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On July 20 2019 03:18 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2019 03:05 Mohdoo wrote:On July 20 2019 02:56 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 20 2019 02:41 CosmicSpiral wrote:On July 19 2019 14:46 GreenHorizons wrote:
Grant me this curiosity if you will, what's your angle? You're well read on this stuff in general, what's your interest in my perspectives? How you identify yourself politically would be helpful as well, it would help me better understand the nature of the answer you're looking for. I like investigating an idea to tease out all the implications. I'm Mark Fisher minus the crippling depression. On July 19 2019 14:46 GreenHorizons wrote:
1. Generally the top 1% of the 1% but power brokers that aren't especially affluent (at least on paper) probably fall in there too. So are we limiting this to political and economic titans + influencers? On July 19 2019 14:46 GreenHorizons wrote:
2. Any of that you say must be excluded can be a part of direct action but does not in itself constitute direct action imo. If we're following your line of thought, they wouldn't be entertained until the revolutionaries have effectively cornered their opponents. Those are options that have either been denied or manipulated to the latter's benefit. On July 19 2019 14:46 GreenHorizons wrote:
3. The general protest of "what about the negative consequences/risks" can't be viewed in a vacuum right? It's not the potential negative consequences of revolution or eternal bliss for all mankind. It's revolution or certain doom for millions, and horrific catastrophe for billions and maybe a handful of people live luxuriously in the rubble that's left. I'd add there's a lot of suffering, death and violence used to maintain this system as it is. Of course not. When talking about the sustainability and survival of the world, utilitarian necessity becomes impossible to ignore. Yet if the victory is too Pyrrhic, recovery becomes impossible and everyone dies anyway. That is a rather pertinent detail. Suffering, death and violence are used to maintain all systems (natural included). The obstacle for your vision is that in practice, revolutions usually embrace those byproducts and never relinquish them. On July 19 2019 20:04 Artisreal wrote:I'll give you the name of two chapters in a McKinsey report on "Women leaders, a competitive edge in and after the crisis": - Companies with at least three female executives score higher on the key organizational dimensions
- Leadership behaviors more frequently adopted by women leaders are critical to navigate through the crisis and beyond
A generalization is rather difficult to make and I've yet to meet a leadership figure that deserved the name in my professional career outside of University, the person male/female/diverse didn't impact that judgement. Nonetheless, research shows that women tend to lead differently from men and more successfully so in times of crisis. And with more women on (the) board, businesses tend to be more successfull compared to mens only boardrooms ( Forbes). While I wouldn't deduct from a small snippet of research that women are better leaders - my personal experience with my first boss differs vastly from that supposition :-D - but it certainly shows strong signals that diversity helps, a lot. Most of this is backwards rationalization. We could equally claim that companies with more robust infrastructure and better track records can absorb the negative impact of woman executives without noticeable repercussions, and there would be no discernible difference in correlation. Not to mention the methodology behind the surveys is nebulous at best. For example, no one can reasonably ascribe or deny the presence of p-value fishing in the McKinsey reports (and it would be trivial to exploit it due to the vague boundaries). Die hard capitalist artist, I'm not sure that works without the crippling depression? ;P For those following along Cosmic is making the argument not that capitalism is great, but there is literally no other option. This is a common belief and it is not something someone should feel bad for thinking. There are a lot of factors involved in developing ideas and it is well described in this episode of philosophize this: http://philosophizethis.org/gramsci-hegemony/CosmicSpiral, I strongly encourage you to consider listening to this podcast. If you do, I will paypal you $5. Spotify link: https://open.spotify.com/episode/62i1Q2wHMXyg3jcDo0M7r6?si=hKI-YVROQyG-9XL1rpqgsA Didn't mean it insultingly or anything, just that the nature of his questions are to disprove the viability of any alternative to capitalism even if capitalism is going to kill us (a Pyrrhic victory sought imo). Show nested quote +The goal of anyone trying to bring about any kind of social change should be to provide alternatives in all three of these areas…they should create a counterculture…an alternative set of cultural norms and taboos reinforced by intellectuals whose job it is to actively CHALLENGE the status quo. He called this other type of intellectuals “organic” intellectuals and it was their job to be skeptical of the existing order of things…provide an alternative means of education that took cues from the counterculture that was created and to embolden the average citizen to take political action by giving them a philosophical outlook that changes the way they see themselves and how they fit into the world. This is why so many attempts at revolution have failed in the past to Gramsci…the orthodox Marxists that tried to organize it didn’t understand the “common sense” of the workers that needed to carry out the revolution. These workers saw themselves and their place in the world solely in terms of how they relate to Capitalist ideology…the ONLY WAY to shift their perspective enough to see the other side would be to fundamentally change the way they look at the world philosophically. The bold part is very much in line with Freire and conscientização and I'm hardly an intellectual but have made a point of fostering a counterculture here to constantly challenge the status quo. The last part of the quote is very much the addressing of "but people suck, so they'll suck under communism" that neglects how nurture impacts human behavior. Capitalism represents a lot of the worst parts of human behavior and amplifies them in the pursuit of profit. A system organized around serving humanities needs in a global and sustainable way creates entirely different social pressures, exploiting people for profit is no longer socially acceptable let alone rewarded. Changing incentives in such a way also influences behavior. Show nested quote +On July 20 2019 03:10 Nebuchad wrote:
I'm not sure that's the argument Cosmic is making given that he mentioned Mark Fisher Honestly I'm not familiar and only know of a sort of capitalism sucks but we're stuck with it type of argument. I've mentioned before most of my theory isn't directly from European socialists/leftists so I could be misinterpreting that for sure. To give a brief explanation, I've heard this quote: "it is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism," before and I hadn't read him to figure out if that was his conclusion that led to the suicide but was just my assumption.
1) that’s not his original quote he just borrows it to make a point in his idea of Capitalist Realism
2) it seems true given that you seem quite capable of imagining how global climate change is an existential threat but when pressed on how to destroy capitalism you focus on the critique of capitalism (and arguably some vague utopian “after-capitalism”) but cannot actually imagine how capitalism will end
3) he’s not a “die-hard capitalist” and not really an “artist” in the conventional sense, although i admit it’s not clear who you meant by “die hard capitalist artist”
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On July 20 2019 03:40 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2019 03:18 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 20 2019 03:05 Mohdoo wrote:On July 20 2019 02:56 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 20 2019 02:41 CosmicSpiral wrote:On July 19 2019 14:46 GreenHorizons wrote:
Grant me this curiosity if you will, what's your angle? You're well read on this stuff in general, what's your interest in my perspectives? How you identify yourself politically would be helpful as well, it would help me better understand the nature of the answer you're looking for. I like investigating an idea to tease out all the implications. I'm Mark Fisher minus the crippling depression. On July 19 2019 14:46 GreenHorizons wrote:
1. Generally the top 1% of the 1% but power brokers that aren't especially affluent (at least on paper) probably fall in there too. So are we limiting this to political and economic titans + influencers? On July 19 2019 14:46 GreenHorizons wrote:
2. Any of that you say must be excluded can be a part of direct action but does not in itself constitute direct action imo. If we're following your line of thought, they wouldn't be entertained until the revolutionaries have effectively cornered their opponents. Those are options that have either been denied or manipulated to the latter's benefit. On July 19 2019 14:46 GreenHorizons wrote:
3. The general protest of "what about the negative consequences/risks" can't be viewed in a vacuum right? It's not the potential negative consequences of revolution or eternal bliss for all mankind. It's revolution or certain doom for millions, and horrific catastrophe for billions and maybe a handful of people live luxuriously in the rubble that's left. I'd add there's a lot of suffering, death and violence used to maintain this system as it is. Of course not. When talking about the sustainability and survival of the world, utilitarian necessity becomes impossible to ignore. Yet if the victory is too Pyrrhic, recovery becomes impossible and everyone dies anyway. That is a rather pertinent detail. Suffering, death and violence are used to maintain all systems (natural included). The obstacle for your vision is that in practice, revolutions usually embrace those byproducts and never relinquish them. On July 19 2019 20:04 Artisreal wrote:I'll give you the name of two chapters in a McKinsey report on "Women leaders, a competitive edge in and after the crisis": - Companies with at least three female executives score higher on the key organizational dimensions
- Leadership behaviors more frequently adopted by women leaders are critical to navigate through the crisis and beyond
