I am no fan of the last President. But I think some credit may be due. One thing the man wanted was to spread democracy (and freedom) in the Middle East. I will go and check some links later, but the bottom line is this: Can we claim that after all this treasure and casualties, that what has been happening across the Middle East over the last six months or so is a coincidence? Yes, a correlation does not a causality make. However, those in the Middle East, watching what has been happening in Iraq and Afghanistan, cannot help but draw the following insight: Though messy and not very efficient, the stumble towards democracy in Iraq is a sign of a different paradigm in operation, that people in the Middle East, can at least compare with what they currently have in political terms. The US got rid of Saddam Hussein. What is in its place is arguably better. In saying this, I do not want to minimize the role of higher food prices and internal issues particular to each state in the current flux of Middle East politics. But, this also does not mean that our presence in the region is perceived as entirely negative, nor that it has had nothing but negative effects. No matter how inept we have been, I think that the way we have been trying to act shows that there are very real differences in comparison with other "imperializers," in substance and style. And this "semi-positive" (or perhaps ambiguous?) take on the US and its mission in the Middle East has had one positive outcome. It has helped fuel calls and actions for getting rid of oppressive regimes.
President Bush will be reminded more kindly by history than many liberals suspect, I believe. Now, if Saudi Arabia goes kabluey, then it might be a different story...
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Myers Briggs Personality Inventory for Bloggers
I have been playing around with Typealyzer, putting all of the class blogs, including my own through the maw of the Myers-Briggs personality inventory, to ascertain personality type. My results are as follows: Of the 18 students and 1 teacher taking the class:
7 are INTP
1 is INTJ
9 are ISTP
2 are ISTJ
which would explain a lot of things...
N.B. Usual caveats apply about not taking this stuff too seriously...
7 are INTP
1 is INTJ
9 are ISTP
2 are ISTJ
which would explain a lot of things...
N.B. Usual caveats apply about not taking this stuff too seriously...
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Culture Between the Wars
Here is a poem for you from Yeats, written in 1921. What do you think?
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Thoughts on the Debate
First off, I have no argument with the sagacious views of the judges. They called the debates the way they saw them, and gave evidence to support their claims. I enjoyed the limited feedback that the judges' views received as well. The key issue for me in this debate was the ability of the fascisti to embrace their point of view and WILL it, as a living ideology. This was really hard, and I saw flashes of it. Why I think this is so important is that we are so repulsed by the actions of Nazism, we tend to be blinded to the allure of fascism. To modern sensibilities, you would have to be crazy to embrace this nihilistic ideology. It is not so crazy when you look at what these countries went through with WWI and after. The real sense of grievance (justified or not) was palpable. The anxiety, the real fear that society was breaking down, with strikes, rioting, and attempted revolution after WWI left deep scars. When faced with the choice between liberty and safety, many of us would like to feel that liberty matters more. For many people in this age, the call of safety was stronger.
The question was raised about budget deficits in one of the debates, as being a reason to disqualify fascism as economically sound. A budget deficit is not inherently good or bad. It depends on the reason for running it. What is helping to prop up American Aggregate Demand at the moment is the Stimulus Bill. That is deficit spending. The New Deal was deficit spending. When Roosevelt went back to trying to balance the budget, the economy went back into recession.
