which enlighten nothing(in Romanian context, this phenomenon takes the shape of an ever-expanding number of authors which flatter themselves with the number of books they produced, without actually having been able to release a genuine work) leave behind bitter question marks. On the other hand, any opinion silently assumes fort itself a normative basis, a basis resembling the nature of a diagnosis(by way of example, one may not formulate a factual sentence <<x appeared as a direct consequence of y’s actions>> within the community, without assuming something in relation to what is and should in fact be the society), even though, the dusty essay-writing and the prevailingness of the day’s small/insignificant opinion ignores this normative basis or prefers to live it in obscurity.”
According to Andrei Marga, cynicism plays the heaviest role in the moral degradation of intellectuals: “We are witnessing – anyway, this is Peter Sloterdijk’s diagnosis – on the very peak of the promotion of illumination(and of that of the Enlightenment), in the era of the most complete knowledge of nature, society and man, the expansion of cynical behavior. Instead of enlarging the solidarity among men, each and every one wants to orchestrate the other(…) This type of cynicism manifests itself strikingly in the intellectual life as well. It is not only the case of the context where, for instance, people who have obtained higher positions and who have published books proclaimed themselves <<intellectuals>>(as if being an intellectual could be reduced to this) and claim a <<privileged>> access to truth. It also about something else, deeper and with heavier consequences: the incapacity of so-called intellectuals to lay down a different opinion from those stipended at that particular moment and the inability to pierce by means of an articulated solution through the wall of an opaque future. Everything that these self-proclaimed <<intellectuals>> can put forth is, in the end, a <<negative futurism>>: <<Watch out, it can get even worse!>>. Constructing an articulated solution for the public problems(which is in fact the purpose of the intellectual truth) is none of their preoccupations, nor does it lie anywhere near their horizon.”

In order to be able to throw light upon such a complicated issue as the dynamics of nowadays informational societies one has to come up with an all-inclusive system of analysis: “Virtually, there can’t be philosophy but there where various experiences are encompassed from one particular point of view, even though this encompassing remains burdensome.” This is just another way of saying that we, as intellectuals, need a real-time interaction among various points of view. Because, in the malevolently premeditated or not absence of such a real time interaction, democracy and liberalism have (as Andrei Marga argues)degenerated into pure proceduralism…just as multiculturalism has degenerated to a simple, physical cohabitation.