A generalization is rather difficult to make and I've yet to meet a leadership figure that deserved the name in my professional career outside of University, the person male/female/diverse didn't impact that judgement. Nonetheless, research shows that women tend to lead differently from men and more successfully so in times of crisis. And with more women on (the) board, businesses tend to be more successfull compared to mens only boardrooms ( Forbes). While I wouldn't deduct from a small snippet of research that women are better leaders - my personal experience with my first boss differs vastly from that supposition :-D - but it certainly shows strong signals that diversity helps, a lot. Most of this is backwards rationalization. We could equally claim that companies with more robust infrastructure and better track records can absorb the negative impact of woman executives without noticeable repercussions, and there would be no discernible difference in correlation. Not to mention the methodology behind the surveys is nebulous at best. For example, no one can reasonably ascribe or deny the presence of p-value fishing in the McKinsey reports (and it would be trivial to exploit it due to the vague boundaries). Die hard capitalist artist, I'm not sure that works without the crippling depression? ;P For those following along Cosmic is making the argument not that capitalism is great, but there is literally no other option. This is a common belief and it is not something someone should feel bad for thinking. There are a lot of factors involved in developing ideas and it is well described in this episode of philosophize this: http://philosophizethis.org/gramsci-hegemony/CosmicSpiral, I strongly encourage you to consider listening to this podcast. If you do, I will paypal you $5. Spotify link: https://open.spotify.com/episode/62i1Q2wHMXyg3jcDo0M7r6?si=hKI-YVROQyG-9XL1rpqgsA Didn't mean it insultingly or anything, just that the nature of his questions are to disprove the viability of any alternative to capitalism even if capitalism is going to kill us (a Pyrrhic victory sought imo). The goal of anyone trying to bring about any kind of social change should be to provide alternatives in all three of these areas…they should create a counterculture…an alternative set of cultural norms and taboos reinforced by intellectuals whose job it is to actively CHALLENGE the status quo. He called this other type of intellectuals “organic” intellectuals and it was their job to be skeptical of the existing order of things…provide an alternative means of education that took cues from the counterculture that was created and to embolden the average citizen to take political action by giving them a philosophical outlook that changes the way they see themselves and how they fit into the world. This is why so many attempts at revolution have failed in the past to Gramsci…the orthodox Marxists that tried to organize it didn’t understand the “common sense” of the workers that needed to carry out the revolution. These workers saw themselves and their place in the world solely in terms of how they relate to Capitalist ideology…the ONLY WAY to shift their perspective enough to see the other side would be to fundamentally change the way they look at the world philosophically. The bold part is very much in line with Freire and conscientização and I'm hardly an intellectual but have made a point of fostering a counterculture here to constantly challenge the status quo. The last part of the quote is very much the addressing of "but people suck, so they'll suck under communism" that neglects how nurture impacts human behavior. Capitalism represents a lot of the worst parts of human behavior and amplifies them in the pursuit of profit. A system organized around serving humanities needs in a global and sustainable way creates entirely different social pressures, exploiting people for profit is no longer socially acceptable let alone rewarded. Changing incentives in such a way also influences behavior. On July 20 2019 03:10 Nebuchad wrote:
I'm not sure that's the argument Cosmic is making given that he mentioned Mark Fisher Honestly I'm not familiar and only know of a sort of capitalism sucks but we're stuck with it type of argument. I've mentioned before most of my theory isn't directly from European socialists/leftists so I could be misinterpreting that for sure. To give a brief explanation, I've heard this quote: "it is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism," before and I hadn't read him to figure out if that was his conclusion that led to the suicide but was just my assumption. 1) that’s not his original quote he just borrows it to make a point in his idea of Capitalist Realism 2) it seems true given that you seem quite capable of imagining how global climate change is an existential threat but when pressed on how to destroy capitalism you focus on the critique of capitalism (and arguably some vague utopian “after-capitalism”) but cannot actually imagine how capitalism will end 3) he’s not a “die-hard capitalist” and not really an “artist” in the conventional sense, although i admit it’s not clear who you meant by “die hard capitalist artist”
1)I'll let Cosmic clarify how he relates to Fisher granted I'm not familiar. I thought he was the capitalist realist, not critiquing them/it
2) I have ideas but I'm not really interested in discussing them with people intent on dismissing the necessity to even think them/it up, let alone work together toward a vision that isn't one I created.
3) Again, I'll let him clarify or pick someone outside of Europe (and increase the chances it's someone I'm more familiar with).
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On July 20 2019 02:56 GreenHorizons wrote:
Die hard capitalist artist, I'm not sure that works without the crippling depression? ;P
Unlike Fisher, I've come to terms with my apostasy from the left. Hopelessness from seeing the only viable political alternative degrade into a specter of its former self probably pushed Fisher over the edge.
On July 20 2019 02:56 GreenHorizons wrote:
For those following along Cosmic is making the argument not that capitalism is great, but there is literally no other option.
Eh? That's the opposite of capitalist realism.
On July 20 2019 02:56 GreenHorizons wrote:
1. For "oligarchs" yeah pretty much.
Okay, so we have an identifiable class. What is the initial approach?
On July 20 2019 02:56 GreenHorizons wrote:
2. Protest is usually part of the cornering for example.
It depends on the context and how protesting intents to expose discrimination/unfairness to a wider audience. The Birmingham Campaign and Dandi Salt Marsh worked admirably but then again, we saw how OWS fizzled out without anointing a successor or forcing the hands of corporations.
On July 20 2019 02:56 GreenHorizons wrote:
3. I would put perpetuation of capitalism under Pyrrhic victories.
More of a nihilistic acceptance of fate, but I see your point.
On July 20 2019 02:56 GreenHorizons wrote:
Neither has capitalism, but it doesn't even have the ambition of equity and embraces/promotes exploitation at a fundamental level.
I disagree with this to the extent capitalism is distinct from neoliberalism. The latter demolished the divisions early capitalistic philosophers made between the market and all other avenues of private and public life (I'm using Mirowski's conception as neoliberalism a cluster of heterogeneous, interrelated ideological positions instead of a strict definition). Granted "classic capitalism" does not solve the issue of inequality - if anything, it assumes a baseline level of inequality. However, it establishes bulwarks against the moral hazard and top-heavy accumulation of wealth that are currently endemic by sequestering the market as a limited domain. By contrast, neoliberalism assumes "individualized, arms-length market exchange", is the template by which most human interactions past a certain threshold ought to be conducted.
On July 20 2019 03:27 Artisreal wrote:
I give you some research and a classic consultancy from the heart of capitalism saying women are essential for resilient business development and you come up with that unfounded dismissal of a post?
Bluntly, I wouldn't give a rat's ass if the report came from the mouth of Ramunajan. The source is irrelevant to the veracity or proper methodology. The most prestigious institutions are not immune to error or motivated reasoning. Not even hedge funds led by two Nobel prize winning winners.
On July 20 2019 03:27 Artisreal wrote:
e: I'll retract my unfounded statement, albeit I find that your dismissal takes the easy way out without taking the topic any further. This frustrated me a bit and thus the rude answer to your post. Sorry about that.
The hard way would be breaking down the report to account for all the uncovered loopholes - disproportionate sample bias skewing the absolute value of the correlation coefficient, interval size on surveys artificially exaggerating effect size, blah blah blah - along with a concomitant meta-analysis of similar claims. I distilled it to the point where people wouldn't fall asleep. Anything more would be needlessly self-indulgent (look at how smart I am!).
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On July 20 2019 04:00 CosmicSpiral wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2019 02:56 GreenHorizons wrote:
Die hard capitalist artist, I'm not sure that works without the crippling depression? ;P Unlike Fisher, I've come to terms with my apostasy from the left. Hopelessness from seeing the only viable political alternative degrade into a specter of its former self probably pushed Fisher over the edge. Show nested quote +On July 20 2019 02:56 GreenHorizons wrote:
For those following along Cosmic is making the argument not that capitalism is great, but there is literally no other option. Eh? That's the opposite of capitalist realism. Show nested quote +On July 20 2019 02:56 GreenHorizons wrote:
1. For "oligarchs" yeah pretty much. Okay, so we have an identifiable class. What is the initial approach? Show nested quote +On July 20 2019 02:56 GreenHorizons wrote:
2. Protest is usually part of the cornering for example. It depends on the context and how protesting intents to expose discrimination/unfairness to a wider audience. The Birmingham Campaign and Dandi Salt Marsh worked admirably but then again, we saw how OWS fizzled out without anointing a successor or forcing the hands of corporations. Show nested quote +On July 20 2019 02:56 GreenHorizons wrote:
3. I would put perpetuation of capitalism under Pyrrhic victories. More of a nihilistic acceptance of fate, but I see your point. Show nested quote +On July 20 2019 02:56 GreenHorizons wrote:
Neither has capitalism, but it doesn't even have the ambition of equity and embraces/promotes exploitation at a fundamental level. I disagree with this to the extent capitalism is distinct from neoliberalism. The latter demolished the divisions early capitalistic philosophers made between the market and all other avenues of private and public life (I'm using Mirowski's conception as neoliberalism a cluster of heterogeneous, interrelated ideological positions instead of a strict definition). Granted "classic capitalism" does not solve the issue of inequality. However, it establishes bulwarks against the moral hazard and top-heavy accumulation of wealth .
I don't think it's necessarily degraded, but it has left European conceptions which were necessarily limited by their circumstances in my view. A lot of white leftists think you can just transpose Marx onto the US and you're done and it's definitely not that simple.
I think I recognize the confusion on my part regarding the argument Fisher was making and your relation.
1. We're not there yet, conscientização is priority 1 to build a movement/mass to take action (beyond actions aimed specifically at conscientização)
2. I'm not going to argue that there won't be resistance and that it may be insurmountable, but I'd rather die trying than die collaborating. That's not to say I rush blindly into the fray, but recognize the consequences of my actions. I'd be surprised if I wasn't already on the BIE list for example. I've noticed the Ferguson protesters dying left and right too btw.
3. The parsing of neoliberalism and capitalism is several tiers above the typical discourse here so I'm intrigued, but my initial loose interpretation of your point suggests the bulwarks were nominal.
