Public Journal:

“Once the subject-object dichotomy was eliminated as the only framework within which critical debate could occur, problems that had once seemed so troublesome did not seem to be problems at all. As an advocate for the rights of the reader, I could explain agreement only by positing an ideal (or informed) reader in relation to whom other readers were less informed or otherwise deficient. That is, agreement was secured by making disagreement aberrant (a position that was difficult to defend since the experience with which one had to agree was mine).” -once again: from Stanley Fish’s intro to his Is There a Text in this Class…

I mainly bring this quote in to emphasize the overlaps at work between Fish’s literary criticism and philosophy, as well as to redeem myself to my Deleuze and Pragmatic habitations (or playgrounds if you will (which I have been pestering with it.

It’s all there. And the mention of the subject-object dichotomy pretty much cues us in to it. But I would note how in this quote:

"Once the subject-object dichotomy was eliminated as the only framework within which critical debate could occur, problems that had once seemed so troublesome did not seem to be problems at all.”

:Fish basically turns to the same solution as both Deleuze and Rorty did: resorting to the materialism of thinking of humans as nodes in a complex system. And as this quote shows:

“As an advocate for the rights of the reader, I could explain agreement only by positing an ideal (or informed) reader in relation to whom other readers were less informed or otherwise deficient. That is, agreement was secured by making disagreement aberrant (a position that was difficult to defend since the experience with which one had to agree was mine)."

:he did it explicitly for the perfectly democratic purpose of undermining the old Platonic notion of knowledge being some kind of corporate hierarchy justified by some transcendent criteria. However, here he is more Deleuzian than Rortyan in that he is looking at the relationship between text and reader and their given interpretive community as a kind of interaction of systems whereas Rorty worked in the more superficial, accessible, and practical expressions of that interaction of systems. Still, we must admire Rorty for his ability (in the sense of a generous teacher: much like Jaspers (to explain that expression in historical terms.

Had a thought tonight:

It may well be that one of the biggest failures in the analytic’s sometimes smug dismissal of the continental approach is its failure to see its common ground with it. I mean whatever you are pursuing, it always about understanding systems to the extent that, because of your comfort with them, you are able to (via creativity (to adjust them in new ways. In this spirit, the analytic first pinned its hopes on language then turned to science. This is demonstrated in Wittgenstein who started out with full faith that truth could be fully approached via the logic of language only to eventually recognize how reality always seems to overflow the language we use to describe it. This is why he eventually recognized the value of language games.

Now I would note how Deleuze and Guatarri, in What is Philosophy, paralleled Wittgenstein’s earlier work in recognizing the import of conceptual play for the sake of creating yet more concepts. In other words, the main difference between D & G’s model is their focus on concepts as compared to the analytic’s focus on language which is, by its inherent nature, beholden to mental concepts.

Granted, I’m fucking this up: this writing at the edge of what I know –as Deleuze suggests I do. But let me try a different approach. Take Stanley Fish’s approach that brings Temporality into the issue of text which is static in nature. The text is always changed by the moment in time it is being perceived. And this is laid out as well in Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition in which an object we are observing in space is always the same thing at different points in time. And we can see how this could all lead to the postmodern blur that we experience with postmodern and poststructuralist thought: the Lacanian Real overflowing the symbolic order.

The thing is, in order to arrive at these understandings, we have to surrender to systems of thought that get us to them. This means that whether we are taking the analytic or continental approach, we will always be dealing with conceptual schemes overflowed by reality. We can only see the object as different at each point in space and time because we understand the concepts of space and time and their effect on our perception.

“What interests me about many of the essays collected here is that I could not write them today. I could not write them today because both the form of their arguments and the form of their arguments and the form of the problems those arguments address are a function of assumptions I no longer hold.” –once again from Stanley Fish’s intro to Is There a Text in this Class….

These are the very first words that Fish starts the book with. And they are important in that they define very mode of operation that Fish is working in. But in order to get at it, I have to describe a recent change in the mode of operation I am working in. I use to assume that I could just keep skimming over text because what was of import to my individual process would latch to my individual filters –the ones I have developed along the way. But I’ve recently come to the conclusion that what that results in is me just repeating what I know without ever getting beyond it. I have therefore decided that my study points at the “library” will consist of me going over and over the first chapter until I get comfortable enough with it enough (to bleed it for all I can (to move on to the next.

And what I have extracted in that process (and in reference to the quote above (is that Fish’s book is basically a history (via individual essays (of how he went from his initial position to his concept of the interpretive community. This is why every article starts with Fish’s critique of what he was doing at the time.

The important thing to note here is how Fish doesn’t just tell, but rather shows. He applies his criticism of the formalist approach via temporality by applying the effect of the temporal on his process as concerns his process and engagement with literature.

“I met that objection by positing a level of experience which all readers share, independently of differences in education and culture. This level was conceived more or less syntactically, as an extension of the Chomskian notion of linguistic competence, a linguistic system that every native speaker shares. I reasoned that if the speakers of a language share a system of rules that each of them has somehow internalized, understanding will, in some sense, be uniform.” –once again from Fish’s intro to Is There a Text in this Class

Now in terms of the Deleuzian/postmodern model of the text and reader being systems interacting within a kind of meta-system, we can easily see why Chomsky’s linguistics would be brought into the mix. And we can further see how all this works under the counsel of the evolutionary model, that which is the source of the overlap between them.