The question was raised about budget deficits in one of the debates, as being a reason to disqualify fascism as economically sound. A budget deficit is not inherently good or bad. It depends on the reason for running it. What is helping to prop up American Aggregate Demand at the moment is the Stimulus Bill. That is deficit spending. The New Deal was deficit spending. When Roosevelt went back to trying to balance the budget, the economy went back into recession.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Freud and Our Discontent
I want to start with an incident that I observed some time ago when I was working in NYC. I walked out of school planning to get back and pick up my son from day-care. I had been teaching, and it was early afternoon on October 31st; Halloween. On the way to the subway, walking along 96th Street, I stopped to see why some of my colleagues were watching the street and talking. There, in the middle of the road was a bearded naked man, with long bedraggled black hair, dancing. Police had surrounded him, and in the distance I could hear the sound of more cop cars coming to aid the officers on the scene (isn’t there any other crime going on in Manhattan that needs attention more urgently?). The naked man fell to the ground, prostrate, face down, arms outstreched at 90° to his body. The police, about eight in number (and still growing), were standing around the man contemplating what they were going to do. I left, knowing that they would soon lift the man into “protective custody.” What about this scene is unusual? I had to leave. The police were doing their job. The man was “clearly” insane. Yet, as my colleagues laughingly pointed out, giving me food for thought: “He was having fun.” If I were to give it very little thought, I could assauge myself that at least he was going to receive “help.” Yet, I know that this is not likely to be very pleasant in itself. As one unhappy person found out: “All the bad things happened. I got sprayed with mace, thrown into a jail cell, interviewed by a psychiatrist and committed, taken to the hospital in a straitjacket and put on a locked ward.” Merriam, K. A., The Experience of Schizophrenia, in Magaro, P., (ed.) The Construction of Madness: Emerging Conceptions and Interventions into the Psychotic Process, Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1976. And that is just the start...
Elizabeth writes that:
""[Freud's theories] bought to fore a powerful critique of the constraints imposed by the moral and social codes of Western civilization" (Coffin, 856). I don't fully understand what the authors are saying here. That the constraints of society forced people to go mad? To sublimate and repress urges that, for true satisfaction, should not be sublimated or repressed?"
She goes on to say that the ego's hold is too strong, especially with the super-ego's help. We need less constraints. Freud was ambivalent about all of this. Society needed to restrain individual desire, yet the Id will get out, since that is where all the energy is. Its the ego's job to to control it, something it does through repression say. One can look up Freud, S., Repression, in General Psychological Theory Papers on Metapsychology, or Freud, S., New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, . It is not always successful. The most extreme form of this is psychosis, when the ego is completely inundated by the Id.
Always in this, the desire for something is a desire for something we LACK. So desire is constructed as a negative and something to be feared. And our inability to mediate this desire is the cause of all our problems. I want to take Elizabeth's point a little further and tie it to one of the themes of our class--the role of capitalism as the dominant economic and social paradigm of our age.
In doing this, I want to consider the work done by Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F., Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism & Schizophrenia, Tr. Hurley, R., et al. This is not reading for the faint of heart.
DG assert that desire is rather a positive force, much like Nietzsche’s will to power. They argue that we desire something, not because we lack it, but because we understand it to be good for us. Thus:
“If desire is productive, it can be productive only in the real world and can produce only reality … The real is the end product, ... Desire does not lack anything; it does not lack an object … Desire and its object are one and the same thing … ” [AO, 26]
Desire is absolutely critical; and was--before the introduction of the “capitalist axiomatic”-- capable of positive force. We don't desire something that we no longer have (like long lost Mum) or get excited about according to advertising we imbibed (I must have that new shampoo! My hair, I couldn't possibly show myself outside, I'd be so ashamed of the greasy strands...). Rather what we do (if left to our own devices) is connect ourselves to other things. That is what we are in our essence--Connecting-Disconnecting Beings. The act of connection and relation is the act of desire in action. One way to think of it is to see ourselves as machines or collections of machines--connecting and disconnecting at any given moment. DG call these machines "desiring machines." We connect in one act of desire, disconnect in another act of desire.
Even if we grant what DG say about desire being positive it is still the case that in today’s society there are many instances where desire appears to fulfill a need or lack. To explain this we have to understand DG’s hypothesis concerning the nature of society and capitalism, and it is here that I want to get to Elizabeth's concerns. They argue that:
“Lack is created, planned, and organized in and through social production…the deliberate creation of lack as a function of the market economy is the art of a dominant class. This involves deliberately organizing wants and needs amid an abundance of production; making all of desire teeter and fall victim to the great fear of not having ones needs satisfied.” [AO, 28]
Thus, the capitalist system actually sets up the conditions for desire as lack to occur. One of the major ways in which this occurs is through the Oedipal family structure, which acts to restrict desire in capitalist societies. Capitalism tends to reduce all social relations to commodity relations mediated by dollar values. One works for a wage and buys goods for a price rather than get or swap goods from/with a friend. Desire is subsequently displaced from its traditional signs and meanings that limit human relations (such as kinship and class relationship, folkways, and religious beliefs). Yet, capitalism reinstitutes or re-places (re-meaning) desire, in conditions of the market place. For example one can commercialize religions and other beliefs into money making ventures. Punk used to be anti-establisment, noe its just another genre in the music catalogue. Further, we are taught to want the latest thing--the new fad, the new model, the latest in technological wizardry--without which we are curiously incomplete. Advertising reinforces this message--we can be better, stronger, smarter, if only we had or used this product...
