Cassandra, freedom of seduction and freedom of speech

Corrado Poli

 “Formerly no one was allowed to think freely; now it is permitted, but no one is capable of it any more. Now people want to think only what they are supposed to want to think, and this they consider freedom”. “What we need is not freedom of the press, we need freedom from the press”. Oswald Spengler

The myth of Cassandra, Priam’s most beautiful daughter, helps understand how information works. The story is well known. It happened that Apollo fell in love with Cassandra, whose name in ancient Greek means “the one who entraps men”. We do not have any precise information about how the facts – if there are any – developed exactly. It is told that Cassandra spent a night at Apollo’s temple though knowing that the god was craving for her. She refused to concede herself to him, reportedly. So as to seduce her, the amorous god presented Cassandra with the gift of prophecy which the girl enthusiastically accepted and tried to use thereafter. Soon enough, Apollo realized that Cassandra had no real intention to sleep with him. As revenge, the vicious God did not revoke the gift, but put a curse on her so that nobody would believe Cassandra’s predictions any longer. A key (though often overlooked) issue of the story is that Priam’s daughter never renounced foretelling, no matter how frustrated she was by not being believed.

 Most of the times the beautiful Cassandra is portrayed as a sad and tragic heroine, cruelly punished by a rancorous god. In fact, disclosing what later proves true adds to one’s posthumous reputation no matter how much they have been mocked when alive. On the other hand, we may also suspect that Cassandra had some minor responsibilities of her own since wooing and accepting gifts is never totally innocent. In a version of the myth she even promised to marry the god and then withdrew. If Apollo actually behaved just as any arrogant male chauvinist, Cassandra, nonetheless, was flattered by Apollo’s gifts and longing.

Cassandra’s myth can read as a metaphor for writers and scholars flirting with power. As long as they belong to a divine organization, they profit from the privileged condition of knowing and interpreting the key facts. Moreover, all people speak about what these writers and scholars utter. Writers not only speak the truth, rather they create it.

In this position their egos swell and they might begin thinking that people believe them because they are smart and tell how things truly are and even should be. They might even imagine themselves as principled and incorruptible since they become completely oblivious of their initial flirting. They misperceive that their ability to elaborate important, timely and witty arguments was a deal rather than some generous gift from gods (whoever they are). Writers and scholars who flirt with a demanding god may soon be smitten by power. They find freedom of speech irresistible and enjoy it when everybody listens to them preaching.

In a more sophisticated version of the myth, while Cassandra was sleeping (alone) at the temple, snakes licked her ears clean so that she was able to hear the future. This metaphor is easily interpreted: god’s snakes may allow someone to know what normal people do not, but this does not necessarily imply that they are allowed to spread information. Thus journalists and writers really know what’s going on, they can confidently foretell what will happen because they are the unaware tools of building a future chosen by others. A soon as they foresee a diverse future, they are cursed by gods who claim the right to choose a future which they can keep under control.

As for Cassandra at Apollo’s temple the time came to choose between purity and stepping in with the god, in the same way writers are requested to choose between freedom of speech and the gratification to be listened to. If they choose the former they won’t be believed anymore; should they choose the latter, they will be requested to simply report gods’ voice.

If writers and scholars hadn’t flirted with power, they would have kept pure, but they would have never known the arcane secrets in the citadel of command. Cassandra would have never been awarded prophetical powers if she had not entered the temple and opened to Apollo’s hopes. You can either be pure and silly or corrupted and officially knowledgeable. Tertium non daturm, i.e. the fallacy of the excluded middle. If you are at the same time well informed and pure, you create a serious danger so that gods need to put a curse on you. Cassandra’s tragic story teaches that by just flirting, you might lose both power and innocence, so that the knowledge you have acquired – that you imagine as a formidable weapon to affirm the truth (and your ego) – is transformed instead into a torture you use against yourself lifelong.

Therefore, remember, writer! You are in a trap: flirting with power allows you to know how things really go. If you eventually do not lie with a god, nobody will ever pay attention to you. You can be listened to and believed only as long as you are Apollo’s lover, but you will only be permitted to speak god’s rule.

Seminari Internacional sobre Innovació i Dinàmiques Territorials

18 de novembre de 2011

 Sala de Juntes de la Facultat de Ciències de l’Educació

Campus de la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

 La planificación territorial: humanistas versus ingenieros

Corrado Poli. Libera Università IULM, Milano, Italia

Vale la pena empezar mi ponencia a partir de este punto y mas precisamente del título del libro para responder a la pregunta implícita en el tema de este Seminario: ¿ “De que manera las nuevas tecnologías influyen en las dinámicas territoriales”? Entonces hay que ser concretos en la explicación de lo que entendemos por nuevas tecnologías y por dinámicas urbanas.

