Postcards:

For all things philosophical.

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d63
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Re: Postcards:

Post by d63 »

Nothing could be more complicated in our current economic environment (and the socio-political one that supports it( than trying to simplify our lives.
d63
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Re: Postcards:

Post by d63 »

We're not the land of Lotos Eaters anymore. We're something worse:

We're the Land of the Lotos Eaters in a constant state of discomfort who put more faith in tossing and turning, in the hope that we'll get back to our previous state, than just getting out of there.
d63
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Re: Postcards:

Post by d63 »

“Paradoxically, the present is never present, but is an effect of syntheses of retention and anticipation. Such a synthesis is passive in that it is not based on the active usage or employment of the faculties, but occurs, “automatically”, as it were. It is this distinction between the active and the passive that Deleuze seeks to undermine in arguing that passive synthesis is in the mind rather than being carried out by the mind. Despite the fact that such a synthesis occurs in the mind, we thus cannot say that it is based on the sovereign power and self-presence of the subject. As such, the first passive synthesis is not an activity of intentional consciousness, but precedes intentionality and renders intentionality possible in the first place. In this way, the distinction between subject and object is blurred in that the first passive synthesis precedes both subjects and objects.” –Levi Bryant: Difference and Giveness

What I would point out here is that Deleuze’s main agenda in undermining the distinction between the passive and active syntheses is mainly focused on the popular notion that because the passive synthesis is passive, it is necessarily unproductive. And it is the doxa of the unproductive passive synthesis that underwrites the scientific claim to privilege, in its descriptive role, over the creativity of our initial encounters with the world of objects –that is since science, and its emphasis on active synthesis, is necessarily founded on the creative work of the passive synthesis.

I would offer an approach from another angle: that of the three syntheses of time:

First there is the synthesis that involves expectation and habitus. This involves the object/event as it approaches us as subjects with our given mental makeup. In other words, as the encounter approaches us, we are evolutionarily wired and obligated to engage the approach with a tentatively confused state that must, in split second terms, create a momentary stay against confusion. One that is continuously revised as the approach gets closer based on its similarity to previous experiences.

This is supported by the second archival synthesis that takes in the encounter and stores it for later use on later similar encounters: hence the supportive role played by repetition in the expectation and habitus of the previous sysnthesis.

The last synthesis involves chancing or what Deleuze refers to as the dice role. This involves the contingencies at work in how we process the encounter and that tend to bleed into our general sense of how things hang together: our concepts and Ideas.

It would also be important to note here that one of the problems with translating Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition is that there was a double meaning at work in the French word for experience in that same word is used for experimentation: creativity. Therefore, we can see a connection between Deleuze’s early work and his later work with Guattarri in What is Philosophy in which they argue that primary role of philosophy is the creation of concepts, or that which I would revise to:

The creation of and free play with concepts.

This is why I can’t help but feel that Deleuze, as he works through the implications of difference and repetition, is mainly referring to the creative act –even when he is not directly referring to it. And what is the creative act but repeating what you know (repetition) until you somehow work beyond it (difference)?
d63
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Re: Postcards:

Post by d63 »

“According to Deleuze, “the mistake of dogmatism is always to fill that which separates, [while] that of empiricism is to leave external what is separated (Difference and Repetition, G. Deleuze)”. In other words, dogmatism posits an extra-worldly realm of essences that falsely unify the diversity of the world, while empiricism falls prey to a nominalistic atomism which treats all beings in terms of an indifferent diversity.” –Levi Bryant: Difference and Giveness.

In this phrase, we can see the dialectic (in the textbook sense of the thesis/antithesis) that Deleuze was seeing in the 2 extremes of metaphysical and scientific dogma. In the former, we have what is typified by religious dogma in that it concocts this universal principle that must apply to every possible object/event in the universe and is arbitrarily used to fill in every gap. For instance, if we ask a religious fanatic why a benign god would let people suffer like it does, the response is usually that God has his reasons. And we see it in a more malignant sense when some right-wing nut attributes hurricane Katrina to the permissiveness of gays in a New Orleans district that actually didn’t get touched by the flooding. And we see the same dynamic at work in the devotees of producer/consumer Capitalism who, appealing to a vulgar interpretation of Darwinism, assume that dying from a lack of access to healthcare, starvation, or being shot in the ghetto is simply the market’s way of weeding out impurities in the gene pool. But the similar dynamic gets really obvious when you consider the argument that no matter how much we indulge in consumption, the market, in its god-like nature, will step in to save us. Take, for instance, Dennis Miller’s argument in a stand up routine that we’ll deal with the depletion of fossil fuels when they start to run out. Note the unquestioning faith in the market and the technology it picks up the tab for. But how many of us want to bet our lives or the lives of our grandchildren on it?

