Pill Pod 110 - Philosophy of History in The Society of the Spectacle (Exclusive)
Added 2023-02-10 21:48:41 +0000 UTCPart II of our Society of the Spectacle dive: Debord's philosophy of time and history. We discuss the historiography that leads to the spectacle, and the eventual universalization of time within it.
Comments
Yo pills, you should check out this movie called Greener Grass (2018) it’s a surrealist comedy that deals with themes of conformity and identity. Funniest movie I’ve seen in a long while. Think you might dig it 👌🏼
paul sevilla
2023-02-17 20:40:39 +0000 UTC44:50 Eric saying slaves unknowingly producing linear time. Nice insight 👍 1:08:30 where to find revolutionary time if all time is accounted-for, and if revolution time can't be found in this dimension of time ➡️ meditation/mindfulness. But not the exclusive "I'm going to sit zazen for 15min or go on a Vipassana retreat and then post about it and humble brag to enhance my persona and then slip right back into habit." Walking meditation whenever you walk, eating meditation whenever you eat, working meditation when you work. No separation, no distinction, no preference. If you try this, really try it, not as some gimmick but as an intention of liberation for yourself and all being, you'll very quickly find that you are no longer within the historical time, no longer in the sequential time, no longer in the accounted-for time. You are in a time that cannot be commodified, exploited, etc. You are on Buddhas "island unto itself." This place is unshakable and timeless. A minute becomes an eternity, the chatter of the sperate self is silenced, noise and worry and separateness and self importance melt away, stillness speaks and you can hear it. From this time, this space, something revolutionary may and (from my experience) does emerge. It may look like nothing special, it's almost imperceptible, but not entirely. You know when you find yourself in the presence of someone like this. It wakes you up. You feel inspired. You feel unshackled. The incessant clock stops. It seems to me that the Surrealists and Situationalists took the wrong road. They tried to solve the problem on the same level as the problem: spectacle, eye candy, etc. Here I think Buddhism, Zen, are superior in tactics. I believe based on my own experience of stripping things down to non-self, vs injecting competition, that the emptying is necessary. I believe that when people touch this silence, after years of wearisome interaction with the spectacle, they will gladly take refuge. It provides instant relief. 1:15:00 "difficult language, difficult to understand" in the context of it's usefulness to revolution in practice, in being able to meet people where they are. Listen to Thich Nhat Hahn speak. Not difficult language, not difficult to understand. Cuts with the skillful means of a bodhisattva who was taken the vow to liberate all being of all time from suffering. There is nothing extra, nothing special. Tangent: the earlier surrealist video take on subconcious. Here too I prefer the Buddhist conception of the store conciousness and mind conciousness. That the seeds of all things lay dormant in store conciousness, and our task as gardener is selective watering through mindfulness, if we want to be nourished by the fruits of equanimity rather than suffering. Going back to auto writing or whatever surrealist called it. This is also pretty much just Zen koans, both the call and the response. There is no fooling the master, either the response is spontaneous or it is not. If it is calculated, you get hit with the stick. If it is spontaneous, you get hit with the stick (with a smile), then you take the stick and hit the master, then you both laugh and have a cup of tea in silence.
ageOfBumFires
2023-02-16 14:22:47 +0000 UTCBeat me to it
Cameron Karnes
2023-02-12 01:48:41 +0000 UTCCanadian anarchist George Woodcock wrote a great short essay critiquing the clock as an invention of capitalist modernity: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/george-woodcock-the-tyranny-of-the-clock "The clock, as Lewis Mumford has pointed out, represents the key machine of the machine age, both for its influence on technology and its influence on the habits of men. Technically, the clock was the first really automatic machine that attained any importance in the life of men. Previous to its invention, the common machines were of such a nature that their operation depended on some external and unreliable force, such as human or animal muscles, water or wind. It is true that the Greeks had invented a number of primitive automatic machines, but these where used, like Hero’s steam engine, for obtaining ‘supernatural’ effects in the temples or for amusing the tyrants of Levantine cities. But the clock was the first automatic machine that attained a public importance and a social function. Clock-making became the industry from which men learnt the elements of machine making and gained the technical skill that was to produce the complicated machinery of the industrial revolution"
anacidcommie
2023-02-11 19:40:15 +0000 UTCMumford technics & civilization, chapter 1
Gareth Tulip
2023-02-11 09:35:36 +0000 UTCI think the thing about time that Pills mentions at the beginning sounds similar to E.P. Thompson’s article Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism (https://www.sv.uio.no/sai/english/research/projects/anthropos-and-the-material/Intranet/economic-practices/reading-group/texts/thompson-time-work-discipline-and-industrial-capitalism.pdf)
Ben
2023-02-10 22:40:20 +0000 UTC