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United States15275 Posts
On July 20 2019 03:18 GreenHorizons wrote:
Honestly I'm not familiar and only know of a sort of capitalism sucks but we're stuck with it type of argument. I've mentioned before most of my theory isn't directly from European socialists/leftists so I could be misinterpreting that for sure.
To give a brief explanation, I've heard this quote: "it is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism," before and I hadn't read him to figure out if that was his conclusion that led to the suicide but was just my assumption.
That's a quote from either Slavoj Zizek or Fredric Jameson. Apocryphally, back in 1998 Zizek noted how Deep Impact and Armageddon both came out in the same year, both production companies ignorant of the other's existence, with the same doomsday plot. Meanwhile it was unthinkable to imagine a movie that ended with a happy transition to a socialist world. Post-apocalyptic and dystopian works abound in fiction, but no socialist ones.
Capitalist realism is "the widespread sense that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it." It's a popular mindset and conviction, not an honest evaluation of possibility.
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On July 20 2019 04:23 CosmicSpiral wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2019 03:18 GreenHorizons wrote:
Honestly I'm not familiar and only know of a sort of capitalism sucks but we're stuck with it type of argument. I've mentioned before most of my theory isn't directly from European socialists/leftists so I could be misinterpreting that for sure.
To give a brief explanation, I've heard this quote: "it is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism," before and I hadn't read him to figure out if that was his conclusion that led to the suicide but was just my assumption. That's a quote from either Slavoj Zizek or Fredric Jameson. Apocryphally, back in 1998 Zizek noted how Deep Impact and Armageddon both came out in the same year, both production companies ignorant of the other's existence, with the same doomsday plot. Meanwhile it was unthinkable to imagine a movie that ended with a happy transition to a socialist world. Post-apocalyptic and dystopian works abound in fiction, but no socialist ones.
I've been talking about this with other leftists and it's importance to political imagination. A lot of what we have today was imagined in sci-fi and people were like "that's cool, let's make that real". Socialism could certainly benefit from such propaganda.
Capitalist realism is "the widespread sense that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it." It's a popular mindset and conviction, not an honest evaluation of possibility
So used to dealing with Capitalist realism in the flesh I hadn't slowed down enough to notice the critique.
I feel like there's room for a fascinating investigation into whether people really identify The Matrix as dystopian though. Presented under different framing (less ominous narration) it could be describing the saving of humanity by AI that Art mentioned.
iirc the Animatrix does this a bit giving some of the back story from the AI's perspective.
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United States15275 Posts
On July 20 2019 04:15 GreenHorizons wrote:
I don't think it's necessarily degraded, but it has left European conceptions which were necessarily limited by their circumstances in my view. A lot of white leftists think you can just transpose Marx onto the US and you're done and it's definitely not that simple.
It's better to let Fisher explain himself on this point. Mind you, he was ostracized from UK Leftist circles for this article and his death celebrated by political opponents only for the same people to brown-nose his corpse when his popularity re-surged.
On July 20 2019 04:15 GreenHorizons wrote:
1. We're not there yet, conscientização is priority 1 to build a movement/mass to take action (beyond actions aimed specifically at conscientização)
I assume rallying the troops is also a function of time since climate change is inevitable and the oligarchy won't band together to stop it (not even to save their own hides). So what would be the theoretical window in which recruitment/edification occurs before the movement becomes futile?
On July 20 2019 04:15 GreenHorizons wrote:
2. I'm not going to argue that there won't be resistance and that it may be insurmountable, but I'd rather die trying than die collaborating. That's not to say I rush blindly into the fray, but recognize the consequences of my actions. I'd be surprised if I wasn't already on the BIE list for example. I've noticed the Ferguson protesters dying left and right too btw.
I'm saying the effectiveness of protests might range from astounding to nothing. Considering we are playing for the highest stakes in this hypothetical, it might be better to abandon a fruitless tactic rather than die a martyr. There are still the more extreme methods to consider.
On July 20 2019 04:15 GreenHorizons wrote:
3. The parsing of neoliberalism and capitalism is several tiers above the typical discourse here so I'm intrigued, but my initial loose interpretation of your point suggests the bulwarks were nominal.
I'd hardly say nominal. One of the major reasons I departed from the left was releasing that they were putatively against "capitalism" as a vague enemy, but most of their tenets aligned with neoliberalism. Since they treated the latter as an effigy to be burned instead of an identifiable belief system, none of them realized it. The whole rumination soured me on the left's ability to evolve beyond caricature as a mass movement.
On July 20 2019 04:24 GreenHorizons wrote:
I've been talking about this with other leftists and it's importance to political imagination. A lot of what we have today was imagined in sci-fi and people were like "that's cool, let's make that real". Socialism could certainly benefit from such propaganda.
The lack of imagination in viable alternatives to capitalism is a major stumbling block for the movement. It wasn't always the case. Utopian literature that full-throatedly celebrated or prominently advocated for socialism flourished in the 50's and 60's despite the worst rumors coming from the Soviet Union. Part of it undoubtedly was that we still had faith that technology could unequivocally transform human life for the better beyond the private realm. Nowadays one gets ambivalent about the Internet of Things, social alienation from social media, and what not.
On July 20 2019 04:24 GreenHorizons wrote:
I feel like there's room for a fascinating investigation into whether people really identify The Matrix as dystopian though. Presented under different framing (less ominous narration) it could be describing the saving of humanity by AI that Art mentioned.
iirc the Animatrix does this a bit giving some of the back story from the AI's perspective.
Cypher certainly saw the Matrix as a boon. What was the point of living in a shithole if the illusion was indistinguishable from reality?
The worldbuilding of the movie is a bit suspect. "Human batteries" are really wasteful in terms of energy production; geothermal plants would've solved the machines' problem at the expense of negating the premise. 
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On July 20 2019 04:50 CosmicSpiral wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2019 04:15 GreenHorizons wrote:
I don't think it's necessarily degraded, but it has left European conceptions which were necessarily limited by their circumstances in my view. A lot of white leftists think you can just transpose Marx onto the US and you're done and it's definitely not that simple. It's better to let Fisher explain himself on this point. Mind you, he was ostracized from UK Leftist circles for this article and his death celebrated by political opponents only for the same people to brown-nose his corpse when his popularity re-surged. Show nested quote +On July 20 2019 04:15 GreenHorizons wrote:
1. We're not there yet, conscientização is priority 1 to build a movement/mass to take action (beyond actions aimed specifically at conscientização) I assume rallying the troops is also a function of time since climate change is inevitable and the oligarchy won't band together to stop it (not even to save their own hides). So what would be the theoretical window in which recruitment/edification occurs before the movement becomes futile? Show nested quote +On July 20 2019 04:15 GreenHorizons wrote:
2. I'm not going to argue that there won't be resistance and that it may be insurmountable, but I'd rather die trying than die collaborating. That's not to say I rush blindly into the fray, but recognize the consequences of my actions. I'd be surprised if I wasn't already on the BIE list for example. I've noticed the Ferguson protesters dying left and right too btw. I'm saying the effectiveness of protests might range from astounding to nothing. Considering we are playing for the highest stakes in this hypothetical, it might be better to abandon a fruitless tactic rather than die a martyr. There are still the more extreme methods to consider. Show nested quote +On July 20 2019 04:15 GreenHorizons wrote:
3. The parsing of neoliberalism and capitalism is several tiers above the typical discourse here so I'm intrigued, but my initial loose interpretation of your point suggests the bulwarks were nominal. I'd hardly say nominal. One of the major reasons I departed from the left was releasing that they were putatively against "capitalism" as a vague enemy, but most of their tenets aligned with neoliberalism. Since they treated the latter as an effigy to be burned instead of an identifiable belief system, none of them realized it. The whole rumination soured me on the left's ability to evolve beyond caricature as a mass movement. Show nested quote +On July 20 2019 04:24 GreenHorizons wrote:
I've been talking about this with other leftists and it's importance to political imagination. A lot of what we have today was imagined in sci-fi and people were like "that's cool, let's make that real". Socialism could certainly benefit from such propaganda. The lack of imagination in viable alternatives to capitalism is a major stumbling block for the movement. It wasn't always the case. Utopian literature that full-throatedly celebrated or prominently advocated for socialism flourished in the 50's and 60's despite the worst rumors coming from the Soviet Union. Part of it undoubtedly was that we still had faith that technology could unequivocally transform human life for the better beyond the private realm. Nowadays one gets ambivalent about the Internet of Things, social alienation from social media, and what not. Show nested quote +On July 20 2019 04:24 GreenHorizons wrote:
I feel like there's room for a fascinating investigation into whether people really identify The Matrix as dystopian though. Presented under different framing (less ominous narration) it could be describing the saving of humanity by AI that Art mentioned.
iirc the Animatrix does this a bit giving some of the back story from the AI's perspective. Cypher certainly saw the Matrix as a boon. What was the point of living in a shithole if the illusion was indistinguishable from reality? The worldbuilding of the movie is a bit suspect. "Human batteries" are really wasteful in terms of energy production; geothermal plants would've solved the machines' problem at the expense of negating the premise.
Yeah I get it. Disentangling legitimate critique of the blindspots of white leftists and shitty neoliberal identity politics is a lot of what I spend my time on among my circles on the left and I've left twitter pretty much for many of the reasons mentioned.