In the latter, we see the limit of science in that it tends to deal with isolated systems. And while this is a necessary and useful approach for science, the problems start when it fails to grasp the finite nature of the system it is describing in the context of the infinite the described system must work within. This, too often, leads to assertions about the infinite (the metaphysical) that sound as if they are describing an isolated system. The most typical example of this is Rand who, based on her concept of objectivism and its supposed fidelity to brute facts, argues for the superiority of producer/consumer Capitalism as if it had the same fact status as 1+1=2. In this sense, the latter extreme transforms into the former. But even without this form of abuse, there is still the empirical limit and the gap it leaves that can be approached by philosophy in its creative/literary capacity.

That said, the failure of these extremes boils down to the failure to recognize the creative productivity of the passive synthesis (the initial encounter w/ the object/event) that, in turn, creates a hierarchy in which the concept (being a product of representation and the active synthesis) must be given privilege over the intuition.

At least, that's my interpretation of it.
d63
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Re: Postcards:

Post by d63 »

Philosophy, like art, is not so much a description of the true as an experience of it. If there is a truth, it is that the mind of the philosopher is pure chaos: scrambled. As Nietzsche said:

"One must have inner chaos to give birth to a dancing star."

This is why they must write. It is the only way they can create the illusion (for themselves and others (the momentary stay against confusion( that such is not the case.....
d63
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Re: Postcards:

Post by d63 »

“If error is foreign to philosophy, if it cannot be that which philosophy strives to avoid, this is for no other reason than that philosophy is ill equipped to deliver us denotative truths about reality or the world. Philosophy is not an empirical practice, even among those who call themselves empiricists. It is never a matter of making true or false statements about states of affairs in the world, but rather a practice of creating and critiquing concepts. Philosophical claims pertain not to referential truths but rather to the medium of basic concepts that free a region of experience so that referential judgments might be made at all. Before one can discourse about the world, the sense of the world must have already announced itself.” –Levi Bryant: Difference and Giveness

One of things that is emerging for me in this study is the similarity between philosophy, as a form of conceptual play, and mathematics and even science. In the sense of conceptual play, philosophy, given the armchair discipline it is, must admittedly also work with the isolated systems of the abstractions we create. This, for instance, is why paradox is the field in which philosophy dominates. We use the concepts of space and the way distance breaks down into infinite digress in order to establish why it is Zeno’s arrow will never reach its target. But that doesn’t mean any one of us would go prancing around between an archer and their target. One would think us smart enough to recognize the difference between reality and conceptual play. But at the same time, doesn’t this suggest a similarity between what the mathematician and the philosopher does? Doesn’t the mathematician also play with numbers (quite often (simply for the sake of playing with numbers –that is with no regard to whether what they’re doing actually refers to reality or not? But it is this kind of play, a sort of brainstorming, that can lead to some very real implications.

(At the same time, some of the most dangerous people in this world are those who want to bypass the play, because it doesn’t serve their serious purposes, and get to the real implications. These people want to own reality.)

The last sentence:

“Before one can discourse about the world, the sense of the world must have already announced itself.”

:refers to the initial encounter with the object/event in which, for a split second, we are completely stupid and intuitive. This is the point at which the sensible is bombarded with information but hasn’t quite processed it. At this point, the mind/brain complex starts repeating the different singularities through the different faculties (in a sense similar to Dennett’s multiple draft theory) until it composes them into a coherent concept. At this point, the object/event is being passed back and forth between the sensible and thought. The important thing to recognize here is that, given this process, there is no hierarchy between the sensible (intuition) and thought (concept). There is only a relationship that produces our experience of reality. Our initial encounter with the object/event is naturally creative. This is reflected in language in the way we listen to what the other has to say and base our understanding of it on similar sentences we have heard, then proceed to answer it with a sentence unlike any we have spoken based on previous sentences we have uttered. Our encounters, like the language we use to describe them, are inherently creative.

