The last set of lectures is possibly my favourite.
Mark Fisher’s talk on Capitalist Realism was difficult to follow without plenty of background information and definition of words but nevertheless I thought he brought up an interesting view of how we are deemed to be at the last stage of everything. Us being the last men, and reality being the last form of illusion. At a stage where everything has been done and “original” has lost its meaning. That is something we as designers had to struggle with. In a time where cultures are no longer distinctive and “sacred relics of the past (are) viewed as aesthetic history today”.
But rather than the bleak picture he paints of the current overtly-saturated situation, I think that this is instead an important “recycling” era. Like a pasticcio (from which you get pastiche), over centuries, ingredients have been laid down layers after layers, each one integrating into the next. The over piling of food though might make the entire dish tasteless and gaudy and give you the same bloated and unhealthy feeling as too much junk food. Perhaps this is where our current climate comes into play, recycling and aggressively turning over and consuming and digesting everything that history recorded, from fashion to art to mathematical theories. We break it down, over-simplify things and remain rather superficial about it all (because we can never actually experience it). Eventually, the pulp created will form the new basis for whatever there is to come. Maybe new forms of culture related to a universalised world.
If the universe is indeed built on numbers as David Orrell mentioned, then indeed I think men has not seen the last of our species or even glimpsed what is truly meant by reality. Something that particularly stood out of his lecture is that of a cosmic harmonies of the world heard by Kepler. It is such a beautiful magical idea that something as complex, bewildering and incomprehensible to mankind as the universe can be explained in something so simple, pure and so accessible as a melody. Isn’t that quite touching?
If David Orrell thinks that our mental models shape the world that we live in, then perhaps he had better convince Mark Fisher to change his forecast of the last species of men to something much more optimistic that can hopefully tie in Nina Power’s ideal of gender equality and Mattew Taylor’s enlightened society that can be pollinated into the minds of human worldwide (shaping a planet would probably require the mental strength of a planet too) at a universal world fair. Meanwhile, we could all try to convince Saul Estrin that either a) we are not driving ourselves to extinction or b) extinction with the promise of an answer is the way to go… after all the dinosaurs have already done it.
let's sing together