I find it a little lazy and also just unpleasant to interface with.
Have you noticed all the liberal absurdity floating around here? Problematizing liberalism and exposing it’s intimate relationship with capitalism and fascism is a pretty damn difficult job (not to mention long overdue)… and it’s no one on the left’s responsibility to make it pleasant for you on top of all that.
Having your worldview collapse from underneath you is most definitely not a pleasant thing… it’s more akin to the withdrawal symptoms one suffers after going cold turkey. I don’t blame people for avoiding it like the plague… but there is no avoiding it unless we wish to continue living in the fantasy world liberalism has tried (and, for far too long, succeeded) to substitute for reality.
And no… I’m not talking about the fake and contrived “liberal-vs-conservative” dichotomy we all see advertised on CNN and Fox, either.
It goes a long way to making these conversations enjoyable for me.
What did you think I’m on here to do? Write theses for your enjoyment?
I’m not a philosopher - I don’t even like philosophy. I didn’t learn my politics in the ivory towers of academia. My background is in propaganda - and not the type of propaganda you study in sterile lecture halls and classrooms, either.
That’s what I do on here - I disrupt propaganda that requires disrupting… and that includes yours.
So if it sounds to you like I’m “counterpunching” your narratives that’s because I am.
The only reason I’m giving you the time of day is because your arguments are rationally sound - which I find (reasonably) indicative of an honest personality - but the assumptions you base them on are terrifically flawed and must therefore be rejected together with the conclusions you reach.
I can just pull a random thing you say and demonstrate this - here’s one.
but at the same time I am wary of those who want to make inhuman demons of those beaurcratic institutions because they were founded by people who had blindspots.
Here is an assumption that can be dismissed with next-to-zero debate - if the problems these institutions pose were merely caused by “blindspots,” why would the status quo react so violently to any attempts to fix said “blindspots” from the bottom up (since, mysteriosuly, these “blindspots” only seem to affect the lives of those who are actually subjected to the actions of all these institutions)? In your framing of the issue it makes no rational sense… unfortunately, it makes perfect rational sense once you admit that the violence doesn’t protect “blindspots” - it protects interests. These institutions don’t have “blindspots” - they serve interests. When they enshrined violent (white) militias into law with the 2nd amendment it was no “blindspot” - it was to protect interests. When they enshrined (black) slavery into law with the 13th amendment, it was no “blindspot” - it was to serve interests. Interests, mind you, which has been very well served right up to the present day - the proof is in the pudding, as they say - and pretending any off this has anything to do with “blindspots” is no less ahistorical than any falsehood peddled by the alt-right.
It seems to me that you are unused to having the assumptions you base your arguments on challenged, and wants to “discuss” things only after the sacrosanctity of the status quo has been established as inviolable - and this I reject out of hand.
If you wish to continue with this discourse, you’re going to have to accept that.
Oof. I am sorry but facing the disgust you bear me doesn’t translate into a way I want to spend my time. At majority level I DO do this for enjoyment because I like to write… and maybe egotistically consider myself a philosopher albiet not one anyone is going to platform. As I saw it what both of us are doing on this forum is discourse. I am not performing for an audience regarding propaganda. From experience nobody tends to read long posts except the person I address them to. It’s part of why I keep them long. I am having a discussion with you.
I didn’t learn in the alabaster halls of acedemia. I couldn’t afford to chase a European history and philosophy degree so I just read a lot of source material. A lot of what I see happening reminds me of other points in history. When dealing with 1000 year spans no example is universal.
My take on philosophy is not American centric specifically. I am Canadian. I look at multiple democracies that have common philosophical ancestries to draw my conclusions some of which have aspects I admire and other aspects have earned nothing but my sharpest critique. America… Has very specific issues. Most of them are in places the discourse doesn’t really touch because Americans are blind to those things not being the norm.
On a personal note lot of the practical stuff I believe comes from more modern philosophers, Sarah Ahmed, Bhaskar Sunkara, Margot Susca, Ferric C. Fang etc etc etc. But adoption of a lot of the designs of government I am interested are stuck at university testing level. I know convincing people to get behind democratic lottery systems is not going to be an in my lifetime thing. There’s too many assumptions and things people hold onto regarding elections to give such radical ideas a shot. If we get lucky a Municipality level trial might be possible but there are far too many norms people cling to that require a lot of intellectual sparring. We don’t have the coffee parlors of the past and as I see it this platform is the next best thing. I use it as a training ground for learning dialectics so when I interface with politics face to face I am practiced.
I have had my share of union politics and trying to shift power structures to know that change is heartbreakingly gradual and most people who are full of fire but don’t understand the game get rebuffed by those systems… and they just become bitter. But those systems for better or worse are what is in power. Your choices in changing them are to play the game well ,get people onside through eloquence and building concensus and applying political pressure to the system to change - or to violently overthrow them… And personally I do not think violent overthrows ever work. But people don’t understand how important concensus is. Compromise and solidarity with stuff you don’t fully agree with is the engine that makes that run and we as a society were trained out of that. We are all individually acting like toddlers who think yelling and screaming will work. If everyone runs on absolute ultimatums demanding utter purity of all of their aims then nothing is achieved. Movements are atomized and inertia will breed anger until basically the pressure blows and in the end the anarchist uprising get crushed by the standing powers or the most powerful opportunist takes the wheel.
