First, that neoliberalism is a completed project with no real internal challengers.
Second, that both the ‘Woke’ and the ‘Alt-Right’ are united in their rejection of liberalism, driven by its perceived spiritual or moral emptiness.
You can’t wish away real, entrenched differences in outlook and ways of life separating one community from another by blaming them on the nefarious influence of some powerful individual. That’s insulting to persons and communities who rely on forging their own value system as a compass for guiding their life and making sense of their world. — Joshs
Your go to response to something you disagree with is personal insult. — unenlightened
Your go to response to something you disagree with is personal insult.
— unenlightened
It's not meant as a personal insult. It's genuinely how I feel about the position you're laying out. — Tzeentch
Oh, your sacred feelings! How very woke! How very feminine! How very irrational! — unenlightened
Ya feel? — DifferentiatingEgg
There never will be an end of woke, it's the history of the fucking world... "we don't like X so fucking kill it!" — DifferentiatingEgg
Woke just is Satan. … farting woke gas all over their students. … and their rotten students melted and disintegrated. … Glory be... — Baden
irony of ironies — Baden
The lack of any sort of thymotic outlet leads to activism for activism's sake. That is not the same thing as a self-conscious rejection of liberalism per se, nor even a recognition of its spiritual and moral emptiness. All it requires is that activism becomes a sort of performative outlet for the desire for recognition that is otherwise frustrated in a society of atomized "worker/consumers." — Count Timothy von Icarus
That’s brand — praxis
Woke is … with no real solutions besides rioting. — Fire Ologist
subjectivity emerges as the culmination of processes of aesthetic enunciation. An aesthetic reconfiguration of experience incorporates elements of the unconscious subjectivity, which operates beyond conscious intention. — Number2018
aesthetics …represents a broader mode of subjectivation that occupies a central place in the dynamics of contemporary capitalism. — Number2018
under capitalist conditions, where novel forms of expression and recognition are constantly negotiated. — Number2018
This phenomena [the maladaptive search for thymos] isn't unique to the far-right. I think it explains many trends across our culture, e.g., the widespread popularity of post-apocalyptic media. The basic idea there is: "if everything falls apart I can actually become a hero, actually have a meaningful life, rather than living a meaningless life where I have been reduced to a bovine consumer," or even "war or crisis will help make me into something more heroic." [Note: whether he is read correctly or not, I think this phenomena explains something of the enduring appeal of Nietzsche in our era]. And this also helps explain other changes in patterns of consumption (e.g. "tactical" everything flying off the shelves, people driving off-road vehicles for their suburban commutes, etc.).
The effects of this sort of thinking are particularly strong in the sphere of gender politics because sex is one of the last elements of human life not to be wholly commodified. Hence, sex remains a strong source of validation, a source of self-worth. And yet, as de Beauvoir points out, Hegel's lord-bondsman dialectic ends up playing out between men and woman here, because the misogynist, having denigrated woman, can no longer receive meaningful recognition from her.
In this sense, the aesthetic dimension of activism may reflect a deeper transformation of subjectivity under capitalist conditions, where novel forms of expression and recognition are constantly negotiated. So, the sense of identity is no longer a fixed essence but becomes something performatively achieved and continually redefined.
Let me re-formulate your questions: Is activism an effect of an involuntary process of subjectivation (i.e. “one can’t help it”)? Does this process also determine the cause one takes up (e.g., anti-capitalism vs. anti-racism)?subjectivity emerges as the culmination of processes of aesthetic enunciation. An aesthetic reconfiguration of experience incorporates elements of the unconscious subjectivity, which operates beyond conscious intention.
— Number2018
Does this operation “beyond conscious intention” serve to select the matter one is active about (environment or trans or women’s rights), or does this operation beyond conscious intention make one an activist at all, as part of one’s aesthetic reconfiguration? Are activists activists because they can’t help it; or are they activists against capitalism and not against racism because they can’t help it? — Fire Ologist
Are you saying that capitalism has produced activists operating beyond conscious intention? If this is what you are saying, why is this peculiar to capitalism? — Fire Ologist
It seems that Nietzschean values place power (self-overcoming) on a pedestal, perhaps slavishly — praxis
The relation of force to force is called "will:' That is why we must avoid at aIl costs the misinterpretations of the Nietzschean principle of the will to power. This principle doesn't mean (or at least doesn't primarily mean) that the will wants power or wishes to dominate. As long as the will to power is interpreted in terms of a "desire to dominate," we inevitably make it depend on established values, the only ones able to determine, in any given case or conflict, who must be "recognized" as the rnost powerful. We then cannot recognize the nature of the will to power as an elastic principle of aIl of our evaluations, as a hidden principle for the creation of new values not yet recognized. The will to power, says Nietzsche, consists not in coveting or even in taking but in creating and giving. Power, as a will to power, is not that which the will wants, but that which wants in the will (Dionysus himself). The will to power is the differential element from which derive the forces at work, as weIl as their respective quality in a complex whole.
