Public Journal:

Dear Diary Moment 9/23/2019:

It started with this brain fart or what I refer to as a poetic flight:

“The so-called meritocracy is complete fucking nonsense!!! I mean how much harder is a Buffet or Gates working than, say, some mother or father working three jobs to take care of a sick child?”

And given the drive-by nature of it, mistakes were made. But at worst, I would consider it an informed blunder in that I still stand by it but have come to recognize (thanks to those who responded (and there were a few –hostile ones even (there were some blind spots in my thinking. But then that’s how we tweak and tighten our offerings and reasoning (our conceptual models), right?

The main plot twist came with the introduction of the issue of “value”. (Thanks Grady! Thanks Alex!) And at first I resisted it (rejected it even (as it suggested some kind of Libertarian/Robert Nozick nonsense. However, in my defense, the issue of value was presented to me as if value and merit were interchangeable.

But then I did as I always do and went to work that night, drove around, and thought about the relationship of the two terms. And I had to since a respected ally of mine, Alex, made this argument:

“D Edward Tarkington value has everything to do with it. Who deserves more if I spend the same amount of effort shitting into a hole as you do digging it out? Should we each be paid the same amount just because we put in the same effort? Or, does it matter what we’re doing with our effort, whether it’s directed towards the progress or detriment of clients or our societies?”

What I came to recognize was that there is a connection between merit and value to the extent that any effort must be working towards value in order to constitute merit. For instance, some people put a lot of effort into theft. But that would hardly constitute merit in most circles –even though it could constitute merit in a circle of thieves. Still, they are two distinct terms. And we can know this by the fact that value can exist without merit. For instance, a beautiful Midwestern girl takes a California vacation and, while walking down the beach in a bikini, gets discovered by an established photographer. He talks her into a 2 hour shoot and, before long, she is making way more money than the guy working 3 jobs in order to get his sick child healthcare. We can, of course, argue she has “value”. But we can hardly attribute merit to her since she hardly achieved her advantage through effort.

Furthermore, what we can assess from Alex’s and Grady’s argument is that what they mean by the term “value” is value to us as CONSUMERS, a very specific form of value. And, as we all know, there are way more criterion of “value” than that.

I stand by my original statement.

Today on MSNBC, a guest on AM Joy who happened to be a Trump/Republican apologist brought up a point that was actually kind of useful as concerns the hard right Republican MO. He argued that if the Democrats pursue the impeachment of Trump, it could work against them in the next election since it will come down to choice between their hatred of Trump and their hatred of government. And there is something to be said for this. And not only can we see this in the hard right, but we can also see it in the pseudo-intellectual pop hipster cynicism of the left.

“Hillary ain’t much better so I think I’ll just sit this one out or vote for Earth Mother Jill Stein.”

But I attribute this to intellectual laziness among those who want to think they’re enlightened. On top of that, there are those that could really care less about being enlightened and are more focused on the day to day, but tend to go where the wind blows them, what appeals to them coming from whatever ideologue that happens to come around and say something that resonates with them. But either way, it comes down to a failure to recognize how government actually works, the imperatives it tends to work under, and why we can’t always get what we want from it.

There are two approaches to a democratic system: the democratic and the Utopian. The democratic approach recognizes what any Poly Scy 101 class will tell you: that politics is the art of mediating diverse interests. And it recognizes that, because of that, we have to work towards what we want in incremental ways. The Utopian, on the other hand, wants everything right now and exactly in the way they want it to be. And that’s what we are dealing with right now: the very source of our cynicism.

And excuse the shameless opportunism at work here (my pimping of my golden egg), but this comes down to a Metaphysics of Efficiency as compared to a Metaphysics of Power. Once again, the cornerstone of it is Efficiency Potential= Resources/expectations which simply means that nothing can reduce efficiency like raising expectations or lowering resources while nothing, inversely, could increase it like increasing resources or lowering expectations.

So let’s take a really good look at how the high demands (the high expectations (of the Utopian approach has affected the system under which we all live and work, how it has made our democratic system more efficient –that is given the resources available to it. How efficient has our political system really been under Trump who is seeking to meet the high Utopian expectations of his followers?

Dear Diary Moment 9/30/2019:

Reading Sylvia Plath’s Ariel, I now see a different expression of the dialectic described in Arthur Lupia’s Uniformed: Why People Know so Little About Politics and What We Can Do About It. It basically runs from information to knowledge to competence. The term ‘information’ is almost self-explanatory (but more than that as I will explain below). The term ‘knowledge’ correlates with the bricolage at work as we collect that information and connect it. (And what is important to understand here (that is for reference) is that the process of building a knowledge base roughly correlates with the physical process of neuroplasticity.) Furthermore, it is important to know that this knowledge base is always intertwined with our more base-of-the-brain responses to the environment we are attempting to negotiate. Competence (as compared to intellect which is basically about the ability to process information into competent acts (is about the ability to fulfill a desired task.