But I would also like to bring into the mix and overlap the Jungian archetype, that which I believe is propped up by Chomsky’s linguistic systems. The thing to understand is that (as I read him when I did (Jung tended respond to accusations of mysticism by rooting the archetype in the structures of the brain, by seeing them as expressions of those evolutionary structures. He did attempt to give them a scientific basis. And I would humbly argue that it is this very scientific basis that Fish anchors his Interpretive Community in.

To me it all comes down to brain plasticity and the role it has played in our evolution: that interaction between individual organisms, the object before them and the environment that surrounds the object, and the other organisms they are sharing the experience with. In this sense, the text that Fish focuses on (that is as a literary critic (is not as different from a group of primates staring at a fire as we might think.

And here we justify expanding Fish’s argument for the Interpretive Community (via the postmodern understanding of “text” as anything that can be interpreted (much as Rorty supposedly did Kuhn. We are justified in hijacking Fish for postmodern purposes –that is whether he likes it or not.

“The distance I have traveled can be seen in the changed status of interpretation. Whereas I had once agreed with my predecessors on the need to control interpretation lest it overwhelm and obscure texts, facts, authors, and intentions, I now believe that interpretation is the source of texts, facts, authors, and intentions. Or to put it another way, the entities that were once seen as competing for the right to constrain interpretation (text, reader, author) are now all seen to be the ‘products’ of interpretation.” –once again: Stanley Fish…

I would first note how Fish seems to be a product of the interpretative community of postmodern and post- structuralist thought. Having worked in the 60’s and 70’s, he is clearly a product of that particular Zeitgeist which, ironically, props up his notion of the interpretive community. And given that, it seems to me that we can expand his point concerning literary criticism by bringing in the postmodern definition of “text” as being anything that can be interpreted: art, a current issue, society, whatever….

And we can do so in the same manner that Rorty did Thomas Kuhn and his “paradigm shifts”. But we do so at the same risk that Rorty came up against by taking Fish’s point in directions that might elicit his protests. But then Fish should have seen it coming given the model he offered that gave the reader (with their given interpretive community (equal status with the text. And he was right to do so. Take abstract or conceptual art. Clearly, the meaning that comes from it is derived from the discourse that goes on around it. But then, as he argues in deference to the formalist position: the text is always there, stable as ever, waiting to prove us wrong.

Finally, I (in a rare moment of foresight (brought in Rorty’s use (or misuse (of Kuhn for a reason. I now realize, having immersed myself in Fish’s book as I have, that the paradigm shifts that Kuhn describes are usually the product of a lot of individual or personal paradigm shifts. As I have quoted Fish before:

“What interests me about many of the essays collected here is that I could not write them today. I could not write them today because both the form of their arguments and the form of their arguments and the form of the problems those arguments address are a function of assumptions I no longer hold.”

It just seems to me that the book is basically a narrative of Fish’s personal paradigm shift. This is why he puts in brief explanations, before each article, of the part those articles played in it.

“I challenged the self-sufficiency of the text by pointing out that its apparently spatial form belied the temporal dimension in which its meanings were actualized, and I argued that it was the developing shape of that actualization, rather than the static shape of the printed page, that should be the object of critical description” –as always: from Fish’s intro to Is There a Text in this Class

Here I would like to focus on the extent to which temporality has influenced contemporary thought (both postmodern and post-structuralist (and the way it has abandon static forms for the dynamic: that which is destabilized and de-centered. It comes down to a time honored (for me at least (riff I like to pull out from time to time:

At what point are you in this sentence right now?

One of Fish’s main arguments against the formalist approach is that it tends to seek meaning at the end of things: the end of each word, of each clause, of each paragraph, and on and on. But Fish sees meaning in the process. He takes the democratic approach of letting every process find its meaning (in process (while having it restrained by the reality of the text as well as the symbolic order the individual is working in. And I think my sentence shows how meaning works, not through the meaning of each individual word, but the way the meaning of each individual word bleeds into the word before and after it.

Before I move on to my next immersion, I want to tie up one last loose end as concerns Fish. I’ve pretty much established that his main claim to fame is his break from the text centered formalist approach (as well as its tendency to anchor meaning in what happens “at the end of the text” (into a more process based approach that gives the reader equal status. And at one point in the intro I have been focusing on, he offers an example (shows rather than tells), based on Milton’s Paradise Lost, that demonstrates the advantage (as concerns extracting meaning (his approach has over the formalists. And hopefully, in between tapping at the keyboard, drinking beer and sipping Jager, glancing back at the text itself, and summarizing, I’ll manage to pull this off. But first the quote:

Satan now, first inflam’d with rage came down,
The Tempter ere th’ Accuser of man-kind,
To wreck on innocent frail man his loss
Of that first Battle, and his flight to Hell.

