Man will always (I don't speak for women) seek power enough to express himself and this will always suffice to persecute, dominate, and manipulate others.
In this I am a conservative, for I do believe human nature is fixed. What can go wrong, I assert, will go wrong. One need only wait. One need only watch families to see that persecution is cultivated young and no political, cultural, or belief system will ever remedy this completely. And so in enough time you will have people with the charisma enough, and others with the affection/neediness/desperation enough to devote themselves to others.
This is bombastic and stupid, but it is correct--if you want to see demagoguery and control and ruthlessness, it is important to look at the pathologies of millions, but I say to you that very little is expressed there that is absent from a smaller scale. Violence, orchestration, cruelty, internalized control... All society's maladies are present in families. We were not corrupted by the state. We gave birth to it and replicate it every day. We don't even need to play it out; it would die without our assistance and the truth is that it is maintained daily by us.
And so I advocate resistance and upheaval and destruction when we assert it is necessary. Will these efforts go wrong? Yes. Inevitably. But still we try. Still we do our best. Still we seek freedom for ourselves and freedom for others. And this is a very subjective concept, I grant. Freedom ain't rational and never will be. You can't draw the line at control through overt violence or political systems. Anyone who has seen individual violence knows that you can have the best system in the world and yet, in the moment, you can still be enslaved or corrupted or crushed or co-opted, finding yourself your own jailer.
This will never go away.
But nevertheless I believe in finding a way to liberate ourselves and help others liberate themselves. I just don't know what form it needs to take, now or ever.
I am happy to fumble through this until my ideas get better.
"Man will always" = failed formula.
ReplyDeleteWhatever you are compelled or impelled to do is not universal.
You're sounding like that liar Crowbar right now.
Fuck you; even an infant uses the power of voice to express needs.
ReplyDeleteCome back when you don't have some pathological issue. Piss in someone else's playground.
"Fuck you" = proof that it's your pathology at work here. What calls for that level of violent anger?
ReplyDeleteMen do not "always" do anything and they surely do not "always" violently express needs for control and dominance.
You're projecting, massively so.
Maybe you should go take a valium, have a nap, and then engage in some self-reflection that doesn't involve projection. If YOU always seek violent control and dominance, that is YOUR deal.
What caused this outburst of blaming?
T Dzhakro:
ReplyDeleteOn what grounds are you denying Cuynet's claim? History? Psychology? Art? Biology? You are just making a blanket statement and implying that it is personal pathology in Cuynet that is the problem. Using derogatory language to boot. One could even argue that your method of argumentation in itself proves Cuynet's point.
You are making an assertion that is contrary to all of human history and culture. Wishing it was not true does not make it so.
I took Cuneyt's universal to be mildly hyperbolic. But generalizations are based on easily observable and repeated instances. Sure, it's possible human beings could be undergoing some imperceptible improvement that will only be recognizable by our distant, distant progeny. Not likely. So, in general, I agree with his indictment.
ReplyDeleteBut recognizing "general" tendencies in human behavior ought not to encourage us to give up on ourselves as free agents. We each individually can resist these temptations and habituate ourselves to different patterns of behavior. Why else bother making the observation?
Brian M,
ReplyDeleteWhere did you go to conversation camp? You're engaged in distraction by projection, just as Cuneyt is.
My point was made clearly. Cuneyt is projecting his own violent urges onto all men. Since I've read your comments where you put yourself in the victim's shoes, I'm surprised you're agreeing with him. Do YOU commit violence whenever you don't get your way? Rhetorically the answer is yes, based on your track record at sites I've read. Do you reduce yourself to physical violence too?
I don't think much of your comments, Brian M. You are an angry victim of life, and you seek to blame everyone else, usually men. In fact I would not be surprised to learn that you write Cuneyt's blog. There's some nice synchronicity in your respective positions.
Also to Brian M --
ReplyDeleteYour suggestion of Gender-wide Blanket Culpability is disproved by my own life. I don't find myself reduced to physical violence or threats of violence when I don't get my way.
Though I do get the idea that you and Cuneyt do that frequently yourselves, both rhetorically and physically, and are seeking to escape volitional culpability by merely blaming the gender.
