tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5770450628194471768.post1619546809296060882..comments2023-04-24T11:33:39.731-04:00Comments on Anarchurious: Power's Cures, Anarchy's CuresCüneythttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09839492265797382364noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5770450628194471768.post-43382704341536155992012-02-17T00:49:23.750-05:002012-02-17T00:49:23.750-05:00Then the same is true of Kantianism, anarchist or ...Then the same is true of Kantianism, anarchist or otherwise.Cüneythttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09839492265797382364noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5770450628194471768.post-57110008474195825602012-02-17T00:32:03.547-05:002012-02-17T00:32:03.547-05:00This reminds me of Nietzsche's "Beyond Go...This reminds me of Nietzsche's "Beyond Good and Evil." I think we can agree on dismissing transcendent ethics. I'm placing ethics in real individual bodies. Truth is personal. My ethics is a matter of taste, yes, but my taste leads to less misery and fewer violations of autonomy than an all-against-all world. And unlike that way of thinking, it's not a big, glaring contradiction.<br /><br />"Resistance is not a betrayal. If the world is Hobbesian (I certainly wouldn't call myself a Hobbesian--I just think the world is anarchic and amoral), then you don't have to grant others the right to beat you. Everyone's free to do whatever they can." <br /><br />One of my points here is that one's body gives the lie to this illusion of absolute freedom. One's body does not give permission, though stoic self-deception, for example, might allow you to suppress the realization somewhat. There seems to be a disembodied, transcendent subject in your thinking. Is that a fair assessment? Concepts are free in a sense but the rest of you is still bound. Descartes' mind/body split was a twisted fantasy.<br /><br />Also, the absence of transcendent truth doesn't make the world amoral. The opposite, I suspect.<br /><br />"But moral feeling is personal and variable..."<br />Yes, but our DNA is remarkably similar. This is the common ground. I'm not gunna let a modern Western obsession with subjectivity-based epistemic purity keep me from saying that pain is pain, and that there's a certain amount of genetic hard-wiring we can make confident claims about. <br /><br />"...and also completely irrelevant to the nature of the Fucking Universe™."<br />Well, I get that the non-human universe is being consistent in not giving a shit, just like answering "what color are zebras?" with "22" every time someone asks is consistent. I'm saying that unlike the non-human universe, humans necessarily do give a shit, and do resist until broken, at which point they still carry the pain. Even a nihilist depressed by life's meaninglessness gives a shit. Depression is just one more way of giving a shit. Again, the claim that Hobbesianism is consistent only make sense with disembodied subjects.Devin Lendahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10122506454377940662noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5770450628194471768.post-33093187152271056552012-02-16T09:52:58.057-05:002012-02-16T09:52:58.057-05:00But moral feeling is personal and variable and als...But moral feeling is personal and variable and also <i>completely irrelevant</i> to the nature of the Fucking Universe™. Just because you're going to make, and I'm going to make, certain decisions in a sandbox world doesn't mean that we can't make other decisions, should we like.<br /><br />I act in certain ways based on my tastes, what's necessary in order to get me what I want (or what I hope will), and my abilities. So does everyone. But we can do anything within our abilities.<br /><br />I think you have me confused. Resistance is not a betrayal. If the world is Hobbesian (I certainly wouldn't call myself a Hobbesian--I just think the world is anarchic <i>and</i> amoral), then you don't have to grant others the right to beat you. Everyone's free to do whatever they can. Now if you accept the amorality of the world, you can fight back, you can accept defeat, you can do whatever you please so long as you don't say "That is wrong." The most I'll say is "I feel that's wrong," but our moral assertions mean fuck all to humanity, to the world, to the universe.<br /><br />Personally, I'm not a nihilist; I just believe the world is amoral. I believe all morality is a fiction, but I'm happy with the fiction. I assert. I declare. I may be wrong, and probably am on a few things. But I do respect the logical consistency of nihilism: "everybody does whatever they want, and when they contest they do whatever they can." It's not my ethos but it's a possible one an anarchist may adopt. Just because mainstreams think of anarchists as caricatures of this mindset doesn't justify sweeping it under the rug.Cüneythttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09839492265797382364noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5770450628194471768.post-58937415831450412372012-02-15T11:17:30.445-05:002012-02-15T11:17:30.445-05:00Glad you framed it up this way.
A couple thoughts...Glad you framed it up this way.<br /><br />A couple thoughts: <br /><br />"So why the fuck can't I, under anarchy as well as law, do what I please and take what I like? Under anarchy especially, who's going to tell me "no"?"<br /> <br />Do you screw people over with abandon now? I assume you don't. You'd feel bad if you did, right? That's why I don't do it. Well, hurt people, yes, just not with abandon. If I beat someone up and took their bike, the guilt would be more painful than the bike ownership would be pleasureable. I don't think an elaborate theory or ethical proof is necessary here. I may feel like a computer sometimes, especially when I'm out for a walk and my mind is wandering but it's a trick these abstractions play, seeming more important than they are. <br /><br />"...the war-of-all-against-all used as a cudgel by Hobbes is just as logically consistent as Kant's categorical dialect." <br /><br />Let's say you try to practice that. You're going around beating people up and taking their stuff. You're thinking it's right or OK or just how it is. Then someone does it to you. If you're being consistent at that moment, you'll say, "Oh well, that's cool. It's perfectly in line with my principles." I don't think that ever happens. Maybe MMA fighters hugging after a fight would be a decent counterargument although you'd still find a grudging respect there at best, not hate-free absolution, and the fight itself is pure hate... Anyway, Netanyahu would not be OK with Iran even responding to an invasion with force. He'd take the moral high ground, as bastards always do, and make them the bad guy based on some thoroughly inconsistent faux principles. Same with any gangsters. In fact, the recognition of someone as an enemy is exactly the feeling that what they're doing is not OK. No Hobbesian would lay down and accept their beating, right? Their resistance is a betrayal of their supposed principles. Hobbesianism is contradiction in its purest form, which reflects how the world is or often is or is from a certain angle but it's anything but consistent.Devin Lendahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10122506454377940662noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5770450628194471768.post-42177397985026903582012-02-14T00:36:09.509-05:002012-02-14T00:36:09.509-05:00Oh, I don't think I can prove armchair sociolo...Oh, I don't think I can prove armchair sociology there. You can put down the lawyer now. No, I just feel that most radicalish types <i>do</i> project upon the future some kind of social or natural rules which would serve them. In short, I feel that I have lived among too many who said, "Well if everyone would just--" or "If we could change the culture--" And I've said it too, sometimes jokingly, sometimes "educationally." But the fact is that if you build a world for people, we usually forget how other people are. Anarchists, with no pole to look at, paint on the future their fantasies. I haven't known a representative sample. I know I'm not speaking empirically. In any case, I certainly do not believe all, or even most, anarchists are that way.<br /><br />Of course, at least one sort of anarchist, I'd wager, would point out the Cairo rebellion and the looting that followed, or mention crime rates in Civil War Catalonia. Somehow people managed. Perhaps Ivan believes culture has shifted toward bestiality. I'd say the economics of the handgun have also shifted in the side of easy mass murder.Cüneythttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09839492265797382364noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5770450628194471768.post-83730278208247381782012-02-13T21:22:46.233-05:002012-02-13T21:22:46.233-05:00Would like to hear about the projection: its dimen...Would like to hear about the projection: its dimensions and scope; and the way you divined its occurrence.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com