Honestly the enmity you show me here is not encouraging. If you think I am evil there’s not really a point in continuing. You have decided that I am not worth your consideration and you have your hackles up. I am not going to change your mind if you think I am scum so I will choose to part ways instead. So thank you for talking to me stranger. I appreciate your time.
Oh, give it a rest. I don’t go to all this trouble because the people I encounter online “disgust” me. I’ve been at this since 2015 - I’m allowed a certain level of jadedness, I reckon. It’s really hard to be disgusted by text. The text allows me to build a pretty decent model of the dominant ideological narratives that a given person has been exposed to and/or internalized (which is rarely a conscious thing), but that is all. The purpose those narratives serve often ends up angering me because I witness their consequences in real life every time I walk down the street - but it’s perfectly safe to assume that none of the people I meet on here and argue with had much of a hand in creating or entrenching those narratives. These narratives (and the reality they serve to enable and justify) are bigger than us. There is no point in individualizing it - at least, not when it comes to us proles.
Ideology is something that happens to us - all of us. It’s not a personal failing.
I’m not exactly sure what it is you are trying to achieve with this discourse… it seems to me that you are trying to make a case for collaboration with formal power, and aren’t sure why leftists (at least, leftists of the non-technocratic persuasion) reject such a collaboration. That is no mystery - we understand what formal power exists to do. There are only two ways in which those at the bottom can enact change that better our lot in life - you either force change out of the status quo in the form of concessions, or you enforce a new status quo. Each is risky and dangerous (for a multitude of reasons) - but so is doing nothing. Waiting for “nicer” people to change things “from the inside” has never helped anyone except in the self-congratulatory mythologies peddled by the very same kind of people these concessions had to be forced from in the first place.
So there’s an irreconcilable difference right there - I have seen nothing in my years that will convince me that you can build anything that can be called democratic with a straight fae within the rarefied confines of institutionalized power. The best you could hope for is something that power will happily call “democratic” but that will purely exist to serve the interests of said institutionalized power - which pretty much describes the (so-called) “democratic” processes we are goaded into particpating in by the political establishment every few years. It’s not designed to allow our participation - it’s designed to prevent it.
I’d say that if we want something that can actually be called democratic we are going to have to build it in opposition to institutionalized power - that is what we have historically been forced into doing, and that hasn’t changed one bit.
Have you noticed all the liberal absurdity floating around here? Problematizing liberalism and exposing it’s intimate relationship with capitalism and fascism is a pretty damn difficult job (not to mention long overdue)… and it’s no one on the left’s responsibility to make it pleasant for you on top of all that.
Having your worldview collapse from underneath you is most definitely not a pleasant thing… it’s more akin to the withdrawal symptoms one suffers after going cold turkey. I don’t blame people for avoiding it like the plague… but there is no avoiding it unless we wish to continue living in the fantasy world liberalism has tried (and, for far too long, succeeded) to substitute for reality.
And no… I’m not talking about the fake and contrived “liberal-vs-conservative” dichotomy we all see advertised on CNN and Fox, either.
What did you think I’m on here to do? Write theses for your enjoyment?
I’m not a philosopher - I don’t even like philosophy. I didn’t learn my politics in the ivory towers of academia. My background is in propaganda - and not the type of propaganda you study in sterile lecture halls and classrooms, either.
That’s what I do on here - I disrupt propaganda that requires disrupting… and that includes yours.
So if it sounds to you like I’m “counterpunching” your narratives that’s because I am.
The only reason I’m giving you the time of day is because your arguments are rationally sound - which I find (reasonably) indicative of an honest personality - but the assumptions you base them on are terrifically flawed and must therefore be rejected together with the conclusions you reach.
I can just pull a random thing you say and demonstrate this - here’s one.
Here is an assumption that can be dismissed with next-to-zero debate - if the problems these institutions pose were merely caused by “blindspots,” why would the status quo react so violently to any attempts to fix said “blindspots” from the bottom up (since, mysteriosuly, these “blindspots” only seem to affect the lives of those who are actually subjected to the actions of all these institutions)? In your framing of the issue it makes no rational sense… unfortunately, it makes perfect rational sense once you admit that the violence doesn’t protect “blindspots” - it protects interests. These institutions don’t have “blindspots” - they serve interests. When they enshrined violent (white) militias into law with the 2nd amendment it was no “blindspot” - it was to protect interests. When they enshrined (black) slavery into law with the 13th amendment, it was no “blindspot” - it was to serve interests. Interests, mind you, which has been very well served right up to the present day - the proof is in the pudding, as they say - and pretending any off this has anything to do with “blindspots” is no less ahistorical than any falsehood peddled by the alt-right.
