Photograph Source Arturo Espinosa | CC BY 2.0 Source: counterpunch May 4, 2018 by Dan Corjescu We live in a world of mass surveillance. A world directed by elites for elites. However, for most of us, our daily lives are expressed by the French saying metro, boulot, dodo (metro, work, sleep). Yet, at any time for anyone and for any reason the seeming safety of everyday life could change in an instant. Franz Kafka captured our current situation in his book Der Process (The Trial) more than a hundred years ago. The following are some excerpts from that book which I have reformulated as laws. The First Law: Jemand mußte Josef K. verleumdet haben, denn ohne…
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Kafka Warned Us
Source: counterpunch September 7, 2017 by Dan Corjescu Kafka’s The Trial can be read in retrospect as a prelude to the Twentieth/Twenty-First century. Although probably not written as prophecy, Kafka’s short unfinished book nevertheless provides a road map to the terrors of the current Surveillance State. As readers of CounterPunch are all too familiar, modern man, as a single individual, is at the mercy of the modern state and those who, lurking in semi-secrecy, direct it. Kafka’s The Trial superbly conveys the unease of our current existential situation. Early one morning, The Trial’s main protagonist, Joseph K, awakes to find that, totally unexpectedly, he has been arrested. Throughout the book he endeavors to find the reason for his…