And we see this dialectic at work in Plath’s Ariel. What she basically did was collect a lot of information about poetry through reading as well as a lot of personal, emotional responses to things. And the ‘more than that’ of the information phase was the lines she ran repeatedly ran through her head because they gave her pleasure: expressed how she felt. (I know this from having written poetry myself.) And she kept doing this until her knowledge base was filled to the point of bursting.

And as Keats pointed out: poetry results from the overflow of emotions. (Although I would boldly (perhaps arrogantly (revise that to an overflow of emotion and knowledge.) And Ariel was an expression of Plath’s competence as a poet built off of the information/knowledge process set off by her divorce to Ted Hughes –that which likely overwhelmed her knowledge base with emotional information.

As I am finding through my immersion in Nancy MacLean’s Democracy in Chains, one of the things that the Koch brothers recognized (much as Naomi Klein did in The Shock Doctrine (was that there was or is no way that their Neo-Liberal agenda could be forwarded by democratic means. There was/is simply no way you could convince the majority of the voter pool that the best way to go is to give the 1% of our population everything they want. Therefore, as David Koch argued, the only way to go about it is to manipulate the “rules of the game” and exploit the technology available to them via their financial resources and the think tanks those resources created.

(And yes: these people are that dangerous, far more so than the what-about-ism aimed at the left. I mean how much influence does PETA and Vegan societies really have on our political process?)

The thing we have to understand here, though, is that the technology Koch is talking about also involves the language games at work in our political discourses. It basically comes down to doxa or socially programmed responses to socially programmed cues. Take, for instance, the term “liberty”. Sounds liberal and reasonable enough; right? However, when this term is used by the right, what it almost always means is the liberty to exploit others for their own gain. In fact, this very term was used in the Antebellum south by John C. Calhoun to defend the rights of plantation owners to have slaves. And in the context of modern Capitalism, it is used to maintain the right of oligarchs to keep accumulating wealth and power, even if it comes at the expense of the liberty of others.

And I bring this up because I think it about time for Democrats to start taking a few pointers from the right-wing playbook and start taking back a few of the terms they claim to have some monopoly on –including those that the right shamelessly stole from progressives in the first place. They need to make clear that the right does NOT have a monopoly on terms like “liberty” or even “self determinism”. In fact, the right doesn’t even have respectable claim to a respect for market forces. We all know that the market economy can be a useful tool. But that’s the difference: we see it as a tool whereas the right sees it as some kind of religion or grand narrative.

Today I want to make a couple of deeper points concerning a brain fart I posted a couple of days ago:

“Milton Friedman? Hayek? Ayn Rand? Alan Greenspan? Robert Nozick? Sure they were intelligent people. The only problem is what they dedicated their intellect to: sucking the dick of the rich in the hope that they’ll give us our fair share.”

And please bear with my process.

First of all, what we are looking at here is an example of what I’ve been on about as concerns the model offered by Arthur Lupia in Uninformed: Why People Know so Little About Politics and What We Can Do About It. And, once again, it has to do with the dialectic he offered that starts with information which moves into knowledge which moves into competence. Furthermore, it shows why it is far more accurate to talk about competence than it is intellect which is more about one’s capacity to process information into a knowledge base that can suit a given need.

And we see this at work with the examples I offer above. They are clearly intelligent in that they show a high capacity to process knowledge for the sake of a given end. But the only thing they show themselves competent at is offering alibis for those that have an economic advantage. And in the process of doing so, they show themselves competent at succeeding by basically sucking that corporate dick, by acting as true believers. Where they show their selves completely incompetent, however, is in a democratic discourse that generally assumes the goal of reaching a compromise that will work for everyone involved. They basically come into the language game un-armed as it were. And it’s why they have to turn to the cheap and mean spirited tactics that they do. I mean when all else fails, turn to what you’re competent at; right? Which segues to my second point:

I now realize that Deleuze and Guatarri’s opposition to “state philosophy” may have been a little misleading. It makes it seem as if government has been the problem all along when the examples of FreeMarketFundamentalism I offer above are the only voices I hear offering conformist arguments –that is when government is the only realistic check and balance we can hope for against corporate power.

It was never “state philosophy” that was a problem that needed to be addressed –at least not as of the the time of D & G. And they should have known that given their Marxist influence. It was, rather, corporate philosophy.

