Lev Lafayette's journal

Last Sunday, I gave my long-awaited presentation on the political philosophy of Jurgen Habermas (transcript available, YouTube video available), the most important social theorist and philosopher of late twentieth-century Germany. Appropriately, I made a batch of German food for attendees: Kartoffelpuffer, Eier in Senfsoße, and Roggenbrot.

I didn't touch deeply on his philosophy of communicative action or universal pragmatics, which I covered quite extensively in my presentation to the Existentialist Society on May 2nd (transcript available). Instead, this presentation covered his earliest works on the Enlightenment public sphere, as well his comments on the "new public sphere" of the Internet, his concept of societies consisting of a combination of functional systems and cultural lifeworlds, his elaboration on theories of law and theories of justice, his interest in Europe and the European Union, and especially transnational bodies and a non-nationalist patriotism based on human rights. I had some critical words to say about his relative absence of environmental concerns, of imperialism, and most importantly, of political economy, classist and patriarchal issues. Still, after six decades of political theory, his truly vast knowledge is undeniable, as even his harshest critics readily admit.

As someone who has been a Habermas-spotter for decades now, I have a dozen or so of his books plus some of the best critiques, countless journal articles and a hefty notepad of one-hundred pages of hand-written material on the two-volume "The Theory of Communicative Action" that I scribbled thirty years ago; I have a red pen at the end noting that I finished the reading after six months or so on 2.15 am on Friday 24th June 1994! Overall, I think I have some 40,000 words that I have written on Habermas immediately on hand - including about 10,000 words written this year. Which makes me think that I should write a short book on his philosophy and politics. It is certainly true that I have a full year already planned ahead of me, and then some, but one cannot plan for when their favourite philosopher's life reaches its historically inevitable conclusion. Apparently, the time is right, and the circumstances demand it.

"What raises out of nature is the only thing whose nature we can know: language. Through its structure, autonomy and responsibility are posited for us. Our first sentence expresses unequivocally the intention of universal and unconstrained consenses"
-- Jurgen Habermas, inaugural lecture, Goethe University Frankfurt, June 1965.

This Sunday, the Isocracy Network will be holding its AGM and, in addition to our usual AGM business, we will have a guest speaker and discussion on "Imperialism, Colonialism, Internationalism," which is particularly relevant to current events. The discussion will be led by Kevin Huynh, JD, who is an avid observer of current world events. Reflecting this interest, Kevin has a honours degree in Politics and International Studies from the University of Melbourne, and holds a Juris Doctor from Monash University. The meeting will be held in person and online. Please message for online details. Unsurprisingly, I have tentative definitions for consideration and discussion.

Imperialism is the control, direct or indirect, of another country. With direct imperialism, a foreign country imposes direct political rule over another country (e.g., French West Africa, British India, Spanish America, Dutch East Indies, Belgian Congo). Indirect imperialism occurs when one country controls the affairs of another country through political influence and economic dependency, for which there is no viable alternative to the sovereign country (e.g., the United States over Latin American countries). Indirect imperialism can also include vassal states, where a country is provided local autonomy for internal affairs but international relations and defence depend on the imperial power (e.g., Tibet and the Chinese Qing Dynasty Empire).

Indirect imperialism can change to direct imperialism and revert back again depending on the rise and fall of independence movements (e.g., Iran under Mossedeq was subject to a US/UK backed coup, indirect imperialism with the Consortium Agreement) or it can result as a concession to the controlled country (e.g., the Unequal Treaties imposed on China, Korea, and Japan). With the dominant power controlling and exploiting the human and natural resources of the foreign country, imperialism was often justified as part of a "civilising mission" (e.g., "mission civilatrice") to bring improvements, stability, education, etc. A famous (and astoundingly racist) example was Rudyard Kipling's poem "The White Man's Burden".

Colonialism is separate but often a part of imperialism. Colonialism involves the deliberate migration of one ethnic group into another country, which may already be populated by indigenous people. Colonial efforts in these circumstances often involve supplanting or subjugating the original population (e.g., the British to Australia).

Now for some trickier questions; how does imperialism relate to globalisation, in a world economy and a world system? Is globalisation replacing nation-state imperialism? Is foreign military intervention justified for humanitarian reasons (e.g., responsibility to protect)? What are the procedures in which this should occur? What is the difference, if any, between globalisation and internationalism? A lot to cover in a two-hour meeting, but one thing is for sure; we're still seeing a particularly nasty side of imperialism occurring to this very day.

