Paolo Bellini
Università degli Studi dell’Insubria, Italy
p.bellini@fastwebnet.it
Between myth and logos:
The concept of Mythopia and Technological Civilization
Abstract: This paper deals with globalized civilization, seen as a complex body of spectacular – often contradictory – narratives disseminated in every corner of our planet by a highly innovative high tech mass media system. The swift development of such a technological colonization, permeating as it does the environment of human beings as well as mental and bodily dimensions, is probably destined to mould and renovate all human societies and their subjects. This enquiry focuses on the form of the most influent narratives determining the worldview (Weltanschauung) and on the dominant social values drawing inspiration from them. However, we do not contend that all narratives and worldviews existing in the vast media domain look alike, are identical, or even similar; rather, it is our contention that a prevailing logical-conceptual structure seems to be emerging, which drives and forms them within their horizon of truth itself, at times presenting them as true and plausible, at times showing their falsity and opinability. This form of narrative can be defined as Mythopia, a blend term deriving from the words myth and utopia and conveying an oxymoric concept, which is here applied to President Obama’s election slogans and communication campaign.
Keywords: myth; utopia; mythopia; technology; brainframe; imaginary; cyborg; Barack Obama
Today’s globalized civilization appears as a body of spectacular – often contradictory – narratives, which are disseminated in every corner of our planet by a highly innovative and technological mass media system. The swift development of such a technological colonization, permeating as it does the environment of human beings as well as mental and bodily dimensions, is probably destined to mould and renovate all human societies and their subjects[1]. In this respect, it seems interesting and appropriate to focus on that form of narration most influential in the world and determining the worldview (Weltanschauung) and those socially dominant values drawing inspiration from it. We are thus not implying that all narrations and worldviews existing in the vast media domain look alike, are similar or even identical; rather, a prevailing logical-conceptual structure seems to be clearly emerging, which drives and forms them within their horizon of truth itself, at times presenting them as true and plausible, at times showing their falsity and opinability. This form of narration can be called Mythopia[2], a blend term formed from the words Myth and Utopia and conveying an oxymoric concept. An oxymoron is a rhetorical figure in which incongruous or contradictory terms are combined. In the present paper, while the term Myth intends to show and justify the origin of something or of the cosmos (universe) in its totality[3], the term Utopia[4] is employed to designate a geometrizing model of reality, aiming at modyfing it so as to either improve it or prevent any potential degenerations (negative Utopia – Dystopia)[5].
As it can be clearly inferred, the first one (Myth)’s function consists in justifying the existing, by showing its genesis, while the other one (Utopia) establishes itself as an antithetical, polemic and performative paradigm as compared with a given reality. Mythopian forms of representation are therefore mythical narrations devoted to explain the whole, a portion of or a specific object belonging to reality, with a view to an ever possible ameliorative performance. Mythopia thus identifies its object as if it were not finished in itself (as in the case of Myth), rather as something always liable to improve and reach perfection, but also to worsen, which makes it fluid, unstable and subject more to the flow of becoming than to the fixity of being. From this viewpoint, Mythopia can be considered a form of hybridisation between the imaginative requirements of Myth and the performative Geometrism[6] typical of rational logos and characteristic of every Utopia. We are thus not intending to uphold that Myth entirely belongs to the level of imagination and Utopia to that of logos, rather that they participate in them according to different modalities. The first one (Myth), in other words, submits logos to the imagination’s needs, while the second one (Utopia) puts the force of images out into service of a rational and performative project. Indeed, while Myth explains and illustrates the origin of something existing, always presenting itself as a not clearly known, opaque and at times mysterious object, Utopia transfigures its object considering it as if it were known and analytically revealed in the modalities of its very creation. For instance, to explain the mystery of man’s origin, Plato tells that «… during that period in which the whole earth was putting forth and producing animals of every kind, wild and tame, our country (Attica)[7] showed herself barren and void of wild animals, but chose for herself and gave birth to man, who surpasses all other animals in intelligence and alone of animals regards justice and the gods»[8]. The quotation shows how the myth told by Plato explains, through a narration rich in images and symbols, the origin of mankind as a spontaneous product of a divinized mother Earth, thus submitting the rational