Yeah, I suppose that's the case. I'm, perhaps, just ultimately a little too paranoid.

I like what you have to say about this, but still contend that there are apparatuses of social control. Deleuze and Guattari came up with abstract machines if you'd like to think of imaginary machines in a more positive light.

An aside:

I have a pretty out theory about how dishwashers are abstract machines. A good dishwasher controls the rhythm of the entire establishment. Generating a rhythm for it lets you and everyone else kind of zen out while at work. It's kind of a form of meditation. The dishwasher is, therefore, the last line of defense between common wisdom and ubiquitous false consciousness.

It's so very like how it is, but it does have it's moments.

I figured that it was Gus. Gus seems like a certain character depiction of mine, but I think is probably pretty alright. I'd doubt that he's in league with any of the political adversaries that I just can't seem to leave behind. Gus kind of gives me some perspective in that way.

I'll probably just tell him that that's how you could interpret Thus Spoke Zarathustra and we'll probably both conclude that Albert Camus both was and was not a Nihilist, but I'll leave him the floor for now.

I just deliberately put what out there I thought could alleviate the recent plight of Nihilism within the Anarchist movement and didn't want for it not to do that. It's nothing that you did or anything.

Most Nihilists tend to be neurodivergent and afflicted by a certain degree of social alienation by that account. They're really not all that bad. The circles that Serafinski runs in, however, are fairly nefarious. By allying themselves with Individualists Tending toward the Wild, they're tacitly threatening to kill their political opponents. They have also done kind of a lot of manipulative things otherwise.

It's concerning, but only so much so, as, as I said before, most Nihilists are just only coping with what they've come to understand about the world so well. It'd be a purely philosophical difference without things like this going on.

You can have this thread back now.

Nihilism is born out of extreme social alienation and it is tragic that it is, but I fear that you give it too much ground by highlighting the poignancy to the pathology.

Serafinski has deliberately situated their work within the concentration camp so as consign their readers to abject despair. They don't want to be liberated from what they have identified as the human condition. They want to produce a situation to where they will be let to go on a manic ride, what they call jouissance, as adventurist terrorists on a killing spree. These people aren't troubled teenagers anymore. They're clever and cruel. It's tragic that they ended up the way that they did, but people are just going to have to let them go the way they're going to go and keep everyone else from getting involved. Hopefully, it's like I think and they won't do anything at all.

You are right that most Nihilists are neurodivergent people in their twenties, though. We can feel sorry for them, I guess.

What I wrote the post I was thinking about some discussions I had on this site in January. One of these people was clearly coming from the standpoint of defending nihilism as a philosophical position. However, he saw it as not being a source for feeling miserable but as a foundation from which to build a creative life. — Jack Cummins

I try not to be too condescending towards Nihilists, but that is what Existentialism is. They'll bring up Renzo Novatore or some other obscure, probably Anarchist, philosopher, but what doing that actually is just Existentialism.

Such people have then realized as opposed to comprhended. — TheMadFool

From Narodnaya Volya to Emil Cioran, I think that most of these people know what Nihilism is. They are not coping well with the sentiment their understanding of the world has evoked, but they are not somehow lacking in abstract comprehension.

I will say that there are probably a grand total of, like, seven actual Nihilists in the world and that it is somewhat absurd for Existentialists to have characterized the Postmodern condition as being plagued by "nihilism". It'd be more accurate to talk about philosophical pessimism.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about what waitresses think about as a dishwasher. Managers often don't like what I did to feel welcome among the staff which was to generate a rhythm from the dishwasher so that everyone could work with certain degree of peace of mind and well. It was actually productive, but it convinces managers that they have to compete with you for control over the staff, and, so, they would often produce a situation wherein being friendly with me would put anyone else in a bad sort of way with them. A waitress wants to present herself in such a manner to where they are physically attractive enough to be quote unquote naturally liked without calling too much attention to herself. They also want to offer only the pretense of expressive individuality without having put nearly any thought into doing so whatsoever. You can call their chosen aesthetic something like "slacker punk". Waitresses have to think about things like this, and, so, tend to know more about them than other people do. If you apply such reasoning to other social situations, you can discover how women do know more than us. Anyone who is marginalized, in some ways, does, but there exists situations that require that women find certain things out, which do not arise quite so commonly for men, and, so, they do.

