Hardcore for Nerds

- Socrates, why does it look like I have a moustache when I don’t?

- Because you insist on wearing sunglasses on top of your regular glasses and they create a large shadow under the afternoon sun

- Wait, how can you see that when your eyes are made of stone and don’t have any pupils?

- Because you’re just imagining this conversation

- Oh ok. So what do you think about the likelihood of a Greek exit from the Eurozone?

- It’s inevitable that a currency union between economies of differing strengths without strong fiscal transfers at a federal level will become unstable

- But what about solidarity? And Europe?

- In my day solidarity was an all-day toga party. And there was no Europe, only the Hellenic world!

- But Socrates, you’re the fount of all European knowledge! How do we get out of this crisis?

- It’s your own fault for taking that democracy thing seriously. You should just have elected Habermas king of Europe when you still had a chance. Now go and get me an ice cream, it’s damn hot standing in the sun here all day.

(after)

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» Alain de Botton: let's talk about sex

There’s something infuriatingly sanctimonious I find in Alain de Botton’s writing, even when he’s making an argument which in parts I agree with. This is from a rather interesting ‘live Q&A’ on the Guardian website, in which he notes that pornography has the capacity to be more virtuous and ambitious rather than ask, as it does currently (at least, I’d say, in its more typical forms), “that we leave behind our ethics, our aesthetic sense and our intelligence when we contemplate it.” Later someone brings up the recent proposals in the UK for restricting access to online pornography on a ‘opt-in’ basis, to which de Botton responds:

“… Philosophies of sexual liberation appeal mostly to people who don’t have anything too destructive or weird that that they wish to do once they have been liberated.

However, anyone who has experienced the power of sex in general and internet pornography in particular to reroute our priorities is unlikely to be so sanguine about liberty. Pornography, like alcohol and drugs, weakens our ability to endure the kinds of suffering that are necessary for us to direct our lives properly. In particular, it reduces our capacity to tolerate those two ambiguous goods, anxiety and boredom. Our anxious moods are genuine but confused signals that something is amiss, and so they need to be listened to and patiently interpreted – which is unlikely to happen when we have to hand one of the most powerful tools of distraction ever invented. The entire internet is in a sense pornographic, it is a deliverer of constant excitement which we have no innate capacity to resist, a system which leads us down paths many of which have nothing to do with our real needs. Furthermore, pornography weakens our tolerance for the kind of boredom which is vital to give our minds the space in which good ideas can emerge, the sort of creative boredom we experience in a bath or on a long train journey. It is at moments when we feel an irresistible desire to escape from ourselves that we can be sure that there is something important we need to bring to consciousness – and yet it is precisely at such pregnant moments that internet pornography has a habit of exerting its maddening pull, thereby helping us to destroy our future.”

I like the bolded part, and the idea about boredom and anxiety. But painting us as being at the mercy of uncontrollable urges - if we’re given the means to fulfil them - and unable to combine or balance action with inaction, stimulation with reflection, indulgence with quiescence; that rings false to me. If that therefore also means that anyone who is ‘liberated’ beyond the most vanilla and polite desires is destined for hedonistic ruin, not because of the social structure around them, but solely because of their unleashed inner demons; that doubly rings false. The problem with the internet - its distractiveness, its lack of empathy - is not so much within people as it is between them.

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A beginner’s guide to punk music:

Can you recommend a solid beginner’s guide to punk music? Though I might be doing research this summer on queer theory, anti-sociality, negativity, and all of those topics’ intersections with, and sometimes opposition to, a *lot* of stuff (“leftist communitarian” politics; mainstream and radical aesthetics objects, e.g., film, comics, music, literature; psychoanalysis and postmodern thought; the history of various radical/othered groups; etc.)—which is to say that I will probably wind up doing a lot of research on punk music—I am also just trying to find my way into appreciating punk music. I really enjoy Built to Spill’s Keep It Like A Secret, Cloud Nothings’ latest album, I’m getting to know No Age, Dismemberment Plan is awesome, and etc. But I figure you might have some particularly solid, heartfelt recommendations, seeing as you post fairly frequently about punk music. That coupled with the fact that your blog, in its punk/politics/philosophy trifecta, is pretty terrific, and therefore—in my eyes—a good source of recommendations/commentary on any one of those three things.