The US (this isn't exceptionalism but circumstance) has particular issues surrounding race and a significant minority population that are deeply ingrained into society in ways that are somewhat unique. That's just to say that European leftists tend to have a different perspective on the role race and identity play and often simply struggle to fathom (reasonably so) the intrinsic nature to US society as we know it.
Granted there are terrible identity politics out there there's a gap between typical European (even among the outcasts) leftism and the issues with the global south and marginalized populations within the western empire.
Part of which is a bit of fetishistic approach to leftists of color I think kinda captured in this excerpt.
Malcolm X, Che, politics as a psychedelic dismantling of existing reality: this was communism as something cool, sexy and proletarian, instead of a finger-wagging sermon.
It sort of strips them of their praxis and turns them into projectors of image rather than examining their functional contributions.
Having this dialogue everywhere else is a bit tiresome but it's obvious to me there are white leftists not taking into consideration the perspectives/contributions of leftists of color and leftists of color exploiting their identity to avoid tougher theoretical examination. We needn't wallow in this though imo. There are people among "both" groups which synthesize them in ways we can learn from.
I mostly like Brand and don't think he should be canceled for saying/doing something stupid on occasion. I also wouldn't quite laud him like was done there.
1. Yeah, timing is a mother. 10 years give or take, if the tide isn't turning I'd probably just focus on planning for the aftermath.
2. Oh yeah, not disagreeing with that. First amendment isn't absolute, so I choose my battles.
3. Gotya, well ya know I don't want to go "No true Scotsman" but ya know lol. This is why I think conscientization is so important (and our only hope really).
On the matrix yeah to the worldbuilding, but I think neoliberalism is basically being cypher without the courage of his convictions.
EDIT: Oh on the battery part, that could literally be them saving humanity and giving us "an afterlife" despite not needing to and humans misinterpreting the relationship.
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@GH
Who are you referring to when you refer to white leftists that think you can just transpose Marx on the US and be done with it?
@CSpiral
What are some of the many left tenets that align with neoliberalism?
edit: or rather tenets that align with neoliberalism while being ostensibly associated with anticapitalism, or is your point that the anticapitalism is reduced to a slogan and they simply take an identity-based social justice approach to neoliberalism, as elaborated by Fisher’s essay on the vampire castle
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On July 20 2019 05:32 IgnE wrote:
@GH
Who are you referring to when you refer to white leftists that think you can just transpose Marx on the US and be done with it?
@CSpiral
What are some of the many left tenets that align with neoliberalism?
edit: or rather tenets that align with neoliberalism while being ostensibly associated with anticapitalism, or is your point that the anticapitalism is reduced to a slogan and they simply take an identity-based social justice approach to neoliberalism, as elaborated by Fisher’s essay on the vampire castle
Speaking generically and to my personal interactions outside of the forum especially on Twitter. But there's also an "ID-pol" reddit that I don't comment in but read that's pretty emblematic of what I'm talking about. That's a gross reduction of what they are doing btw, but essentially they think dealing with race can be an afterthought to class disregarding (or at least not properly treating imo) the influence race has specifically on US society relative to the European societies (and the theory that came out of it)
I'd guess the latter to which I wouldn't really object as I would to the former (as you seem to be indicating you would as well).
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On July 19 2019 13:26 Wegandi wrote:Show nested quote +On July 19 2019 04:02 ShambhalaWar wrote:On July 19 2019 02:35 IgnE wrote:On July 19 2019 01:45 ShambhalaWar wrote:On July 19 2019 00:05 IgnE wrote:On July 18 2019 15:29 ShambhalaWar wrote:On July 18 2019 13:46 IgnE wrote:On July 18 2019 13:20 ShambhalaWar wrote:On July 18 2019 11:35 IgnE wrote:On July 18 2019 09:42 ShambhalaWar wrote:
[quote]
You nailed it dude... I 1,000,000% agree with this.
I as that as a milk-toast, Scotts-Irish, white ass American man. About 8 years ago I was confronted with the reality of my privilege and I did not want to accept it, but eventually did, and it opened my fucking eyes.
“When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.”
Equality requires the privileged to relinquish some of their power, most are unwilling to do that.
When I was a little kid growing up on the east coast in the semi-south I used to think my black friends would lie about all the horrible shit that happened to them, I thought, "why do they make this stuff up?" Turns out I just never had to deal with it, so it was invisible to me... that is privilege. What power have you relinquished in order to work towards equality? I would say the first step, and probably the most important is simply acknowledging that I have privilege, and giving up my ignorance about my privilege. The nature of privilege is ignorance, the privileged people don't have to consider the problems other people do. So in regard to racial privilege, in acknowledging it I would think there comes some degree of commitment in calling it out when I see rather than just letting it slide because, "I'm white and it doesn't affect me." If I'm playing a game a CSGO and I hear the N word (happens all the time), rather than just be ok with that, I can at the very least confront them on it, and report the account. There are many different versions of that... for example is I see a nazi symbol written on a wall, I can get a pen and mark over it. Donate to a charity organization that combats racial inequality, march for black lives matter. I haven't done these latter two things, but for a lot of my black friends growing up I apologized for not believe them when we were kids, and tell them I believe them now. Small steps, but if all privileged people did that, the world would change. I thought there was more to privilege than that. You don't sound like someone who's given much of any thought to the subject. What's the point of your post? Are you actually curious about my experience or just want something to rail against? The post GH made that I quoted, you sound exactly like the type of person that post describes. Equality feels like oppression for you, that true for you or you just never even gave it a thought? No, I'm actually just surprised at how little privilege you actually had to relinquish. It's almost like you didn't have much power in the first place. You really stretched there, too, with the suggestion to donate to BLM. Giving away money counts as giving away power I guess. But maybe the metaphorical language doesn't really work? Why do you think this idea that giving up privilege feels like oppression resonates with you so much when your examples of giving up privilege are so lame? I can think of something else that might better describe the experience of 1) conversion to a cause, 2) spreading the good news to blasphemers, and 3) tithing — but "relinquishing power" isn't it. I'll ask again... What is the point of your post? Does Equality feel like oppression for you? And if you don't think money is power, you are incredibly naive. I am trying to decide why this “relinquish (white) power” articulation seems so off to me. Who are the kind of people you imagine when you imagine indignant whites for whom giving up privilege feels like oppression? Are they people who can actually give up “power”? What kind of power do they have and don’t have, now, in 2019? And what kind of power do you gain as a “woke” white who can preach to others? I feel obliged to point out that 1) I acknowledged that giving money might be some kind of “relinquishing power” although such language feels overwrought — I’m not sure why that would be different in kind from other charitable giving or why it would feel oppressive and 2) you said you haven’t actually given money to BLM so it seems fairly moot. As for my personal opinion, no, equality doesn’t feel like oppression to me, hence my line of questioning. Personally, I am inclined more towards the idea of “recognition.” edit: given that someone posted a Nazi talking about “race-recognition” while I was typing this post, I have to now clarify that I meant “recognition” in the sense of Hegel or Levinas: recognition of the subject. Not some scientistic recognition of race, which we want to deconstruct anyway right? You speak like someone who really doesn't understand the concept of privilege, which is really the nature of it privilege... you don't have to worry about it because it doesn't directly affect you. If you are are white, there are a host of difficulties in life you don't have to worry about... In other words, day to day, you don't have to give these difficulties a second of thought, but minorities do, because they are affected by the difficulties. For example, as a white person, when you are pulled over by the police in America, you don't have to worry about being killed in the same way an African-American does. When you get pulled over you expect to pay a speeding ticket. When an African-American gets pulled over they have to worry they might die. The privileged person doesn't have to give a seconds thought to the latter problem, that is their privilege... To walk through life worrying about other things and thinking about things other than being killed by a cop. Let's use your word... recognition. If you "recognize" your privilege, that is the first step, Yay! After you recognize it, you can do other things to be allies for minority groups, and there are varying degrees of time and effort you can put toward that. But... by virtue of "recognizing" your privilege, you are in a sense giving up some degree of your power, because you can no longer just pretend minority groups aren't being persecuted. And it's also not enough to simply now "recognize" your privilege, you have to speak out against it... or be the person who knows and does nothing. Those scenario's are flatly untrue. While yes, an African-American has a higher likelihood of violent incident with the police based on their percentage of the general populace (13%>25%), that's not to say that whites don't also have to worry about those things (who do you think are the majority of folks killed by police...it's white people). To actually believe that the police mostly only kill or violate the rights of blacks is patently false (and easily disproven with publicly available data). The police fuck everyone, some more than others, but they fuck everyone (unless you're politically connected that is). You do your argument a disservice by its extreme hyperbole (and also alienating a lot of white people who you could pretty easily convince to join the side of police reform). https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/(WaPo has a decent resource as well)
These are great sources, I'll use them both.
In the WaPo article I'm guessing you just read the one sentence in the post article, "most people killed by police were white" (the rest of the article didn't impact/interest you?). The problem with that is percentages do matter... that's why people use them in statistics. So for some reason you don't think percentages matter?
White people make up over 60% of the population, so yes... the number of white people killed will be larger, but if you were born black you have a higher chance of being killed by police, at least 200% more (whatever 3x comes out to). Just by virtue of being born that color.