It just seems like philosophy should reflect that.
d63
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Re: Postcards:

Post by d63 »

And just to give you sense of the connection, Ambig, between my present study and what you're doing here, to let you know I'm not just arbitrarily importing this stuff:

"Perspective is the structure wherein the subject unfolds and without which it would not be. In this respect, perspective is similar to Heidegger's being-in-the-world [or Dasein as you like to put it]. Perspective is the inseparability of the subject from its world. In other words, the perspective is not in the subject; rather, the subject is in the perspective." -Levi Bryant: Difference and Giveness

In this sense, we can see how misconceptions, such as objectivism, can result from assuming the subject/object dichotomy or the failure to recognize the truth of Dasein as you would put it. It is also behind Deleuze's assertion of the truth of relativity (that is by virtue of the perspective of Dasein) as compared to the relativity of truth (which results from the dogma of the subject/object dichotomy).

That said, I would also note the role played by the moral dimension of repetition (or that which can be perfectly repeated) as pointed out in the original text:

“Moralists sometimes present the categories of Good and Evil in these terms: every time we try to repeat according to nature or as natural beings (repetition of a pleasure, of a past, of a passion) we throw ourselves into a demonic and already damned exercise [difference –my addition] which can only end in despair or boredom. The Good, by contrast, holds out the possibility of repetition, of successful repetition and the spirituality of repetition, because it depends not upon a law of nature but on a law of duty, of which, as moral beings, we cannot be subjects without also being legislators. What is Kant’s ‘highest test’ if not a criterion for what can, in principle, be reproduced –in other words, what can be repeated without contradiction in the form of moral law? The man of duty invented a ‘test’ of repetition; he decided what could be repeated.” -Difference and Repetition, pg. 4

If we really look at what the pseudo-objectivists are trying to do, we see how the moral imperative of perfect repeatability has bled, through a residual effect, into the assertions of those who would make claims concerning their adherence to the criteria of “objectivity”, “facts” (that is when they’re usually talking about data), and the “scientific method”. In effect, what they are asking us to do is to accept their conjectures and speculations based on their almost religious faith in these terms as a kind of moral imperative –much as we are suppose to accept the authority of a priest based on their commitment to Christianity or any religion for that matter.

This is one of the cool things about French philosophy to me: it doesn’t approach the authoritarian element from an us-and-them perspective; it looks, rather, to the core of the human predicament common to us all to find the source of the authoritarian perspective. In this sense, it has never been as important as it is now.
d63
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Re: Postcards:

Post by d63 »

Post after a heated debate with some conservative friends:

Now that that we've all calmed down, most importantly myself, I feel there are some issues that need to be addressed from a less volatile state of mind:

First of all, we are always more than ideologies. We are always more than what we might say or write. Unfortunately, on these boards that becomes easy to forget. Without the physical presence of the individuals, and the other kinds of interactions we can engage in with them, we find ourselves engaging the other as the posts we see before us. On the boards, until we take the time to truly remember, all we are are our expressions and the mental concepts we evoke in each other.

Still, I stand by my assertion that there are aspects of the conservative ideology, as it is expressed today, that simply do not afford us the luxury of being beautiful souls who accept all perspectives as one perspective among others. We cannot fall into the fallacy of corporate media that will situate absurd, irrational, and dangerous (and potentially fascist) views beside those of the rational and act as if we should see them as anything less than absurd and irrational and not worthy of consideration. And while I was, out of impulse, a little abstract and general, as well as mean spirited, in the mudslinging that occurred, I hope to be a little more concrete and respectful in describing my reasons for doing so without surrendering my position while doing so.