I know more about men (being a man) than I do about women. There seem to be plenty of women around whose EQ is about the same as men -- just flavored differently. — Bitter Crank

I don't think that you're correct about this, but it doesn't have anything to do with innate femininity. Women have more of a need to analyze social relationships than men, and, so, do tend to be more emotionally intelligent by that account. The paradox to this, however, is that it can make you hypersensitive.

Emotional intelligence refers to the ability to identify and manage one’s own emotions, as well as the emotions of others. Emotional intelligence is generally said to include a few skills: namely emotional awareness, or the ability to identify and name one’s own emotions; the ability to harness those emotions and apply them to tasks like thinking and problem solving; and the ability to manage emotions, which includes both regulating one’s own emotions when necessary and helping others to do the same. — Emotional Intelligence

I think that that sums it up fairly well, but also think that it depends upon the situational context. When people will let you express emotions in certain ways, you can do so better. It otherwise is contingent upon circumstance or relies upon manipulation.

In a way, they're all in on it. It's why they just never want to let me bail. They're afraid that others will follow. Others will follow, but we will be so few and far between. It's like the independent music industry. It only can attempt to dissolve the music industry at large, but will never succeed. "...shining on the chosen few", y'know? I'm not its elected kin, though. I just see the truth. What kind of life is this, though? Just reveal it all to people who just don't care. I guess that I could put things better. I'd really rather just cultivate a way of life, though.

The snail's pace of progress, man. It'll just keep going, I guess.

...international relations, racial injustice, environmentalism, all of it.

Mistake this not for a plea for radical change. Radicals play part and parcel to it being stuck like it is. Mistake this not for a plea for Postmodern caste either. It's just not really all that great and it ought to be otherwise. People just have to accept that it's stuck the way that it is, quit reading the news, and drop out. That, too, though is just a part of it. It's just what I do. The snail's pace of progress is nearing its apex. History just culminates in disappointment. There's a lot to life, I guess, though. I don't know. I'm just rambling.

I suppose that we should try to have faith, shouldn't we? Should we?

There are other circles and sets of society for the word to travel in, though. Perhaps, I'm just being overly defensive?


Let's hope that it doesn't become another legend of Ruby Ridge.

That was what I was referencing. I'm kind of like a pool shark, in a way. It always seems like I'm just kind of out there, when I can be fairly perceptive. I am also just kind of out there, though. It could just be a delusion of grandeur or persecutory complex, but I kind of feel like nearly everything that I either do or say has a tendency to either backfire or inspire responses in worlds that I have no contact with. I also kind of have that Klaus Kinski complex, though, where I can never quite tell if things seem to revolve around me or if I'm just kind of schizophrenic. It's all very strange, I think. That's all that I'll say.

So as to leave off here, I'd say that an apparatus is akin to cult pathology. Pathology can be compared to a set of ideas that become as if they were true because they are believed to be so. Cult as an adjective refers to a confusion of obsession with reverence within any given venerated ideology or worldview. Earlier, I spoke of Fascism in the abstract. Yukio Mishima can be said to have embodied such an idée fixe.j His suicide was truly a subversive act. It was the culminate manifestation of such an idea, one that will result in its disintegration. There isn't just Fascism, however. Other forms of social control will also have to be destroyed, hopefully without such desperation.

It'd seem that living well outside of however we should like define systems of control will do us better than anything else, as it'd show people what they really want, which is to have the freedom to do so. That's just the trick, though: living well and having the freedom to do so.

I don't have anything else to say for now, and, so, will be off unless anyone comments on this. So long, I guess. 'Til we meet again!