Capitalism works on the basis of axioms such as “supply = demand”, and “workers are paid the value of their marginal product (that is, what they are worth),” and “capital must be allowed to move to take advantage of profit opportunities anywhere in the world, so that in the long run there is no profit to be found.” Thus, on the one hand capitalism fixes production in the form of goods (to be consumed by consumers) and in the form of the people who make them (producers--entrepreneurs and workers) by giving us uniformity of production and consumption; and in the way that desire for those goods actually unfolds in capitalist society. On the other hand even as it spreads it’s uniformity to every corner of the earth, capitalism stresses the rights of the individual to be free- to choose those things that are considered desirable, even if they are not part of the capitalist axiomatic [AO, 179, 223+]. Thus, you can have any shampoo you want, as long as you choose from the 300 varieties that we offer. And if you don't like that, then use this herbal, environmentally friendly alternative (which is made by the same corporation family...). There is an increasing pressure to conform and be free at the same time. This increasingly becomes a contradictory message that becomes increasingly more difficult to satisfy: “society is schizophrenic.” [AO, 361] Thus, “[e]verything in the system is insane:.” [AO, 374-375] Capitalist society will force you to be free--free to choose what you want, as long as what you want is what the capitalist system can provide.
Individuals might like to escape this pressure. What this means is that if one wants to express one’s desire to escape the confines of societies over-determination of their person, and find a way to express their desire positively requires, DG argue, that the individual must find a creative means of escape- a line of flight, which others have metaphorized as a voyage, or journey [AO, 131, 151, 224, 230, 245, 255]. Creativity here means that the opportunities open to the individual to connect with the world increase. This is something that capitalism as we have seen wants to control in the form of managing one’s desire as lack--"Be creative, but in ways that pay the bills or make profit!" The individual who is on this line of flight always runs the risk of falling into the grip of the forceful intervention if it appears that they are not “playing the game” of being a good consumer\ producer. The situation that the adventurous individual faces who wants to experience their desire as pure positivity will clash with the system.
Or, to put it another way--capitalism is designed to specifically put you in this double bind. You can be an individual and have your needs met, just as long as you conform to the expectations of the system by using its mass-produced products. And if your desires are those that don't fit the norms because the model of :desire as lack" doesn't thrill you--Be Careful!--you must repress or sublimate them. And if you fail? We have nice padded cells for you...
Elizabeth writes that:
""[Freud's theories] bought to fore a powerful critique of the constraints imposed by the moral and social codes of Western civilization" (Coffin, 856). I don't fully understand what the authors are saying here. That the constraints of society forced people to go mad? To sublimate and repress urges that, for true satisfaction, should not be sublimated or repressed?"
She goes on to say that the ego's hold is too strong, especially with the super-ego's help. We need less constraints. Freud was ambivalent about all of this. Society needed to restrain individual desire, yet the Id will get out, since that is where all the energy is. Its the ego's job to to control it, something it does through repression say. One can look up Freud, S., Repression, in General Psychological Theory Papers on Metapsychology, or Freud, S., New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, . It is not always successful. The most extreme form of this is psychosis, when the ego is completely inundated by the Id.
Always in this, the desire for something is a desire for something we LACK. So desire is constructed as a negative and something to be feared. And our inability to mediate this desire is the cause of all our problems. I want to take Elizabeth's point a little further and tie it to one of the themes of our class--the role of capitalism as the dominant economic and social paradigm of our age.