My conclusion for the transparent society was that it has a somehow cynical, or at least oxymoronic name, s it is far from being transparent in any ways… A true intellectual will try to go beyond the venomous criticism (per se ) of such a society, and he’ll try to come up with solutions for the crisis that he managed to signal. A first necessary step within this process of constructive criticism is to see the causes behind such attitudes and to try to get an insight(with the sense of “capacity to discern the true nature of a situation; intellectual penetration”) into the workings of such a system. Here’s Andrei Marga diagnosis on the issue:
“After all, what really holds back the mediatic society from becoming a society of transparency ?(…)” Andrei Marga proposes the following answers (analyzing the philosophy of mediatic society from Horkheimer and Adorno to Vattimo): “a) through its proceedings, the mediatic process spreads the <<common denominator>> of facts and cultivates the <<leveling down>>(equalization) of values; b) it encourages <<functionality>> within the systems and much too little initiatives of change; c) it cultivates the intuitiveness, the fragmentariness, to the detriment of the comprehension of the world’s subtle but tenacious correlations; d) it disseminates whatever is <<consumable>> to the detriment of durable values; e) it weakens the distinctions, within the classic culture, between the necessary and the accidental, between the essential and the hazardous; between the truth and the hearsay; between authentic value and improvisation.”
Despite all these(its huge manipulative power, its unsuspected ways of twisting the truth and the reality to its own advantage), Professor Marga insists on the fact that the mediatic society does not swallow the postmodern world- it is only a manifestation within it, and that, “to regard it exclusively from a critical point of view, would be an attitude just as wrong as the one which simply refuses to acknowledge its real presence.”
Following this thread, we could say that media is just another participant to the society of transparency(like any ordinary citizen), with the only difference that it has at its disposal highly sophisticated technological devices and an army of experts with which to interpret and further spread the message. Its aim should be to make the transparent society even more visible, that is, to translate (whenever necessary) the bureaucratic language for the masses and to read between the lines…that is, to help democracy remain a vivid concept. Unfortunately, a sad phenomenon happened –“On the other hand, the media gains its autonomy, to such extent that it no longer remains just an instrument, but it becomes an enterprise in itself, with its own purposes.” Power nucleuses with personal economic interests come into being, which become stronger by the day, impossible to penetrate and which begin to use democracy instead of working in its service (as they should do, considering the fact that they emerged and derived their power from the democratic theories).
The question arises: what can we do, when faced with such a situation.
Linda Hutcheon, in her “Politics of Postmodernism”, provides us with an excellent answer: not to regard it from an exclusively negative point of view, but to PROBLEMATIZE it.
But what means “TO PROBLEMATIZE SOMETHING OR TO MAKE SOMETHING PROBLEMATIC”? Linda Hutcheon insists that every individual’s postmodern moral obligation is to reflect upon those processes by which we represent ourselves and the world around us – that is, to become aware of the means used to set up the signification and to construct the order within our daily experience/routine.
Hutcheon claims that we live in an epoch not just dominated but simply created by media and by popular culture. That is why one can’t avoid representation, and those who pretend to be able to avoid it or to simply go around it, what they do, in fact, is to avoid and to go around the settlement of their notion of representation while deliberately sticking stubbornly to a philosophy which sees representation as trans-historical and trans-cultural.
Linda Hutcheon in her “Politics of Postmodernism” concludes that we live in an epoch where one can’t avoid representation.
The Poststructuralists also had a similar vision, but on the subject of the language: they spoke of the “language as prison” saying that we live in an “inescapable textuality”, in a vicious circle of the language(immediately after one had stopped thinking in a language, he starts thinking in another one). Leaving the sphere of a language ultimately leads to entering the sphere of another one, we cannot live outside language.
Not being able to avoid representation, we’ll surely fail to be able to avoid media either. But what we can do, is to filter and personalize(instead of just taking for granted ), to apply a philosophical critical method to everything that we are offered – a method that excludes the previous unconditioned confidence and which makes everything problematic(“A great man once said there’s no such thing as a stupid question.”).
Hutcheon says that we can do this by simply reflecting upon the circumstances/the context in which the representation was produced and thus we’ll discover the aims behind its broadcasting. In fact, Hutcheon’s message is to actually start using the media. But, she insists, you can only do this if you stop letting yourself be used by it. Today we live in an era when one finds information everywhere, hanging up on every fence: the issue is no longer to find it but to select it and to process it to your advantage.
But how can you select and process the information that you need, how can you let yourself impregnated only with that information which suits you best?
THE ANSWER IS: USING HUMBOLDT THEORY OF COMMUNICATION.
Humboldt shows how language, representation and politics should function in a sincerely-interested-in-evolution society: he said that language, far from limiting us, it enriches us. Humboldt proposed the metaphor of communication seen as a sexual act: when two people communicate, they leave in each other a GERMINATIVE content which will further develop into a real “foetus.” This foetus stands for the incipient stage of future great and complex idea . He also stressed that, when communication is not staged or politically biased, when it is sincerely and passionately carried out, this “foetus” will evolve in the person receiving those ideas without shattering the initial personality of the receiver. On the contrary, it will evolve by enriching and expanding it(the personality of the receiver) to new and unexpected dimensions.
Considering all of the above as patterned of Humboldt’ s theory of communication, one must, in order to conceive a viable theory able to give an appropriate form to the contemporary conscience, carefully select and filter the informational -“spermatozoa” which get to penetrate and fertilize his brain. He has to do this, in order to avoid the reduction of his sapience to raw information/data.

Bibliography:
1) Andrei Marga, Diagnoses, Articles and Essays, Ed. Eikon, Cluj-Napoca 2008
2) Andrei Marga, Filosofia Americană clasică , vol.1, editura All Educational, Bucureşti 2000
3) Ştefan Bolea Ontology of Negation, ed. Casa Cărţii de Ştiinţă, Cluj-Napoca, 2004
4) Paul Kurtz, American Philosophy in the Twentieth Century, a Sourcebook from pragmatism to philosophical analysis, published by The Macmillan Company Collier-Macmillan, USA, 1969.
5) Henry Samuel Levinson , The religious investigations of William James, University of North Carolina Press, Chapell hill, 1981.
6) Norman K. Denzin, The Cinematic Society, London, SAGE Publications, 1995
7) David Brin, The Transparent Society (1998).
8) Linda Hutcheon Politica Postmodernismului, translated by Mircea Deac, Ed. Univers, Bucharest, 1997
9) Cornel Vîlcu unpuiblished course in Linguistics for the 4th year English majors 2006 UBB Faculty of Letter Cluj
10) Vasile Voiculescu Lostriţa(The Huck)
11) Stanislaw Lem’s The Cyberiad , Harvest Books; 1 edition (December 16, 2002)

