The Pitfalls Of Politicizing Science In Nepal

Whenever we are at the stage of politicizing science, it means that we are in a state of desperation, because most of the time we intentionally leave science intact and sacred as the last place for our political messages to spread, so that science being politicized speaks of a certain crisis of the political parties who undertake this endeavor. In desperation, we leave our political thoughts behind and simply rouse physical bodies of the scientists/science scholars towards expressing the political opinions and slogans that we demand. They are to go out on the street directly from the classroom, without a formation of a political agenda and strategy suited to them and to their studies and subject. And thus we have the extent of their negative response towards their politicization being quite shallow, as shown in the Nepali context of doctors and students protesting against politics in science by only protesting the disruption of their studies, as if they haven't really had the chance to discuss and explore how politics has entered science as a taught subject in a manner deeper than the rousing up or disruption of the movement of their physical bodies and minds.

One may say the politicization of science is the result of the arrival of a critical moment in a political movement or idea, when our politics absolutely must be expressed by as many people as possible, yet this interpretation is incorrect for it provides no reason for science being so completely isolated from politics in the first place. The only agenda critical in the moment when science is politicized is the need for physical bodies, for sheer numbers and for raising the volume of a protest; scientists seldom play a bigger role than that in politics.

For we may ask: are scientists ever allowed (or ever responsible) for the utilization of their intellect towards politics, but even more so, are they ever allowed to infuse their own scientific ideas with political ideas? No they aren't allowed this endeavor, for there is a fear that if scientists are given this type of freedom to interpret and apply political ideas, they will muddle up the ideas and end up producing a confused scientific-political statement which may undermine the more obvious messages that political figures wish to spread. It is not out of fear that science itself may lose its stature in contact with politics that political figures keep science away, but rather they feel that politics will become distorted by scientists/science scholars.

Yet any time science is put to a social cause, or a social cause asks of science to “invent something,” such as a vaccine, the political figures are not far away, not to act in a historically prominent and serious manner to either initiate or prevent science from being social, but rather to act slyly and in an moral-instructional manner to preach to scientists/science scholars the importance of society, to show that despite science's ideas ranging beyond human society, it is ultimately turned towards human society, and so to hold scientists/science scholars partly accountable for the crises in society that may come up someday. The urgency of political parties calling on science is a fake urgency, yet it is mistaken by scientists and science scholars, who consider their involvement immensely important and become politically active in the most evident way they think: protesting out on the streets.

The Schools: Caught Between Colonization and Psychoanalysis

Colonization/the colony is at the horizons always to an education system (or, schools), and also it is always far away from where the action, where the stuff, for psychoanalysis takes place. It is always at the best vantage point to the education system: it is able to discern what is going on in the practice of teaching, and it disrupts this action if it is too dangerous to the colony in order to fulfill its own goals. For psychoanalysis, the effect of colonization arrives through the mediation of the education system: psychoanalysis relies on the techniques perfected in the education system, namely the techniques of narrativizing episodes (“literature”), converting persons into characters (“history”), identifying context (“sociology”) and more, enlisting, by the end, and especially in the mathemes and symbols of Lacan, even mathematics and the hard sciences. So that when colonization disrupts the education system, as a second-hand effect, it disrupts psychoanalysis; or perhaps the disruption of psychoanalysis is the intended goal, where the education system is disrupted only because it is close to psychoanalysis.

But perhaps colonization is even closer to the education system than psychoanalysis is, for as much as psychoanalysis is dependent on the education system for its raw materials and “research,” colonization has the closeness to actively disrupt the education system, as if it were a direct parent to it. Yet in another way colonization is also far away, for it puts the figure of the colonist-power/colonizer at the horizons while sending through a messenger figure of this colonist-power to do the disruptive work on the education system. Psychoanalysis seeks talking figures to conduct the talking cure, but colonization never presents subjects as talking figures, those that speak are only there to deliver prepared messages after the briefest of interactions, so that the content of their speech is second-hand, and the main reason the messengers are there is to present a written text, a written text prepared with great effort by the colonist-power to erase his/her own mark in it. As written, the text fits well with the education system (or, the textual system) as well as avoiding psychoanalysis (or, the non-textual talking cure) in a single stroke.

With the colony firmly at the horizons of the education system, the expansion of the education system is pre-figured, for it is to go towards colonization itself, it is to further “colonize,” submit to the mentality of colonialism, become colonial. The education system which in smaller form looked to be resistant to the system of colonization and the influence of the colony, upon expansion becomes a prominent force of colonialism itself. The colonized becomes the colony, and psychoanalysis now steps in to record the changes to wider society: the dilution of characters (“the end of history”), the undifferentiated space as replacement for specific context (“the beginning of an inaccurate sociology”), and more, culminating with the abandonment of the psychoanalyst by the education system which once supported it, for in a twist it is the psychoanalyst which now fulfills the role of a historical figure with a narrative and a context. The psychoanalyst becomes an object of knowledge and not the subject who fed off of or even demanded knowledge.    

The United Nations And The Anti-War Protest

The prevalent myth casts the UN as a response to wars that had disrupted the world, and the most special reason for the UN's origination, we are told, was for the prevention of a war such as the second world war. But in fact the UN did not arise to problematize and prevent war. It is clear that war is not being prevented in the world today; there have been numerous wars waged since the UN's inception. Instead, the UN was founded to respond to a particular outgrowth of war: the UN was founded to respond to the act of the anti-war protest. The war was not the issue of concern for the UN, but the anti-war protest was the main outgrowth of war where the UN was to find its true purpose, and thereafter intervene and restore the world to an order.

The UN only intervenes when a particular kind of protest takes place: for the UN to act, the protest must fulfill certain requirements, and thus problematically the UN normalizes the population towards protesting in a certain way. If the protest is outside the boundaries of the UN's requirements, the protest fails to get the scrutiny in the global stage that a “UN-normalized” protest would get. The UN does not just communicate the protest to power, but takes control of the protest and how it progresses, and tries to form itself as the only legitimate link between power and the protesters. Thus it seeks only the normal protest, and if the normal protest seems impossible, it seeks to actively normalize the protest before intervening to stabilize the place.

Protests which are too angry/violent, protests composed entirely of marginalized identities and protests which are “too small” in the number of people involved are all examples of abnormal protests for the UN, which the UN attempts to normalize before publicizing them. By influencing and controlling the types of protests which take place, the UN gets a handle into the problematic region's politics and society, and also mediates the relation between the protesters and the powerful. If a protest does not have a stamp of recognition from the UN, it does not make it to the ears of power at all, and therefore power may be unaware that there is a problem. Moreover, the UN acts not when the power is harmful to the protesters, but rather when the protesters are beginning to become harmful to the way power operates and what power is.

Militarized Zones As Fragmenting A Territory

We tend to think “militarized zones” exist at the borders of a few nations that are suffering from war, but in fact militarized zones exist in and influence the composition of every nation, even peaceful ones. Militarized zones don't exist at the borders exclusively but are bought based on monetary decisions, such as the price of land, the price of fuel to connect one zone with another etc.

Militarized zones used to be clustered around and formed by a single figure. That is how “personal militarization projects” arose, with the personal goal of one single figure dictating the formation of militarized zones. With the submission of land under the monetary system, the military was able to expand its militarized zones simply by purchasing land rather than invading it, that is, the military could act like any business client. Afterwards the size of the purchased land for militarized zones began to dictate such things as the size of the military, its ranks, its activities and the content of subsequent personal militarization projects the higher ranks wished to implement.

