Thanks for that, I skimmed through it: and the problem of territoriality is fascinating and the correlation perhaps productive toward an analogical approximation to where post modernism is heading , if you can give credence to some sort of parallelism. Fascinating and certainly worth while. I will certainly try to be on board. Thanks.
The world has not evolved beyond atrocities at all. American society has laws and education that stop atrocities from happening nearly as often as they normally would, but only within its jurisdiction, which is of course America itself. The atrocities that happen around the world has always bothered me a little, but I have never lost any sleep over them, because it’s not in my nature to care, no matter how hard I once tried to. Likely 299.99 million of America’s 300 million would be more likely to go to a therapist to complain about personal relationships than the atrocities around the world. It seems that says a lot about the present state of human nature; our sympathies always have been and always will be towards those we know personally.
Yes, people cooperate within hierarchies and much is accomplished by those hierarchies, 99 percent being in favor of those in the hierarchy itself, 99 percent of that being in favor of those at the top of the hierarchy. I know very well how cooperation is in my nature as much as competition, but the two always go together for me. For example, once I was worked very hard to get a promotion and I even could have been accused of being less of a team player, being that my concern was always what my employers thought of me not my coworkers.
Once I got the promotion I understood that my former coworkers who now worked for me weren’t overly inclined to be cooperative with me and that others in middle management weren’t inclined to be very cooperative being that I may one day have surpassed them, but what I found infuriating was that those in the highest ranks of management itself weren’t being cooperative. They failed to understand my potential to help them to increase productivity and thereby get them the respect and promotions of their superiors (not to mention help keep the company afloat, thereby helping everyone who worked for it) and instead were focused on seeing how much shit I would take from them while remaining subordinate. They had no reason to fear I would ever surpass them, they simply were so simple minded that they put meaningless displays of power over their own ambitions. I consider it to be a positive trait to be able to know when and how to combine competition and cooperation.
As Americans I don’t believe we’re obligated to concern ourselves with policy at all. But, when we do it only makes sense to let our only concerns be what is best for ourselves, friends and family. If we were in a third world country and asked to choose between taking sides between rivals competing to maintain authoritive control then it would be foolish for us to let our criteria be anything other than what side we would most likely survive under, which would likely be the strongest of the two. But, as Americans we have the luxury of letting our loyalties towards politicians be affected by ideals rather than necessity.
For that very reason I don’t spend much time concerning myself with politics, but if I did and was to actively support a politician the last word for me would still be about my own interest. I think our leaders should be strong, but only if they put the interest of Americans over that of others. So I’m not appealing to what’s natural in itself, as if nature were separate from me, but I’m appealing to what is natural for me, such as the desire to live well.
Interesting points, Stuart. And sorry if I came off a little too strong. My main concern is that, as many people, you might get a little too attracted to the radical nature of what I call The Neo-Nieitzscheian Gospel of the Fanciful. Right now, I came on here with a post in mind, so I have to be brief. It seems to me that the main thesis in it is the notion that man, because they have chosen to act like something a little more evolved than brutes, they have somehow deprived themselves of their natural essence. And it is this so-called “natural essence” that I think we have to have to question. Furthermore, I think you have to look at the discrepancy between the end result being described and our actual reality. For instance, how is mankind less creative in their supposedly softened state than they would be in a more primal state with the whip of nature always cracking at their back? And all you gotta do is look at college football every Saturday and the armed forces that fought in Iraq and Afghanistan to recognize that there isn’t any real lack of Spartan men (and women) that satisfy the criteria of masculinity in the classical sense that the ideology seems to pine for.
Anyway, back to the plan I came on here with.
I think what’s more relevant than the need to be creative or willful in a society that doesn’t tolerate it is the need for self-respect (which of course isn’t helped when one must be conformist and submissive). If you have been given enough respect by others in your life, then you will have enough self-respect for yourself that it will be easy to overlook the aspects of lesser importance that you and most others are deprived of.
Need and creativity go together. And it’s true that there is much need in the modern world. But, when there’s need, creativity is usually the last option. In the modern world conformity rather than screativity is usually the easiest way to overcome basics needs.
Satyr has a very specific way of defining masculine and feminine, that is in certain sense far removed from the standard definitions. I agree with his conclusions based on his definitions. I would be happy to take the challenge of explaining them in my own words, you only need ask. But, I prefer to discuss the issues that I have put much independent thought on. That is the issues that I have felt the need to personally address. I agree with most of not all of Satyr’s ideas, but I have yet to find the same import in all of them.
