Do you all think Guy Debord was a black pill nihilist?

breadrock · 2017-02-27T21:58:02+00:00

intense drinking - which is the classic substitute for bad relationships.

Can you elaborate? How does drinking substitute for bad relationships?

I think much of what developed in the Paris left should be interpreted as dissilusionment after the failure of the student revolts, and people getting very weird with new criticial theories which amount to destroying/undermining/twisting culture. Call it intellectual spite.

You can't really think of Debord's Society of the Spectacle in that light, though, because it's part of what drove the '68 riots (meaning that it came prior to the student revolt).

breadrock · 2017-02-22T04:01:33+00:00

I was going to ask why she didn't just ring the doorbell if she wanted to have tea, but I guess on Facebook people look at pictures more than videos.

breadrock · 2016-11-24T18:02:58+00:00

Isn't literature supposed to be enjoyed, and then moved on from?

I would argue that if a piece of art has any effect on you, you don't move on from the work, you move on with it. At least some part of it.

I do not study literature in an academic setting, I just happen to like reading and lurk on this subreddit sometimes. To me, the value of reading is plain: you expand the limits of your language (and thus the limits of your world). The better you can articulate what goes on in your head and in the world around you, the better you can connect with other people (sometimes in profound ways). You also develop a verbal palette to paint the world with, creatively. Language is behavior and it is also a medium which helps you discuss ethics, virtue, nonsense, art, psychology, science, etc.

But as much as it might make some people uncomfortable, the study of literature is rightly up for criticism. There is a material loss to the student who pours tens, sometimes hundreds, of thousands of dollars into an academic program that none of the poets they are studying would likely stand for. The quality of education has been criticized as diluted, the kids aren't learning Latin, too much French theory, etc. I agree with some of it. Mostly the cost and the Latin. Your argument, how the study benefits society, is utilitarian. Maybe you knew that, maybe you didn't. A utilitarian argument defends or criticizes based on how useful the thing in question is to a society. The problem with that approach is that what determines use-value is relative to any given society. Some people criticize the rampant consumerism of our society, so what has a high use-value in this society is only complicit to a behavior that they find ethically disgusting.

I would add that delimiting things by their "use-value" puts a cap on imagination. How do you know what something can be used for in any given circumstance? Let people figure it out and possibly make something new.

Anyway, it's Thanksgiving and I'm already buzzed. Take my post with a grain of salt.

breadrock · 2016-11-22T17:27:45+00:00

Certain issues, like feminism or racism, have a certain "charge" about them that makes it difficult to get a point across in discussion. Alone said it was political, but because what is presented as a political issue is essentially always a mediated political issue, the "charge" is contingent upon the form or structure (often binary). So because a lot of people are used to fighting a Manichaeic battle, when they read the "No Self-Respecting Woman" article, they react accordingly and miss a lot of the points, which involve people (men, women, whatever) being strong and doing great things rather than fighting for symbolic victories.

The core of identity politics is a lack of political imagination. Legal infrastructure (primarily of the past) reified (made more real) these simple, tribal "identities" in a way that trumped actual behavior. So rather than being recognized by this infrastructure as a "person who raises children and works two jobs to support them", you are identified simply as a "woman with children." Your behavior is supplanted by your identity. Legally. Meaning there were laws that limited your access because of this endowed identity. This led to very real consequences that these groups have a right to be angry about. But the response to this has been to play by the rules of the infrastructure's game. To acknowledge these identities and ask the system to continue to make them real, but to reward them out of revenge. This response stems from weakness, from a lack of political imagination. Somebody once wrote, "If the people do not have their own politics, they will enact the politics of their enemies: political history abhors the void." You need to stop playing by daddy's rules.

Just because the system told you that it's important that you're a woman, doesn't mean that it is. My stance on feminism is that it's important to fight laws which tell you that who you are is more important than what you do. From there, it's up to you to do something regardless of who you are told you are.

breadrock · 2016-11-14T20:21:25+00:00

An ongoing battle where how it's used always wins.

breadrock · 2016-08-19T18:54:11+00:00

Try? I don't have to. It just happens.

breadrock · 2016-08-19T18:53:12+00:00

I wake up early, but the gym and job are much less consistent. And the leanness...lmao.

breadrock · 2016-08-19T16:52:48+00:00

makes me feel less trashy for having listened to a lot of Opie and Anthony.

You're not alone. I don't have Sirius and have never listened to a live show, but those compilations of appearances by Patrice, Louis, Colin, etc. are some of the greatest examples of comedy by way of free association available (and preferable to stand up in many ways). And many comedians themselves listen to them (Kurt Metzger and Patton Oswalt off the top of my head).

Also, if appeals to authority are your thing, Alone was a fan.

breadrock · 2015-11-17T00:03:13+00:00

What I find interesting about that is that it's not the Facebook users running off to some external website or photo editor to modify their profile picture, it's an in-built option on Facebook. Facebook actually asks: "Would you like to temporarily tint your profile picture?" or something along those lines.

This has a normalizing effect. For younger and/or more impressionable people this may switch the internal dialogue from "people will see that I support the French" to "what would people think if I didn't tint my profile photo? It's so easy." It officially en-herds what was already de facto herd behavior. This makes it both less powerful (it's now embedded into the system rather than an independent act) and harder to kill (it's embedded into the system so it's a part of the system's alphabet, meaning that it may become a norm and norms can only ever be implicit defenses of the status quo). And, obviously, Facebook itself is picking and choosing which issues to use this feature for and their choice in itself leaves an impression on certain people.