One of the weird things about philosophy (especially of the Continental kind (is how it tends to have some of its most compelling effects when you get away from it for a while, much as I have had to do because of my present political situation in America. And, reading Nancy MacLean’s Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America, I’m starting to get a more crystallized sense of the implications as concerns Deleuze & Guatarri’s sense of conceptual play for the sake of creating concepts at work in What Is Philosophy.

One of the things that Maclean points to throughout the book as concerns the main player in the history of the right, James McGill Buchanan (not the political foot soldier we all know of in James Buchanan), is how he tended to work with conceptual models and thought experiments while paying little attention to the actual empirical effects of his policies. And we tend to see this at work in most theorists of the FreeMarketFundamentalist right including Rand, Friedman, Nozick, as well as Greenspan.

Now do not get me wrong here: my intention is not to establish a false equivalency between D & G’s understanding of process and that of right-wing FreeMarketFundamentalists; nor is it to engage in the informal fallacy of creating a slippery slope between D & G’s conceptual play and the stealth activities of the right. That would be to succumb to the analytic fantasy of finding some one-size-fits-all solution or what Rorty referred to as some over-riding epistemological system by which we can judge the accuracy of our statements.

My point, rather, is to bring out the difference between what right-wing libertarians are doing and what continentals and pragmatics such as Rorty were doing. Right-wing libertarians, because of their personal investment and self interest in their conceptual schemes, tend not to test their models against reality. They can only be right because they sound right –that is to them at least.

On the left, however, there is always that pragmatic overlap between thinkers like D & G and Rorty that obliges them to test their conceptual schemes against reality in order to see if they fulfill the pragmatic criteria of actually working.

“Most Classical economists believed in the so-called Say’s Law, which states that supply creates its own demand. The reasoning was that every economic activity generates incomes (wages, profits, etc.) equivalent to the value of its output. Therefore, it was argued, there can be no such thing as a recession due to a shortfall in demand. Any recession had to be due to exogenous factors, such as a war or the failure of a major bank. Since the market was incapable of naturally generating a recession, any government attempt to counter it, say, through deliberate deficit spending, was condemned as disturbing the natural order. This meant that recessions that could have been cut short or made milder became prolonged in the days of Classical economics.” -Chang, Ha-Joon. Economics: The User’s Guide (Kindle Locations 1291-1296). BLOOMSBURY PUBLISHING. Kindle Edition.

Here again, I return to the point I have been trying to make for some time as concerns the relationship between the exchange value of the products we buy and the buying power and demand it creates. FreeMarketFundamentalists would have you believe that exchange value equals buying power. They work by the formula exchange value=demand & buying power. (And note that I use the symbol “&” as compared to “+”. I do so because there is a lot of overlap and interchangeability between the two which would not lead the cumulative effect the “+” symbol would suggest –something I’m certain FreeMarketFundamentalists would agree with.) But if this were true, buying would just defuse and sweep through the population and everyone would get they need and even want within reason.

But that simply is not the way it works. The important thing to understand here is that the rich do not shop at Walmart: the kind of place that most people derive their income from and gives them the buying power to buy the products they participate in producing and distributing. What rather happens is that as the money that comes from exchange value moves to the top, the buying power and demand it creates contracts. This is because as people get richer, they turn away from large scale producers that employ large numbers of people to high end boutiques: exclusive outlets that employ far fewer people and, thereby, creates less buying power. On top of that, we have to consider how much of that excess buying power goes into savings where it just becomes static.

Of course, the FreeMarketFundamentalist will pose the argument that the rich will offset that through investment. But the important thing to understand here is that investment doesn’t create a strong economy, demand does. It may create a short-term boost through the people it hires: the buying power it produces. But that buying power created can never match the exchange value it produces. In other words: all the investment in the world won’t do shit unless people have money to buy the product.

(This, BTW, is why we live in a debt society in which it is not a matter of how much you have as compared to others, but rather how much others owe you.)

One of the things Ha-Joon Chang does in his user guide for Economics is describe the various schools of economic thought. He, of course, covers the Austrian School. And one thing that I discovered is that I, as a social democrat, actually agree with them on one point: that people are not always rational actors and that there is always an element of randomness involved in the history of our economy. Where I depart with them is their conclusions and prescriptions. And social democrats need to understand this and articulate it to the public a little better if they are to have the success I think they’re capable of.

The problem with the Austrian School’s conclusions is that they’re letting the perfect get in the way of the better. Since randomness and complexity is ubiquitous throughout our economic system, why attempt any government interference in the market at all? This, of course, is the false dichotomy we social democrats deal with everyday, even among left of center media outlets such as MSNBC which grilled Elizabeth Warren on whether she was a “Capitalist” or not.