As much as the military can be present in many places where it can afford to be present, it can also be absent from a lot of places which need military protection because it cannot afford to establish a militarized zone in there. As a result, paradoxically some populations are overprotected while others more privileged are vulnerable.

Whether it happens because of monetary purchase or by invasion, the building of militarized zones in different parts of the territory causes the people of the different parts to feel autonomy and eventually leads to the fragmentation of the single territory into smaller states. Meaning that, it is the differentiation of one militarized zone from another based on location that causes the single territory to fragment into smaller states. Even in civilians, a “state-making” mentality and initiative forms around a militarized zone. 

Tourism and Urban Sprawl Against the Nomadic Order in the Outskirts of Kathmandu

Urban sprawl is making its presence felt in parts of Kathmandu, with houses now spotted on the hills of the valley which were once pristine. The urban sprawl is a tactic by the city's more powerful authorities to counter the oncoming “nomadic order” where nomads attempt to counter the sedentary lifestyle they are enclosed in and seek paths out of Kathmandu. With urban sprawl, the “closeted nomad” finds little in the way of pristine nature to suggest that there is an alternative to sedentary life, he/she thinks the world has houses everywhere and that there is no place uninhabited to which he/she could travel to.

The suburban trend of “running away from home” may be budding in the youth of Kathmandu's housing developments, for such a trend may come hand-in-hand with suburbia itself. This would have been especially problematic had the hills in close proximity to Kathmandu's suburbs been left pristine and full of possibilities for travel and escape. However the authorities have stepped in to encourage building houses on the hillsides, so that youth from Kathmandu's suburbs do not act on their nomadic impulse to travel to the hills and beyond.

If a nomad bent on leaving the center of Kathmandu does indeed travel to the hills to go beyond it, he/she will find that the houses are especially welcoming, especially warm, especially designed to make the sedentary lifestyle seem appealing as a last effort to counter the nomadic impulse and order. This welcoming attitude is called “tourism,” and the hills looking into and beyond Kathmandu are well suited to become tourist-spots even as their hidden motive is the prevention of a nomadic order. Tourism is another name for the placing of sedentary populations in places that could have been uninhabited and welcoming to nomads. Today the “tourism industry” is a vital arm of the sedentary order to house nomadic travelers within a sedentary lifestyle once again.

The Useful Lacanian Question During a Conflict: “What do you want from me?”

In previous cases of conflict people acted and responded in ways that suggested that they were facing threats to their identities because of that conflict. Invasion was a genuine fear, where a nation could be subsumed in the order of a foreign power, thereby causing the loss of a previous national identity.

The rebellious question “Who am I?” lingered not just after a war and invasion but rather during the war itself. The lack of knowledge of a war's outcome meant that people felt they did not belong to either side in the conflict, and the most pressing “Who am I?” drew from there. People were seeing, sensing, eating and living in the war context but this question remained in their minds, which was the first indication in their lives that there could be a way of life outside of national identity and that a kind of attractive “base-level life” was possible. In other words, the “Who am I?” is not asked when the one posing the question is feeling a loss and wants to get a definite answer (“In two years, you will be a Nepali”), but it is the first moment of the realization of a complete freedom from belonging to any nation or identity (“I don't belong anywhere and I feel free”). This lack of commitment to any nation or cause is what threatened the war-making elements and compelled them to make war in a way that did not elicit this question. This “Who am I?” question was prevalent in an atmosphere where struggles against war were themselves more aggressive; “Who am I?” was still a tactic based on implicitly defeating a certain side after a certain period of time rather than coming to a genuine discussion or contract between the warring parties.

War-making elements have found a way around anti-war outcry and have subdued the feelings of identity-loss. Sophisticated and exciting techniques of warfare have been produced today, so that war itself is seen as giving an exciting answer to the “Who am I?” question; war indeed has become about young people “finding themselves,” and that is how it is “advertised.” People are more geared today to live out their identity in the conflict context rather than feel that war robbed them of their identity; they have grown tough because of war rather than being unable to cope with it. Today war can take its time, be prolonged, get dramatic for the satisfaction and intrigue of the war-making elements, whereas previously there used to be war-making elements that got bored and grew irritated of war rather than singing its praises, and this attitude was an important reason that brought about the end of certain wars.

People have grown accustomed to war, they have grown to build a daily life that is not against the war, or disrupted by the war, but rather utilizes the context of the war, a life that is actively involved in the war context; there is a daily life where offices to deal with conflicts have arisen, the think-tanks have made work of the studying of war daily and so war subsequently became more than an armed struggle but becomes work, a job. “Popular support” for war becomes more than a wave of supporters celebrating war in the streets and becomes a concentrated group of individuals utilizing their intellect and information to justify war, finding the war context exciting as it enables the exercising of their imaginations as much as demanding objective dealing with cold facts. The aura of seriousness to the war-effort makes war very hard to take as a joke or distraction. War used to be considered a distraction in the lower wrung of the social strata, and the higher up one went in the hierarchy the more war was looked at as a joke. Today this model has been outdated by the fact that the higher-up, intellectual class is more engaged in war than before, and hence this higher-up class builds sophisticated wars rather than considering wars to be a joke.

The most effective rebellious question in war is no longer “Who am I?” posed to nature or God, but rather, following Lacan, the more primary question that we all ask as human children to human mothers: “What do you want from me?”. Unlike the “Who am I?” which takes one beyond the people and war, the Lacanian question places two conflicting people in a relationship. The question is not a “What do you want that I have? What do you want from my possessions?” but “What do you want from me?” at once ready to give the most intimate and personal of things, things from me, and not from mine. “What do you want from me?” is essentially a question with no answer because there is no thing that is from me, instead, everything I have is a possession based on a contract. There is nothing except for “me” that “I” can give; and the "What do you want from me?" question itself is all I can give...The only way to preserve Nepali identity is to give it over to the other who will preserve it. The only thing the other wants “from me” is the preservation of my identity just as it is.   

The Inauthentically Exhibitionist Technological Age

Exhibitionism is a key tendency in the technological age today: the technological age involves products that don't just use technology, but actively flaunt the inner technology in use. We have those rudimentary Apple computers which had see-through plastic exteriors that made the wiring and machinery visible. At that point in history, Apple's technology was not so advanced that they would want to genuinely flaunt it, rather, the exhibition of the wiring was done to create the fantasy of complexity. A lot of the sophisticated knowledge about devices today is at the level of wiring and not the 'sub-wiring' level, this is done in order to try and curb the effects of a more intense exhibitionist logic that would not have stopped at revealing the level of the wiring alone. Our impulses to destroy fragile wiring and machines is curbed by a fascinating knowledge of the wiring level. 

The dissection of frogs in biology is not relevant to learn about the frog, but rather we dissect frogs to prepare for the manipulation of the wiring of machines; but it is more a preparation for assembly-line technology-related jobs rather than advanced “bio-tech” jobs. The rise of the technological age has brought about changes in the education system that go beyond simple changes to the subject of "computer science," but impact all other subjects of study, especially all the sciences. Indeed, in an ironic vein, computer science itself seems to fall behind in the technological age.

