That fits as smoothly as a cat in a box.
Our latest new saying.
Also:
There’s a cat up the chimney.
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Is that like calling something “streets ahead”?
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That’s just cattywampus.
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Got a twofer tonite:
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If video games don’t cause violence, how do they cause misogyny?
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If life does not begin at conception, when does it begin?
If life begins at conception, are egg and sperm cells not alive?
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No, let me explain. From Le Wiki:
Ovum and sperm do not reproduce, nor do they adapt to their environment via successive generations. Hence eggs and sperm are not alive.
Oh shit, I’m not alive!
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They do, however, respond to stimuli. Otherwise they wouldn’t seek out an egg.
#BWOOP BWOOP BWOOOP STRAWMAN ALERT
What is being discussed is the misogny that already exists within video games and how this reinforces sexism in other aspects of culture, and like violence in video games, desensitizes us.
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I keep hearing that life begins at forty, so that gives family planning (and a few legal cases) a lot of leeway.
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And, video games don’t cause violent behavior, but it looks like there are links to increased aggression and other negative effects, probably via much the same mechanism as increased misogyny etc.
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Not a good time to realise that my trousers today are a little too tight around the crotch…
That’s a really interesting thought. It’s hard to miss that there’s a whole lot of divine commanding in the Old Testament, so I’d guess that the priests who wrote the version of the Book of Genesis with which we’re familiar were very conscious of some formulation of the Euthyphro dilemna. The temptation, after all, was to become like God, in knowing good and evil. This also reminds me of Milton’s Paradise Lost: I think the idea Milton hit on was that “knowledge of good and evil” meant a sort of Hegelian dialectical process in which humanity would ultimately merge with God.
How did I not see this thread sooner? Anyway, I’ll take a stab at this:
Capitalism is rule by those who control capital. I’m phrasing it this way under the influence of an essay I just read, John Bellamy Foster’s foreword to István Mészáros’s The Necessity of Social Control. It was pointed out that Marx seldom used the word “capitalism”, and instead talked about capital and the system of capital. Mészáros’s framing puts the focus on the system of aggregating capital as the problem. Framing it as “capitalism” implies it’s primarily a political problem – just put workers’ councils in charge (for instance), and things will get better. But, if those workers’ councils are still just managing the system of capital, focused on maximizing production to aggregate capital, then you’ll end up with capitalism – the system of capital is the base, and capitalism is the superstructure. I’m used to discussing what’s gone wrong in terms of the theory of state capitalism, but framing it this way seems a bit clearer and more easily generalizable. The real problem is the system of capital – fail to dismantle that, and you’ll end up with an elite that controls the capital and uses that control to dominate everything else, which is capitalism.
Neoliberalism – hmm. I thought this was going to be the easy one, but I’m less sure now that I’m thinking about it. Fundamentally, neoliberalism is a strategy for increasing the centralization of control of capital in the US and its closest lieutenants, a successor to the liberal/social democratic strategy that prevailed from World War II through about 1973. That prior strategy had been aimed at pre-empting or dissipating domestic resistance while racing to establish structures to maintain global economic and political dominance. This strategy began breaking down in the late 60s, and came to an end with the economic crisis of the early 1970s. The economic crisis was resolved in the ruling class’s favor: profitability would be restored by rollbacks of social spending, and effectively, real wages have remained static since 1973, whereas previously real wages had tended to increase proportional to increases in productivity, since the beginning of the industrial revolution. Also in 1973 was Pinochet’s coup in Chile; US economic advisors were very influential on the Pinochet government, and they established the model of austerity programs that the US and its lieutenants have pushed whenever possible: in exchange for short-term financial assistance, the economy must be restructured around cash payments to foreign lenders, and in particular, any programs that strengthen the working class are to be eliminated. The twin pincers to coerce agreement are the network of global financial institutions controlled by the US ruling class and its lieutenants, and the threat of military intervention. Worsening conditions for foreign workers are used to justify further worsening of conditions for domestic workers, in order to stay competitive.
That’s neoliberalism.
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I would have said neoliberalism is the policy stance of privatizing infrastructure and services that the government would traditionally provide, in order to enrich the industries that the legislators know they’ll be working in once their terms are up.
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Okay I think those are both excellent working definitions… (and @foolishowl) too, but another question. Culture seems deeply important for the modern neoliberal economy. How do we theorize that into this framework of extreme privatizing and extension of US influence over global markets? Because I’d argue that culture is a key battle ground in the neoliberal era. I think we need to expand our understanding to include something other than physical manufacturing of goods, which is where analysis of the system of capital seems to be stuck. The economy, at least in the US and other western democracies has radically changed in many ways. It’s service oriented right the way down. The culture industries are, at their heart, sort of service oriented, no?
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The opposite of “lesson” is “moron.”
I’d never heard this one before. It came up in the book we’re reading.
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The former is definitely true, and I’ve been concerned with how the structure of working class life has changed and what that means about how to organize workers. The latter is a widely held position, but some question it. (I haven’t finished that article, but I’d been discussing this with the author recently.)
I’m puzzled by this claim. Partly, I’m wrestling with how to handle “culture” as a general category. Mostly, when someone talks about culture, I tend to think of art, and I’d thought that the trend with art that people talk about is away from it being a service. Though come to think of it, there’s an incipient trend towards tailoring the selection of cultural products for individuals, but that service of tailoring is entirely automated – i.e., Amazon book recommendations, music recommendations by Pandora, etc.
You and me both. It’s a tricky issue, which really is at the heart of what I’m doing.
Maybe we need to differentiate between “culture” and “culture industries”, because that’s really what I meant - culture being sold in a market place (which can be a rarefied one, like the high end art market). I’d say that the culture industries are expressing themselves through getting state support for their agendas, including more restrictive copyright and continued state use of culture as propaganda.
[edited to add] I’ll check out the link, but have you read Bethany Moreton’s book? The one about Wal Mart and the culture of neoliberalism?
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