Abonilox,
ReplyDeleteGiven that Cuneyt likes to pretend at a sort of exquisite vocabulary and rhetorical style, I find it absurd that someone would defend his blanket-blaming techniques. They do resemble Crow more than anything. Crow, or perhaps Stan Goff.
I guess this blog is one way for Cuneyt to work out his alleged mistakes in his alleged marriage. But I don't really buy the notion that he writes from the heart, from real experience, at this blog.
Instead what I get is an air of pomposity, eternal rectitude, and then a sheepish confession of small-mindedness in some 1% of his overall outlook. It's like there's a formula or template at work.
I was perhaps unclear when I used that aside about women, but I was using "man" in a soft-sexist way to mean "humanity." But I think your assertion of me beating up poor widdle men is the usual type of masculinist mobbing that I saw on the comments at Crow's.
ReplyDeleteT, if you don't want to interact with me, then you're free to go elsewhere. I don't think I'll delete your nonsense, but I don't think you're interested in any kind of dialogue, and while I certainly don't want an echo chamber here, I did come here for a little bit of a cut above the normal sports bar quality.
Good luck with your own philosophy. I can strain through your nonsense and clumsy tossing of my biographical details in order to see your substantive points--my language is indeed often pompous, and I think I sometimes push too hard in a basic multicultural class vein while playing around here (though this is due at least in part to the stated purpose of this blog--I mean, it's a goddamned power politics blog with some biography thrown in because that's all I had on my mind)--but I'm frankly unwilling to dig. You're not a client of mine. I'm not getting paid to deal with your shit, and my zeal no longer extends to preaching to the combative. So, in short, I will deal with those who treat me kindly, no matter how vehemently we disagree. And if you can't, what's the point? I'm not right--I just have some best guesses at this moment. I don't see the need to force my views on you, but if you ask for clarification, as others have on this very site, I will provide it. But dissing me and insulting a man who, whatever the hell he is or isn't (or wasn't, as he could be dead now), was always kind to me albeit in the limited sphere of Internet life? What's your endgame here? That I'll yield? That I'll seek to understand your view? Why the hell put the effort forth to someone who merely criticizes and insults and offers nothing else? It's a big Internet and I'm confused as to why you're here.
Oh, and I can't wait to talk about my own violence past and semi-present, but I differentiate it from society. And to be honest? I've probably changed since I wrote the words you're no doubt using to analyze me. So you could have asked for clarification here or had a conversation, but you spoke in a way to which, were you to say it in person, nobody would respond reasonably. T, next time you insult me, please be interesting. When I first talked to Oxtrot we hit off terribly and we continued to disagree for as long as we spoke, but you have to say that the man could at least be interesting.
ReplyDeleteProjection = nice when you do it, eh?
ReplyDeleteor when Crow does it
or when Brian M does it
In those cases, it's not just nice, it's treated as if it has just defined reality.
Look here, "Cuneyt" -- I'm not defending "masculinity," I'm saying you are engaged in projection of your own horrifying traits onto everyone else whom you catch under the phrase of "man" -- regardless of whether you backpedal and say it was intended as a euphemism for humankind, while at the same time pissing about "masculinist" whatever-ing.
Nice of you to admit you are Crow's understudy/stunt-double, though. Swell of you to project a "reality" about me that doesn't exist, just like Crow.
As to "the combative," what in Hades was the original essay, you pretentious knob?
Oh, and I can't wait until you resume aping Crow a bit longer.
ReplyDeleteMaybe you could admit that Crow doesn't exist, that you wrote Crow's blog, and that there was never any cancer diagnosis nor a youth spent making millions while kicking in the heads of your critics, blah blah blah.
You want to get along with someone, you stop projecting bullshit onto them simply as a way to handle disagreement. Crow's method was to label his critics as, variously, misogynist or bigot or reactionary. Yours is enantiomerically following Crow's, which is a cute little synchronizing if ever there was one.
If you want to say the men in your life have treated you poorly, then say that.
If you want to say YOU have mistreated the women in your life, then say that.
Of course, like Crow or Goff, you can't deal in these personalized ways. You have to make sweeping assumptions and accusations, blaming everyone except the actual malefactor in issue.
And do it with lots of polysyllabics and historicity, so that you can feel erudite and scholarly, and project a bogus kind of "expertise" that is much more implied than shown.
Alright. So more of the same. I need to try to make my statements more immediate; I hear that all the time from my kumbaya counselor friends. But I find insults tiring so I'll move on to my second tactic.