I haven't actually tried to organize a protest, and, so, don't think that I could. I did leave art in a bunch of places, stage a series of "Industrial Action Paintings", and wage a rather debauched "riot of espionage", but I don't think that any of that really qualifies or would help my case in a court of law. Being said, I'm pretty sure that posting this has just solved this for me. I wouldn't worry about it, I guess.

This is as much of a rhetorical question as it a plea for legal advice. I am an Anarcho-Pacifist with a former interest in Communization and there seems to be a counter-intelligence program designed to make me out to be a drug runner and Fascist collaborator centered around a local bar, reading group, and within the Anarchist movement, all to varying degrees of knowledge and complicity. I am certifiably insane and I can't prove any of this, though. If I could, though, could I claim that in a court of law?

The contemporary Anarchist interpretation of Nihilism is somewhat dangerous. In Blessed is the Flame, Serafinski highlights a poignant poverty to resistance in concentration camps so as to offer a futile revolution predicated upon vengeance, quite literally, I might add, wherein acts of terror are undertaken à la l'art pour l'art. It's basically just a form of political suicide.

Nihilist interpretations of the human condition can also be somewhat insidious. They can have kind of a pessimistic assessment of human nature that approximates in The Will to Power.

Existentialists refer to all sorts of things as being indicative of "nihilism", some of which are and some of which are not, but its contemporary manifestation within the Anarchist movement is indicative of an incapacity to cope with the human condition. I'm pretty sure that The Conspiracy of Fire Nuclei also happen to be somewhat Nihilist.

I'd bet that The World as Will and Representation has a larger body count than The Myth of Sisyphus, though.

The first message transferred over the Baltimore-Washington telegraph line was "What hath God wrought". This, to some, may seem as a historical curiosity, but I think that we ought to take the message of foreboding seriously. By granting people the potential to communicate over long distances, Samuel Morse had created the technology by which information warfare could be waged. Consider the catastrophic impact that propaganda has had on the world or even the cult pathology generated by the Cold War.

As much as I should like to believe that people just don't lose their humanity, the sheer number of genocides in the Twentieth Century would feign prove otherwise.

What has been said ought to be true, though. People ought never to become as machines of destruction. We ought to think that someday they won't. We only ought to, though.

That's what I think about this, anyways.

I like the general sentiment of what you have expressed, but am not entirely sure that it applies.

In so far that there is social control, something or someone must arbitrate it. It is not as if life is literally automated. It's that various mechanisms are developed so that it becomes in some way or another.

I think that apparatuses arise within networks of influence, through the development of technology, because of legal systems, and even through philosophy in the creation of various ideologies. I think that the idea of an apparatus is that it becomes as if there is something else that comes to be what is in control. A network of social relations comes to create its own codes of conduct, internet access becomes integral to a person's capacity to find their place within the world, the concept of justice become a society of discipline and punishment, or a revolutionary political philosophy becomes a state-sanctioned orthodoxy. There are always still people involved, but I do think that apparatuses exist.

They don't just do so within political life. Consider the various symbolic orders, imagined hierarchies, and particular doctrines within the arts. I wish that what you have said is true, and life were merely to flow as a river, but the Postmodern condition, I think, exists because of cybernetic social control. There are always other ways of life, however.

For all of the critiques there are to make of Marxists, it's not as if they never have perceptive ideas.

Situational awareness is definitely key. I know that I often forget that there are conclusions that I have drawn because of the thought I have felt a need to put into certain ideas or events that other people wouldn't have come to just by virtue of not having the same experience.

I'm not sure that I fully agree that everything is a product of human agency, however. There are always, of course, actors, but I will say that it is often as if some other emergent phenomenon is really in control.

I read some Habermas ages ago, but can't remember any of it as of right now. Maybe I should look back into it?

Though I am not trying to perplex anyone, I can understand that I might. I'm glad that they generate interest, though.

I think that social deviance kind of gets at what you've gleaned. You couldn't have a film like Scorpio Rising without there being further and further automation over social and political life. People often revel, or even celebrate such cultures, but I feel as if they're kind of a tragic expression of a lack of freedom.

