One thing that I want to know, for my own purposes, is how you and your wife kept it going through all of that? For real! It's (no-irony) heroic. My girlfriend & I have been through all sorts of ups and downs. It's hard to love a person through all of those tectonic shifts (especially when you think, deep down, they might deserve something better) — csalisbury
I think you're on to something real and less than ideal, but maybe you're missing what is also the implied respect for men in the way they are picked on. They are implied to be strong enough to take it. So there's a respect to refuses to pity or excuse in that same meanness. Hearing what people really think of you is (within limits) a privilege. — syntax
I used to watch "Full House." Not the one that's on now, the original. I guess 25 years ago. It was the story about a widowed father, his three daughters, their uncle, and a good male friend. The opening credits showed all of them in the park; the baby and two young girls and the three men, having a picnic. Playing with each other. Laughing. It used to bring a tear to my eye to see men portrayed that way. I wish I could say it was a wonderful show, but it wasn't. It was dumb, poorly written, and poorly acted. Terrible. — T Clark
I acknowledge my social experience is pretty limited to my middle class town and friends. That's one of the reasons I want this discussion. I want to test my understanding with a broader scope. Other communities, other countries. — T Clark
It definitely wasn't true of you, obviously, but many men and women absorbed images of gender roles where men were central to society, but peripheral in the home (emotionally anyway). Women were peripheral in society, central in the home.Playing with each other. Laughing. It used to bring a tear to my eye to see men portrayed that way. — T Clark
What are you saying? I legitimately don't understand. You're talking about your posts, and how your posts, but I feel like --- it just feels like a platonic..post. I feel like I'm lacking nutrients. — csalisbury
Well, a showcase of how NOT to play would be better, I think. I try not to play. I can't say I'm a big success, but I hope I'm not a total failure. — Πετροκότσυφας
Well, a showcase of how NOT to play would be better, I think. I try not to play. I can't say I'm a big success, but I hope I'm not a total failure. — Πετροκότσυφας
It feels this way, indeed. But I think that after a certain point you can't really tell, so, even if only methodologically, the idea that it's play all the way down, should be abandoned — Πετροκότσυφας
Well, I have a friend who sings to magpies, at least you're not that bad. — T Clark
This is really the first time I've sat down and tried to articulate my own feelings on the matter, so I'm not sure how to express it. That's one of the reasons I want this conversation. In your writing, I think you are more articulate on the subject than I am. Although you have a focus on the way women are treated with disrespect in your own life and your work, I've always liked that you recognize that the weight of society falls on men as well as women. You have always been very evenhanded. — T Clark
The background is great, and I think it matters. I grew up in a small conservative town. Working class.
Lots of stupid meanness at my school. Orphans for the local orphanage were mocked (once) by literally hundreds of people at the same time. Total mob mentality. And lots of fights. Everyone loved a fight. I was in some of them, and I wasn't always the 'innocent' party. The worst insults (the fight or lose face insults) were homophobic. At some point I started to think that this homophobia was a fundamental block or enemy of ideal male consciousness. A truly 'manly' consciousness wouldn't deny itself anything. Dare to know, etc. But I only wanted to love other men as equals , very rare and mostly theoretical sexually asymmetrical thrillseeking aside. — syntax
To me the disappointing play is maybe the rule. When things get real (good play), wheels start to spin in this old heart. Working all of this out feels like an extremely deep kind of play. The play becomes conscious of itself. The play includes an attempt to unveil itself, or many such attempts. Intoxicating. I find it hard to turn it off once the wheels start spinning. I want the forum to be good, but I'm neglecting my responsibilities to write this. — syntax
I have had men do it with me on a number of occasions, because I have a strong presence but I am actually very gentle inside so it was difficult for me to tolerate without getting hurt. — TimeLine
I relate to being tough on the outside and gentle on the inside. — syntax
The violence for me is more or less internally sublimated in critical thought. — syntax
It's all pretty twisted, because this 'fierceness' of thought is trying to strip away false personality in one sense (get to simple mammalian love and joyful embodiment as 'true' Christianity and Tao) and attain a kind of ('masculine') statue-like invulnerably. — syntax
