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We’ve been here before. “Socialism, to be sure, is not written off as dead today in the same sense as liberalism is”- Paul Tillich Early in 1933 the theologian and academic Paul Tillich published this book at essentially the same time Hilter became Chancellor. Tillich was the first non Jewish academic dismissed and chased out of the country when the Nazis seized power, mostly for this work. Following his dismissal Reinhold Niebhur contacted him and visited him in Germany in the summer of 1933 to convince him to come to Union Theological Seminary in the United States. The book occupies unique place as a rigorous argument for socialism in the face of an eminent fascism, and it roots itself in a historical analysis of religion, socialism and fascism, some of which the author was writing from an unique first hand experience (for example , Heidegger was a professor of Tillich’s as an undergrad and eventual collogue when Tillich was a professor and he is often both refuting Heidegger and using Heidegger’s categories) As such it potentially can speak to us now. It is also quite interesting in conjunction with more modern work on Ur-Fascism. I recommend listening to “The War on Everyone” it’s pretty good and by a goon. http://www.thewaroneveryone.com/ In the past some of you may remember me referencing this book (The Socialist Decision), but I hadn’t ever sat down with a full text of it and read it rigorously cover to cover. I could not put that off any longer. For those familiar with me, this is not a work of theology. This is anthropology, philosophy, and Marxism. But it also is unarguably still a religious socialism. I intend to work my way through it in this thread. I plan to summarize segments and I will link to those posts as they happen here in this OP. I don’t intend to be particularly formal. A great deal of the ideas and concepts that originate in this book reverberate, particularly through the civil right movement in the United States and the Cold War. Much of the religious / Marxist dialogue in the 60’s has its roots in this book. As a secondary purpose for the thread. We are in another moment where we as a society face the choice the book presents: the “Socialist Decision”. Now I am not as far to the left as some of you are (and that is plainly obvious), but I agree with most of you about the necessity we are faced with, that the country must move left. But there is a problem currently and well, I’ll let the text say it: “The Socialist Decision is a decision of socialism and a decision for socialism. What follows is a summons to this twofold decision. We shall establish the grounds for the decision, describe it’s nature and demonstrate its necessity. The socialist decision is required of two groups: of those today who are the bearers of socialism today and of those who today are it’s opponents but who in the future will also have to be it’s bearers” In other words the second purpose for this thread is to discuss how do we get people that some of you sneer at (“ liberals”, ”centrists”, etc), to think more like you do. How did I come to think more like you do? Before you write this off: “And, again, in exactly the same way, the proletariat is not the class opposite of the bourgeoisie, it is non-bourgeoisie, which means non-non-bourgeoisie. We thus have not two classes, but one—the bourgeoisie—and its negation of the negation, a non-non-class, a weird class which can only win by abolishing itself as class and thereby doing away with all classes…to be non-non-bourgeois is not to be bourgeois again, but our (the proletariat’s) prospective ally.” All that said, let’s set some ground rules: Let’s try not to report each other merely because we disagree. I’ve never reported a single post. If we get some fascists, yeah report those fuckers. Everybody else, try to keep it goddamn in the thread. Don’t make me loving report a post. Let’s not be poo poo heads, but let’s get very angry with each other because that means we give a poo poo. Don’t be lovely to each other. Curse, yell, argue, etc at each other arguments, but try not to treat particular posters poorly. I’ll ask you to stop if I see it. You can ask each other to stop that poo poo if you see it. Don’t loving weaponize this. Take risks. Make arguments you don’t have the language for yet. I’m sure as hell going to. I’m prepared to be contradictory and in the excluded middle (gently caress Aristotle, I am Lutheran after all) . Related to the main discussion and that comment, I’d also like to talk about Less Than Nothing. Zizek left a huuugggeee loving Tillich shaped hole in it. He also clearly is references Tillich multiple times in the text but not explicitly in the sense of mentioning him or discussing him, but he makes assertions that steal and reference Tillich’s language explicitly. He's doing it on purpose. That’s topics not going to be organized, and if my time gets short it'll get dropped. Links to posts discussing book sections by chapter: Forward Introduction Part 1 Political Romanticism its Principle and its Contradiction (this is the section on fascism) 1.The Presuppositions of Political Romanticism 1. Mythical Powers of Origin https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3901455&pagenumber=1#post499207308 2. The Break with the Myth of Origin in Judaism https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3901455&pagenumber=1#post499340481 3. The Break with the Myth of Origin in the Enlightenment and the Romantic Reaction https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3901455&pagenumber=1#post499458133 2. The forms of Political Romanticism 1. Conservative and Revolutionary Forms https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3901455&pagenumber=1#post499562111 2. Return to the Powers of Origin https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3901455&pagenumber=1&perpage=40#post499788547 3. The Struggle Concerning Traditions https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3901455&pagenumber=1#post499856533 4. The cultural Expression of Political Romanticism https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3901455&pagenumber=1&perpage=40#post500061880 5. The Political Expression of Political Romanticism Part 2. The Principle of the Bourgeois Society and the Inner Conflict of Socialism 3. The bourgeois Principle and the Proletariat 1. The Bourgeois Principle and its Tensions https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3901455&pagenumber=2#post500345523 2. The Leading Groups and the Limits of the Bourgeois Principle https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3901455&pagenumber=2&perpage=40#post500588349 3. The Radicalization and the Shattering of the Bourgeois Principle in the Class Struggle https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3901455&pagenumber=2&perpage=40#post500735461 4. The Proletariat and Socialism https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3901455&pagenumber=3&perpage=40#post500960199 4. The Inner Conflict of Socialism 1. The inner conflict of Socialist Belief intro https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3901455&pagenumber=3&perpage=40#post501225919 The inner conflict of Socialist Belief https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3901455&perpage=40&pagenumber=4#post501692618 2. The inner conflict in the Socialist View of Human Nature https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3901455&perpage=40&pagenumber=4#post502756891 3. The inner conflict in the Socialist Concept of Society 4. The inner conflict in the Socialist Idea of Culture 5. The inner conflict in the Socialist idea of community 6. The inner conflict in the Socialist idea of economics Conclusion: Socialist Praxis PART 3 The Principle of Socialism and the Solution of its inner conflict 5. The Socialist Pronciple and its roots 1. The powers of Origin in the Proletarian Movement 2. The elements of the Socialist Principle 3. Expectation and Action 4. Expectation and Origin 5. The Prophetic and Rational Character of Expectation 6. The Socialist Principle and the Problems of Marxism 1. The problem of Historical Materialism 2. The problem of the Historical Dialectic 3. Critique of Dogmatic Marxism 7. The resolution of Socialisms Inner conflict through the Unfolding of the Socialist Principle Intro: The Proletariat and Revolutionary Romantic Groups 1. Origin and Goal the expectation of the Future 2. Being and Consciousness in the Picture of Human Nature 3. Power and Justice in the structuring of society 4. Symbol and concept in the development of culture 5. Eros and Purpose in the Life of community 6. Nature and Planning in the economic order Conclusion the future of Socialism I’m going to skip the forward and introduction for now, but will return to them later. I really want to start with The Presuppositions of Political Romanticism, Mythical Powers of Origin. Another note, I ain’t gotta lotta time, I generally just can’t sit down and write anymore. I’m in the midst of applying for new jobs too. But I’m not going to peter-out either. Expect me to get to each chapter slowly but inevitably. Conversation may die out and this poo poo might sit for a while when I get busy. But I’m going to plod on eventually, even if no one else were to ever post, I’m getting through this text. Those of you that have argued with me over the years know this. I’ll eventually get to it, but now I’m even slower than used to be.8 Bar Ran Dun fucked around with this message at 03:15 on Feb 25, 2020 |
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Oct 17, 2019 05:52
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Oct 17, 2019 05:52
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The Mythical Powers of Origin There is a lot relevant to unpack in the chapter. Primarily there is the concept of the “ Myth of Origin”. If one has been in D&D for the last several years one has encountered Prester’s concept of “narrative”. That’s a good analogue to keep in your head in this discussion. So what is a “Myth of Origin”. These are stories we tell about where we come from. They nearly all connect to father or mother figures. Here one could diverge into Psychoanalysis, eg. Freud and Lacan. Generally Myths of Origin are not regarded abstractly but instead concretely. They are specific stories that are about specific individuals or groups or things. A good contemporary from the US example is the “Founding Fathers” The story is about specific people in a specific place with both true and untrue elements. The purpose again is to explain where we (or one) came from. There are some general categories of these origin myths. The two most relevant categories to a discussion of fascism are “Soil” and “Blood” especially in how they relate to nationalism. Soil is, rather literally here, stories about the ground and location we come from. Stories along the lines of, We are from this place, and this place is special, and that makes us special. Nationalism is rooted in the myths of “Soil”. In our society we can see this category expressed in the westward expansion, we can see it in the way “rural” is romanticized. We see it in the way the “South” is romanticized. “Blood” is narrower. They are stories about : We are from these people. Origin stories of Blood can be about race or lineage. Blood can also be divine election. Dominionism, the lost cause, white supremacy, etc are examples from our culture. It also leads into a third origin category of “Social Group”. The tribalism currently playing in our politics is a good way understand this last category. The right’s: “Our society is from capitalism and those socialists are the enemy.” is a good way to think about the structure of social group myths of origin. Now all of these myths of Origin are religious. But they aren’t monotheistic and generally they are hidden religions (in that they don’t explicitly identify internally as religions. Yet generally, they have the characteristics of religions. They’ll have structures analogous to priesthoods, analogous to dogmas. Fox news or talk radio would be a good concrete examples. These hidden religions tend to have a cyclical nature, think: As it was in the beginning so it shall be in the end. Think : from dust to dust, from God to God, ‘We all return to Nothing.” In our current politics MAGA is a good example of the cyclical nature of origin myths. They focus on whence rather than whither. It’s important to understand the difference between : apocatastasis and apocalypse. Myth of Origin are apocatastasis. ἀποκατάστασις It’s fair characterize all conservative thought, thought that looks backwards or tries to preserve, as having this cyclical , apocatastasis, character. But this character isn’t inherently only conservative. Now a note, not all of these myths are inherently bad. You have them. I have them. Anything that asks “Where am I from?” has them. But obviously they are connected to this fascism thing, so how does that happen? Bar Ran Dun fucked around with this message at 06:35 on Oct 26, 2019 |
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Oct 17, 2019 05:56
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This is an interesting and much needed break from the incessant megathreads that dominate D&D these days and I am looking forward to how things progress. Don't get too discouraged if discussion moves slowly, especially at first, these kinds of more in depth discussions can take a while to get off the ground but are often much more interesting than the news driven threads. I'm curious to see how you develop your discussion of the book. My first comment regarding what you've written so far would be that a few definitions would be handy for evaluating your claims. Since you argue that many modern political movements are pseudo-religions, I think it would be useful for you to provide some sense of how you make that determination. You say that there are analogous parallel structures - having an equivalent to a priesthood and dogma - but that comparison seems underdeveloped. You also write that "all of these myths of Origin are religious" but I'm not clear by what you mean. Are you saying that all the specific myths of origin that you name checked are religious or are you arguing that any "Myth of Origin" is inherently religious in nature? While I do not dismiss this argument out of hand I do see some serious potential weaknesses to adopting this view of things. It would seem to water down the meaning of 'religion' to a substantial degree, essentially making any strongly shared belief system de facto a religion. If that is indeed your claim then I think it deserves to be clarified and stated in a more clear and transparent way. What defines a religion, what makes something a dogma, what makes a group analogous to a priesthood, etc. Defining terms and explaining exactly what correspondence you see between religion and politics would probably make the overall argument easier to follow. A second comment I would make is that we should keep in mind that while this book discusses a much larger phenomena with a particular resonance in modern times, it is nevertheless a book from a specific time and place. The emphasis in the text on blood and soil nationalism is particularly fitted to the German case. Arguably there is a split within the American far right at the moment between, among other groups, the alt-right and the alt-light, with the later group claiming to adhere to a sort of 'civil nationalism' that is open to different races, while the former are explicitly racialist and white supremacist. Temporary American white nationalism and its idea of race is also not necessarily the same as the Nazi conception of the Aryan race. While the Nazi Nuremburg laws were taking direct inspiration from America's legal segregation the Nazi conception of both race and soil was arguably very different from the contemporary White Nationalist conception of these things. Perhaps this isn't where you want the focus of the thread to lie (i.e. perhaps the distinctions between Nazi and White nationalist conceptions of race are academically interesting but not politically relevant to this thread) but I thought it was worth raising the issue. We need to be ever cautious regarding how we use language - it's very easy to make it two different things seem the same by giving them a common label. So let's be as vigilant and transparent as we can be about how we apply these labels and what exactly we mean when we use them.