Now let’s look at this particular line:

To wreck on innocent frail man his loss

The tendency of most readers would be to assume that the referent of “his” would be “innocent frail man”. And it would naturally follow from this that the loss in question, the one Satan had wrecked upon man, was the garden. But if you actually look at the logic of it, the loss in question is actually Satan’s “Of that first Battle, and his flight to Hell.”

Now if we were to accept the at-the-end approach of the formalists, we would reduce this to a failure on the reader’s part. But if I’m reading Fish right, we also have to look at how Milton utilized the line break in order to trick the reader into the misconception in the first place. And there is a good chance he also understood that the reader would eventually correct themselves. And he did so because he saw meaning in that process so that the reader, as Fish put it, would become “aware of his tendency, inherited from those same parents, to reach for interpretations that are, in the basic theological sense, self serving”. As Fish concluded:

“This passage then would take its place in a general strategy by means of which the reader comes to know that his experience of the poem is a part of its subject; and the conclusion would be that this pattern, essential to the poem’s operation, would go undetected by a formalist analysis.”

I have recently, due to personal experience, recognized a flaw in one of my favored models: two responses (the psychotic and the sociopathic (to the nihilistic perspective in relation to the symbolic order. But first a quick explanation.

The nihilistic perspective basically involves recognizing that any argument we might make breaks down to assumptions, and these assumptions reach a point where they can no longer be validated by other assumptions or arguments. You either accept those assumptions or don’t based on your given sensibility. In other words, these assumptions float on thin air and there is no solid foundation for any argument we make or any real criteria by which to judge action. And the symbolic order (as a human construct propped up by power and power alone (is as beholden to this dynamic as our individual belief systems.

This lack of a real criteria can lead to two responses: the psychotic and the sociopathic. The psychotic response is about retreat in that, having no real criteria by which to judge action, the individual creates their own semiotic bubble with its own terminology and rules of discourse and action. The ideal model for this is the mad man walking down the street engaged in a personal discourse that most normal people cannot understand. But it can also be applied to drug addicts and alcoholics and in more productive ways such as the avant garde in the arts.

The sociopathic response is more aggressive in that, having no real criteria by which to judge action, the individual turns to the one criteria that seems to have a kind of force and praxis about it: that of power. It ultimately breaks down to an erroneous tautology:

I have power because I am right; therefore, I am right because I have power.

This, of course, is the domain of the sociopathic serial killer, but can manifest in more socially acceptable ways such as cut-throat Wall Street types or players as anyone knows who has had their heart broken by one.

That said, as recent experience has showed me, my model wasn’t completely accurate in that I have presented the two responses as two unrelated responses acting from two poles from two sides of the symbolic order. But as the movie Trainspotting more accurately suggests, the two can actually interact in complex ways. The predatorial aspect of the sociopathic can be seen in the psychotic response while the psychotic individualization of their semiotic order can be seen in the sociopathic. As it turns out, my model was perhaps a little too orderly.

In reference to string: facebook.com/groups/filosop … 208377019/

“So… all this would be useful for what???” –Armand Martin

First of all, Armand: I’m glad you asked. Not only is this a question I’ve spent about the last 40 years of my life trying to answer (a question I’ve built a lot of confidence and comfort with answering), but you’ve pretty much given me the keys to the kingdom in that the question and answer lies at the core of almost every space (every sandbox (I inhabit here: the opportunity for cross pollination here is like… wow!!! Everything coming together….

Alright!!! Let’s get started:

I would start with a question for you, Armand: why does everything have to be “useful”? Now I get it. I, myself, have argued throughout these boards that there is a disconnect between theory and day to day life. But why does everything we do have to be useful? The diametrical opposite of Play?

It seems to me that what you are appealing to is the tyranny of the functional which can be unequivocally attributed to the corporate values of producer/consumer Capitalism. And in that context, no form of opposition could be more useful than useless acts of play. I mean how is watching a movie or listening to a song “useful”? One could even ask how engaging in religious rituals are “useful”. Yet people engage in these acts all the time. I, and my respected colleagues, engage in this not because it might lead to the creation of an I-Phone; but because it justifies (makes beautiful (our point A to point B.

And in that context, we see an actual use for seemingly “useless” pursuits of knowledge:

We, as a species, are at an important evolutionary milestone: we either evolve beyond the competitive mode we started with (that which uses our higher cognitive functions for the purposes of our baser impulses (into the cooperative: that which turns to a tit for tat relationship between our baser impulses and our higher cognitive functions (or we end up destroying ourselves as a species. And it may well be (via brain plasticity (our more “useless” forms of Play that get us beyond that very important milestone.

This is important, guys. And Armand’s question is proof positive.

“In his consideration of law and repetition in the introduction to Difference and Repetition, Deleuze is not primarily concerned with laws of nature but with moral laws that are based on acts meant to be independent of laws of nature. His target is not science but a Kantian approach to morality.” -Williams, James. Gilles Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition: A Critical Introduction and Guide (pp. 35-36). Edinburgh University Press. Kindle Edition.

Williams then goes on to say:

“However, this focus on morality is also a weakness. It means that, at this stage of his book, Deleuze continues to evade legitimate questions concerning the role that science may have to play in the development of his own concepts. Does it make sense to speak of intensity, of individuals and of their acts without putting these terms to scientific scrutiny, in the form of experiments, and to scientific criticisms, in the form of comparison with what is known about these concepts (Emotions are produced by these chemical reactions. This individual has these properties. The reasons given for these acts are . . . The chemical genetic and physical explanations for them are . . .)?”