— thropless

(Got this very interesting question through Tumblr’s ‘fanmail’ function - yes, outsiders, that is actually its name - which doesn’t allow you to publicly respond. Assuming that wasn’t the sender’s intention, I’m going to reply here, which also has the advantage, unlike the regular ‘ask’ function, that others can directly reblog this post if they have something to add…)

Many thanks for the compliment, very happy to help!

Not sure if it is really a “solid beginner’s guide”, but Nicholas Rombes’ superb A Cultural Dictionary of Punk: 1974-1982 sounds as if it could go really well with your interests, and it’s quite accessible even if it eschews any and all attempts at a traditional account of punk bands. Also his 33 1/3 book on the Ramones self-titled debut is an excellent attempt to reframe the original classic punk album in a cultural theory context, as ‘the last great modern record, or the first great postmodern one’.

Beyond that (and beyond books, which I’ve otherwise found to be very limited on this subject as I’m interested in or see it), I’d have to skip forward a few years to c. 1985 before my knowledge really picks up again (an arguable failing of the Rombes book is that it does end in 1982, essentially before hardcore establishes itself, and thus before all the main forms of punk rock I enjoy today) with the ‘Revolution Summer’ bands in DC and the nascent ‘emo’ movement - so Embrace, Rites of Spring, who politicise hardcore in a newly personal and emotional sense, and thence onwards (and inwards) to Fugazi, who really as a band both embodied and transcended the ‘politics’ of punk as I’d see it, as well as contributing to the expansion of its sound.

Personally, I most identify that post-hardcore sensibility, both musically and lyrically (and thus politically and philosophically) with my favourite band, Hot Water Music, who drew a lot on the earlier Fugazi sound but also went their own, more moderate experimental way with it over the past decade (or two); something like their album No Division would be a really interesting place to start I think with their sort of positive reaction to hardcore and its politics. I’m sure there are more detailed places to start with the intersection of punk and ‘anti-sociality’ (and I’m not even touching on UK or Irish punk here, of which there is a lot and a lot to be said), but aside from, or developing from, my early experiences of stuff from Green Day to basically the entire catalogue of Epitaph Records (and the standard, socially and politically vocal bands like Rancid or Bad Religion), I’ve really more gotten into punk as a positive, progressive and reflective movement, so it’s hard for me not to put that spin on it.

I get the impression from the bands you mention that you like a combination of the melodic and the somewhat abrasive, and probably around that a certain structure of complexity - which is pretty close to my own tastes, although curiously I’m not a particular fan of those specific bands, but that just goes to show that punk, particularly modern punk (or ‘post-hardcore’, and through its influence, much of today’s ‘indie rock’ - to distinguish this in part from music which sticks to punk, or hardcore, as a much more conventional image), is a wonderfully multi-threaded affair. Anybody else able to pick it up from here?

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Yeah, Your Feelings Are Important

philolzophy:

In philosophy you’re supposed to use arguments to get to the truth. Ideally you and another bro with a different opinion go back and forth lobbing criticisms at the other person’s point of view. There isn’t an end point because philosophers never stop talking. There’s always something else to be critiqued, another point to mention, and another scenario to consider.

From outside, it might appear that the “point” of philosophy is to get somewhere, to arrive at the destination of wisdom. Spoiler alert: this never happens. This isn’t something philosophy promises from the beginning.

I think philosophy is more internally focused than this. Philosophy has strengths and weaknesses- it’s really great at helping you think about your beliefs and actions but it really sucks at delivering a capital a Answer to what you should be doing, thinking or feeling. What I mean is that you should read philosophy and think about philosophy and talk to people about philosophy insofar as it helps you think about whatever is important to you.

The reason that philosophy acts more like a mirror than a vehicle is that we’re not logic-based beings. As unpopular as this opinion is, we’re ruled a lot more by feelings and emotions than reason. We’re rooted to the things we care about in this life, no matter how stupid they are. So, for all your dinner table arguments with your parents about political philosophy the determining factor when you get to the voting booth is your feelings and experience- even if your dad has argued a more convincing case than you have.