Last Saturday I hosted the Isocracy Annual General Meeting (FB), where I gave a presentation on "Climate Change and International Relations" which had a few people attend in person (who received a fairly reasonable Indian meal, produced by yours truly) and a few online as well. The content of this presentation will be put online in a few days, but in a nutshell, it dealt with the evidence of global warming, the significance and trends, responsibility, mitigation and adaption, costing, and international enforcement. That night I attended a social gathering organised by Young Labor Professionals, which was low-key on the politics, but quite excellent on a range of other topics. Also related, the following day I ended up tuning into the Fabian Society National AGM, which was addressed by the NSW Minister for climate change Penny Sharpe, who spoke on climate change politics (I rather suspect we should trade notes).

As for the food, attendees at my now thoroughly regular Friday evening at-home-restaurant had the first bite of the papadam, so to speak. I was pretty happy with how my butter faux chicken, saag paneer, and chakka (jackfruit) curry turned out, along with the mango-sago pudding with gulab jamun and coconut cream. As the evening war on we ended up playing a round of Munchkin and the ever-questionable Cards Against Humanity. It served as a lighthearted contrast to my increasingly intense Call of Cthulhu game which I ran on Thursday night, a visit to Rue's Crew on Saturday playing Root (I sat out this one, but it was good to see the May Fourth factions being employed), and most pleasingly on Sunday Karl B's playtest of a post-apocalyptic Melbourne setting with sapient rats and crows; appropriately I spent quite a bit of time with Liz and Karl's real rodents. Finally, as a somewhat asocial event, last week I also attended (as a last-minute decision) a local flute and bassoon concert entitled "Contrasts" by Simone Maurer and Lyndon Watts. It is handy to live so close where such good music is freely available.

The past week and for the week coming I've been quite hermit-like, dedicating almost all my time to work and study. Of course, with the end-of-trimester looming for the latter, it is not surprising; final exams, major essays, and the like are the norm for any student even at my age and level this is no different. Current plans in the coming days include a presentation for carbon pricing on the "Scandinavian Carbon Taxes with the European ETS" which I must say is showing positive results, and a major essay for political economy on the cheery subject of the Anthropocene Extinction Event. In addition to these extra-vocational activities and on the other side of the lectern, over the next two days I"ll be running training workshops for "Regular Expressions with Linux" and "High Performance and Parallel Python" with the suggestion that this is not entirely a contradiction in terms.

I haven't entirely been hermit-like however, and did venture out into the great world of social connection on Saturday with the Isocracy Annual General Meeting which was held both in-person and remote attendees. The topic of discussion was Australia's rental crisis, along with the matters of demographic changes, land tax, interest rates, inflation, mortgage stress, rent-caps, and the Housing Australia Future Fund with a handy video presentation from the Grattan Institute spurring discussion. To be honest, there are no simple solutions to this, and whoever says there is hasn't thought it all through. Later that day I ventured out to a green-wedge outer suburb for a celebratory (and superbly catered!) gathering at Alison B.'s. I was in a rather exuberant mood, having saved up several days of the spirit and found myself engaging in all manner of quality conversations whilst downing two bottles of sparkling until settling into a nice game of chess at 2.30am and somehow managed to rise before noon the following day without feeling much worse for it: "My only regret is that I have not drunk more champagne in my life."

The past week has been both productive and social; I have a presentation to the Melbourne Agnostics on "Neotopia: A Transhumanist Political Economy", a wide-ranging and dense presentation (yet far from complete) which is transcribed part one and part two). In addition, next week is the Isocracy Annual General Meeting on the housing and rental crisis in Australia under the old meme title "The Rent is Too Damn High!". I have also almost completed my final essay for a Graduate Diploma in Applied Psychology which (and one may wryly smile given my life over the past few years) on relationship advice and online dating after a long-term relationship - it's been a particularly difficult essay because of the sheer density of content that the word count demands. On a related matter I had a particularly wonderful Tuesday the company of one Dr. Yanping as she was being awarded her doctorate at Monash University, and a few days prior I joined Alison B, at a little gathering for Mikey M. and Liz Q. with many old associates from the late 90s/early 2000s goth and gamer scene, and spent a good portion of the evening chatting with the ever-wise Django.

These are all matters of some light in my world. But, truth be told, the deeper I dive into my new degree in climate science and policy, the greater a sense of realistic pessimism looms. This, of course, is a well-known feature of such awareness; frustration, along with a degree of depression and anxiety are a professional risk among climate scientists, although not at a debilitating level. As CO2 emissions continue to increase and show little sign of slowing down with a constant failure among the international community as a classic negative externality (someone else's problem). Last year we hit 417ppm of CO2, and CO2 as a long-lived greenhouse gas we'll have decades of global warming even if we ceased all emissions today. Under these circumstances, I am increasingly convinced that a 4-degree C warming from preindustrial levels by 2100 is the most probable - which does mean a very different world.

