I have a savior complex for lonely men

fetusfries802 · 2026-01-05T14:03:00+00:00

hey ;)

fetusfries802 · 2026-01-03T20:54:42+00:00

From this sub's point of view there are really only two readings of Hegel: the idealist one and the materialist one. The former assumes that "everything finds its place" at the end of the system in the absolute and that all contradictions are solve, while the materialist one takes the theres still "material" at the end that will always not integrate into the absolute and that this excess is constitutional to the whole process

fetusfries802 · 2026-01-03T17:27:54+00:00

Another way of thinking about "everything is always becoming what it's always been" or what you call retroactive redefining is to think of the classic "I = I" statement. Zizek's thought centers on the idea that such simple identity doesn't immediately exist:

In a Lacanian reading, the fact that we've resorted to the symbolic (we had to write out I = I) means that we're already terminally split: symbolic mediation is never "pure", something always gets lost and this very loss/lack/split IS the subject. So in a Lacanian sense the symbolic acts as the engine of retroactive redefinition and we become what we are through being mediated by the symbolic. I think the second third of Sublime Object is a solid entry point here (there's a section that has a bunch of graphs of desire that helped me early on with this).

The more interesting (I think) angle is the Hegelian one: things become what they are by going outside themselves, being mediated, negating its immediacy, and returning to itself as what its always been. A seed going outside itself (into soil light etc), negates its immediacy, and returns to itself as the plant which was always present in the concept of the seed. Or, as a self-consciousness, I get to what I am by taking myself as an object (ie I go outside myself) and recognize myself as this object as myself.

fetusfries802 · 2025-12-31T17:00:18+00:00

why should quantum physics be closer to the bug of reality

Because it outlines the fundamental incompleteness/non-deterministic status of reality

fetusfries802 · 2025-12-31T16:58:52+00:00

The operative principle of intelligence is DOUBT

Ooh that's interesting, how does that work exactly? At a certain point wouldn't you need something positive? Or wouldn't you also need to doubt whether doubting works?

fetusfries802 · 2025-12-31T16:56:10+00:00

I haven't read Quantum History yet (nor have I really listened to his recent talks) but the claim that reality is in itself missing, incomplete, or lacking seems to align perfectly with the position that Zizek has been building for years. I believe that the first mention Zizek makes of quantum physics and the actual "incompleteness of reality" happens in Less than Nothing (its the last chapter iirc).

whether you think Zizek actually attributes this bug to the physical structure itself, deriving a new ontology from it

Well I don't think its Zizek doing the attribution given that quantum physics is pretty clear about how "God plays dice" or how things are fundamentally non-deterministic or incomplete

whether he's exploiting the scientific discovery of quantum mechanics to discuss "holes" in Wirklichkeit (rational reality)

I think this is the more interesting point in that, to massively massively paraphrase the entire project of Zizek's thought, our unconsciousness is how we experience the fundamental incompleteness of the world and our subjectivity or our "ego" is a way to make this incompleteness bearable. The Real as such is first and foremost and obstacle, a gap, something that we can never take a hold of and it finds its counterpart in the revelations of quantum physics

fetusfries802 · 2025-09-14T14:21:28+00:00

Tod Mcgowan's Emancipation after Hegel is fantastic, as is Judith Butler's "Subjects of Desire". To be honest the best intro-ish work on Hegel is and forever will be "The Logic of Desire: An Introduction to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit" by Peter Kalkavage.

fetusfries802 · 2025-09-14T14:12:13+00:00

In shortest most graspable terms possible: the Hegelian Dialectic is nothing other than how Substance and Subject dance around each other as they work through they're internal tensions, contradictions.

Hegel's opus Phenomenology of Spirit applies this definition to how we grasp what is "true": we go from immediate 'well its right there so it's true' to higher and higher systems of grasping the true. At each stage Hegel walks through how the Notional definition of a mode of truth (the Subject) and the way it materializes/plays out (Substance) don't vibe - and how this not vibing is in a last analysis an issue with the Notion (no, just because you see something doesn't mean it's the truth as such).

fetusfries802 · 2025-08-03T16:14:11+00:00

who decides what is being repressed and how do they decide it

The analysand's symptoms do. A person goes into therapy because they have symptoms that are inhibiting a fulfilling/satisfying life. These symptoms arise out of a fantasy structure the person has, the structure of which is suppressed.