And I bring this up because Social Democrats seem to assume the Austrian School’s point without being forthright about it. They seem to recognize that there is no way the central planning of a purely socialist economy could possibly work. This why they tend to work in more incremental ways. The problem is that they have, thus far, failed to concede that point and left most people with the impression that it is an either/or dichotomy. I mean God forbid any Social Democrat admit any overlap with a FreeMarketFundamentalist.

And it seems to me that now is the best time for them to get that point across by pointing to that other side of that coin (or double edge sword if you will (as expressed in the collection of essays: Can it Happen Here? In it, they make the valid point that while Trump might try to turn America into some kind of authoritarian state, the system is just too complex for him to pull it off. (He, in a weird sense, has mostly attempted to engage in a kind of central planning centered on him.) And thus far our recent history has shown that to be correct. It has been our complex bureaucracy that has resisted him at every turn. Therefore, it would seem imperative upon and beneficial to Social Democrats to show their intellectual prowess by publicly expressing their hesitation when it comes to “central planning” in any general sense.

“Production has been seriously neglected in the mainstream of economics, which is dominated by the Neoclassical school. For most economists, economics ends at the factory gate (or increasingly the entrance of an office block), so to speak. The production process is treated as a predictable process, pre-determined by a ‘production function’, clearly specifying the amounts of capital and labour that need to be combined in order to produce a particular product. Insofar as there is interest in production, it is at the most aggregate level – that of the growth in the size of the economy. The most famous refrain along this line, coming from the debate on US competitiveness in the 1980s, is that it does not matter whether a country produces potato chips or micro-chips. There is little recognition that different types of economic activity may bring different outcomes – not just in terms of how much they produce but more importantly in terms of how they affect the development of the country’s ability to produce, or productive capabilities. And in terms of the latter effect, the importance of the manufacturing sector cannot be over-emphasized, as it has been the main source of new technological and organizational capabilities over the last two centuries.” -Chang, Ha-Joon. Economics: The User’s Guide (Kindle Locations 3067-3076). BLOOMSBURY PUBLISHING. Kindle Edition.

Here again, we return to the problem with the Neo-Liberal/Republican/Libertarian agenda: this erroneous notion that an expanding economy will solve all problems. Or as their John F Kennedy, Reagan, put it:

“A rising tide raises all boats.”

This is why they put, above the interests of ALL parties involved, the interests of the rich. And this is why they seem completely oblivious to the very real effects of their policies on very real people. They focus on quantifiable matters such as the GDP without so much as a consideration of how individuals are actually doing: the quality of their lives. Take, for instance, a point made by Robert Reich. If you suddenly lose a union job in manufacturing that was paying 20$/hr. and had to maintain your quality of life with 10$/hr., that would mean that you would have to work 16 hours a day. But as if that wasn’t bad enough (and to add insult to injury), you would find yourself having to pay for things you didn’t have to before. Instead of cooking your own meals, you would to buy them from restaurants. Instead of mowing your own lawn, you would have to hire a lawn service. In other words, you would be increasing the GDP while significantly decreasing the quality of your life.

Furthermore, what Chang is getting at here is that manufacturing (despite all claims to it being a “post-industrial society” (is still more important than the neo-liberals would have you believe. And as much as I agree with him, this is where I would depart with Chang in that he didn’t include it. If you think about it, a thriving economy depends on people like you and me being able to walk into a store or shop and being able to exchange money for goods or services. In fact, I have to wonder if a service isn’t secondary to goods –somehow dependent on the production of goods. Yet the Neo-Liberals act as if we can somehow carry on under an economy that no longer seems anchored (a kind of Simulacrum if you will (in the manufacturing of goods –that is given that about 40% of our economy is based on finance.

“Changing minds is essential to any revolution, then. Social shifting is about changing people’s minds, I’d say, because with peoples’ minds come their goals, and so their lives. And the battle for minds and hearts is a battle for aims and ideals.” –Bartley, Grant. The Metarevolution (2nd Edition) (Kindle Locations 1167-1169). Punked Books. Kindle Edition.

I hesitated to post this. (If I have, you’re reading it.) I originally started out with this immersion in Bartley’s book with the intent of taking a stealth approach in going thoroughly through the book and submitting an article. But as I vacillate on the choice to click the post button, I can’t help but consider the possibility that taking the stealth approach might be a little like ambushing him and not giving him a chance to respond to any commentary I might have on the book. I mean I am commenting and playing off of what he clearly put a lot of heart and soul into. Plus that, I have always considered what I do on these boards a process in public (consider this Dear Diary Moment 4/17/2020) and it would give me a chance to develop my thoughts on it before I actually sit down to write the article.