Is this the washington post article?
The literal conclusion of the article is exactly the same as my point.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/08/29/we-gathered-data-on-every-confirmed-line-of-duty-police-killing-of-a-civilian-in-2014-and-2015-heres-what-we-found/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.f600d762c567
If it is... this washington post article literally says,
"Most people killed by police were white. In 2014 and 2015, white people made up about 62 percent of the U.S. population and are underrepresented in this group. Meanwhile, blacks made up 17.9 percent of the country and are dramatically overrepresented. In other words, African Americans are disproportionately more likely to be killed by police than white people. Latinos also are overrepresented in data on killings by police, making up 17.6 percent of the population but 19.3 percent of these deaths."
Apparently WaPo love hyperbole as much as I do.
I also LOVE that the article you linked me, literally opens with this graphic...
![[image loading]](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/54ecf211e4b0ed744420c5b6/t/594ea218d482e9221abf6674/1498325585644/policearemostlikelytokillblackpeople.png?format=1000w)
![[image loading]](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/54ecf211e4b0ed744420c5b6/t/569534449cadb69b288bedee/1452618828280/2015policekillingsunarmed.jpeg?format=750w)
So I'm genuinely fucking curious... Do you just not read any of your sources, or do you read them and them magically make up your own alternative reality where you pretend these facts mean something different than what they literally say?
I mean both your sources explicitly say... if you are black you have a much higher chance of being killed by police... or be profiled, or harassed, or etc...
It's as though you read my statements and think I said, "A white person has never been killed by a police officer ever... (and then you say) THAT'S A LIE! SUCH HYPERBOLE!"
And then you proceed to link me information backing my point (while simultaneously missing the entire fucking point of the website, which is that black people are disproportionally affected)... and claiming, "look white people get killed too!"
I don't think I can help you man... You are like the people in the gun thread that think dems want to take all their guns... Nothing I can say to them or you.
But definitely, you don't understand your privilege. You have a massive blindspot for that, and in my humble opinion it behooves all of us as white people to understand our privilege, otherwise things will never change.
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On July 20 2019 04:00 CosmicSpiral wrote:I disagree with this to the extent capitalism is distinct from neoliberalism. The latter demolished the divisions early capitalistic philosophers made between the market and all other avenues of private and public life (I'm using Mirowski's conception as neoliberalism a cluster of heterogeneous, interrelated ideological positions instead of a strict definition). Granted "classic capitalism" does not solve the issue of inequality - if anything, it assumes a baseline level of inequality. However, it establishes bulwarks against the moral hazard and top-heavy accumulation of wealth that are currently endemic by sequestering the market as a limited domain. By contrast, neoliberalism assumes " individualized, arms-length market exchange", is the template by which most human interactions past a certain threshold ought to be conducted.
In my view it's a fairly logical consequence of the principles and the layout of liberalism and capitalism that neoliberalism ends up the dominant form of organization after a while. I would expect that to happen just from the textbooks. I guess it could be results oriented in that, well, it happened, but I'd be interested in reading your take on this if you disagree.
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Netherlands19129 Posts
On July 20 2019 08:21 ShambhalaWar wrote:Show nested quote +On July 19 2019 13:26 Wegandi wrote:On July 19 2019 04:02 ShambhalaWar wrote:On July 19 2019 02:35 IgnE wrote:On July 19 2019 01:45 ShambhalaWar wrote:On July 19 2019 00:05 IgnE wrote:On July 18 2019 15:29 ShambhalaWar wrote:On July 18 2019 13:46 IgnE wrote:On July 18 2019 13:20 ShambhalaWar wrote:On July 18 2019 11:35 IgnE wrote:
[quote]
What power have you relinquished in order to work towards equality? I would say the first step, and probably the most important is simply acknowledging that I have privilege, and giving up my ignorance about my privilege. The nature of privilege is ignorance, the privileged people don't have to consider the problems other people do. So in regard to racial privilege, in acknowledging it I would think there comes some degree of commitment in calling it out when I see rather than just letting it slide because, "I'm white and it doesn't affect me." If I'm playing a game a CSGO and I hear the N word (happens all the time), rather than just be ok with that, I can at the very least confront them on it, and report the account. There are many different versions of that... for example is I see a nazi symbol written on a wall, I can get a pen and mark over it. Donate to a charity organization that combats racial inequality, march for black lives matter. I haven't done these latter two things, but for a lot of my black friends growing up I apologized for not believe them when we were kids, and tell them I believe them now. Small steps, but if all privileged people did that, the world would change. I thought there was more to privilege than that. You don't sound like someone who's given much of any thought to the subject. What's the point of your post? Are you actually curious about my experience or just want something to rail against? The post GH made that I quoted, you sound exactly like the type of person that post describes. Equality feels like oppression for you, that true for you or you just never even gave it a thought? No, I'm actually just surprised at how little privilege you actually had to relinquish. It's almost like you didn't have much power in the first place. You really stretched there, too, with the suggestion to donate to BLM. Giving away money counts as giving away power I guess. But maybe the metaphorical language doesn't really work? Why do you think this idea that giving up privilege feels like oppression resonates with you so much when your examples of giving up privilege are so lame? I can think of something else that might better describe the experience of 1) conversion to a cause, 2) spreading the good news to blasphemers, and 3) tithing — but "relinquishing power" isn't it. I'll ask again... What is the point of your post? Does Equality feel like oppression for you? And if you don't think money is power, you are incredibly naive. I am trying to decide why this “relinquish (white) power” articulation seems so off to me. Who are the kind of people you imagine when you imagine indignant whites for whom giving up privilege feels like oppression? Are they people who can actually give up “power”? What kind of power do they have and don’t have, now, in 2019? And what kind of power do you gain as a “woke” white who can preach to others? I feel obliged to point out that 1) I acknowledged that giving money might be some kind of “relinquishing power” although such language feels overwrought — I’m not sure why that would be different in kind from other charitable giving or why it would feel oppressive and 2) you said you haven’t actually given money to BLM so it seems fairly moot. As for my personal opinion, no, equality doesn’t feel like oppression to me, hence my line of questioning. Personally, I am inclined more towards the idea of “recognition.” edit: given that someone posted a Nazi talking about “race-recognition” while I was typing this post, I have to now clarify that I meant “recognition” in the sense of Hegel or Levinas: recognition of the subject. Not some scientistic recognition of race, which we want to deconstruct anyway right? You speak like someone who really doesn't understand the concept of privilege, which is really the nature of it privilege... you don't have to worry about it because it doesn't directly affect you. If you are are white, there are a host of difficulties in life you don't have to worry about... In other words, day to day, you don't have to give these difficulties a second of thought, but minorities do, because they are affected by the difficulties. For example, as a white person, when you are pulled over by the police in America, you don't have to worry about being killed in the same way an African-American does. When you get pulled over you expect to pay a speeding ticket. When an African-American gets pulled over they have to worry they might die. The privileged person doesn't have to give a seconds thought to the latter problem, that is their privilege... To walk through life worrying about other things and thinking about things other than being killed by a cop. Let's use your word... recognition. If you "recognize" your privilege, that is the first step, Yay! After you recognize it, you can do other things to be allies for minority groups, and there are varying degrees of time and effort you can put toward that. But... by virtue of "recognizing" your privilege, you are in a sense giving up some degree of your power, because you can no longer just pretend minority groups aren't being persecuted. And it's also not enough to simply now "recognize" your privilege, you have to speak out against it... or be the person who knows and does nothing. Those scenario's are flatly untrue. While yes, an African-American has a higher likelihood of violent incident with the police based on their percentage of the general populace (13%>25%), that's not to say that whites don't also have to worry about those things (who do you think are the majority of folks killed by police...it's white people). To actually believe that the police mostly only kill or violate the rights of blacks is patently false (and easily disproven with publicly available data). The police fuck everyone, some more than others, but they fuck everyone (unless you're politically connected that is). You do your argument a disservice by its extreme hyperbole (and also alienating a lot of white people who you could pretty easily convince to join the side of police reform). https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/(WaPo has a decent resource as well) These are great sources, I'll use them both. In the WaPo article I'm guessing you just read the one sentence in the post article, "most people killed by police were white" (the rest of the article didn't impact/interest you?). The problem with that is percentages do matter... that's why people use them in statistics. So for some reason you don't think percentages matter?
White people make up over 60% of the population, so yes... the number of white people killed will be larger, but if you were born black you have a higher chance of being killed by police, at least 200% more (whatever 3x comes out to). Just by virtue of being born that color. Is this the washington post article? The literal conclusion of the article is exactly the same as my point. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/08/29/we-gathered-data-on-every-confirmed-line-of-duty-police-killing-of-a-civilian-in-2014-and-2015-heres-what-we-found/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.f600d762c567If it is... this washington post article literally says, "Most people killed by police were white. In 2014 and 2015, white people made up about 62 percent of the U.S. population and are underrepresented in this group. Meanwhile, blacks made up 17.9 percent of the country and are dramatically overrepresented. In other words, African Americans are disproportionately more likely to be killed by police than white people. Latinos also are overrepresented in data on killings by police, making up 17.6 percent of the population but 19.3 percent of these deaths." Apparently WaPo love hyperbole as much as I do. I also LOVE that the article you linked me, literally opens with this graphic... So I'm genuinely fucking curious... Do you just not read any of your sources, or do you read them and them magically make up your own alternative reality where you pretend these facts mean something different than what they literally say?I mean both your sources explicitly say... if you are black you have a much higher chance of being killed by police... or be profiled, or harassed, or etc... It's as though you read my statements and think I said, "A white person has never been killed by a police officer ever... (and then you say) THAT'S A LIE! SUCH HYPERBOLE!" And then you proceed to link me information backing my point (while simultaneously missing the entire fucking point of the website, which is that black people are disproportionally affected)... and claiming, "look white people get killed too!" I don't think I can help you man... You are like the people in the gun thread that think dems want to take all their guns... Nothing I can say to them or you. But definitely, you don't understand your privilege. You have a massive blindspot for that, and in my humble opinion it behooves all of us as white people to understand our privilege, otherwise things will never change.