So, philosophy can help you determine how you feel about something by asking reason-based questions. It can shed light on your own biases, but there’s got to be a visceral connection as well. It can lead you to water, but it can’t make you drink. An experience can change your mind about something you firmly believe, a relationship with someone who believes differently than you can do that, earnest self exploration can do it, but an argument can’t.

When is it going to be okay to talk about the limitations of reason? We’re people, not equations. Believing in something is a complicated and layered course of action that we steer with all parts of ourselves. Is it funny that marketers understand this but philosophers don’t?

Yeah, but what what are ‘feelings’? Are they neurochemical transmissions, archetypes of a collective psychology, divine manifestations of human conscience, or any of the myriad structures of understanding that have been placed on them?

The quip about marketers assumes that to know how to manipulate someone is the same as to understand them. Is it? A large part of the history of modernity is the effort to manipulate human beings towards some further end - socialism, profit, one of the proselytising faiths (including psychoanalysis), or simply socially-policed good behaviour - but the humanist project in its true form surely calls for some greater study in appreciation, a greater understanding that combines reason and emotion.

An equation is by definition something that can be manipulated, but to truly understand and appreciate the joy of mathematics requires an understanding and appreciation of it as an art, something that you can have feelings for, that can possess beauty. “Believing in something is a complicated and layered course of action that we steer with all parts of ourselves” is in a way a kind of verbal equation, and by its own logic it reaffirms the central position of rationality, as part of that complex self.

I’m pretty sure that when I go into the voting booth, I’m working from a series of rational decisions and deductions (after all, I’m in that portion of the electorate who does fully understand that mathematics of proportional representation under the single transferable vote) balanced with prejudices and feelings, both cultural and personal, about the objects of the ballot paper. Moreover, I typically have made my decision for some time previous and whatever ‘feelings’ I encounter in the moment tend to be peripheral reflexes about the process. But then, if one ‘believes’ in the ideas of the Myers-Brigg typology, I have an understanding as to why my particular behaviour occurs, and why I’m more comfortable expressing rational thoughts ahead of, but not to the complete exclusion of, feelings.

By all means talk about feelings - I was surprised the post didn’t cover the etymology of the word ‘philosophy’, philo - love, and sophos - thought (or even better in the case of ‘PhiLOLZophy’, the Greek letter used to indicate the golden ratio of science and aesthetics, lolz, and (s)ophos). Yet there are limitations of emotion also - and I’m not thinking here of the traditional objections of irrationality or illogicality, the reasons why perhaps the original post is tagged ‘feminist philosophy’ (tho maybe that’s part of yr blog’s golden ratio between laughter and sophistry, too!), in part because an evolutionary paradigm of emotions and psychology would probably explain our feelings as rational in a survival sense, part of our natural resilience even, or especially, if they are often at odds with our modern rationality. Instead, the limitations as I see them in a philosophical sense exist because our emotions are susceptible to being subsumed into a larger scheme of thought, whether it be psychological, religious, or political (including struggles of class or of identity) and becoming as restrictive and dominating as the rationalist ideology one may seek to escape. In other words, to return to my opening question, what are feelings?

It is that contested issue we must, if not quite decide, then recognise, before incorporating the emotional life into a holistic view of ourselves. Rather than trying to argue away argument by placing belief and feeling at the base of our decision-making, accept that both are involved, reflexively, in how we make sense of the world. Sense and sensibility.

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Hey Dummies: Political Correctness and Being Nice Aren’t Mutually Exclusive

philolzophy:

Someone recently got really angry with me for asking why I shouldn’t use the word ‘retard.’ I know it’s wrong, I’ve blogged about thinking it’s wrong, I just get massively frustrated because no one can explain to me why it’s wrong. No it’s not the same as being racist or saying “that’s gay.” I guess because given the option I’d rather not have a mental disability. I don’t think this preference makes me a bad person. If you think it does, please explain it to me.

Anyways, I felt really hurt that trying to have a conversation to better understand why this is wrong resulted in such a dismissal. I felt hurt and like I was probably being a huge ignorant bigot. But I was trying to understand, wasn’t I?

