THE SUBJECT BETWEEN
OPEN TRADITIONS
AND COLLECTIVE MEMORY
Heiko Daxl
Media in motion
"The cult of info-tech underestimates
the role of experience and pre-existing knowledge
in the processing and generation of new knowledge."
Jules Marshall in Mediamatic
Our present time evokes more and more the necessity to reflect terms of tradition. It would be ridiculous and fatal to abandoned these terms and with them the tradition, but it would be even more naive to escape by redefinition. To follow them without being critical is in most cases also impossible.
Events that follow each other are not independent from each other. Events of the past are so to speak the cause of events in the future. Time has a direction and absorbs everything what happens. The sense of sequel is a result from inter linkage of events in direction of new events, but must not be necessarily in a linear causality. Causality probably just exist as individual experience. The past is seem as the fact, as unchangeable. The future on the hand has the potential possibility of realisation. Events in the future are open and are characterised by not yet know or experiences facts.
"Aboriginals, when tracing a songline in the sand, will draw a series of lines with circles in between. The line represents a stage in the Ancestor's journey. Each circle is a 'stop', 'waterhole', or one of the Ancestor's campsites." (Bruce Chatwin: The Songlines)
If events are facts at every time, there is in principle just the possibility to explore the undiscovered and to open it for our consciousness. This actual creates nothing new, but it links facts in a different way. Does is not give the chance for free structure, for conception and creation in the very sense of the word? We know today, that we are not observing the world in an objective way, but that we always part of the observation.
The determining linear principle of classical causality does not help anymore to achieve and understand our present word. It is more replaced by a non-linear autopoetic philosophy. This new systems of thinking get and keep their identify, even when their components are constantly changing or interlining. There is no sufficient explanation by talking is as a mechanistic function of its parts. "The function of an autopoetic awareness is the observing and listening of the reality, to rethink it in the mirror of the mental repertoire are recombine it by internal plans and imaginations. So conceptions of the word and cultures can progress, e.g. reflections of internal conceptions in which me move and act. 'We' are the human society, that was on one hand created by ourselves, bur on the other hand is integrating us in its network. by creating our culture we are creating our conditions as well and in the and the structure of our future." (Ronald Fischer)
Gradually the sciences are transforming the conventional view on our universe into a complex system of interdependencies, which is not only beyond the general understanding and description, but is rattling the basic of the absolute proof of mathematics and physics. Random, chance, dynamic erratic developments, instability or quite generally the dissolve from order to chaos are the synonyms for this confusion, a kind of Heisenberg's "relation of the unsharp" of causality. We have reached today the situation that our world is like gigantic laboratory, more uncontrolled than controlled.
In a world, accelerated by means or transportation and media, our ability of absorbing sensory impressions has also been accelerated, but we can even state today, that media is still following the constructions of images that were developed already in the older techniques. obviously the technological evolution is similar to the biological; that as a rule - even if the opposite is proclaimed - nothing news is developed from nothing, but that new constructions are always build on the foundations of the old.
Perception is the verification of pre-dreamed hypothesis. We are looking for so much order, that the word does appear senseless and for so much chance that is does appear boring. A new mode of creativity is shaping its form. This mode is a transversal one, because it is operating between the faculties and categories. through navigation and inter linkage it is on the way to new forms and views.
Perception is the verification of pre-dreamed hypothesis. We are looking for so much order, that the world does appear senseless and for so much chance that it does appear boring. A new mode of creativity is chapping its form. This mode is a transversal one, because it is operating between the faculties and categories. through navigation and inter linkage it is on the way to new forms and views.
"It might happen for example that someone, who is used work transversal, is understanding the 'ratio ascend' of our presents society much deeper, than by studying for years sociological, culture-diagnostically or philosophical writings. And that he might get through this interdisciplinary view to a solution of an old philosophical problem of our century, the problem, how highly different rationality's - this difference is defining the dynamics of modern times - are connected, how today in a diversity of rationality reason is still possible." (Wolfgang Welsch). This complex confusion a challenge and a change to achieve new perspectives in a time of staggering definitions.
What we can learn from tradition is the richness in the multiplicity of the regional and individual, the suspension of norms and standards by a global dogmatism to avoid an alienation from future experiences. We should let traditions act on us; we should take time that they can echo in rethinking. What we should add is our hope and our engagement in a peaceful but discursive side by with the inherent possibility of a more human shaped future. The future lies in the open communication, the pollywog of traditions. Every individual can proof here his competency. It is not the field for teams, parties or groups in political, diplomacy, economic, media and culture, that even want to tell us, how an apple should look like. It is the task of the individual to look around, to experience and to accept advises from time to time, to re-focus for transparency. Because a belief in the development of history that follows a logic, does not anymore correlate with the facts.
"Information is a difference that makes difference" (Gregory Bateson) and not an endless recognition of the eversame patterns.