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Oct 18, 2019 17:25
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Bar Ran Dun posted:
Kurzgesagt on youtube argues that that ideas are good and humans generate ideas and therefore humans are good. It elaborates that when humans are stuck in survival situations most of their ideas tend to be about basic needs - which isn't useful to us because those problems are largely solved in modern society. So if you want to gain the most benefit from the most people it's to your advantage to pull them out of poverty. "Egoistic Altruism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvskMHn0sqQ
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Oct 18, 2019 20:18
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DreadLlama posted:Kurzgesagt on youtube argues that that ideas are good and humans generate ideas and therefore humans are good. It elaborates that when humans are stuck in survival situations most of their ideas tend to be about basic needs - which isn't useful to us because those problems are largely solved in modern society. So if you want to gain the most benefit from the most people it's to your advantage to pull them out of poverty. This video is remarkable. It takes some basic and intuitive propositions and a laudable sounding premise and then uses them to make some of the most twisted, misleading and propagandistic arguments imaginable. Almost every specific comment it makes on history and development is incorrect and its model of how innovation works is dangerously simplistic. The overall message is so incredibly idealistic that there's literally no action plan whatsoever, which is unsurprising because the actual purpose of this video isn't to make you change your behaviour, it's to reassure you that the current system is basically benign and functional and that all that is needed is to remove some unfortunate distortions that are preventing some people on the bottom from achieving their true potential. I ask people to stop and think for a second whether everyone would really be materially better off in any concrete sense if the electronic devices we're all using to post on these forums were priced fairly and produced by workers who were compensated equivalently to the privileged workers of advanced industrial countries. Kurzgesagt talks in this video about how much more advanced medical research could be if there were more scientists. That may be the case but they overlook the massive role of care workers in the medial industry. Somebody has to empty the colostomy bags and wipe up the blood. In a lot of economies that person is a racialized migrant (or the child of one) who is compensated with a comparatively tiny wage, which means there is more wealth available to invest in the healthcare system. It might sound progressive to say that we would all be better off if the world were more equal but what that really does is disguise the huge extent to which our current living standards are predicated on exploitation. In numerous crucial fields like agriculture, textiles, garments, transportation, electronics or social reproduction the role of cheap labour is absolutely crucial to propping up living standards in places like Australia, Japan, Western Europe or North America. If you take a T-shirt that was produced in Bangladesh and that retails at $14 CAD as an example, then the worker in this case earns $0.12 - less than two per cent of the total cost. The factory itself collects $0.58. Factoring in another costs like insurance and transport you end up with a shirt costing $5.67 to fabricate, transport and sell. The Store's markup is 60%. So the vast majority of the value in this process is captured by people in the first world despite the fact that the factory workers in this example are literally risking their lives every time they go to work. Even more crucially though, the government of the country where the shirt is sold collects tax revenue off its sale. Assuming the shirt in this example was sold in Ontario, Canada in 2013 then there would have been a combined provcincial/federal sales tax of 13%, or $1.82. That means more value from each T Shirt sold by Joe Fresh in Canada is going toward supporting Canadian healthcare than is going toward compensating the actual workers or administrative staff or anyone else actually living in Bangladesh. I apologize if this is a tedious length to go into but I think this point is important. People are sometimes quick to obfuscate or dismiss the extent to which first world economies in 2019 are directly reliant on the exploitation of the rest of the world. That Kurzgesagt video - brought to you by Bill and Melinda Gates - takes our empathetic desire to help people and then weaves it into a misleading Just-so story that conveniently obscures more than it reveals. I think there is a strong case to be made that we would all be better off living in a less exploitative world but this video isn't actually making this argument, nor do I think the video's primary aim was actually to convince anyone to be more altruistic. Instead I think the real intention here is to naturalize artifical constructed ideas like 'supply and demand' and naturalize them in such a way that a kind of progressive neoliberalism is seen as common sense solution to problems that actually call for much more radical fixes than anything a video sponsored by a billionaire's charity is likely to advocate. tl;dr - Maybe earnestly citing a video paid for by someone who flew on the Lolita Express isn't actually the best starting point for a discussion of altruism or addressing problems with capitalism
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Oct 18, 2019 21:53
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Helsing posted:This video is remarkable. It takes some basic and intuitive propositions and a laudable sounding premise and then uses them to make some of the most twisted, misleading and propagandistic arguments imaginable. Almost every specific comment it makes on history and development is incorrect and its model of how innovation works is dangerously simplistic. The overall message is so incredibly idealistic that there's literally no action plan whatsoever, which is unsurprising because the actual purpose of this video isn't to make you change your behaviour, it's to reassure you that the current system is basically benign and functional and that all that is needed is to remove some unfortunate distortions that are preventing some people on the bottom from achieving their true potential. this feels like a word salad refutation that just jumps all over the place complaining about the need for healthcare workers who are immigrants to some sort of complaint that canadian healthcare is taking too much of the taxes to an accusation the video is made by pedophiles? (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Oct 18, 2019 23:11
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Helsing posted:This is an interesting and much needed break from the incessant megathreads that dominate D&D these days and I am looking forward to how things progress. Don't get too discouraged if discussion moves slowly, especially at first, these kinds of more in depth discussions can take a while to get off the ground but are often much more interesting than the news driven threads. This single question could justify its own thread. I’ve had many discussions on it in D&D over the years. Yes it’s that broad and there are a couple directions to approach why from. From an anthropology perspective, there is an enormous diversity in the category of behaviors and beliefs agreed to be religions, to not exclude religions from the category the definition must be adequately broad. Generally if one opens up an introductory level religious studies text this pops up right at the beginning. More specifically I personally will generally be thinking in the terms used by Tillich. The work generally recognized as laying out the foundation for this type of analysis is “On a Theology of Culture” (although it is from well after The Socialist Decision”) also important to this type of analysis is Richard Niebhur’s “Christ in Culture”. For a good introduction to how this thinking works and its general process I’d point you to “Film as Religion”. Again in the past I’ve posted from that work extensively. A lot of this thinking is dialectic theology and Hegelian. Its roots are not that different from say critical theory. So as far as a working definition for the thread goes why not go with: Religions are attempts to relate the symbolic to the Real. That’s not really broad enough even. But it’s probably adequate to the discussion. Ideology is a similar way to think about “religions” but I would not limit religion to ideology. Everything I’d consider an ideology I’d call a religion, but not all religion is ideology, especially within Christianity. For the purposes of the thread I think it's fair to consider myths of origin ideologies. Helsing posted:A second comment I would make is that we should keep in mind that while this book discusses a much larger phenomena with a particular resonance in modern times, it is nevertheless a book from a specific time and place. The emphasis in the text on blood and soil nationalism is particularly fitted to the German case. Arguably there is a split within the American far right at the moment between, among other groups, the alt-right and the alt-light, with the later group claiming to adhere to a sort of 'civil nationalism' that is open to different races, while the former are explicitly racialist and white supremacist. Temporary American white nationalism and its idea of race is also not necessarily the same as the Nazi conception of the Aryan race. While the Nazi Nuremburg laws were taking direct inspiration from America's legal segregation the Nazi conception of both race and soil was arguably very different from the contemporary White Nationalist conception of these things. Perhaps this isn't where you want the focus of the thread to lie (i.e. perhaps the distinctions between Nazi and White nationalist conceptions of race are academically interesting but not politically relevant to this thread) but I thought it was worth raising the issue. We need to be ever cautious regarding how we use language - it's very easy to make it two different things seem the same by giving them a common label. So let's be as vigilant and transparent as we can be about how we apply these labels and what exactly we mean when we use them. Yes, Nazi categories drew a great deal from the American categories. They are related, but you are correct they aren’t identical. It’s like different animals filling the same evolutionary niche in different habitats. We can’t learn everything about one by looking at the other, but we can still make useful predictions. One can infer things about a gazelle from looking an antelope, or about a triceratops from looking at a rhino. But it is important to remember they are different things. So when these categories are being discussed that’s a good thing to keep in mind. Another thing, that I’ll get to later is that fundamentally, essentially, myths of origin in political romanticism are contradictory and incoherent, that makes them a bit squishy to pin down. DreadLlama posted:Kurzgesagt on youtube argues that that ideas are good and humans generate ideas and therefore humans are good. It elaborates that when humans are stuck in survival situations most of their ideas tend to be about basic needs - which isn't useful to us because those problems are largely solved in modern society. So if you want to gain the most benefit from the most people it's to your advantage to pull them out of poverty. The question of what ideas are and if they are real is very much directly related to the thread topic. Personally, I think ideas are tools.They are "technology" in the sense foundations of cybernetic understands technology. They are tools that are also signifiers. They don’t have an intrinsic moral value, tools are used for the end of the user. The user’s ends are moral or not.
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Oct 19, 2019 00:24
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Bar Ran Dun posted:This single question could justify its own thread. I’ve had many discussions on it in D&D over the years. Yes it’s that broad and there are a couple directions to approach why from. From an anthropology perspective, there is an enormous diversity in the category of behaviors and beliefs agreed to be religions, to not exclude religions from the category the definition must be adequately broad. Generally if one opens up an introductory level religious studies text this pops up right at the beginning. I have a tendency to cause digressions that I will do my best to reign in for the moment (ed: I definitely failed in that, apologies), but I do feel as though we at least need to carve out some basic distinctions here. I feel as though not all religions are equivalent in this way. Prior to the axial age most religion in Eurasia that we know of seems to be somewhat closer to what we'd now think of as magic or superstition. The emphasis on an afterlife, or the sense that actions taken while alive will have some cosmic moral significance and might influence your fate in this afterlife, or even the sense that cosmic principles somewhat resembling our sense of 'good' and 'evil' might be at play in the universe and that humans might have a role in the struggle between them, are all ideas that only seem to gain purchase in the last six thousand years. We see another significant seeming jump as the world of Antiquity begins to crumble and the 'pagan' religions of the Greeks, Romans, Persians etc. are challenged by the rise of monotheistic and in particular Abrahamic faiths. Many scholars have argued that the millenarian strain within religions like Christianity or Islam live on in the form of political doctrines that call for the total reconstruction or society or humanity. It's a common argument against communism and also more recently has been deployed as a critic of hegemonic liberalism. I can understand that argument though I'm not sure I find it totally convincing. On the other hand, I'm not sure if all mystical, supernatural or faith based belief systems should necessarily be treated as belonging to the same category. Is the Roman Pantheon directly comparable to the God of Israel? Is there no real significance in the stark differences in attitudes between different faiths regarding non-believers or heretics? Perhaps the simplest way of saying this would be to put it as follows: a common theme of Christianity is that it is important because it is true. Christ really was the son of God, he really did die for our sins, and believing that really will set you free. Contrast that with the surviving transcripts we have of trials in ancient Rome where Christians refused to make sacrifices to the Emperor. Roman prosecutors found the whole thing baffling because they didn't understand why anyone would suicidally refuse to make the necessary sacrafices. They really didn't care if you believed in the cult of the Emperor, they just wanted you to make the necessary gestures for social stability. They would even say as much during the trials. They'd implore to the Christian defendant's self interest and point out all the nice things in life they'd be missing out on after they died. The significance of this anecdote, to me, is that it implies that for at least its most serious adherents Christianity was a substantial break from the religions of the past - a truly radical doctrine that overturned many assumptions about religion and introduced a very different kind of belief system than the ones that had preceded it (though in this respect it likely borrowed a great deal not only from the Jews but also from various mystery religions that were then widely spread throughout the Mediterranean Roman world). As for how this relates to the thread: I think it's alright to use broad and inclusive categories, especially for a big picture discussion like this one, but let's not lose sight of the extent to which these categories are theoretical constructions. If we want to assume for the moment that all religions are more or less the same because they all attempt to draw connections between "the symbolic and the Real" then that's alright, but let's keep in mind that this isn't a fact given to us by nature, this is a constructed argument that can and should be scrutinized carefully. Especially since - and I think you're better equipped to recognize this than most goons - the 'Symbolic' and the 'Real' are not necessarily stable or timeless categories themselves. quote:Yes, Nazi categories drew a great deal from the American categories. They are related, but you are correct they aren’t identical. It’s like different animals filling the same evolutionary niche in different habitats. We can’t learn everything about one by looking at the other, but we can still make useful predictions. One can infer things about a gazelle from looking an antelope, or about a triceratops from looking at a rhino. But it is important to remember they are different things. So when these categories are being discussed that’s a good thing to keep in mind. Agreed, and to be clear I don't think this is a fundamental issue, just something that should be noted. quote:The question of what ideas are and if they are real is very much directly related to the thread topic. Personally, I think ideas are tools.They are "technology" in the sense foundations of cybernetic understands technology. They are tools that are also signifiers. They don’t have an intrinsic moral value, tools are used for the end of the user. The user’s ends are moral or not. Yeah this is a much more succinct way of expressing what I was trying to say above. The Kurzgesagt video is very reminiscent of traditional economic development models that see economic growth as a more or less pure and direct result of capital accumulation. You pile enough capital into a country and that country will grow richer, countries that are less developed are capital poor and countries that are well developed are capital rich, the key to helping backwards countries develop is to increase the amount of capital they have. The problem with that perspective - as development economists have themselves recognized - is that this ignores the organization and structure of the economy, which it turns out is very important to the question of development. This is part of the answer to how countries with huge endowments or natural resources can often end up with extremely unbalanced and under developed economies while other countries with comparatively poor resource endowments can become successful - because the internal structure of the economy, as well as the specific types of relationship that the local economy has with the global economy (and with specific countries in the global economy) also matter. A country that specializes in manufacturing is different than one which only produces raw resources. A colony has a different economy to an imperial metropole. A country with deep systemic corruption faces problems that a country with very low corruption doesn't. A socialist, liberal or communist economy all operates differently even if the basic problems they face are often quite similar. So to relate this back to what you said: the way a system is organized matters. You can't just count up the amount of capital in an economy, you have to look at the concrete relationships and institutions and how they interact. So likewise just arguing that piling up more and more educated people will automatically create more widely shared prosperity, regardless of what institutions or economic systems are in place - is profoundly misleading. If we let that guide policy and were careless we could easily end up with a situation where a poor country over produces educated people who then leave the country for more advanced economies, resulting in a brain drain situation. In order to recognize problems like that and find ways to address them we need a much more nuanced understanding of how the economy actually works as a system, and unfortunately that video offers a very misleading account.
