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Neues aus der Welt der Wissenschaft |
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Terror, Krieg und Technikgläubigkeit |
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| | | Der 11. September ist auch zum Angelpunkt vieler Debatten über das amerikanische Selbstverständnis geworden. Der Computerpionier und Kritiker der Informationsgesellschaft Joseph Weizenbaum läßt nun mit einer Wortmeldung aufhorchen, in der die Logik der amerikanischen Politik und Technikgläubigkeit als Vorgeschichte und Schlüssel zum Krieg gegen den Terrorismus kritisch beleuchtet wird. |
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Kritik der instrumentellen Vernunft |
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Der Einsicht folgend, dass Wahrheit in der Regel das erste Opfer des Krieges ist, plädiert Weizenbaum für eine schonungslos offene, auch in der Sprache unverblümte und ehrliche Diskussion der Hintergründe.
Die Verteidigung gegen Terrorismus wird nicht in Frage gestellt. Die Analysen sollten sich aber nicht nur mit den Potenzialen des Gegners, sondern auch mit der Vorgeschichte und dem Kontext der eigenen Haltung befassen - also auch mit der Logik der westlichen Zivilisation, die der emeritierte MIT-Professor von Fortschritts- und Technikgläubigkeit geprägt sieht.
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"Was machen wir eigentlich?" |
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Ganz in diesem Sinne hatte sich Weizenbaum schon früher gegen den "Imperialismus der instrumentellen Vernunft¿ gewandt und daraus eine harsche Gesellschaftskritik entwickelt.
Die Tendenz, Problemlösungen primär in der Technik, damit aber auch in militärischen Anwendungen zu suchen, sieht der Erfinder des Computerprogramms "ELIZA¿ in Zusammenhang mit einer Vergötterung der Technologie, die für die zivilisatorische Haltung des Westens typisch sei. Kein "Kampf der Kulturen¿, sondern eine kritische Überprüfung der eigenen Denklogik - nach dem Motto "Was machen wir eigentlich?¿ - erscheint demnach angesagt.
"Science.orf.at¿ bringt dazu einen Artikel von Joseph Weizenbaum, der kurzfristig von der Zeitschrift "Gegenworte¿ der Berlin Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zur Verfügung gestellt wurde, in englischer Sprache.
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Joseph Weizenbaum - ein "Dissident"
Joseph Weizenbaum wurde 1923 in Berlin geboren, er emigrierte nach der Machtergreifung der Nazis 1936 mit seinen Eltern in die Vereinigten Staaten, wo er Mathematik studierte. Nachdem er an der Konzeption des ersten Computer-Banksystems beteiligt war, lehrte er Computer Science am Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In den frühen 60er Jahren entwickelte er dort "ELIZA", ein Computerprogramm, das in der Lage war einen schriftlichen Dialog scheinbar mit inhaltlichem Verständnis zu führen. Die Reaktionen auf dieses Programm, das in Wirklichkeit die Antworten nur nach einfachen Regeln und Schlüsselworten generierte, führten zu einer intensiven Auseinandersetzung Weizenbaums mit ethischen Fragen des Computereinsatzes und der Technikentwicklung, die er in seinem 1976 erschienen Buch "Computer Power and Human Reason" ausführte:
"Ohne Frage hat die Einführung des Computers in unsere bereits hochtechnisierte Gesellschaft (...) lediglich die früheren Zwänge verstärkt und erweitert, die den Menschen zu einer immer rationalistischeren Auffassung seiner Gesellschaft und zu einem immer mechanistischeren Bild von sich selbst getrieben haben."
In einem Vortrag bezeichnete Weizenbaum sich selbst einmal als Dissident. |
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 Mehr über Joseph Weizenbaum |
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11 September - My View |
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By Joseph Weizenbaum
The world was sent into shock on September 11th, 2001. A historic threshold had been crossed: The myth of the invulnerability of the United States of America, based on its being guarded on both its western and eastern shores by great oceans, was shattered cruelly, dramatically, at great expense in human lives.
A new weapon had been invented: the passenger plane filled with travelers. The immediate reaction of the American authorities was to close American airspace to all nonmilitary aircraft. It was the only thing to do. After all, any airplane then aloft could easily be another missile heading for its target.
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A feeling of disorientation |
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The shock was immediate and it has not attenuated in the few weeks that have since passed. To set eyes on the New York skyline now is like seeing a Daly rendering of the Statue of Liberty with the arm holding the torch simply missing.
It is not possible not to see that new skyline without feeling a cognitive wrench, a disorientation. How can these two mighty towers be erased in a few hours? Now America and the world knows how simple it is. And, it can happen again and again in any country, any city. It is scary!
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What are the lessons of this catastrophe? Not any that we could not have learned at a much lower price, simply by thinking. However we actually think, our thoughts are ultimately articulated, if at all, in language, even to ourselves. It is therefore essential that we use language accurately: we ought to speak truth to the extent that we can make it out, not, for example, use euphemisms to hide truth from ourselves and from others. |
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The war against terrorism |
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The United States of America has declared war on terrorism. What does "war", what does "terror" mean? An ancient saying has it that "when weapons speak, laws are silent", another says that truth is the first casualty of war. War means first of all the substitution of violence for the rule of law and of lies for truth.