I relate to being tough on the outside and gentle on the inside. The violence for me is more or less internally sublimated in critical thought. Fixed ideas get shredded. The new part of the self is born from the death of an old part of self. — syntax
The tricky part (and I think you know all this and will agree) is that identities are intimately tied up with fixed ideas. Moreover, the language of 'private' thought is always potentially public. That means that as I brew up the death of one of my own sub-selves, I am also brewing up what others could experience as the deepest kind of poison to their currently sanity-sustaining word-sense of self. — syntax
Men are the scary gender, the violent gender. Women are no angels, but I know the eerie possibilities of the male soul more intimately. (I do know a particular woman very well, and her meanness potential is cute by comparison. An exaggeration? A fantasy? ) I also know or just believe that personality is a city built on a sleeping volcano. Sometimes that volcano will sleep through an entire life, but one eruption is enough to change or erase everything. — syntax
Let's not forget humour (what counteracts depression) and positive relationships between people either, otherwise culture deteriorates and we would live within a mechanistic environment where responses are without quality of character. You breed weakness on both ends of the spectrum, so it is about achieving the balance between the two.
This is not humour, though, not authentically where people are laughing mutually and are being playful.
I laugh because I don't need to feel.
Do you think humour is necessarily part of mutual amusement and play? I'm not sure this is right, it seems broader to me. Mockery and rebuking are humorous but neither are reciprocal play. — fdrake
II mean, humour isn't just this generator of positive feelings, it can easily be repurposed for all kinds of dark shit. — fdrake
Yeah, and just for clarification: I don't think it's play all the way the down. I 'believe' in something like final vocabularies. Our empathy and understanding have their limits. All play analysis can hope to do is maybe to knock down some fake limits. Or just help one develop style and charisma. Roughly speaking, I have a fantasy of the philosopher as a type of person who intentionally lives willingly and greedily in a tangled mess of ideologies and even enjoys surfing on the cognitive dissonance (endless 'foundationless' enrichment, aesthetically justified). But even here I think a fundamental faith in that fantasy has to be fixed. I have to unironically believe in being an ironist (which is also tied up for me with a notion of 'being a man' [freedom, godlessness]). So there is a foundation, but it is understood to live largely in the dark. — syntax
Some women are very bad, indeed they can be very manipulative to a point of turning good men into very bad men and still come off appearing to be a caring and innocent woman. They have mastered appearances but underlying that is nothing but a vicious creature tricking people to think otherwise. Sorry, both men and women are scary and violence need not only be physical. It can be psychological too. The scales are tipped when we look at the outcomes of the aggression, however, and that is largely a result of our cultural and sociological attitudes to masculinity and the fact that men are physically the stronger sex making them more capable to act out aggressively. — TimeLine
Zizek is speaking of an artificial laughter done in a way where - if humour is used as a tool to play this game - then laughter is given to us. So, in the instance where a woman is insulted, if there is an underlying and generally accepted misogyny, laughter is given to the audience where the woman is instantly the joke. This is not humour, though, not authentically where people are laughing mutually and are being playful. — TimeLine
I've seen someone be very playful with how much they like to cut themselves and how worthless they think they are. It was something like 'hey it doesn't matter if I cut myself if I'm worthless right? At least it's something I get to enjoy now and then!'. Structurally, a joke. It was sort of funny in the 'man hanging himself by his own belt and then his trousers fall down' way. Also coming home to an ex mid suicide attempt (vodka + pills) 'What are you doing?' 'I'm thirsty'. — fdrake
I would not call that humour. If it does not generate positive stimuli then it is something else. Being incongruous characterises some form of amusement because it challenges and shocks a person, like shit jokes, but the function is not to demean or dissolve significant concerns but to draw insight and improve. — TimeLine
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