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Acosmism and the Non-Existence of the World
Though we talk all the time a great deal about it, contrary to popular belief, there is no such thing as the “World”. (...) In actuality though, in our use of this concept, we draw together as a mental unity an infinity of combinations and possibilities. To be more precise about it we can follow Leibniz in the Theodicy in defining the World as: “the whole succession and the whole agglomeration of all existent things,” which, he goes onto say, “must be reckoned all together as one world or, if you will, as one Universe.” (...)
Though this may seem all far too abstract to bother with, the point is really simple enough as by World we really mean no simple thing at all, but rather a dynamical system of things. A system of not just things, but other systems, and everything which exists in the world really, it must be admitted, can be thought of in connection with other things in an infinite number of possible senses. So the World-System includes out thinking, our divisions of things into categories, scientific, historical, cultural, the systems of those divisions, and so on and so forth forever. (...)
The science of World has a history, and progresses symbiotically, and necessarily with the progress of every other field of science, and even progress in technology, industry, government, infrastructure, and everything else one may wish point to.
(...) As the metaphysicians of the 17th and 18th centuries explicated World, British East Indiamen plowed the seas and enclosed the planet Earth geographically into maps and charts. Likewise in the courts of Kings and Princes across Europe scientific instruments were refined and turned into objects not only of measurement, but of art, and were adorned with elaborate carving and gilding that transformed them into imposing ornaments of power. (...)
Across Europe, as all the above unfolded, so were roads and post systems constructed that increased the regularity and speed of correspondence, which had no less of an effect than transform the economy of Europe into one of letters of credit and finance. Such construction depended though on nothing less than developments in instruments and mathematics, and furthermore, they were projects generally undertaken by gradually growing bureaucratic administrations which centralized power in the nation state and the absolutist government. Such bureaucracies in turn developed an appetite and eventually, an addiction, to tables and books full of data and demanded at every turn more and more quantification.
None of these phenomena are occurring during this time independent of the others, certainly not the development of World, which Metaphysics treats as one of its central subjects of investigation. This World then is nothing short of the conceptual foundation for the scientific, technological, industrial, and methodological progress which has led through centuries to the emergence of global commerce, world trade, instantaneous communication, financial reporting, geopolitical meta-governance through international institutions, etc. Yet in what sense is it actually real? Not in any ordinary and commonplace one. It is, again, the combinatoric compounding of an infinity of infinities represented in terms of a single conceptual construct: World. (...) And the proliferation of disciplines of science and sociology and finance all represent nothing but Modernity’s fevered quest for a complete accounting of the Leibnizian Infinity of Infinities. (...)
To talk of a company feels to us a very straightforward thing. There’s a firm, it owns a factory. It manages the factory. It’s owned by a man in a top hat in Victorian era England. Perhaps two centuries ago this was indeed the norm. A firm was a few lawyers or bankers in an office in London. (...) This though has long since stopped being the norm, as since the turn of the 20th century behemoth conglomerations have arisen through more sophisticated legal models of corporate governance which make it possible for a company to own shares of other companies. (...)
Offshore banking is railed against often enough in political discourse in the public sphere, largely for tax evasion, but the nightmare of these practices is far deeper should strike not indignation, but a kind of genuine terror in us. This sentiment I mean sincerely, as the more fully one considers the organizational scheme at work, the deeper one will be ensnared and discover this themselves. Shares of one corporation owned by a businessman or some other fool are handed over to a holding corporation, which owns the shares the businessman wishes to insulate. He then owns only the shares of the corporation which owns the shares. Not only this, but he can, during his financial schemes, use equity in the corporation which owns the shares as an asset, and hand over a portion of the shares of the holding corporation to business partners or whoever he wishes... (...) The depth of the recursion is beyond comprehension. (...)
These networks of ownership, and the disposable corporations designed to link institutions together, is but one aspect a the global system which serves to instantiate the infinity of infinities which comprise the World. Similar organizational principles are at work in the world of foundations, think tanks, charities.
(...) To say the World does not exist, this is the real truth. To say that it does refers to this organizational hydra I’m describing, as it's only by means of this structure and this approach to organizational design that the infinity of infinities is realized. Not as conceptual totality, but a disfigurement of reality. In the World order of Neo-Liberalism, which is constructed so as to enforce and manifest the fractal dynamics of infinitely compounding possible combinations, we exist only so far as we’re conditioned by these dynamics. We exist only across those dimensions of life and activity so far successfully subjected by the state, banking, insurance, commercial consumption, etc. We are infinitely dimensional beings, separated and disjointed into contortions of humanity. Souls divided and channeled into quantifiable domains of economic, political, ideological activity regulated by the Neo-Liberal world hydra. And this is something I’m sure many people certainly already know. (...)