ReplyDeleteAbonilox, I think I should clarify, since it got floated that I was saying all families are like this. Not all families are violent, thank God. Nor are all men. I've dealt with violence from men and women and in some wonderful formative and corrective relationships, I've lived as an equal.
But. In society, there will inevitably be some violence, and there will inevitably be people strong enough to survive and, for a million reasons or motivations, some of these people will be willing and able to manipulate, mistreat, and dominate others. And between them and the ready-made victims, passive due to temperament, choice, or upbringing, there will be those who neither resist nor avoid. They will follow.
My point is that anarchism must be seen as a process. I've said it before and I repeat it again (maybe I'm projecting the recurrence; ha), but I can't conceive of any perfect system. And if we made it perfect, it wouldn't be for long. I want to emphasize that violence, in and of itself, is value neutral, at least in my opinion. And likewise chaos, obedience, cooperation, independence, disagreement. And the fact that humanity cannot be made to fit one mold is probably an adaptative advantage. We're incredibly sophisticated; I don't think the inevitable fall of all systems, from perfect anarchy to perfect stasis, is due to some original sin. Some aspects of human culture are particularly nasty, and whereas Brian (I think it was Brian M) said yesterday that anarchists must necessarily accept local bullies and tyrants, I disagree. Anarchists must neither accept the cost of statelessness nor minimize it; I do think that anyone considering the philosophical camp as a whole should ponder its results. I sure as hell don't know, but this blog is and has always been one of assertion and approximation. I don't need to perfect my ideas to express them and have them challenged. I am, like most people, a bit of a draft myself. The cliche of a "work in progress." So I put my ideas, some firm and some less so, out here and get feedback.
Anyway, I wanted to add that the system will have violence; no such dynamic can be said to be present in all individuals or families. I just know that even after the glorious revolution and the hanging of black flags everywhere and the resolution of all political discord everywhere, forever, folks will still beat their kids and kids will perhaps knuckle under, perhaps break, perhaps smolder, and perhaps learn that the best way to survive is merely to become the biggest and meanest bastard around. I wish I could prove this with a pie chart for the more methodical or the less imaginative, but uh, this is all the softest of social science, at its very best.
Oh yeah, and I'm actually Barack Obama, Jack Crow, and the entire editorial staff of Pravda. But I did really get a divorce--from myself. My entire life and this entire silly blog has been directed by M. Night Shyamalan, which explains both its sloppiness and its bullshit finale.
Not that this blog or even the comment thread is about me, but I am one of the most passive...to the point of pathology...people I know. So no, I am not "projecting" MY violence on anything. But I have never really had to be violent, so this is no crowning achievement on my part. But look around the world and deny that violence is ever present in so many social groupings of all sizes...even beyond States.
ReplyDeleteAnd tell me about YOUR activities (implied and otherwise under your various names and pseudonames). Heck, as you cut off other drivers or shove your way to the front of the line, because as an anarchist you cannot be bound by petty rules, man, tell me that there is no violence in your life, Karl.
Anarchism as a process sounds great. Always questioning authority, etc. etc. That's why I read you, because you make me think. Even if I fail to live any sort of "anarchist" life myself.
I didn't choose the anarchist life. The anarchist life chose me. Oh fuck, I drive a Nissan.
ReplyDeleteNo worries, Brian. All amateurs here.
Cuneyt, whatever form your journey might ever take, the first step would be imagining a world where everyone wasn't so terrible.
ReplyDeleteThe resignation of self you commit is the same resignation of self so many others commit. When you believe what you expressed above, you are Dubya; you are Gates; you are Obama; you are Truman. When you believe more, you are no longer those demons, even if they shatter your body.
If it's never possible for all of this to be anything but a self-interested horror of randomly-arranged molecules fucking each other over to survive, then you lose nothing by trying out a little imagination. Let it grow into faith, and you still lose nothing.
No one else can win here, either, if the selfish genes rule the temporal world. If the world is about grabbing stuff and hurting people, then what did Warren Buffet really win in his ~100 years? The ability to interpret more pleasurable, meaningless electrical charges within his gray matter, based on the pleasures and pains interpreted by other humans living at the time, the meaning and memory of which all vanish when he expires? If this is really hell, what do you have to lose?