Do notice that this has been an universal transition that has happened in all Western (and other) countries. Yet not all countries have suffered similar polarization. The usual stereotypes in jokes of the city dwellers and rural folk doesn't result in such dramatic polarization. For example, in my country clearly derogatory terms of poor people, like white trash, were used in the 19th Century, but disappeared from use in the 20th Century.You’ve got it backwards. The polarization wasn't the result of the make-up of the political parties. It was due to the fact that one part of the country, the cities, moved more rapidly into a post ‘60’s economic, social and intellectual way of life than the slower changing rural areas. As a result, people needed to change what the political parties stood for in order to reflect the growing cultural divide. They have now done that. — Joshs
The radical transformation of the Republican party is something that has happened quite recently. Perhaps one thing was that the Republicans started fearing that the demographic transition where white Americans lose the majority and minorities would stay loyal to the Democrats made them to choose populism. Or simply Trump and populism took them and they have carried on with the flow.60 years ago the republican party was socially moderate , fiscally conservative , supportive of the U.S. as the world’s policeman, and over-represented by wealthy, educated voters. It is now the populist party, is dominated by the poor, lesser educated and working class, is isolationist and socially conservative. — Joshs
Do notice that this has been an universal transition that has happened in all Western (and other) countries. Yet not all countries have suffered similar polarization. — ssu
Perhaps one thing was that the Republicans started fearing that the demographic transition where white Americans lose the majority and minorities would stay loyal to the Democrats made them to choose populism. Or simply Trump and populism took them and they have carried on with the flow. — ssu
This might be actually simply globalization, when we all watch the same movies, follow the same TV series and sports and listen to the same music and buy basically the same stuff. Urban life is quite similar as you can go to a McDonalds or a Starbucks everywhere around the world. Few customs are just different, as in the climate. Being a farmer is different way different from that life of an urban consumer. What is a total world apart is when someone is still a subsistence farmer, which means absolute poverty basically.It's also shrunken some differences. For instance, I've heard the sentiment expressed, and even seen it in op-eds, where bourgeois Americans (or Europeans) claim they have more in common with and feel closer to (more kinship with) other bourgeois from Dubai to Hong Kong then with their fellow citizens outside their socio-economic context. — Count Timothy von Icarus
If people think that the present is dominated by liberalism / neoliberalism, then naturally their critique is against this. But here it should be remembered that what isn't important is the grievance, which everybody can see, but what is purposed to solve it. You will have the "Woke" answer as you will have the "Alt-Right" or the "Populist" answer.The dissolution of custom and culture brings with it its own tensions, since there is no longer a "binding together" of ends and identity. To some extent, this is papered over by making pluralism and the destruction of custom its own goal. But this cannot go on forever. Eventually there isn't much left to transgress or destroy except for liberalism and pluralism itself. I think that's pretty much the stage we have gotten to. Once that sort of "call to activism in service to liberalism" is no longer an option (because neoliberalism has won) only the pleasures of epithumia—i.e., sensible pleasures, wealth, and safety—are left to support liberalism. Hence, those seeking thymos (honor, recognition) or any higher logos (as against the emptiness or "decadence" of an epithumia culture) will end up turning against liberalism. I think you can see this in "Woke" and the "Alt-Right." — Count Timothy von Icarus
It's a good point to look at the US as separate states as there's obviously a huge difference between Massachusetts and Wyoming and Alaska.So to be fair in our comparisons, we shouldn’t compare the level of political polarization in Belgium or the Netherlands to the U.S. as a whole, we should compare them to states in the U.S. with comparable average lived density, like Massachusetts, Illinois or California. What we find by doing so is that such highly dense U.S. states are no more polarized than their European counterparts, because like those counterparts, a large percentage of their populations are relatively urban and therefore reject strong social conservativism. — Joshs
I think you're right and bring up some good points. My point would be that other maladaptive thymotic outlets are not so straightforwardly corrosive for politics and civic virtue.
For instance, two things I've noted before:
This phenomena [the maladaptive search for thymos] isn't unique to the far-right. I think it explains many trends across our culture, e.g., the widespread popularity of post-apocalyptic media. The basic idea there is: "if everything falls apart I can actually become a hero, actually have a meaningful life, rather than living a meaningless life where I have been reduced to a bovine consumer," or even "war or crisis will help make me into something more heroic." [Note: whether he is read correctly or not, I think this phenomena explains something of the enduring appeal of Nietzsche in our era]. And this also helps explain other changes in patterns of consumption (e.g. "tactical" everything flying off the shelves, people driving off-road vehicles for their suburban commutes, etc.).
The effects of this sort of thinking are particularly strong in the sphere of gender politics because sex is one of the last elements of human life not to be wholly commodified. Hence, sex remains a strong source of validation, a source of self-worth. And yet, as de Beauvoir points out, Hegel's lord-bondsman dialectic ends up playing out between men and woman here, because the misogynist, having denigrated woman, can no longer receive meaningful recognition from her. — Count Timothy von Icarus
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