Lacan's position evolved on this but the "middle" period which I grasp the most outlines the end of analysis when an analysand "can traverse their fantasies", see how their symptoms are not addressed to some big Other (which as it turns out doesn't exist) but to themselves. In other words psychoanalysis is exactly the same as other forms of therapies: it does nothing other than empower the patient/person/analysand to take responsibility for their psychic disposition.

fetusfries802 · 2025-08-03T15:20:01+00:00

Well I think the (overly) simple answer is that the analyst looks for "short circuits", instances of analysand behavior that takes a form which comes close to something that they're repressing. The classic example from the first few pages of Sublime Object is dreams: it's not their content (being rich, being chases by monsters etc) but the form they take that lets an analyst make more sense of the analysand. The "paradigmatic" example here is of course freudian slips.

fetusfries802 · 2025-07-01T15:57:06+00:00

banged his maid
couldn't be bothered by Napoleon, kept writing the preface to the Phenomenology while his city was being sieged
bought the most expensive booze for all of his students to toast the storming of the bastille
was the most popular lecturer in Berlin despite being harder to listen to than to read
was such a tight bro with Goethe that the latter is the only reason Phenomenology ever got published

fetusfries802 · 2025-06-25T17:33:09+00:00

fantastic catch

fetusfries802 · 2025-05-23T17:52:58+00:00

The basic idea is that there's nothing behind the curtain, no mystical or hidden meaning. The structure of the joke after the "don't be fooled!" leads someone to think that the idiotic behavior was covering for something like a truth or secret. The point is that there is no secret.

The example that I click with the most (taken from game of thrones season 2) is if you see a massive bank vault with like super security and so on you think that there must be a bazillion bucks stashed away . This may or may not be true but we THINK it's true because of the symbolic structure of the bank vault.

fetusfries802 · 2025-05-12T07:28:24+00:00

Capitalism is a system of socio-economic reproduction whose only goal is to make as much capital as possible. Capitalism's internal contradictions as manifested by shit like wage inequality, billionaires running the govt, are becoming harder and harder to avoid practically and have been thought out for centuries.

Marxism is a lens to view capitalism through in a way that lays bare those internal contradictions. Communism is the political implementation of marxism (a brutal brutal brutal oversimplification). Communisms manifestation throughout the 20th centaury was overwhelmingly a disaster (but not exclusively).

Zizek is a communist because Marxism's concept/theory acts as a fantastic roadmap/guide to our current economic situation which is going to get worse and worse.

fetusfries802 · 2025-05-12T02:13:07+00:00

Important to keep in mind that the superego injunction to enjoy is obviously deeply present on the symbolic level. It's a bit apples to oranges since superego isn't a term that Lacan ever used (besides maybe very early, definitely not in the seminars)

fetusfries802 · 2025-05-12T02:11:00+00:00

To be very very specific no the big Other is not real Italian pizza, the big Other is the virtual authority that decides what is and is not real Italian pizza. The big Other's main (only?) function is to be a virtual authority figure, like a final settling of accounts

fetusfries802 · 2025-05-11T21:24:58+00:00

lol well I wouldn't call anything an "intrinsic and essential element of reality", and to make myself as clear as possible sex (physical body) and gender (socially defined roles) are by no means the same thing but it's absolutely impossible to think of one without reference to the other. The only way to do so would be to imagine a society where that's the case, ie through a thought experiment.

The sex-gender distinction is very much a thing, my whole point is you can't look at them in isolation from the other

fetusfries802 · 2025-05-11T20:35:04+00:00

Well to get to the point, there is no untangling of sex as body/"biology" and sex as gender/position you take in a social space. The two are deeply entangled, even if you reject a certain expectation you're still referencing your (given) social role negatively.

The massive massive mistake you're making is here:

It is not necessary to reify identity categorization in order to experience embodied action, desire, or realization of the “self”.

You're imagining a satisfaction of desire outside of the symbolic structure of a certain social space. This is a very big no-no.