And we have to agree with Williams here. There is just no way around science. I recently came up against this with my model of the psychotic and the sociopathic in the context of the nihilistic perspective and the symbolic order. The two people who were responding to it kept responding in terms of the clinical definitions of psychosis and sociopathy while I was working in the metaphorical: I was attempting to describe a cultural phenomenon. To put it another way, I was offering a model that would be of more interest to artists than anyone who wanted a more expositional understanding of the human condition. And I would humbly offer a model that might lead a consolidation between the continental and analytic approaches to philosophy.

I return to my revision of Russell’s description of philosophy: that it lies in that no-man’s land between science and theology. I, however, given the secular times we live in, have revised it to that which lies in that no-man’s land between Science and Literature. Here, for me at least, we get a more delicate understanding of the difference between the analytic and continental approach: while the analytic leans towards the science side of the science/literature spectrum, the continental leans towards the literature side of it.

And both have value: the scientific for seeing the facts in the face of that which resonates and seduces and the literary for posing the resonate and seductive against the operationalism of the scientific that claims to have exclusive access to facts when it, in fact, gets thing wrong from time to time, especially when it comes to the human condition which can’t be isolated in a lab environment.

Actually, I’m glad you asked, Christian. Not only because it gives me an opportunity to pull out an old riff and work in my comfort zone, but because today’s study point gave me nothing to write about. That confession out in the open, I’m not really sure we can talk about “a philosophy” or “your philosophy” as much as a philosophical model that works within the general tradition of philosophy.

And in that sense of it, I would pull out, yet again, one of two (maybe three (golden eggs I’m proud of: Efficiency: that which is maximized by minimizing the differential between the resources put into a given act and the resources gotten out. And the main source of that pride is the way it overlaps with all three members of my holy triad: Deleuze (w/ and w/out Guatarri), Rorty, and Zizek. But, in order to understand it, we first have to recognize that philosophy (along with every other discipline one might pursue (has always been dominated by one imperative: to get to know systems to the point of being able to work creatively with them. This, as far as I can tell, is the only means by which we advance or progress. And this, ultimately, involves working from the general systems involved down through the various subsystems to the individual actions of which a given system is composed.

And as far as I tell as concerns philosophy, our understanding of those individual actions has been pretty much been dominated by a Metaphysics of Power. Take, for instance, Spinoza’s notion of joyful and sad affects which is a matter of those individual interactions being a matter of overcoming the other or not. We also have Schopenhauer and Nietzsche’s Will to Power. The idea, of course, is that, through the diverse attempts to overcome the other, it all levels out into the closest thing to perfect by addressing a multitude of diverse interests. This was the main thesis behind Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations.

Here’s my problem with it, though: it seems to me that if every individual act was merely a matter of one actor attempting to overcome the other, our whole system would have destroyed itself years ago in mad struggle to become “king of the hill”. It wouldn’t have leveled out as much as drawn into one most powerful thing.

Hence the Metaphysics of Efficiency. In this case, the primary mechanism by which everything works is a formula I have devised: Efficiency potential = Resources/expectations. And there is no need to do the math. It simply means that nothing decreases potential efficiency like lowering resources or increasing expectations while, inversely, nothing increases potential efficiency like either increasing resources or decreasing expectations.

And once you understand the implications of this, you start to see the diverse (maybe even universal (ways it can be applied. Just to give you a taster: you have to ask why drug addicts and the homeless seem to choose (or stick with (the life they do. But if you consider the formula offered above, you start to see that they see it more efficient to lower their expectations (as compared to the expectations of “normal” people (so that the resources available to them meet those expectations. And we can see it at the opposite pole with successful people who end up destroying themselves because the resources available to them can never meet the expectations they have. It even has literary applications. I mean if you think about it, many stories about family dynamics (think Death of a Salesman here (are about a coexistence of efficiencies (an efficiency in itself (compromised by one family member having higher expectations than the resources available to the system can meet.

“We need to foster and nourish the ‘inborn Thou’ by strengthening children’s relations to the world around them and other people. The only way to restore the inborn Thou to our society is to allow children to develop their intuitive knowledge by allowing them full reign to their imaginations in the arts and sciences and in doing philosophy with them.” –from Maria daVenza Tillmanns’ Philosophy Now article: Children, Intuitive Knowledge & Philosophy

Now there is a lot to unpack here and this, potentially (because it reflects on many of the things I’ve been concerned with in my process), could give me give me a couple of days worth of rhizomes as well as a letter to the editor. And given the criteria by which I tend to work (what I can use –steal even), this pretty much qualifies as a good piece of writing. I highly recommend it, should you have access.