needs of causal explanations to ancient Greek culture’s imaginative projections. Man’s origin therefore substantially remains opaque, which is however justified and metabolized by Myth, by controlling the anguish resulting from mankind’s impossibility to directly and experimentally learn of its first appearance on this planet. Otherwise, if – for instance – one analyzes a classic book of utopian literature such as The City of the Sun[9] by Campanella, it is to be easily noted how, since from the very beginning, the object is known even in its single details and represents a perfect political community, where all defects – even architectural ones – have been amended. «Furthermore, the city’s structure – says Campanella – is so built that if the first circle were stormed, it would of necessity entail a double amount of energy to storm the second; still more to storm the third; and in each succeeding case the strength and energy would have to be doubled; so that he who wishes to capture that city must, as it were, storm it seven times. For my own part, however, I think that not even the first wall could be occupied, so thick are the earthworks and so well fortified is it with breastworks, towers, guns, and ditches»[10]. Noticeably, The City of the Sun contrasts, even in its defensive structure, with any real city, representing as it does an ameliorative model which is straightaway revealed through the hyperbole of its impregnability; furthermore, it represents a perfectly rational model to which imagination offers itself as a means of completed realization[11]. Mythopia, as a hybrid narration, ever lying suspended between Myth and Utopia, is thus a collective modality to cope with the real (as in the case of Myth) which subjectively and individually explicits itself in performative models (as in the case of Utopia), though in turn projecting the mind itself (meant as the place where consciousness and self-consciousness develop) of each individual into a collective and transpersonal dimension. Indeed, by exploiting an imaginative rhetoric of the synthesis[12] between collective and individual requirements typical of Myth and Utopia[13], it allows those narratives permeating the social body to emerge, conferring on each individual the possibility to interact with it depending on one’s own literacy and culture rate. It is nevertheless to be cleared up that mythopian narratives are neither scientific theories strictly speaking, nor least of all mere daydreams, spontaneously generated within post-modern society. They represent a common horizon of meanings and values that specifically apply to all areas of cultural production, influenced as they are by the rational and performative logos typical of techno-scientific disciplines as well as by a collective imaginary, imaginal and imagerie[14] which structure the visions that technological post-modern civilization has of itself and of the world. Mythopian forms of individual and collective narrating and self-narrating can nonetheless be better understood by attentively considering the relationship between message and medium in the computerized multimedia communication age.
As McLuhan maintains, «the medium is the message»[15], and beyond what the author specifically affirms on the issue, we shall highlight the identity between medium and message, seen as the forma mentis or brainframe[16] of a subject utilizing certain means of communication to cope with reality. In other words, television, computer, radio, the press and any other possible communication means affect the very structure itself of our mind, developing some cognitive skills, specifically determining the modalities themselves of thought organization and mental structures through which reality is organized, understood and decoded.
As de Kerchkove asserts: «At a certain level of our unconscious, the brainframe created by literacy has influenced our way of arranging thoughts: reading has led our brain to classify and combine information exactly as we do with alphabet. Similarly, the brainframe created by television affects our way of elaborating information. The video screen fires fotons into the spectators’ brain since their early age, and there is evidence suggesting that this affects the way we use our eyes»[17].
Western civilization, which has built a planetary environment characterized by a high rate of technological growth and a rapid spreading of computer technologies, also produces new subjectivities, bringing about new forms of narration, compliant with the new media through which we relate to the surrounding reality. In particular, the impact of new technologies on mental and consequently narrative space is to be taken into consideration.
Indeed, post-modern technological civilization, thanks to the large popularization of technology and ICT[18] sciences, creates new forms of subjectivities questioning the classic dualism public vs. private, which modern society as it is intended has developed. That is to say, thanks to the invention of computers and cyberspace, normal mental activities, usually kept in the personal sphere as something entirely private and collectively expressible only through a literary effort (in a broad sense) which has been decided and much meditated upon, are suddenly projected outside thanks to computers and virtual space, thus becoming places for mental externalization par excellence.
