Pill Pod 118 - Victor's Paper (Exclusive)
Added 2023-04-07 02:54:19 +0000 UTCLet's hear it crush!
Comments
Phenomenology roots me in a way that does not need much if any abstraction to sense a world. But this purity does not equal a grand narrative. In Japanese Zen Buddhism, Satori is very personal, only the result is universalized: stillness. Not wholly a feeling of peace and unity but also an abyss between you and the symbolic. This root is personal. But one can still form what's left of the social.
Khemith
2023-04-21 11:03:24 +0000 UTCPills is like a mage who found the secret aperture for something new and he's slowing mutating; trying not to alarm his friends. Sitting back in shimmering robes offering purple insight.
Khemith
2023-04-19 10:59:28 +0000 UTCWelcome to team Tankie, Victor 🫡
Zack Klug
2023-04-10 13:15:24 +0000 UTCthank you victor!
Sebas
2023-04-09 23:51:51 +0000 UTCI don't think we should paint the re-education of the cultural revolution in broad brush strokes. I lived in China for many years and know people who were relocated for re-education. I don't think any of them are pro-government, for some it was a terrible experience, but for other's eye opening and life changing in positive ways. (Not claiming at all here that the cultural revolution as a whole was a positive experience. It was brutal and horrible in many aspects. But it did change the culture of China, and there were personal experiences that were positive)
robert m
2023-04-09 20:58:31 +0000 UTCIf folklore is how we interface with our environment, and the desire algorithms of agricultural communities in sublime nature have mechanised into mass media and today's folklore, which is advertising; wtf is the sublime on the other side of the advertising folkloric interface? Because I think the fringes of that process is where we get our ideals and ethics from, so there's a lot of promises there, which get interpreted and ingrained into us as desires and aversions (like how would you feel checking a Republican/Tory box on a ballot? There would be a resistant magnetic force of disgust pushing the pen away, no matter how black-pilled you are on democracy). I really want to be optimistic that there is some kind of potential within us, that is not intellectual, like how most children would be reluctant to kill, or the fact that to even exist means creativity and cooperation have so far triumphed over competitive annihilation.
Alex B
2023-04-09 20:38:05 +0000 UTCThis is really interesting! I appreciate the work and discussion (norms seem like an area that's increasingly topical and under discussed; "habitus" as opposed to simple mimesis, rational voluntarism, or some spooky version of economic, cultural or biological determinism. It incorporates aspects of behavioral socialization, collective mythologies in culture, and normativity- something that moves and shifts dialectically according to identifiable logics- which require human agency but does not subsume that agency into some voluntarist collective myth of "transformation" as such.) I agree with almost everything that was said, but it discussion of habits came amusing close to the old rationale for Mao's policy of sending party leaders and students "to the countryside" to work with peasant farmers. The idea, which justified the rationale for the Cultural Revolution more broadly, was that elites needed to understand to live like the peasants and workers to adequately "build socialism." Of course, its execution (which was brutally violent) and its implicit, functional aim (to destroy any opposition to Mao within party institutions) completely overshadow the ostensible logic of the policy. Still, as a history and Marxism nerd, I appreciated the similarity lol. Also, regarding "thoughtfulness"- a term that comes to mind is cognitive empathy (which is also a prescriptive feature of humanist psychotherapy, the theory that underlies contemporary public mental health and welfare services, the "sugar" that goes with the bitter medicine of austerity.)
Isaac Suárez
2023-04-08 22:34:01 +0000 UTCI never went to college until right when the pill pod started. Now about to start a masters
Waya Dalimber
2023-04-07 16:07:23 +0000 UTCI like hearing about the experience of a philosophy convention. I wonder if I'm the only patron who hasn't been to college.