That said, Bartley is right here. We’re not just going to vote our problems away. It will require a paradigm shift, a complete change in sensibility. For instance, in America, we would be a lot better off with the social democrat position of Sanders. But as a Social Democrat myself, I recognize that now is not the time. I recognize that before we actually institute the radical change that Bernie represents, we have to convince a little less than ½ of American voters to stop hearing psycho-shrieks every time anything something remotely Marxist is mentioned. And that holds a lot better odds than the above 50% we were looking at 10 years ago.

That said, I want to comment on another quote:

“Well, we clearly need some sort of revolution, even if just to free ourselves from the numbing effects of the conditioning misinforming our heads. We need more freedom because we don’t even know we need more freedom! (If you think you live in a world of optimal freedom, think at least twice. What does that freedom amount to, economically and intellectually? What are its boundaries and limitations? Generally we’re free to seek success as socioeconomically defined, which is currently a very limiting condition, as it means expansionist materialism.)”

There is a lot more to freedom than a choice between Coke or Pepsi.

…and you’re as boring and dull as ever.

“The central problem with our ideologies and their ideals is a problem with our thinking about them, or rather, with the extent of our lack of thinking about them. We endure bad basic ideas as individuals or as societies because we lack effective criticism of those ideas. Thus, one of the core ideas motivating this manifesto is that uncriticality in ideological thinking is the source of profound sociocultural problems, including the paradox of revolution. We could therefore say that the way we respond to the continuing need for fundamental change needs to fundamentally change. Since this deeper change will possibly never be finished as long as history isn’t, it would therefore be eternal revolution. So ideologically-critical thought recommends ideologically-critical thought as an eternal revolution which keeps overcoming the deficiencies of our limited revolutions. This eternal revolution is the metarevolution.” -Bartley, Grant. The Metarevolution (2nd Edition) (Kindle Locations 2978-2987). Punked Books. Kindle Edition.

Ultimately, what this comes down to is recognizing the distinction between the democratic and utopian approach to political, economic, and social policy. The democratic approach recognizes what any Poly-Sci 101 class will tell you: that politics is the art of mediating diverse interests. The consequence of this is that the individual accepts that the only real and effective democracy is one in which everyone has things they like while dealing with things they might not. The utopian approach, on the other hand, wants it all and they want it the way they want it. That is when, regardless of the ideology or belief system involved, things get dangerous.

Guys: as concerns Trump’s suggestion that we swallow disinfectant, we need to keep one important thing in mind:

THE MAN IS TROLLING US!!!

And don’t get me wrong here. I’m not being condescending. I took it seriously too –at first. But I mostly got a laugh out of it in the sense that I was fooled into thinking that he actually believed what he was saying. But such a statement is just way too absurd to think that anyone, even Trump, would believe it. And I even saw highly intelligent people on MSNBC suggest that his statement could actually lead someone to ingest disinfectant.

I think one of the most enlightening books I’ve listened to on Trump is James Poniewozik’s An Audience of One: Television, Donald Trump, and the Politics of Illusion. And I highly recommend it as an antidote to the BS (in very much the Frankfurt sense of it (that spews out of Trump’s mouth. The thing to understand about Trump is that throughout his career, he has come to learn that what ultimately wins the day is chaos, disruption, conflict, and provocation. It is his secret sauce to success. And if you look at it, you will see this has been at work throughout his career and lies at the very heart of his success with The Apprentice.

And what he did with that statement was apply the same secret sauce he used for reality TV to politics. He basically baited us into an over-reaction then backed away by holding up his hands and saying he was only being sarcastic. Now imagine how pleasing that must have been to his supporters. The joke’s on us; right?

However, this is not to say the man’s not dangerous. As Poniewozik also points out: one of the most notable aspects of dictators is their ability to get people to accept a lie even if they don’t believe it. Note, for instance, a Trump supporter who stood outside of a Trump rally and pined wishfully for a day when he could go to the southern border on vacation, pay for 25$ for a permit, and get 50$ per confirmed kill. Then, when pressed on it, backed away, held up his hands, and claimed to only be joking. Now imagine anyone of you are with someone really attractive at a party and someone walks up to you and notes how hot your date is, claims to want to put their hands all over them and then, when you respond, holds up their hands and claims they were only joking. Would you take them at their word? Or would you recognize that they had basically baited you into a reaction that they could then mock?

Neither the truth nor reality matters to these people. All that matters to them is winning the language game by controlling the rules of it. And they only control those rules as long we over-react. This is why we have to do to them what we eventually learn to do with online trolls: thicken our skins and quit dignifying their nonsense by reacting to it and start analyzing and responding like the intelligent people we are.