The computer, indeed, imitates some mental processes as computation and at the same time stimulates procedures typical of analogy and sympathy in those using it, which derive from the imaginal dimension of the existing. Cyberspace, instead, extends the relationship mind-(electronic)machine beyond the solipsist dimension of such an interaction, in a boundless space where it is possibile to refer to other similar dyads (mind-machine), steadily trying to be invisible, to partecipate, feeling dialogic emotions, though irreparabily influenced by a sort of electronic narcisism. Therefore, the desire to establish multiple connections turns into a visibility tending to mingle with existence.
Again, as de Kerckhove concisely observes: «The impact of cyberspace on mental space is that whereas mental activities were internalized and privatized by the literate bias, the screen is externalizing them»[19]. Thus, never as in the information age was Berkeley’s motto of value, which reads: esse est percipi (to be is to be perceived).
From what has been asserted, we can already understand how Mythopia, intended as a noetic structure[20] to understand reality as a whole, by identifying and interpreting the object which is each time taken as its own content, proves to be the typical syntax of the new technological forma mentis (brainframe) resulting from the interaction between the dyad mind-computer and the other media. Furthermore, Mythopia emerges as a substantial outgrowing as well as an integration within a more complex order, of the mechanical, linear and progressive mentality, typical of modern culture. In this respect, it perfectly satisfies the needs of a mind-computer which is not private any longer, but overdramatized within the cyberspace virtual dimension.
Indeed, in its self-creation as a collective and simultaneously individual narration, according to the modalities typical of Myth and Utopia, it allows any subject to absorb, constantly identifying with it, the horizon of truth typical of dominant techno-sciences which, by means of machines, prolong rational and performative logos’s needs, without renouncing the power of images and their unavoidable emotional polarization. Mythopia, as it has been illustrated, becomes rooted in two different levels, a material, structural one, and a noetic, mental one, influencing one another.
The former (structural) points to a passage from a purely biological subjectivity, based on the use of mechanical and linear communication media, to a bioelectric one, grounded on a strong interaction with any kind of intelligent machines as well as on the attempt to colonize man’s body itself through them[21]. Hence, for instance, any type of experiment is attempted, such as that of connecting human brain directly to a computer to treat pathologies such as locked-in syndrome. This is a disease caused by the incapacity of moving and speaking owing to a complete paralysis of the body, the brain being nonetheless perfectly intact[22]. The latter (noetic) one, instead, expresses itself on the narrative level in particular, which identifies the dominant worldviews and the horizon of sense where those groups and individuals belonging to technological civilization live.
Thought’s logical-rational dimension combines here with the imaginative and voluntaristic one based on the performativity principle which makes up the specific dimension of collective acceptance. Such a conceptual framework now allows us to analyze two different mythopian narratives: on the one hand, a general one affecting post-modern civilization’s views of man, while on the other a more specific one exemplifying the rhetoric strategies deployed in Barack Obama’s speech as President of the United States of America.
The first narrative deals with the cyborg, a figure present in the collective imagination through many movies and literary works which contributed to making it popular[23]. A term derived from the English cybernetic organism, the cyborg is a humanoid form of life resulting from the integration of natural biological parts and artificial mechanical and/or electronic ones, which can also represent non-human-like forms of life (animal and/or vegetal).
Elsewhere we insisted a lot on this figure[24], but here it suffices to say that it is a proper Mythopia, since it meets our definition of the concept. Indeed, the cyborg stands up on the more general Darwin’s theory of evolution [25] which, besides being a scientific theory strictly speaking, rises to the proper character of a Mythopia, thanks to this symbiontic image.
As in the platonic myth, man comes from earth, though in the sense that he is not engendered from a sacralized nature, as in any mythologem regarding mother Earth, rather he is the product of a long evolutionary process, which is realized in the interaction between life and matter through the generation of heterogeneous living beings, which have been evolving for millions of years, giving birth to mankind.
It is thus assumed that originally: “The environment on the early Earth favoured the formation of complex molecules, some of which became catalysts of a variety of chemical reactions”[26] … “Many dissipative structures, long chains of different chemical reactions, must have evolved, reacted and broken down before the elegant double helix[27] of our ultimate ancestor formed and replicated with high reliability»[28].