After several days of shifts on prepolls and work on election day itself, the results came in for the Victorian 2022 election with a convincing return of the Labor Party to the government benches for a third term and with results pretty close to what the betting agencies and opinion polls were actually saying (but the media would have had us believe otherwise). True, there were some big swings against the government in their traditional northern and western suburbs, which they will have to work on. But in the south and eastern marginal seats which the Liberals had to win, there was no swing and in some cases a swing to the government. The problem for the Liberal Party, now as an extreme conservative party of happy-clappers and cookers, is that "quiet Victorians" want nothing to do with them.

As one would expect, I went to the post-election party for the Albert Park and Prahran campaigns, although not before attending Andrew D., 40th birthday celebrations beforehand for a couple of hours. Both events were, of course, quite interested in the election result and with the similar sort of assessments we've seen over the past few days. Two days afterward, I had a few old political (and musical) friends over for lunch for a long discussion about such matters, including the quite famous psephologist Billy Bowe of the Pollbludger; I do wish he'd kept his old subheading: "Reflections on the miracle of democracy at work in the greatest nation on Earth". Another matter that is getting attention is the censure of former Prime Minister Scott Morrison who assigned himself multiple ministeries without telling relevant people - or the Australian people. I'm not sure there ever has been such a blatant secret power grab and, incredibly, he is showing no contrition. Finally, for what it's worth, the Isocracy Network is hosting a forum on Universal Basic Income with speaker Michale Haines this coming Saturday at the Kensington Town Hall.

Friday was an exciting day for caseopaya with news that our Willsmere property had been sold. We did almost zero renovations and arguably we could have received more, but frankly we are both very happy with the price it went for. So, I am about to find myself with a fair bit of coin in my pocket in the very near future, which is combining particularly well with the itchy feet I have for international travel after two years of being confined within Australian borders. I purchased a couple of bottles of Chateau de Bligny as we had a few celebratory drinks with Jac and Damien B. The following evening I caught up with caseopaya again to meet her new Manx kitten as a pal for the aging Mac Lir. So small, so full of energy, and very chatty! We also managed to get through a couple of episodes of "Black Mirror", which continues to be insightful and disturbing.

The weekend also witnessed the Isocracy Annual General Meeting at the Kathleen Syme Centre, our first face-to-face meeting for some eighteen months, combined with an equal number attending online. Guest speaker was Anthony Leong, Victorian President of the Australian-China Friendship Society, on the topic of International Relations and Responsibilities from China's perspective, where he adeptbly handled several topics ranging from the South China Sea, Tibet, the Uighers, China's position on the Russian-Ukraine and more. In the very near future I will put a transcript of the presentation on the Isocracy webites (unfortunately my laptop microphone is in a terrible state).

The following day was another gathering with Anthony (hence "Leong weekend", haha). The first was not-his-birthday-party at the "Life's Too Short" bar in East Melbourne. As always his gatherings include some people serious achievers in life who have lived a life committed to building a better world, along with younger people who making this journey as well. So whilst it was a small gathering, there were two former members of parliament, a former diplomat, and a recently appointed County Court judge who specialises in criminal cases. I had a long chat with said individual about recidivism and restorative justice. Afterwards we retired to Anthony's apartment for more drinks and discussion. A wonderful night of genuine people who have never let their success or positions replace their humanity. It is through the initiative of such individuals that the lives of millions of others are improved.

As the countdown to the end of 2021 approaches, I am welcoming the end of what has been an unpleasant year in many respects, whether I consider my unfortunate prescient comments at the start of the year on COVID-19 cases and deaths, or some rather challenging times in interpersonal affairs. All of these have had quite a toll on initial plans ("Events, my dear boy, events", as attributed to Harold MacMillan). When I think in terms of other years it probably counts as the second-worst year of my life; my last year of high school was a little harder in hindsight but I was perhaps too young to realise how bad it was. Nevertheless, despite the difficulties, I really have been fortunate to have sufficient personal resources and caring friends whose support over the year which really have helped me through and I actually feel slightly confident about 2022. As is my wont, I will do a more complete review in a few day's time as I account for the activities and challenges over the year, although I will note that the phrase "annus horribilis" was apparently first used in 1870 as an Anglican response when the Roman Catholic Church established papal infallibility. Mind you, as a pantheist I experience divine revelations all the time.

