 Hi, and welcome to yet another philosophical improvisation, today a bit different, a bit longer I am going to go through the draft of a presentation for a talk I will give tomorrow at a philosophy and psychoanalysis conference on the concept of truth so my talk is about the truth of capitalism and I Will go quickly through the slides This is based on a book I wrote in 2008 called peut-on jouir du capitalisme? Lacan avec Marx et Heidegger That book is actually being translated into Swedish So first of all we must Summarize what is going on in the capital sphere Capitalism is about surplus value and purchase surplus value means that Sales revenue less the cost of production should produce a financial benefit. It's a very simple basic definition So I'm not trying here to define capitalism in the technical sense I'm trying to define it logically and Psychologically so in order for this process Of production of surplus value to function we need At the same time to A knowledge that There is a production of a virtuality in abstraction namely capital That virtuality is Considered valuable because it represents a universal possibility of purchase and or power What we observe in the last hundred years is that for capitalism to function there needs to be a continuous extension of the territory of Purchasable objects, okay, so to give an example We could imagine a society where Access to unpolluted oxygen becomes a necessity and a necessity that would be Accessible only to those who can afford it the other ones would die of All sorts of diseases provoked by pollution. This is already the case there tens of Thousands of deaths in cities provoked by the pollution of the atmosphere pollution of the air and People need to live in those cities in order to work Okay, so anticipated capital is a virtuality with a factual causation and impact on reality It is an abstraction capital is an abstraction ever projected in the future nevertheless that fiction as Real impact on the reality Okay, so the capitalist fear is what Lacan calls the discourse of The master, okay, so by discourse Is meant a system a system of exchange of symbols and other Communities now let's look at the emotional sphere What if the emotional sphere functioned as an analog on of The capitalist fear, okay, so In this case, we could say that the emotional sphere means experiential benefit That should produce an emotional enjoyment once you take away the existential cost So here again, you would have the production of a virtuality an abstraction Lacan cosy to jouissance absolute enjoyment Happiness That virtuality is considered valuable because it represents a universal possibility of happiness and again and power We could argue that in this case a an emotional sphere that would function as a a projection of the capitalist fear Would imply a continuous extension of the domain of pleasure and this is Arguably the case today where people believe that School should be a pleasurable Work should be pleasurable Human relations should be pleasurable. I mean We're not saying here that they they should be a horrible experience, right? but It is not certain that the Paradigm of enjoyment can be universalized to the entire sphere of experience and it is not Certain that this actually produces more happiness. So there is a contradiction, of course In its logic that in the end It produces the opposite. Okay. Now, let's consider a third Sphere the sphere of knowledge the epistemic sphere the sphere of truth if It is the case that today that sphere is And Lacan calls it the discourse of the university While the emotional Sphere is the discourse of the hysterical for Lacan if the epistemic sphere was a Translation a transposition of the economic sphere. We could say that Cognitive outcome less the cost of research Or search or quest should produce an epistemic benefit an effect of truth And here again, we have the production of virtuality namely knowledge and At the very limit this idea of omniscience, which is so present today in our Society ruled by artificial intelligence and a desire to forecast the Future and the behaviors with Accuracy and precision in order to control The future the future being therefore Part of that extension of domain of the purchasable We want to sell the future That virtuality Namely absolute knowledge is considered valuable because it represents a universal possibility of understanding and again our power And this suppose a continuous extension of the domain of the knowable and in other words What is it? It is science modern science modern science is the capitalist equivalent of The idea that we can sell everything we can know everything We can Measure everything There is a science of poetry for example Or there should be a science of human emotions a science of social behavior a science of God So in this case anticipated knowledge is a virtuality which has an effectual causation and impact on reality Yet again, it's very easy to see how Anticipations of knowledge Have an immediate impact on the present see for example the amounts of Money and millions that are spent in programs that are Emulating the brain that are mimicking the brain and its connections In computers as if We could Produce intelligence just by looking at chemical Transactions between neurons And in a way it does produce intelligence and that's why it's never ending produces a form of intelligence that is relative not in the machine itself, but in the discourse of The university and that's keeping the machine running As much as emotions are kept running with the fiction of absolute enjoyment as much as Capitalism is kept running by the fiction of continuous surplus