work, labor, action
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08::November::2010 14:28 → permalink

Arendt‘s tripartite approach to the sociopolitical — Work, Labor, Action — in “The Human Condition” suggests the expenditure or the flow of energy. All three are intertwined within the do-ing, the be-ing of life, and in the sense that they are all embodied expressions of life-energy, they are equal, divided only by the particularities of the pathways of expression of those energies. She begins, I believe correctly, with viva activa as her source: the active, activated life. However, she does not explicitly posit a connection between viva activa and the source of the possibility for an active life, ones life-energy (sourced in the energized thermodynamic flows of life itself).  These impulses towards the social structures of collective life must have a source, an activated well-spring that drives the cumulative social (and life) dynamic.  The question of the source is perhaps more important than the ultimate expression of the source.

It is in the interpretation of work, labor, and action as mappings of social relation where she initially frames difference as emerging from an expression of material “durability.” She frames the “durability of the world” from this materialistic sense, a durability that “gives the things in the world their relative independence from men who produce and use them.” I think this is precisely where she makes a mistake: a core flaw in Western thinking lies in the fundamental disconnect of that which is ‘out there’ to that which is ourselves. Although those externals of ‘what man hath wrought’ appear to have the “function of stabilizing human life,” it is this precise separation which, while offering an objective relationship with “the environment of nature,” conceptually and perceptually separates us from nature.

Durability is a metric which is immersed in time and related to the structural/material characteristics of an energy configuration. It also relates to complexity and the thermodynamic qualities of the human-constructed configuration. To be durable is must be able to persist in time: to resist change, in Latin durus means “hard.” Change, as the enemy of durability, can only be resisted or counteracted by an influx of the ‘correct’ or reinforcing form of energy. By correct I mean an energy that promotes the persistence of a particular configuration versus the dissolution of the configuration. Energy may cause either or both to occur.

For example, with prototypical techno-social persistence in mind, think of an object, a building, fashioned from stone. The energy necessary to re-configure raw, in situ stone into a building is significant. The intermediate (human) source is embodied energy, or a wide techno-social infrastructure supporting machinic augmentation of the body. It is no coincidence that stone structures are often co-located with the central hubs of significant techno-social civilizations. The high initial pay-out is rewarded by a longer-term persistence compared to, say, wood which requires a smaller initial pay-out of energy. Clearly there is a direct correlation between the durability of human configured situations and the initial and continuing availability of energy input into various configurations of expression.

A ‘separated’ approach to activated life denies what is quantum ‘fact.’ The ‘material’ substance of whatever constitutes the self is completely connected, embedded, not as reified and ordered crystal in a matrix, but as merely another expression of a continuous field of energy. It is perhaps correct to imagine that one of the only things that distinguish ‘us’ from ‘out there’ is the difference in thermodynamic state (negentropic) and state of complexity. Of course, somewhere within that complexity is an intentional consciousness which seems to demand “subjective control over our physical circumstances” (King, 2006), but subjectivity needs to be thought of differently. Or just not thought of at all.

Why?

Instead of hunting for subjective patterns in the flux of energy that is the substrate of everything, maybe it’s better just to experience the flow: to work, to labor, to act.

Ach, so much to read, so much to understand. Fifteen months into the process, and the prospect of applying a metric to progress: just to see, feel, is it doable? Is it worth it? Is this stressful immersion into the removed praxis of paying life-time-attention to the sometimes resonant remains of prior lives a good thing? Can immersion in the past be a good thing? Wallowing, submerged in the resonant archive of other times and places, people.

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