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Oct 19, 2019 21:07
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Helsing posted:I have a tendency to cause digressions that I will do my best to reign in for the moment (ed: I definitely failed in that, apologies), but I do feel as though we at least need to carve out some basic distinctions here. I feel as though not all religions are equivalent in this way. Prior to the axial age most religion in Eurasia that we know of seems to be somewhat closer to what we'd now think of as magic or superstition. The emphasis on an afterlife, or the sense that actions taken while alive will have some cosmic moral significance and might influence your fate in this afterlife, or even the sense that cosmic principles somewhat resembling our sense of 'good' and 'evil' might be at play in the universe and that humans might have a role in the struggle between them, are all ideas that only seem to gain purchase in the last six thousand years. We see another significant seeming jump as the world of Antiquity begins to crumble and the 'pagan' religions of the Greeks, Romans, Persians etc. are challenged by the rise of monotheistic and in particular Abrahamic faiths. Some of this gets hit on in the next book section. Judaism, monotheistic thought, breaks myths of origin. So there will be a post about this soon. Helsing posted:Many scholars have argued that the millenarian strain within religions like Christianity or Islam live on in the form of political doctrines that call for the total reconstruction or society or humanity. It's a common argument against communism and also more recently has been deployed as a critic of hegemonic liberalism. I can understand that argument though I'm not sure I find it totally convincing. On the other hand, I'm not sure if all mystical, supernatural or faith based belief systems should necessarily be treated as belonging to the same category. Is the Roman Pantheon directly comparable to the God of Israel? Is there no real significance in the stark differences in attitudes between different faiths regarding non-believers or heretics? The Roman Pantheon is comparable to angels, demons, and saints in Christianity. Particularly in say Origin and Neoplatonism. The God of Israel, that’s more in line with the One or Logos. It’s important to understand that millenarian thought is just a subcategory of apocalyptic thought, we also need to keep in mind apocastasis vs apocalypse. But as far as it goes what I would say (and Zizek argues along these lines I think correctly) dialectic thought is apocalyptic thought. The One getting split into Two (or Three or a multiplicity) that’s apocalypse in a very, very, literal sense. Revolutionary or radical thought must be apocalyptic, but not all apocalyptic thought is millenarian, most of it isn’t. Helsing posted:Perhaps the simplest way of saying this would be to put it as follows: a common theme of Christianity is that it is important because it is true. Christ really was the son of God, he really did die for our sins, and believing that really will set you free. Contrast that with the surviving transcripts we have of trials in ancient Rome where Christians refused to make sacrifices to the Emperor. Roman prosecutors found the whole thing baffling because they didn't understand why anyone would suicidally refuse to make the necessary sacrafices. They really didn't care if you believed in the cult of the Emperor, they just wanted you to make the necessary gestures for social stability. They would even say as much during the trials. They'd implore to the Christian defendant's self interest and point out all the nice things in life they'd be missing out on after they died. The significance of this anecdote, to me, is that it implies that for at least its most serious adherents Christianity was a substantial break from the religions of the past - a truly radical doctrine that overturned many assumptions about religion and introduced a very different kind of belief system than the ones that had preceded it (though in this respect it likely borrowed a great deal not only from the Jews but also from various mystery religions that were then widely spread throughout the Mediterranean Roman world). I think you’ll find this section from Less Than Nothing, interesting: “Following Dupuy, we should reverse matters here: the radical break introduced by Christianity consists in the fact that it is the first religion without the sacred, a religion whose unique achievement is precisely to demystify the Sacred.” The state and ideology put Jesus on the cross. The break is not what you think it is. It is much closer to existentialism. From another section where he references Dupuy: “Concerning Christianity, it is not a morality but an epistemology: it says the truth about the sacred, and thereby deprives it of its creative power, for better or for worse. Humans alone decide on this.”24 Therein lies the world-historical rupture enacted by Christianity: now we know, and we can no longer pretend that we don’t know. As we have seen, the impact of this knowledge one cannot get rid of once it has been gained is not only liberating, but deeply ambiguous: it also deprives society of the stabilizing role of scapegoating and thus opens up the space for a violence not contained by any mythic limit. Helsing posted:As for how this relates to the thread: I think it's alright to use broad and inclusive categories, especially for a big picture discussion like this one, but let's not lose sight of the extent to which these categories are theoretical constructions. If we want to assume for the moment that all religions are more or less the same because they all attempt to draw connections between "the symbolic and the Real" then that's alright, but let's keep in mind that this isn't a fact given to us by nature, this is a constructed argument that can and should be scrutinized carefully. Especially since - and I think you're better equipped to recognize this than most goons - the 'Symbolic' and the 'Real' are not necessarily stable or timeless categories themselves. What’s the context of these constructions and categories? It’s the no. We build things in the face of being crushed, crucified, by the things (states and ideas) built before by others. What is built changes. The context in which things are built might not.
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Oct 20, 2019 05:20
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The Break with the Myth of Origin in Judaism Brandor’s note, this chapter to be gentle is showing it’s age. It was definitely written in Germany in the thirties. It’s not antisemitic, it’s an explanation of why fascists hate the Jews. But it makes some assumptions that are problematic and it’s correct to call them problematic or worse but the core concept the idea of the prophetic and its role breaking Myths of Origin, is fantastically important. So here I go. So we’ve got this pantheon of Myths of Origin. Blood, Soil, Society, etc in all the specific concrete expressions particular to each culture. How does that interact with monotheism? What does “All One” or “All in One” do to the story “ I am from here”. It is destructive of that story. When Nietzsche talks about Christianity being “destructive of values” this is what he’s talking about. So where does this originate, it originates in the combination of Ancient Greek thought, specifically Platonism and Neo-Platonism with the monotheism of Judaism. quote:“The mythical consciousness creates all-embracing unities and and tries to overcome polytheism by the imperialism of one god (emphasis Tillich’s), that is, of one space. …(But) The original attachment to the soil, however, is stronger than the power of the all-embracing unity… Domination by space is broken where a tendency in this direction has been established- in the social group, and in connection with the demand implied by the father symbol. Being loses it’s immediacy through the “ought”. That question of the “ought cannot be answered by reference to what is. “ The good transcends being” (Plato) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUJ1Z4kqV8A quote:It is the significance of Jewish Prophetism to have fought explicitly against the myth of origin and the attachment to space and to have conquered them… God is free from the soil , the sacred land , not because he has conquered but precisely because he has lead foreign conquers into his own land in order to punish the people of his inheritance… Thus the myth of origin is shattered—and this is the world historical mission of the Jewish prophetism.” Now what Tillich is talking about here is basically the ability of religion (and I would not restrict this to Judaism / Christianity as he did in the thirties (though he later abandoned that restriction)) to break myths of origin. In our society the best way to understand this process is to look at the African American community. Malcolm X, Dr. King etc. I think the best way to get this concept is this sentence. “God drat America”. The anger that things now are not as they ought to be now: “God drat America.” The religious breaking of myth of origin is: I am hungry now may you never bear fruit again. Anyway the breaking of “Soil”, place based Myths of Origin, in this way is a good and necessary thing. It is our myths being broken by the failures of those myths. The religious breaking of myth of origin is often apocalyptic: "You can run on for a long time, Tell em that God is going to cut you down." But one can already probably see where this is going. This is why the German fascists hated the Jews. This is one of the reasons why our fascists hate POC and Muslims. Diverging from Tillich, as the concept didn’t exist at the time, I think the “not-all” is useful here. The not-all is when we look at our myth and see it’s limits and understand that that it isn’t the whole. It doesn’t describe all reality, it’s “not-all”. In some cases the “not-all” has been equated with the feminine or with socialism or with authentic Christianity. Not-all breaks the myth, it breaks the cyclical, it ends the status quo.
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Oct 22, 2019 05:09
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The Break with the Myth of Origin in the Enlightenment and the Romantic Reaction But something else breaks myths of origin, rationality. “The autonomous consciousness suppresses the dimensions or origin, the depth dimensions, so to speak.” Basically, with rationality we can break poo poo up into finite parts. We can order poo poo in casual relationships. With testing and science and rigorousness criticism, we can go “Soil?” gently caress that look at this bullshit myth, that poo poo’s wrong for X, Y and Z reasons. Education and reason break that poo poo apart. So do the structures of a modern and capitalist economy (more on that later). Anyway these two forces Prophetism and Rationality (which are often opposed) break Myths of Origin. Some of the specific myths they broke were feudalism and monarchy. The breaking of these myths moved us from Feudalism to Capitalism and underlie the Protestant / Catholic divide in Christianity. It’s also important to note they preceded Capitalism they do not proceed from Capitalism. They can break it as a myth, in the same way they broke previous myths. Anyway, dialectics are dialectics so what is the reaction? Political Romanticism. Tillich defines this term as a negation and as the second part of a dialectic: “ Political Romanticism is, thus, the counter movement to prophetism and the Enlightenment on the basis of a spiritual and social situation that is determined by prophetism and the Enlightenment. We can understand Political Romanticism here as a big umbrella that contains both conservatism and fascism Tillich continues: quote:It is thereby compelled to fight under presuppositions that it denies and with methods that it attacks in its opponents. It is forced to use the ethical categories of prophetism and to portray itself as a higher ethos., even though the myth of origin as such excludes ethics. And it is forced to use rational analysis as a means of establishing itself (for example historical, sociological, and psychological investigation ) and thus appeal to the very thing it distrusts in principle as alien to the origin. In this way the theories of political romanticism arise ; despite the frequently brilliant in which they are developed, they cannot escape the contradiction of having to establish the irrational by rational means (Brandor’s note, Think of the Libertarian example of Praxeology here). In this way to emerges the praxis of political romanticism, which in the soil of a consciously organized society has to adopt the very rational forms of organization it seeks to abolish (Brandors note, here think of the characteristics of Ur-Fascism). The Myth of Origin can only return – unbroken, as is necessary for it—if the society in which it has been broken comes to an end. The Middle Ages were only possible because antiquity and its whole system of rational perception and shaping the world came to an end…. Now there is a lot to unpack there. Why conservative and fascists are the way they are, why accelerationism is probably garbage are among the implied conclusions. But the following chapters address how the above plays out in conservative and revolutionary Romantic groups informed by Tillich's experiences in Germany. So I’ll be writing about that next. Returning to the not-all, political Romanticism could be considered a rejection of the valid argument of “not-all” about a particular myth of origin.
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Oct 26, 2019 06:33
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Chapter 2: The forms of Political Romanticism Conservative and Revolutionary Forms This chapter deal with basically what we see now within the Republican Party. The old guard gently caress you got mine tax cutting, regulation busting, poor hating, racist fuckers and the paranoid fringe, John Birch society, Alex Jone, Tumpist, racist fascist motherfuckers. Basically this chapter provides working definition and descriptions of the two groups on the right often now called “conservatives” and “Trumpists”. quote:Political Romanticism can assume either of two forms: it can be conservative or revolutionary(Brandor’s note revolutionary here is the fascists if it’s not clear). The two forms can be combined in many ways, but they also stand in opposition to one another. The conservative form is based on the attempt to defend the spiritual and social residues of the bond of origin against the autonomous system, and wherever possible restore past forms. It appears in groups that have not yet been completely integrated into bourgeois society, primarily landowners, peasants, nobles, priests, and artisans. So what is conservativism here. It’s the residual feudal elements of society reacting to liberalism and the bourgeois society attempting to restore “past form” eg. Feudalism. This is the first category of reaction to the broken myth of origin. It’s the attempt to restore the old broken myth back to it’s status quo. It wants the old back or restored. The second type is revolutionary romanticism quote:The revolutionary form tries to gain a basis for new ties to the origin by a devastating attack on the rational system. It is carried out by those groups that have entered into the inner structure of the rational system without having lost continuity with the groups of origin from which they are descended. But now they feel threatened by complete absorption into the system, on the one hand, and by the mechanization and loss of status which this system effects, on the other hand. Here we find primarily office employees, certain groups of bureaucrats, and those intellectuals who have no chance of being incorporated into the rational system; but there are also some farmers and artisans who are being hit specially hard by the crisis, to the point of hopelessness You’re probably already picturing specific groups and specific people
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Oct 30, 2019 05:01
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Bar Ran Dun posted:As usual these dead gay forums are a good year plus ahead of the national discourse
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Oct 30, 2019 15:56
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It's too bad this thread hasn't generated more activity but I think it might benefit from more engagement with the politics of 2019. What kind of lesson or action plan are you thinking can be derived from this? I have to be honest. Seeing you making these references to critiques of political moderation is a bit hard to square with your enduring affection for Obama and your support for Pete Buttigieg in the Democratic primary.
