Philosophy bullshit.

[D.o.S.]

^^^Hahaha please know that that day was a ruthless deconstruction of millennials. But...you're a millenial, right? As am I? Even if we don't identify as such. So you gotta deal.

Yeah we both are (but I don't think they'd claim us under that trademark).

[Eivind August]

I will post something later, just having a philosophy overload in these exam days.

I would normally recommend books, but I can see which of my favs are available bitesize on the free net.

[psychic vampire.]

Funny, i just made the decision to part with my book copy of Simians, Cyborgs, and Women, since it's been sitting on my shelf for years. I read Cyborg Manifesto and Companion Species Manifesto and a few other pieces of hers in college and they were very influential, but sometimes it's hard to tell if she and her successors are bemoaning or celebrating the age of the technological/cyborg body. I take part in it, but find it less than thrilling. Haraway, at least, seems critical of it, but in my experience a lot of the trans people i meet celebrate it as the liberation of gender, i always sort of viewed technology as a symptom of the systems that created gender in the first place, but difference of opinion can be a beautiful thing.

I printed out some of your links to bring with me camping, looking forward to some "light reading" for the week. bell hooks is a wonderful writer as well. It is unfortunate that a lot of this writing feels like... bullshit. Or just, irresponsibly in love with the ivory tower academic system that keeps so many people out of itself as to further cooperate with the stratification of class and educational access. I'm a big fan of the Keep It Simple, Stupid rule, and even the Keep it Stupid, Simple rule as well.

Emma Goldman is always a favorite. An often misquoted favorite. Humorously, were you aware of the Aufheben controversy and its blow up on Libcom? That got turned into a pretty good essay too.
http://dialectical-delinquents.com/arti ... hebengate/

And i'll stop revealing my wingnut lefty too much in here. Would love to see anything else people wanted to post, even if it was more Jaden Smith.

[Eivind August]

Maybe you'll like this? http://www.freyamathews.net/downloads/P ... radigm.pdf
I find Mathews' work interesting, though I'm not sure whether I agree or not (which is usually a good sign, actually). Check out her book "The Ecological Self" as well. I think the fact that some of her terms borders on New Age-sociolect can diffuse her message a bit, but maybe some of you guys are more into that than me.

Did some light googling, and it turns out that a lot of the stuff I've been working on is only available if you pay or have access to online libraries through your university or something. Found these, though:

https://moodle.ufsc.br/pluginfile.php/1 ... efense.pdf

http://faculty.georgetown.edu/irvinem/v ... tworld.pdf

https://sculptureatpratt.files.wordpres ... tics-1.pdf

Oh hey, a full version of Adam Smith's moral theory: https://www.ibiblio.org/ml/libri/s/Smit ... ents_p.pdf

I'll post more as I come across it.

[Invisible Man]

Were you aware of the Aufheben controversy and its blow up on Libcom?

Yeah. But this is the kind of thing that I spent a lot of time on when I was a young warthog...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EILeWQEDtMw[/youtube]

And now it bums me out to no end. Sectarian infighting and violence seem so unproductive. Tangential, but I went back to the culture wars of the 1930s and 1980s/early 90s for a study of the rhetoric of political turmoil. After reading just about every relevant source in a couple hundred literary and cultural publicatoins, I learned absolutely nothing except that 1) human beings' capacity for pettiness is infinite, and 2) organizing individuals under political umbrellas is a necessary but maddening exercise in tautology. Only our most insane citizens attempt to do this (i.e. Trump, HilClint, politicians and policymakers in general).

In other words: what other outcome was possible? A peaceful reconciliation of pretty fundamental and extreme political stances? Nah. One tidbit that was useful to me in thinking through this stuff is that 'radical' isn't supposed to mean 'extreme' or 'Left,' though that is most often how we use it. It comes from 'radix,' which is the latinate root for...'root.' Like 'radish.' So 'radical' means foundational or fundamental, not extreme, though it doesn't really matter if no one knows that or uses it that way.