Talking to the other Lolz Doll about this she brought up a conversation we’d had the day before in reference to the latest episode of The Challenge where a contestant puts on Nutella blackface in an extremely flawed effort to make a joke. She asked me in earnest why exactly blackface was racist. I feel like if you asked this in regular society the reaction you’d get would be like “OMFG why are you so racist you don’t even know that blackface is VERY offensive.” I don’t doubt for a second that blackface is very offensive but the right way to answer someone asking a genuine question about a sensitive subject is to explain.

I think blackface is offensive because I think it’s awful when straight guys pretend to be gay guys for a joke (cf: every high school and college talent show ever) and when men dress up like women. There’s nothing comedic about it, it doesn’t come off like satire, it comes off like straight up mocking.

Sure, you can shame people with political correctness but they’ll never carry the banner of your cause. Explain your case with charity and patience and you’ll get converts, people who will exponentially aide the growth of awareness of your concern. As it turns out, empathy is a better motivator than shame.

From personal experience of the field, I really disagree with the logic here about using the term ‘retard’. Disability is not any different from race or sexual orientation just because it has a still-accepted value judgement associated with it, such that one can reasonably state that you’d prefer not to have a disability (though I don’t see why you couldn’t say you’d prefer not to be gay or not to be a woman, or even to be white, other than it reinforcing existing senses of inequality). Rather the concept of ‘ableism’ and (dis)ability rights is about disconnecting that ‘objective’* lack of ability from the right of all persons to respect and dignity, regardless of your view of their situation. That’s not meant to be a criticism of your viewpoint - none of us have, or are ever going to have, total understanding of everybody else’s experiences, but we can separate that knowledge from recognising their humanity and personhood. For example, gay people don’t deserve equal rights just because their sexual identity is of equivalent value to that of straight people, but because they are already people in the first place.

As for blackface and the wider question of promoting understanding of offence, I completely agree that it is unhelpful and unproductive to immediately accuse someone of being a bigot. I’m reminded of this very good explanation of ‘How To Tell People They Sound Racist’, or in other words, how to address potential issues of racism without making people defensive about being called a ‘racist’ - because the latter is about intention, whereas the effect is really what is at issue. That said, it’s probably a good idea to be aware that if people think you sound bigoted then their response, if it’s honest and communicative, is quite likely to make you feel bigoted. Which sucks, but at least you have the ability to explain your statement and maybe clarify what you meant - if you’re on the receiving end, it’s harder and psychologically more damaging to explain away someone else’s statement that strikes you as offensive.

To look at your follow-up post, it’s something I largely agree with:

“My point is that the last thing you said “if someone says something is offensive don’t do it” is a really poor rule to follow. You need to understand why things are offensive or else you are just going through the motions. There’s a kind of censorship by shaming that goes on when people want to learn about feminism or whatever else and are told instead to check their privilege and read a book first. Let’s talk about it openly pls.”

Complete relativism - and letting everyone decide what is legitimately offensive against themselves, to be followed as rule by everyone else - is obviously not the way to go, if simply because very few people will agree with it (and it makes criticising power or privilege pretty much impossible). Nor is ‘going through the motions’ conducive to much except a sterile kind of politeness. However, there’s an aspect to understanding which I think is crucial to recognise - offensiveness is rarely a logical, coherent act (that would to be assume most conflicts in society have a wholly rational character), so it’s not necessarily amenable to a logical, rational solution. Something is offensive frequently because people of an otherwise discriminated-against group find it so, and outside of that group it might be difficult to understand why.

Our reality is a case of competing rationalities, and until or unless we construct a wholly shared conception of values we’re always going to have to say ‘well, they find it offensive, so we shouldn’t do it’. The idea of objective - or objectively identified and understood - offensiveness is perhaps not just nonsensical but itself offensive, as a hegemonic attack on subjectivities. As it happens, I also disagree with your interpretation of the offensiveness of blackface - the mocking in the present is to me connected with the subjugation and physical discrimination in the past, or is perceived as such, and with the continuing legacy of structural inequality in the present. Perhaps that’s true for gay guys and women, too, but not quite as sharply? Truthfully, establishing the reason for something’s offensiveness is not an end in itself, but a means to further dialogue - so that’s why I support this call for political communication as well as correctness. Also, some tips on how to be nicer would be helpful - some of us aren’t built for empathy in our argumentative reasoning (or communication generally), but it doesn’t follow that our intention is to shame.