I have been on leave this week because that's how the University does things, but unlike a typical end-of-year, I haven't gone into a mad panic trying to get things done by the artificial deadline. Nevertheless, four fairly significant events have occurred in these last days. The first was a visit from my dear friend Mel S., with whom we spent a good day in banter over politics, music, the pandemic, etc. The second was putting together an article on "The Political Economy of Workers' Cooperatives", which I must acknowledge that various discussions with AnCaps actually helped a great deal. It must be said that thoughts on the matter are leading me to consider such a body for my Wild Flying Geese project, but that will be something for 2022. The third event was being featured in a case study on supercomputing by Dell, which includes an advertisement for Dell kit on Youtubue. The final was confirmation that I book that I was the lead contributor for a chapter has reached the stage of pre-print, Cybersecurity and High-Performance Computing Environments. Every so often, prior work that one has done generates results.

This afternoon I was deeply honoured to chair a presentation by Dr Jo Birch of the University of Melbourne Herbarium, which has plant and fungi collections items from 1770, a really wonderful opportunity. Kinda-related had a pretty good meeting with my MHEd supervisor on Wednesday, much of which had to do with the economics of value. I am getting the impression (rather like work) that my supervisor (manager) had decided that I don't actually really require supervision due to levels of intrinsic motivation, which must be part of my madness. Apart from that, I've had the fairly dull (but important) job of updating training documentation, I also took the opportunity in my spare time to write in my copious spare time thoughts on the "Rise and Fall of the Taliban". which was reviewed by some of my favourite individuals who have close contact with said events. It is pretty rough to acknowledge that mere days after I published the piece that the extremist Taliban and the even more extremist ISIL-K are already in deadly conflict. It's one thing to say that it looks like such conflict to occur, it's painful to witness such predictions coming true. Needless to say, I remain dedicated, universally, to societies that are liberal, secular, and democratic on an institutional level regardless of cultural differences ("cultures" can be traditional and conservative and yet still respect that their constraints are chosen due to their own dedication or beliefs).

Consideration of these topics and personal experiences has led me to delve into my own mind about issues about race and class. The former is a powerful product of ideology, which suggests that historical and contextual cultural differences between members of our species somehow are reflective of biological morphology. It is scientifically incorrect to state there is even such a thing as human "races" within the species (something I have argued since the 1990s when it was still unpopular to do so, as the public record will show). The human species is simply too young and too prone to admixture between groups for anything close to sub-species or breeds to occur. Racism, however, is a politically grounded reality motivated by these harmful pseudoscientific beliefs. In contrast, "class" is an element of political economy that traditionally refers to a source of ownership (land, labour, and capital), associated income (rent, wages, and interest), and by which power of political decision making is vested first in the owners of land, then capital, then labour, and here's a fun fact: people can belong to all classes simultaneously (e.g., they own some land, some capital, but their main source of wealth is their labour) or even none at all (e.g., the argument for a "welfare class"). Excluding people from political power and sources of wealth through ideology and embodied in law is a primary objective of those that have power and is a concrete and institutional manifestation of racism and sexism (e.g., prohibition of property ownership, prevention of voting rights).

There's been a small flurry of the articles on the Isocracy Network in the past few days; my own contribution, just posted, is a comparison between New Zealand and Sweden for dealing with the novel coronavirus. Wes Whitman has contributed a piece on the economic policies of James Meade, a rather under-rated 20th-century economist. Finally, there is new contributor Derek Wittorff on "The Radicalism of Systems Theory". All bodes well for tomorrow's annual general meeting of the Isocracy Network which will be held over Jisti.

Today I also completed a massive, three-thousand-word, review of The War of the Worlds, including the original book, the radio drama, the musical version, and the most recent film; I couldn't resist adding a little bit of discussion of coronavirus into the mix as well. On a different aesthetic orientation, there is my own health and personal body sculpting, as I've remained at consistent weight for the past three weeks, and there are still several kilograms I wish to shed. As a result, I am also doubling-down on the exercise I do and have built myself a small collection of industrial-EBM tunes to listen to as I do so.

Work-wise my usual tasks have taken a step back this past few days as I've made some major revisions to the parallel programming (OpenMP, MPI, OpenACC, CUDA) programming courses that I'll be conducting on Monday and Tuesday next week, along with courses on regular expressions and running jobs on Australia's peak HPC system the fortnight after that, then there's an additional course on mathematical programming in an HPC environment (Octave, R, Mathematica, etc). All-in-all it's been many thousands of words written and re-written over the past several days, all of which will provide lasting content. It's almost as if words have a deep and special meaning to me; that words, especially matters of promising and forgiveness (as Hannah Arendt famously pointed out) have redemptive power to the human spirit. There is much more I could say about that, but that will have to wait a few more days.