I would start by pointing out that this is not a matter of intellect. To do so would be to underestimate the higher cognitive functions of the scientifically noted sociopath. Furthermore, it would be ideologically suicidal for me not to recognize the intellectual achievement of such conservatives as Buckley, Will, or Sowell. And I know my friends. And it would be nothing less than an experience of self repulsion to try to describe them as anything less than intelligent and decent people. The problem, as I see it, lies in the relationship between our baser impulses (the base of the brain) and our cognitive functions. We all work out of self interest. Make no mistake about it, even socialists are not martyrs. What they are basically working from is an idea of a society in which they could best function. And in that sense, they are no better than pro-Capitalist Conservatives. The difference lies in how they situate their baser impulses in relationship to their cognitive functions. What the progressive does is put their baser impulses in an equal partnership with their higher faculties. Hence the recognition that their self interest is best served by recognizing the self interest of others and everyone, even if it comes at the cost of compromising their own self interest without surrendering it all together. The pro-Capitalist Conservative, on the other hand, puts their higher faculties, the cognitive, at the service of their baser impulses. In that sense, it becomes a lot like a junkie arguing why they should be able to keep being junkies. It’s why they have lost the capacity to differentiate between rationality and rationalization. It is rationalization that give their arguments the feel of a teenager who’s been busted at something and will throw everything on the table in the hopes that something will stick. And it is, consequently, the source of all the absurd non-rational, non-democratic tactics they will resort to to get their way (take, for instance, the brownshirt tea party and citizen’s united). And in this lies the fascistic potential that is exclusively the domain of the pro-Capitalist Conservative Republican and not the basically impotent Left as they would have you believe.

But, before I go into the concretes of conservative rationalization (that is as compared to rationality), I would offer one caveat to an issue that came up in the mudslinging. Gun control, much as capital punishment, has never been one of those make or break issues to me. When some nutjob goes in and shoots up a school, it would be easy to jump on the gun control bandwagon. But I think the issue is a little bigger than access to guns. For instance, we have to ask why it is that Canada, as Michael Moore pointed out in Bowling for Columbine, has twice as many guns per capita yet has far less gun violence. Now this is just conjecture on my part, since I have no way of empirically proving it; but I would suggest that the recent increase of such incidences may be the result of the stress and tension caused by America’s adolescent and unconditional embrace of every-man-for-themselves Capitalism. But that is just an opinion.

What is not an opinion, however, but an observable fact, is the way pro-Capitalist conservative treats Capitalism like it has some intimate and exclusive access to freedom. But as far as I can tell, I have no choice but to turn to Capitalism in order to survive. I am forced to depend on the market because my government lacks the balls to stand up to it. And it lacks those balls because it is basically owned by Capitalism. Of course, the pro-Capitalist conservative buys into the illusion by surrendering their selves to the misdirection of making it all about government, the puppets, rather than the puppet master. This is because they like the fix that Capitalism is ALLOWING them. Like any common junkie, they will protect their pusher at all costs. And they do so under the deluded notion that Capitalism will continue to supply them with that fix after they have grown useless to it.

What they’re incapable of understanding is that Capitalism puts one thing above all others: profit. Any benefit they associate with it (quality, freedom, the betterment of society, etc.) is basically secondary, and by virtue of that, expendable.

But nothing could rip through a pro-Capitalist conservative’s assumptions about the relationship between Capitalism and Freedom (that which they keep pounding their chests and ranting about) is a point made by Slavoj Zizek (a Communist). As he pointed out, we shouldn’t be so worried about the authoritarian nature of China. What we should really worry about is the fact that China, despite being an authoritarian nation, is kicking our ass at Capitalism. Given that, what commitment to Freedom would our corporate masters really need to maintain?

Yet, the only solution our pro-Capitalist conservatives, for all their chest pounding and talk about freedom, have to offer us is just kissing the ass of the rich a little bit more in the hope that they'll show a little gratitude.
d63
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Re: Postcards:

Post by d63 »

"Every day, I wake up on the wrong side of Capitalism" -graffiti on a broken down wall on a message board avatar.

I try to make my peace with Capitalism. Not that I believe in it. But because it has won and there is nothing I can do about it. So why expend so much energy being pissed about it? Plus that, I tend to piss people off that are actually dear to me because I start off trying to be respectful then end up losing my cool and becoming blatantly insulting then regretting it after. One of my biggest regrets from my last attempt at this was attributing the problem to pro-capitalist conservatives when what I should have been aiming at was RWAs (to use Bob Altermyer's term) or right wing authoritarians. I make this move for 2 reasons. First of all, not everything I want to describe, as concerns the limits of the perspectivism of the beautiful soul, is directly connected to a pro-capitalism position. I also have issues with certain religious principles that are not, in a pragmatic sense, realistic or sustainable.

But more important, I now re-realize (remember) that if Capitalism is approached as an effective tool, one among many (such as socialism, Keynesianism, even Communism), it returns to the model of our baser impulses working in cooperation with our higher cognitive functions: rationality as compared to rationalization. In that sense, it becomes the benefactor of our evolutionary process that started with base of the brain and evolved into the cognitive. The problem lies in looking at Capitalism as fulfilling a role that has failed time and time again: that of a grand narrative.

