Bruno Latour once suggested ( think rightly) that we aim for an ‘object-oriented democracy’. What does this…

Bruno Latour once suggested ( think rightly) that we aim for an ‘object-oriented democracy’. What does this mean? Read on. His magisterial essay at the link below too. /1 https://t.co/F042joQa4O

When we think about humans acting together, we almost always think about them interacting ‘subjectively’. With feelings and ideas and thoughts. Latour’s entire career was an attempt to show this as fundamentally wrong. /2

Latour showed it was the objects we use every day that are actually what hold societies together. That technology is fundamentally misunderstood as a ‘tool’. Objects/technologies are profoundly social. The MOST social part of our societies. /3

Take any technology and if you look you will see gathered around it a whole collection of humans. The people who design and build it, the people who use and maintain it, the people who wholesale and retail it. Etc. Objects and technologies are not tools. /4

Yes you can frame them in that way, ‘a lawn mower is a tool to mow lawns’. Obviously. But that misses the fundamental *social* transformation the introduction of that technology brings about. /5

Once mowers exist, an ‘industry’ exists around the design, construction, sale and maintenance of the mowers. Thousands of peoples’ ‘subjective’ lives are now not only maintained by the existence of mowers, those subjective ways of being didn’t even exist beforehand. /6

And then add the millions who use the mowers, the technology weaving its way into their various social ways of being. As well as the providers of fuel, lawn products etc. What’s critical here is that it’s the technology that holds everything together, as a *social* group. /7

This is the problem Japanese and German carmakers are having right now, with EVs. Chinese automakers are threatening their existence. There’s nothing objectively too difficult for these older carmakers in shifting to EVs. Their resistance is social. /8

Not only their companies, but entire communities and cities surrounding legacy carmakers have shaped their social and cultural lives around combustion engine technology. To shift to EVs means a profound disruption of their social and cultural lives. /9

Once objects and technologies have woven together a particular group of humans, the dreary concept of ‘maintenance’ (like the concept of ‘administration’) is really the magic key. It’s the ongoing maintaining of these objects that disciplines human collective life. /10

People will never, ever just agree on things. Human desire is far too fluid. But once you embed social relations inside objects and technologies, their continued upkeep imposes a discipline on collective life. Societies that build things are stable societies. /11

Those aren’t two separate statements. It’s the process of building things that creates social stability. The Romans knew it, it’s why their particular collective lasted for so long. A material basis for human collective life. A collective focused on material well-being. /12

Imagine an object-oriented democracy today. One focused only on the material well-being of peoples. Where decisions are made entirely on gaps on that material well-being. What do we get instead? Rampant idealism. /13

Decaying and collapsing ‘infrastructure’, while we vote for idiots arguing idealistic battle cries about small government, trickle-down, the level of taxation, the commitment to nationalism etc. All ‘subjective’ hot air. Debates that never (and can’t) end. /14

We can usually all agree though on the level of material well-being. Our ‘cost of living’, for example. And the solutions to these are also material things, mostly already known and quite simple. What stops them being implemented? /15

The necessity to route everything through these idiot subjective status games, where the prize is victory in the electoral battle. So for example we might have ‘small government’ advocates for public health up against ‘the usefulness of the State’ advocates. /16

One of them will win a given election. Does this mean public health will get attention? Not at all. It was always just the currency of the subjective debates over meaningless idealisms. We need an object-oriented democracy. One focused exclusively on material well-being. /17

Down with all idealisms and ideologies. The entire focus on ‘keeping the lights on’. Material things. /end