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What can I know (if trust in knowledge has been lost)? | 23 — Science “rules” over vanquished nature, resulting in the destruction and exhaustion of natural resources. — Knowledge has degraded into knowing how to use: into objective data and instructions on how to perform operations with them. It makes us less capable of understanding others or ourselves, of enquiring after the meaning of things and imagining that what is in reality could be otherwise. — Our ability to act in all areas of life is being increasingly limited to the operation of technological services. This increases our vulnerability to technology and the uncontrollable apparatus invoking their special expertise”? — Under the guise of a rational organisation of society, the system of efficiency known as economic reason — in reality the profit principle and aggressive political centralisation — has subjugated to itself all other goals, thus rendering impossible communities’ self-determination. — The gulf separating the stupefyingly rich from the intolerably poor has widened worldwide and has become practically unbridgeable — to the greater glory of the rational organisation of our societies. — In the society of prosperity identified with wasteful consumption, the only legitimate goal of all efforts is to use up the world as rapidly as possible — in other words, to transform things into waste. “Production” is the only purpose of work; that of freedom is “consumption” and satiation. The means has become the end. — After the world of goals and interests was privatised and relativised, and thus became everyone’s private affair, politics retained no meaning apart from seizing the means of power. — Not incidentally, the triumphal path of progress is lined by mountains of rubbish of unprecedented size and accompanied by the uncheckable spread of aggression. ‘The description, judgment and apology of rational rule plays a central role in the political philosophy of the twentieth century. Perhaps it was 4 The clarification of the difference between knowing and understanding in the “information society” has become an existential question. Knowledge is here understood as instrumental knowledge, know-how. “Adam knew his wife, Eve, and she conceived” (Gen 4:1) — the correctness of the knowing is verified by the result: she conceived, i.e., Adam used his wife in the appropriate way. Whether he understood her is of course another question. Understanding is a relationship between two people. Jesus understood the adulterous woman; he knew what it means to sin and judge. He understood the intention of his accusers as well. Thus could he say, “He that is without sin, let him cast the first stone at her” (John 8:7)
