Worldless Freedom

Two 20th century technological achievements mark the shattering of the shared world: The atomic bomb as an emblem of the impending apocalypse and the Soviet Sputnik satellite that was the initial indication of the separation of humans from the Earth. While the first case brings up the end of humanity through worldwide devastation, the second opens up a phantasma of boundless freedom. This idea left its impact on neoliberalism, while its hostility towards society lives on in today’s tech oligarchy libertarianism, as demonstrated in plans for space colonisation (Musk) or smart cities (Thiel). While war, crisis, and exploitation of resources escalate and the climate crisis keeps being denied, a part of the global elite aims to turn the smashing of the shared world into the pretext of absolute freedom. All the more urgent, then, is the question how politics can promote a sense of community today.

About the lecture series

Global ecological and political challenges mark our present; we experience a rapid development of artificial intelligence as well as a spacefaring revival. Is there a correlation between these phenomena? And what is their link to the resurgence of authoritarian governmental regimes? The lectures in this series examine the change of the image humans create of themselves and the world – with Ulrike Haß, Jan Völker, and Samo Tomšič.