The real logic of exhibitionism is not content with the revealing of naked flesh, but rather, beyond that, the revealing of the internal organs and ultimately the continuous “cutting up” of the outer layers that serve as clothing to reveal another layer of clothing within. It is “clothing all the way in” when it comes to exhibitionism, there is no truer authentic reality to reveal. The initial fascination with the insides of a computer must therefore be moderated by the understanding of the logic of exhibitionism: that the technology they see is not the more important, more serious, final reality. We are, in other words, inauthentic exhibitionists when it comes to our fascination with wiring.

Perhaps there will come a time when the exhibitionist logic gets so intense that the machines are broken apart, smashed and damaged, when we move beyond the fascination with their wiring and try to go deeper and deeper within the surface. Machines will eventually be seen in this scenario as "damage-prone" as they tempt us to destroy their exterior to look inside. Perhaps this exhibitionism towards the devices will outweigh our considerations of their “use-value.” A post-technological age could then begin.

The Age Of Concern For The Artist

Although today's trend of paying record-breaking prices for art work is criticized as capitalist “commodification” and superficial trade of art, the trend could well be an indicator of the faith in art work that the art world has. But even more so, this expensive trend demonstrates an attempt to “save” or “uplift” the figure of the artist in society. Even if the artist in question is already dead, paying large sums for his/her art work provides him/her with a legacy, a success story and an “ordinariness” regarding his/her relevance in the world today; the attempt is to make the artist feel safe. Paying record sums is part of a wider age in the art world: the age of showing concern for the artist.

One way in which the age of the concern for the artist has come about is through globalization. With globalization, what were previously close relations in the art world have gotten even more intimate. The artist, at the center of the art world of dealers, collectors, viewers and students, is now exposed and revealed to these identities in great detail. The artist is found to be problematic, not because of any specific malady, but because the image of a “problematic artist” can finally be properly employed given the possibility of intimacy and care for the artist. A kind of parental impulse in the art world can be satisfied by the artist figure who serves as the object of concern/attention.

The artist's status becomes more important than the art work he/she produces. The concern for the artist has moved beyond just attention towards him/her to outright scrutiny. In this scenario, the art work completely “hides behind” the artist, the work is deliberately made obscure, and if it happens to be displayed “prematurely” before the artist's “problematic years,” its value is deliberately taken to be small, for it has to be displayed at the right moment so that its trade may prove “therapeutic” for the artist. Today the art world around the artist is too eager to help the artist. 

As the display of the art work becomes the final act for the artist, the art work no longer becomes the point of production of information and knowledge about the artist's life and health. Beyond his/her art work is just silence, with the art work being “deterritorialized” from the art world, with the art work serving as the final statement beyond the communicative and enclosing/“territorializing” function of “art world language.” The art work fosters no communication but brings about a silence, and this silence is a result of complete ignorance towards the art work, because the art world has replaced art work as the artist's therapeutic object, with the artist's safety as top concern over his/her creativity and productivity.

True rebellion in the art world today would be focused on experimenting with the timing of the display of the art work: if the work is displayed “prematurely,” before an artist's “problematic years” or even"creative years," then its value will be lower in monetary terms, but the art work will also be very relevant as an object indicating the condition of the artist's life, and so premature display would produce communication about the artist through the discussion of his/her art work. This would go against having the art work stand as an end-point beyond which there is only an unproductive and awed silence on the part of the art world.  

Globalization And The Refugee Movement From Unprotected Territories

In hopeful depictions, globalization is seen as the movement of laborers or wealth freely across the world. This picture of labor and wealth mobility is inaccurate because it is increasingly becoming evident that globalization will be defined rather as the era of the mass mobility of human beings seeking security and safety. This much is seen in the mass movement of refugees, which increasingly looks like being the symbol which defines what globalization stands for. In the new globalization model, the western world will open its borders further not to invite working-age laborers, but to ensure the security and safety of populations seeking respite from warfare or natural disasters. All movement towards the west is a ultimately "refugee movement," it entails a "becoming refugee" of the moving individual or group. 

Any future policy by safer, western societies regarding the increase in immigrants in their territory will have mostly to do with ensuring that these immigrants are provided security and safety, but not much beyond that. Ultimately, as the securing/protecting of the population becomes the major concern, the progress and development of that population takes a back seat, because for securing powers, it is important that the secured population maintain a fixed character, and not become anything more that cannot be handled. In securing, the population is fixed in its level of development and prosperity; the population remains secure but stagnant.

The paternal, protective function which is supposed to be a standard across all territories is today absent in numerous territories; security is not a given right in many nations, mainly because the western peace project no longer goes outward to “fill in” war-torn territories with broad zones of peace, but rather seeks to invite inward to its shores those singular individuals who seek to live. Today peace is a project of protecting fortunate individuals and not the whole of the group which is being persecuted. Additionally, the militarization of the west does not mean that the whole world is a safer place, even though this is how it is usually thought for comfort, but western militarization only implies the safety exclusively of the west's own borders and territories.

The fulfillment of the Foucauldian idea of “construct live,” where the goal for individuals and societies is the prolonging of life and avoidance of death, increasingly requires that populations move away from their territories and move towards other more secure territories because not all territories are secure even though they have authority in place which continues to relay messages celebrating security. “Construct live” needs to be amended for the globalization age: living a longer life comes only if one's territory is abandoned for the west; living longer is only possible with mobility towards the west, with deterritorialization from one's homeland, a deterritorialization which is long-term, perhaps even permanent, because the west does not always give the chance of a proper rehabilitation/reterritorialization. The west itself will soon seek to be known for its protective function above everything else, protecting the few against weak threats being practically easier than actively developing whole weak societies. To protect oneself is not a “natural” aim which originates in the mind of the individual, rather, the west demands that the individual seek protection and hence travel to the west, but, problematically, protection is all the west will give.     

Development Of Infrastructure In Nepal As A Preparation For A War-Making Territory

War is a result of the process of “development,” where development means the “macro-projects” implemented by big international developers to build roads, food-making mechanisms and other basic infrastructure in a certain territory. War is made easy on a day-to-day basis through the use of infrastructure: war-machines are being driven in the modern, well-paved roads, and war soldiers are being provided the most nutritious food. Without a proper network of roads, such wars would not be possible, and without hospitals to treat the war casualties, these wars would not have a steady supply of fighters. Proper roads etc facilitate warfare, even more than providing for the populace a kind of higher quality of life and prosperity. Higher quality of life and prosperity are simply promises made by the macro-style development organizations. These developmental organizations' stated goals of prosperity and higher quality of life seem only to apply for western countries, in the rest of the world these goals have only enabled easy transition to a war-making entity.

Many problematic territories in the world have consistently disproved the link between development and peace. An important reason for the link between development and war may be the “foreign-ness” of development. War is waged in problematic territories with disregard and disrespect for foreign, western infrastructure, the roads are used ostentatiously for war-making purposes, even as this goes counter to the philosophy of the organizations that built these roads. This disregard and disrespect for infrastructure is possible because the infrastructure is not felt to be “community owned” but rather is felt to be “foreign made.” War-making entities seek the continuation of the roads and hospitals so that the war effort can be kept alive, hence, today's war-making entities would rather have the big developers provide humanitarian relief and develop infrastructure so that the war may be continued with ease after the developers leave. Increasingly, war will be stopped just for big development projects, this kind of temporary stop will be the definition of peace, and conflicts are likely to continue for decades if the parties use this model of “allowing the big development organizations into the war-zone periodically.”