Such a scientific narrative, however, is not exclusively classified in a mythical sense any longer[29], since the evolutionary process is not concluded at all, nor does it depend on the creation of an ultra-human divine being, though in principle it projects itself into the future, where similar modifications are evidently always possible.
Evolutionism can thus be qualified as a mythopian narrative since, opening up to a still indefinite future, it allows to consider man as an ever genetically perfectible being, who can be technologically tackled in principle by manipulating his genetic code (that is to say, by taking the place of nature) and grafting electronic parts in his body in order to improve his characteristics.
In this sense, though the evolutionist narrative confines itself to justifying man’s presence on our planet at first (as in Myth), as it shows a receptiveness to the future since the very beginning, in the wake of the last discoveries in genetics and of the new information and electronic technologies, it turns into a mythopia through the image of the cyborg, opening up to a performative dimension permitting such a semantic shift.
Not only does this narrative not confine itself to a purely scientific area, rather it gives rise to a proliferation of symbiontic images on the whole influencing the social body as well as the value horizon forming it. The second mythopian narrative, considered in a genuinely communicative field, connected with generating social consent, regards, as already shown, the political rhetoric adopted by the recently elected President of the United States of America. Barack Obama has indeed utilized two extremely significant slogans during his election campaign: Yes we can and Change We Can Believe In. In the first one, made up of three very simple words, at first the term Yes identifies a dimension of optimism and participation, connected with the act of affirming, where a general positive attitude is definitely opposed to an implicit act of negation, as a will to refuse. This generic and objectless Yes then finds in the expression we can a collective sense of affirmation, thanks to the very use of the first person plural pronoun we, evoking a strong sense of community.
The latter finds in turn the sense of its general unity and power through the modal verb can, which conveys an open will, with no precise object, but destined to be completed by each one in view of a change, which President Obama assumes to be the American people’s actual will. The second, which is slightly more complex, ideally places itself as a completion of the first slogan as well as the beginning of a new age.
On the one hand this completes the verb can by means of the term Change, belonging to that semantic field inevitably involving such concepts as transformation, mutation and future, which again refers to the expression we can, also connected with the previous slogan, though transiting on its object, the strong concept of Believe In. This expression conveys the idea of believing in ourselves, also reinforced by stressing we can, and confirms the absence of an object; moreover, the verbal form believe in helps recall the idea of something powerfully divine and escatologic, since this is usually used to affirm either one’s faith or a private certainity in something holy and inviolable. These slogans, to be considered against the American election framework and the various semantic nuances unravelling through the proper political campaign[30], can be strongly associated with the myth of the United States of America’s foundation, projecting it into a future where only individual and collective performative skills can create a just and perfect society.
Indeed, such myth rests on, as Wunenburger reminds us, four fundamental elements: moral manichaeism, a matriarchal idea of America, the multiethnic egalitarian myth and money worship[31]. This is the reason why the United States of America have always been feeding on a collective imagination connected with the perception that their founding Fathers had of themselves as the elected of a new reign of God on earth and, therefore, as good beings (moral manichaeism), as opposed to the Indians and all others in general[32].
To this adds the idea of brotherhood based on the image of a society producing abundancy and guaranteeing safety (the matriarchal idea of America) [33], as the strong concept of equality, resulting from a providential nature (egalitarian myth) [34] as well as from the belief in a destiny consisting in producing richness, symbolically expressed by money (as a cultual object) [35], and obtained through the exploitment of huge natural resources.
All these elements are properly collocated in Obama’s speeches and writings, thus trascending myth and transforming intro a Mythopia. After clearly denouncing the three main crises which the United States of America and the whole world are passing through at present, that is to say, the Iraqi and Afghanian wars, climate changes caused by pollution and the disastrous negative spiral involving globalized economy[36], Obama presents the American people his new founding vision.