In doing this, I want to consider the work done by Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F., Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism & Schizophrenia, Tr. Hurley, R., et al. This is not reading for the faint of heart.
DG assert that desire is rather a positive force, much like Nietzsche’s will to power. They argue that we desire something, not because we lack it, but because we understand it to be good for us. Thus:
“If desire is productive, it can be productive only in the real world and can produce only reality … The real is the end product, ... Desire does not lack anything; it does not lack an object … Desire and its object are one and the same thing … ” [AO, 26]
Desire is absolutely critical; and was--before the introduction of the “capitalist axiomatic”-- capable of positive force. We don't desire something that we no longer have (like long lost Mum) or get excited about according to advertising we imbibed (I must have that new shampoo! My hair, I couldn't possibly show myself outside, I'd be so ashamed of the greasy strands...). Rather what we do (if left to our own devices) is connect ourselves to other things. That is what we are in our essence--Connecting-Disconnecting Beings. The act of connection and relation is the act of desire in action. One way to think of it is to see ourselves as machines or collections of machines--connecting and disconnecting at any given moment. DG call these machines "desiring machines." We connect in one act of desire, disconnect in another act of desire.
Even if we grant what DG say about desire being positive it is still the case that in today’s society there are many instances where desire appears to fulfill a need or lack. To explain this we have to understand DG’s hypothesis concerning the nature of society and capitalism, and it is here that I want to get to Elizabeth's concerns. They argue that:
“Lack is created, planned, and organized in and through social production…the deliberate creation of lack as a function of the market economy is the art of a dominant class. This involves deliberately organizing wants and needs amid an abundance of production; making all of desire teeter and fall victim to the great fear of not having ones needs satisfied.” [AO, 28]
Thus, the capitalist system actually sets up the conditions for desire as lack to occur. One of the major ways in which this occurs is through the Oedipal family structure, which acts to restrict desire in capitalist societies. Capitalism tends to reduce all social relations to commodity relations mediated by dollar values. One works for a wage and buys goods for a price rather than get or swap goods from/with a friend. Desire is subsequently displaced from its traditional signs and meanings that limit human relations (such as kinship and class relationship, folkways, and religious beliefs). Yet, capitalism reinstitutes or re-places (re-meaning) desire, in conditions of the market place. For example one can commercialize religions and other beliefs into money making ventures. Punk used to be anti-establisment, noe its just another genre in the music catalogue. Further, we are taught to want the latest thing--the new fad, the new model, the latest in technological wizardry--without which we are curiously incomplete. Advertising reinforces this message--we can be better, stronger, smarter, if only we had or used this product...
Capitalism works on the basis of axioms such as “supply = demand”, and “workers are paid the value of their marginal product (that is, what they are worth),” and “capital must be allowed to move to take advantage of profit opportunities anywhere in the world, so that in the long run there is no profit to be found.” Thus, on the one hand capitalism fixes production in the form of goods (to be consumed by consumers) and in the form of the people who make them (producers--entrepreneurs and workers) by giving us uniformity of production and consumption; and in the way that desire for those goods actually unfolds in capitalist society. On the other hand even as it spreads it’s uniformity to every corner of the earth, capitalism stresses the rights of the individual to be free- to choose those things that are considered desirable, even if they are not part of the capitalist axiomatic [AO, 179, 223+]. Thus, you can have any shampoo you want, as long as you choose from the 300 varieties that we offer. And if you don't like that, then use this herbal, environmentally friendly alternative (which is made by the same corporation family...). There is an increasing pressure to conform and be free at the same time. This increasingly becomes a contradictory message that becomes increasingly more difficult to satisfy: “society is schizophrenic.” [AO, 361] Thus, “[e]verything in the system is insane:.” [AO, 374-375] Capitalist society will force you to be free--free to choose what you want, as long as what you want is what the capitalist system can provide.
