It's fascinating to me how every person in the dissident community (for lack of a better term) is looking at what's going on, and seeing completely different things.
This seems right to me:
"the contemporary Western expressions of psychosis are precisely the manifestation of our culture’s denial of will, agency, consciousness and real relation in the existential experience of sensitive individuals"
But Paul Kingsnorth looks at our situation from an Eastern Orthodox POV, and sees idolatry of the self and self-will. Rudolph Riggery, a physicist, sees a corruption of science, superstition, and irrationality. Jeff Childers, a populist conservative lawyer, sees Marxism rampant.
So what is it that we are actually looking at?
Anyway, in regards to your post, I've been thinking about how my father railed against "the Combine" all of his life (he got the term from Ken Kesey), and wound up swallowing MSNBC's propaganda. If he were alive today he'd surely be railing for war against Russia, and would be unable to see the hypocrisy in wanting other people's children to die for an obscure political motive, when he'd spent so long condemning the government for Vietnam.
This article, so helpful. Thanks. Hey, on this line:
“ Experimental observations such as those of the Milgram & Asch experiments should probably be interpreted as evidence of the strength of these sorts of attachments rather than simplistic hypotheses such as a lack of critical thinking capabilities of the majority.”
…was just in conversation about this. Seems like critical thinking capabilities are not applied where needed most. I mean, the general characteristic is either refusal, or loss of ability to, apply critical thinking capabilities <<to one’s own tribe>> (profession, nation, class, race, self, whatnot). And when lost here, what value are such capabilities applied elsewhere? The least of the effects of this loss is reinforcement of precisely the lack of critical thinking capabilities. I don’t know, I think though this points at meaning having evaporated from your sentence
Pretty much nobody buys an SUV to spite Greta. They were already going to buy that SUV for their own reasons…LOL Fuck Greta is at most an afterthought that you’ve seized on, so that other people can’t have their own valid reasons for wanting something or doing something
So the point I'm making is that such an act becomes possible to experience as a rebellious statement. As an assertion of independence, as symbolic dissent from the extreme points of view of marketed and astroturfed activism.
Yet people who play according to the script on both of these ends will serve to protect the system and its objectives.
The point IM making is that for most people, that’s at most an afterthought to something they were already going to do 🤷🏻
Dismissing it as this (fuck Greta LOL) being their whole reason for doing something or even for existing is no less flawed than the Branch Covidian/progressive/communist view of everyone Not Them.
It’s a great way to dismiss SUV buyers/vaccine rejectors/people who insist women don’t have penis, and justify trampling all over them because it’s not like they are people with agency, and that is simply not acceptable
"... that’s at most an afterthought to something they were already going to do ..."
Right, but I'm not putting this forward as a reductive causal explanation for people's behaviour. It's a factor in the formation of a social trend.
This sort of reminds me of when I was an undergrad in sociology, and I encountered the idea that the entire discipline undermined the notion of free will &c. I couldn't see why people would think that was even remotely plausible - just because social behaviour at the macro level exhibits recurring patterns doesn't mean that the individual lacks agency.
I mean, there's an incredible amount of space between my everyday choices and institutional behaviour or social trends.
It's fascinating to me how every person in the dissident community (for lack of a better term) is looking at what's going on, and seeing completely different things.
This seems right to me:
"the contemporary Western expressions of psychosis are precisely the manifestation of our culture’s denial of will, agency, consciousness and real relation in the existential experience of sensitive individuals"
But Paul Kingsnorth looks at our situation from an Eastern Orthodox POV, and sees idolatry of the self and self-will. Rudolph Riggery, a physicist, sees a corruption of science, superstition, and irrationality. Jeff Childers, a populist conservative lawyer, sees Marxism rampant.
So what is it that we are actually looking at?
Anyway, in regards to your post, I've been thinking about how my father railed against "the Combine" all of his life (he got the term from Ken Kesey), and wound up swallowing MSNBC's propaganda. If he were alive today he'd surely be railing for war against Russia, and would be unable to see the hypocrisy in wanting other people's children to die for an obscure political motive, when he'd spent so long condemning the government for Vietnam.
As he went, so went the Left in America.
It’s like Invasion of the Body Snatchers https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077745/
This article, so helpful. Thanks. Hey, on this line:
“ Experimental observations such as those of the Milgram & Asch experiments should probably be interpreted as evidence of the strength of these sorts of attachments rather than simplistic hypotheses such as a lack of critical thinking capabilities of the majority.”
…was just in conversation about this. Seems like critical thinking capabilities are not applied where needed most. I mean, the general characteristic is either refusal, or loss of ability to, apply critical thinking capabilities <<to one’s own tribe>> (profession, nation, class, race, self, whatnot). And when lost here, what value are such capabilities applied elsewhere? The least of the effects of this loss is reinforcement of precisely the lack of critical thinking capabilities. I don’t know, I think though this points at meaning having evaporated from your sentence
Excellent article. Thank you.
Pretty much nobody buys an SUV to spite Greta. They were already going to buy that SUV for their own reasons…LOL Fuck Greta is at most an afterthought that you’ve seized on, so that other people can’t have their own valid reasons for wanting something or doing something
So the point I'm making is that such an act becomes possible to experience as a rebellious statement. As an assertion of independence, as symbolic dissent from the extreme points of view of marketed and astroturfed activism.
Yet people who play according to the script on both of these ends will serve to protect the system and its objectives.
The point IM making is that for most people, that’s at most an afterthought to something they were already going to do 🤷🏻
Dismissing it as this (fuck Greta LOL) being their whole reason for doing something or even for existing is no less flawed than the Branch Covidian/progressive/communist view of everyone Not Them.
It’s a great way to dismiss SUV buyers/vaccine rejectors/people who insist women don’t have penis, and justify trampling all over them because it’s not like they are people with agency, and that is simply not acceptable
"... that’s at most an afterthought to something they were already going to do ..."
Right, but I'm not putting this forward as a reductive causal explanation for people's behaviour. It's a factor in the formation of a social trend.
This sort of reminds me of when I was an undergrad in sociology, and I encountered the idea that the entire discipline undermined the notion of free will &c. I couldn't see why people would think that was even remotely plausible - just because social behaviour at the macro level exhibits recurring patterns doesn't mean that the individual lacks agency.
I mean, there's an incredible amount of space between my everyday choices and institutional behaviour or social trends.