It seems to me that you are unused to having the assumptions you base your arguments on challenged, and wants to “discuss” things only after the sacrosanctity of the status quo has been established as inviolable - and this I reject out of hand.
If you wish to continue with this discourse, you’re going to have to accept that.
Oof. I am sorry but facing the disgust you bear me doesn’t translate into a way I want to spend my time. At majority level I DO do this for enjoyment because I like to write… and maybe egotistically consider myself a philosopher albiet not one anyone is going to platform. As I saw it what both of us are doing on this forum is discourse. I am not performing for an audience regarding propaganda. From experience nobody tends to read long posts except the person I address them to. It’s part of why I keep them long. I am having a discussion with you.
I didn’t learn in the alabaster halls of acedemia. I couldn’t afford to chase a European history and philosophy degree so I just read a lot of source material. A lot of what I see happening reminds me of other points in history. When dealing with 1000 year spans no example is universal.
My take on philosophy is not American centric specifically. I am Canadian. I look at multiple democracies that have common philosophical ancestries to draw my conclusions some of which have aspects I admire and other aspects have earned nothing but my sharpest critique. America… Has very specific issues. Most of them are in places the discourse doesn’t really touch because Americans are blind to those things not being the norm.
On a personal note lot of the practical stuff I believe comes from more modern philosophers, Sarah Ahmed, Bhaskar Sunkara, Margot Susca, Ferric C. Fang etc etc etc. But adoption of a lot of the designs of government I am interested are stuck at university testing level. I know convincing people to get behind democratic lottery systems is not going to be an in my lifetime thing. There’s too many assumptions and things people hold onto regarding elections to give such radical ideas a shot. If we get lucky a Municipality level trial might be possible but there are far too many norms people cling to that require a lot of intellectual sparring. We don’t have the coffee parlors of the past and as I see it this platform is the next best thing. I use it as a training ground for learning dialectics so when I interface with politics face to face I am practiced.
I have had my share of union politics and trying to shift power structures to know that change is heartbreakingly gradual and most people who are full of fire but don’t understand the game get rebuffed by those systems… and they just become bitter. But those systems for better or worse are what is in power. Your choices in changing them are to play the game well ,get people onside through eloquence and building concensus and applying political pressure to the system to change - or to violently overthrow them… And personally I do not think violent overthrows ever work. But people don’t understand how important concensus is. Compromise and solidarity with stuff you don’t fully agree with is the engine that makes that run and we as a society were trained out of that. We are all individually acting like toddlers who think yelling and screaming will work. If everyone runs on absolute ultimatums demanding utter purity of all of their aims then nothing is achieved. Movements are atomized and inertia will breed anger until basically the pressure blows and in the end the anarchist uprising get crushed by the standing powers or the most powerful opportunist takes the wheel.
Honestly the enmity you show me here is not encouraging. If you think I am evil there’s not really a point in continuing. You have decided that I am not worth your consideration and you have your hackles up. I am not going to change your mind if you think I am scum so I will choose to part ways instead. So thank you for talking to me stranger. I appreciate your time.
You don’t say.
Oh, give it a rest. I don’t go to all this trouble because the people I encounter online “disgust” me. I’ve been at this since 2015 - I’m allowed a certain level of jadedness, I reckon. It’s really hard to be disgusted by text. The text allows me to build a pretty decent model of the dominant ideological narratives that a given person has been exposed to and/or internalized (which is rarely a conscious thing), but that is all. The purpose those narratives serve often ends up angering me because I witness their consequences in real life every time I walk down the street - but it’s perfectly safe to assume that none of the people I meet on here and argue with had much of a hand in creating or entrenching those narratives. These narratives (and the reality they serve to enable and justify) are bigger than us. There is no point in individualizing it - at least, not when it comes to us proles.
Ideology is something that happens to us - all of us. It’s not a personal failing.
I’m not exactly sure what it is you are trying to achieve with this discourse… it seems to me that you are trying to make a case for collaboration with formal power, and aren’t sure why leftists (at least, leftists of the non-technocratic persuasion) reject such a collaboration. That is no mystery - we understand what formal power exists to do. There are only two ways in which those at the bottom can enact change that better our lot in life - you either force change out of the status quo in the form of concessions, or you enforce a new status quo. Each is risky and dangerous (for a multitude of reasons) - but so is doing nothing. Waiting for “nicer” people to change things “from the inside” has never helped anyone except in the self-congratulatory mythologies peddled by the very same kind of people these concessions had to be forced from in the first place.
So there’s an irreconcilable difference right there - I have seen nothing in my years that will convince me that you can build anything that can be called democratic with a straight fae within the rarefied confines of institutionalized power. The best you could hope for is something that power will happily call “democratic” but that will purely exist to serve the interests of said institutionalized power - which pretty much describes the (so-called) “democratic” processes we are goaded into particpating in by the political establishment every few years. It’s not designed to allow our participation - it’s designed to prevent it.
I’d say that if we want something that can actually be called democratic we are going to have to build it in opposition to institutionalized power - that is what we have historically been forced into doing, and that hasn’t changed one bit.