Internet Sources:
1)http://www.thefreedictionary.com
2) Mihail Bakunin God and the State, on-line edition at http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/godstate/ch01.htm
3) http://www.generationterrorists.com/quotes/the_little_prince.html
4) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatic_maxim,
5) http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_701708528/panopticon.html

Notes: The speed you can achieve in the actual practice of transmitting data is called “effective speed”. It deviates from the maximum achievable speed.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/cognition, consulted on the 1st of September, 2008, 16:02 p.m.

Andrei Marga, Diagnoses, Articles and Essays, Ed. Eikon, Cluj-Napoca 2008, p.47

Andrei Marga, Diagnoses, Articles and Essays, Ed. Eikon, Cluj-Napoca 2008, p.52, my translation

Ştefan Bolea Ontology of Negation, ed. Casa Cărţii de Ştiinţă, Cluj-Napoca, 2004, p.102, my translation

Mihail Bakunin God and the State, on-line edition at http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/godstate/ch01.htm , Chapter I consulted on the 16th of May 2008, 12:04.a.m.

Bakunin, op. cit, Chapter III

http://www.generationterrorists.com/quotes/the_little_prince.html, consulted on the 16th of May 2008, 12:04.a.m.

Empiricism, is the view that experience, especially of the senses is the only source of knowledge. The theory that all concepts emanate from experience and that all statements claiming to express knowledge must be based on experience rather than on theory.

William James, “Philosophical conceptions and practical results”, p 117, taken from Paul Kurtz, “American Philosophy in the Twentieth Century, a Sourcebook from pragmatism to philosophical analysis”, published by The Macmillan Company Collier-Macmillan, USA, 1969.

Ibid. p.117.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatic_maxim, consulted on the 16th of May, 2008, 15:28 p.m.

Andrei Marga –“Filosofia Americană clasică” , vol.1, editura All Educational, Bucureşti 2000, p.148. “ Pentru a aduce astfel deplină claritate în ideile noastre asupra unui obiect trebuie doar să chibzuim ce repercursiuni practice poate include acest obiect. – la ce să ne aşteptam în ceea ce priveşte percepţiile şi la ce reacţii trebuie să ne aşteptăm. Concepţia noastră asupra acestor repercursiuni , fie ele nemijlocite, fie întârziate, constituie atunci pentru noi întreaga concepţie a obiectului, în măsura în care această concepţie are în general o semnificaţie pozitivă.”

Henry Samuel Levinson , ‘ The religious investigations of William James’, University of North Carolina Press, Chapell hill, 1981.

Specialized studies claimed that there is a difference between manipulation and persuasion. Namely, that the persuaded social actor(in the sense of participant) is aware of an well informed on the intentions and aims of the one who tries to convince him…while the manipulated social actor is unaware and even unsuspicious of such subversive intentions. Unfortunately, what the nowadays Media is after, is to melt into a single technique both manipulation and persuasion, to create a all-embracing nebula with/in which and to blind people and from where(on the background of ths general state of blindness purposely induced by no one else than they themselves) they could project themselves as the a Light-Giving Star(Sun), as the Guiding Light: ” Believe me.The sun always shines on t.v.”, the way A-HA put it in their lyrics. But it’s an evil light, like Vasile Voiculescu’s underwater deep lights mentioned in LostriţThe Huck): „luminiţa care pâlpâie în beznele nopţii şi trage pe călătorul rătăcit la adânc”(The twinkle which flickers in night’s waves of darkness and which soaks the lost traveler deep down into the dark waters); or like Stanislaw Lem’s Gaurozauron – the most cunning and artful star, the star with shifty, inconstant and versatile flickering which would often mislead the caravans towards the Black Waste.(Gaurozauron is the star mentioned by Lem in his The Cyberiad)

The panopticon is A prison so contructed that the inspector can see each of the prisoners at all times, without being seen; high-surveillance prison; a prison with cell blocks situated around a central area, ensuring that prisoners could be viewed at all times, http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_701708528/panopticon.html, consulted on the 9th of May 2008, 18:30 p.m.