This is a vision going back to that myth concerning US origins and projecting it into a utopian and performative vision of the future. As he himself writes referring to the many disillusioned and of course to all his people (democrats, republicans and independents): «They are ready to come together and choose a new and better future for America. … I have a vision for America rooted in the values that have always made our nation the last best hope of Earth [moral manichaeism] – values that have been expressed to me on front porches and family farms [matriarchal idea of America]; in church basements and town hall meetings over the last eighteen months [egalitarian myth, the future President listens to everybody]. The people I’ve met know that government can’t solve all our problems, and they don’t expect it to. They believe in personal responsibility, hard work and self reliance. They don’t like their tax dollars wasted [money cult and productive work]”[37]. Later on in the introduction he thus concludes with a call on solidarity, asking the Americans to behave as one nation and one people[38]. He thus evokes his utopian performative project made up of a new way of intending the relationship between finance and productive economy, a renovate pedagogy based on the study rather than on playing or electronic narcosis, a downsizing of large corporations’ power, the cancellation of top managers’ tax concessions and new modalities of energy production respecting the environment[39].
According to the interpretative pattern we have designed and elaborated so far, the above is a mythopian narrative to all intents and purposes. Indeed, by going back to the myth of the American foundation and also thanks to the intensive use of the most developed mass media systems, Obama builds up a founding model where individual (I) and collective (we) dimensions constantly overlap. He identifies a clear-cut performative project, where the original values making up the American social contract can be placed in the next future, in connection with the new-born socio-cultural development model put forward. More generally speaking, such a narrative draws on the biopolitical project[40], which is mythopian in its post-modern version. As Hardt and Negri rightly note: «Biopower is a form of power that regulates social life from its interior, following it, interpreting it, absorbing it, and rearticulating it. Power can achieve an effective command over the entire life of the population only when it becomes an integral, vital function that every individual embraces and reactivates of his or her own accord. … The highest function of this power is to invest life through and through, its primary task is to administer it.
Biopower thus refers to a situation in which what is directly at stake in power is the production and reproduction of life itself»[41]. As it can be noticeably inferred from the passage above reported, biopolitics as a project of production, reproduction and administration of life itself makes up the most general frame in which Obama’s narrative can be placed. How can one not grasp, then, the profound sense linking biopolitics to the newly elected US President’s project, which focuses on renovating the American promise through reforms destined to change the citizens’ life, building up a mass consent where the individual and collectivity overlap, thus trespassing the modern boundary line dividing public and private dimensions? Affirming that our belief rests on a change based on the economic management and health to the benefit of middle class, on the development of eco-consistent energy production forms, on scientific and technological progress, on worldwide leadership and crime fighting, represents a biopolitical action, since it establishes an order where power and the responsibility of individual and of collective life merge and incorporate one another. Such a biopolitical horizon is itself a Mythopia. Biopolitics, indeed, does nothing but recover the original myth of modern age associated with the exaltation of the individual, reason and consent, derived from the Englightment and the Contractualism tradition, building up through these a narrative open to an ever future Utopia, where individuals and community behave like communicating vessels. If the individual that with the products of his work and brains gets rich and also enriches his own society is the founder of modern age, corner stone of society and state’s constractualist constitution[42], in post-modern age such an individual gives way to any kind of neotribal-like aggregations[43]. These aggregations are, in other words, mythopian symbolic containers, virtual places, semantic areas where each individual can write his own personal story within the framework of a global biopolitical mythopia.
The biopolitical system thus goes beyond modern individualism, allowing the individual to express him/herself by fluctuating among different identity groups, and involves it as an essential element of a collective intelligence organized in the Net. Resuming the initial topic of this concise paper, we can then assert that, if western civilization inaugurates, with Plato, a demythologyzing journey dictated by logos, global civilization decisively goes back to myth at present, thanks to the latest (information, electronic and genetic) technologies, readapting it through Mythopia to techno-scientific rationality’s performative needs.
Notes
[1] See D. de Kerchove, Brainframes. Technology, mind and business, Bosch & Keuning, Utrecht, 1991 and The architecture of intelligence, Birkhäuser, Boston, 2001; P. Virilio, The information bomb, translated by C. Turner, Verso, London, New York, 2005; M. Castells, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Blackwell, Malden, Mass., 1996-1998, Vol.1-2-3.
[2] See P. Bellini, Il concetto di Mitopia, in Cyberfilosofia del potere. Immaginari, ideologie e conflitti della civiltà tecnologica, Mimesis, Milano, 207, pp. 109-115.
