Dakryn's Batshit Theory of the Week

[Dak]

I feel like you didn't quite get to the point you were trying to get to.

 

[CiG]

I didn't know you had a blog, it's very interesting and thought-provoking so far, I'm going from most recent and I'm on The Trump Dump.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading the entry about Mad Men, it made me want to check that show out too, which I'll likely do. I also shared Ideologies of the Immediate: On the Zeal of Trumpish Populism on my facebook as I think it could generate some interesting discussions, at the very least I think others should read it.

Great stuff, I like the way you write too. I need to bookmark this.

Edit: You seem to have neglected to mention another portion of Trump's support that is rather important though, dissatisfied democrats/independents. There is notable overlap with Bernie's and Trump's supporters and there are a significant amount of people that are willing to vote for Trump if Bernie is out.

 

[Einherjar86]

I feel like you didn't quite get to the point you were trying to get to.

This post was more half-assed than usual, mainly because I simply wrote a few pages and then wanted to get it off my plate for the time being. I have a second-chapter draft that needs finishing, and this was taking up too much time.

That said, I think it gets the point across that paranoia, at least after WWII, assumes a new form as a critical methodology rather than a psychosis. That was all I really wanted to emphasize, and to suggest that people such as Deleuze and Guattari can help us develop it.

Finally, this falls right into my area of professional interest, so I may expand on it and send a more fleshed-out version to an academic journal. If it's a topic I might want to pursue further in my career then I usually only post a truncated version on the blog.

I didn't know you had a blog, it's very interesting and thought-provoking so far, I'm going from most recent and I'm on The Trump Dump.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading the entry about Mad Men, it made me want to check that show out too, which I'll likely do. I also shared Ideologies of the Immediate: On the Zeal of Trumpish Populism on my facebook as I think it could generate some interesting discussions, at the very least I think others should read it.

Great stuff, I like the way you write too. I need to bookmark this.

Edit: You seem to have neglected to mention another portion of Trump's support that is rather important though, dissatisfied democrats/independents. There is notable overlap with Bernie's and Trump's supporters and there are a significant amount of people that are willing to vote for Trump if Bernie is out.

Many thanks! I'm glad it's of interest.

I am going to go ahead and admit that my political posts are probably far more prone to error and/or more disagreeable than the posts on literature, film, theory, etc. My politics are very much informed by concepts I've absorbed from literary theory that have very little to do with politics, and therefore render some of my political claims unintelligible (in my own opinion). Furthermore, I'm simply not a political commentator, and my reasons for doing so are often more emotional than rational reasons.

I originally intended the blog as an exploration of the theme of modernity (and postmodernity), which it still is in many ways. Unfortunately some current political topics have managed to sneak onto it.

 

[Dak]

In the sense that it attempts to address a foreboding loss of conception/control, I could agree. The problem I think in conspiracy theories has much less to do with orientation than detail. Conspiracy theorists are "noticing" in a good way, but lack education in how to process and sort the information. As a result, information is processed and sorted in a variety of probably poor ways, and then redistributed and amplified in similarly uneducated ways.

 

[Dak]

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160708-the-past-is-not-set-in-stone-so-we-may-be-able-to-change-it

 

[Einherjar86]

So fucking awesome. I can't get enough of quantum physics, thermodynamics, information theory, etc. etc. It boggles my mind to think about the behavior of pure matter.

I recently picked up a book by Douglas Hofstadter called Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid that looks at comparable models in physics/mathematics, art, and music. It also offers some layman's explanations of concepts and theorems that are really helpful.

 

[Dak]

http://qz.com/730799/the-us-is-still-throwing-away-a-ridiculous-amount-of-edible-food/

The US discards almost half of its fresh food produce, according to new research.

Around 60 million tons of produce, worth about $160 billion, is wasted, according to government data—a third of all foodstuffs, though experts and farmers tell the Guardian the real figure is closer to half of all foodstuffs, when taking it into account vegetables abandoned in the field and left to rot because of minor blemishes.

Pet peeve of mine.

The so-called “ugly food movement” is trying to challenge food waste by putting more pressure on supermarkets. Last year, the UK’s biggest supermarket, Tesco, agreed to give away its unsold food. The supermarket had admitted to throwing away 30,000 tonnes of edible food. In France, big supermarkets were banned from throwing away edible food last year. Retailers now have to donate unsold merchandise to charities or to farms where it could be used to feed animals.

Probably a move in the right direction. At least send a usable portion to food banks.

 

[Einherjar86]

Yeah, this is really a huge deal, far more than it's often made out to be. John Oliver did a very good episode on this some months ago (one of his best, in my opinion).