“If we could come to see such appeals as gimmicks, we might become able to dispense with words like “intrinsic,” “authentic,” “unconditional,” “legitimate,” “basic,” and “objective.” We could get along with such banal expressions of praise or blame as “fits the data,” “sounds plausible,” “would do more harm than good,” “offends our instincts,” “might be worth a try,” and “is too ridiculous to take seriously.” Pragmatists who find this sort of banality sufficient think that no inspired poet or prophet should argue for the utility of his ideas from their putative source in some other to reason. Nor should any defender of the status quo argue from the fact of intersubjective agreement to the universality and necessity of the belief about which consensus has been reached. But one can still value intersubjective agreement after one has given up both the jigsaw-puzzle view of things and the idea that we possess a faculty called “reason” that is somehow attuned to the intrinsic nature of reality. One can still value novelty and imaginative power even after one has given up the romantic idea that the imagination is so attuned.” -Rorty, Richard. Philosophy as Cultural Politics: Volume 4: Philosophical Papers (Page 87). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.

“Questions such as “Does truth exist?” or “Do you believe in truth?” seem fatuous and pointless. Everybody knows that the difference between true and false beliefs is as important as that between nourishing and poisonous foods.” -ibid

I think one of the most problematic aspects of the neo-classical/scientistic aversion to postmodern/pragmatic position (since pragmatism is basically postmodernism light with the anglo-American style of exposition (is that they tend to jump to a lot of unwarranted conclusions about what the looser approach to philosophy is about. They, for instance, assume that since we don’t take a reverent position towards the “Truth”, we are taking an anything goes position. We, as much as the neo-classical/scientistic, want to back our position with data and hard facts. The only difference is that we recognize that our emotional responses to what is in the world is as much a hard fact and part of the data as anything science might have the tools to describe.

Furthermore, they tend to argue that we are anti-science because we question the privilege of science much as Foucault did. But all Foucault did was question the political imperatives behind a lot of what science claimed to be the “Truth”. What they fail to recognize is how authoritarian science can actually become when it assumes itself to be the only means by which understanding can be achieved, that which claims the right (the authority (to shut down any discourse that does not play by its rules. Note, for instance, Hawkins’s claim that science would render philosophy pointless, that it would answer all the questions that philosophy presents. And note, also, that it was an argument based on what Hawkins thought science should be able to do rather than what it actually achieved.

Finally, it fails to recognize the role that philosophy plays in the general scheme of things. To cop off of and revise Russell: philosophy lies in that no-man’s land between science and the arts. The hard approach to philosophy tends to make the mistake of taking what the pragmatic and continental (the soft approach (do too literally. They think we’re trying to compete with science when all we’re really doing is offering metaphors: conceptual models that might give us a deeper understanding of the environment we are adapting to. We are not trying mirror the world. We are simply forming rhizomes with it in the hope of creating something better.

“Daddy, are animals ever ironic or sarcastic?” –from a Metalogue in Gregory Bateson’s Steps to an Ecology of Mind

Never really thought about the relationship between self consciousness and the more literary terms of irony and sarcasm. But I now realize that the capability to be ironic or sarcastic is one of the main things that distinguish humans from other species in that they require a certain amount of self consciousness. I see this in the sometimes self-deprecating humor I tend to engage in on these boards, or even in the more finished letters to the editor for Philosophy Now. I do what I do out of a serious effort to say something truthful to the world while being perfectly aware of how pretentious that must seem or even is. As I like to joke:

I refuse to be taken seriously!

And we should note here the mirror test of self consciousness brought to my attention in Steve Weber’s The Origin of the Self. If you take any animal and put them in front of a mirror with blush on their face, you get a sense of how self conscious they are by how they respond to what they sense as an abnormality. For instance, it’s been found that children up to six months of age will generally not respond by trying to wipe the dis-colorization off. This suggests a lack of self consciousness up until the age of six months. Furthermore, while some higher primates did respond by wiping the blush off, most did not.

But we have to be careful here. Bateson (via the father (goes on to argue that other species cannot engage in irony or sarcasm because they don’t have a language. But that neglects the fact that our language started out with specific grunts that communicated information to other members within our tribe. One of the points brought up was a smaller dog showing its belly to bigger dog in order to defuse a possible fight. It’s basically a submissive gesture. And it can even be thought of as ironic to the extent that it is exposing itself to the bigger dog to keep the bigger dog from attacking it while still talking in the language of domination. It is, as Bateson argues, an evolutionary adaption, little more. Still, it works very much like a language. So we have to be careful about the solipsism that can result as concerns animals based on demarcations between the ability to be ironic and sarcastic and that which cannot. Once again, even a human baby up until six months is incapable of such self consciousness.