[4] J.J. Wunenburger, L’utopie ou la crise de l’imaginaire, Jean- Pierre Delarge, Paris, 1979; J. Servier, Storia dell’utopia, edited by G. de Turris, Edizioni Mediterranee, Roma, 2002.
[5] See C. Braga, Utopie, Eutopie, Dystopie et Anti-utopie, in Metabasis.it, September 2006, Year I, Number 2 (www.metabasis.it).
[6] «Geometrism comunicates through the supremacy of simmetry, plane, the most formal logics both in representation and behaviour» (G. Durand, Le strutture antropologiche dell’immaginario, trad. it. di E. Catalano, Dedalo, Bari, 1991, p. 186).
[8] Plato, Menexenus, in Plato in Twelve Volumes, translated by W.R.M. Lamb., Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, William Heinemann Ltd., London, 1925, 237d.
[11] An interesting in-depth study on Campanella’s political thought can be found in A. Cesaro, La politica come scienza. Questioni di filosofia giuridica e politica nel pensiero di Tommaso Campanella, Franco Angeli, Milano, 2003.
[12] «Imagination desires much more than a narrative present, understanding requires that what is contradictory should be thought within a synthesis simultaneously and under the same relationship» (G. Durand, op. cit., p. 355).
[13] «While utopia appears, then, as something directed by the subject (even a collective one) producing it, myth conducts the subject itself and, in other words, submits it. These features improve revealing utopia’s abstract and unreal nature, which always results from an aware contrast with reality, in order to modify, remould or escape it. Myth, instead, is to be intended as immediately operative, firmly incorporated in the way of being, feeling and living, cohesive with the social body, even in the possible unawareness of its unreality, since it asserts itself on and in reality. Utopia can be defined as a sort of mirror reforming or inverting reality, which occurs to a lucid vision of mind or active intellect, either in a programmatic sense (if it is considered a framework of a reality to be fulfilled) or as an escape place, in the desperate or ironic awareness that this cannot be realized (utopia is always desired as long as it is absolutely unreal) or also as a result of resignedly ascertaining the evils of reality. Myth, instead, is so much embedded in the fabric of the collectivity which grows it, that the latter can even become a socio-somatic expression of myth itself. (G. M. Chiodi, Utopia e mito: due componenti della politicità, in L’irrazionale e la politica profili di simbolica politico-giuridica, edited by C. Bonvecchio, E.U.T., Trieste, 2001, pp. 267-280).
[14] «Firstly, an imagerie, a production of images which refers to the use of ideas or human beings’ imaginative representations in public life and which contributes to their effectiveness… Then, an imaginary, strictly speaking as a creation of unreal objects, completely invented mental contents, that is to say corresponding to neither verifiable, nor empirical data. The story regarding the sacred origin of authority, the drama staging ensured by any charismatic leader, the invocation of a society formed by equal people with insurrectionary aims, presuppose beliefs and narrations with no objective basis, nor experimental assessment, rather they have a spiritual influence as if authentic facts were appointed… Lastly, imaginal representations, resulting from the imaginal which identifies primordial images, universally in scope, not exclusively depending on subjective conditions, but imposing on the individual’s soul as autonomous mental realities, noetic facts. Imaginal, a term imposed by diverse philosophies of imagination, thus groups together archetipical representations, symbolic prototypes which do not have real correspondents, though playing a phsychic and intellectual role, since they aim at giving sense and conferring value» (J. J. Wunenburger, Imaginaires du politique, Ellipses, Paris, 2001, p. 79).
[15] M. McLuhan, Understanding media: the extensions of man, Routledge Classics, London, 2001, p. 7.
[16] «A brainframe is something different from an attitude or a mentality, though being it as well and much more. Although structuring and filtering our worldview, it is not exactly a pair of specific glasses – since the brainframe never lies in the superficial structure of consciousness, but in the profound one» (D. de Kerckhove, Brainframes. Mente, tecnologia, mercato, edited by B. Bassi, Baskerville, Bologna, 1993, p. 11).
[20] The term “noetic structures” refers to the three fundamental principles determining thought in general: reason, imagination and will.