Norman K. Denzin, The Cinematic Society, London, SAGE Publications, 1995, p. 191

Norman K. Denzin, The Cinematic Society, London, SAGE Publications, 1995, p.204

Norman K. Denzin, The Cinematic Society, London, SAGE Publications, 1995, p.191

Norman K. Denzin, The Cinematic Society, London, SAGE Publications, 1995 p.9

Taken from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/extinction, consulted on the 5th of September, 2008, 16: 07 p.m.

My Bold

Norman K. Denzin, The Cinematic Society, London, SAGE Publications, 1995, pp.216-217

My Bold

The unfortunate reality according to which media channels generate reality instead of reflecting it or of analyzing it (as their mission within the democratic equation says that they should do) is also depicted by Professor Andrei Marga when he brings into discussion Horkheimer and Adorno’s famous masterpiece “Dialektik der Aufklärung”(Amsterdam 1946) : ”one enters the era of <<cultural industry>> which changes the very foundations and infrastructure of previous public communication and leaves behind serious inquiries: can it be the case that ever-since the Media entered the political game as a major player, one can no longer speak about serving democracy but rather of subjecting it to personal interests?; can it be the case that the desire to faithfully represent reality was replaced, in the process, with a rat-race for the creation of that very reality? “(Andrei Marga, Diagnoses, Articles and Essays, Ed. Eikon, Cluj-Napoca 2008, p.51, my translation)

Denzin, op.cit, 215

The reality according to which the Self had become a haunted animal; an animal on the verge of global extinction/annihilation through phagocytosis in the informational systems (a phagocytosis carried out by the amoeba disguised under the name of “multi-media societies” ) is also discussed in David Brin’s book – “The Transparent Society” (1998).

Brin deplores the erosion of privacy in the hands(or, better said, TENTACLES) of the surveillance, communication and database technology. He explores, in highly catchy manners and narrative techniques, how important some degree of privacy is for most human beings (in the sense that it allows them moments of intimacy within which to exchange confidences and to prepare – in some security and necessary mental equilibrium – for the competitive world).

Brin’s main thesis is that “true privacy” will ultimately be lost in a “transparent society” but, he still regards the transparency as a necessary evil, as a must in the fight against corruption and abuses of power(“most dangerous and corrupt abuses of power go hand-in-hand with a lack of accountability and transparency”) and in the struggle/need on the part of the individual to adapt to this shape-shifting and constantly overcrowded world .

His solution is that Governments should provide equal in the sense of perfectly reciprocal surveillance for all: the public has to have the same access/right(no more no less) as those in power – when it comes to obtaining personal gain out of the use of such technological devices.

My Bold

Denzin, op.cit, p.215

Andrei Marga, Diagnoses, Articles and Essays, Ed. Eikon, Cluj-Napoca 2008, p.11, my translation

Andrei Marga, Diagnoses, Articles and Essays, Ed. Eikon, Cluj-Napoca 2008, pp.6-7, my translation

Andrei Marga, Diagnoses, Articles and Essays, Ed. Eikon, Cluj-Napoca 2008, p.23, my translation

Andrei Marga, Diagnoses, Articles and Essays, Ed. Eikon, Cluj-Napoca 2008, pp.24-25, my translation

Andrei Marga, Diagnoses, Articles and Essays, Ed. Eikon, Cluj-Napoca 2008, p.7, my translation

Andrei Marga, Diagnoses, Articles and Essays, Ed. Eikon, Cluj-Napoca 2008, p.52, my translation

Andrei Marga, Diagnoses, Articles and Essays, Ed. Eikon, Cluj-Napoca 2008, pp52-53, my translation

Andrei Marga, Diagnoses, Articles and Essays, Ed. Eikon, Cluj-Napoca 2008, p.51, my translation

Linda Hutcheon “Politica Postmodernismului”, translated by Mircea Deac, Ed. Univers, Bucharest, 1997, p.58.

Cornel Vîlcu unpublished course in Linguistics for the 4th year English majors 2006 UBB Faculty of Letter Cluj, mimeos

As an off the record fact, Kant, the German philosopher buttoned up to the very last button (of the spirit, of course!!!ha! ha!), when hearing about such a daring approach, said firmly and with a vexed German pride in morality and manners:”Out of the Question!”

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