Harmful stimulation can never evade detection. Such a stimulus would simply go unnoticed and have no effect on our thinking or feeling. — Joshs
Isn't such duplicity just standard in social interaction? We can wear masks when needed, without losing sight of what's a mask and what's real. It's almost as though your argument hinges upon that not being the case. — Judaka
. The lie migrates from the interpersonal to the intrapersonal. When we are forced to wear a mask, we tend to confabulate personal agency into a process of being dominated. We become the mask in the process of imagining ourselves separate from it. The inner lie, the gap we create between our personal narrative and our true social position allows the mask to remain and operate. And the more effective the lie, the better it may operate. — Baden
the person must learn how to detect influencing stimulus prior to being able to choose which stimuli to accept. And this is such an extremely difficult task that even the most highly trained philosophers do not develop an enviable capacity. — Metaphysician Undercover
If I know my co-workers are Trump supporters and I hate Trump, I may keep my mouth shut to avoid conflict, but that's not inner conflict, right? Instead, to avoid direct conflict, I'll make a post on my social media and mock them online. — Judaka
But who is the “true” me here? — Baden
But I don’t want to get pigeon-holed theoretically. Yes, for my purposes, it suits me to present a theory that tries to walk a middle line between metaphysical notions of an ultimately “true” self and postmodern notions of decentred subjects in a flux of necessarily competitive agencies: I need some comprehensible notion of self to make my case and I also want to stay grounded in a solid social scientific context. So, my aim is to put forward a coherent grounds for making an argument, not to take theoretical sides for the sake of a theoretical discussion. There either is a problem or there isn’t. If there is, the job is to put forward a theory that explains it in a self-consistent manner. That doesn’t preclude it being done otherwise. — Baden
Sure, this is a way of looking at selves through the lens of the social, from which perspective we are social atoms in a discursive flux. We are grounded in physical bodies too though. So, there’s always a spectrum from “individuality’ to “social”. A — Baden
I don't experience identifying these kinds of issues as angst but as interesting opportunities for thought. Kind of like how you experience them as fun opportunities to talk about your experiences in the kitchen or at the seaside. — Baden
There in no such thing as increased human flourishing, as though there were one objective linear scale of meaurement. For one thing, the understanding of what flourishing entails ,how and why it is important, changes from era to era, culture to culture and person to person. — Joshs
What constitutes a stimulus for you is different than what constitutes one for me, even if we are in the same room at the same time. — Joshs
I think this is very simply wrong. There are conditions under which all people will either be happy or unhappy. No one wants to be a slave, for example,
I doubt anyone is really happy when being exploited by others, or for that matter, when exploiting others. There is undoubtedly a basellne human nature which g — Janus
But who is the “true” me here? — Baden
For most of human history slavery was common and accepted , and I wager that if you were to ask slaves in periods of history when slavery was widely present if they believed that there were situations under which they themselves would be morally just in owning a slave they would say yes. — Joshs
Many slave owners sincerely believed slavery was not only just but benefitted the slave. So the idea that slavery is immoral and abusive exploitation that prevents overall
human flourishing is not a universal of history or human nature, but a contingent product of modern culture. I agree that humans have always desired ‘flourishing’ but this is like saying we want what we want. — Joshs
What flourishing or exploitation means is relative to a value system, and value systems change. I think what evolves is our ability to relate to the ways of others different from ourselves and this allows flourishing to be shared more widely among different segments of culture. — Joshs
I don't buy this idea of relativity. It is compassion or its lack that determines whether one can see whether others are flourishing or not. — Janus
Zizek believes the modern world is sick, due to the hegemonic dominance of Capitalism. In this thinking he is joined by most of the members of the Frankfurt school. The sickness they see in the world is inseparable from their reliance on the notion of alienated subjectivity. — Joshs
You are a moral realist. What remains to be determined is whether your universalism concerning this aspect of human nature grounds itself on an evolutionarily adaptive instinct or a metaphysical a priori. If the former , do you agree with psychologists like Jonathan Haidt that there are a number of innate moral foundations? He specifies at least 5:
Care/harm
Fairness/cheating
Loyalty/betrayal
Authority/subversion
Sanctity/degradation.
But the catch is that while each of us has all of these , we have them in differing concentrations. The result is a relativism and political polarization over values. — Joshs
No, it is not. The figures of Nietzsche’s Dionisius, Foucault’s Baudelaire, and Deleuze’s Proust and Kafka have not returned the identity of the same. On the contrary, their subject of return has been becoming. The author himself, a figure of a character, literary, conceptual, and aesthetic components of the work compose a singular multiplicity. The work and the producer have simultaneously become and effaced; they have acquired the temporary, fragile, self-sufficient modus of existence. “Eternal return affects only the new, what is produced under the condition of default and by intermediary of metamorphosis. However, it causes neither condition nor agent to return on the contrary it repudiates these and expels them with all its centrifugal force. It constitutes the autonomy of the product. It is repetition by excess which leaves nothing of the becoming-equal”. (Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, p 90).Mark the singularity of events. . . . Grasp their return. . . . Define their lacuna point, the moment they did not take place. (Foucault, ‘Nietzsche, Genealogy, History’). Through the figure of Baudelaire, Foucault re-affirms the reality of the Nietzsche’s Dionysian aesthetic existence.