[21] See G. O. Longo, Il simbionte. Prove di umanità futura, Meltemi, Roma, 2003 and P. Virilio, La legge di prossimità, in La velocità di liberazione, edited by T. Villani e U. Fadini, La strategia della lumaca, Roma, 1997, pp. 65-72.
[23] The list would be a very long one, thus we will limit to reporting just a few works among the most significant ones. As far as literature is concerned: see P. K. Dick, Do androids dream of electric sheep?, Doubleday, Garden City, N.Y., 1968 and W. Gibson, Neuromancer, Ace Books, New York., 2000. As for cinema: see R. Scott, Blade Runner, Warner, USA, 1982 and D. Cronenberg, Existenz, Canada, 1999.
[24] See P. Bellini, Cyberfilosofia del potere. Immaginari, ideologie e conflitti della civiltà tecnologica, op. cit., pp. 124-138.
[25] See C. Darwin, On the origin of species, New York University Press, Washington Square, N.Y., 1988; and F. Capra, The web of life: a new scientific understanding of living systems, Anchor Books, New York, 1996.
[26] F. Capra, The web of life : a new scientific understanding of living systems, op. cit., p. 235.
[29] We would like to clear up some misunderstandings. Sokal and Bricmont have recently written in a well known book: «Vast sectors of the humanities and the social sciences seem to have adopted a philosophy that we shall call, for want of a better term, “postmodernism”: an intellectual current characterized by the more-or-less explicit rejection of the rationalist tradition of the Enlightenment, by theoretical discourses disconnected from any empirical test, and by a cognitive and cultural relativism that regards science as nothing more than a “narration”, a “myth” or a social construction among many others». (A. D. Sokal – J. Bricmont, Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science, Picador USA, New York, 1999, p. 1 ). We would like to specify that we are not referring here, as in the rest of our scientific production, to scientific theories as fantasy or imaginary narrations, but we are using the term myth to designate the imaginative influences of such theories in the social field as well as highlighting that they never correspond to an absolute, exhaustive of any possibility of thought. They are rather subject, as any human thing, to critical interpretation when they define reality in a univocal way. Science is not a myth to us in the sense of an imaginary, unreal construction, but it is to be considered mythpoietic since it structures a worldview and strongly affects the creation of the collective imaginary/imaginal, establishing the value horizon of our civilization. In this very last meaning – and omitting that emerging from its specific field of application which only the specialist can give his opinion on – science can therefore be considered a Myth or a mythopian narration.
[36] «Our nation is in the middle of two wars – a war in Iraq that must come to an end and a war in Afghanistan that is and always been the central front in the fight against terror. Our planet is in the midst of a climate crisis that, if we do not act, could devastate the world our children inherit. And our economy is in a downward spiral that is costing millions of Americans their homes, their jobs, and their faith in the fundamental promise of America – that no matter where you came from, or what you look like, or who you parents are, this is a country where you can make it if you try» (B. Obama, Change we can believe in: Barack Obama’s plan to renew America’s promise, Three Rivers Press, New York, 2008, pp. 1-7. pp. 1-2).
[37] B. Obama, Change we can believe in: Barack Obama’s plan to renew America’s promise, op. cit., pp. 2-3.
[38] « … the only way to truly bring about the future wee seek is if we are willing to work together as one nation and one people. That is our task in the months and years ahead, and I look forward to joining all of you in that effort» (Op. cit., p. 7).
[40] M. Foucault, The birth of biopolitics: lectures at the Collège de France, 1978-79, translated by G. Burchell, Basingstoke [England]; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
[41] M. Hardt – A. Negri, Empire, Harward University Press, Cambridge Massachusetts – London England, 2000, pp. 23-24.
[42] See T. Hobbes, Of the Naturall Condition of Mankind as Concerning Their Felicity and Misery and Of the Causes, Generation, and Definition of a Common-wealth, in Leviathan : or, The matter, forme and power of a common-wealth ecclesiasticall and civil, Barnes & Noble Books, New York, 2004; J. Locke, Of the state of nature and Of the beginning of political societies, in Second treatise of civil government, Hackett Pub. Co, Indianapolis, Ind, 1980.