I don’t think their is anything outstandingly masculine about athletes, no matter what definition of masculine you’re using. If we were to use the most common definition, then athletes would rank slightly above average at best. But, when using the most common definition of masculine, soldiers certainly rank very high; no one is easier to respect and desire to emulate than one who has been in combat. Perhaps part of your issue with Satyr’s essay is that he is seemingly demeaning soldiers and others who risk much by not including all of them as the most masculine. Even though he’s using a particular definition I can still see how it can be insulting to those who pride themselves as being masculine based on other definitions of the term.
But, what would it matter if Satyr was to include all soldiers in his definition of masculine? The fact is that there are relatively very few soldiers, especially in the first world. So if you wish to call the desire to avoid combat soft, then the first world has become very soft.
Also, it is understandable that this conversation be allowed to progress at what ever pace comes naturally, even if it should be left idle indefinitely.
His definition of the feminine, Stuart, is homosexuals and anyone that proposes anything that might give less powerful people a break -such as socialism. That’s all I need to know about it. He clearly longs for a day when men were men and women knew their place. I mean his whole argument in the essay reeks of sexual frustration. And he has this fantasy of himself as some lone Zarathrustrean prophet ushering in the Overman whom no one else can truly understand. And he resorts to the Cassandra complex of assuming that anyone who attacks his position is somehow mediocre. He’s not even that original.
I mean what else would he mean by the “leveling of mankind” but anything other than a cheap alibi that might allow other people who happen to have an upper hand bully those that don’t? He’s basically arguing that every intellectual out there, all these college educated people, have yet to reach his level. This is why you never hear him referring to any other philosopher outside of Nietzsche. And it’s easy to understand why since Nietzsche’s so easy to read -and, as Satyr demonstrates, equally easy to misinterpret. It’s why, out of all other philosophers, Neitzsche gets more mention in popular culture. Satyr thinks he can ride on his own instincts about what philosophy is. This is why he is a better writer than he is a philosopher: he writes and thinks a lot while taking in little from others. In this sense, he’s a lot like Herbert Spenser who gathered his knowledge piecemeal, just bounced around and adapted whatever suited his fancy, in order to produce Social Darwinism. My guess is that Satyr never attempts to push beyond himself because he is always right where he needs to be. This is because he can draw in people who are at an early point in their process with the seduction of the radical and the rationalization of all sociopathic impulses.
He, as far as I’m concerned, is little more than a piss-ant of a philosopher who is more concerned about his status than he is the advancement of understanding or his process. He writes good. But underneath that style is every wrong move an intellectual can make.
And I prefer we minimize any direct reference to Satyr or KTS since I don’t want my other discourses locked down. I don’t need his name to rip through his nonsense.
Less powerful people never get breaks, unless they are aligned with those who are powerful. I could never truly grasp liberal ideals, let alone socialism, because I always realized on some level that there was very little sincerity in the idea that people are embracing various ideas of inclusion out of altruism. It would have been easy if the liberal inclusiveness had provided me with a life to live, but my disadvantages never qualified as those which should be mitigated.
What I’m speaking of right now has nothing to do with that website. I’ve been expressing these thoughts from time to time this last year; hundreds of my posts were dedicated to this subject and I had probably made over 15 threads on related subjects. The only things that have changed are that I no longer humor liberalism by making the pretense that I only wish to change it or better it, and I no longer on occasion take a step back from my positions on the subject and nihilistically say that none of it means anything. Perhaps, I have a poor memory, but I don’t recall many people on ilp directly addressing the drastic inconsistencies with all forms of liberalism. It seems they either wave their hand at liberalism altogether as if it was too obviously incoherent or they fail to understand (or pretend to fail to understand) exactly what inconsistencies I’m talking about.
This is the first topic on liberalism that I made here, if you find the time please take a look:
One thing I’d like to add is that I know that many people I would call liberal minded, such as yourself, are very willing to show inclusiveness and much kindness to whomever may politely ask, but that is where many go wrong. One who is in need, does not have some higher transcendent value if he is outgoing and very forgiving of the society for which his unpleasant state could be blamed. Those who bear their misery and disadvantages silently are so easy to ignore, especially when a first world liberal is still young and healthy and wishes to experience all that life has offer him in this rare state of existence. The expression about the cake comes to mind; he wants his good life and he wants to feel good about himself and never have to develop the emotional callouses that the vast majority of people, since humans first evolved, had to develop.
I don’t embrace socialist or liberal ideas out of altruism, Stuart. My motives are actually quite selfish. I embrace them because I am honest enough to recognize the vulnerability of my own situation and would prefer to know that if things do go really wrong, I have a fallback position that is not the catastrophic one offered by the do or die approach of Capitalism.