Hence we find development organizations are obliged to speak of war out of guilt, because (unconsciously) they are making war possible with their infrastructure development projects. There is a positive correlation between a warring population's war effort and the level of development of infrastructure in that territory. But in today's developing world, the first thing that should provide the people with a common identity is their territory's infrastructure rather than their cultural similarities and natural resources. Hence, it is up to the people to collectively come to own the infrastructure that has made their lives easy. Ultimately, this may mean that foreign-made infrastructure itself becomes the object of contention: the big roads and hospitals are rejected, the food-making systems are ignored for alternatives designed by the community, the power-plants are replaced or reclaimed etc. Collectively making infrastructure would bring about unity between the populations of different territories or identities. The activities generating strong community ownership should be the number one priority within a wider infrastructure development project, rather than community ownership only being encouraged at the end of the project as some kind of added bonus.

Funerals In The “Cyber-Civil-War” Age

In Foucault, the state controls information so that it can ultimately control the behavior of the physical human bodies of the population. This model does not suffice, because today the superstate instead controls physical human bodies as information carriers, to control bodies in their ability to carry and hold information, not for how they behave. The state does not produce information seeking to control the population, but rather it controls the production of information by human beings themselves; the state becoming only a controlling entity, creating life or taking life but not in charge of the production of information, because state-like production of information is now in private hands.  

In the near future under this superstate, every physical body will already be in the cross-hairs of the superstate because these bodies will be the carriers of important information, and every body will always already be like a deviant if the information systems the superstate stores within the body become virus-laden or faulty. Without the innocent body's own fault, something such as a chip or a bar-code within it may deviate and cause the necessity to unjustly destroy or intrude on the body that simply carries the deviance/faulty device. Innocent lives will frequently be lost at the hands of the superstate only concerned with the management and maintenance of its devices. Another ethical question would emerge: does the superstate let the innocent life to live and have his/her virus-laden chips infect the whole of cyberspace, or should an innocent life be killed?

The superstate may deem necessary to retrieve and erase the deviant devices within the human body of its subject, giving rise to a “cyber-civil-war” in the future between the authoritative superstate and angry but innocent “deviant” carriers of information systems who feel intruded. In this war, the biological death of the citizen would not be the end objective of the superstate, because the body is not to be killed just in its movement and behavior, but must also be destroyed for the information that it carries within it. For the superstate, the body cannot simply be shot and let to lie in the street. Proper destruction of the body and not just its death would be the aim of the superstate, making the superstate effectively an entity that controls post-death funeral processes, that approves and administers some kinds of funeral processes over other kinds, depending on which funeral process enables proper destruction of the information systems within the body. The superstate will control the complete cremation of bodies in order that the information systems in those bodies are completely destroyed. Mass concentration camps will ensue where citizens are to go to die and be cremated in a way suited to the superstate. Killing the human body will become an activity performed on the way towards the deactivation of the foreign devices within that body; the worth and value of the human body will be judged based on the smooth functioning of the devices within it: if the device manifests a lot of bugs for some reason, the human body, no matter what its wealth and class, will be considered a weakness in the superstate's order. 

The superstate's complete control of funerals would be a great denial of freedom for the population to do whatever it feels like with its dead bodies. It would be problematic for a superstate if the mourning civilians were to get rid of cremation, to make the dead body productive and active through the information stored within it, to let the virus roam freely, to withhold the information contained in the dead from the superstate, to make it possible for others to extract data from the chip before the superstate does. In this civil war, the entombing of the dead and the use of open graves would resist the superstate's authorization of complete cremation. 

The Impossibility of “Private” Space Flight And The Desire To Be Lacanian Big Other

In the Cold War, we witnessed a space race between two superpowers, but the space race among governmental entities began long before then, with people from different religions and/or societies all trying to imagine space in their own ways, with certain people representing the figure of “state/governmental astrologer,” like the "state philosophers" loyal to authority that Deleuze and Guattari found problematic. Space has always been the object of contesting theories and ideas, but so far these ideas and theories have been produced by governmental authorities linked to the state and not private citizens. But what ultimately motivates these space races is the desire to be the Lacanian big Other of society, to be that individual who is literally at a distance from the earth in outer space and hence distant from all of its societies and cultures, Big Other in a way that no place in the earth can today afford to produce, totally distant from symbolic coordinates and known locations.

However, this desire to be the big Other does not manifest in astronauts who work for the government, for the government and state always maintain very clear, serious and authoritative communication between themselves and their astronauts in order to keep the astronauts within the symbolic order of earth, and hence being a big Other within a governmental organization is impossible, and being a big Other implies a rejection of government. Hence we understand the need for formal and serious jargon from earth's "mission control" while communicating with governmental astronauts to keep them engaged within the earth's symbolic order. Informal “human” and “emotional” and even "philosophical" language is discouraged by authorities such as NASA despite the momentous and epic space travel, because the informality may inspire in the astronauts a sense of being free, and it is only a matter of a small push before zero-gravity is able to actually free oneself from the constraints of the earth's symbolic order. But only once private individuals travel to space can they come close to experiencing the status of big Other, since for private individuals their disengagement with earth will be close to complete.

Unlike the World Wars, the Cold War was itself never a contest to kill the small other of the enemy human being, but the Cold War logic was to try to be the big Other, distant from all of society, as in the case of the space race, spatially distant. Countering Foucault, the space race is evidence that power is not attained in a direct and competitive relationship with one's adversary, but rather by transcending the knowledge and capabilities of the adversary as it relates to an external object that is to be mastered. In other words, power is not the exercising of one's will over the adversary's being and possessions, but rather power is the mastering of what the adversary observes and senses.

However, it seems that being the big Other is not a permitted position in the eyes of the dominant and lawful father. And hence, in bygone years, when a very strict and dominant patriarchy was in place, there was a prevalence of authoritative governmental/state astrologers, who tried to imagine space theoretically and through fantasies from earth but had no intention of traveling and being in space alone as a big Other. In the past a theoretical engagement with space dominated, but today, with the law of the father in decline, the trend has very much become to build machines that can take one's body to space, so that one can directly be in space as a big Other of society.

It is this new-found fantasy to be big Other which motivates the construction of highly technical rockets and related machinery. Technical limitations are not the main reason why we don't travel to space. Indeed, as the myth goes, the computers that sent man to the moon were not even close to sophistication and power to even the most simple computers prevalent today, so it is not difficult to go to space if one is not forbidden to do so.

There aren't consumable objects that take one to space, rather, one is always to be attached to life-preserving machines if one is to be a big Other in space. The machines are attached to one's body, intimate and absolutely necessary for basic survival, and they cannot be treated as consumable objects can, that is, they cannot be thrown away. Thus, they are, for all purposes, a part of the body of the space traveler, and hence being the big Other involves a radical alteration of the body. Even so, being the big Other is still impossible today, even in the most freeing of space flights, because when the entrepreneurs of today claim that they will launch “private” space flights, they do not mention that figures from some governmental authority, such as NASA, will also “accompany” them, control their navigation and movements and monitor them thoroughly as patriarchal authorities do. The law is now articulated differently: being the big Other is allowed, but temporarily, for it is only allowed if the citizens are to return back to earth eventually. Thus the closest one can come to being the big Other via space-travel is by fantasizing that one is completely lost in space. In this regard, being the big Other is still only possible in fantasy.  

