Authority and co-immunity
25
May
The word “author” has the etymological root of Latin “auctor”
which means “source”, “instigator” or “promoter”, suggests someone who should augere (increase, magnify or improve) and the suffix tor (an agent, who does the action, as in a doctor or a sculptor), so there is no direct relation to power or originality, he must “perfect” something that exists.
The idea that authorship confers power or the creation of something original is as it comes from the word also something authoritarian, which can be interpreted as an exaggeration of authorship, an almost exclusivity or even an excess of power.
Networks are a contemporary way of establishing this authorship of improving what exists, in some ways even allowing “anonymous” people to participate in co-authorship, or in Sloterdijk’s account of co-immunity, and in this sense we can retrieve the word authority.
In the wisdom of oral culture, people who speak with authority are those who know the roots and traditions of a particular culture, are like living libraries that hold the cultural heritage of a nation, ethnicity, or people.
In the biblical saying that Jesus spoke with “authority”, besides being deeply connected to the Jewish culture from which the Christian originated, he also had an affective connection with his culture and his people, so besides knowing what he was talking about, he had empathy with the average person.
The idea of the modern state must change, it is unacceptable how politicians and managers of the Modern State behave, there is no trust of the population in them, levels of corruption are immoral, and it is necessary, above all, to look at the interests of the “public“.
But the networks demand changes in the individual posture as well, knowing how to listen, would like to culture what is different, respect values and traditions that are not like ours and not have cultural concepts as definitive truths, it is time for change and requires a change of mentality , networks can help.