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Oct 31, 2019 21:12
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Helsing posted:It's too bad this thread hasn't generated more activity but I think it might benefit from more engagement with the politics of 2019. What kind of lesson or action plan are you thinking can be derived from this? It takes time for us to break away from our lives to read through and effort post back. I know that these threads are difficult to respond to timely, and I know I might respond in the necessary order as Brandor is going through it. I intend to participate. I think Brandor understands that and will be patient. I hope everyone else applies the same. I think considering beliefs in the frame of reference in time is super important to know what a particular response. Philosophy and Religion can debate the meaning in current time or a former as the frame of reference can be unmoored from a fact based structure. Science has a harder time with that particular conundrum. With politics now taking statistics into count with increasing predictability it might be good to consider our personal beliefs as side cases in these discussions. I think Brandor is working in good faith. Even if I disagree with reasons he may believe something. I might be discussing a irrelevant topic. But I find this thread very interesting. I have alot of reading to do.
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Oct 31, 2019 21:46
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i'm following, but to post itt i need more time than i've got atm. it's been a busy few weeks
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Nov 1, 2019 12:23
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Helsing posted:It's too bad this thread hasn't generated more activity but I think it might benefit from more engagement with the politics of 2019. What kind of lesson or action plan are thinking can be derived from this? Thats because you are looking at it backwards. Invert the question. Why I would like Obama and Buttigieg is plainly obvious. What have I told you about who I am and the various places and instituions I've been through? I read either of thier autobiographies and I indentify with massive chunks of each, in specfic, absurdly specfic ways. We could talk about that. But thats not interesting and it's not the important question. The better question is why have I taken a more radical turn? Why have I decided for socialism? and for things like that critque of moderation? It's been there under the surface, for over a decade inserted by the later theological works of the author.. That question is answered by this book. Is the change repeatable in others? This books author intentionally sets it as a project in this work and it has worked atleast once.
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Nov 2, 2019 20:34
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Defining the difference between reactionary groups is interesting. Fascist using authority in the capitalistic(rational) system to rationize the myth of blood and soil, vs tradionalists who just use the myths as the rationale. Capitalism is at first hlance suppose to be a rational system but anyone who has done any reading on the subject knows the market and individual are anything but. The implication of love vs social norms seems sound. A just society(one I consider just) allows love to coexist with social norms. The measure of that injustice is the existence of conservative ideology itself in positions to exert authority to define those social norms. Good start I think.
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Nov 3, 2019 17:25
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Bar Ran Dun posted:Thats because you are looking at it backwards. Invert the question. Why I would like Obama and Buttigieg is plainly obvious. What have I told you about who I am and the various places and instituions I've been through? I read either of thier autobiographies and I indentify with massive chunks of each, in specfic, absurdly specfic ways. We could talk about that. But thats not interesting and it's not the important question. The better question is why have I taken a more radical turn? Why have I decided for socialism? and for things like that critque of moderation? It's been there under the surface, for over a decade inserted by the later theological works of the author.. Perhaps it's easier to be blunt here and get this issue out in the open so it can be addressed clearly. If you look at Obama and think he was a great President rather than a failure and if you look at Buttigieg and think that he would make a good President then in what meaningful sense have you taken a radical turn? If your readings are allowing you to feel that you've made a radical shift in your politics despite the fact you're still supporting the same politicians and policies then that would be, if anything, an indication that this is a serious political dead end where all you've done is invent new legitimizing fictions for centrist politicians so that you can pretend to have adjusted your politics to the Trump era without ever leaving your political comfort zone. If that is indeed what is happening then I see no reason to celebrate that.
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Nov 3, 2019 17:36
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Bar Ran Dun posted:Thats because you are looking at it backwards. Invert the question. Why I would like Obama and Buttigieg is plainly obvious. What have I told you about who I am and the various places and instituions I've been through? I read either of thier autobiographies and I indentify with massive chunks of each, in specfic, absurdly specfic ways. We could talk about that. But thats not interesting and it's not the important question. The better question is why have I taken a more radical turn? Why have I decided for socialism? and for things like that critque of moderation? It's been there under the surface, for over a decade inserted by the later theological works of the author.. put perhaps a gentler way than helsing, why do you think being able to identify yourself with a politician is a good means for you to choose what policies to support?
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Nov 3, 2019 23:35
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A big flaming stink posted:put perhaps a gentler way than helsing, why do you think being able to identify yourself with a politician is a good means for you to choose what policies to support? At this point I’ll be voting for Bernie in the primary with Warren as a second choice, my state is fairly late. I still identify with Buttigieg more, even though he’s currently my third choice. Helsing is just upset that I don’t think Buttigieg a sociopath. And Helsing you want this topic related to now. So discussed is this working definition of revolutionary political romanticism. Remember back in the Russia thread there were sort of three camp of thought one was that there was explicit coordination, ala this: Uglycat posted:The score, as I see it: But you didn't think there was evidence for that. (Though there is now, but one could still question the competence of the parties ability to coordinate ). Another was nothing happening at all crowd. But you proposed an emergent form of coordination like synergistic, I can’t seem to remember the exact word you used as an alternative to explicit coordination. But I compared it by analogy to the religious concept of spirit and to equivalent concepts in Less Than Nothing. Uglycat’s list of organizations there, it’s a good list of groups that meet the thus far presented definition of political romanticism. Groups that would have that emergent form of coordination together like a school of fish, because of their myth of origins (this time capitalist myths) broken with the choice made not for socialism but for the past and revolutionary political romanticism. BlueBlazer posted:Defining the difference between reactionary groups is interesting. Fascist using authority in the capitalistic(rational) system to rationize the myth of blood and soil, vs tradionalists who just use the myths as the rationale. Capitalism is at first hlance suppose to be a rational system but anyone who has done any reading on the subject knows the market and individual are anything but. Yes the myth of the rational capitalist system is being broken because it can be rationally demonstrated that it is an irrational system. It’s also being broken prophetically because it is unjust. I think you nail it in the second paragraph.
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Nov 4, 2019 05:00
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Bar Ran Dun posted:At this point I’ll be voting for Bernie in the primary with Warren as a second choice, my state is fairly late. I still identify with Buttigieg more, even though he’s currently my third choice. Helsing is just upset that I don’t think Buttigieg a sociopath. This isn't about Buttigieg's inner mental state this is about trying to make sense of your political beliefs and how they fit together. In particular I want to understand why all your criticisms of American politics are exclusively focused on Fox News and the Republic Party when Obama and Buttigieg seem to be clear examples of exactly the kind of political romanticism that you're describing here. If we were to compare the crude mercenary rhetoric of Trump to the grandiloquent rhetoric of a typical Obama speech then Trump's semi-coherent ramblings would arguably be a much more honest and accurate presentation of American foreign policy than Obama's absurd attempts to argue that the US military empire is really somehow on the side of justice and human rights. Let's take the essay on ur-fascism that you cite repeatedly and look at what is almost the very first passage: Ur-Fascism, Umberto Eco posted:In April 1945, the partisans took over in Milan. Two days later they arrived in the small town where I was living at the time. It was a moment of joy. The main square was crowded with people singing and waving flags, calling in loud voices for Mimo, the partisan leader of that area. A former maresciallo of the Carabinieri, Mimo joined the supporters of General Badoglio, Mussolini’s successor, and lost a leg during one of the first clashes with Mussolini’s remaining forces. Mimo showed up on the balcony of the city hall, pale, leaning on his crutch, and with one hand tried to calm the crowd. I was waiting for his speech because my whole childhood had been marked by the great historic speeches of Mussolini, whose most significant passages we memorized in school. Silence. Mimo spoke in a hoarse voice, barely audible. He said: “Citizens, friends. After so many painful sacrifices … here we are. Glory to those who have fallen for freedom.” And that was it. He went back inside. The crowd yelled, the partisans raised their guns and fired festive volleys. We kids hurried to pick up the shells, precious items, but I had also learned that freedom of speech means freedom from rhetoric. You seem to be using articles like Eco's ur-fascism piece to narrowly criticism conservative politicians and media outlets in America while quite conspicuously ignoring liberal outlets and politicians. Referencing Martin Luther King's condemnation of the white moderate and again, remaining silent on the role of the liberal establishment in America, further emphasizes this discrepancy in your thinking. The idea that conservatives in America are more inclined toward political romanticism just doesn't follow. The opposite would be an easier case to make, at least in the last few years. Republicans tend to be more open in acknowledging the brutal self interest at the heart of American politics while liberals are eager to mystify American politics by invoking legitimizing myths. This is all kind of indicative of how your real target seems to be conservatism rather than capitalism. If that's the case then calling yourself a socialist or a radical seems like a misnomer. You advertised this thread as a way to understand how to get liberals or centrists to think more like socialists but maybe the first step is to then demonstrate that this has actually happened. Where's the actual break here? What's the rupture between a liberal or centrist and a socialist, in your mind?
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Nov 5, 2019 19:27
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I too am basically holding off on the There, there. Until this rhetoric makes the face turn to self-criticism it's just jerking off into a mirror whilst crying. Bar Ran Dun posted:Chapter 2: The forms of Political Romanticism Like, come on man. Tap that poo poo on in, I know you've got it in you. Integrate these oppositions. The problem isn't parties, the problem is that some people are comfortable with the way things are and some other people are most people on Earth at a time when the social, ecological and economic fabric of everything is disintegrating in the same 10 year window. I feel like in attempting to be thorough, you're integrating notions that weaken your point as gadflies instead of strengthening it. You're thinking yourself into trouble so--at best!--you can demonstrate thinking yourself out of trouble. This is why technocracy is a four-letter-word. Like some current Democratic candidates for president I could name!