Apparently there are some strange legal warpings that make supermarkets nervous about donating food (if I recall correctly...). But that's really a poor excuse, especially since so much food that's past its "sell by" date is actually perfectly fine to consume.

 

[Dak]

Yeah, this is really a huge deal, far more than it's often made out to be. John Oliver did a very good episode on this some months ago (one of his best, in my opinion).

IMO. Food waste is right up there with dilapidated infrastructure issues in my mind. Food availability and infrastructure are the keystones of civilization, and we have been successful enough for just enough time to completely ignore it - and part of the ignorance is in the extreme specialization and technological takeover of various fields. In terms of cost and/or manpower, these things don't require the percentage of participation they once did. But they have not decreased in objective importance as it relates to humanity - to the human condition. As far as much infrastructure goes, even to the "robot condition" or whatever posthumanistic mumbo jumbo one might be concerned with.

Apparently there are some strange legal warpings that make supermarkets nervous about donating food (if I recall correctly...). But that's really a poor excuse, especially since so much food that's past its "sell by" date is actually perfectly fine to consume.

In our litigious western world, why would you consider that a poor excuse? But yes, plenty of food past its sell by date is "safe" to consume. However, much of that food isn't good to consume to begin with. An anecdotal exception I would make, ignoring the hullabaloo surrounding MSG, is beef jerky. My father worked for Frito Lay for like 2-3 years, and during that time we would get the past-date snacks that he pulled. Oberto beef jerky was one of the products and was a hell of a lot healthier than some of the other shit we could afford to eat (like Ramen Noodles and "Kraft Singles").


In totally unrelated news:



Fareed is a like a baby cornsnake, and Putin is a fullgrown python. I wouldn't trust Putin as far as I could throw him in personal relations, but he's far more intelligent than anyone the US has employed in the Oval Office in years.

 

[zabu of nΩd]

Shit dude... I watched that video last night, then had an *epic* dream about Putin.

In the dream I met him at the Kremlin, and he and some tour guides (including an American expat guy about my age) showed me around the grounds and gave me various lessons on Kremlin history and Putin's daily routines.

I had several oddly candid conversations with Putin. In one of them, I was rambling about some of my weirder / more obscure thoughts on American politics, and then one of Putin's aides approached us to notify Putin of something, and Putin jabbed me in the ribs to shut me up so I wouldn't embarrass him with political incorrectness in front of his men.

I was also invited to sit in on a trial of six or seven alleged political offenders, because Putin wanted to demonstrate to me that Russia had strong rule of law. Oddly, Putin himself was the prosecutor in the trial. He debated off and on with the judge over the nature of the crimes, and the judge corrected him several times on some legal nuances. At the end of the trial, one or two defendants were acquitted, and the rest were sentenced to life in prison. Putin "consoled" the men by telling them their trial was one of the most poetic dramas of its time, and that it was a great honor to have the President decide their fates.

We talked one-on-one again after the trial, and Putin tried to convince me that while the penalties seemed harsh, they should be put in the perspective of maintaining social order, and that for the vast majority of citizens Russia's laws on political crimes have no more an adverse effect on quality of life than America's laws do.

The dream had a really creepy twist at the end when the American expat privately admitted to me that he was also a political prisoner, with a life sentence of house arrest inside the Kremlin. He showed me his bedroom right before I was led out at the end of the tour.

 

[Dak]

http://www.sciencealert.com/a-man-w...hallenging-our-understanding-of-consciousness

Pretty interesting stuff.

 

[Einherjar86]

"Cleeremans argues that in order to be aware, it’s necessary not simply to know information, but to know that one knows information. In other words, unlike a thermostat that simply records temperature, conscious humans both know and care that they know.

This is most fascinating to me, because I agree with it and yet cannot get over the fact that it demands a logical paradox in order to be true. It inaugurates a series of levels of awareness, from which consciousness reflects on itself, and reflects on its reflections, and reflects on its reflections of its reflections, ad infinitum. This actually isn't problematic if we grant that consciousness is a process of learning, as Cleeremans suggests. But it becomes problematic when we work backwards, to try and pinpoint the origin of consciousness. In other words, if consciousness necessitates reflection on itself, then how the hell could it appear? It would have to have already existed in order for it to start reflecting on itself.

This is for show really - I don't believe that consciousness always existed. Speculating on its origins is pretty fruitless, unfortunately; but I think it's safe to say that consciousness and language are fairly close to one another (whether or not one came first, I think they emerged too close to call), and that the first "step" in the process, so to speak, likely happened simultaneously (or, to put it another way, emergently).