This is because when Capitalism is turned into a grand narrative, we have to assume that the motivation behind it is a total focus on self interest. The RWA might argue that it is for the general good in some twisted take on Darwinism or such platitudes as the cream rising to the top. But we have to assume that the only reason they are making this argument is that they hold some advantage in it, or that they are fanciful enough to believe they could one day. The problem for the RWA is that discourse always involves more than one person which obligates them to frame their position in the sense of what is good for society as a whole. This is what leads to all kind of ideological games on the part of the RWA. This leaves them with one of 2 strategies.

On one hand, they can take the hysterical/neurotic route of switching their basic assumptions at their convenience and screaming louder than anyone else as is typlyfied by the Tea Party who claim to be protecting the American spirit while being perfectly willing to undermine democracy (through citizens united and voter ID laws and the gerrymandering of republicans) as long as it gets them their way or Sarah Palin undermining attempts to reform healthcare with talk about death panels. The irony of Palin is that while she was doing what we typically do in political debates, being sci-fi writers posing our particular slippery slope argument, what she was actually describing was a mechanism (the death panel) that was already in place: the insurance industry.

The other route they can take is that of sociopathic in which they address the issue with a kind rock-star non-chalance like Dennis Miller or P. J. O’Rourke. This approach, as far as I can tell, is heavily rooted in Rand and involves a kind of in-crowd mentality that allows the individual to feel like they are such a player that they really don’t care what the truth is. The guru makes a wisecrack and they laugh. And that is all the proof they need that they are in the right place. I would offer as proof: Marlee Maitlen, Carville’s wife, who on an episode of Bill Maher’s Real Time responded to Maher’s point concerning global warming and CO2 emissions with:

“Surely Bill, you don’t expect me to ride a bike to work.”
d63
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Re: Postcards:

Post by d63 »

I am starting to see that there are bigger issues at hand than my repulsion to and frustration with certain aspects of the Republican sensibility and the absurd reasoning behind it -that which I would refer to as the authoritarian element- and that, framed in evolutionary terms, it may well be little more than a result of the haphazard manner in which we have evolved and hold implications for how we evolve, or adapt to our environment, in the future. This, in turn, holds the even more important implication of whether we sustain our genetic lineage and species or surrender it to the natural selection of eliminating a genetic makeup that is no longer sustainable. Furthermore, and most importantly, I am starting to see that Capitalism, that which the authoritarian element clings to, is not the end of history as Fukiyama would have it, not the Hegelian promise of our final perfection, but little more than an evolutionary stepping stone that is presenting some resistance to the next step and, in that sense, has evolved into more of an evolutionary liability than a facilitator. And it is because of this that progressives need to reconsider the perspectivism of the beautiful soul, that which considers all perspectives as worthy of consideration, not as an ethical consideration, but rather as an evolutionary mandate.

But first I would offer a summery, revision, and refinement of the point I have been trying to make here. I started with the recognition that the absurd reasoning of the authoritarian element, especially as pertains to the republican party, is not a matter of intellect (one could have the knowledge of a rocket scientist and still be authoritarian) or moral center (as is well described by Zizek in the Plague of Fantasies in the push/pull tension (Jouissance) often seen in even the most cruelest forms of human behavior). The difference between them and the progressive lies, rather, in the relationship between our baser impulses (self interest) and the cognitive (that which has evolved from the base of the brain). I pointed out that we all act of self interest to some degree or other. Even the socialist (in the spirit of Rawl’s original position) is working from a vision of society in which they feel they could function best. And in this sense, they put their baser impulses in tandem with their higher mental functions. This we will refer to, in the spirit of Game Theory, as the cooperative model.

The authoritarian element, however, puts their higher cognitive functions in the service of baser impulses. This we will refer to as the competitive model. And it is this dynamic that results in the absurd reasoning we tend to get from the authoritarian in that the competitive model does not worry so much about logical consistency as forcing into (and upon) the discourse what is purely in its self interest. Unfortunately, for the authoritarian element, public discourse is a negotiation beholden to the public good. This puts them in a position of cognitive dissonance in that they have to frame reality in such a way that the public good involves them fulfilling their personal self interest with no compromise on their part. And given the inherent difficulty of doing so, it should seem no wonder that the authoritarian element must resort to the ideological dance that we time and time again watch them engage in. It should seem no wonder that they would have to engage in rationalization over rationality.