[psychic vampire.]

I am about to fuck off to the woods in an hour, so i will probably not get to most of Eivind's links until i get back. Trying to read the Freya Matthews piece before i leave bc i think you've mentioned her to me before. But i expect once i get over the initial shock of being out of the woods and back in civilization i'll (re-)read them all. I took a year long-ish break from reading theoretical or non-fictional writing, but am feeling super ready to go back to it again; these cycles or reading taste happen often for me.

IM: I feel you. And i did not know about the etymology of radical as root & radish, but that is very interesting to know. Sectarian infighting is something my good friend and i talk about. In the last year there was a growing presence of self-proclaimed Maoists in our town, who - despite the fact that many friends tried to be very congenial and polite with them - were making a lot of stabs at people not under that banner. But then, i do it too. And these "fundamental" differences can seem so real, or intense, or important, and in some cases they are, but often they're not. Or maybe they still are, but should be worked through. But it seems very hard for most people i know, myself included, to work through letting go of "being right." When one group is fundamentally opposed to something, and another group is built upon that very groundwork, it can be hard to find the actual lines of intersection and crossover.

The Aufheben thing always struck me as an interesting example of that. They were a source of thought that was being touted by a lot of people of certain backgrounds on the anti-authoritarian left, and when it became clear one of their primary members had not just worked with police, but had helped develop the very soft policing tactics that were quelling people's impulses of rage and grief, it did sort of become relevant to question where, how, why, or even if their politics could be useful to people against policing. I happened to not be disposed towards their ideas to begin with, but am a firm believer that most of the time we should adopt a Don't Throw the Baby Out With the Bathwater approach. It's complicated. But it is clear sectarian infighting accomplishes literally zero.

[rustywire]

...am a firm believer that most of the time we should adopt a Don't Throw the Baby Out With the Bathwater approach. It's complicated. But it is clear sectarian infighting accomplishes literally zero.

I'm a fan of the wisdom in idioms, proverbs and colloquialisms. "Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater" is one to reflect on, one I've tried to embrace. The reality being it's a remarkable achievement to be constructive, create and maintain great things... than to destroy them and embrace a mantra of disposability where everything is replaceable & the goal is to acquire 'new' things which may (likely) not be an upgrade or even adequate replacement. Especially where those "things" are people or life, in general.

Another one is "Don't go cutting off your nose to spite your face" which popped into mind upon reading Invisible Man's above mentioned revelation #1 (the capacity of humans to be petty even on the brink of self-destruction; even when it benefits no one)

[D.o.S.]

[D.o.S.]

Also, found it:
http://www.dhspriory.org/kenny/PhilText ... ngness.pdf

This nihilation is given to my intuition; I am witness to the successive disappearance of all the objects which I look at-in particular of the faces, which detain me for an instant (Could this be Pierre?) and which as quickly decompose precisely because they "are
not" the face of Pierre. Nevertheless if I should finally discover Pierre, my intuition would be filled by a solid element, I should be suddenly arrested by his face and the whole cafe would
organize itself around him
as a discrete presence.
But now Pierre is
not here.

NSFW: show

This does
not mean
that I discover
his absence
in some
precise
spot
in
the
establishment.
In
fact
Pierre
is
absent
from
the
whole
cafe;
his
absence
fixes
the
cafe
in
its
evanescence;
the
cafe
remains
ground;
it
persists
in
offering
itself
as
an
undifferentiated
totality
to
my
only
marginal
attention;
it
slips
into
the
background;
it
pursues
its
nihilation.

Yeah fuck editing that line for line any more. Anyway, essential text. V. Good.

Here we go, here's the one line of the whole thing:

This freedom which reveals itself to us in anguish can be characterized by the existence of that nothing which insinuates itself between motives and act. It is not because I am free that my act is not subject to the determination of motives; on the contrary, the structure of motives as ineffective is the condition of my freedom.