Just to make a quick jump into this, you throw statistics and then blame priviledge while ignoring the influence of culture. Disclosure up front, the term priviledge alone makes my skin crawl so you'll take anything I write with a few grains of salt probably and I am of the opinion that nature abhors equality. Black and latino culture in large parts of the US are a major influence on active crime rates and have been throughout the entire 20th and 21st century so far. The higher rates of crime in certain communities are directly responsible for a higher exposure to lawenforcement and the way subjects are approached by them. And looking at statistics on crime in certain areas and police injury and fatality it appears not entirely unjustifiably so.
I mean what is the follow up here otherwise, the overrepresentation of americans of non european descent is due to alot of them being wrongfully convicted and innocent while in prison? Sounds ludicrous to me, especially with regards to the overrepresentation of violent crime amongst those cultures. The more I hear of this and read on it the more I see a historical base for post slavery hard conditions sculpting a preexisting cultural base for american minorities that leads to tribalism and extraordinary rates of crime. This has been boosted during certain parts of the last century due to the cultural economic base in those communities leaving them extremely vulnerable to drug related issues.
It appears to be a cultural problem that needs to be dealt with, but seeing how the above mentioned things are still glorified in today's rap culture especially I am sceptical of this with regards to the short term at least.
This is all not to detract from the fact that any death is a tragedy, especially at the hands of those whom we entrust with our safety in the form of any law enforcement officer. There might be a reasonable base for the mentioned statistics but that should not mean it is desireable or acceptable in any way and deserves to be monitored and acted upon whenever possible. But I think it is unreasonable and undesireable to ignore the facts and circumstances that give rise to the cited statistics in your post.
So I fail to see how priviledge has anything to do with solving this cultural disaster except for boosting victim culture and feeding more into the current intersectional bullshitstorm. Taking personal responsibility for yourself, your family and your community seems to be the only way this actually goes somewhere in the relevant communities.
So like I stated earlier, I fully agree with you that this is not an acceptable place to be and that these incidents are all horrible horrible things to happen as they leave families devastated but I am of the opinion that there is an underlying cause that is largely being ignored due to current victim culture and the apparant lack of responsibility and that it is not racism. (But obviously racism exists and contributes to this but I think it's influences are overstated and not the main root cause.)
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United States15275 Posts
On July 20 2019 05:32 IgnE wrote:
@CSpiral
What are some of the many left tenets that align with neoliberalism?
edit: or rather tenets that align with neoliberalism while being ostensibly associated with anticapitalism, or is your point that the anticapitalism is reduced to a slogan and they simply take an identity-based social justice approach to neoliberalism, as elaborated by Fisher’s essay on the vampire castle
The short answer is that their epistemological, metaphysical, and ethical precepts neatly align. Big surprise, two radical offshoots stemming from classic liberal tradition that prize autonomy as the highest virtue happen to share the same underlying currents. Progressives generally don't recognize this as they frame neoliberalism as antithetical to their own ideology by focusing on how the conclusions differ. If one wonders why ardent supports of equality and freedom can evangelize mega-corporations like Google and operate guilt-free within the confines of Hollywood, well...avoiding cognitive dissonance is easy when the similarities run so deep.
A similar phenomenon occurs when contrasting fascism with communism. I explained some pages back how fascism derived its praxis and social theories from left-wing thinkers, which ensures its tactics mirror radical left groups like Antifa. Horseshoe theory fails on account of assuming the extremes converge; in reality, they operate from the same playbook.
On July 20 2019 08:26 Nebuchad wrote:
In my view it's a fairly logical consequence of the principles and the layout of liberalism and capitalism that neoliberalism ends up the dominant form of organization after a while. I would expect that to happen just from the textbooks. I guess it could be results oriented in that, well, it happened, but I'd be interested in reading your take on this if you disagree.
While historical accounts give the impression neoliberalism was a natural progression from capitalism and liberalism, it represented a marked break from both traditions. It was the brainchild of a few public intellectuals who aggressively promoted it through think tanks and adviser positions; its key representatives viewed liberalism and democracy as antimonies, although they didn't proclaim so outside of the MPS; the epistemological justification for ceding judgment to the market would have been utterly alien to Smith or any Enlightenment-influenced philosopher.
It's late over here. I'll fully elaborate on each post tomorrow.
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On July 20 2019 14:32 Nyovne wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On July 20 2019 08:21 ShambhalaWar wrote:Show nested quote +On July 19 2019 13:26 Wegandi wrote:On July 19 2019 04:02 ShambhalaWar wrote:On July 19 2019 02:35 IgnE wrote:On July 19 2019 01:45 ShambhalaWar wrote:On July 19 2019 00:05 IgnE wrote:On July 18 2019 15:29 ShambhalaWar wrote:On July 18 2019 13:46 IgnE wrote:On July 18 2019 13:20 ShambhalaWar wrote:On July 18 2019 11:35 IgnE wrote:
[quote]
What power have you relinquished in order to work towards equality? I would say the first step, and probably the most important is simply acknowledging that I have privilege, and giving up my ignorance about my privilege. The nature of privilege is ignorance, the privileged people don't have to consider the problems other people do. So in regard to racial privilege, in acknowledging it I would think there comes some degree of commitment in calling it out when I see rather than just letting it slide because, "I'm white and it doesn't affect me." If I'm playing a game a CSGO and I hear the N word (happens all the time), rather than just be ok with that, I can at the very least confront them on it, and report the account. There are many different versions of that... for example is I see a nazi symbol written on a wall, I can get a pen and mark over it. Donate to a charity organization that combats racial inequality, march for black lives matter. I haven't done these latter two things, but for a lot of my black friends growing up I apologized for not believe them when we were kids, and tell them I believe them now. Small steps, but if all privileged people did that, the world would change. I thought there was more to privilege than that. You don't sound like someone who's given much of any thought to the subject. What's the point of your post? Are you actually curious about my experience or just want something to rail against? The post GH made that I quoted, you sound exactly like the type of person that post describes. Equality feels like oppression for you, that true for you or you just never even gave it a thought? No, I'm actually just surprised at how little privilege you actually had to relinquish. It's almost like you didn't have much power in the first place. You really stretched there, too, with the suggestion to donate to BLM. Giving away money counts as giving away power I guess. But maybe the metaphorical language doesn't really work? Why do you think this idea that giving up privilege feels like oppression resonates with you so much when your examples of giving up privilege are so lame? I can think of something else that might better describe the experience of 1) conversion to a cause, 2) spreading the good news to blasphemers, and 3) tithing — but "relinquishing power" isn't it. I'll ask again... What is the point of your post? Does Equality feel like oppression for you? And if you don't think money is power, you are incredibly naive. I am trying to decide why this “relinquish (white) power” articulation seems so off to me. Who are the kind of people you imagine when you imagine indignant whites for whom giving up privilege feels like oppression? Are they people who can actually give up “power”? What kind of power do they have and don’t have, now, in 2019? And what kind of power do you gain as a “woke” white who can preach to others? I feel obliged to point out that 1) I acknowledged that giving money might be some kind of “relinquishing power” although such language feels overwrought — I’m not sure why that would be different in kind from other charitable giving or why it would feel oppressive and 2) you said you haven’t actually given money to BLM so it seems fairly moot. As for my personal opinion, no, equality doesn’t feel like oppression to me, hence my line of questioning. Personally, I am inclined more towards the idea of “recognition.” edit: given that someone posted a Nazi talking about “race-recognition” while I was typing this post, I have to now clarify that I meant “recognition” in the sense of Hegel or Levinas: recognition of the subject. Not some scientistic recognition of race, which we want to deconstruct anyway right? You speak like someone who really doesn't understand the concept of privilege, which is really the nature of it privilege... you don't have to worry about it because it doesn't directly affect you. If you are are white, there are a host of difficulties in life you don't have to worry about... In other words, day to day, you don't have to give these difficulties a second of thought, but minorities do, because they are affected by the difficulties. For example, as a white person, when you are pulled over by the police in America, you don't have to worry about being killed in the same way an African-American does. When you get pulled over you expect to pay a speeding ticket. When an African-American gets pulled over they have to worry they might die. The privileged person doesn't have to give a seconds thought to the latter problem, that is their privilege... To walk through life worrying about other things and thinking about things other than being killed by a cop. Let's use your word... recognition. If you "recognize" your privilege, that is the first step, Yay! After you recognize it, you can do other things to be allies for minority groups, and there are varying degrees of time and effort you can put toward that. But... by virtue of "recognizing" your privilege, you are in a sense giving up some degree of your power, because you can no longer just pretend minority groups aren't being persecuted. And it's also not enough to simply now "recognize" your privilege, you have to speak out against it... or be the person who knows and does nothing. Those scenario's are flatly untrue. While yes, an African-American has a higher likelihood of violent incident with the police based on their percentage of the general populace (13%>25%), that's not to say that whites don't also have to worry about those things (who do you think are the majority of folks killed by police...it's white people). To actually believe that the police mostly only kill or violate the rights of blacks is patently false (and easily disproven with publicly available data). The police fuck everyone, some more than others, but they fuck everyone (unless you're politically connected that is). You do your argument a disservice by its extreme hyperbole (and also alienating a lot of white people who you could pretty easily convince to join the side of police reform). https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/(WaPo has a decent resource as well) These are great sources, I'll use them both. In the WaPo article I'm guessing you just read the one sentence in the post article, "most people killed by police were white" (the rest of the article didn't impact/interest you?). The problem with that is percentages do matter... that's why people use them in statistics. So for some reason you don't think percentages matter?