I like your description of an apparatus. I've included my warning against believing in the metaphor too directly as I went quite mad a while ago and something that I had done was to have hallucinated machines that I became fixated on destroying. I even wrote a series of texts to create an assemblage for that specific purpose. It turned out to be some of the most arcane political philosophy ever written by that account.

I have chosen machination to describe an apparatus for its double meaning. It's difficult for me to express how it's as if there is an actual psychic machine that has been projected into the world and simultaneously that there are actual people who attempt to set things out so that the world gets controlled in some way or another. I both like and dislike the machine metaphor. It is as if there is a manifest collective psychic phenomenon that, in itself, has secured control. At the same time, I wonder if that doesn't hazard a certain madness. Ultimately, there are people out there who attempt to conscript others as their subjects. We can speak of an apparatus, but what is one, really? I do kind of suspect that it is as if they exist, though.

I don't know that I would say that apparatuses merely protect the establishment itself. They exist within the ultra-Left just as they do in mafias as they do within any system of law. There are establishments who have secured greater control, having been engaged in such things for longer, but it is not just they who either create or let them become created and are either utilized by them or put them to use. Felix Guattari once titled an article, "Everyone wants to be a fascist." In a way, I think that you can think of Fascism as an apparatus in itself. That people believe that everyone can only attempt to organize society so that it is to their liking creates a certain cult pathology in relation to control. I am not speaking of Fascism as it has come to be historically understood. I'm speaking of it more in the abstract. The Wilhelm Reich quote about the "fascist in our head", I think, is all the more terrifying if we can consider Fascism as an apparatus. There's a certain optimism to it as well, however, in that the battle is almost purely psychological. It's just something that I think about from time to time.

What I'm also positing of apparatuses is that, upon discovering their machinations, you necessarily are making an attempt to render them inoperative. A person's mind is the only that they have to live with at all times. You can only seek to liberate it. That's kind of a speculative theory, though.

That's actually a pretty good idea. I suppose that I'll just have to organize my thoughts.

Fair enough, but I am just leaving this thread open to a conversation as to what I have highlighted as Cybernetics. As I don't think that anyone else will comment on it, I'll probably just be leaving. Cya later, I guess.

Okay.

In a way, the actions of the LPA were kind of like the Hippie plan to levitate the Pentagon. What, as theatre, such an act shows people is that suspending the rule of American militarism would let them create a more liberal and equitable society. What it also revealed was that the most effective way to do so was to liberate the American populace from the cult pathology of militarism itself, the easiest way to do so being to suspend its horizon of meaning. While in either jest or delusion, it did make a certain degree of sense.

Being said, because such forms of protest, through whatever is done in response to them, can so often produce a situation that is, at best, fairly quixotic, I would also warn against believing in only them.

To come back to my original idea, what I am suggesting is at stake, when there ought to be a generally agreed upon assumption that all parties ought to be attempting to bring about as liberal of a society as possible, in both the realm of the political and the social, is control. It is primarily secured and maintained through apparatuses. I stand by what I said before, which is that you can think of one as an aggregated set of machinations that get people to act in a manner that is beneficial to the set of people who design them.

That social relations and politics are predicated upon that social capital is accumulated, maintained, and wielded as a weapon of conquest, however, is precisely what the aforementioned "cult pathology" is. I would also warn against letting my nihilistic assessment of the Postmodern condition become a form of Nihilism. People ought to be so-called "idealists". They ought to think that social relations and politics ought to be predicated on that all parties agree to create as liberal of a society as possible.

In the meantime, however, I would suggest to continue to render apparatuses of social control inoperative.

That is all that I have to say about this for now. Feel free to proceed from there.