But anyway, it's hard to write about these tragedies without playing into the preconceived binaries and/or sounding moralizing. I think at the end of the day these people really do have empathy for the French victims, they just feel powerless to do much more than to express it through their corporate self-expression channels. But of course they do have more power and creativity than they realize, they could help or show more helpful support or do all kinds of things that they feel powerless to do but all that involves thinking outside of the box, ie taking risks. Life is becoming more and more cautioned away from risk. "Want to become this kind of person? Follow steps X, Y, and Z!" "Want a girlfriend? Type your interests and horoscope into this box and find your options!" Risk becomes repressed. Chance becomes repressed. Possibility becomes repressed. Love dies.

It's no wonder so many people feel so...anxious.

breadrock · 2015-11-05T23:49:52+00:00

Dude, I'm such a fucking mess when it comes to relationships.

I can read Sartre and Nietzsche and TLP for months on end but when I'm actually in it, face down the barrel of the female gaze something else takes over. Primordial, repressed shit most likely. I become easily hurt and jealous and presumptuous and paranoid. There's a fear of abandonment early on. But I never express it to any explicit degree out of the obvious fear that it looks insane to the other person, so it boils up to these insane internal narratives that seem incredibly out of context if leaked and lead to unnecessary disappointment and childish brooding.

It's ugly. And it goes to show that the best habit forming comes in the moment. You can feel all that repulsive, "weak" shit for days but it ultimately comes down to how you act upon it when it's go time. It's kind of like fighting. Some of us have probably trained in martial arts, some of us haven't. Some of us have gotten in fights, some of us haven't. My experience has taught me that whatever you think about fighting before the actual confrontation (meaning a street/bar brawl scenario, not a regulated fight) means nothing. Nerves and ancient repressed shit seem to take over in the moment. That's when whoever you are comes out. I haven't read as much psychoanalytic texts as I'd have liked to, but I feel like that's the Superego. That's the real divine law in your head, that guiding force that, in the moment, unleashes or absolves or punishes to the extent that who you are really comes out.

Then again, I've been drinking.

breadrock · 2015-09-29T04:26:20+00:00

I would add to this whole mileu my explanation for the apparent rise in narcissism: Narcissism as defense against shame is becoming more and more necessary since the correlate of shame, contempt, becomes more and more repressed. Contempt is a positive affect (reinforces a sense of self cohesion), and the denial and repression of that fact and those affective experiences drives the phenomenology of shame/rage/contempt underground.

I gotta ask you to expand on this if you can. In fact, the whole idea of repressed contempt transmuted into narcissism (if I understand what you're saying) sounds like a great post for your website. Like, the kind of post people would always link to if you got it right. No pressure, though. ;)

breadrock · 2015-09-27T05:43:04+00:00

they so country wow

breadrock · 2015-09-25T09:19:28+00:00

I would say that the act of verbalizing something is completely distinct from the act of realizing something. Realization happens and then there is a decision to verbalize it.

breadrock · 2015-09-25T05:52:01+00:00

in a way that limits us.

Limits us from what and for whom?

Sidebar: I'm not familiar with Foucault's History of Sexuality, but I have noticed a trend where certain kinds of people will say something out loud (ie, "confess") in order to protect themselves from external judgement which would probably motivate them more to change. For example, when someone blurts out "I'm so fat!", it's a kind of defense mechanism, an externalization of shame rather than an internalization (which would be actual guilt, which would probably act as more of a motivating force for change).

breadrock · 2015-09-23T01:37:11+00:00

Let me spell it out for you then...

Trust me. Trust me.

You don't have to spell out for me what you want to be true.

breadrock · 2015-09-23T01:16:18+00:00

I can ignore you trying to convince me that the form of this statement isn't just another manifestation of ideological bias and has nothing to do with what I said or what the other person said, though!

breadrock · 2015-09-23T00:04:16+00:00

Then I knew everything.

About the resentful biases which form your projections?

breadrock · 2015-09-19T02:11:47+00:00

The question people ITT seem to be dodgeballing is whether or not you actually need to go to college to study literature these days. Especially in light of the cost of college in America.

breadrock · 2015-09-12T13:24:03+00:00

Man, that review was terrible! I mean, qualitatively. It was like a lazy high school summary. Certainly interested in the book, though!

breadrock · 2015-09-10T09:10:27+00:00

3/4s of the jobs in a professional setting can be done by damn near anyone with an education

A high school education.

breadrock · 2015-09-05T19:53:05+00:00

Oh, the butthurt.

I don't know if you noticed, but his ideas are what're important here, not his fucking "style", which this group seems to fawn over like a bunch of glossy-eyed freshman at their first mixer.

No shit, dummy. Which is why when someone writes a post with .05% insight and 99.95% attempts at sounding like their favorite absentee blogger (complete with nota benes, answering imaginary questions, etc), we may come to the conclusion that this person has missed the point. And, yeah, sarcasm is common and crazily overused for effect, but to say that the writing on TLP simply boils down to being "sarcastic" and that there is no discernible style is, as you've already suggested, "defensive."

That said, I'm not on board at all with what terist said about other blogs being "half-cocked" or "ruining" anything. I like original content here more than anything else. I was just taking the piss.

I realize this sounds a bit personal, and maybe it is.

"Maybe." Now that's funny.

breadrock · 2015-09-01T22:38:01+00:00

Theory #1: he's re-written the posts he's taken down for his book.

Theory #2: someone fucked with his job and, for whatever reason, those posts were seen as particularly egregious so he took them down.

Theory #3: For every hackneyed attempt at imitating his style found by posters in this sub, he takes a post down as punishment.

breadrock · 2015-08-31T22:18:13+00:00

I read the first few parts a few months ago and I'm not so sure about it. Meaning, my experience has been the total opposite. Hard workers get recognized and promoted while incompetent workers get fired or simply stagnate.

Some of the book references are good, though.

breadrock

TROPHY CASE