That said, while there are many reasons to like the article (many connections with aspects of my process), I would start one of the most prevalent: the way it puts some shine on the answer to the question of the month, what is the future of mankind, that I will have the pleasure of publishing in the next issue. My point was that mankind has reached an important evolutionary milestone in that we either make the leap from the competitive evolutionary legacy (that which involves the base of our brains (our immediate self interest (utilizing its higher cognitive functions strictly for its purposes) to the cooperative: that in which our baser impulses see it in their interest to work in tandem with the cognitive functions and their recognition of the interests of others, including the other of our environment. And as I made clear, unless we make this evolutionary leap, we risk destroying ourselves as a species along with all other species of life.

And where better to start than children as Tillmanns suggests? Right? I further note the overlap between Tillmanns’ agenda and that of continental philosophy (especially as concerns Gille Deleuze via Bergson (and the more practical and accessible American approach via Pragmatism –especially as practiced by Rorty. Tillmanns poses their position against the analytic and the tyranny of the functional (will try to get to this later (by propping up the value of intuition and Play. And it is through intuition and Play (what Tillmann refers to (via Buber (as relation (that we come to concrete understandings of our environment. And it is in this very spirit that continentals tend to work, especially in the case of Deleuze who offers an, at first, indecipherable text for the sake of a kind of Play in which the reader is allowed to engage with it creatively by their own terms which are always anchored in the reality of the text itself.

Tillmanns’ point pretty much comes down to what I have believed for some time now: that all great achievements must start in Play and return to it frequently. In other words, it must be rooted in something that a child could do.

“Although viewed as political opposites, the two movements had surprising overlap. Contrary to the widespread belief that Occupy Wall Street shilled for the Democratic Party, only 27 percent of Occupy Wall Street demonstrators were Democrats. Seventy percent were Independents. The Tea Party, in turn, was hardly a front for Republicans, as 40 percent of its members were Democrats or Independents; 34 percent were self-described moderates or liberals.” –from Ronald W. Dworkin’s How Karl Marx Can Save American Capitalism –a book I will be immersed in for the next 3 to 4 weeks and that you (unfortunate soul (will be hearing about……

And so the plot thickens –especially for those seeking any type of full understanding (i.e. the intellectuals). Of course (for me at least), there were always hints. Being a progressive in the Midwest, I have seen the overlaps between the concerns of my right-wing friends and mine. It was their focuses and solutions that always concerned me. And through that I have come to see that people are always more complex than the ideologies they embrace or anything they could say at any given time. I even know it from an inside perspective, if you will (you know what I’m talking about, right?).

But do not mistake me for some kind of beautiful soul or saint. I, too, have succumbed (and will likely continue to succumb (will try to articulate on the benefit of it as I go along (to the personal war rally: one that actually goes to the fascist extreme wondering if those people shouldn’t be wiped out of the human gene pool or, at least, quarantined in Texas: a Fed-Free zone where they can carry out their Fed Free fuck fantasies to their ultimate end. But that response is out of the fear that comes from some obtuse, ignorant statement like Ben Carson’s “poverty is a state of mind”. In such moments, I would like take an idiot like that and drop him off in some inner city so he can see, for himself, how much of a “state of mind” it actually is.

And that type of fancy is all fun and fine –as, once again, I will attempt to articulate on later. But as an intellectually and creatively curious person, I(we(you: the other I (am committed to working beyond fancy. And to that end and agenda, I can only quote Alexander Pope:

“A little learning is a dangerous thing ;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring :
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.”

“A complete victory for crony capitalism would have broad scope, with ramifications that penetrate deep into society. Not only would millions of Americans continue to be deprived of an opportunity to produce, but also the frontiers of production would close even further to them. For the last half-century, social scientists have observed that Americans increasingly forsake the world of production for the world of consumption. As government and business work together to control the dimensions of public life, including politics and work, Americans shift their attention to private life, dwelling on the small and petty differences between brands and tastes. Philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre calls this new state of affairs “bureaucratic individualism.” Many Americans no longer build towns out of deserts or drain cities out of swamps, but they do know, for example, ten different kinds of jeans and can speak authoritatively on twenty different kinds of chocolate. Serious people of all political persuasions bemoan this change as a ridiculous and embarrassing end to a great people. As crony capitalism accelerates, people lose the world of production and gain a paltry remainder. The nightmare of a deformed human being who not only does not create but who has no interest in creating, and who consumes but does not produce, becomes more real.” -from Ronald Dworkin’s How Karl Marx Can Save American Capitalism

I would first note Dworkin’s surprising turn from my initial concerns with the book. My initial concern was that he was propping up a libertarian agenda, mainly focused around deregulation that would support the efforts of smaller and newer businesses (something I do support with qualifications), under the guise of a Marxist perspective on Capitalism. But what I’ve seen thus far is more a focus on the alienation that Capitalism (especially Crony Capitalism (can lead to.

That said, there seems to be lot to unpack here. So I start by focusing on:

“For the last half-century, social scientists have observed that Americans increasingly forsake the world of production for the world of consumption. As government and business work together to control the dimensions of public life, including politics and work, Americans shift their attention to private life, dwelling on the small and petty differences between brands and tastes.”

We’ve all seen this: what I would call the culture of the connoisseur in which the individual’s method of operation lies in not actually creating anything, but rather presumably picking out the best of what others have created. We’ve seen it, for instance, in the intellectual arrogance of the contrarian: the one who, no matter what work you quote, is always there telling you:

“Oh no, silly child; such and such is much better.”