Terror means the spreading of fear, dread, horror and finally panic among people. And who are the terrorists? They are the agents whose lawless violence strikes fear into the hearts of people. Their big lie is that they represent and are acting on behalf of an entire people.
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Who are they? |
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The people who rammed the World Trade Center towers in Manhatten and those who plowed into the sides of the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. are by right called terrorists. So also those who trained and financed them, whoever they are.
Who are they?
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Some allies |
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Although it is not welcome in these days to call attention to the mistakes (misdeeds?) of the USA, it must be said in clear language that "they" include, among many other Americans, Mr. George Bush senior, former president of the USA and, what is perhaps more important, former head of the CIA.
For it was the US Government through the CIA that first recruited, trained, outfitted and supported the people who first fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan and who only later became the Taliban . The same US Government supported Sadam Hussein in his war against Iran, supplying him then with weapons later used against the US and its allies in the Gulf War.
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Some judgements |
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Indeed, it is difficult to think of any civil conflict since the end of World War II in which the USA did not support the forces arraigned against a legitimate government, most often ousting, often killing, the country's legitimate ruler. US governments have followed the same course since then, i.e. training men of many countries in the art kidnapping, torturing and massacring people, finally their own people, at the command of their brutal governments.
If there were an international court of justice with power to indict and convict people of having violated human rights and of other crimes against humanity, then surely most of American presidents of the second half of the twentieth century as well as many of their senior assistants would have ended their careers as convicted felons.
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The logic of the conflict |
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I do not say that here in order to argue that American crimes on the world scene justify crimes committed against America. Not at all! But without examining the principal actors on the world stage, their motives and their actions we will never uncover the causes of the violence that is tearing the world apart. And the USA is a principal actor, not merely a victim.
And if we do not discover the actual logic of the ever more heated conflict of which we are a part, then the cycle of violence will continue and intensify. At the end of that chain lies a third world war and after that a dark age in which the living will envy the dead.
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Yet, somehow, the United States of America declaring war on terrorism seems to me to be like the mafia declaring war on organized crime. In the famous American cartoon the main character, Pogo, says: "We have met the enemy and he is us." So it seems to be, but not only on "our" side but on all sides of the apparently insoluble conflicts raging all over the world. The real enemy of civilization is war itself. |
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So, what is to be done? |
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Of course, the people who committed the murder of thousands of innocent people in New York and Washington must be pursued and brought before a court perhaps an international court like that in Den Haag. It may be that at the end of a large scale military operation lasting perhaps months or even years, the people more or less responsible for the attacks of September 11th, if still alive, will be brought before a court of justice - assuming there is an end.
But, just as an alcoholic must first realize and admit that he is sick before a cure becomes a possibility, so must we, say, the so-called G7, but principally the USA, come to realize our heavy responsibility for the bitterness and hate that fill a large part of our world. This self examination is urgently needed now.
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Worship of technology |
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Most conflicts of the second half of the 20th century that cost millions dead have not come to an end, not in the sense that peace has been established and the guilty identified and brought to account.
One important reason for that is, I think, that we have come to worship our technology to the point that it is easy, almost natural, for us to convert all of our problems to technical problems that we can then attempt to solve by technical, for example military, means.
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The real reasons |
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To be sure, this method of problem solving does "solve" one sticky problem: We then do not have to search for and confront the real reasons, to examine our responsibilities for the messes into which we get the world and ourselves, let alone acknowledge them and attack them.
And, as it is with conflict between persons, it is very hard, nearly impossible to change the other. We can at best change ourselves. In the present crisis this means we must come to understand the roots of conflict, not only from our point of view but that of our opponents, but first of all our contribution.
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All over the world people are murdered, shot, bombed, even tortured to death. The world wide arms trade carried on in large part by our friends and massively by ourselves, the USA, is the fuel that fires the engines of death. If we had the political will, we could do something about that. But not so long as unrestrained adherence to the pig principle, i.e. that more (profit) is always better than less. We can stop the financial violence we commit on the people of many countries, e.g. the embargoes that keep whole nations, e.g. Cuba, in misery, and we can relieve the huge burden of debt that virtually bind nations to economic slavery. |
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War against terrorism |
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One of the announced weapons in our "war against terrorism" is to destroy the training camps in which recruits to terrorism are trained, and by the way, shielded from world justice. It may be difficult and costly to accomplish that goal. But the USA, i.e., we can stop training and supporting the terrorists who, after having been schooled and armed by us, go to their homelands to terrorize their own people.
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The madness of war |
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The mass murder that was committed on September 11th, the shock that went around the world and remains with us demonstrated it most clearly, does it not?, the madness of war and, more importantly, the insanity of the world in which we live. Even those who live in relative comfort in the so-called first world, in the West and North, must now realize that we are on a mad course that can lead only to world catastrophe.
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Two great towers |
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The two great towers, to be sure symbols of proud, shamelessly victorious capitalism, but also of modern architecture, indeed of the reach of human genius, imploding in on itself in minutes: a rehearsal of what will become of humanity if we do not come to our senses - and soon! The responses to that tragedy and the responses to the responses, and so on, will in large part determine the fate of our children.
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01.01.2010 |