However, in a secondary sense, I also embrace it because I consider myself lucky. Given the resources I have, I really am a lot luckier than a lot of other people. But I could enjoy it a lot more with the full confidence that there are not other people suffering in the world when they actually do not need to. So, even in this case, my motives are selfish.
Furthermore, I would oppose to the notion that strife is necessary for self transcendence the a certain level of comfort is as well. Like Marx, I believe that Capitalism, and its do or die nature, stands in the way of most people achieving their full potential, that it is not the feminine aspects of society that do so, but rather the masculine ones.
Hi d63, Stuart:
To get to the bottom of any social/political point of view, it is useful to approach it from the vantage of ideology. Capitalism is least ideological, right? And socialism is most. Marxism for all ppractical purposes failed, as capitalism also is apparently failing, or soon to fail. Could conceivably, a mixture of ideology and laissez fair be a way to get the benefits of both? A mixed economy based on private/public sector interaction be applicable on a need by need basis? Isn’t this what Obama is trying to do with his startup medical insurance plan? Or do you think capitalism as it stands is doomed to follow it’s self destructive course?
A precedent can be seen in the policies under Woodrow Wilson, and I think WW1 was somewhat a progenitor of the policies or lack of, as well as Deleanor Roosevelt’s New Deal, prior and during WW2. To a certain extent under both Kennedy and Johnston, and all others excepting Ronald Reagan, efforts were made.
I think these stop gap measures di not make much of a difference, they only afforded cosmetic, psychological damage control, too little, too late.
Apart from another world war bringing on drastic ideological changes, do you see any effort by any administration or national and/or international entity to be able to bring on effective change?
It is even conceivable that internally revived , grass roots movements such as occurred with the vigilantes, the New Left of the 60's could arise, but the effect of those movements had mostly changes relating to equal rights. The paradigm borderline states of capitalistic/schizophrenic derivation as connective to social-psychological-economic paradigms, have yet to offer a definitive analysis, capable to stand up to the onslaught of the pleasure machine of capitalism to internalize, de territorialize and de personalize every attempt at social change. That much is history.
The politics of experience connecting social psychology’s derivation of this anomalie, has devolved to a simple deterririalization of say Ronald Laing’s works, simply by declaring questionable relevancy, or simply out of fashion. Politics of experience has been expropriated to benefit those who saw the relevance and effective use of the concept,and working it toward their advantage. It is politics and the manipulation of politics,and it can go either way.
Do or die capitalism doesn’t exist. Societies have always used moral and ethical considerations and laws to prevent it. Very few people want 100% capitalism.
Even a 60% capitalism is too much for D63. 
It must be, Phyllo, because it isn’t working.
If you say something is not working, then you must have an example of something else that works. Or at least works better. What is it?
Here’s something for you to chew on, Stuart. It’s an excerpt from the Deleuze lectures I’ve been reading online:
“There are people who are so impotent that they are the ones who are dangerous, they are the ones who take power (pouvoir). And they can take power (pouvoir) ˜ so far away are the notions of power (puissance) and of power (pouvoir) ˜ the people of power (pouvoir) are the impotent who can only construct their power (pouvoir) on the sadness of others. They need sadness. They can only reign over slaves, and the slave is precisely the regime of the decrease of power (puissance). There are people who can only reign, who only acquire power (pouvoir) by way of sadness and by instituting a regime of sadness of the type: repent’, of the type hate someone’ and if you don’t have anyone to hate, hate yourself, etc.”
There are 2 ways to go about this: authority or force. Authority is when you have enough confidence in your process that you just do what you do and let others decide what they want to do with it. Force is what you do when you lack the confidence in your process to do what I previously described.
Satyr validates his beliefs on the misery of others. That’s all there is to it.
I believe an expansion of the public economy, that which eliminates the profit motive from providing basic needs, is the only response to global Capitalism. Capitalism needs to know that we are never fully dependent on it. Until it does, it will continue with the arrogance that underlies its exploitation. And if we don’t, we will become slaves.
We’re at a point where we need to consider socialism (something that doesn’t run on the mechanism of the profit motive) or we are fucked. Capitalism, as it is, is what will lead us to scenario similar to the movie The Road.
It won’t be the Mad Max scenario that the Neo-Neitzscheian Gospel of the Fanciful pray for. It will be a process of watching lives, environment, and the will to power just withering away. But then, let’s hope we get there before we go through the phase described by the movie Blade Runner, or the very real situation of Johannesburg in which 5% of the population live in wealth while the other 95 live abject poverty. District 9 wasn’t just a sci-fi movie: it was an observation and is the future of most Capitalist societies, as Neil Blomkamph rightly observes.