Individuals might like to escape this pressure. What this means is that if one wants to express one’s desire to escape the confines of societies over-determination of their person, and find a way to express their desire positively requires, DG argue, that the individual must find a creative means of escape- a line of flight, which others have metaphorized as a voyage, or journey [AO, 131, 151, 224, 230, 245, 255]. Creativity here means that the opportunities open to the individual to connect with the world increase. This is something that capitalism as we have seen wants to control in the form of managing one’s desire as lack--"Be creative, but in ways that pay the bills or make profit!" The individual who is on this line of flight always runs the risk of falling into the grip of the forceful intervention if it appears that they are not “playing the game” of being a good consumer\ producer. The situation that the adventurous individual faces who wants to experience their desire as pure positivity will clash with the system.
Or, to put it another way--capitalism is designed to specifically put you in this double bind. You can be an individual and have your needs met, just as long as you conform to the expectations of the system by using its mass-produced products. And if your desires are those that don't fit the norms because the model of :desire as lack" doesn't thrill you--Be Careful!--you must repress or sublimate them. And if you fail? We have nice padded cells for you...
Friday, February 27, 2009
It is Time to Choose the Blogging Trinity...
Hi all,
What that subject line above means is that I would like you to "pick the teams" you are going to be working in. There are 18 students. 3 members in a team. They can be (and a team or more will have to be) mixed class.
On Monday, I want to know who you are working with. If you already know, great, let me know.
What I expect you to do:
1. You will maintain doing three blog entries a week on your blog. From now on, though, I expect that two entries will be on the reading and discussion that we do (as before). The third entry should be directed to the work that the other members of your group have been commenting on. Of course, you can have more than the minimum number of blog entries required.
2. The first two entries should have links to URLs outside your group of three. The third entry should do this AND link to blog entries of your group.
3. Start thinking seriously about a topic you want to do. I will be asking you about that in a couple of weeks or so.
I will continue doing spot checks, and I will comment on my own blog on what I see in your group efforts.
Take care
CasTuesday, February 24, 2009
The Evolution of an Idea
A number of folks posted on Social Darwinism:
PD Kong, argues that the issue about Spencer is that he lacks both observation AND a mechanism of transmission for his claims. It is interesting to note that Darwin himself believed in an idea of pangenesis, which held that characteristics were passed on physically by gemmules. This sounds suspiciously like Lamarck, and acquired traits. Thus, according to Darwin:
"It is universally admitted that the cells or units of the body increase by self-devision, or proliferation, retaining the same nature, and that they ultimately become converted into the various tissues and substances of the body. But besides this means of increase I assume that the units throw off minute granules which are dispersed throughout the whole system; that these, when supplied with proper nutriment, multiply by self-division, and are ultimately developed into units like those from which they were originally derived. These granules may be called gemmules. They are collected from all parts of the system to constitute the sexual elements, and their development in the next generation forms the new being; but they are likewise capable of transmission in a dormant state to future generations and may then be developed.)"
Classier Hoenig, saw Social Darwinism as a new dress for old ideas. I thought the Midnight Ponderer’s contribution raised interesting issues. Even if we got rid of the “Marching Morons”
or the idiocracy (in the worst of all possible worlds) there would be a new set of folks who would fill in the gap. The issue is the prevalence of capitalism. And one doesn’t have to rail about the injustices of capitalism to get this outcome. It could strictly be an outcome of the differentials between talents of individuals. As Nozick argues in State, Anarchy, & Utopia, differentials in outcome could be completely fair, if voluntarily arrived at. We all agree to pay a basketball star a little form each of us to see him or her play. The star does well, gets more than us, and they do well, and we do less well. So the question is: “How do we handle those that have lower status in our society?” I mean, one major critique of Nozick’s approach is that a differential in talent does not have to be very large (in fact quite small…) to get an inordinately large difference in compensation. I just have to be half a second faster than you, and I get paid twenty times as much to play the same game. Is that fair, even if it is the impersonal free market that determines it? There will always be an underclass (due to these differentials in talent, no matter how small in a capitalist system), even if that underclass is a lot brighter than the earlier underclass that had been, well, er,… “liquidated.”
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