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Nov 6, 2019 05:58
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I have written elsewhere that if you're reading these words, you have access to an incredible device that gives you multiple Libraries of Alexandria worth of information. Saying this in the wrong places is apparently harassment according to people who are no doubt trying their best to be taken seriously. That's unfortunate because if one was so inclined they could take that energy shitposting about conservatives and D&D posters they don't like very much in every direction all the time and turn it into learning stuff about things on this incredible online platform to approximate a personal education by doing the work of learning things they don't already know. Here's an approximately introductory chapter relative to this point in The Socialist Decision in another forbidden text whose meaning has been cruelly denied to too many for instance: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ Let's read ten paragraphs from this grimoire that describe every single economic transaction since the Bronze Age quote:The capital C is made up of two components, one, the sum of money c laid out upon the means of production, and the other, the sum of money v expended upon the labour-power; c represents the portion that has become constant capital, and v the portion that has become variable capital. At first then, C = c + v: for example, if £500 is the capital advanced, its components may be such that the £500 = £410 const. + £90 var. When the process of production is finished, we get a commodity whose value = (c + v) + s, where s is the surplus-value; or taking our former figures, the value of this commodity may be (£410 const. + £90 var.) + £90 surpl. The original capital has now changed from C to C', from £500 to £590. The difference is s or a surplus-value of £90. Since the value of the constituent elements of the product is equal to the value of the advanced capital, it is mere tautology to say, that the excess of the value of the product over the value of its constituent elements, is equal to the expansion of the capital advanced or to the surplus-value produced. That's it. That's the rational process by which one dollar becomes two, that's the rational process by which a worker is rationally considered less valuable than the machines with which they use to perform labor, its why the hegemonic system abhors ecologically sustainable inputs and its why more money keeps going into fewer hands, its how a nonvalue spits in the eye of the natural order and multiplies into something. The particular values of c, v, C, C', and s can and will change, and people can bicker for Woke Points about how close to v they are on Twitter, which is a company that tumerously derives its cruel facsimile of C' via investment while its notional value falls but the function does not. What use does a society have for existentialism that already turns nothingness into billions for those who are already billionaires, while we're talking as atomized and helpless voices on a phantasmal information network containing most of the knowledge that has ever been possessed by humanity? That a sectarian heart daydreams uncertain while empty stomachs, diseased flesh and indebted bodies decide is a point of persistent frustration with the American left that is only just now slowly and painfully being caught up on in the States https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0IopdH1e3s&t=45s This, to me, is the problem and not a lack of proper spiritual inner-space, or a means to address such. The problem is that to seek democracy as-such is a dog chasing a car, if we have no equability then when we catch up it just drives off again. The answer is not a pathology of strange other fish or how they swim, but a study of the currents in which we all live. IMO. Helsing posted:This isn't about Buttigieg's inner mental state this is about trying to make sense of your political beliefs and how they fit together. In particular I want to understand why all your criticisms of American politics are exclusively focused on Fox News and the Republic Party when Obama and Buttigieg seem to be clear examples of exactly the kind of political romanticism that you're describing here. If we were to compare the crude mercenary rhetoric of Trump to the grandiloquent rhetoric of a typical Obama speech then Trump's semi-coherent ramblings would arguably be a much more honest and accurate presentation of American foreign policy than Obama's absurd attempts to argue that the US military empire is really somehow on the side of justice and human rights. Earlier Brandor, by way of a NYT article referenced a Kierkegaardian condemnation of moderation and my note to that besides a long sigh would be that while these dead gay forums are perhaps a step ahead of the pundits we're about 80-90 years behind the actual grownups. Your post made me giggle though, because this is a thread about nothing so much as one particular work of Paul Tillich, who himself was a contemporary of Theodor Adorno and in fact brought him to prominence in order to build a contemporary reading of Kierkegaard. Adorno would later go on to tear down Kierkegaard for spare parts as rank interiority and get more savage the more experiences in the UK, US, and postwar Germany disabused him in about the same way as I suspect you're getting ready to do here: quote:Through the negation of reality, however, the content of mystical faith itself becomes dubious: " The mystic is never consistent. lf he has no respect for reality in general it is not obvious why he does not regard with equal distrust that moment in reality when, as he believes, he was affected by the higher experience. That too is indeed a moment of reality!" This thought could easily enough turn against Kierkegaard himself. But his arguments do not crystallize. The mystic is judged not according to the measure of a reality that he fails, but according to the measure of his own inwardness: "The failing of the mystic is that by his choice he does not become concrete for himself, nor for God either; he chooses himself abstractly and therefore lacks transparentness. " Transparentness, however, is itself exclusively determined inwardly: by repentance. Ethical concretion therefore remains as abstract as the mystical act, as the mere "choice of choice." This choosing constitutes the schema of all of Kierkegaard's dialectics. Bound to no positive ontic content, transforming all being into an "occasion" for its own activity, Kierkegaard's dialectic exempts itself from material definition. It is immanent and in its immanence infinite. Indeed he hopes to protect the dialectic from the bad infinity of the simply unlimited: "When a mystification, a dialectical reduplication, is used in the service of a serious purpose, it will be so used as merely to obviate a misunderstanding, or an over-hasty understanding, whereas all the while the true explanation is at hand and ready to be found by him who honestly seeks it." Or in the act of "choice": "The self that one chooses in so far as one chooses oneself, is assumed to be in existence prior to the choice; and likewise, one can only choose the beloved that is indeed already the beloved. To choose the beloved can only mean her acceptance." Yet the origin of this immanent dialectic presents itself at the same time as functional: "Am I just suffering from an excess, morbid reflectiveness? I can give evidence that this is not the case. For there is a leading thought in this whole matter that is as clear to me as day, namely to do everything to work her loose and to keep my soul upon the apex of the wish." Maintaining the self at the apex of the wish is nothing other than dialectical movement within the enigmatic-unreal figure that Kierkegaard's philosophy of immanence confers upon this movement. so yeah. ahead of CNN, at least! A little better than reddit at least! Well over half a century late for this, however. Honestly this thread could keep going under a discussion of this comparative analysis of The Socialist Decision and Construction of the Aesthetic, that's basically where this is all headed anyway. Willie Tomg fucked around with this message at 08:46 on Nov 6, 2019 |
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Nov 6, 2019 08:33
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Helsing posted:This isn't about Buttigieg's inner mental state this is about trying to make sense of your political beliefs and how they fit together. In particular I want to understand why all your criticisms of American politics are exclusively focused on Fox News and the Republic Party when Obama and Buttigieg seem to be clear examples of exactly the kind of political romanticism that you're describing here. If we were to compare the crude mercenary rhetoric of Trump to the grandiloquent rhetoric of a typical Obama speech then Trump's semi-coherent ramblings would arguably be a much more honest and accurate presentation of American foreign policy than Obama's absurd attempts to argue that the US military empire is really somehow on the side of justice and human rights. I think Trump's complete detachment from values of any kind should bring back a certain appreciation for a time when America at least claimed to stand for something. I've never understood this sub-forum's (and yours) comparative rejection of historical or moral relativism. But, I haven't been here for years so I'm not aware of what the current Trump era thesis is.
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Nov 7, 2019 04:46
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asdf32 posted:I think Trump's complete detachment from values of any kind should bring back a certain appreciation for a time when America at least claimed to stand for something. I've never understood this sub-forum's (and yours) comparative rejection of historical or moral relativism. But, I haven't been here for years so I'm not aware of what the current Trump era thesis is. trump does claim to stand for something, though, asdf. he claims to stand for strength, for aggression, for unorthodox solutions to complex problems, for blind aggressive insistence that whatever you'd assumed was true must necessarily override any elitists telling you "that's not how any of this works, you loving moron." as you can attest, that's a message a lot of people find attractive.
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Nov 7, 2019 06:10
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Helsing posted:Where's the actual break here? What's the rupture between a liberal or centrist and a socialist, in your mind? Broken myth, the liberal and the centrist are participating in a myth they do not consider broken. That myth is a theonomy. By that I mean this, The systems of the world are structured so as to produce that myth as a conclusion perceived to be identical with reality. We could call this myth a bunch of things: The post war global order, neoliberalism, even just capitalism. It is still factual to assert the world still works under the systems that support the myth. These systems are both physical in the sense of global trade and ideological. Good or harm can still happen in the tweaking of these systems. But they aren’t producing the myth as a conclusion in growing portions of the population. There is a gap between the real situations of our lives and the myth. The myth is increasingly irrational and unjust and that breaks it. Some people are still on the unbroken side of this situation. The myth is still working for them. That doesn’t make bad people. The real systems that support the myth still generate what the myth promises for those people and they’d like it to generate those things for everyone. That’s where I’d put liberals and centrists. But those systems also feed us and keep the lights on which further complicates things. But and this is important merely breaking the myth isn’t adequate. Socialism is one possible response to the broken myth. Conservatism is another (the attempt to restore old myth) revolutionary romanticism, fascism, is another ( the attempt to have greatness in a new myth, but that myth always contradicts the theonomy of the broken one, so it’s doomed to fail. A new myth is really only possible on a blank slate). Being on the broken side of the myth is not-capitalism, but it’s only that. There is also an expectation of a better alternative. There is also (“I am not afraid of that word.”) systems building necessary for that socialist expectation to be chosen over the other alternatives. We can't escape confronting the systems of the theonomy. Willie Tomg posted:I too am basically holding off on the There, there. Until this rhetoric makes the face turn to self-criticism it's just jerking off into a mirror whilst crying. Unfortunately not all not all my conversations can be public on the internet and that one I cannot do publically currently. Which is weird for me, I love doing that poo poo. Alas, it is happening and I may be able to post about some of it in the future. Willie Tomg posted:Honestly this thread could keep going under a discussion of this comparative analysis of The Socialist Decision and Construction of the Aesthetic, that's basically where this is all headed anyway. You are correct. I wanted to eventually going to go in that direction, though I was headed towards a comparative analysis with Zizek. What is the “thread of expectation” in Tillich especially in the Socialist Decision? That paper has some very good stuff in it. Anyway, there is a line in there I think is worth focusing on. The idea that Kierkigard’s existentialism is a new idealism. I have opinions on that, ones probably worth another post later.
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Nov 7, 2019 06:56
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Return to the Powers Of Origin Both types of Political Romanticism want to return to their origin state, that apocatastasis thing. In terms of myths of soil there is a “Return to Soil”. This is the effort to restore feudalism both the lords and the peasantry, or in our own context it might be a effort to return to plantations and slavery, or even share cropping. Necessarily this involves a break with the world economy. In other words talk about the “globalists” is return to soil talk. This is back to autarky and gently caress the rest of the world. The “return to the animal sphere” is blood’s apocatastasis. This is blood and race. This is anti-Semitism in Tillich’s time. In our time it’s anti-Semitism, racism, and anti-Muslim sentiment. It’s also expressed as misogyny. Quoting from the text “(it) is used to remove women from the public sector – spiritual, political, and economic—and put them back into the patriachically structured family, to deprive them of the political rights and to cast back the relation between the sexes either into the old aristocratic pattern of male dominance or into the legalistic confines of the lower middle class.” There is also the “return to the social group” when we see talk about economic anxiety that’s this. It an appeal to the return to the support of communities. For individuals to be safe and secure in the communities that they came from . It’s the longing for security in the face of the anxiety created by the hollowing of these communities by capitalism. It expresses in the desire for a leader. In Tillich’s time this was two things, a desire to return to monarchy and the Fuhrer principle. In our time it expresses as their desire for Trump to embody the state. Return to blood also explains the misogyny in romantic groups. They are trying to restore the old male dominated feudal order, or to limit women to the lower economic classes. The goal is to remove women from the public sector, politically, economically and spiritually. But the real kicker is return to the social group. When a functioning democratic society has a strong state power this apocastatis leads them to undermine it, it must be made weak so that traditional social structures can be strengthened. We’ve seen that in our conservatives for decades. But for the revolutionary romantics it express in another way. This is also the same return, but they attempt to fabricate a new social origin one that leads them to desire a strong non democratic state. There is a return to a new monarchy. An attempt to fabricate a father ( or mother figure) where one did not exist. Return to the myth of origin of the social group, means a all powerful king figure or a fuhrer. But this figure isn’t for anything other than itself. It is also always contradictory. This contradiction in apparent in our political romantics. The conservatives talk family values, small government, and “charities should do that not government.” Think weak government strong paternal and feudal structures. That’s all an expression of conservative political romanticism and the return to old preexisting broken structures. Trump and that authoritarian streak is an expression of the revolutionary political romanticism, a new structure, a leader, a fuhrer, accountable to no one with a strong government. It is particularly dangerous that the second group, the fascist group, is eating the conservative romantics and growing in size.
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Nov 7, 2019 06:58
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The Struggle Concerning Traditions “Between the origin and the present stands tradition.” So to relate a myth of origin one must relate to traditions. Some of these traditions are pre-capitalist. But capitalism has broken most of them. Broken tradition have become “literary remembrances”. Political romanticism can attempt two things regarding traditions, the first is to preserve the ones that haven't been broken. The second is to attempt to turn literary remembrances into traditions again. This characteristic is why Tillich uses the term “romantic” for these groups. Tradition stems from the various origins discussed previously. They descend from the origin and they are subordinated to the origin. Traditions can be used to attack things that break myths of origin: education, individual autonomy, and departure from historic social norms. Political romantics must attempt to create a national tradition to use to attack. But this attempt is always profoundly contradictory. An example from now would be the boy recently given an award for distributing flags to all the houses in his neighborhood to make it more patriotic. This isn’t a real tradition it has no real roots in the origins of the nation and people. But they attempt to fabricate it as such so that it might be used to symbolically attack and manipulate. Or this is a good example Mr Ice Cream Glove posted:https://mobile.twitter.com/UFloridaYAF/status/1192583221499834369 Building on this idea of national traditions, if a national tradition cannot be built on a racial or social heritage then another root for the tradition is sought. That is where the idea of “National Religious Traditions” orginates. Tillich goes on to argue that the effort to create this religious tradition isn't particularly effective. But what is effective is that in trying to create it they expell the prophetic element from the religion and population at large and replace it with nationalism! “More often this takes the form of indifference to the church's proclamation and passionate devotion to the idea of nation” Our romantics have been very successful in this. The remainder of the chapter explains why Protestantism is particularly susceptible to this, but that's probably interesting only to me.. In this chapter we also find what i think are the roots of Tillich’s later religious work. One way religion can respond is by its own return to “primal revelation”. When we look at something like fundamentalism we see this fight occuring. Romantics are attempting to cement a literal bible as the revelation allowing the religion to be subsumed fully into the national and capitalist myth. For those of us that are religious we cannot allow this. To allow it is to allow our faith to be subsumed for a fascist end. This is why Tillich wrote his systematics, and it is why right evangelicalism finds them particularly threatening. Tillich attempts to ground Christianity (and reality) in the event of Jesus as the Christ as it’s primal revelation. This also leads to a new thought, something I haven’t seen in academic papers, or any of Tillich work explicitly, but that I’ve believed for a couple years now. Tillich’s later theological work in the US is also an attempt to insert the decision for socialism we see in the introduction to this work, and presented in this book, dialectically into American Christianity. That’s not something the adults have been discussing for decades Willie. It also relates to that line I found so interesting in that comparative about Adorno, the one line about Kierkegardian existentialism as a new idealism (and the exception made by Adorno for Tillich’s existentialism). But that deserves it’s own post. Why I don’t a gently caress at all about the distinction between materialism and idealism and how and why that got to me via Tillich’s existentialism. Edit : Prester this is the root of what you and several other poster have been observing about American Christianity, the National Religious Traditions stuff. Bar Ran Dun fucked around with this message at 08:11 on Nov 10, 2019 |
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Nov 10, 2019 00:52
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Bar Ran Dun posted:Broken myth, the liberal and the centrist are participating in a myth they do not consider broken. I don't really feel like this has meaningfully answered my question. The difference between a liberal and a socialist is that they follow different myths? Well practically speaking what does that mean? What are the concrete real world implications of believing the one myth or the other? Or at the very least, in what specific ways do these different myths substantially diverge from each other?