— Number2018
So then it is the eternal return of the same. — Joshs
I hypothesize that , of the many readings of Deleuze , you resonate with those that I find in writers like Massumi , Protevi and Delanda. — Joshs
I used to read Massumi’s books. He is interested in the problem of our autonomy and subjectivity that we deal with in this thread. But, as far as I know, he has not solved it yet.” The call to go beyond ideology is a call to attend to the novelty of the situation, and to find ways of conceptualizing the current mode of operation of the capitalist process, and the new kinds of spin-off effects it produces, that can grasp its novelty and complexity. How can a relational approach give us a new understanding of capitalism as a self-proliferating What are the new figures of that relation? Is the figuring still a question of personification? If so, is identification still at the basis of the figures of capital? What does it mean to ‘personify’ a derivative? A credit default swap?” (Massumi, ‘Politics of affect’, p 90)Do you agree with Protevi that this analysis of the ‘above’ into the political and the ‘below’ into the biological is compatible with Deleuze? — Joshs
From the vantage of poststructuralist thinking, which deconstructs subjectivity, the problem of the alienated capitalist subject vanishes and in its place emerges a pluralism of strategies for ensuring that new openings or ‘lines of flight’ are created within discursive structures (economic, social, technological). — Joshs
Secondly, there is no "mask narrative". The deception here is intentional and calculated. It's like you're analysing the situation as someone who doesn't know any better. You know that the PC office worker is being intentionally and purposefully deceptive, to appear as a model employee is the purpose of this deception. The deception is the mask, if there was no deception, and the PC office worker from the start openly expressed how foolish the boss was, then there would be no mask or deception to talk about. It's by design, and the continuation of this deception requires continuous intent.
We use masks for all kinds of reasons, but it's always calculated. For example, the PC office worker may present as apolitical until probing the situation to see whether being truthful will lead to conflict or kinship. Is it courageous to say whatever you think with no regard for consequences? Or foolish?
Humans are so fucking good at lying, we do it seamlessly, effortlessly, instinctively. To characterise us as having our psyches shattered (exaggerating) by telling some lies to our boss just seems very unnatural to me. — Judaka
Humans are so fucking good at lying, we do it seamlessly, effortlessly, instinctively — Judaka
We use masks for all kinds of reasons, but it's always calculated — Judaka
The experience that we have of our lives from within, the story we tell ourselves about ourselves in order to account for what we are doing, is fundamentally a lie – the truth lies outside, in what we do. — Zizek
I disagree, humans are instinctively calculative, Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in the Everyday Life is a book I could recommend on this topic.What is instinctive is just what is not calculated. — Baden
But what I've presented relates to the operation of a more generalised context where “lying” is proposed as a defence against the domination inherent in being on the wrong side of an asymmetric power relation that establishes itself as a mode of life — Baden
This can be applied to all sorts of contexts, of course. Zizek puts it succinctly:
““The experience that we have of our lives from within, the story we tell ourselves about ourselves in order to account for what we are doing, is fundamentally a lie – the truth lies outside, in what we do. — Baden
But what you can’t deny is how the effort at deception functions socially, its impotence, and its even facilitative role in a power dynamic that maintains the employee as a tool of the boss and the company machinery in which they are embedded. — Baden
I'm struggling to understand how the various arguments you've made recently are connected. Are they? — Judaka
Western capitalism is less tyrannical than what preceded it or what exists elsewhere, and western democracies are less tyrannical than alternatives. — Judaka
I'm autistic, so I'm actually pretty awful at this, and I have to do a lot of this calculation consciously because it doesn't happen as automatically. Autism has potential value as a way to look at for contrast from what's normal. — Judaka
My agency is expressed and defined in terms of how, through social interchange, I continually establish and re-establish what is at stake and at issue for me in partially shared
circumstances of interchange with others. Personal agency can never be determined apart from the social embedded practices which form it, but neither can agency disappear into or simply be ‘dominated’ by social discursive structures, since practices are never completely shared — Joshs
But it seems to me that not only what the dimensions, magnitude and form of the problem are , but whether there is seen to be a problem at all, is determined by the theoretical framework we embrace. In other words, the theory comes first, not after a problem has been identified — Joshs
From the vantage of poststructuralist thinking, which deconstructs subjectivity, the problem of the alienated capitalist subject vanishes and in its place emerges a pluralism of strategies for ensuring that new openings or ‘lines of flight’ are created within discursive structures (economic, social, technological). — Joshs
When it comes to the biological body, things have changed since Marcuse’s Freudian-influenced concept of libido. Within enactivist approach in psychology, which share features with poststructuralism, the relation between individual and social is less a spectrum than an inseparable, reciprocal interaction. Body, mind and world form one system. There is a functional autonomy to the self of the organism , but not in Freud’s sense of an interior psychodynamic structure. When you read today about the psyche being ‘embodied and ‘embedded’ , this indicates that , as Shaun Gallagher writes “objective (social and cultural) factors already have an effect on our perception and understanding of the world, even in the immediacy of our embodied and instrumental copings with the environment.” — Joshs
should we let people explore their identities even if this turns out to be bad for them or should we teach people about their identities even this turns out to be bad for them? If letting anybody explore identities implies costs and risks, should we let people explore their identities at their own expense/risk or share the expense/risk collectively as much as possible? I think that what you consider commodification of identities answers both questions in a certain way. And that the notion of "commodification of identities" is also supposed to frame them in a negative light, because it suggests exploitation (some self-interested social agents sell a variety of goods/services designed for identity seekers despite their potential side effects and make money out of it), while the issue that we must deal with prior to discussing exploitation is the desirable balance between freedom and safety in satisfying individual needs within a community — neomac
However, I believe that according to Heidegger we are fundamentally inauthentic. So this presents a sort of paradox, to find the true self is to find inauthenticity, and this is probably why we are prone to multiple identities. We cannot say that one or another is the true identity, because it's like asking what are you doing with your life, when the person is involved in many projects. — Metaphysician Undercover
I'm not suggesting liberal democracies are worse places to live than theocracies, dictatorships or other tyrannies. — Baden
And I think the idea we can think our way out of being controlled through deception where such deception primarily functions to make us more comfortable being controlled is contradictory. — Baden
But who is the “true” me here? — Baden
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