I haven't actually read this text by Giorgio Agamben, the text where this idea is outlined by Michel Foucault, and am somewhat hesitant to use Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's terminology from the text that I have read, A Thousand Plateaus, but, I am willing to posit that social control is primarily secured and maintained through the utilization of various apparatuses. Agamben defines an apparatus well as "literally anything that has in some way the capacity to capture, orient, determine, intercept, model, control, or secure the gestures, behaviors, opinions, or discourses of living beings." You can think of one as an aggregated set of machinations that get people to act in a manner that is beneficial to the set of people who design them. What I am further willing to posit is that much of what is actually happening within both the realms of the political and the social is that such an automated form of control has been attempted to have been put into effect and more or less everyone else is attempting to render it inoperative. Though I would suggest that such ideas are fairly sapient, I would warn against believing in the machine metaphor too directly. There are actually people out there who set in motion the course of events which result in the attempt at subjugation and the attempt at liberation from it. Being said, I also think that there is something to the pathological interpretation of the concept of an apparatus. It is the utilization of such machinations that creates a certain degree of cult pathology within the sets of society who attempt to put them into effect. In a way, they believe in their grand designs. The London Psychogeographical Association was certainly idiosyncratic. Though it was to some extent, it was not entirely absurd. Liberating people from things like the cult pathology of what this or that statue or architectural landmark was supposed to produce in the world, though hazarding a certain degree of cult pathology in its own right, actually made a certain degree of sense, as there just as well might have been biopolitical operations that relied upon established cultural symbols. People often become lost in things like that, though.

The idea, I think, is that social control is primary to socio-political activity and that it is primarily maintained through the regulation of the rhythm of society. It's, of course, much more complex than that, but that is, perhaps, the best one sentence summary that I can give.

You're not incorrect, but there's a certain poverty to that line of reasoning, though. You spend an extraordinary amount to time to produce some great work or another and all that it really buys you are one or two compliments. You otherwise try to figure out how to feel welcome somewhere and even occasionally succeed, but somehow, in some way or another, someone else trips you up and you just scramble to try and fix things here and there, but, by the time you do, you've just become all too bothersome, and, so, you leave everything and everyone with some parting phrase or gesture, so that they can know that you've left. The internet is just an ender's game. What is the internet other than a reflection of society, though? It doesn't matter where you go. You're either already dead or the way, the truth, and the light. All that any form of your illuminating brilliance buys you, though, is a bit more time. You can't help but cheat the system to be let to create something of enough value to improve your quality of life. You know that you don't have any other options. It's true what they say, though. Cheaters never win. Losers don't either, though, and, so, what can anyone do?

I also wonder if Cybernetics is the correct term. What I am attempting to describe could be considered to be akin to Biopolitics, but I don't think has too much to do with the regulation of biological life. It's more of a way of regulating the flow of society so that it becomes organized in such a manner that secures and maintains this or that social order. The definition, "the science of communications and automatic control systems in both machines and living things", is somewhat apt, as well as that the field of study has been applied to social systems, but I wonder as to whether the existent field wouldn't serve to confuse matters. I have yet to come up with another term, though.

Okay, but it says right there in the article that Libertarianism originated in Anarchism.

I'm just going to continue to elaborate on this as I, at least, feel like I'm onto something.

When a-political types take a jab at the politically-minded and say something like, "It's all just some high school popularity contest.", they tend to assume that their social critique is somehow "cheap", if not motivated by some form of envy or what they lack in self-confidence. On some level, they're right. They probably haven't really put too much thought into it. By the same token, however, the aforementioned statement does kind of call to light the primary political predicament. It's like how some Feminists will say that the problem is just chauvinism. It's a way of seeing the world that makes a lot of sense if you don't believe in it too directly. People aren't motivated to abuse power out of materialistic selfishness. They either have some vision of the world that they can't let go of or just simply want to cultivate a certain persona, a certain culture, a certain conduct, and a certain way of life. They become convinced that, in order to do so, they have to secure a certain degree of control over society. When the world rebels, and it always does, they, further come to justify what they deem to be necessary in order to maintain it. It becomes about the cult of personality, the coterie clique, and the clandestine course of action. It is like some high school personality contest, but one where one's place in the world relates to their existential status. The sets of society to have inspired the a-politically minded to put forth such a critique are reflections of the overarching social order. Intelligence plays into that as well, just as wealth or anything else does, but they only play, when the game itself is what has become of control.