And here we have to make the distinction between contrarian condescension and a friendly recommendation. And most disconcerting here is how this has been normalized through media: most notably reality TV. Here we have people actually being entertained by the discriminate taste of the main actors in shows like American Pickers and Pawn Shop Stars. I mean watching people watching those shows is like watching primates discovering fire:

“Ooh!!! They have things. Cool things!!!”

And in this, we can see the crass materialism that has resulted in a Trump presidency. But the irony gets deeper when you consider how department stores sell us our individualism. It gets pathetic and funny at the same time. One time, in the 90’s, I saw a guy that had that Limp Biscuit look: backwards hat, khaki shorts, and a Le Tiger shirt. But it turned comical when I saw another guy walk up with the exact same wardrobe. The irony lies in the fact they chose the wardrobe to express their individuality (which they associated with Limp Biscuit (and ended up succumbing to marketers who were perfectly aware of Limp Biscuit as well. The corporations sold them their rebellion.

And I would argue that we’re starting to see the same dynamic at work with tattoos. They, once again, are little more than an expression of the individual’s taste for the creativity and production of others. And they are as much a form of consumption as anything else.

“Saving Capitalism demands a third way –not rigid Republican conservatism or blind Democratic state interventionism, but a new politics in which the state focuses, laser-like, on advanced capitalism’s unique threats to private life, while leaving much of the free market intact.” –from the summary of Ronald Dworkin’s How Karl Marx Can Save American Capitalism on the back of the book….

I would also extract a quote from one of my earlier posts on this:

“The problem for me, as concerns Dworkin, is that he is using this issue to present the same old nonsense that other neo-liberals and FreeMarketFundamentalists have: that Adam Smith pastoral vision of everyone pursuing their interests and exchanging their goods –something that might have worked when everything was artisans, shopkeepers, craftsmen, and family farms, but could hardly work with the population dynamics we are dealing with now. This is why he keeps trying to make the distinction between “crony Capitalism” and “advanced Capitalism”.

This becomes apparent to me in Dworkin’s hard-on with guilds –think unions here (his understanding of “crony Capitalism” (who shut down outsider approaches to a given market. And this is right out of the Libertarian playbook as described by Andre Marrou in the 1992 independent debate with Lenora Fulani of the New Alliance party. Marrou turned to the sentimentality of a woman in the ghetto who could turn her living room into a hair salon. But as nice as that sounds (and it is worth considering as concerns policy), it’s little more than a diversion from our obligation to take care of the less fortunate among us –that is since anyone of us could end up in a less fortunate situation.

What he is feeling like to me is a FreeMarketFudamentalist who is turning to the novelty of being one who can talk about Marx without expecting psycho shrieks.”

And I think the former quote clearly gets at my concern. I mean you have to ask how “the state” solves any problem that Capitalism presents without “intervention”. And, unfortunately, the conclusion of the book (as of this reading (does not offer any concrete solutions to the problems he is pointing out –that is outside of a section, “The Future of American Conservatism”, in which he seems to be suggesting that conservatism return to its old role as check and balance to progressive excesses while recognizing the very real consequences for individuals: the molecular as compared the molar. As the summary also says earlier:

“In the past, capitalism’s weak spots were obvious: sweatshops, workhouses, and hunger. The twentieth century welfare state saved capitalism by fixing them. Today’s weak spots are less obvious; they don’t even seem related –mass loneliness, a declining birth rate, young people postponing adulthood, and workers using sleep aids to function on the job.”

And I get this -that is in the same postmodern sense that Dworkin seems to be broaching. But Dworkin seems to be dismissing the postmodern approach by failing to recognize the cultural shift from the Marxist emphasis on exploitation through production to the postmodern emphasis on exploitation through consumption. And it seems to me that any attempt to check the latter exploitation will, by its inherent nature, require state intervention via regulation and expansion of the public economy.

“The three forms of alienation [Alienation from the object of labor, Alienation from the activity of labor, and Alienation from one’s human identity] have existed for centuries, with some scholars arguing that labor has been alienated since the dawn of man, when the first farmer had to go out in the cold to plant his crop. But Marx’s fourth form of alienation -the alienation of man from man- is unique to capitalism, and therefore relatively new. In this form of alienation a worker looks upon his employers as his enemy and other workers as his competitors. People should be close, but capitalism drives them apart. They compete for grades in school; they compete for jobs after graduation. Once in jobs they see each other as exchangeable economic units. Their social relationships dissolve. They grow alien to each other under capitalism. It is this alienation of man from man that has intensified with capitalism’s advance, to the point of mass loneliness.” -from Ronald Dworkin’s How Karl Marx Can Save American Capitalism

Here, my feelings are mixed. On one hand, I fully agree with the spirit of Dworkin’s point. And this is where I see the main reason for recommending the book. At the same time, you have to note a certain amount of hyperbole. I, for instance, have never looked at my fellow workers as “competitors” or “competed for grades in school”. I have seen my employer as “the enemy”, but that is only when they’re acting like micromanaging assholes. In fact, what Dworkin seems to be mainly describing is what goes on in middle and upper management. This is because what you’re dealing with there are a growing number of people attempting to justify their jobs by coming up with new policies that generally fuck with the lives of those actually doing the work.

