I find it disheartening that you would come in here and shit on the floor.
What Cow tried to do:
What happened:
You’re absolutely correct, I went about it in the wrong way. My intent was to say that I love and respect this community and I’d love to see this energy channelled for collective, good things. Maybe even world-changing things.
Instead of finding frustration, I should have found opportunities. I apologize to you and everyone else here for my initial post in this thread.
HELLS NO! We also posts gifs, make Marx brothers reference, and compare chip-dip recipes.
I made a lovely one out of leftover cream cheese and black onions last week (and mayo, and onion, and a little cayenne pepper). Really good on toast.
Then you have to point out that you are speaking a different language and that when you say “toast” you do not mean “heated bread” or “a short speech prefacing a drink of alcohol” and instead mean “a two-wheeled contraption ridden by a purple-spotted elephant.”
If you use common words with uncommon meanings in a common context NOBODY KNOWS BUT YOU.
Positive stuff is great. And I recognise the power of collective action even if I don’t play well with others IRL.
It would probably help if you knew where I was coming from.
By way of analogy… Someone chucks the remains of their take-out from the window of a speeding car.
There are a number of approaches to solving the issues here. Prosecuting the driver, pressing for biodegradable take-out containers, dissuading the mega-franchise from opening stores, educating people in healthier eating habits, making fresh food a cheaper, better alternative to junk, road-safety campaigns, anti-littering awareness, traffic-calming measures and environmental protection legislation are just a few ways this can be dealt with. I just pick up the crap and dispose of it.
Any sort of change begins with what surrounds you and empowerment starts at home. I can’t affect what goes on in government, but I can change the local area for the better and by extension, the local people.
Without getting too much in detail, change what you can for the better and people become better, both through doing it and seeing it done. Picking up crap inspires others to also pick up crap and to not litter, altering their environment and themselves.
And I don’t have to be a nice person, play politics or kiss arse to do that.
So how can transparency and an internet movement help me? I love the ideals of http://www.abiggishidea.com/ but I’ll never be on their hiring list. I have zero political power, knowledge or interest and if nailed to the floor, would describe myself as vaguely anarchist but like the majority of people, don’t care too much about what’s outside of what I can immediately change.
If your movement can help me, you might just have cracked it. 
Mostly just thinking aloud here, but seems like you’re on to something.
It’s a good start. Thanks. 
I would not say that its so much the emotional character to debates such as this as much as it is the airing of supposed grievances in a very one sided manner.
It causes people to abandon the current paradigm as dysfunctional.
Lets look at the current “sub-subject” of this thread, the dialogue between yourself and @Mindysan.
You interpreted the “sexism in every room, ever” statement the same way that I do. Fatalistic, which I insist is really the only way its meant to be interpreted. But implicit in this type of rhetoric is an enemy, it always the same enemy, its the enemy with privileges that they dont know they have.
Answer this: In Critical Race Theory, Critical Gender Theory, Critical… whatever… who is always the bad guy?
Clue: Its the enemy that does not engage in Sharia oppression of women, its the enemy that does not engage in female genital mutilation, its the enemy that brought female live expectancy into the modern age, its the enemy that abolished slavery, its the enemy that educates women, its the enemy that gave women a vote.
But, hey, I’m a man. So … you know… There is no solution to any female grievance except socialist revolution. Because, you know, somehow socialism brings out the angels in humanity. Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot… great feminists one and all.
Im interested in the fact that this type of rhetoric has shifted to feminism. It used to be all about race( with the ever present cooption of women ).
It will play out in the same way all socialist enterprises do. Socialism will fail and capitalists will take the blame.
Language does change, organically. But it can also be steered to achieve political ends.
Some people here have also said this can be said to characterize your participation in this discussion as well.
I agree that it could be interpreted fatalistically. But if there is a same “enemy” I’d say it’s simply people’s tendency to form small-minded in-groups and treat outsider poorly. This is much harder to deal with than one group which can be overcome, because if that group is dealt with, then another can easily find themselves doing the same thing. And in any given instance of oppression, the basis for who suffers for it (sexes, genders, races, etc) tend to be poorly rationalized. People refusing to think clearly and create problems which otherwise did not exist is itself a huge problem.
This all depends upon who’s theories they are. For example, many white people can complain that black people are the problem - while black people can complain that white people are the problem. So it depends which side you listen to. If it’s always one side, then you are only listening to one side. But I do think that ultimately these are only “problems” of tribal identification between groups which obscure actual, solvable, real-world social problems. And how is anybody supposed to intelligently solve any social problem if they can’t think critically?
You seem to be cherry picking your revolutions. What about the revolutions of England, France, and the US? People seem to have found many beneficial aspects to those. They did away with oppression by the churches and monarchies, but also enshrined into law and economics other forms of oppression which were not recognized at the time. The law of the land became that property-owning white men were free to participate in a civilized society. But, in daily life, many have outgrown the restrictions imposed by this. Women and non-whites have only had their participation recognized in the US and Europe for 100 years or less. And many are still either not accustomed or not on board with this. It’s an uphill battle when the law of the land recognizes your equal worth, but people don’t in daily life.
It might clash with your chosen crusade to complain about whatever you imagine socialism to be, but post-Enlightenment Western culture has been somewhat socialistic. All this means is that having a society is more important than everything being controlled by one group. Otherwise post-revolution US could have merely had it run directly by another noble aristocracy, or business interests. They did do this, but they added concessions towards recognizing some participation by others, to distinguish themselves from what they were rebelling against. They were being “progressive” for their time. Because they recognized that there is also social capital, cultural capital. That owning stuff does not automatically make anybody smart, or fit, or just, or interesting. But the hyper-acceleration of the industrial age has seen that largely bred out of social institutions. A dictatorship based upon a few owning everything is functionally not much different than one where all space is public and controlled by an elite.