I was just reading something recently about nonlinear dynamics, and how nonlinear differential equations aren't taught at lower educational levels (even undergraduate levels) because they're generally unprovable, or don't offer explicit solutions. If consciousness can be described as a reflexive model (or a "strange loop"), then it might fall into a non-mathematical version of this category, which would make it - by any logical means - unprovable.

But then, within any formal system there are always unprovable truths.

In our litigious western world, why would you consider that a poor excuse? But yes, plenty of food past its sell by date is "safe" to consume.

That wasn't very specific. Of course it's a good excuse for companies, but a poor excuse at the more abstract social level (a reflexive level, if you will) for exploring alternative ways of putting food to good use. That's what I meant.

 

[Einherjar86]

Alain Badiou, the controversial Maoist philosopher (yes, Maoist) calls Islamic terrorists "fascists":

http://mariborchan.si/text/articles/alain-badiou/our-wound-is-not-so-recent/

It's a long piece - here's a selective portion:

In reality, then, this fascizing form is internal to the globalised capitalist structure, of which it is in a certain sense a subjective perversion. Everyone knows, what is more, that companies, but also confirmed Western clients such as the Saudi government, are continually negotiating with fascist gangs installed in the middle-east zones, and that they negotiate their own interests as best they can. Let us finally say that this fascism is the obverse of a frustrated desire for the West, organised more or less militarily on the flexible model of the mafia gang, and with various ideological colourings in which religion plays a purely formal part.

What interests me here is what this fascizing subjectivity offers to the young. After all, the killers of this January, like those of November, were young people, young people from France. They are young men between twenty and thirty years old, mostly from an immigrant worker background, second or third generation. These youths consider themselves as without prospects, without any place in society they could occupy. Even those who are educated to some extent, who have a baccaulaureate, have no vision for themselves: no place for them, in any case no place that conforms to their desire. These youths therefore see themselves as being on the margins of the salaried class, of consumption, and of the future. So what fascization offers to them (what is stupidly called ‘radicalisation’, when in fact it is a pure and simple regression) is a mixture of sacrificial and criminal heroism and ‘Western’ satisfactions. On one hand, the youth will become something like a mafioso, and proud of it, capable of sacrificial and criminal heroism: kill the westerners, wipe out the killers of other gangs, practice a spectacular cruelty, conquer territories, etc. This on one hand, and then on the other, touches of the ‘good life’, various satisfactions. Daesh pays its group of thugs rather well, much better than they would ‘normally’ get in the zones where they live. They have a little money, they have women, they have cars, etc. So it’s a mixture of deadly heroic propositions and, at the same time, Western corruption by products. And this is a consistent mixture that has always, fundamentally, been characteristic of fascist gangs.

Obviously, there are strong Marxist overtones here; but I think it's compelling to see a "radical academic" actually call out the fascism of terrorism.

 

[CiG]

How low is your opinion of radical left-wing academics that calling out fascism is praiseworthy?

 

[Einherjar86]

Who's praising? I'm just making what I think is an important observation, considering how conservatives loves to paint academics as sympathizers who perceive terrorists as righteous revolutionaries.

 

[Dak]

Communist sees something he doesn't like and calls it Fascist + the fault of global capitalism. Really on the cutting edge there.

 

[Einherjar86]

Beyond his labeling of terrorism as fascist, I think the argument is interesting. It's also one of the less obscurantist things Badiou has put into writing.

But I agree overall, it isn't anything groundbreaking. Mainly I was attracted to it because most academics beyond Slavoj Zizek tend to stay away from geopolitical issues such as terrorism. Sometimes you'll see something (from Jameson or Butler, etc.), but they're few and far between. And it makes me happy to see radical leftists like Badiou not falling victim to the stereotype.

 

[Dak]

Beyond his labeling of terrorism as fascist, I think the argument is interesting. It's also one of the less obscurantist things Badiou has put into writing.

But I agree overall, it isn't anything groundbreaking. Mainly I was attracted to it because most academics beyond Slavoj Zizek tend to stay away from geopolitical issues such as terrorism. Sometimes you'll see something (from Jameson or Butler, etc.), but they're few and far between. And it makes me happy to see radical leftists like Badiou not falling victim to the stereotype.

Well it's certainly pretty clear I'll credit him with that (it probably pained him to write in such a way ). But that's about the only positive thing I could say about it.

 

[Dak]

There must be a warehouse in DC where they stock potential VP candidates. Biden and Pence look like they rolled off the same assembly line. Too bad QC overlooked the Cheney model.

 

[Einherjar86]

Nick Land is reading Echopraxia by Peter Watts. He's already made a couple "quote posts" over at OI. It's caused quite a little stir in the comments over Watts's politics. But when it comes to science, I imagine that a lot of Watts's ideas complement Land's.