California's Wildfires And The Firefighters' Philosophy

We see the might of the fire department when it tries to contain enormous wildfires, and we know that this fire department could replace the police and the army in places that are susceptible to fires. The fire department's up-to-date technology, such as the latest cutting-edge chemicals to tackle the blaze, and its highly skilled manpower consisting even of airplane pilots, enable it to manage large swathes of land and large numbers of population, making it very powerful, sometimes literally overnight. But this power is dependent on the whims of the fire.

The sustenance of power in the fire department depends fully on the duration of the blaze: if the blaze lasts for days, the fire department is powerful for those days, and if it lasts for weeks then the fire department is powerful for weeks. After the wildfire is extinguished, the fire department dramatically loses power and once again goes back into oblivion. Its oblivion and inactivity is complete, for the fire department maintains no internal “office politics” because its experience of power is intense, short-lived and accompanies the fire, as opposed to being the result of careful and farsighted political planning, team-building and manipulation.

Today's intense and panicked focus in the media on the wildfires of Canada and the USA are not so just because the fires have been particularly intense and active, but because of the anxiety that the longer the fires last the longer the fire department stays in power, and gets the chance to further strengthen its role in a certain place and in wider society, toppling even the police and army from certain places, for one.

The fire department dictates the flows of people out of dangerous places and evaluates when the population's private property has to be left behind. Giving the painful instruction to leave behind one's home and other belongings which cannot be taken along is made far easier by the philosophies declaring the impermanence of things. It is this idea in philosophy of impermanence which can be carried forward, thought over and espoused by the fire department more than by other organizations. It is this philosophy with which the fire department is engaged in while doing its “office work,” when the firefighters directly face the blaze, as opposed to being politicized thoroughly like the police and the army and thinking of the tactics and strategies to gain more political power for a certain team or leader within the department, even when they are supposed to be completely engaged in on-the-ground operations. Politics is of no interest to the firefighter, politics ultimately being the search and problematization of the “other” of a certain society, which the firefighter is not concerned with, given that his/her “enemy” is the natural fire itself and not the foreign or criminal “other.”

However, there is a political-philosophical problem in the fire department when it engages in the Greek philosophers/thinkers who consider fire to be one of the important four or five elements which compose the universe, and influenced by the ancient Greeks the firefighter celebrates the importance of fire and becomes a supporter of fires, and considers fire to be his/her leader and indirectly lends support to the sustenance of the fire department's power through his/her desire to see the fires burn for as long as possible. He/she ceases to fight the blaze, and builds all kinds of protests in the department in order to ultimately support his/her budding revering of fire. We must continue to reward the firefighters as enduring heroes and heroines of society for their role in dousing fires even long after they doused the blaze, which may convince them to abandon Greek philosophy's emphasis on and exaltation of fire.

Kathmandu's Widened Roads And The Marginalization Of Nepal's Nomads

There can never be an ideal, true nomad: being born is being born stationary and being introduced to a sedentary life. There is a significant moment of nomadic rebellion within the mother's womb, when the infant kicks his/her feet against the wall of his/her mother's womb, asking to be let go from his/her stationary and sedentary life, and be submitted to a “life of the legs.” But the kick is misinterpreted, and the child once born is introduced to a sedentary world, placed on its back, given illusory empty space where his/her kick does not meet an object to push away, and displayed for the pleasure of other sedentary figures that surround him/her as a special destination.

Reading Lacan, one feels that the mother's walking away from the child is due to her own nomadic impulse to walk, or her way of kicking the child back as a response to her child's kick on her womb. Yet contrary to Lacan, the child does not ask the hurt-filled question “Where does my mother go?” because indeed the child itself has kicked the mother away from within the womb before the mother actually walked away. The mother walking away from the child is a result of his/her kick to her womb; the child demands the mother to walk; the child is the originator of a nomadic impulse in the mother.