The point I’m trying to make is that we cannot convolute a lack of self consciousness with a lack of a self. Here Sartre is useful. He makes the distinction between consciousness and reflective consciousness. And even though it is only humans that seem to be capable of reflective consciousness, we have to admit that other species are perfectly capable of consciousness (of a self), even if it expresses itself in a non-reflective form that can’t engage in irony or sarcasm.

“It is logically possible that in one cultural environment A will be dominant and exhibitionist, while B is submissive and spectator, while in another culture X may be dominant and spectator, while Y is submissive and exhibitionist.” –from Gregory Bateson’s Steps to an Ecology of Mind

This comes from an interesting social model Bateson presents (that which generally deals with power relationships (that I have yet to fully explore the implications of. But it seems like it could be useful. And given the window I have here, I can only offer a short synopsis as background. He starts with symmetrical relationships in which there is a tit for tat. The best example here is a sporting event in which both teams are presumed to be starting from equal ground. He then goes on to describe relationships that are asymmetrical but complementary:

Dominant as compared to Submissive

Succoring as compared to Dependent

Exhibitionist as compared to Spectatorship

And if you think about it, pretty much every relationship you could think of (that is outside of symmetrical ones (fits within one of these complementary opposites. But given my window, I’ll have to leave it to the reader to pursue the implications of it. All I want to cover for now is the second part of the above quote: the culture where X is dominant while acting as spectator while Y is submissive while acting as the exhibitionist.

Of course, the first thing that comes to mind is the court jester who acts at the favor of the king while expressing their power through the folk magic of art. And as I write this, I can’t help but think of Ayn Rand as a kind of court jester acting at the favor of corporate interests. Unfortunately, we also have to see in this the whole Hollywood system in which all participants (directors, actors, screenwriters, etc., etc. (are always working within the perimeters laid out by the producers: those who have access to the money. And they do so by continuing to be entertaining exhibitionists for the producers. As long as they’re entertained, the money will keep coming.

And we would like to think that the other arts are above all this. We know better, of course, with music since it works under the same industrial model that movies do. But the song remains the same with literature and the arts which pretty much follows the industrial model of being at the mercy of an editor or a patron. As much as we would like to think those higher pursuits are above all that, we are still working in a dynamic in which X is dominant while acting as spectator while Y is submissive while acting as the exhibitionist.

It seems to me that there have been three primary mythologies (that which lead to an emphasis on a loose fancy as compared to a more involved imagination (that have haunted America since the beginning and played a major role in what we’ve experienced for the last four years:

  1. The truthful outburst

  2. The triumph of the revolutionary

And 3. The Christ-like historical figure

The truthful outburst is about something that breaks away from protocol in order to express something that has been denied due to the inherent blockages built into the protocol. We see this in such movies as Bulworth and Man of the Year. And we can especially see it in the effect that Trump has had on his followers in his rallies. That which offended most reasonable people, because of this, seemed profound to his MAGA-Minions.

The triumph of the revolutionary can easily be seen in Trump’s followers storming the Capital and the fancy this must have ignited in their minds as they were doing it, especially given that it was this very behavior that established our country in the first place. Misguided as it was (due to a lack of imagination), they clearly fancied their selves analogous to the original revolutionaries.

But the most interesting to me (that is for my purposes here (is the Christ-like historical figure which, while being historically factual, took on a more mythical aura about them. Think, for instance: Jesus, Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, and William Morris, anyone that was so inspirational that they took on the air of the profound. And that is clearly the mythology that Trump’s MAGA-Minions are embracing given that many of those who stormed the Capital actually claimed they were willing to die for Trump.

So you have to ask if the reason we end up with demagogues like Trump is that they fill in the gap left by the absence of such authentically inspired individuals as Jesus, Kennedy, King, etc., etc… And put in mind that such figures cannot be forced. They have to emerge spontaneously, as if by an act of God –whatever that might be. Also put in mind that some theologians have presented the theory that the term “Antichrist” suggests someone who is Christ-like, but not quite Christ and, thereby, capable of all kinds of evil, even if it goes against their original intentions.

I really do like theory –the depth of understanding it brings me- especially as concerns social and economic justice. I really do. Still, the pragmatist in me (the old school bourgeoisie liberal that still believes in the institutions we have as Rorty use to joke (is a little hesitant about taking it too seriously when it comes to solutions.

Take, for instance, Slavoj Žižek’s argument that Starbuck’s humanitarian efforts offer a distracting possibility to the better off in society: that they can buy their redemption and appease their conscience for the price of a cup of coffee. And I agree with him. Much as I agree that the philanthropy trap is a misdirect meant to make government solutions seem less necessary. But before we surrender to the radical pop-cynicism of assuming that the system is just rotten to the core and anarchistic calls for tearing the system down to the ground and rebuilding it from there, couldn’t we just say:

“Look Starbucks: the gig is up. Žižek exposed you. Still, anything helps. And we appreciate you for that. You could have chosen to do otherwise. But it’s not going to be enough. It will still require substantial government intervention through policy to truly fix the problems we have.”