This, in turn, leaves the authoritarian element one of 2 strategies. They can either turn to the sociopathic in which they assert their self interest with a kind of rock star non-chalance that is more about making it feel fashionable than right (Dennis Miller, P J O’Rourke, Ayn Rand, Etc.). Or they can take the hysterical route in which the assumptions on which they base their assertions tend to shift from one to other at their convenience and results, to the outside observer, in vulgar compartmentalization. The former speaks for itself in the watered down sociopathy (that which characterized NAZI Germany) it involves. The latter speaks in blatant contradictions and mythologies such as when Palin attempts to frighten us with sci-fi tales of death panels when they already exist in the form of the insurance industry and the Tea Party’s assertion that they have some exclusive access to freedom and the American spirit while simultaneously compromising democracy through voter ID laws, citizen’s united, and republican gerrymandering to get their way.

But nothing illustrates the hysterical approach better than the recent history of healthcare reform. When Hillary Clinton attempted to reform healthcare, the general argument against was that there was no way the government could compete or provide the quality that the private sphere could. But when it came to the public option, the argument suddenly switched to there being no way the private sphere could compete with it. And I would note here the outright fascism involved in the assumption that those who die from lack of access to healthcare can only be because they didn’t make the effort to have it. In other words, access, in this instance, becomes a means of eliminating the undesirables: the non-producer/consumers. Sound familiar?

But it gets more critical when you consider the role that religion (the other side of the faith based coin of Capitalism propped and backed by our Calvinistic tradition) has played in trying to implement bans on birth control into public policy (based on some idealistic notion of pimping abstinence) when we cannot possibly hope to solve any of our problems until we deal with population control. But the limits of the perspectivism of the beautiful soul gets pushed even closer (if not over) to its limits when you consider the faith based resistance to policy on global warming, policy backed by a general consensus among the scientific community that it exists and is the result of human activity. Here we come up against a form of denial, for the sake of self interest, that renders the perspectivism of the beautiful soul not just impractical, but self destructive.

And it is here that we find our abandonment of the beautiful soul dynamic not just a matter of practicality, but a threshold to the next step in our evolutionary progress. If you think about the competitive model, you might see it as little more than a necessary evolutionary steppingstone that has passed its time, that what we are experiencing now in the authoritarian element is not the base of the brain carrying out its eternal dominion over the cognitive, but a desperate attempt to keep that dominion. Hence: the clearly desperate measures we see it resorting to. Note, for instance, its propensity towards anti-intellectualism.

And in this sense, we can see the progressive not just as morally right, but evolutionarily necessary in that if we are to sustain ourselves as a species, we have no other choice than to turn to the cooperative model. As progressives, given the environment me must adapt to, we can carry the torch and either dismiss and outright reject, as nonsense and denial, the authoritarian faith in our right to exploit the earth until Jesus takes us away in the rapture, or the hand of God or the invisible hand of the market intervenes, or we can surrender ourselves to the laws of natural selection and watch our species and genetic makeup perish.
d63
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Re: Postcards:

Post by d63 »

First of all, Sean, thanks for giving me something to fill my 500 word window with. Today’s reading session wasn’t doing much for me. And I had resigned myself to the drive-by style of going about and making quick responses to minimal points. And while there is value in that, and enjoyment to be had, you’ve given me an opportunity to work in the way I have grown more comfortable with and seems more productive. But, yeah:

“ Our health care system is slowly becoming privatized again I agree.”

That’s what I was afraid of. Thanks for confirming it for me. Another development that concerns me came to my attention in an MSN article in which a writer from Holland was giving advice to Washington State concerning the legalization of pot. What was brought to my attention was a reactionary movement in the government, due to a more conservative government, which involves Amsterdam scaling back a lot of freedoms that made it a kind of Mecca to partiers in America. And I can’t but feel this is the result of corporations creating economic turmoil in order to get the people of that country to vote more conservative on top of using those freedoms as an escape goat for those failures. It reeks of the same type of misdirection we deal with from conservatives in America. Plus that, it is as if Holland is actually folding to the pressure America was putting on it during the height of America’s War on Drugs.