The International News Media's Birthing Of BRICS

Leaders from Brazil, India, China and South Africa (in short: the BRICS nations) meet regularly, cooperating with one another because their countries are claimed by the news to represent the economic and geopolitical powerhouses of the future. But the BRICS's economic performance and sociopolitical climate are far from steady to make the “powerhouse” label justified. Rather, the significance of “the BRICS arc” lies in the international news media "big business." This international news media big business has divided into continental offices and thus needs a nation to play the role of “leading continental powerhouse” to serve as the main character for their news-stories in a specific continent. China and India play the “powerhouse” characters in “Asia-Pacific,” while Brazil plays the same character for South America as South Africa does so for the African continent. A standardized and model narrative is in display for each continent, with the use of the “one core power per continent” story-line. If the specific proper names of BRICS countries are removed, the broadcast news in the “Asia-Pacific” region will resemble that in “Africa” or elsewhere to a great degree because of a kind of standard news template having been utilized by each continental office. Nations such as Nepal are not regular fixtures within international news channels, and so do not have roles to play, but for nations that are a regular fixture, there needs to be an arc or story in which they are placed as characters so that they can attract loyal viewers on a day-to-day basis.

The aesthetic orderliness of this simple idea of the one-powerhouse-per-continent arc makes it seem that the international news media shapes geopolitics in a way that makes the world seem pleasing to the audience: the goal of news being shaping geopolitics to make the news attractive, rather than relying on undramatic information-spreading. Also, the audience's demands for more relevant news-stories encourages the news media to build the story that each continent has its own powerhouse, a powerhouse which that whole continent can relate to and like or dislike. American power is in decline not only because of geopolitical tensions, but rather also because "America-as-sole-superpower" arc is no longer attractive for audiences of the international news media channels. The audiences have moved to appreciating a new kind of news-story, one where a regional nation takes up the role of regional powerhouse.

As so much of the news media's production relies on international relations, it follows that the news media are more invested in orienting international relations a certain way, in other words, the news media is not just invested in observing foreign nations, but rather is invested in actively monitoring and shaping the stories that emerge from foreign nations. The news media shapes geopolitics from behind-the-scenes in this way because it is good for business: it can expand its viewership and operate its offices in “Asia-Pacific” or “South America” if it can produce news that will keep South American viewers tuned in in South America and the African viewers tuned in in Africa and so on. 

With And Without The Super-Egoist Nepali Constitution

Different nations have different intensities of punishment, meaning that the difference in sensitivity to punishment between two populations demarcates national boundaries between those populations in the first place. Nepal is the name of a territory with a certain intensity of punishment and a certain level of harshness of the police-prison “punishment system” that is different from that of other nations. The Nepali constitution makes Nepal uniquely Nepal by subjecting some people to a certain level of punishment, or to a different "way of punishing" that still falls within a globally-relevant "intensity of punishment" scale. 

When the constitution is being written, one area of scrutiny for its writers is to see whether Nepal police is competent enough to actually enforce the tenets in the constitution document. At this stage, the police has to actively demonstrate its potential. So as long as the constitution is being drafted, Nepal could be called a “low-intensity police state” as the police works to try to convince the constitution writers that it will be effective in applying the completed constitution.

After the constitution is complete, Nepal police plays a role in making the constitution the most authoritative document within the nation. The police has to discipline the nation's subjects towards acting “by the book” or “by the document.” Of course the things that cause displeasure and discontent are to be enforced, but more importantly, people also have to be trained and disciplined to take and enjoy the benefits that are produced by the constitution. People do not "naturally" work towards increasing their pleasure or satisfaction, rather they need a constitution to lead them. Freedom isn't realized “naturally” by the people, but has to be given to them through the text of the constitution. Like Zizek's formulation of the superego as demanding enjoyment through a command: “Enjoy!” we will have the Nepali constitution demanding people to “Be Free!” 

But even without a constitution, Nepal functions smoothly with the same authorities in place and the status-quo in check. This constitution-less but smooth running Nepal shows that people behave as if some kind of law is already in place even when it isn't. People do not challenge authority using their “freedom” even when there is an opportunity to do so, as if they already know that there is no such “freedom” outside the constitution's enforced freedom, or as if people cannot articulate a freedom in the absence of a constitution. There is no need/use for a strong and disciplining Lacanian “Law/Name of the Father” because people have today begun behaving as if there is a law, pretending there is a law, without there being need for an actual, written law and an authoritative individual as its producer. Nepal shows that we are in a kind of “post-political” moment with the constitution as outdated: we have moved to a phase where we can self-discipline and function without a constitution.

International Involvement in Nepali Constitution-Making Hall

It feels like the Nepali constitution will be an authentically Nepali-made document. Although they speak of it sometimes, major international actors seem to remain silent from any continuous involvement with Nepali constitution making. This is not the truth however. The foreign involvement in the constitution is evident and it is concentrated to one message only at this point: the maintenance of order among the members of the constitution-making body. Apart from that, the details of the Nepali constitution are not of importance at the moment, as if to suggest that for Nepali politicians to come to order is a significant progress at this point in the constitution-making process. We are fooled by the brevity of the foreign message into thinking that there is no message at all. In short, the main message from international parties can be encapsulated in one word: “Order! Order!”

What can feel and look like the complete absence of a foreign power is more likely to be an even broader, more authoritative involvement on foreign power's part. Micro-managing with regards to the smaller details of the Nepali constitution is the job of those with less power, not more. Having said this, however, it should be noted that once the members involved in constitution-making really come to order, then other more detailed messages will arrive from abroad. No longer will the foreign message be to Nepalis to “be patient” and “let the formal constitution-making process play out,” but it will be established in relations with individual political figures directly.

While the foreign powers spread the message of “Order!” the Nepali politicians choose to act through acts of vandalism and disruption, which is not the mark of a sustained political response, but rather appears to be the act of a more passive group without proper avenues to express politically. At once, in Nepal, the avenue and channel for political expression has been concentrated to one hall, with great opportunities for monitoring and controlling of the Nepali political process and activity. (Also, within the hall, the differences in power between two politicians are so nuanced and marginal that politicians do not attempt "political power games" to dominate other less powerful politicians, so that all politicians appear as passive and powerless.) Outside the assembly hall, political activity seems to be quite infrequent and low in intensity these days. The assembly hall is like a detention center: it is a place to isolate those politicians who if left to the streets will cause much disruption in Nepal. This means that the assembly hall did not come after a completed peace-process, but it is a necessary place to try and complete the peace-process itself.  

The Frequent Meetings Between Figures Involved In The Greek Crisis

In the Greek financial crisis, the 'powerful' figures of Greece and EU members have been meeting one another very frequently, and this indicates that power relations between the figures are being formed and challenged constantly. The Greek case is peculiar: we are quite accustomed to nations failing, but when they fail usually it is in cases such as civil wars, so that the government is lost before the nation fails in the usual case. It is in the Greek crisis where Greek and European governmental structures are alive, active and aware of the failures-in-progress, where governmental and financial structures are very present to the Greek failure, they are very sturdy, yet they are not acting in ways that can save the people from the crisis; it is a crisis given that there is plenty of power in each figure/structure rather than a failure caused by a lack of power everywhere, so it is a failure within and because of the power-play rather than after the exhaustion of power of all figures and parties involved.