Ichabod
2023-04-07 14:28:21 +0000 UTCAlso, Pills, I think I've got a text here you might find interesting, which I think is definitely relevant to this critique of leftist thought: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/the-curious-george-brigade-anarchy-in-the-age-of-dinosaurs "The fatal flaw of dinosaur thought is an insatiable desire for mass. The roots of this hysterical urge can be traced back to the smoke-choked nights of the 19th century, a long night we have not yet left. However the exact origins of this insistence on becoming a mass do not interest us; instead, we want to understand how this dinosaur thought makes its ways into our present cultures of resistance, and what we can create to replace it. The desire for mass dictates nearly everything a dinosaur does. This insatiable lust governs not only its decisions, but also its very organization. Mass organizations, even in the presentation of themselves to others (whether potential allies or the media,) engage in a primitive chest puffing to feign that they are more massive than they actually are. Just as the early dinosaurs spent nearly every moment of their waking lives in search of food, the dinosaurs of the Left expend the majority of their resources and time chasing the chimera of mass: more bodies at the protest, more signatories, and more recruits. The continued attraction of mass is no doubt a vestigial dream from the days of past revolutions. Every lonely soul selling a radical paper under giant shadows of gleaming capitalist billboards and under the gaze of a well-armed cop secretly daydreams of the masses storming the Bastille, the crowds raiding the Winter Palace, or the throngs marching into Havana. In these fantasies, an insignificant individual becomes magically transformed into a tsunami of historical force. The sacrifice of her individuality seems to be a token price for the chance to be part of something bigger than the forces of oppression. This dream is nurtured by the majority of the Left, including many anarchists: the metamorphosis of one small, fragile mammal into a giant, unstoppable dinosaur. The dream of mass is kept alive by the traditional iconography of the Left: drawings of large undifferentiated crowds, bigger-than-life workers representing the growing power of the proletariat, and aerial photographs of legions of protestors filling the streets. These images are often appealing, romantic, and empowering: in short, good propaganda. However, no matter how appealing, we should not trick ourselves into thinking that they are real. These images are no more real, or desirable, than the slick advertisements offered to us by the cynical capitalist system."
anacidcommie
2023-04-07 10:30:08 +0000 UTC"Hegelian bros tend to dress much more poorly" SCHNIFF. Aside from the liberal idea that women's rights or gay rights under the same capitalist liberal democracy are in any way revolutionary or that it's good to be politically habituated (especially given the state of the world rn), I mostly agree with what Victor's saying here. But this is exactly the reason why leftists should stop appealing to the masses and fantasising about a mass revolution and instead formulate and espouse a politics that appeal to the subjects who are inclined towards the ironist mindset that Victor mentioned in this paper, those who are prepared to disengage from the mass-object and are ready and willing to the hard work of questioning norms and thinking about living differently (the creation of new subjectivities that Deleuze, Guattari & Negri talk about). Such people should work towards finding each other and formulating new modes of resistance, perhaps with a focus on damage mitigation rather than sweeping social change. Especially in the face of a global, liquid modernity where you cannot challenge the system unless you get worldwide, simultaneous resistance, which is extremely unlikely to ever happen. But if the conditions of such a thing *do* happen, the organisational infrastructure for an real, emancipatory alternative would exist, rather than the ever-present fascism. And Victor should own the fact that he called the masses lazy literally just one Pillpod episode ago, and that definitely checks out. Intellectual laziness and the existential crises that are brought about by engaging with radical ideas are definitely important explenatory factors as to why the masses don't want to think about alternatives to the status quo. And they are stupid, in the sense that they would have so much to gain materially if they even tried doing even a little bit of this. For example, Americans would gain so much if they just adopted a thoroughly non-radical, social democratic system of politics like in the Nordic countries compared to what they have now. But even thinking critically just enough to say, vote for Jeremy Corbyn instead of the Tories really is too much to expect from the masses. You could just replace thoughtless with unconscious tho, right? That seems to be a good word for what is being described. Especially since the masses are an object driven by unconscious desire that is manipulated through advertising and general spectacle, rather than anything approaching rational thought or choice.
anacidcommie
2023-04-07 10:27:51 +0000 UTCmetareflective??
Judah
2023-04-07 07:47:48 +0000 UTCFeeeemale professor
Ashley H
2023-04-07 05:17:28 +0000 UTCSICKKKK
Waya Dalimber
2023-04-07 03:03:01 +0000 UTC