value Okay so if we summarize Anticipated capital is a virtuality with effectual causation and impact on the present. So is anticipated enjoyment absolutely enjoying And so it is so is anticipated knowledge So we have three fictions three horizons three absolutes three ideals Third are arguably never attainable Which nevertheless produce many effects on the present We could say that those are three fetishizations of the future the paradox here is that we are anticipating an An impossibility we are anticipating an infinite and there's this idea. It's called the infinite monkeys theorem That well Eventually in the long term Anything that can happen will happen in fact not even anything can happen anything at all Will happen if we wait an infinite amount of time and that's our Brain our desire our emotions function Because in fact this idea of the infinite is embedded in the world. It's not just a logical fiction. It is embedded in our Behavior two infinites there's the And we there is a confusion between these two infinites. There is the infinite. There is purely incremental We make an addition one plus one plus one plus one. Okay, so that's the numerical infinite But then there is the absolute infinite and there is this idea that well infinity produces The emergence of novelty so now the title of the paper was the truth of capitalism, right? so Word is meant by that and what is meant by everything that was said until now? Well, I believe that we can say that the truth of capitalism is summarized in a three-word slogan More is less Okay, not less is more But more is less and that is That has another name and it's called overproduction the main problem of the capitalist fear the emotional sphere and The epistemic sphere is overproduction, right? Because there's this gap that we need to feel gap of knowledge knowledge gap we say in research Emotional gap need of love affection enjoyment pleasure and Of course the capital gap, right, which is always generated by our everyday life where more and more things are Commodities there's the gap of Not having enough money, but there is also the gap of having Too much money a lot of people don't know what to do With more than a reasonable amount of money. They need to spend it and of course they don't know how to spend it because It never really satisfies That gap they have in them, which is essentially the same gap the epistemic gap the emotional gap and the capitalist gap are The idea of the infinite within us not the relative infinite, but the absolute infinite Right this idea of absolute possibility Can generate two modes of understanding one based on luck Based on the idea that the earth is but a rock and that we need to overproduce to maintain life And an opposite idea would be well absolute possibility is not Way back there in the future unreachable but in fact all around us as Abundance not necessarily visible abundance not necessarily material abundance not necessarily epistemic abundance, but in fact as a Feeling an emotion and that's what I call creation of the Creel It is the imminent feeling that the world is Absolute generosity The idea that we don't need to produce constantly in order to Receive Okay, so a Paradigm of lack can only create overproduction We always go too far and then fall back where we started We need a paradigm and a shared cosmology of abundance not the real as void and desires lack, but rather the Creel as Infinite Present imminent Abundance and that might be a scuddle for some right for Well intention people might say look at the poor people in Africa. How can you speak of abundance? Well precisely? If they're really concerned about the people in Africa They should go to Africa and really help them They are only concerned about those people in discourse and They reproduce their capitalist mode of lack which only Creates that idea that those who do not have do not possess access to the three modes of Capitalist fear are considered inferior. So my idea is Of course that we need to shift from a paradigm of more is less Right, which is the truth of capitalism or we produce the less in fact We had the less we experienced the less we Feel this emotional Gratitude that in the end everybody pretends to follow and to aspire to and less is more Which is is well-known slogan and then we actually is a slogan that is sometimes present even Even in production modes my point in using here the slogan less is more is a reference to a 19th century poor life, so it's it's not a reference to the so-called marketing of authenticity which Might be Relying on a mode of production that seems much more authentic and Simple and respectful, but in the end it is still It's interesting. They're interesting Initiatives there, but it is still dependent of the necessity of Overproduction right and just look at the supermarkets how Bio food is now overproduced and so now we need something else We need gluten-free and after gluten-free will invent something else and okay, so let me finish with a reading No, I won't I won't read the poet poem by Robert Browning Less is more the title of the poem is Andrea del Sarto Just these two lines perhaps to paint a little thing like you smeared carelessly Passing with your rogues afloat you do much less so much less someone says I Know his name no matter so much less well less is more look radio and I am judged and of course we know many Experiences occurrences in life were less is more that was called the soul not so long ago Okay, so I will leave you with this Unfinished notes I still have until tomorrow to elaborate this more logically but I wanted to practice the talk In sharing with you and see you tomorrow