But my experience with my co-workers is that of the only reason worth going to work every day –that is outside of the money. People at the bottom of the ladder tend to bond, if for no other reason, for the complications imposed on them by middle and upper management. Still, Dworkin’s point is justified by the Jack Welch approach in which turmoil is encouraged in order to shake off those who are producing the least.

That said, Dworkin’s emphasis on the alienation between man and man (which includes females (as I’m guessing Dworkin is (am using the term “man” in the metaphorical sense of “mankind” (leads to some interesting results. My concern begins when he diverts the issue to the psychological (that is without offering any real political or social policies to address the issue of alienation (at the neglect of very clear economic issues: The very fact that you cannot have a situation in which you have 1% of the population feasting at the table and the rest of us fighting for the crumbs and not expect the problems we are having.

In that sense, Dworkin’s book feels like little more than a misdirect: the denial of an addict of producer/consumer Capitalism.

Random Bounces 6/10/17:

Bounce 1 (in reference to discourse: facebook.com/groups/3760629 … 5850999462):

“Not to mention, the invention of “the corporation”, the non-man, the soulless, lifeless entity (although legally recognized as “persons”) with profit as its sole reason and purpose for existing.

Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary defines it as ‘an ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility’.

Here’s a fun challenge: Notice where, how and with whom Give&Take is used compared with where, how and with whom Be-Do-Have is used, to notice where and how abuses exist.” -John Juster

I would also note, John, a point brought to my attention by either Ken Taylor or John Davies from a PhilosophyTalk podcast: that corporations are inherently sociopathic: they don’t care, they don’t feel, they’re completely lacking in empathy. In other words:

“It doesn’t feel!!! It can’t be human!!!”

:that is despite what the Citizen’s United ruling tells us. That said, what I mainly came back for was to articulate on your give/take dynamic in the context of a conceptual model I have been nurturing for some time: Efficiency or that which is maximized by minimizing the differential between the resources put into an act and the resources gotten out. And I present it as a Metaphysics of Efficiency that is opposed to the Metaphysics of Power (and the Culture of More that results (which has dominated our culture so far.

Now, given the window I have here, I’ll have to elaborate as we go along. But your point gives me an opportunity to apply it in your terms. (And I would also note that the concept has been haunting me throughout my immersion in Dworkin’s book.) It seems to me that your give and take dynamic pretty much represents the Metaphysics of Power in that such relationships always end up asymmetrical in that, as I said before, the “taking” part of it always seems more in the interest of the individual subject. The be/do/have dynamic, on the other hand, seems to support the Metaphysics of Efficiency in that is about an individual act that only takes in the resources it needs and, thereby, leaves resources available to other acts of be/do/have. Once again, I’ll have to explain as we go along. This is just the wide swashes.
*
Bounce 2 (in reference to discourse: facebook.com/groups/6757450 … 0110161057):

“I think this may be a bias on the part of Marx. Much like the mistake he made regarding the market, he thought that the market was a capitalist phenomenon when it was in fact a phenomenon of any industrialized economy—though it wasn’t his fault, there weren’t any other industrialized economic systems to compare to. In this case I would argue that man to man alienation could appear under any political system where people were induced to compete. Feudal lords could induce it just as easily as evil managers.” –David A. Anderson

I would go deeper than that, David, in arguing that when it comes to Capitalism, there is nothing new under the sun. It pretty much comes down to what has always been the case: under whatever ideological system, there have always been a group of people who felt they were entitled to more than others, even if it came at the other’s expense.

This is why we always see common frameworks under the deceptions. As I like to joke:

It use to be pray hard and follow these principles, and you too may enter the kingdom of heaven.

Now it’s:

Work hard and follow these principles, and you too may enter the kingdom of success.
*
Anyway guys, there was so much more I wanted to get to here. I apologize for what I couldn’t.

Coming to the end of my immersion in Dworkin’s How Karl Marx Can Save American Capitalism as I am, I find myself coming to peace with him –that is with qualifications. As the section in the last chapter suggests, “The Future of American Conservatism”, Dworkin’s primary goal is to reform the conservative position (mainly that of the economic conservative (and take it (as well as the Republican party (back to the role it use to play: that of check and balance to progressive excesses. And we all have to agree that the left can be a little too idealistic and, thereby, excessive. For instance: the idea of open borders. Granted, in perfect world it would be nice; but in ours, it just wouldn’t be prudent –anymore than eliminating the powerful tool of Capitalism would.

I even agree with Dworkin’s concerns as concerns Marx’s 4th form of alienation (the one that emerged with advanced Capitalism): man against man. And he does provide an adequate survey of the results of that alienation –sometimes through narratives that, while plausible, are a little less than multidimensional.

(I sometimes found myself wishing he was as good a fiction writer as he was a theorist.)

Still, as a theorist, apparent conservative and true believer in the market, Dworkin at least tries to see and describe the very real effects of the market on individuals. And in this sense, he is not just offering the novelty of a FreeMarketFundamentalist being able to talk about Marx without expecting to hear psycho shrieks, but a reasonable approach that seeks to save Capitalism by addressing the needs of those it leaves out.