 Por lo que se refiere a las tecnologías, tenemos dos tipos de dudas:

• en primer lugar de contenidos, es decir: qué tecnologías especificas se deben aplicar;
• y en segundo lugar (y yo creo que es lo más importante) hay que tener en cuenta una secuencia fundamental: ¿quién inventa, quién produce, y quién aplica las tecnologías?

Debemos considerar las nuevas tecnologías que aún no han sido introducidas; pero sería, incluso, más importante comprender porqué y cómo se siguen aplicando las tecnologías tradicionales aunque desde hace mucho tiempo no resuelven los problemas.Para poder comprenderlo tenemos que servirnos de la competencia de los sociólogos de las organizaciones en política urbana.

En otras palabras, la innovación urbana:

• ¿es generada por tecnologías que son elegidas y elaboradas libremente?
• ¿o, sin embargo, las tecnologías adoptadas son la respuesta que los técnicos dan a una evolución urbana que se produce autónomamente, fuera de control?

Inmediatamente, pensamos a las nuevas tecnologías como algo elaborado por los técnicos y los ingenieros, sin una reflexión social y política preventiva. Es decir sin poner en discusión la secuencia anteriormente mencionada.

En este caso, la tecnología – ya sea nueva o vieja – se superpone a la sociedad que se asume como un dato fijo, una constante y no una variable. Asì sin embargo, la sociedad acabe volverse en una variable dependiente de las tecnologías: una vez que el proceso se ha iniciado, el progreso técnico incide de manera profunda en el modo en que la sociedad se organiza. Este en el mejor de los casos! ya que se acepta que la tecnología puede cambiar la sociedad sobre la base de un progreso que ella misma dirige, es decir, que nosotros lo dirigimos intencionalmente, aunque podamos pensar que lo dirigen personas equivocadas. Si tenemos fe en la técnica y en la tecnocracia, esta puede ser una buena noticia. Quizá durante un cierto tiempo lo fue, pero desde hace tiempo, está claro que han surgido notables problemas y dudas sobre “la sociedad del riesgo tecnológico” que fue sistematizada en tiempos relativamente recientes por Ulrich Beck.

THE FULL ARTICLE IS AVAILABLE IN “ESSAYS”

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT: FROM FALLACY TO FRAUD

from “Mobility and Environment. Humanists vs. Engineers in Urban Policy and Professional Education” Springer: New York-London, 2011, pp. 16-17

 1 – PROLOGUE

1.1.Sustain or progress?

Would you be happy if, being young and in love, filled with enthusiasm and expectations, your beloved partner replied to your proposal to pursue a lifelong relationship by saying: “It’s ok, I think we can have a ‘sustainable’ relationship and our ultimate goal will be to make it last as long as possible, no matter how we feel and what we do. Hence, don’t ask me to change any of my routine and I’m not going to do anything to cope with my possible shortcomings.” You would probably not appreciate such a response, unless you were so dejected and your life was so miserable that you couldn’t even conceive any real improvement in your gloomy existence. Surely you would prefer a response along the lines of: “Yes, I am going to share my life with you and this relationship will help us both to realize a real improvement in our lives. Together we might even be better off, but what really matters is our emotional fulfillment. Our lifelong relationship will make us better human beings and we will fulfill our personalities and satisfy our everyday needs. We will even contribute to the welfare of others, albeit indirectly. We will pass on appropriate values to our offspring and we will look ahead to our relationship continuing and flourishing through generations”. If we would be happier with the second answer, then why should we accept for ourselves and the rest of the world the dull perspective of “just sustainable” development? Why should we not strive for rewarding, marvelous, brilliant development or, even better, just for “development”, without attributes? Admittedly, in real life one should allow that in relationships, after some years, “sustainability” may become the only possible solution for the mere conservation of a family ménage. However, even if the main priority is the dull sustainability of the relationship, any family counselor would suggest to the partners that, in order to muddle through a sustainable relationship, they should find out something new to pursue together,  make new goals and eventually a new covenant between them. In this metaphor, the partners are, on one hand, humankind, society and economy; on the other hand, Nature and environment.

The Sustainable Development approach has become the sole strategy available do deal with the environmental crisis and it operates as the proxy of a missing ideology. The removal of any alternative to environmental policy is paralleled with the elimination of a century old political dialectic between capitalism and socialism. This temporary lack of conflicting comprehensive political projects has impoverished the current intellectual and political debate. The elaboration of a political alternative – based on new social and political values related to a radically new covenant between humanity and Nature – would help to recreate a new dialectic and the conditions for human progress. (THE FULL TEXT IS AVAILABLE ON LINE AT SPRINGER’S WEB SITE).