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Nov 13, 2019 21:03
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Helsing posted:I don't really feel like this has meaningfully answered my question. The difference between a liberal and a socialist is that they follow different myths? Well practically speaking what does that mean? What are the concrete real world implications of believing the one myth or the other? Or at the very least, in what specific ways do these different myths substantially diverge from each other? It's jumping all the way to the end of the book, but the since word has already come up. It's about expectation. Marxism and existentialism have a conflict about expectation and Willie has already correctly identified this. Tillich makes expectation the symbol for socialism! The real world implication is why people go one way or the other when the theonomous myth breaks. What do you want for the future Helsing? What is your expectation? Why is that expectation not romantic? I've got one more chapter on the romantics. After that to book moves onto to the bourgeoisie and socialism and it starts getting into this in detail.
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Nov 15, 2019 06:02
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The Cultural (translators note Geistige also rendered as spiritual or intellectual) Expression of Political Romanticism This chapter deals with political weapons. Criticism and construction as it expresses in political romantics. It is also discusses the general and appropriate use of these weapons. Tillich first sets up a way of categorizing political romantics in a spectrum. On one end we have the rational / scientific on the other the mythic. The closer one is to the mythic the more one’s politics is an expression of political romanticism. Some professions and training predispose for or against this tendency of the mythic, over the years D&D has had many discussions on this topic. But the most effective expressions of political romanticism depart a bit from this spectrum. “ Therefore the most appropriate cultural forms of expression for this movement are those in which poetic or scientific elements are combined with priestly or prophetic ones ( the former corresponding to conservatic romantics, the latter revolutionary romanticism). Apocalyptic, which is ecstatic and revolutionary in nature, has proved to be the most effective cultural expression of political romanticism.” He goes on to assert that political romanticism is impossible to really ground coherently in the scientific. In contrast to both liberalism and socialism, which are (or attempt to be) rationally rooted, political romanticism tends not to generate great thinkers. It has a “ striking deficiency” in theory. Political romanticism accesses the scientific through its “presuppositions”. Here in D&D we’ve seen this play out in libertarians, particularly in “praxeology”, the presupposition that human’s act. We also can it “Science of Freedom Research Topics” in the Koch movement. But political romanticism has an “intuitive character” because it is a protest against bourgeois philosophy. Here he references Shelling, and I think all Zizek’s references to Schelling in Less than Nothing also are related to this same character, Socialism must also have this intuitive protest against the bourgeois. “Political Romanticism tries to go behind the object-subject split in all existing things, to break the power of analysis, to regain the original unity, to accept rather than investigate, to “let be” rather than schematize. Next he identifies their tendency to refer to Nietzches thought ( and then how hard Nietzesche would have shat on their beliefs.) The important part to take here is the bit about : “intuitive character” because it is a protest against bourgeois philosophy. This is the commonality of socialism with political romanticism. It is also arguably the root of Tillich’s existentialism. It is also why Willie we can’t just ignore existentialism.
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Nov 17, 2019 05:03
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On the topic of turning this critique inward, Obama just gave a speech on Friday. The book turns next to the bourgeoisie and socialism. This might be a good interlude before starting that. Anyway here is the full text of his speech below, I’ll get to my thoughts based on the Socialist Decision thus far in the next post I make. Might be a day or two. The truth is, after eight years in the White House, I needed to spend time one on one with Michelle if I wanted to stay married. And she says hello, by the way. I also wanted to spend quality time with my daughters, who were suddenly young women on their way out the door. And I should add, by the way, now that I have a daughter in college, I can tell all the students here, your parents suffer. They cry privately. It is brutal. So please call. Send a text. We need to hear from you, just a little something. The truth was I was also intent on following a wise American tradition of ex-presidents gracefully exiting the political stage and making room for new voices and new ideas. We have our first president, George Washington, to thank for setting that example. After he led the colonies to victory as General Washington, there were no constraints on him, really. He was practically a god to those who had followed him into battle. There was no Constitution. There were no democratic norms that guided what he should or could do, and he could have made himself all-powerful. He could have made himself potentially president for life. Instead, he resigned as commander in chief and moved back to his country estate. Six years later, he was elected president, but after two terms, he resigned again and rode off into the sunset. The point Washington made, the point that is essential to American democracy is that in a government of and by and for the people there should be no permanent ruling class. There are only citizens, who through their elected and temporary representatives determine our course and determine our character. I’m here today because this is one of those pivotal moments when every one of us, as citizens of the United States, need to determine just who it is that we are. Just what it is that we stand for. And as a fellow citizen — not as an ex-president — but as a fellow citizen, I’m here to deliver a simple message, and that is that you need to vote because our democracy depends on it. Now, some of you may think I’m exaggerating when I say this November’s elections are more important than any I can remember in my lifetime, and I know politicians say that all the time. I have been guilty of saying it a few times, particularly when I was on the ballot. But just a glance at recent headlines should tell you that this moment really is different. The stakes really are higher. The consequences of any of us sitting on the sidelines are more dire. And it’s not as if we haven’t had big elections before or big choices to make in our history. The fact is democracy has never been easy, and our Founding Fathers argued about everything. We waged a civil war. We overcame depression. We’ve lurched from eras of great progressive change to periods of retrenchment. Still, most Americans alive today, certainly the students who are here, have operated under some common assumptions about who we are and what we stand for. Out of the turmoil of the Industrial Rvolution and the Great Depression, America adapted a new economy, a 20th-century economy, guiding our free market, with regulations to protect health and safety and fair competition. Empowering workers with union movements. Investing in science and infrastructure and educational institutions like U of I. Strengthening our system of primary and secondary education, and stitching together a social safety net. All of this led to unrivaled prosperity. And the rise of a broad and deep middle class, and the sense that if you worked hard, you could climb the ladder of success. And not everyone was included in this prosperity. There is a lot more work to do. So in response to the stain of slavery and segregation and the reality of racial discrimination, the civil rights movement not only opened new doors for African-Americans, but also opened up the floodgates of opportunity for women and Americans with disabilities, and LGBT Americans, others to make their own claims to full and equal citizenship. And although discrimination remained a pernicious force in our society and continues to this day, and although there are controversies about how to best ensure genuine equality of opportunity, there is been at least rough agreement among the overwhelming majority of Americans that our country is strongest when everybody is treated fairly. When people are judged on the merits and the content of their character, and not the color of their skin, or the way in which they worship god, or their last names. That consensus then extended beyond our borders, and from the wreckage of World War II, we built a postwar web, architecture, system of alliances, institutions to underwrite freedom and oppose Soviet totalitarianism, and help poor countries develop. And American leadership across the globe wasn’t perfect. We made mistakes, at times we lost sight of our ideals, we had fierce arguments about Vietnam and we had fierce arguments about Iraq. But thanks to our leadership, a bipartisan leadership and the efforts of diplomats and Peace Corps volunteers, and most of all thanks to the constant sacrifices of our men and women in uniform, we not only reduced the prospects of war between the world’s great powers, we not only won the Cold War, we helped spread a commitment to certain values and principles like the rule of law and human rights, and democracy, and the notion of the inherent dignity and worth of every individual. Even those countries that didn’t abide by those principles were still subject to shame and still had to at least give lip service to the idea, and that provided a lever to continually improve the prospects for people around the world. That’s the story of America. A story of progress — fitful progress, incomplete progress, but progress. And that progress wasn’t achieved by just a handful of famous leaders making speeches. It was won because of countless quiet acts of heroism, and dedication, by citizens, by ordinary people — many of them not much older than you. It was won because rather than be bystanders to history, ordinary people fought and marched, and mobilized and built, and yes, voted to make history. Of course there’s always been another darker aspect to America’s story. Progress doesn’t just move in a straight line. There’s a reason why progress hasn’t been easy and why throughout our history every two steps forward seems to sometimes produce one step back. Each time we painstakingly pull ourselves closer to our founding ideals: that all of us are created equal, endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, the ideals that say every child should have opportunity, and every man and woman in this country who’s willing to work hard should be able to find a job and support their family and pursue their small piece of the American dream. Ideals that say we have a collective responsibility to care for the sick and the infirm. And we have a responsibility to conserve the amazing bounty, the resources of this country and of this planet for future generations. Each time we’ve gotten closer to those ideals, somebody somewhere has pushed back. The status quo pushes back. Sometimes the backlash comes from people who are genuinely, if wrongly, fearful of change. More often it’s manufactured by the powerful and the privileged, who want to keep us divided, and keep us angry and keep us cynical, because it helps them maintain the status quo and keep their power and keep their privilege. And you happen to be coming of age during one of those moments. It did not start with Donald Trump. He is a symptom, not the cause. He’s just capitalizing on resentments that politicians have been fanning for years. Rooted in our past, but also born out of the enormous upheavals that have taken place in your brief lifetimes. By the way, it is brief. When I heard Amari was 11 when I got elected and now he’s, like, started a company, that was yesterday. But think about it. You've come of age in a smaller, more connected world, where demographic shifts and the winds of change have scrambled not our our traditional economic arrangements, but our social arrangements, and our religious commitments and our civic institutions. Most of you don’t remember a time before 9/11, when you didn’t have to take off your shoes at an airport. Most of you don’t remember a time when America wasn’t at war, or when money and images and information couldn’t travel instantly around the globe. Or when the climate wasn’t changing faster than our efforts to address it. This change has happened fast, faster than any time in human history. And it created a new economy that has unleashed incredible prosperity, but it’s also upended people’s lives in profound ways. For those with unique skills or access to technology and capital, a global market has meant unprecedented wealth. For those not so lucky, for the factory workers, for the office workers, even middle managers, those same forces may have wiped out your job, or at least put you in no position to ask for a raise. As wages slowed and inequality accelerated, those at the top of the economic pyramid have been able to influence government to skew things even more in their direction: Cutting taxes on the wealthiest Americans, unwinding regulations and weakening worker protections, shrinking the safety net. So you have come of age during a time of growing inequality, of fracturing of economic opportunity. That growing economic divide compounded other divisions in our country. Regional, racial, religious, cultural, it made it harder to build consensus on issues. It made politicians less willing to compromise, which increased gridlock, which made people even more cynical about politics. And then the reckless behavior of financial elites triggered a massive financial crisis, 10 years ago this week, that resulted in the worst recession in our lifetimes and caused years of hardships for the American people. For many of your parents, for many of your families. Most of you weren’t old enough to fully focus on what was going on at the time, but when I came into office in 2009, we were losing 800,000 jobs a month. 800,000. Millions of people were losing their homes. Many were worried we were entering into a second Great Depression. So we worked hard to end that crisis, but also to break some of these longer-term trends. And the actions we took returned the economy to healthy growth and initiated the longest streak of job creation on record. We covered another 20 million Americans with health insurance. We cut or deficits by more than half, partly by making sure that people like me, who have been given such amazing opportunities by this country, pay our fair share of taxes to help folks coming up behind us. And by the time I left office, household income was near its all-time high, and the uninsured rate had hit an all-time low, wages were rising, and poverty rates were falling. I mention all this just so when you hear how great the economy is doing right now, let’s just remember when this recovery started. I mean, I’m glad it’s continued, but when you hear about this economic miracle that's been going on when the job numbers come out, monthly job numbers and suddenly Republicans are saying, “It’s a miracle!” — I actually have to remind them those job numbers are the same as in 2015 and 2016 and ... Anyway, I digress. So we made progress but — and this is the truth — my administration couldn’t reduce 40-year trends in only eight years, especially once the Republicans took over the House of Representatives in 2010 and decided to block everything we did. Even things they used to support. So we pulled the economy out of the crisis, but to this day too many people who once felt solidly middle class still feel very real and very personal economic insecurity. Even though we took out [Osama] bin Laden and wound down the wars in Iraq and our combat role in Afghanistan, and got Iran to halt its nuclear program, the world is still full of threats and disorder. It comes streaming through people’s televisions every single day. And these challenges get people worried, and it frays our civic trust, and it makes a lot of people feel like the fix is in and the game is rigged, and nobody’s looking out for them. Especially those communities outside our big urban centers. And even though your generation is the most diverse in history, with a greater acceptance and celebration of our differences than ever before, those are the kinds of conditions that are ripe for exploitation by politicians who have no compunction and no shame about tapping into America's dark history of racial and ethnic and religious division. Appealing to tribe, appealing to fear, pitting one group against another, telling people that order and security will be restored if it weren’t for those who don’t look like us, or don’t sound like us, or don’t pray like we do. That’s an old playbook. It’s as old as time. And in a healthy democracy, it doesn’t work. Our antibodies kick in, and people of goodwill from across the political spectrum call out the bigots and the fearmongers, and work to compromise and get things done and promote the better angels of our nature. But when there’s a vacuum in our democracy, when we don’t vote, we take our basic rights and freedom for granted, when we turn away and stop paying attention, and stop engaging, and stop believing, and look for the newest diversion, the electronic versions of bread and circuses, then other voices fill the void. A politics of fear and resentment and retrenchment takes hold. And demagogues promise simple fixes to complex promises. No promise to fight for the little guy as they cater to the wealthiest and most powerful. They’ll promise to clean up corruption, and then plunder away. They start undermining norms that ensure accountability. And try to change the rules to entrench their power further. And they appeal to racial nationalism that’s barely veiled, if veiled at all. Sound familiar? I understand this is not just a matter of Democrats versus Republican or liberals versus conservatives. At various times in our history, this kind of politics has infected both parties. Southern Democrats were the bigger defenders of slavery. It took a Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, to end it. Dixiecrats filibustered antilynching legislation, opposed the idea of expanding civil rights. And although it was a Democratic president and a majority Democratic Congress, spurred on by young marchers and protesters that got the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act over the finish line, those historic laws also got passed because of the leadership of Republicans like Illinois’ own Everett Dirksen. So neither party has had a monopoly on wisdom. Neither party has been exclusively responsible for us going backwards instead of forwards, but I have to say this, because sometimes we hear ‘Oh, a plague on both your houses.’ Over the past few decades — it wasn’t true when Jim Edgar was a governor here in Illinois, or Jim Thompson was governor. Got a lot of good Republican friends here in Illinois, but over the past few decades, the politics of division, resentment and paranoia has unfortunately found a home in the Republican Party. This Congress has championed the unwinding of campaign finance laws to give billionaires outside influence over our politics, systematically attacked voting rights to make it harder for young people, and minorities and the poor to vote. Handed out tax cuts without regard to deficits. Slashed the safety net wherever it could, cast dozens of votes to take away health insurance from ordinary Americans, embraced wild conspiracy theories like those surrounding Benghazi. Or my birth certificate. Rejected science. Rejected facts on things like climate change. Embraced a rising absolutism from a willingness to default on America’s debt by not paying our bills, to a refusal to even meet, much less consider, a qualified nominee for the Supreme Court because he happened to be nominated by a Democratic president. None of this is conservative. I don’t mean to pretend I’m channeling Abraham Lincoln now, but that’s not what he had in mind, I think, when he helped form the Republican Party. It’s not conservative. It sure isn’t normal. It’s radical. It’s a vision that says the protection of our power and those who back us is all that matters even when it hurts the country. It’s a vision who says the few who can afford high-priced lobbyists and campaign finance, set the agenda. And over the past two years this vision is nearing its logical conclusion, so that with Republicans in control of Congress and the White House, without any checks or balances whatsoever, they have provided another $1.5 trillion in tax cuts to people like me who I promise don't need it. And don’t even pretend to pay for them. It’s supposed to be the party — supposedly — of fiscal conservatism. Suddenly deficits do not matter. Even though just two years ago, when the deficit was lower, they said I couldn't afford to help working families or seniors on Medicare, because the deficit was an existential crisis. What changed? What changed? They’re subsidizing corporate polluters with taxpayer dollars, allowing dishonest lenders to take advantage of veterans and students and consumers again. They have made it so that the only nation on Earth to pull out of the global climate agreement. It’s not North Korea, it’s not Syria, it’s not Russia or Saudi Arabia. It’s us, the only country. There are a lot of countries in the world. We’re the only ones. They’re undermining our alliances, cozying up to Russia. What happened to the Republican Party? Its central organizing principle in foreign policy was the fight against communism, and now they’re cozying up to the former head of the KGB. Actively blocking legislation that would defend our elections from Russian attack. What happened? They’re sabotaging the Affordable Care Act, it’s already cost more than 3 million Americans their health insurance. And if they’re still in power next fall, you better believe they’re coming at it again. They have said so. In a healthy democracy there’s some checks and balances on this kind of behavior, this kind of inconsistency, but right now there's nothing. Republicans who know better in Congress — and they're there — they're quoted saying, ‘Yeah, we know this is kind of crazy,’ are still bending over backwards to shield this behavior from scrutiny, or accountability or consequence. They seem utterly unwilling to find the backbone to safeguard the institutions that make our democracy work. And by the way, the claim that everything will turn out OK, because there are people inside who secretly aren’t following the president’s orders, that is not a check. I’m being serious here. That’s now how our democracy is supposed to work. These people aren’t elected. They’re not accountable. They’re not doing us a service by actively promoting 90 percent of the crazy stuff that’s coming out of this White House and saying don’t worry, we’re preventing the other 10 percent. That’s not how things are supposed to work. This is not normal. These are extraordinary times. And they’re dangerous times. But here’s the good news. In two months, we have the chance — not the certainty, but the chance — to restore some semblance of some sanity to our politics. Because there is actually only one real check on bad policy and abuses of power. And that’s you. You and your vote. Look, Americans will always have disagreements on policy. This is a big country, it is a raucous country. People have different points of view. I happen to be a Democrat. I support Democratic candidates. I believe our policies are better and that we have a bigger, bolder vision of opportunity and equality and justice and inclusive democracy. We know there are a lot of jobs young people aren’t getting a chance to occupy or aren’t getting paid enough or aren’t get benefits like insurance. It’s harder for young people to save for a rainy day, let alone retirement. So, Democrats aren’t running on good old ideas like a higher minimum wage, they’re running on good new ideas like Medicare for all. Giving workers seats on corporate boards. Reversing the most egregious tax cuts to make sure that college students graduate debt-free. We know that people are tired of toxic corruption and that democracy depends on transparency, and accountability, so Democrats aren’t just running on good old ideas like requiring presidential candidates to release their tax returns and barring lobbyists from making campaign contributions, but on good new ideas, like barring lobbyists from getting paid by foreign governments. We know that climate change isn’t just coming, it is here. So Democrats aren’t just running on good old ideas like increasing gas mileage in our cars, which I did and which Republicans are trying to reverse, but on good new ideas like putting a price on carbon pollution. We know that in a smaller, more connected world we can’t put technology back in a box. We can’t put walls up all around America. Walls don’t keep out threats like terrorism or disease. And that’s why we propose leading our alliances, helping other countries develop, and pushing back again tyrants, and Democrats talk about reforming our immigration system so, yes, it is orderly and it is fair and it is legal, but it continues to welcome strivers and dreamers from all around the world. That’s why I’m a Democrat. That’s a set of ideas that I believe in. But I’m here to tell you that even if you don’t agree with me or Democrats on policy, even if you believe in more libertarian economic theories, even if you are an evangelical and our position on certain social issues is a bridge too far. Even if you think my assessment of immigration is mistaken and that Democrats aren’t serious enough about immigration enforcement, I’m here to tell you, that you should still be concerned with our current course, and should still want to see a restoration of honesty and decency and lawfulness in our government. It should not be Democratic or Republican, it should not be a partisan issue to say that we do not pressure the attorney general or the FBI to use the criminal justice system as a cudgel to punish our political opponents. Or to explicitly call on the attorney general to protect members of our own party from prosecution because an election happens to be coming up. I’m not making that up. That’s not hypothetical. It shouldn't be Democratic or Republican to say we don’t threaten the freedom of the press because they say things or publish stories that we don’t like. I complained plenty about Fox News, but you never heard me threaten to shut them down or call them enemies of the people. It shouldn’t be Democratic or Republican to say we don’t target certain groups of people based on what they look like or how they pray. We are Americans. We’re supposed to stand up to bullies — not follow them. We’re supposed to stand up to discrimination, and we’re sure as heck supposed to stand up clearly and unequivocally to Nazi sympathizers. How hard can that be? Saying that Nazis are bad? I’ll be honest, sometimes I get into arguments with progressive friends about what the current political movement requires. There are well-meaning folks, passionate about social justice, who think things have gotten so bad, the lines have been so starkly drawn that we have to fight fire with fire. We have to do the same things to the Republicans that they do to us, adopt their tactics. Say whatever works, make up stuff about the other side. I don’t agree with that. It’s not because I’m soft, it’s not because I’m interested in promoting an empty bipartisanship. I don’t agree with it because eroding our civic institutions and our civic trusts, and making people angrier, and yelling at each other, and making people cynical about government, that always works better for those who don’t believe in the power of collective action. You don’t need an effective government or a robust press or reasoned debate to work when all you’re concerned about is in maintaining power. In fact the more cynical people are about government, the angrier and more dispirited they are about the prospects for change, the more likely the powerful are able to maintain their power. But we believe that in order to move this country forward, to actually solve problems and make people’s lives better, we need a well-functioning government. We need our civic institutions to work. We need cooperation among people of different political persuasions. And to make that work we have to restore our faith in democracy. We’ve got to bring people together — not tear them apart. We need majorities in Congress and state legislatures who are serious about governing and want to bring about real change and improvements in people’s lives. And we won’t win people over by calling them names or dismissing the entire chunks of the country as racist or sexist or homophobic. When I say bring people together, I mean all of our people. This whole notion that sprung up recently about Democrats needing to choose between trying to appeal to white working class voters or voters of color and women and LGBT Americans. That’s nonsense. I don’t buy that. I got votes for them in every demographic. We won by reaching out to everybody. And competing everywhere, and by fighting for every vote. And that’s what we got to do in this election and every election after that. And we can’t do that if we immediately disregard what others have to say from the start because they’re not like us — because they’re white or they’re black or they’re men or women or they’re gay or they’re straight. If we think that somehow, there is no way they can understand how I am feeling and therefore don’t have any standing to speak on certain matters because we are only defined by certain characteristics. That does not work, if you want a healthy democracy. We can’t do that if we traffic absolutes when it comes policy. To make democracy work, we have to be able to get inside the reality of people who are different and have different experiences and come from different backgrounds and we have to engage them even when it is frustrating. We have to listen to them even when we don’t like what they have to say. We have to hope that we can change their minds and we have to remain open to them changing ours. That doesn’t mean, by the way, abandoning our principles or caving to bad policy in the interest of maintaining some phony version of civility. That seems to be, by the way, the definition of civility offered by too many congressional Republicans right now: We will be polite so as long as we get 100 percent of what we want and you don't call us out on the various ways that we are sticking it to people. And we’ll click our tongues and issue vague statements of disappointment when the president does something outrageous but we won’t really, actually do anything about it. That’s not civility. That's abdicating their responsibilities. But again, I digress. Making democracy work means holding onto our principles and having clarity about our principles and then having the confidence to get in the arena and have a serious debate. And it also means appreciating that progress does not happen all at once but when you put your shoulder to the wheel, if you are willing to fight for it, things do get better. And let me tell you something, particularly young people here. Better is good. I used to have to tell my young staff this all time in the White House. Better is good. That’s the history of progress in this country — not perfect, better. The Civil Rights Act did not end racism, but it made things better. Social Security did not eliminate all poverty for seniors, but it made things better for millions of people. Do not let people tell you the fight’s not worth it because you won’t get everything you want. The idea that well, there is racism in America so, I am not going to bother voting — no point. That makes no sense. You can make it better. Better is always worth fighting for. That’s how our founders expected the system of self-government to work. And through the testing of ideas and the application of reason and evidence and proof, we can sort through our differences. And nobody would get exactly what they wanted, but it would be possible to find a basis for common ground. And that common ground exists. Maybe it’s not fashionable to say that right now. It’s hard to see it with all the nonsense in Washington, and it’s hard to hear it with all the noise. But common ground exists — I have seen it. I have lived it. I know there are white people who care deeply about black people being treated unfairly. I have talked to them and loved them. And I know there are black people who care deeply of the struggles of white rural America. I am one of them and have a track record to prove it. I know there are evangelicals who are deeply committed to doing something about climate change. I’ve seen them do the work. I know there are conservatives who think there is nothing compassionate about separating immigrant children from their mothers. I know there are Republicans who believe government should only perform a few minimal functions but that one of those functions should be making sure nearly 3,000 Americans don’t die in a hurricane and its aftermath. Common ground’s out there. I see it every day. Just how people interact and how people treat each other. You see it on the ballfield, you see it at work. You see it in places of worship. But to say that common ground exists, don’t mean it will inevitably win out. History shows the power of fear. And the closer we get to Election Day, the more those invested in the politics of fear and division will work, will do anything to hang onto their recent gains. Fortunately, I am hopeful because out of this political darkness, I am seeing a great awakening of citizenship all across the country. I cannot tell you how encouraged I have been by watching so many people getting involved for the first time or the first time in a long