White people make up over 60% of the population, so yes... the number of white people killed will be larger, but if you were born black you have a higher chance of being killed by police, at least 200% more (whatever 3x comes out to). Just by virtue of being born that color. Is this the washington post article? The literal conclusion of the article is exactly the same as my point. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/08/29/we-gathered-data-on-every-confirmed-line-of-duty-police-killing-of-a-civilian-in-2014-and-2015-heres-what-we-found/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.f600d762c567If it is... this washington post article literally says, "Most people killed by police were white. In 2014 and 2015, white people made up about 62 percent of the U.S. population and are underrepresented in this group. Meanwhile, blacks made up 17.9 percent of the country and are dramatically overrepresented. In other words, African Americans are disproportionately more likely to be killed by police than white people. Latinos also are overrepresented in data on killings by police, making up 17.6 percent of the population but 19.3 percent of these deaths." Apparently WaPo love hyperbole as much as I do. I also LOVE that the article you linked me, literally opens with this graphic... So I'm genuinely fucking curious... Do you just not read any of your sources, or do you read them and them magically make up your own alternative reality where you pretend these facts mean something different than what they literally say?I mean both your sources explicitly say... if you are black you have a much higher chance of being killed by police... or be profiled, or harassed, or etc... It's as though you read my statements and think I said, "A white person has never been killed by a police officer ever... (and then you say) THAT'S A LIE! SUCH HYPERBOLE!" And then you proceed to link me information backing my point (while simultaneously missing the entire fucking point of the website, which is that black people are disproportionally affected)... and claiming, "look white people get killed too!" I don't think I can help you man... You are like the people in the gun thread that think dems want to take all their guns... Nothing I can say to them or you. But definitely, you don't understand your privilege. You have a massive blindspot for that, and in my humble opinion it behooves all of us as white people to understand our privilege, otherwise things will never change. Just to make a quick jump into this, you throw statistics and then blame priviledge while ignoring the influence of culture. Disclosure up front, the term priviledge alone makes my skin crawl so you'll take anything I write with a few grains of salt probably and I am of the opinion that nature abhors equality. Black and latino culture in large parts of the US are a major influence on active crime rates and have been throughout the entire 20th and 21st century so far. The higher rates of crime in certain communities are directly responsible for a higher exposure to lawenforcement and the way subjects are approached by them. And looking at statistics on crime in certain areas and police injury and fatality it appears not entirely unjustifiably so. I mean what is the follow up here otherwise, the overrepresentation of americans of non european descent is due to alot of them being wrongfully convicted and innocent while in prison? Sounds ludicrous to me, especially with regards to the overrepresentation of violent crime amongst those cultures. The more I hear of this and read on it the more I see a historical base for post slavery hard conditions sculpting a preexisting cultural base for american minorities that leads to tribalism and extraordinary rates of crime. This has been boosted during certain parts of the last century due to the cultural economic base in those communities leaving them extremely vulnerable to drug related issues. It appears to be a cultural problem that needs to be dealt with, but seeing how the above mentioned things are still glorified in today's rap culture especially I am sceptical of this with regards to the short term at least. This is all not to detract from the fact that any death is a tragedy, especially at the hands of those whom we entrust with our safety in the form of any law enforcement officer. There might be a reasonable base for the mentioned statistics but that should not mean it is desireable or acceptable in any way and deserves to be monitored and acted upon whenever possible. But I think it is unreasonable and undesireable to ignore the facts and circumstances that give rise to the cited statistics in your post. So I fail to see how priviledge has anything to do with solving this cultural disaster except for boosting victim culture and feeding more into the current intersectional bullshitstorm. Taking personal responsibility for yourself, your family and your community seems to be the only way this actually goes somewhere in the relevant communities. So like I stated earlier, I fully agree with you that this is not an acceptable place to be and that these incidents are all horrible horrible things to happen as they leave families devastated but I am of the opinion that there is an underlying cause that is largely being ignored due to current victim culture and the apparant lack of responsibility and that it is not racism. (But obviously racism exists and contributes to this but I think it's influences are overstated and not the main root cause.)
I mean what is the follow up here otherwise, the overrepresentation of americans of non european descent is due to alot of them being wrongfully convicted and innocent while in prison?
Actually it's exactly that (as well as other factors some of which shamb mentioned) and we've known for decades.
There's a "cultural disaster" at the root of the problem alright, but it's not Black or Latinx culture that has it.
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Schumer is now calling for basically what Trump called for a few months back that asylum seekers should stay in their countries and apply from there.
Schumer said that it would be more “fair and a lot easier” to allow people to apply for asylum in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. He acknowledged the need for more immigration judges and ways to deal with gang violence, but said addressing asylum issues is “much better of a solution than what we saw here.”
www.politico.com
When Trump said it people said it was moronic, it still is. Because of who asylum seekers are...
Who is an asylum seeker?
An asylum seeker is someone who has fled their home in search of safety and formally applied for legal protection in another country. Because he or she cannot obtain protection in their home country, they seek it elsewhere. Asylum seekers may be of any age, gender, socio-economic status, or nationality—though the majority come from regions of the world that are suffering from conflict, disaster, and weak rule of law
www.rescue.org
Granted he's using Trump's concentration camps as the excuse, essentially saying the US can't keep asylum seekers safe from our own government's gangsters so they are better off where they are fleeing from...
If you lived long enough to get a hearing they'd undoubtedly use that fact against your claim to not be safe...
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On July 20 2019 14:32 Nyovne wrote:
I mean what is the follow up here otherwise, the overrepresentation of americans of non european descent is due to alot of them being wrongfully convicted and innocent while in prison? Sounds ludicrous to me, especially with regards to the overrepresentation of violent crime amongst those cultures. The more I hear of this and read on it the more I see a historical base for post slavery hard conditions sculpting a preexisting cultural base for american minorities that leads to tribalism and extraordinary rates of crime. This has been boosted during certain parts of the last century due to the cultural economic base in those communities leaving them extremely vulnerable to drug related issues. It isn't actually ludicrous though because that's exactly what the problem is. It's not necessarily just wrong convictions, but more so that charges and sentences tend to be substantially harsher for people, especially people of colour, from lower socio-economic groups, even for non-violent crime. This leads to there being a disproportionate amount of people from racial minorities being in prison. Contrast this with the high profile US court case recently where a judge indicated he was hesitant to charge a white man with sexually assaulting a woman despite the man even describing what he did as rape in text messages with friends because the judge didn't want to harm this man's "bright future". It's pretty obvious that there's an issue since it just happens to be white people, especially wealthy ones, who get all the lenient prison sentences or are let off easy by the police.
And this topic is 100% a privilege issue. White people in North America tend to be given the benefit of the doubt in a way that black and latinx people are not. This extends to how police handle people in when responding to situations. In several of the high profile shootings of unarmed black people, the people shot were holding cell phones or other benign objects, and the officer just assumed the object was a weapon and shot before confirming the person was armed. In many cases, the people being shot are shot within a minute of the officer showing up, and little or nothing was done to attempt to de-escalate the situation. This doesn't seem to happen nearly as frequently with white people, and the statistics back this up.
And bringing up rap music? What is this? 1990s Phil Donahue? Next you're gonna start blaming video games and that evil MTV channel.
As GH alluded to, it's not the cultures of various minorities that are the problem. It's police culture. It's not a "black culture" thing that police just happen to stop black people significantly more frequently than white people. It isn't a "latino culture" thing that police in states like Arizona frequently stop latinx people and ask for identification but don't do the same for white people (don't get me started on Joe Arpaio). It's police culture and racial profiling, and it's been a substantial issue for decades.
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On July 20 2019 14:32 Nyovne wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2019 08:21 ShambhalaWar wrote:On July 19 2019 13:26 Wegandi wrote:On July 19 2019 04:02 ShambhalaWar wrote:On July 19 2019 02:35 IgnE wrote:On July 19 2019 01:45 ShambhalaWar wrote:On July 19 2019 00:05 IgnE wrote:On July 18 2019 15:29 ShambhalaWar wrote:On July 18 2019 13:46 IgnE wrote:On July 18 2019 13:20 ShambhalaWar wrote:
[quote]
I would say the first step, and probably the most important is simply acknowledging that I have privilege, and giving up my ignorance about my privilege.