“To be fair there isn't all too much difference between our countries. We have a single monarchy family with the perception of a democratic parliament, you have the Bush's and Clinton's. Tis all still dominant families ruling like an aristocracy.”

Couldn’t agree with you more. As it stands, our democracy has become little more than an a smokescreen for an emerging aristocracy/oligarchy. Although, I would argue that our presidents don’t have near the power a true monarchy would have. This can be seen in Obama who, I believe, sincerely believed he was going to stand up to Capitalism, only to find himself up against corporate forces that he had to dance around. This is why we ended up with Obamacare as compared to nationalized version of healthcare that you and other western industrialized nations have enjoyed for some time –or at least a public option. It was the only way, due to the influence of lobbyists from the health insurance industry, that he could pass any kind of healthcare reform –reform, mind you, that will ultimately end up being an appeasement that supports the illusion that our democracy is actually working. The reason for this is that our democracy has become little more than puppet show designed to distract us from the puppet masters. We are offered a choice between 2 candidates handpicked by corporations in order to give us the illusion that we are actually participating in the process, when all we are actually getting from the aristocracy/oligarchy are concessions that create the illusion of freedom while keeping us well within the parameters of our role as produce/consumers.

And you make some negative points about America. And as far as I’m concerned, while I believe in the principles that started this country, those principles have lost their force here. I mean it: fuck American exceptionalism. But allow me to outdo you on your concerns. America, compared to every other western industrialized nation, is relatively young. It is as if we are in this adolescent phase in which we feel that the world would fall apart if we weren’t number 1. And it is why we can maintain that exceptionalism when, statistically, we’re far from first in about everything but military strength and confidence in our youth. And this is not just our political system. For instance, when the subject of France comes up, and their contempt for Americans, the explanation I tend to get out of my conservative friends is that they’re jealous of us. Then I proceed to hear a lot of grumbling about how the French forgets that it was us that saved their asses in WW2. But anyone who has actually gotten the news from anything other than radio talk show hosts or FOX news would recognize that it is because we are shoving our form of Capitalism down their throats. This issue came up when the French were facing the possibility of having their 35 hr. workweek raised to 40 to make them more economically competitive. The popular myth being spread around at the time was that while the French worked to live, the Americans lived to work. It’s a myth. Pure nonsense. Yet the myth was propagated to make the French more pliable in giving up a privilege that they had earned through dissent.

(To give you a sense of the base-of-the-brain level this country is working at: I’m guessing that if someone mentioned the name of Marx or socialism, most people in Europe would see it for what it is: an ideological construct no less worthy of consideration than any other ideological construct –something you learn about as an option. In America, however, many of us are socially programmed to hear psycho-shrieks every time either word is mentioned. I mean all the republicans or Rush Limbaugh seem to have to do concerning a policy is mention the magic words and the Democrats are either sticking their tails between their legs or trying to explain why their policy is not socialist or Marxist.)

What is funny to me is that our Christians have always thought of the prediction of the Beast and anti-Christ as always emerging “over there”. In fact, they have even attributed it to the European Union. What is weird to me is that they have, for the most part, been standing in the most powerful country in the world while doing so. It just seems to me if there ever was going to be a candidate for the beast, it would be the very system under which they live, thrive, and that they embrace.

The point is, Sean, that I can outdo your issues with America in that this country, in its adolescence, and through a kind of growing pains, is laying the groundwork (through the deluded reasoning (rationalization) of self interest or the competitive model over the cooperative) for an atrocity (fascist in nature) comparable to that of Germany’s through our conservative elements. I mean what is the Tea Party but a modern day version of the Brownshirts? It has come to the point where it is facing the same process every other western industrialized country that has been number 1 has had to: that of stepping down from above other countries and taking its place among them.

And while it may not be the Apocalypse our Christians predict, it will likely feel like it to them. And it probably won’t be graceful….