time. They’re marching and they’re organizing and they’re registering people to vote and they're running for office themselves. Look at this crop of Democratic candidates running for Congress and running for governor, running for the state legislature, running for district attorney, running for school board. It is a movement of citizens who happen to be younger and more diverse and more female than ever before, and that’s really useful. We need more women in charge. But, we’ve got first-time candidates and we got veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, record numbers of women. Americans who did not have an interest in politics as career but laced up their shoes and rolled up their sleeves and grabbed a clipboard because they too believe this time is different. This moment’s too important to sit out. And if you listen to what these candidates are talking about in individual races across the country, you’ll find they are not just running against something, they are running for something. They’re running to expand opportunities and they’re running to restore the honor and compassion. This should be the essence of public service. Speaking as a Democrat, that’s when the Democratic Party has always made a difference in the lives of the American people, when we led with conviction and principle and bold new ideas. The antidote to a government controlled by a powerful few, a government that divides, is a government by the organized, energized and inclusive many. That’s what this moment’s about. That has to be the answer. You cannot sit back and wait for a savior. You can’t opt out because you don’t feel sufficiently inspired by this or that particular candidate. This is not a rock concert, this is not Coachella. We don’t need a messiah. All we need are decent, honest, hardworking people who are accountable and who have America’s best interest at heart. And they’ll step up and they’ll join our government and they will make things better if they have support. One election will not fix everything that needs to be fixed. But it will be a start. And you have to start it. What’s going to fix our democracy is you. People ask me what are you going to do for the election? Now, the question is, what are you going to do? You are the antidote, your participation and spirit and determination, not just in this election but in every subsequent election, and in the days between elections. Because in the end, the threat to our democracy does not just come from Donald Trump or the current batch of Republicans in Congress or the Koch brothers and their lobbyists or too much compromise by Democrats or Russian hacking. The biggest threat to our democracy is indifference. The biggest threat is cynicism. A cynicism led too many people to turn away from politics and stay home on Election Day. To all the young people who are here today, there are now more eligible voters in your generation than in any other. Which means your generation now has more power than anybody to change things. If you want it, you can make sure America gets out of its current funk. If you actually care about it, you have the power to make sure we seize a brighter future. But to exercise that clout, to exercise that power, you have to show up. In the last midterm election, in 2014, fewer than 1 in 5 young people voted. One in five. Not 2 in 5. Or 3 in 5. 1 in 5! Is it any wonder this Congress does not reflect our values and priorities? Are you surprised by that? This whole project of self-government only works if everybody is doing their part. Don’t tell me your vote does not matter. I’ve on states in the presidential election because of five, 10, 20 votes per precinct. And if you don’t think elections don't matter. I hope these last two years have corrected that impression. If you don’t like what’s going on right now — and you shouldn’t — do not complain. Don’t hashtag. Don’t get anxious. Don’t retreat, don’t binge on whatever it is you’re bingeing on, don’t lose yourself in ironic detachment, don’t put your head in the sand. Don’t boo. Vote! Vote! If you are really concerned of how the criminal justice treats African-Americans, the best way to protest is to vote! Not just for senators and representatives but for mayors and sheriffs and state legislatures. Do what they just did in Philadelphia and Boston. And elect states attorneys and district attorneys who are looking at issues in a new light. Who realize that the vast majority of law enforcement do the right thing in a really hard job. And we just need to make sure all of them do. If you are tired of politicians who are all for nothing but “thoughts and prayers” after a mass shooting. You’ve got to do what the Parkland kids are doing. Some of them have not eligible to vote yet. They’re out there working to change minds and registering people. They’re not giving up until we have a Congress that sees your lives more important as a campaign check from the NRA. You’ve got to vote! If you support the #MeToo movement, you’re outraged by stories of sexual harassment and assault, inspired women who shared them, you’ve got to do more than retweet a hashtag. You’ve got to vote. Part of the reason women are more vulnerable in the workplace is because not enough women are bosses in the workplace. Which is why we need to strengthen and enforce laws that protect women in the workplace, not just from harassment, but from discrimination in hiring and promotion, and not getting paid the same amount for doing the same work. That requires laws, laws get passed by legislators, you’ve got to vote! When you vote, you’ve got the power to make it easier to afford college and harder to shoot up a school. When you vote, you’ve got the power to make sure a family keeps health insurance — you can save somebody’s life. When you vote, you’ve got the power to make sure that white nationalists don’t feel emboldened to march with their hoods off or their hoods on in Charlottesville in the middle of the day. Thirty minutes. Thirty minutes of your time — is democracy worth that? We have been through much darker times than these. And somehow each generation of Americans carried us through to the other side. Not by sitting around and waiting for something to happen, not by leaving it to others to do something. But by leading that movement for change themselves. If you do that, if you get involved and you get engaged and you knock on some doors and you talk with your friends and you argue with your family members and you change some minds — and you vote, something powerful happens. Change happens. Hope happens. Not perfection and not every bit of cruelty and sadness and poverty and disease suddenly stricken from the Earth. There will still be problems, but with each new candidate that surprises you with a victory that you supported, a spark of hope happens. With each new law that helps a kid read or helps a homeless family find shelter or helps a veteran to get the support he or she has earned. Each time that happens, hope happens. With each new step we take in the direction of fairness and justice and equality and opportunity, hope spreads. And that can be the legacy of your generation. You can be the generation that at a critical moment stood up and reminded us just how precious this experiment in democracy really is. Just how powerful it could be when we fight for it. When we believe in it. I believe in you. I believe you will help lead us in the right direction, and I will be right there with you every step of the way. Thank you Illinois! God bless! God bless this country we love! Thank you.
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Nov 17, 2019 05:23
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Bar Ran Dun posted:Unfortunately not all not all my conversations can be public on the internet and that one I cannot do publically currently. Which is weird for me, I love doing that poo poo. Alas, it is happening and I may be able to post about some of it in the future. SA is basically a clearnet front for like three dozen (at most, lol) deep web cliques worth a second tug on a dead dog's cock and everybody worth their salt know it, lmao dont sweat it. quote:You are correct. I wanted to eventually going to go in that direction, though I was headed towards a comparative analysis with Zizek. What is the “thread of expectation” in Tillich especially in the Socialist Decision? That paper has some very good stuff in it. Anyway, there is a line in there I think is worth focusing on. The idea that Kierkigard’s existentialism is a new idealism. I have opinions on that, ones probably worth another post later. Zizek is a troll after my own heart, but he is a troll. If he's deviating out of his Heglian wheelhouse, it is to troll. If you don't know this on a fundamental level, you are the kind of person he is trolling. His invocations of Christ are specifically Antichristian in their particulars in order to point out how the Gospel is itself Antichristian and self-deconstructing when subjected to a psychological dialectics as distinct from theological ones. The Pervert's Guide to Cinema is a running joke about how all texts (and in that case specifically Zizek's favorite films), when we pursue their meaning, also create the conditions for their demeaning. Supermechagodzilla has made an entire posting ouevre out of this, and it is highly good IMO to see Marvel and Star Wars fanboys unable to rebut even the most clumsy dialectical readings of their preferred stanned franchises, but I wouldn't loving vote for SMG for Dog-catcher, nawmean? Adorno is, IMO, a more valuable comparison for where you want to go mostly because Adorno and Tillich are contemporaries and also introduced the F Scale of authoritarian personality which it sounds like more where you want this to go. That Adorno had a hard row to hoe while Tillich was venerated and why/how that could possibly be the case is a nontrivial historical factor, as well, IMO. I think this thread is suffering somewhat (to put it lightly) for having you, me, and Helsing being the only real effortposters in it. My best experiences on this forum were people who knew more than me leaping into action telling me the things they knew, and it kind of sucks that a thread like this isn't getting greater traction when it cuts so strongly to the core of so many issues in the contemporary center/left. As for my expectation? I strongly suspect that at great length, your process of applying Tillich's dialectic to the current moment will synthetically recreate the "romanticism" you would so castigate and--entirely unknowingly and entirely in well-intentioned earnest!--try and set yourself apart from a repeated pattern of utterly amoral people activating these yearnings. I contend: this inevitable conclusion is why Tillich was elevated among the segments of the German "left" who were beaten like tame dogs until the Soviets--and all their problems and internal contradictions--cleaned the mess a hitherto triumphant Hitler left on the carpet. I contend: your existentialist approach leaves you blind, which is why you are so consistently duped by a materialist liberalism in christian clothing. This is how we arrive at politicians declaring hope for change isn't the way to get elected, a racial justice plan with no nonwhites fights racism, an audience of people clapping that Pete Buttegeig said something they didn't understand independent of whether they agreed or not, and theories of "psychology" utterly and aggressively independent of prevailing psychological writings that conveniently apply to the marginal percent of people with whom we disagree, but not ourselves or the people we hope to win over, and then determine that this moment above all other historical moments is the moment where we have crossed some kind of climactic Rubicon. It's bullshit thought from and for bullshit people who are bullshitters, and you're better than that and we both know this. Bar Ran Dun posted:The Struggle Concerning Traditions Marxism is, itself, systematized. It is, if anything, pathologically systematized, to the point that one could fairly argue it erases the "romantic"!! This is why I linked those couple passages from Das Kapital! The system exists! Learn the loving system! You're on the loving internet! There is no excuse for not being at least passingly familiar with this! You keep saying you're a socialist and missing the fundamental basics of it!! Oh my loving god!!! if you are then claiming that this dispassionate and clinical analysis misses some kind of localized human/spiritual element, Negri and Hardt (50% of that pair being present in that video I linked, if you may recall, you should watch/rewatch it, it's quite good!) literally made their entire careers writing about that, and how one may reasonably fight in the face of hegemonic control. They have specifically done this alongside South American Liberation Theology! So yes!!! People HAVE been talking about this! You do not know they have, but they have! If your grievance is that nobody has done this in a way that flatters your particular conception of the gospel, then perhaps remove the beam from your own (in the plural sense, not your singular, but also yes your singular) eye before removing the mote from an ongoing leftist discourse--which is quite active and vital, increasingly so lately, and we'd love to have you onboard! ---- You've also done a massive post, so give me a tick or two to read that. Willie Tomg fucked around with this message at 07:37 on Nov 19, 2019 |
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Nov 18, 2019 07:44
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D&D was never a "good" forum. It was never supposed to be. It was always a containment zone for people who were "funny" but a little too po-faced for GBS. Its humor, on this comedy website, was at best gallows humor, and at worst (and most common) probatably unfunny in GBS. Humor geared toward people who read too much. But those people did, at some point, actually read. That's why it ever had a culture, ever. Especially the parts that hated the culture! That cultures produce their antithesis is a fundament of dialectics! Even when it was--to my estimation--worst, there was a background-radiation level of knowledgeability. This was the basis of making fun of grover's F22's-with-lasers fetishism, or goldbugs, or bitcoin. You come into this forum looking for a fight. You will almost always get it. This is why this forum has always generated the most reports, this is why I will never understand why anybody actually agrees to moderate this shitheap. While I think D&D has been worse in the past, at what I consider this forum's lowest ebb, it would at least have more than three loving posters knowing something about anything at all posting in a thread that wasn't a containment zone for tweets, at an active invitation for discussion. That poo poo makes me sick, to think of how far things have degraded. If you're thinking "this doesn't seem to have much to do with the thread" than thank you for reading this far.
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Nov 18, 2019 08:03
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oh, that big post was just Obama's Big Excuse speech. oh. okay. well then e; the old Soviet joke about not having to worry about censoring Das Kapital because nobody could understand where the text contradicted party doctrine, except its americans and christians slowly and painfully discovering what south american clerics were saying about the gospel since the mid-70's anyway what if the guy elected on "hope" for "change" actually worked to change something about the structures that oppress us, and gave us something to hope for beyond more hope? sorry. sorry for the shitpost, we all know that short=poo poo 
Willie Tomg fucked around with this message at 08:23 on Nov 18, 2019 |
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Nov 18, 2019 08:13
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A good thread
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Nov 18, 2019 08:32
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Willie Tomg posted:D&D was never a "good" forum. It was never supposed to be. It was always a containment zone for people who were "funny" but a little too po-faced for GBS. Its humor, on this comedy website, was at best gallows humor, and at worst (and most common) probatably unfunny in GBS. Humor geared toward people who read too much. But those people did, at some point, actually read. That's why it ever had a culture, ever. Especially the parts that hated the culture! That cultures produce their antithesis is a fundament of dialectics! sorry if this is too much "babby's first hegel" question, but could you elaborate on the bolded a bit? Is this a result of underlying contradictions within the culture, i.e. capitalism, or is this self-negation fundamental to any concept according to dialetics?
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Nov 18, 2019 22:33
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I kinda scrolled through this but I enjoyed the marxist gnostic anime jazz interlude
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Nov 19, 2019 03:16
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