What is emile on Anarchist news dot org talking about?

Question

I am intrigued with emile but I have no idea what the fuck he is ever talking about. What is emile on Anarchist news dot org talking about?

For those that don't know what I'm asking about:
https://encrypted.google.com/#hl=en&output=search&sclient=psy-ab&q=site:anarchistnews.org+%22emile+-+%22&oq=site:anarchistnews.org+%22emile+-+%22&gs_l=hp.3...3293.13641.0.14040.28.17.0.0.0.1.2826.5764.7-1j1j1.3.0.les%3B..0.0...1c.1j2.3cV94WCVtEU&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&fp=3e1960d58e8957d2&biw=1000&bih=650

I see emile refer to Mach often. From what I know Mach was a physicist. I don't understand how Mach or theoretical physics relates to MAKE TOTAL DESTROY

Answer 1

I'm still trying to figure it out a lot of the time, not necessarily the fault being Emile's, but they often use a kind of metaphysical-phsyics language to discuss theoretical concepts, but while often critiquing the western scientific worldview, what they call "relational understanding".  They recently posted the following on A-News but its a pretty good explanation of where theyre comin from:
"What is ‘relational understanding’?

My writing, for example, is couched in ‘relational understanding’ which differs from ‘rational understanding’ in a manner discussed by Ernst Mach using the metaphor of ‘figure and ground’. Rational understanding is in terms of the dynamics of figures; i.e. it is in terms of ‘what things-in-themselves do’. Relational understanding acknowledges that figure and ground [matter and space, inhabitant and habitat] are in conjugate relation, as in the case of a hurricane [figure] and the atmospheric flow-space it gathers in [ground]. Mach points out that PHYSICAL REALITY is where “the dynamics of the habitat/ground are conditioning the dynamics of the inhabitants/figures at the same time as the dynamics of the inhabitants/figures are conditioning the dynamics of the habitat/ground.” [‘Mach’s principle’].

Our standard way of discussing/understanding dynamics IN WESTERN CIVILIZATION [i.e. not in aboriginal and buddhist and vedic approaches to understanding] is to reduce dynamics to ‘what figures do’ where ‘figures’ are understood as ‘things-in-themselves’. For example, we know that a hurricane is a figure that is in conjugate relation with the atmospheric flow space [ground] that it gathers in [the figure is a ‘dimple in the flow’], but for convenience we impute all of the authorship of the dynamic to the 'figure' and we say that; ‘Katrina is intensifying and growing larger; ... Katrina is moving north towards the Gulf Coast; ... Katrina is wreaking destruction on New Orleans;... Katrina is dissipating.’.

Essentially, our habit or ‘convention’ of convenience is to mentally superimpose an absolute space and time reference frame over the ‘figure’ and describe what the figure does relative to an absolute frame, rather than dealing with the complexity of its being a dynamic ‘dimple’ in the dynamic ground, rather than a ‘thing-in-itself’ in empty space with ‘its own internal process driven and directed development and behaviour.

Since we reduce ourselves and biological organisms in general in this manner, this reduction we build into our language/discourse has a profound influence on how we see ourselves and the world; i.e. it has a profound influence on ‘what is reality’ to us. [This is discussed by Sapir and Whorf and is termed ‘the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis’].

That’s the gist of difference between ‘relational understanding’ which acknowledges the conjugate figure/ground relation, and ‘rational understanding’ which reduces dynamics to ‘what things-in-themselves do’.

What you are ‘detecting’ is that my comments are in terms of ‘relational understanding’ instead of the usual ‘rational understanding’.

One of the ramifications here is that ‘hierarchy’ follows from ‘rational understanding’ or ‘thing-in-itself based understanding’ but not from ‘relational understanding. For example, as soon as one imposes ‘thing-in-itself’ status on ‘figure’ one must assume that its behaviour derives from its own internal processes; i.e. it must have its own ‘internal direction’ or ‘internal management’ of its behaviour. It must have an internal centre of control [management] as well as operational components to achieve behaviour [workers].

In the relational view, for example, the fertile valley [‘land of opportunity’] beckons and someone starts tilling the soil and someone else joins in and starts planting and someone builds some tools for the harvesting and someone else builds a grindstone to make some flour from the grain and a community farming operation ‘gathers’ RELATIONALLY in the general flow of life. The evolutionary drive is a combination of ‘epigenesis’ [outside-inward ground-to-figure orchestration by the opening of spatial possibility] and ‘genesis’ [inside-outward figure-to-ground blossoming of assertive potentialities].

NOW, if we lift out all the little wriggling creatures in this ‘community farming operation’ and hold them up in the air against a blank background we can apply ‘analytical inquiry’ and monitor what each participant is doing and how the multiple participants coordinate their activities to produce farm products. With this ‘description’ in hand, and thanks to the invention of money and wages and the concept of ‘paid labour’, we can install a ‘manager’ to ‘give voice’ to the description of activities, along with a bunch of workers that he can assign to the various tasks and, voila, a factory-farm based on the dynamics of figures, out of the context of the dynamics of ground. We can plunk this factory farm operation down anywhere we like. All that’s needed is a bag of money to purchase a manager and some workers. Of course we did cheat the people out of their own free association and their building of a relation with the land and with one another.

What’s the point? The point is that analytical inquiry or rational intellection orients solely to ‘figures’ out of the context of ‘ground’ and gives a view of dynamics in the one-sided terms of ‘what things-in-themselves do’. From the point of view of analytical inquiry or ‘rational understanding’, the ‘community farming operation’ and the ‘factory farm operation’ are identical and produce the same results. But from the point of view of relational understanding, what has gone missing is the relationship between the ‘system’ of the farm operation and the ‘suprasystem’ of fertile valley, seasons, climate etc. the ‘system’ is included in [the ‘systems sciences/Ackoff’ call this ‘synthetical inquiry’]. Furthermore, this relation between suprasystem and system or between dynamic ground and dynamic figures provided the orchestrating/organizing force which, in the factory farming operation is replaced by a ‘manager-worker’ organizing force. There was no ‘boss’ in the community farming operation [there was shared leadership] and everyone was there on their own volition rather than because they were following a trail of money/wages.

Hierarchy and the leader-follower split follows from reduction of relational understanding of dynamics in terms of the conjugate figure-ground relation [physical reality] to rational understanding of dynamics in the convenient but over-simplified one-sided terms of the dynamics of figures."