*this isn’t really the place to go into the concepts of the ‘social’ and ‘medical’ models of disability, but it might help to think of it not just simply as sociological or a clinical question of ‘ability’, but an epistemological one as well: how do we assess what someone is capable of, when those capabilities are shaped not only by their own bodies but the structure and attitudes of their surrounding environment, including our own ideas of their capability?

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PhiLOLZophy Talks With Xiu Xiu’s Jamie Stewart

philolzophy:

A few weeks ago, I became aware of this Huffington Post essay by Xiu Xiu frontman Jamie Stewart. I thought it was really thought-provoking, so I asked him if he was interested in talking to me about it further. What follows is our conversation about sexual identity, social convention, and, well, fun.

An excellent intellectual discussion about being bi (and fun). I kinda wish it could have been a little longer, but I guess that’s what the dude’s music is there for! Read it for thoughts about non-absolute conceptions about identity and who the hell cares, anyway.

bisexuality philosophy sex xiu xiu queer

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“ What, after all, is the meaning of faith, if not an ultimate cessation of doubt or any inward inquiry? Isn’t that a selling point for faith?

—

Boatzone 3: Religion, Secularism and Multiculturalism

I think most intelligent people of a religious persuasion would disagree. Without being too mystical, as I understand it the purpose of faith is not to eliminate doubt (“Faith presupposes doubt while belief excludes it. The opposite of doubt isn’t faith, but belief.” - Jacques Ellul, h/t PhiLOLZophy) but to reconcile it with some transcendental view of human limitations. At least that’s what I’ve picked up from a couple of decade’s worth of exposure to Christianity (mostly of the moderate Protestant - Episcopal/Anglican - and Catholic kinds). I don’t share the belief in such a transcendence, or see the need for it in already post-modern and post-materialist world*, but I appreciate the role it plays in grounding people’s worldviews without necessarily closing off inquiry.

Conversely, when you talk about science it would be erroneous to say that the ultimate cessation of uncertainty or empirical inquiry was its aim, although this is a naive view of the “search for knowledge” often used by both its promoters and detractors - especially those of the latter wishing to replace its implicit relativism with their own non-explicit fundamentalism (e.g. evolution v. intelligent design). Science has no definitive end any more than proper religion does - and both operate on rules which are evolved if not completely arbitrary - with the chief distinction that it produces material results** and is, in theory at least, better at maintaining doubt than faith itself.

That distinction is why it occupies a privileged space in the secular sphere, and has done ever since capitalism saw the need for material progress. The idea that “individual faiths can and do see scientism as another competing individual faith” is one sense correct, except that science is the one truly collective human endeavour that religions have barely dreamed of (and that’s saying a lot); yet typically it is an attempt at continuing warring belief through the misconceptions outlined above. Secularism is an idea beyond the pluralism which would merely regulate that contest; it is an ethic which establishes a society in which faith, in the broadest and least dogmatic sense, and reason can both in their own ways be pursued and not merely tolerated.

In a sense then, I am of the opinion that we must do as Habermas suggests and accept the inputs of faith as a mode of thinking and expression, while insisting on reason as the only (explicit?) arbiter of outputs to society. What faith nor reason can fully tell us is, however, what society is: if, to quote my earlier phrase, society is not an allegory (but, yes, a signifier) then that implies it cannot possess transcendence (equally it is not a ‘thing’, amenable solely to scientific analysis). We are doomed to politics, just as we are doomed to our own minds.***

*In both these points of view I tend towards the Buddhist perspective that we are already transcendent, which helpfully allows us to get on with our daily lives and pursue scientific inquiry while knowing it’s all just maya.