In this crisis, even governing structures and not just banks deserve the label “too big to fail,” in that, so far it is governing structures being “saved” by financial institutions rather than governmental structures doing the saving. However, financial institutions seldom have the patience of saving government indefinitely, and so it is only in the eyes of a benevolent government that institutions and structures become “too big to fail” and are saved. It is not in the interest of financial institutions to constantly act as “saviors.” Only a big and benevolent governmental structure can save Greece for a period of decades and generations now.  

We also see in the meetings of the prominent figures of Greece, EU, ECB etc the surprising intimacy of governmental figures and financial figures. It is a case of financial figures looking into the politics of the crisis, and politicians looking into the financial aspects of it, as if each figure knows his/her own area of interest/expertise will not bring about the solution, and so these interminglings show desire among the figures involved to evoke a proper “EU philosophy” which would move beyond finance and governance, which would wipe the slate clean of political and financial attempts, so that the figures could meet and act in the name of that “EU philosophy” and undertake a more romantic/idealistic cause to save Greece. The optimistic signs are there that romanticism is already in play, because the figures in the crisis have become elevated personalities in the eyes of one another, with the media only working to add cosmetics to that elevation or “romance,” and this romantic attachment to changing one another is why they meet one another so frequently and in friendly terms. The figures of the “savior” and the “rebel” and several others are in play in this romance.

Yet the influential figures in the crisis simply do not know how to act without a properly important “EU philosophy” given that their financial and political decisions have failed, and subsequently the crisis is always worded in such complicated terms and unfolds in a complex manner, with these complications and complexities showing a desire to be articulate and productive in a philosophical manner. But the problem is that it is in the “style” of idealistic philosophy to arrive a little too late to the scene, and so we may see the figures involved evoking the philosophical underpinnings of the EU only once the EU has failed. Idealistic philosophy must be present to the crisis at the moment, not at a later time when the EU can be painted, appropriately for those figures involved who wish to remain in their seats, as a philosophical mistake rather than a governmental or financial one. 

The Computerization of Earthquake Forecasts

The global financial system is, in non-crisis times, the chief object which forecast/prediction is applied to. Whereas previously the art of predicting lay with some special individuals that through their “powers” predicted natural disasters and other things, today mathematical and computerized models have replaced prophetic individuals in the science of mainly financial predictions.

Some may feel that if human beings can predict financial actions and processes accurately, they can also predict seismic activity to a great degree of accuracy. The computer becomes seen as able to play God in the realm of mathematical prediction. The computer model of the financial system, in other words, is the “Master symbolic order” which legitimizes man-made knowledge/models about all other things. The “computerization” of knowledge, meaning the use of computers to formulate knowledge, begins with the financial system and later as a result the prediction of earthquakes is itself computerized. It is forecasts of the financial system which instill in people the idea of an “order,” a “regularity,” a “predictability,” and weather/nature forecasts take a backseat, like in our media news channels, and appear inspired be financial predictions rather than being the financial system's forerunner. People will believe in the “math” of earthquake prediction as long as they believe in the math of financial prediction.

But in reality our understanding of earthquakes seem to rely only on a few mathematical symbols/concepts: among them, the “Richter scale,” “epicenter” and “velocity,” which have all entered the Nepali lay-speak, but there seems to be not many more other symbols and concepts related to the earthquake which could feature in a better mathematical model. It seems that the computer models that predict earthquakes must be outdated, whereas the computer models that understand the financial world are very cutting-edge.

However, since the global financial system has been in crisis, the financial model's ability to predict financial trends and processes has been called into question. Consequently, as we can see from Nepal's example, people's faith in the computer's ability to predict seismic activity has also been erased, because the financial crisis is a case of computerized modeling as a whole coming into crisis. There will be “panic-driven” predictions in both finance and seismic activity going forward, as long as the global financial system does not serve now as the representative case of the computer's ability to "intelligently" understand and predict.

A Nepali Construction Worker's Fantasy With Power Tools In Post-Earthquake Nepal

As damaged houses are being destroyed in Nepal today, serious power tools have been brought into the country to do this job. Nepalis that are dreaming of jobs in the Middle-East are instead employed now, albeit temporarily, with the dismantling process here at home using the new power tools, and this kind of dismantling work has consequences on fantasy production. The Middle-Eastern countries in which Nepali workers work are known for oil wealth and other kinds of revenue, and the fantasy of the Nepali worker in the Middle-East, then, concerns itself with spending oil wealth and consuming more and more, rather than with saving money and working hard. But, with the jackhammer and other power tools used by Nepali workers here in Nepal today, this fantasy will transform from a fantasy of consumption and excess pleasure to a fantasy of production, where the workers will fantasize about working in the Middle-East instead of spending money over there. The patriotic passion with which the Nepali workers work to dismantle buildings in Nepal will also translate into a high degree of commitment towards work once they are abroad. That feeling that they are “representing Nepal” when they are working abroad tomorrow will also be supplemented by their feeling of “doing Nepal's work” in dismantling Nepali houses here today. This fantasy-to-be-more-productive entails that Nepali workers will be more entrepreneurial and “business-savvy” than before, and will try to attempt more lucrative and profitable ventures in the nations where they are employed, rather than being dependent on wage labor without much freedom for upward mobility.

The jackhammer is a smaller version of the Middle-Eastern oil drill, and the feeling of the powerful working jackhammer in a worker's hands will translate to a desire to control with one's hands an entire oil drill or even an oil rig, such is the positive “power trip” of controlling a powerful jackhammer and of destroying an entire house. There is, for the first time today, a definite relationship between Middle-Eastern heavy industry/construction and work within Nepal, putting the focus of the relations between Nepal and the Middle-East on issues related to work conditions rather than leisure and wages, perhaps even putting the issue of dangerous work conditions on the map. An authentic interest in issues related to work will be more prevalent: the Nepali worker, upon migration, will realize that the Middle-Eastern countries are not only a place for spending and luxury, but that these countries have to be recognized instead for the efficiency they show in generating oil and the endurance of their operations and business practices. Further, familiarity with the equipment used in serious construction would be favorable towards the Nepali worker's productivity in the Middle-East, and be looked favorably by the bosses over there, causing more rapid upward mobility in the workplace hierarchy, perhaps even taking a Nepali worker to the very top.

What the migrant Nepali worker must try and avoid, however, is a kind of “identity crisis” related to the difference in responsibilities at work between here and in the Middle-East: the work here in Nepal today is destructive and negative, while constructing buildings or extracting oil in the Middle East is a more positive endeavor, one that creates something rather than destroying. There may be moments when the migrant worker questions his/her authentic position, whether he is supposed to create or destroy. If the migrant worker identifies with the destructive work in Nepal too much, he/she will be thought to be more comfortable with destructive work: thereby employed in the military of a Middle-Eastern country and dropped into war-zones, and then a military relationship between Nepal and the Middle-East would begin, like in the case of the British army and Nepali soldiers, with stricter conditions on who can work over there.