Some of Nepal's villagers become nomads when they leave behind a previous more sedentary life in the village for Kathmandu. The Nepali villager comes to Kathmandu for the first time, and in that very first moment of stepping off the bus, he/she is completely directionless, lost from familiar sedentary life, nauseous from the bus travel, with the solid and firm tarmac below him as a kind of support, a kind of sign that the urban world he/she is in can be navigated. Then as he/she travels on foot, taking hesitant steps at first, he/she becomes nomad, a traveler of Kathmandu's roads, criss-crossing Kathmandu's roads without more than the most basic purpose, at most to sell his/her village goats in the market he/she cannot locate, but moving beyond that purpose too as he/she keeps walking freely. He/she doesn't care to read the sign-posts that tell him/her where the goat market is and he/she doesn't try to understand the prevailing dialect/accent.

Yet Kathmandu's main roads have been widened significantly as a part of a big development project. Supposedly the roads have been widened to aid the growing population of drivers, but these widened roads marginalize Nepal's nomads. The pavements, which are the paths that once allowed nomads travel on foot, are nonexistent in many places, and even where they exist they are unsafe to walk given drivers driving fast and reckless. Crossing Kathmandu's widened main roads is impossible given the fast and heavy traffic flow, and so there is no possibility of changing directions based on the whim of the nomadic legs, of criss-crossing Kathmandu freely, like there used to be.

Driving within the confines of their small cars, Kathmandu residents miss the nomadic travelers once found walking the pavements. Hence authorities must interpret Kathmandu's automobile collisions as expressions of a wish for all the cars to be “kicked” away and life to be enjoyed by foot again. But a large crowd gathers around the road accidents in Kathmandu, and it is a mysterious large crowd of sedentary individuals that seems made specially for the purposes of surrounding accident scenes. This sedentary crowd blocks the drivers involved in the accident from running away on foot and instead forces them to become sedentary. For the drivers this crowd signals the real possibility of imprisonment, that most sedentary of experiences.

Nepal's Holidays And The Disciplining Of Politics

When everybody else is on Republic Day holiday in Nepal, the politician goes to work. In the holidays, the politician produces a holiday-related document, such as a policy paper on improving work condition for laborers, released aptly on and for the occasion of Labor Day holiday. The politician also engages in other activities like visiting the site of significance given a certain holiday, or engaging in healthy debate with his peers about the holiday.

“Holiday politics” is the result of the disciplining of the political system. One is effectively told that one can only say and do certain things during a particular holiday, like discussing the plight of women strictly on the occasion of Women's Day, when it is allowed and indeed given a lot of exposure. But there is yet the space for rebellion against such a disciplining of politics: one can write something on the plight of women even when it is not Women's Day, or write about an important event long after it has elapsed so that the “holidays” around it is already over, when it is as if a normalization after the event has led to the origin of conditions for the event to re-emerge. It is problematic that we celebrate Women's Day again next year precisely because we have already forgotten or erased the significance of this year's Women's Day and its achievements; what we need to do is originate and re-originate Women's Day and not just celebrate it and forget it.

Problematically, we have written history to create more holidays. We have become historians to unearth events in any given day which could transform that ordinary day into a holiday, and we have come up with techniques of studying history in order to produce more holidays. This is how history writing is so close to the politician, because the historian provides the politician with holidays. Thus, even if a small group of women rebelled against the significance of “Women's Day” and wrote a paper on women on an ordinary day, the historians are able to magnify and glorify this event to transform that day into a new broad holiday related to all women, and make it distinct from other more ordinary days.

The ordinary people must try and enlist historians to downplay the official holidays rather than transform ordinary days into holidays. Or, ordinary people must show that they are always thinking of their causes, and indeed, that every day should be a holiday. The creation of holidays must be taken up by the stakeholders of a certain cause and not left to the historian-politician team. 

Olympic Fantasies In Nepal's Torch Rallies

Protesters in Nepali torch rallies having daydreams that they are carrying the Olympic 2016 torch instead of protesting some issue with an ordinary flaming torch...First, this quite peaceful fantasy of carrying an Olympic torch helps to deter the protesters from using the flaming torch for arson, and hence this fantasy may be thoroughly crafted by the figures like the road-side Television stores that do not wish to see physical disturbance through torching. However, this fantasy of being an Olympic sportsperson leads to a moment when the protesters become more athletic, making the protests louder, more physical and even more violent.

The Nepali torch rally becomes a site of sports-like competition: who can run the fastest without tiring? Who can shout the catchy slogans the loudest? Who can cause the most disturbance in the streets? Ultimately, whose body is more healthy and better? This competition fractures the unity of the protesting crowd, dividing the protest itself between winners and losers.