**as a side note, considering the psychological context and add-ons to much of this discussion, has science ever conclusively produced immaterial results, i.e. an improvement in our immaterial lives above and beyond that produced by religion or unscientific philosophy? Of course there are many ways in which the material and immaterial interact, which technology has vastly improved - e.g. the internet - and thus the distinction may be false, but is it to be too sceptical of modern psychological understanding to restrict science’s achievement to ‘material results’?

***that’s not meant to sound quite so depressing, especially as I rather like politics. but that Dante-like vision is I think crucial to the intersection of the humanistic and existentialist worldviews, the point at which those of us without faith find our ethos and our purpose. there’s also an elusive quote from Gellner’s The Psychoanalytic Movement which describes the inextricable quality of human suffering and manages to make it sound positive (or perhaps I’m simply misremembering it, but I’ll take the illusion). not to forget, as well, the first truth of Buddhism…

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» “We Have Chosen To Be Gay”

(h/t the New Inquiry)

“Those who “choose to be gay” offer the disturbing possibility that attachments and affiliations can be chosen outside of state-sanctioned norms. That there are ways of living not envisioned in school textbooks. That how we choose to live matters just as much, if not more, than how we are supposed to live.

To choose what one “likes” over one’s “duty.”

So much depends on the latter.

Too much.”

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“ Oh, I think we need some — instead of talking to economists like me, we need to be talking to psychologists and sociologists to try to get at the root of this problem.

—

Bruce Bartlett, “the supply-side champion who wrote the manifesto for the Reagan Revolution” (h/t Moneyfire)

This makes about the most sense of anything I’ve read about politics in the past few days. Though, even taking the ascribed historical context at face value, I’m slightly suspicious that as a “conservative economist” he doesn’t once criticise social spending in this interview, or is not recorded as such. Maybe that’s just me being cynical, or the effect of living in the politics of austerity where “public sector reform” is the mainstream left’s acquiescence/abandonment to the right’s “bloated public sector”, but I kept waiting for that other particular shoe to drop.

Someone, whose opinions I respect deeply, said in a response to a question about libertarianism

“I think that negative rights (Google negative/positive rights re: Isaiah Berlin if you’re not familiar with this term) are the only objectively warranted political system, and that each society should decide within itself which types of positive rights they want to add on top of that.”

To an extent I agree with that, but not totally (I’ve read enough of the history of the 20th century to see the problem in pursuing a pseudo-objective vision of how to transform society by political and physical means, but I also have enough sympathy with the source material not to completely buy into Berlin’s argument). Regardless of how you define ‘objective’ in a political context - arguably there is no such thing - the distinction strikes me as worrying in its implications. On the face of it, it suggests that we are destined to go back and forth between left and right, with no means of achieving rational consensus, for as long as society exists in its recognisably modern form?

Or, and this is the view I hold more closely, are some positive rights not in fact necessary for the operation of democracy in the first place? Not only in the sense of access to some kind of decent citizenship (through health, education, employment, even leisure) but the all-too-apparent fact today that if wealth and power are too easily accumulated by those at the top it negates the ability, or worse, the inclination, of everyone else to participate in democratic politics. In effect, the unequal distribution of positive rights (what Tumblr users might typically refer to as ‘privilege’, which is a de facto recognition of inequality) interferes with the application and even the meaningful existence of negative rights, no matter how much we all agree on their importance and/or self-evidence. So much for that neat political theory distinction*.

But cheer up, it’s not just the economy, stupid!

*I’m not saying it’s not true, I’m saying it’s maybe just not that useful.

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intellectualvalentinesday:

Albert Camus: Myth of Sisyphus (1942)

“My greatest act of revolt against this meaningless world is the happiness I feel because of you.”

ok, this one made me throw up a little.

but just because reading the final pages of The Rebel was one of the more profound experiences of my lifetime:

“Each tells the other he is not God; this is the end of romanticism. At this moment, when each of us must fit an arrow to his bow and enter the lists anew, to reconquer, within history and in spite of it, that which he owns already, the thin yield of his fields, the brief love of this earth, at this moment when at last a man is born, it is time to forsake our age and its adolescent rages. The bow bends; the wood complains. At the moment of supreme tension, there will leap into flight an unswerving arrow, a shaft that is inflexible and free.”

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