If this is something more, though, then a touch of hope makes you starlight.
Hope and Future.
The point, you progressives playing at Internet Anarchists, is very simple.
ReplyDeleteYou (Brian M, Cuneyt, and many others in the insular circle of self-impressed "intellectuals" who link to each other) frequently post your "thoughts" with blanket-blaming techniques. Then when you get called on this, you either toss projection onto your accuser ("misogynist" or "reactionary" or "bigot" or "masculinist" -- examples aplenty above in this thread) or you play at some backpedal of "clarifying."
All bad things in the world happen due to individual bad actors. If a woman gets raped, it's due to the rapist's behavior. Not all men. The rapist in question. If a woman gets sexually harassed at work, it's the harasser's fault, not all men's fault. If a man gets raped in prison by a thuggish inmate, it's the thug's fault, not all prisoners' fault. On and on.
This should be obvious.
Pseudo intellectuals like to think that by speaking in broader terms they're uncovering big truths. But truth doesn't work by projection. Projection is guesswork, not proof.
To answer victim-boy Brian's Q: I have been a victim of violent behavior worked by the hands of women, and by the hands of men. I do not blame women generically. I do not blame men generically. I blame the individual actors who laid their personal hands on me violently, or whose hands held weapons that struck me violently.
The whole game of calling someone a "misogynist" is bullshit. Unless, of course, you have met and spent considerable time with that person and observed his actual behavior.
Pretending you can divine the psyche of another person based on internet comments, that's high comedy, but you clowns seem to think you actually possess the power to do so. Each the ones I've blamed in this thread -- Cuneyt, Brian M, Crow -- has pretended he could discern my personality concretely and conclusively based on posts on the internet. Each of you has done so with an air of authority.
None of you ever has met me.
None of you ever has spent time in my presence.
None of you knows the extent to which I am serious in my commentary, or the extent to which I adopt a perspective for the sake of an in-character study.
You can't be bothered with such details, regardless of how essential they are to understanding another.
You're far more comfortable pretending reality is defined by your extrapolations and blanket-accusations based on imaginings.
If you phony self-impressed "intellectuals" were half the mega-brains you think yourselves, you might just get the bigger theme of my internet activity -- that the internet is not real, it is a projection, and each internet persona is a shell inhabited fictionally by the person or people who operate the keyboard that has types out the "thoughts" behind the internet persona's handle.
ReplyDeleteEven those who use their own names on the internet, like Wee Glennie Greenwald, are actors playing a role. Greenwald is not a legal expert and his legal abilities are inferior, his analytic skills nearly absent, his inferential reasoning talents gone on vacation. Yet he presents himself as a renown constitutional law scholar/expert/litigator, while his posts show nothing of the sort... if you're actually a lawyer with some skill who has litigated and thereby obtained the ability to assess the adversary's skills through written advocacy.
That none of you internet poseurs has the ability to make these discernments reveals each of you to be frauds. I haven't seen a single one of you demonstrating any kind of academic brilliance or actual, practical wisdom. What I have seen, in great abundance, is pretense -- showy words, hearts-on-sleeves, and whole shipping containers full of hurt-on-display.
It's like Dr Phil done by NPR listenerrs.
cuy net.. brian ? that's cute , said half quickly read .. but need to go out .. .
ReplyDeleteMy F^%$#ing God, Karl/Oxtrot/T DZh whatever you are calling yourself. Does your real name happen to be Marcuse?
ReplyDeleteThis is multiple postings of weapons grade projection/"mote in the eye versus beam in your own" ranting here.
Carry on, my Good Man. What is next, accusations of homosexuality/wimpyness? Am I a Feminazi?
I'm done. I've got to wander off and start randomly beating on people while quoting Keats. because I am so VERY VERY VIOLENT and such an INTELLECTUAL to boot. ROFLOL.
Sorry Cuynet for abetting the derailment of a very thoughtful post. Which is all this is, and that is fine. If intellectualizing is so evil and useless, why does Karl/Oxtrot/Tdrizzle spend so much time, heck more time, creating these lengthy screeds?
Whether TDzhakro is or isn't ungood in some way, why not try addressing the subject matter it referenced?
ReplyDeleteWe're here to read, learn, and discuss, right? Is that not the point of this side of the new toy?