Help me!
d63
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Re: Postcards:

Post by d63 »

Now that I think I'm getting you right, Jay, I have to agree with you. As I tried to point out in another rant, I think the issue of Global warming and the crisis of Capitalism has presented America with the next evolutionary step: that of getting beyond Capitalism. In a sense, it is as if all this is a kind of evolutionary backlash in that while our baser impulses (that which has evolved into our higher mental functions) have been what has gotten us here, it has come to the point where we either abandon the old competitive model of the cognitive in the service of the base of the brain and its baser impulses (that which defines the authoritarian sensibility that dominates the republican party) and turn to the cooperative model in which the 2 act in tandem, or we perish by the criteria of natural selection in not adapting to our environmental circumstance. The backlash comes from the base of the brain clinging to its position of dominance. And this is what results in the absurd reasoning that is coming from the authoritarian element of the republican party.
d63
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Ah, what the fuck!? Given the utter disgust and disappointment I feel for Iambiguous right now (the guy seems to have gotten a little full of himself for all his talk about no one knowing the absolute truth( nothing could be more therapeutic for me than to jam with an ILP peer peer-to-peer –that is despite our differences.

“That’s just the catch…. it’s not so much a matter of ditching Capitalism as ditching the oppression it has come to represent…. However, if you really look at our current autocracy, you find that there really isn’t anything that new about it. It still utilizes the same kind of ideological tactics that oppressive societies have used throughout time. “

“I tend to see this less in terms of a few people who are different from 'us', as in terms of the will to power. I do find that thesis correct, in as far as it describes general tendency. Creatures need to feel in control somehow, this is their emotional prerogative.”

I would tend to agree with you in that the will to power pretty much explains every possible atrocity a human can accomplish along with most (if not all( of our greater accomplishments.

Still, I would counter(or compliment( this (and excuse the opportunism (with a recent construct that has emerged from my conceptual play:

Our evolutionary process has been one that has evolved from our baser self-interested impulses (that which involves the will to power –what I would call the Competitive model (to the Cognitive . This model is based on a relationship between the base of the brain (and I’m speaking figuratively here (and the cognitive in which our higher functions are put in service of the base. However, as we have become more group oriented, what has developed is the Cooperative model in which the base is forced to act in cooperation with the cognitive. Now both are acting out of self interest and are beholden to the will to power. The progressive, even though some would like to delude themselves into a notion of pure altruism, and despite their embrace of the cooperative model, are still acting out of self interest and, by definition, the will to power (there's no way around it. Even Marx, a guy dealing with a lot of economic hardships to pursue what he loved doing, was simply describing and justifying a system in which he could do what he was without near the hardship. And in that sense, the self interest was clearly there.

But what we see in the competitive model, the cognitive being subject to the base, is the kind of absurd reasoning and logical dances we find in the more authoritarian elements of the conservatives. This is the source of the compartmentalization seen in people that would cut social programs to reduce the debt for their grandchildren while having no problem with leaving them the catastrophic environmental legacy of global warming and the depletion of our natural resources. They, of course, counter this with faith based claims that god will intervene or Jesus will take them away in the rapture or that Capitalism will develop the technology to deal with the problem. But it clearly reeks of the same kind of denial you might find in a common drug addict or alcoholic. And we can see that same denial at work in the complete neglect of the issue of population control that lies at the bottom of these issues. Instead, we get the reality TV hegemony of 19 Kids and Counting which is suppose to warm our hearts and make us long for good old fashion family values, but actually presses the case for eliminating the child tax credit after the third one. However it is suppose to make me feel, I find it despicable and irresponsible.

The upside, however, is that these environmental issues present us with an evolutionary crisis and threshold that may take us to the next stage: that of moving from the competitive to the cooperative model: a state beyond our unconditional faith in Capitalism: that state in which we are willing to compromise our own immediate self interest for the sake of our long term interest: that which will sustain our genetic makeup.

The problem is that we can now see, given this possibility, the reason to be for the resistance of those still working from the competitive model: the evolutionary backlash from the competitive model that has gotten us to this point thus far. Does its indignant stance seem a surprise? To put it in metaphorical and evolutionary terms, it is the base of brain struggling to maintain its dominion over the cognitive which is expressed in the intense anti-intellectualism of the authoritarian element of the republican party.

Note, for instance, a recent discourse, after the report made by the scientific community that confirmed that climate change is happening and that it is the result of human activity, in which a hot looking republican chick (an appeal to our baser impulses: Neo Con cheerleader) presented the argument to Dan Nye the Science Guy that the scientists were bullying the republicans. Now that is grand: the nerds are actually picking on the cool crowd.
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Bill Wiltrack
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Re: Postcards:

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[edited by iMod]
d63
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Post by d63 »

Thank you, iMOd.

I know Bill from another board: and he's pretty much a heckler.

Anyway:
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