Open brief aan Geert Wilders. Voorgelezen bij de presentatie van het boek Paniek in de polder. Polytiek en populisme in Nederland. Rotterdam, Boekhandel Donner (Lijnbaan), 1 april 2011, 16-18 uur.

Beste Geert!

Het liefst had ik je het eerste exemplaar van mijn boek Paniek in de Polder. Polytiek en populisme in Nederland persoonlijk overhandigd, maar dat leek de organisatoren van deze opening van de Maand van de Filosofie niet zo’n goed idee. Ze waren bang dat je aanhangers stennis zouden komen schoppen. Belachelijk idee! Zij schijnen nog steeds niet door te hebben dat de PVV zich in korte tijd heeft getransformeerd tot een respectabele partij die in het politieke polderlandschap, die gedoogt en gedoogd wordt. Partij-ideoloog Martin Bosma heeft inmiddels zelfs een column in de NRC, de buurtkrant van de Amsterdamse grachtengordel. Kan het nog polderrijker? Van dat gedemoniseer door Gutmenschen als Rob Riemen hebben we de buik nu toch langzamerhand wel vol. Kom op zeg, we leven niet meer in het decennium van Fortuyn!

The psychoanalyst Abraham Maslov once remarked that for someone who only has a hammer, everything appears to be a nail. For a globaliz ing culture, in which the computer rapidly has become the main instrument, the world becomes a gigantic database.

      We see this database ontology at work when, for example, information technology is deployed in the field of genetic manipulation. The gene pool of life on earth is then no longer primarily conceived as a contingent and factual evolutionary constellation, but rather as a database of an infinite number of virtual life forms that can be actualized at will. In other words, the artistic collage has become a reality-creating tech nology. Biologists use computer programs that can simulate alternative evolutions in order to create specific alternatives to reality. Not only can past life forms be revitalized by in formation-technological manipulation but by contingent or intended mutations; even future possibilities become objects of manipulation (a specific form of what Anthony Giddens calls ‘the colonization of the future’). Although not yet as in as spectacular a way as in Spielberg’s Jurassic Park or in sci ence fiction films such as Robocop, our world is increasingly populated with new, transgenetic life forms (and thus with new forms of post-natural beauty and ugliness), created with the aid of informational bio-technologies.

     What applies to physical and biological reality also applies to social and cultural reality, rich domains for the database ontology. We no longer follow, as pre-modern people did, certain habits, customs and norms because there are no other alternatives (known); nor do we, as modern people did, deliberately choose certain options out of a deep conviction. Instead, these cultural genes (called “memes” by Richards Dawkins), are more or less randomly taken from the “meme pool” of the various increasingly globalizing cultures on earth.