It is entirely possible that a small team of very athletic athlete-politicians win in the torch rallies of all the political parties and hence cement a leadership position in all the political parties, forming a kind of authoritarian element in the whole political system and thereafter dominating the other losing political figures. Indeed, the danger of Nepal's unhealthy and non-athletic politicians is that it will allow authoritarian power to develop among an athletic set of political figures who keep winning the torch rallies across the political spectrum.

In the torch rally, it is the body of the protester which is scrutinized, not his/her mental ability with regards to politics, or even his/her emotion or passion towards a cause. Especially in the case of Nepal, with aging politicians, politics in the public event of a protest becomes a thoroughly bodily activity: the body dictates how long the politicians walk, and the unhealthy politician's body's need for exercise may be accompanied by an upward surge in torch rallies.

But for some politicians the torch rally is not an exercise or a training for a bigger athletic-political event, rather it is itself the most important event for which they prepare with other lesser events such as charity football matches. Whereas in a more romantic time in the past, the body was given up in the fight for a cause, as for instance through lengthy imprisonment of the body, today the politician's body has to be kept fit and well-exercised in order that there be sufficient energy for winning torch rallies across a variety of causes. The cause in the torch rally has stopped dictating the protester, rather, the distance of the protesting route may be more important, or the protester's diet. In the future, as a kind of real blow to the passionate politicians' attempts to be sensitive to real problems, the torch rally may be made more routine, with the artificial manufacture of more and more dubious causes to protest, if the torch rally becomes part of the exercise routine for the leading politicians.

The American Central Bank's Militant-Economists Turning To Nepal

We note a lot of “unknowns” in the analysis of expert economists when it comes to the macro-economy, and these unknowns are often concerned with the unpredictability of military events in global warfare and in geopolitically tense regions. This lack of knowledge of the relationship between military events and macro-economy is a result of the fact that military events are not factored-in in the analysis conducted by Central Banks and the strict responsibility of the predictions and analysis of military events are reserved solely for military departments.

There is no factoring-in of military events in the American Central Bank's economic model (known as the FRB/US) because it is unclear to the frustrated economist which side the perpetrator of a military event is: when a military event occurs, is it definitely an enemy's doing or the doing of the “secret service” of oneself's own government? Clarity in whether it is the “self” or the “other” undertaking a military event is important to macroeconomic models because economists use “self-other” distinctions to label some military events as negative “external shocks” coming from the other and some military events as positive “internal operations” coming from the self. This divide between friendly self and enemy other, even in these times of advanced “neoclassical economics,” shows that there is little room for understanding that self-driven military events can also be detrimental to the macro-economy. The American Central Bank's macroeconomic model must read self-driven/self-perpetrated military events as negative “shocks” as well. 

The American Central Bank needs more “militant-economists” who are able to obtain military knowledge beyond the capabilities of other economists and factor this knowledge into economic modeling and policy making. Militant-economists in the making can turn to non-militarized Nepal to look at the impact of specific global military events on a national-level macro-economy without dividing these military events along the lines of “self-initiated” and “other-perpetrated” and looking at military events neutrally. 

“Brexit” And Britain As The Foucauldian Limit-Experience Of The EU

No longer is the term “border” sufficient to name the dividing line between Britain and the EU. A border is a line which divides two territories, but it is a passable line, a form of continuity remains between the two sides, and this continuity allows the flow of migrants, for instance. With “Brexit,” we must come to abandon the idea that only a “border” separates Britain and the EU, and instead employ the word “limit” borrowed from the Foucauldian term “limit-experience,” to mean that now when the EU seeks Britain, it encounters a kind of final limit, and going to Britain or interacting with it is a “limit-experience” for the EU populace and also for migrants. 

With “Brexit,” Britain is turning towards becoming a nation with a more authoritarian and oppressive tendency. Usually borders are porous, and there tends to be some form of continuity between two sides of a border, which suggests a peace between the two territories, but it is only in authoritarian and oppressive regimes where borders are turned into limits, where borders are closed off and there is no possibility of easy passage. With a limit imposed in place of a border, Britain is effectively and emphatically saying that it is not the EU. Going forward, we can expect Britain to stubbornly act on being not-EU, by changing its laws, cultures, political system etc; in short, by obsessing over its difference from the EU to a great degree and hence exercising a high level of control into what happens within its territory.