“’Ha, ha, ha! You will be finding in toothache next,” you cry, with a laugh.

“’Well? Even in toothache there is enjoyment,” I answer. I had toothache for a whole month and I know there is. In that case, of course, people are not spiteful in silence, but moan; but they are not candid moans, they are malignant moans, and the malignancy is the whole point. The enjoyment of the sufferer finds expression in those moans; if he did not feel enjoyment in them he would not moan.” –from Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground

One of the cool things I’m getting out of this particular run through Kaufman’s The Basic Writings of Existentialism is an overlap with a lot of the more contemporary thinkers I gravitate towards. In this case, that main overlap I’m seeing is with Lacan’s concept of Jouissance. And to offer a brief synopsis:

Lacan argued that when it comes to sex, we experience pleasure at a conscious level while experiencing discomfort at an unconscious one. And this is confirmed by scientific evidence that the prostrate, during the sexual act, is agitated until it is forced to release sperm in order to return a state of homeostasis. And this makes sense. If you think about it, sex is a process of working towards a threshold that will take you out of a place you’re really enjoying at the time.

Lacan then reverses this in pointing that many of our psychological maladies are a matter of feeling discomfort at a conscious level while experiencing pleasure at a subconscious level. And if you think about it: why else would we repeat behaviors that give us displeasure at a conscious level unless we were experiencing some kind of pleasure at an unconscious one? A young man falls in love with a girl, gets her, yet, finds himself constantly imagining her with other men. Fear? Or a kind of porn? You tell me:

Dostoyevsky then goes on to describe how Cleopatra took pleasure in sticking pins in her servant girls breast in order to watch their “screams and writhings”. And here we see an overlap in Žižek’s bounce off of Lacan when it comes to human cruelty in the context of NAZI Germany:

“It is especially important to bear in mind how the very ‘bureaucratization’ of the crime was ambiguous in its libidinal impact: on the one hand, it enabled (some of) the participants to neutralize the horror and take it as ‘just another job’; on the other, the basic lesson of the perverse ritual also applies here: this ‘bureaucratization’ was in itself the source of an additional jouissance (does it not provide an additional kick if one performs the killing as a complicated administrative-criminal operation? Is it not more satisfying to torture prisoners as part of some orderly procedure –say, the meaningless ‘morning exercises which served only to torment them –didn’t it give another ‘kick’ to the guards satisfaction when they were inflicting pain on their victims not by directly beating them up but in the guise of an activity officially destined to maintain their health?”

“The crowd is untruth. Therefore was Christ crucified, although he addressed himself to all, He would have no dealings with the crowd, because He would not permit the crowd to aid him in any way, because in this regard He repelled people He repelled people absolutely, would not found a party, did not permit balloting, but would be what He is, the Truth, which relates itself to the individual –And hence everyone who truly would serve the truth is eo ipso, , in one way or another, a martyr.” –from Kierkegaard’s ‘That Individual’ in Kaufman’s Basic Writings of Existentialism

First of all, I apologize for the blatant confirmation bias and vulgar self promotion I’m about to indulge in (that is without compunction), but this pretty much parallels my understanding of Jesus’ unfortunate fate. What clearly got him killed was the fact that he belonged to everyone while belonging to no one at the same time. Think about what happened with Pontius Pilate who, sources say, wanted nothing to do with the whole affair. So he takes Jesus (who is charged with matters at best vague) and Barabbas who is charged with killing a Roman soldier. He then asks the people to choose which one is to be spared. The people, of course, choose Barabbas because his résistance to the Roman Empire seems more concrete and comprehensible.

And here we should note Layotard’s point in The Postmodern Condition that one of mechanisms towards oppression is the natural human draw to the easily interpreted and easily communicated. We can further see Christ (as described by Kierkegaard (as the ultimate deconstructive hero. This, furthermore, brings us to a better understanding of why Kierkegaard’s pursuit of Christianity is so important to Continental philosophy in general –that is in him rooting a lot our conceptual models in his understanding of Jesus. Note, for instance, Christ’s emphasis on private philosophy as compared to public, or rather, respectively, self creation as compared to social change as Rorty makes the distinction. And we see the residual effect of this in thinkers like Deleuze (w/ and w/out Guatarri (as well as Derrida.

And note, also, the analogous relationship between the deflective statements of thinkers like Deleuze or Derrida and those of Christ. I would argue that Christ (much as Deleuze did (would advice one to not ask what it means, but rather pay attention to what it does.