User:Luisa Moura/reading/masters of reality

One of the first electronic networking spaces: 1985 WELL. It carried the connotation of a communal space, space of concord, even being one of the first instances in which a community was sold to it self as commodity.

“(…) in FACEBOOK we manage to assume the goals of a corporation as our own choices and tend to forget that it is a space of participatory surveillance”

Foucault and the reflection on the care for the individual by the state, starting during the XVII century (coincident with a wave of war, rebellion and political instability); If you are prepared to die for the state, the state owes you your wellbeing Great armies and destruction technology grows together with the technologies of care. Human happiness becomes a political object. The notion of ‘police’ appears, not as a weapon against crime, but mostly as a force that would take care of the citizen.

Suddenly the happiness of citizens was seen as a fundamental base for the survival of the state and therefore taken as a priority. Informational systems were created to supervise the citizen’s wellbeing. “The state can govern directly, through legislation, or indirectly, by formulating values of individuality that the individual will seek to preserve.” The state produces the individual and the state takes care of the individual; at the moment that the individual is defined however it “seeks autonomy” and looks for ways of getting “better self-management”, “forgetting perhaps that a well managed individual is precisely what the state desires”

“Liberalism must produce freedom, but this very act entails the establishment of limitations, controls, forms of coercion, and obligations relying on threats (…)” There is a shift in emphasis from trade to competition, and the human becomes understood as human capital. We are stimulated to invest in the self to increase its biological potential and be able to compete in the market real. Man as entrepreneur of himself (Foucault)

In Foucault’s governmentality everyone has an “investment in an understanding of themselves as economic units, and as producers of their own freedom” “At the heart of governance is the production of desire of the subject to improve (…)” to calculate their best interest and to minimize their own risk

How to learn to take very good care of yourself? Self-performing subjects: the reality TV show.

“It is here that human happiness as a political object is performed. This is the genius of control societies: it is the same mechanism which encourages us to willingly mine our own data on behalf of multinational corporations and governments whilst at the same time expressing our freedom, creativity and self-agency – a more perfect circle has never been squared. In reality TV show, the subject is repeatedly placed in judgment of their peers, or instructed by someone with greater experience (…)” “This is the way we govern ourselves and this is the way we are governed – not by following orders or meeting obligations but by taking up challenges and exercising choices”

“(…) it is regarded as legitimate, and even virtuous, to influence the behavior of citizens through the use of techniques developed by behavior science” “(…) finding intelligent ways to encourage people to make better choices for themselves” (Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness) “Nudge understands that there is initially no neutral position in relation to choice, as we are always already surrounded by architecture of choice (…) “people don’t always make active choices (…) if you leave it as an active choice to – then a high proportion won’t bother to opt in”

“(…) final break with the post-war settlement in which taxes provide cover for essential risks, and also allows for a shift from state and public services to the individual, the family, community groups and businesses”

“(…) the locus and logic of governmentality is that I transform my oppression and exploitation into an expression of free will and self-agency”

“Politics becomes the market research, formation and direction of sentiment. Today’s masters of reality, with a battery of technologies of the self at their disposal, are able to implant ‘the real conviction’ that we are happy into our consciousness”. We lost our right to unhappiness.