It could also be that being the limit to EU will send Britain into obscurity, make it a kind of “alien nation” devoid of signs and markers we expect from other nations of the EU and the wider world. A nation seeking to be a “limit nation” would not look and feel similar to other more “centralized” nations; it would have very few and basic signs of being a nation at all, it would lose its defining national signs and symbols, such as popular landmarks in its capital city, and its people could lose their spirit of nationalism, becoming "Zombies" in a sense. Disagreeing with Foucault's idea that a limit can be experienced, we believe that any experience at the limit is impossible. A limit is a “zero-point,” a point which is not included in any territory, it is like the edges of a three-dimensional solid, which is not a part of anything and where theoretically nothing can exist to experience it. EU populations will find, in seeking the limit-experience of being in Britain, that it is like being in a stifling zero-point, and hence that there is nothing desirable about going to Britain because it simply does not have signs and symbols which can be experienced. Even after Britain has left the EU, ultimately it will be the EU's disappointment with Britain being at the limit which will bring about Britain's obscurity.

A true limit is a point which is far away, something too drastic and undesirable for most, something at the edge of an extensive distance, something that is almost impossible to reach, a place which is completely obscure and alien. Hence, given this possibility of becoming completely obscure, alien and undesirable, it is more likely that we will see Britain continue to have a national identity and hence not in fact turn into a zero-point to cause a true limit-experience. Being a true limit to the EU would entail a thorough destruction of Britain, a thorough dismantling of everything which has been built up in tandem with the EU nations, or a leveling of everything like in a war. Since this will likely not happen, “Brexit” may very well imply that Britain is putting up a performance, and does not intend to be a true limit. Its isolation and its differentiation will be moderate, and similarities with the EU will persist. “Brexit” will enable EU populations to experience a “lite limit-experience,” and therefore Britain may continue to be a draw as a a kind of amusing simulation of a true limit.   

Teachers' Pension Funds And The Parent-Teacher Meeting Of The Future

We hear of state-level "XYZ teachers' pension funds" as clients to big financial organizations. While being associated with a financial organization was in the past a good thing for teachers because the financial organizations were considered role-models of society, given the current negative perceptions of financial organizations, these teachers/future pensioners may find themselves considered greedy, undisciplined or generally of a bad character due to their association with the big financial organizations.

Even when there is evaluation of how the teachers are doing their jobs by financial organizations that are working in the guise of local or national government, this evaluation will ultimately be driven by the logic that if the teachers do their jobs better, their pension funds will be better, and consequently, the financial organizations themselves will be better rewarded. Nowhere will the benefit of a proper education to a child be mentioned in all this supervision and evaluation.

In the future, there will be a secret preferential treatment of the students by the teachers based on which parents are able to give the best investment advice and tips in the parents-teachers meetings. The merits of the parents will decide the fate of the children: the children in the classroom will be considered vehicles of investment tips and advice that they have learned from their parents; contributions to class will be interpreted based on the finances of the teachers and how they could be made better. In recognizing the importance of the pension and the pension fund, we must be critical of the idea that teachers determine the quality of the future of their students, because we may find that students determine the quality of the future of their teachers to an even higher degree.

Eventually, a particular branch of economics, a kind of “macro-economics-by-elementary-school-kids” will be born and taken seriously, and TV shows such as “Are You Smarter Than A 5^th Grader?” will re-emerge with much more advanced material; some 5^th graders will become well educated enough in advanced finance and macro-economics to be hired by the big financial organizations with teachers as middle-men/agents as well as clients. Economics will be a major subject of study from the earliest years of school education, and it will be seemingly concerned about the world economy, but also blatantly anxious about the pension fund. Open class discussion will blatantly focus on the health of the pension funds and seek advice from the smarter 5^th graders. Unlike in the young-adult and adult world, the anxiety over finances and the future does not need to be hidden from the youngest section of the populace, which means there is a far more productive environment for the discussion and problem-solving of the financial issues in the elementary school classrooms. Thus, we hear today of how the university is linked to the big financial organizations, but we may find elementary schools with even more effective relationships with big financial organizations in the future.