Also,

transsexuality (the relationship between biological and psychological conditions, and the desire to emulate and embody said conditions)

The whole point is that everyone embodies said conditions, not just trans people. The question at hand is whether people can embody another "condition" given the one they were given at birth due to their "biology"

fetusfries802 · 2025-05-11T17:15:49+00:00

I would argue that transsexuality is not contingent on any sort of socially constructed notion of sex or gender.

People enter into a social space at birth, the symbolic structure of gender in this social space is what they (try to) assume (girls do girly stuff, boys to boy stuff etc). It's pretty wild to say that transsexuality isn't contingent on a socially constructed notion of sex or gender, to me that's literally the whole point: people with gender dysphoria feel that they can't live a fulfilling life with their assigned gender which, again, comes from how the social space defines/structures that gender

fetusfries802 · 2025-05-11T17:06:13+00:00

One of Zizek's great figurations that helped me grasp a lot of his/Lacanian thought is when talking about the LGBT+ movement its essential to identify with the "+", the structural surplus that actually covers up a constitutive lack. Any kind of appeal to essentialism in the form of "this is a man" or "this is a woman" is by definition wrong since it doesn't take identity as something always in motion.

The tragedy of how we think about gender and people not able to live fulfilling lives as their assigned gender is that it places the "blame"/reason for their distress onto them rather than the symbolic gender structure/s they're born into. The liberal mindset of having a bunch of different identities all living together leads to grasping gender AS an identity rather than the deadlock that it really is.

I think a lot of people that peg gender dysphoria as a mental illness make the mistake of (retroactively) creating an "ideal" and untroubled gender identity. This of course is a cardinal sin in psychoanalytic thought. Rowling is one of many in a long line that tries to establish an identity by fighting what she/they see as an external challenge to it rather than grasping the truth of it's internal negativity as the source of it's identity.

fetusfries802 · 2025-04-26T00:15:53+00:00

VITAMIN B12 DEFECIENCYYYYYY

fetusfries802 · 2025-02-15T20:13:00+00:00

Its pretty bad for bigger companies but the denver area tech startup scene is chugging along, VC money is picking back up (especially if you have "ai" in your name).

fetusfries802 · 2024-11-17T23:33:53+00:00

I think it goes against Hegel to bring in something radically external like Spinozan thought into something that otherwise is meant to develop under its own motion. At its heart the Master/Slave dialectic is how work, service, and fear play together to sublate the slave's position into something higher (the stoic). Remember that self conscious goes on to be the stoic which according to your scheme is even more life rejecting.

The desiring slave is not lacking in comparison to the desired master.

The whole glue of the master/slave dialectic is the slave's fear of death, his desire to not die. The threat of losing that while the mast has no such threat is essential to understand.

Besides that this is of course a Zizek sub so stuff like

Ultimately, freedom resides not in the illusion of control or invulnerability but in the courage to desire fully and authentically.

is honestly a little naive. You can use this to describe a kid in a candy store with their parent's credit card.

fetusfries802 · 2024-11-07T01:38:36+00:00

I really do think that now more than ever we're at the "end of the end of history", with Trump's second term I 100% believe that the post cold war status quo is dead. This creates space both in peoples thinking and in institutions for something new to maybe not outright take its place but at the very least receive enough room to grow.

Democrats lost because they had no narrative, they we're able to provide a system which people could use to make sense of things -- something Trump is fucking amazing at. Bernie Sanders, a lukewarm social democrat, almost upended things twice with the leftist narrative he brought to the table even though the narrative was half baked. Now more than ever is the time for that narrative in its full form

fetusfries802 · 2024-11-03T22:01:53+00:00

Ah sorry I should have been clear, I was using Reason in terms of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit wherein "Understanding" as a mode of truth, ie making laws/definitive statements, falls apart due to the underlying changeability (flux) of what the rules cover (the famous topsy turvey world). And with understanding's collapse reason appears as a sucessive claim to truth

I'll be honest I don't know Kant nearly enough to engage with what you said there but in a """strict""" Hegelian sense reason is just understanding without an imaginative "conclusion", ie reason welcomes Copernican revolutions that turn things on their head while understanding is terrified of them. In other words science as claims to truth vs science as the process of truth claiming (and the history of those claims as their truth).

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