But the profit motive makes entrepreneurs responsive to basic needs. It creates a feedback mechanism such that when needs change the supplier adapts to satisfy the new needs. New products and services are created in response. If the profit motive is removed, the new needs do not have to be identified or satisfied …quickly or at all.
The hard core capitalists say that socialism is already in place in the US and elsewhere and that’s what is producing failure.
And it can go right on responding to new needs. I don’t care about that. It’s basic needs I’m concerned with. If Capitalism responds to new needs, that’s just extra. But basic needs are what we have to have in order to exist: food, shelter, and healthcare. And as long as we have to turn to Capitalism for those, we are slaves. The rest is just excess which Capitalism can have.
These are just false dichotomies - basic need and extra need. Old/existing need and new need.
Look at shelter. Populations grow and decline, people move around. During growth, ‘new’ shelter has to be constructed. Who will build it? Profit or non-profit builders?
Look at food. Is ‘basic’ food some ration of bread and water? Can someone supplying lobsters make a profit or is access to lobsters also basic food?
Is the profit factor to be removed from all aspects of food production and distribution? Growing food, transportation of food, preparation and selling food would all be non-profit? You could not even make a sandwich and sell it without a government agency checking how much you profited?
Good point. The profit motive has pre industrial, pre so called capitalistic origins. In feudal times, farmers would go to market to sell their produce, and of course they made a profit. The profit motive is not an invention of ideology,it an inherent part of human nature.
D63 and obe, when it comes to the issue of capitalism; I just want to say that I neither advocate any economic or political system, nor do I wish to make an argument against anyone specifically. Let me repeat what I said in my post on the morning of the 20th:
If I were to discuss these matters in a more hypothetical way, outside of my personal concerns, it would only be in the context of what systems and policies I would assume would be best for the world’s stability. Or, perhaps, in the context of what systems and policies would actually potentially improve the world - but only in the long run, such as the next hundred or more years.
I assumed you were claiming to be altruistic because it seemed you wished to do your part in helping society. If you had absolute power, as if you were a god, and could change the world to be the way you want it to be, and you got rid of all pain, then I would understand the argument that you would have done so selfishly, so that you would no longer have to worry about this contrast between you luck in being happy and other misery. But, I don’t understand how you would think you are more than a part of the solution, in which case your actions aren’t going to be the sole cause of the end of suffering. Of course that is assuming that suffering can be ended, which is another matter entirely.
My implication in my earlier post was that many modern first world people don’t live a life of suffering, and the liberal minded of them (which likely includes the majority of Americans who consider themselves conservative) like to think that by being kind or giving back to those who are outspoken yet polite is all that is needed, ignoring those who quietly suffer. When I said:
I didn’t mean to imply that I believed people must suffer to become a better person (not to say that I don’t believe that, it’s just that the philosophical issue of how suffering and nobility interrelate is another matter entirely). What I was implying is that when one is happy it is always at the expense of another, and if that happy person did not have to develop emotion calluses to continue living life in such a way - happy through them misery of others - it is because they have managed to delude themselves (or be deluded) into thinking that their happiness isn’t at the expense of others.
All that is necessary for this form of delusion is either ignorance of the world, or an ideological way of discounting the ignorance of the world. For the liberal that I was referring to in the above quote: Firstly, he doesn’t have to see those who are suffering regularly and he, for the vast majority of the time, doesn’t have to see the means in which his happiness is at the cost of others - therefore the ignorance. Secondly, because he is told that by holding onto liberal ideology and making very unsacrificial efforts towards the supposed benefit of others, he is absolved from blame - the ideology.
Historically a different form of delusion was common: Firstly, unlike the modern liberal this deluded person, while doing well, did see the suffering of those around him - for example take any large city two or three hundred years ago, on the way to different parts of the city one with money usually couldn’t help but pass by people obviously deathly ill or starving with ribs showing. But, he was always told not to associate with poor people, and told they were lower forms of life and deserved their lot, so sympathy could never develop.
All wild animals must develop certain features that most people in the first world do not, but I wouldn’t say that wild animals develop emotional calluses, or at least not in the way that unsheltered people do. Maybe animals experience fear, isolation as such, but I doubt they experience sympathy. The sheltered person doesn’t necessarily avoid sympathy, but what they do avoid is the constant necessity to turn away from those for which they are sympathetic towards and look after themselves or those they already have an obligation to.