The problem is that he suggests that we need to address the psychological issues over the economic ones when the economic issues are the very source of the psychological ones. And how, exactly, do we legislate those psychological problems away? I mean this was Marx’s primary point –and even in the earlier books of Marx that Dworkin refers to and embraces. What Dworkin, to me, fails to see is that “man’s alienation to man” is inherent in the competitive nature of Capitalism, that whether it takes the form of advanced Capitalism or “Crony” Capitalism, it all comes down to same thing:

You simply cannot embrace an everyman for themselves (dog eat dog (ideology and ask “why?” when someone is holding a gun to your head and jacking your car. Likewise, nor can you expect profit seeking behaviors to look out for the best interests of everyone.

The deeper I go into Gibney’s book, A Generation of Sociopaths, the more I find to disagree with. Once again, I think he might have been better off noting the role sociopathy (which has always been inherent in America’s embrace of individualism (seems to be playing in the current political climate while noting the extent to which it seems to have accelerated under boomer dominance. As written, his condemnation of the boomer generation often comes off as one-sided to the point of compromising his otherwise articulate and comprehensive understanding of recent history. For instance, he accurately describes the important advances America made running from the New Deal to the 70’s: advances in social, racial, and economic justice as well as government financed advances in research, science, and technology and a major improvement in infrastructure. And I would also agree that a lot of it did get pissed away under the boomer’s watch.

At the same time, I think Gibney would benefit heavily from a reading of Robert Reich’s book on SuperCapitalism in which he points out that a lot of what occurred from the 80’s on was inevitable due to advances in technology. As Reich compellingly points out, what happened in the golden age that Gibney describes (or the not-so-golden age as Reich calls it: since it was mainly white males who were benefitting (will try to get to this later (was the result of the oligopolies that existed in those days. As anyone near or beyond my age remembers, those were days when most markets were dominated by one, two, at most three corporate entities. Cars, for instance, were dominated by Ford, Chrysler, and GM. TV was dominated by ABC, NBC, and CBS. And communications were dominated by Ma Bell. Under those circumstances, companies had the leeway to act as social ambassadors that could tolerate union demands, progressive taxes, and social safety nets.

But as technologies in transportation and communication advanced, these companies found themselves faced with increasing competition. And the corporation’s main reason to be is the satisfaction of the customer for the sake of its stockholders. There’s no way around that. We simply cannot expect corporations to act as moral agents. That is the job of government.

And given this, we can see that what Gibney attributes to the sociopathy of boomers may actually be the inevitable result of the inherent sociopathy of Capitalism –something Gibney conveniently dances around. And why wouldn’t he? Given his background as a lawyer, hedge fund manager, and venture capitalist?

“Even if we can no longer study large communities without TV, it is still at least possible to study differences between light and heavy viewers. These tests reveal a similar dynamic, “relatively strong negative correlations between viewing and achievement.” Reading comprehension and math performance all suffer when TV viewing is relatively heavy; children who watch a lot of TV are also more aggressive than light watchers (regardless of whether the programs themselves are especially violent). “ -Gibney, Bruce Cannon. A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America (p. 24). Hachette Books. Kindle Edition.

Now it’s not like a lot research need be done here. The cause and effect relationship (the correlation (between TV watching and the lack of educational achievement is pretty easy to see: people who spend their time watching TV have less time to read or even think. This gets some shine from the Great Courses audio book I am presently listening to, The Terror of History: Mystics, Heretics, and Witches in the Western Tradition, in which Teofilo F. Ruiz points out that one of the preconditions for achieving the mystical experience is a willingness to not constantly fill one’s mental space with external distractions: TV, music, audio books in my case, etc… And I think Ruiz’s point puts some shine on to how TV and other media can lead to the sociopathy of Gibney’s thesis –that is regardless of the actual violence of its content. But it gets more critical and timely when Gibney points out:

“It’s not that other generations don’t have their own issues with television, and the effects of newer media like immersive video games, smartphones, and Facebook will not be clear for some time. They are also beside the point for now, because it will be years before younger generations run the country. The unavoidable fact is that the nation is currently run by people who have a deep and unshakable relationship with TV, entranced from their beginnings by a medium with unambiguously negative effects on personality and accomplishment.” -ibid

What we have to note here is the effect of immediate gratification –that which Gibney associates with Boomer sociopathy, and which may well be being passed off onto their/our offspring. I, myself, have often written about my concern with the immediate gratification of instant publication, that which I find myself as seduced by as anyone else. And it seems to me that this can ultimately lead to a kind of narcissism. And how exactly do we distinguish narcissism from the sociopathy that Gibney describes?

Case in point: note the emergence of trolls, and how they evolved, as message boards became more popular –that, once again, which involves the immediate gratification of instant publication. The problem of Trolls, of course, has been greatly reduced by the FaceBook block which is complete as compared to the old message boards. But there still seems to be an element of sociopathy involved in that we are never engaging with the other as a whole, but rather a series of posts: objects that happen to occupy our computer screens.