I think it’s basically the same process. Not very interesting, perhaps, but certainly relevant.
Fail at what? Blamed for what, by whom? Maybe you already know it all because you are flogging tired stereotypes?
But what are political ends? And how does one know when they are achieved? Depending upon what level you view human interactions, all human social activity can be said to have political aspects. But many people defer having real personal politics to others, and instead just rally behind a “go team” mentality of token participation in struggles long ago defined by others.
Don’t forget Dorothy Day.
I don’t like Gaga, but I love that gif.
I think you mean the one to me. I thought it sounded kind of nonpologetic, both since it wasn’t made to the two of you, and what I had called out wasn’t the affront but lying about the ban. But hey, I figured, we will know soon enough whether he decided to be nicer or was just learning how far he could push things.
I don’t know what gender he thinks I am; for both me and Humbabella I know different people have guessed different pronouns. I’ve been treating it as a sort of reassurance of anonymity, which is probably stupid anxiety about opening up to people that I should work on, but I also think it’s sort of an interesting glimpse at how I come across to others.
Thanks for aiding and abetting my laziness… er, time working on a fellowship application, I mean! Yes, that’s it.
With the way he’s behaving now, I’d guess the latter, not the former. Sad, really.
I don’t know if you come across as a dude or a lady, but it hardly matters to me, either way - we should get the same respect, whether male, female, or gender neutral, right? I probably fail at times, but I do try to treat people as I’d like to be treated regardless of agreement on discussions. At the end of the day, it’s a real human being on the other side of the conversation, and I’d hate for people to feel bad over a disagreement on the internet. Life is hard enough and I tend to find this place a nice respite at times.
I once saw a strange movie about cutting.
Almost every movie is about cutting!
Russian Ark had no cuts. So in a sense, it’s about cutting, despite itself. I should really see it, if only to resolve the question of “film or novelty act.” Anyway, in Secretary, the protagonist is a cutter, and, later, a masochist-- resolving for some the question of “why?”
He totally lost me at opposing open source, and creative commons…
I’m a capitalist pig and I see value in the commoditization of tools and media; the endgame of a free market is that the price of everything drops to 0.
Who wouldn’t like that?
I’ve seen Russian Ark and thought it was great. Never saw it again, so I don’t know how well it holds up to repeated viewings though.
I’m not sure you know how the free market works? I don’t think your laudable goal of getting everything to zero is how it works or how corporations want it to work. They want constant cuts to their overhead (usually in labor, but as Wal-Mart has show, in other places - distribution chain,etc) in order to maximize their profits, which can lead to a drop in prices. But if the goal is accumulation of wealth and a return on capital outlay, you just can’t get to 0. Because someone has to make that stuff and get paid for doing so, yeah? We can certainly debate how get there, but as long as you need cash to trade for goods/services you need to survive and you aren’t making it all yourself, at home (food, shelter, clothing), then everything can’t drop to zero and still work out as a capitalist system.
Let’s talk about Cultural Marxism for a bit. My understanding of Marx (as a bullshitter who doesn’t actually know anything about anything) is that it is less that he called for a revolution and more that he predicted one. He made parallels between the inequal wealth in capitalism and the inequal class in aristocracies/monarchies and said that capitalists would be overthrown in the same way that many kings and queens have been as soon as things get bad enough that people get pissed.
The Frankfurt School was some intellectuals who got together in the inter-war period who - like many thinkers influenced by Marx - wondered why the revolution hadn’t happened yet, and set about theorizing about why it hadn’t and under what conditions it would. They brought in thoughts from the relatively new field of psychology to figure out why people actually behave the way they behave and don’t have revolutions when it seems like they should be having them.
According to Cultural-Marxism-Theorists, this gave rise to Cultural Marxism, which is a movement that uses psychology - maybe especially the manipulation of language - to groom societies for communism. This movement (whether or not governed by some shadowy illuminati-esque body) has continued to the present day and gotten strong and stronger.
I think that’s all fair, but there are some things I don’t get:
First, why are feminists associated with Cultural Marxism? Feminism (not the word, but the thing) predates the birth of Marx, and certainly doesn’t come from the Frankfurt School. Is it because feminists “police” language, which is a tool of the Cultural Marxists? Is it because they favour equality, which is a tenant of communism?
Second, how does cynicism lead to communism (maybe this is just the pet theory of our Cultural-Marxist-Theorist and not a broader theme, so this question may not have a good answer)? My experience of cynicism is that it leads to inaction, not to revolution. But if broad-based cynicism was a force for change, wouldn’t it remain a force for change after communism was in place?
But third, and I think this is the big one, is this account of history, at a high level, even wrong? I mean, clearly the Frankfurt School still influences intellectuals (everyone I knew in university loved Adorno for a very narrow definition of everyone). Clearly feminists do suggest revisions to language as part of a program of fostering equality. Isn’t this just a negative-lens through which to view a gradual move towards equality?
Basically, if the slippery slope is to a society where we are all equal, I’m not sure why we are trying to avoid the first step. Who am I in this conspiracy? Am I a manipulative purveyor of the idea that more equality is more good, or am I a dupe to those manipulators - a fool convinced into believing that equality is a good thing?
I feel like if I am accused of being a cultural marxist, maybe the response should be, “Well, it’s possible I would find your account of reality a little fanciful, but basically whatever you think of my values is probably fairly accurate.”
It makes me think of people who said that gay marriage would start the slippery slope to polygamy. Yeah, it probably did. I’m sure my friends will be happy about that if they ever want to marry one of their boyfriends/girlfriends into their marriage. Let’s jump down that slope.