The Body-Without-Organs as a Response in Post-Earthquake Nepal

In post-earthquake Nepal, people have many ideas on how to deal with unbearable trauma, but mostly these ideas arise out of desperation and the need for a quick solution. And then there is now also more anger towards that nature from where the earthquake arose, an anger which could be problematic as it leads to more deforestation, poaching and pollution in Nepal...that is why the progressive development of Deleuze and Guattari's body-without-organs (BwO) is the most adequate response to the trauma of the earthquake: the BwO entails the removal of skin so as not to feel the sensations of the quakes, the removal of eyes so that the quakes are not visible...the losing of one's physical bodily organs linking one's self to the quake. The BwO could be a direct result of the trauma (“I lost sight in my eye-organ because of seeing too much of the earthquake”), an actual medical operation to remove the eye/skin, or it could be an intense imagined state, in any case where the skin and other organs that sense and respond to the earthquake cease to be a part of the functioning body, becoming instead a non-functioning mediation between nature and the BwO.

As everyone is running around in panic during the earthquake, the BwO remains steady and still, doing productive activities. As a careful tactician, the BwO channels all its productive energy/labor away from the organ which it sees as problematic: the eyes may be inactive/removed, for instance, but the ears can be more active than before. In this way, a clutter of organs is reduced to a few highly productive ones, and production does not cease even during and after an earthquake. In a world used to production from all available bodily organs, the production from a select few organs yields novel objects not encountered before, and in this regard the BwO's productivity works as a rebellion against full-bodied capitalist industrial production.

When one sheds one's skin, there is no need to enact a kind of violent change on nature to deal with the trauma of the earthquake; there is no angry response turned towards nature, because the earthquake is not felt, at least not in its full severity. On the other hand, there is no real change to the BwO either, because the skin is only a mediator between the BwO and nature; the skin does not belong to BwO or to nature. And hence the skin can be “shed” to curb the response of the conscious mind and body to the earthquake. The earthquake occurs and there is harm enacted upon the BwO, but, it is not registered, and thus the BwO continues to become productive, it continues to live with the earthquake but without reliance for its productivity on such whims of nature.

The BwO does not feel the sensations of harm to the body so as not to feel self-centered and self-defensive when it comes to the earthquake. Due to this selflessness, the BwO could have a positive social/altruistic function, very helpful in the post-earthquake situation. Also, for the BwO there is no sentimental attachment to the removed organs of the body, which is indeed a big feat given the protective mentality with which a person is characterized when it comes to the body's protection.

When the BwO becomes productive during an earthquake, it becomes admired for its bravery and for its work-ethic, and so it becomes a historical/heroic object, its “body-ness” not realized by those who celebrate it. But the BwO is still a living body, and death may occur to such a body at any time, for the BwO's survivalist tendency is weakened by the loss of organs. Yet there is still definitely a kind of contentment to the body's death, because nature has not been harmed, the earth remains safe for more years to come. 

Nepal's “Culture Shock” With Post-Earthquake Aircraft

It is post-earthquake Nepal, and unfamiliar planes have been flying overhead constantly...These aircraft are a necessity now, true, but they happen to be objects without proper cultural context and cultural reference points in Nepali society. And these aircraft are part of a wider problem: that the Nepali cultural production to deal with this crisis will be interrupted by drastically foreign objects/aid, particularly those signs of foreignness without a well-established significance and meaning in our society. A cultural imperialism is taking place in Nepal: the very loud sound of the unfamiliar aircraft reminds one of the stories heard of loud and disturbing music played to natives or prisoners in western wars as a way of muting and shocking those populations into instant defeat. But as this particular imperialism has the face of benevolent foreign aid, there will not even be many critical stories/legends about it. When there is no reference point to a foreign object, there is not even a properly 'visible' adversary one can identify, rather, something defeats one without even registering as an “enemy” or “adversary/opponent.”

The foreignness to the intervention found in this earthquake is in contrast to the previous earthquake: there were unique stories about and explanations to the previous big earthquake, for instance. But in today's context the issue is more about directly being involved as an aid worker, or a doctor, or a scientist, while the identity of the producer of cultural signs and symbols to address the earthquake has been ignored. The question is: where is the old man/woman to tell us the stories about previous disasters? Where is the platform for the old man/woman who has been a keen observer of this earthquake and the sensations and feelings it produced? This person is needed now, not at a later date when the shock of the earthquake has declined and when a comfortable/romantic remembering is underway. 

The post-earthquake moment could be taken up to deny cultural production with the reasoning that cultural production is associated with “superstition” and “non-scientific knowledge.” And any elaborate and imaginative cultural production, such as a long story, or a figurative image, or a tragic poem, is taken as a sign of emotional trauma and subsequently suppressed or provided with an insipid environment where it can be kept away. Today children are not traumatized the most, but they are most easy to label as traumatized by the earthquake because they most quickly route their experience of trauma into cultural objects, and the many other identities who are also traumatized will only surface later, when these identities are influenced by the children and begin to deal with the trauma with their own cultural production. The earthquake has shown that cultural production is inspired by the work of children, and demanding children to do imitative art based on well established cultural signs and symbols is not properly inspirational to them.

More important than restoring destroyed temples is to allow children to inspire others with their art, and we must be ready to accept a drastic re-imagining of the cultural object on display. However, “superstition” may well be a part of this cultural production, and so we may indeed find a genuine and original (re)-emergence of temples in some form as children build them. We await a commemorative monument made by children, and we await a reaction/response which takes this commemorative monument as the singular influence and inspiration to a very productive, enduring and transnational artistic movement and practice. Nepal has been too isolated, and many foreign gestures cause too much disturbance. We are at risk of perpetuating this isolation if outsiders don't act because they feel intrusive. The gaze of this inactive outside world will translate into productive action when outsiders can see and feel how we are relating to the trauma and thereafter create something for audiences of their own choosing. The disaster is not just “natural” or “domestic,” but even the gesture to help out causes some harm: Nepal cannot be touched without disturbance, there is no neutral or observer position. Artists will enter Nepal next after foreign aid workers and will look to curb the disturbances caused by foreign aid itself.

Rock-Star Scientists in Post-Earthquake Nepal

With the recent earthquake, scientific knowledge in Nepal has been removed from the privileged individuals, institutions and social practices in which it usually operated; the “cultural sphere” where scientific knowledge circulates has shifted from high-brow to lower-mainstream. Indeed, all signs of a connection between science and privileged members of the population is being erased in order not to inspire anger and resentment among the wider public without such access to science. Politicians are playing the role of quiet, uninformed spectators, as if they had not been provided scientific rationales behind the earthquake, both regarding its cause and consequent safety measures (and in order that the “natural disaster” and its casualties is seen to have “natural” causes and not political, social or cultural causes.) Somewhere, a rock-star scientist is conducting the post-earthquake show. 

The rescue mission is in a “quick-relief” and technical-scientific mode: it is in the expensive and sophisticated jet airplanes now flying above, it is in the use of the most cutting edge infra-red cameras, it is in the hands of the more “scientific” (and hence “developed”) foreign rescuers, for whom the goal is to do the work efficiently as much as it is to be successful, and all the while even able Nepalis play the role of the uninformed and helpless. In fact, in the face of this foreign mission, it is because so many of us have to play the role of victims that we continue to stubbornly believe that we will be further victimized by more dangerous earthquakes. But this self-victimization is more so a problem of a sudden diminishing of work and productivity, rather than a traumatic and scared emotional response to the real crisis.