The nature of privilege is ignorance, the privileged people don't have to consider the problems other people do. So in regard to racial privilege, in acknowledging it I would think there comes some degree of commitment in calling it out when I see rather than just letting it slide because, "I'm white and it doesn't affect me."
If I'm playing a game a CSGO and I hear the N word (happens all the time), rather than just be ok with that, I can at the very least confront them on it, and report the account. There are many different versions of that... for example is I see a nazi symbol written on a wall, I can get a pen and mark over it.
Donate to a charity organization that combats racial inequality, march for black lives matter. I haven't done these latter two things, but for a lot of my black friends growing up I apologized for not believe them when we were kids, and tell them I believe them now.
Small steps, but if all privileged people did that, the world would change. I thought there was more to privilege than that. You don't sound like someone who's given much of any thought to the subject. What's the point of your post? Are you actually curious about my experience or just want something to rail against? The post GH made that I quoted, you sound exactly like the type of person that post describes. Equality feels like oppression for you, that true for you or you just never even gave it a thought? No, I'm actually just surprised at how little privilege you actually had to relinquish. It's almost like you didn't have much power in the first place. You really stretched there, too, with the suggestion to donate to BLM. Giving away money counts as giving away power I guess. But maybe the metaphorical language doesn't really work? Why do you think this idea that giving up privilege feels like oppression resonates with you so much when your examples of giving up privilege are so lame? I can think of something else that might better describe the experience of 1) conversion to a cause, 2) spreading the good news to blasphemers, and 3) tithing — but "relinquishing power" isn't it. I'll ask again... What is the point of your post? Does Equality feel like oppression for you? And if you don't think money is power, you are incredibly naive. I am trying to decide why this “relinquish (white) power” articulation seems so off to me. Who are the kind of people you imagine when you imagine indignant whites for whom giving up privilege feels like oppression? Are they people who can actually give up “power”? What kind of power do they have and don’t have, now, in 2019? And what kind of power do you gain as a “woke” white who can preach to others? I feel obliged to point out that 1) I acknowledged that giving money might be some kind of “relinquishing power” although such language feels overwrought — I’m not sure why that would be different in kind from other charitable giving or why it would feel oppressive and 2) you said you haven’t actually given money to BLM so it seems fairly moot. As for my personal opinion, no, equality doesn’t feel like oppression to me, hence my line of questioning. Personally, I am inclined more towards the idea of “recognition.” edit: given that someone posted a Nazi talking about “race-recognition” while I was typing this post, I have to now clarify that I meant “recognition” in the sense of Hegel or Levinas: recognition of the subject. Not some scientistic recognition of race, which we want to deconstruct anyway right? You speak like someone who really doesn't understand the concept of privilege, which is really the nature of it privilege... you don't have to worry about it because it doesn't directly affect you. If you are are white, there are a host of difficulties in life you don't have to worry about... In other words, day to day, you don't have to give these difficulties a second of thought, but minorities do, because they are affected by the difficulties. For example, as a white person, when you are pulled over by the police in America, you don't have to worry about being killed in the same way an African-American does. When you get pulled over you expect to pay a speeding ticket. When an African-American gets pulled over they have to worry they might die. The privileged person doesn't have to give a seconds thought to the latter problem, that is their privilege... To walk through life worrying about other things and thinking about things other than being killed by a cop. Let's use your word... recognition. If you "recognize" your privilege, that is the first step, Yay! After you recognize it, you can do other things to be allies for minority groups, and there are varying degrees of time and effort you can put toward that. But... by virtue of "recognizing" your privilege, you are in a sense giving up some degree of your power, because you can no longer just pretend minority groups aren't being persecuted. And it's also not enough to simply now "recognize" your privilege, you have to speak out against it... or be the person who knows and does nothing. Those scenario's are flatly untrue. While yes, an African-American has a higher likelihood of violent incident with the police based on their percentage of the general populace (13%>25%), that's not to say that whites don't also have to worry about those things (who do you think are the majority of folks killed by police...it's white people). To actually believe that the police mostly only kill or violate the rights of blacks is patently false (and easily disproven with publicly available data). The police fuck everyone, some more than others, but they fuck everyone (unless you're politically connected that is). You do your argument a disservice by its extreme hyperbole (and also alienating a lot of white people who you could pretty easily convince to join the side of police reform). https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/(WaPo has a decent resource as well) These are great sources, I'll use them both. In the WaPo article I'm guessing you just read the one sentence in the post article, "most people killed by police were white" (the rest of the article didn't impact/interest you?). The problem with that is percentages do matter... that's why people use them in statistics. So for some reason you don't think percentages matter?
White people make up over 60% of the population, so yes... the number of white people killed will be larger, but if you were born black you have a higher chance of being killed by police, at least 200% more (whatever 3x comes out to). Just by virtue of being born that color. Is this the washington post article? The literal conclusion of the article is exactly the same as my point. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/08/29/we-gathered-data-on-every-confirmed-line-of-duty-police-killing-of-a-civilian-in-2014-and-2015-heres-what-we-found/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.f600d762c567If it is... this washington post article literally says, "Most people killed by police were white. In 2014 and 2015, white people made up about 62 percent of the U.S. population and are underrepresented in this group. Meanwhile, blacks made up 17.9 percent of the country and are dramatically overrepresented. In other words, African Americans are disproportionately more likely to be killed by police than white people. Latinos also are overrepresented in data on killings by police, making up 17.6 percent of the population but 19.3 percent of these deaths." Apparently WaPo love hyperbole as much as I do. I also LOVE that the article you linked me, literally opens with this graphic... So I'm genuinely fucking curious... Do you just not read any of your sources, or do you read them and them magically make up your own alternative reality where you pretend these facts mean something different than what they literally say?I mean both your sources explicitly say... if you are black you have a much higher chance of being killed by police... or be profiled, or harassed, or etc... It's as though you read my statements and think I said, "A white person has never been killed by a police officer ever... (and then you say) THAT'S A LIE! SUCH HYPERBOLE!" And then you proceed to link me information backing my point (while simultaneously missing the entire fucking point of the website, which is that black people are disproportionally affected)... and claiming, "look white people get killed too!" I don't think I can help you man... You are like the people in the gun thread that think dems want to take all their guns... Nothing I can say to them or you. But definitely, you don't understand your privilege. You have a massive blindspot for that, and in my humble opinion it behooves all of us as white people to understand our privilege, otherwise things will never change. Just to make a quick jump into this, you throw statistics and then blame priviledge while ignoring the influence of culture. Disclosure up front, the term priviledge alone makes my skin crawl so you'll take anything I write with a few grains of salt probably and I am of the opinion that nature abhors equality. Black and latino culture in large parts of the US are a major influence on active crime rates and have been throughout the entire 20th and 21st century so far. The higher rates of crime in certain communities are directly responsible for a higher exposure to lawenforcement and the way subjects are approached by them. And looking at statistics on crime in certain areas and police injury and fatality it appears not entirely unjustifiably so. I mean what is the follow up here otherwise, the overrepresentation of americans of non european descent is due to alot of them being wrongfully convicted and innocent while in prison? Sounds ludicrous to me, especially with regards to the overrepresentation of violent crime amongst those cultures. The more I hear of this and read on it the more I see a historical base for post slavery hard conditions sculpting a preexisting cultural base for american minorities that leads to tribalism and extraordinary rates of crime. This has been boosted during certain parts of the last century due to the cultural economic base in those communities leaving them extremely vulnerable to drug related issues. It appears to be a cultural problem that needs to be dealt with, but seeing how the above mentioned things are still glorified in today's rap culture especially I am sceptical of this with regards to the short term at least. This is all not to detract from the fact that any death is a tragedy, especially at the hands of those whom we entrust with our safety in the form of any law enforcement officer. There might be a reasonable base for the mentioned statistics but that should not mean it is desireable or acceptable in any way and deserves to be monitored and acted upon whenever possible. But I think it is unreasonable and undesireable to ignore the facts and circumstances that give rise to the cited statistics in your post. So I fail to see how priviledge has anything to do with solving this cultural disaster except for boosting victim culture and feeding more into the current intersectional bullshitstorm. Taking personal responsibility for yourself, your family and your community seems to be the only way this actually goes somewhere in the relevant communities. So like I stated earlier, I fully agree with you that this is not an acceptable place to be and that these incidents are all horrible horrible things to happen as they leave families devastated but I am of the opinion that there is an underlying cause that is largely being ignored due to current victim culture and the apparant lack of responsibility and that it is not racism. (But obviously racism exists and contributes to this but I think it's influences are overstated and not the main root cause.)
It is funny how privilege theory gets people really riled up. It's really just another tool to examine society and understand inequality between groups, and a pretty good one. There's a degree of contribution to victim culture, but that doesn't make it wrong.
The problem with privilege theory is that idiots who don't understand it throw the term around constantly, but it's one of the better ideas to come out of the Sociological sphere in a while.
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I think capitalism will eat itself once the automation / AI revolution is in full swing. Either that or we'll have a harsh dystopian outcome. The reaction of the demographic at risk during that time needs to be the correct one.. because only they will have the power to change their fate.
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EPT
