In Greek mythology, the titans were the first gods, directly tied to the universe’s primordial forces, who arose before the Olympians people once learned about in school and who are still depicted in popular media (you know the names: Zeus, Aphrodite and other cosmic celebrities).
From the Wikipedia article:
The Titans were the former deities, the generation of gods preceding the Olympians. They were overthrown as part of the Greek succession myth, which tells how Cronus seized power from his father Uranus and ruled the cosmos with his fellow Titans before in turn being defeated and replaced as the ruling pantheon of gods by Zeus and the Olympians in a ten-year war known as the Titanomachy (‘battle of the Titans’). In the aftermath of this war, the vanquished Titans were banished from the upper world and held imprisoned under guard in Tartarus. Some Titans, such as Oceanus and Helios, were allowed to remain free.
Recently, the Titans came to mind when I read this post on Twitter:
A key quote:
“In Silicon Valley, [there’s] almost this Copernican principle — where people used to believe that the world revolved around the Earth, then realized that it revolves around the sun.”
“There’s a Silicon Valley parallel where people think that all of technology, all of industry, revolves around Silicon Valley, but it’s actually kind of the opposite.”
Typical of Americans, Sequoia Capital’s Maquire unnecessarily added, ‘kind of’ when, in fact, there’s no doubt or partial truth: the tech industry and all of its products and apparent power, are entirely dependent on a vast, complex supply chain of capital and resources commanded by older, and far more powerful sectors of the global system.
At the foundation of this system, primordially tied to the world like the Titans of myth, is oil.
For many years, we were encouraged to believe that ‘software was eating the world’. In fact, software and the software industry, were eating at the pleasure of the gods who were, from a media perspective (away from specialist circles) banished to the netherworld, outside of our thoughts as if to Tartarus. The tech industry builds (or, increasingly, pretends to build,) data centers that are supposedly temples in celebration of a glittering future. In fact, Cronus, drenched in crude, laughs in the dark recesses of the Earth at the pretensions of the tech lords who, despite all their talk of nuclear fusion and other exotic escapes, still need petroleum to function.
The US/Israel war on Iran, and all that has, quite predictably followed, has raised the reality of the old gods who never left to our consciousness. What is the United States, in its Olympian thrashing about, disrupting, perhaps even dismantling?
…
On 14 April, Twitter user ‘Victims of Capitalism Memorial Foundation’, (also known as ‘Mikey’ on various podcast appearances) posted what you see above to their account.
People who claim Marxist or, at the very least, materialist commitments should focus on how the world works and help others learn.
Unfortunately, in western Marxist circles, there’s a tendency to run from such understanding as if fleeing a ghost. This may be due to the balkanisation of Marxist thought (and inaction) in the academy, coordinated by the state (as Gabriel Rockhill compellingly argues in his book, ‘Who Paid the Pipers of Wester Marxism?‘).
Whatever the cause, as we approach a global crisis, it’s important to do what we can to correct this lack.
Below, some introductory guides. I’ll add more as I learn about them.
Key Aspects of the Global System That Will Be Disrupted by the War on Iran You Should Understand
Videos on Youtube
Computational Impacts 