Scientists have organized scientific statements for the more “popular culture” public sphere and consequently scientific knowledge may soon be posted extensively out on the streets, advertised next to the images of consumer products, cementing the authority of science. Scientists have had to orient themselves towards utilization of the popular media, as opposed to the scientific journal, and for the sake of scientific knowledge scientists are to operate directly in the public sphere, exposing themselves to the interrogations of a general public, rather than operating in the gradual and methodical sphere of the seminar/conference. This kind of 'proletarianization' of science has been going on for quite some time, yet the intensity with which scientific knowledge has to be produced for the uninformed masses is especially high today. The scientist's audience is no longer an individual fellow scientist, the audience is a series of demanding but illiterate individuals.

A new bravery and "rock-star" ruggedness among scientists and scientific scholars is evident today, which is certainly to be admired, yet it will eventually lead to too intense a focus on the personalities of the scientists of Nepal and lesser focus on their innovative potential and knowledge production capabilities. In short, doing science in Nepal will be more about acting like a scientist and conforming to an image of a reasonable scientist: the scientist in this post-earthquake stage needs to 'look' the part more than anything else. Each individual scientist is to behave like an authority figure with full confidence on scientific knowledge; science becomes a matter of passion like music to a musician. And science will henceforth have a proper and permanent public face, the problem being that such a face demands a lot of attention.

With the imperative to respond to the trauma of the earthquake, authorities of science in Nepal have had to reckon with themselves with the question regarding their “unity regarding a common viewpoint,” as in, the scientists have to evaluate the complete knowledge and set of beliefs that each scientist has, in order to isolate the deviant scientists that possibly may not conform to the dominant explanation and logic of the cause of the earthquake. A new sensitivity to madness is under construction in wider society: it begins by the stigmatization of trauma in the wider public but its true purpose is to create and isolate the “mad scientist” identity, in order that the deviant scientists are quickly branded to be insane and hence their opinions deemed invalid. It is important to note that all scientists are to agree upon the cause of the earthquake, so that science as a discipline as a whole is legitimized and its circulation in the post-earthquake context allowed by the wider public.

In the later post-earthquake Nepal, a new series of scientists will soon be under development, in order that the legitimacy of science be generated in Nepal through sheer numbers among the total general public population. This “production-line” of scientists is itself quite dangerous, for such questions on the ethics and intellectual potential of the new scientists will be ignored, rather, people will be able to become scientists with relative ease, especially as the scientific knowledge of geology that these new scientists will have to learn and support seems quite simple in its current stage.

Philosophy in "World" War 3 Propaganda

World War 3, as the other “world” wars, will be evident to a certain side when the enemy side's entire civil populace is seen to be invested in a certain conflict: especially when some conflict becomes a highly dominant social and political agenda among the enemy nation's lower class population. World Wars do not just play out in between politicians and through diplomatic decisions taken by the few, but rather they involves the masses and the masses' own ways of perceiving the conflict: it could be trench warfare, but it could also be a war in many fronts and settings, for the exact nature of the war will be dependent on the masses. A “world” war is dependent on a mass movement and a popular support for the war effort, because “world” does not imply the different nations' standing armies, but suggests the entirety of the world's armed forces and civilian populations.

An important factor creating a mass-mobilized war is the effectiveness of the enemy's propaganda. The enemy's propaganda turns lower classes into philosophical subjects and objects through a kind of rapid education, and because it makes them philosophical and educated the lower classes have immense appreciation for this propaganda. The object of propaganda is never just instruction, but also education, for the goals of propaganda are more longer term than the immediate enlistment and fighting in the war. Propaganda turns men and women towards investment in fighting for abstract and lofty ideas such as “human,” “nation” or “belief” so that they are not just ready to fight in armed war today but in the “war of ideas” of the future. As the enemy's philosophy is considered most threatening, the enemy's philosophical lower classes are attacked extensively, hence a World War concerns itself with mass-scale destruction.

Ultimately, the masses, once “made philosophical” extensively, will themselves shape the nature and style of war that they wish to engage in. They are not dictated by the elites to take up arms, rather, they make these and other decisions, for they have finally received a serious education directed towards them, albeit that this education is dismissed as biased propaganda by elites. And that lower class' initiative in shaping the nature of war is precisely the true intention of the elites: to not get their own hands and minds dirty in the war but rather see it play out, as if automatically, among the lower classes. In World War 3, the masses will learn to read through propaganda posters, they will learn to understand the concepts related to a war context, their education will be heavily influenced by the war. It is very possible that a kind of more non-violent “cold war” will take place, or that all “world” wars will in the future be “cold” because the philosophical masses choose not to “weaponize” themselves, but rather to express hostility in mass protests which are then publicized to the enemy. After propaganda has made them philosophical, they themselves will then develop propaganda to support one another, and the quality and effectiveness of propaganda will itself determine who is winning and who isn't. Propaganda posters, books, films, plays and other such products will be the medium of education, especially for those young ones born into warring times and regions, and so education will be dominated by “heavy” ideas even at the primary level. Another form of non-violent mass mobilization is the war on a “knowledge-based front,” such as the “space race” between USA and USSR, where the masses participate in a war where amounts of knowledge gained rather than territory gained become of importance, given that propaganda has turned the masses into philosophers rather than soldiers.

“Construct Live” and Genocide in the Pacifist's War

The Foucauldian notion of “construct live” has in warfare been ingrained and internalized to a great extent, and that is a point of great pride for pacifists. We may never see the loss of armies in a scale comparable to the World Wars again, because even in war, the armies involved are not out to kill but rather to enable continual survival; a protective mentality reaches out to “the enemy's” ground troops too. The issue in war today is the removal of arms from the enemies' hands and the dispersal of the enemies from strategic points in a territory, while ensuring that the least amount of lives are lost.

A problem emerges due to this notion of “construct live” (or “let 'the enemy' live”): that the enemy which is in command of a region of interest, when dispersed and displaced by a stronger force, comes to another region within the territory where it is once again in command. When the weaker side is removed from one place it is simply moved somewhere else and becomes the new controller of that other region, without any direct exercise of its will or force. For the side with a weaker army, this invasion-without-force becomes ideal: it simply needs to evade the sporadic gunfire in one region and will find itself ruler of the next. And for the pacifists, the war-without-force is ideal, because it entails lesser casualties in the armies. The enemy becomes a permanent/immortal fixture in warfare, as long as the notion of “construct live” remains and there is land to move to, and this “immortal-and-mobile enemy” has shown that it can be more violent than peaceful.

We may therefore seriously acknowledge that indeed the pacifists are in control of war with this tenet of “construct live,” but that their faith in “construct live” is submitting more and more territories to brief but traumatic militaristic rule as the weaker side moves from place to place. "Construct live" and "mobility-and-immortality" lead to the rationalization and perpetration of genocide by the displaced, weaker side, because of these reasons: the lack of connection/loyalty with the land one is currently in charge of as the sole armed force, the frustration at displacement by a stronger side, the amount of idle time in this new type of warfare, the experience of privilege and comfort at not being killed, and most importantly, the constant maintenance of a certain high level of military strength. After the genocidal act, the tenet of “construct live” is abandoned and a new, more lethal phase in war begins.