I have finished my rambling. It's basically the beat-speak variant of the thesis to All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace or primary critique in The Cybernetic Hypothesis. I thought that it would make more sense of this, but now kind of doubt that it will. Oh well, I guess.

The problem with Capitalism is that it rewards shameless opportunism. While I'm only discounting so much as to your claims of Rockefellers, what I'm suggesting is that, if you keep on as you have, you'll be following that paper trial forever, as it just doesn't lead anywhere. True Capitalism would be preferable to however you want to describe the various forms of control that exist today. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri called them "Empire". Call it what you will. What I see as the primary plight both within and without the intelligence community, the CIA just being a fairly useful example for me, in all of the political foray is that people just become obsessed with securing and maintaining control. It's the implicit thesis to the film, Protagonist. This is just my speculation, however.

I'm sure that this law firm, given what information we have of it, has had a fairly decisive influence over American politics. Previously, however, you had depicted this as if they had set up the CIA. That is what I have been discounting. As I said before, perhaps I have merely misinterpreted you, though?

When it comes to intelligence, I think that people often think that wealth just must be somehow behind it. There's a fairly limited set of social circles where people who join intelligence trades tend to arise, most of which do have a fair amount of wealth, as well as that wealth can motivate people to do all sorts of things, and, so, we can generally assume that there is a certain interest of both old and new money that does become effectuated by the intelligence services, particularly that in the United States, as well as that in the U.K.. What I think that people often fail to understand about politics, however, is that the primary point of contention is over political power. Wealth offers a person a certain degree of power, but it is not power itself. What is moreso often at stake in political disputes are that various classes attempt to set out the world in such a manner that is to their benefit. People occasionally talk about social capital, but often fail to see its relevance. Within a political context, social capital is power. There are various factions out there who engage in the dispute over what classes are let to arbitrate the organization of society in so far that it is to their benefit to do so. Giorgio Agamben has echoed Walter Benjamin in stating that "God didn't die, he was transformed into money". What we can take from this is that money has become the "opium of the people". It is the capacity to rule, and not to profit, that people wage political disputes over. Were all of what happens in the world really to just relate back to wealth, I think that you would find for shameless opportunism to be preferable the various forms of authoritarianism that have created our political plights.

I'm just kind of dishing out some ideas, here, more or less because I feel like it, but, have only really continued to engage in this debate as such to get that point across. In a way, it is a point of contention, but I have no real intention of being contrary. What you know of Sullivan & Cromwell is kind of interesting information. I don't know. Originally, I had just kind of wanted to speculate on the intelligence trade.

The sheer number of plights that have been created because of the so-called "War on Drugs" ought to be evidence enough of that the full decriminalization and legalization of all narcotics is just simply requisite. The excessive criminalization of drugs has done nothing to curb their use and has only resulted in excessive violence and forms of criminal punishment. Though I personally have a number of qualms with the laissez faire attitude towards drug use that some drug users adopt, only when substances become decriminalized and legalized can it be made so that they are used responsibly. The Mexican government hasn't decided to put forth a plan to decriminalize all narcotics because of that they, like I, am so inclined to believe that a person has a right to do with their own mind and body what they please; they have done so because they have no other means to prevent the extraordinary excess of drug violence there. Regardless as to what anyone thinks about whether or not drug use is either responsible or ethical, the War on Drugs has been a near and total catastrophe. It is time for the United States to own up to that as well.

I am not disputing that Allen Dulles was the first director of the CIA or that he was as a corporate lawyer and partner at Sullivan & Cromwell. I am disputing the narrative that you had previously presented of David Rockefeller's network of influence to have been powerful enough to suit the CIA to the purpose of protecting his industrial empire. I'm not even entirely sure as to what Sullivan & Cromwell has to do with David Rockefeller.