Aesthetic Materialism

  Start at the Beginning Previous Chapter: Day 1, Part 12 Your eyes open.  You see flies and a small, glowing bug buzzing around.  ...up on the wall, the glimmer of something! You are a girl in a cage.  There's a somewhat older boy with a shaved head, kneeling in a cage next to yours.   "Hey!" you whisper to him, but he sits there, impassively, staring forward. "Hey!" say, still whispering but more loudly and insistently.  You're just staring at the smooth back of his head, in gradually rising frustration. "I can hear you perfectly well," he intones, speaking clearly in a normal tone of voice. The room rocks to the side, and you tumble backwards.  The boy seems poised, utterly unperturbed.  As you regain your balance, up on a nail, sticking into the wall, you see it: a golden key, surrounded by the flies. As the entire room lurches at a nauseating slant, the golden key sways out from the wall, as if stretching towards you, invitingly. Yo...

  In "The Eclipse of Reason," Max Horkheimer writes: "Having given up autonomy, reason has become an instrument." First I would have to believe that reason ever had autonomy - or to even know what autonomous reason would mean - before I could accept the premise that it has "given up" this autonomy. Horkheimer is smuggling a kind of idealism (quasi-Kantian) into his presuppositions. Reason has never been autonomous. As Hume said, reason is, and ought to be, the slave of the passions. Or, better yet, the material conditions of a society, in the final analysis, determine the ideological superstructure, including that society's reason. At best we might say that our goal is to create - for the first time - an autonomous reason. But that is well outside of the goal of Marxism. As Marx put it, reason has always existed, but not in rational form. The role of the critic is, through dialectic, to discover the rational kernel within the irrational - and ...

Whenever I speak to a Marxist, I feel like a Religious Studies researcher, or an anthropologist of religion, speaking to a Christian.   For me, not only is Marxism a religion - it's the religion.  It's the religion by which all other religions are measured.  Something is a religion if and only if, and to the extent that, it resembles Marxism.  (And that's not a bad thing.  I love religion .  And I also love communists .)  I see an unbroken line of tradition from the earliest Hebrew prophets - Amos, for instance - to contemporary communist movements.  From the beginning of this civilizational progression, Marxism was always in a process of becoming, of entelechy.  It always existed as potential; in Marx it reaches its entelechy or fulfillment - or at least until something else supersedes Marxism.  (I think Nietzsche attempted something like this, but he mostly failed.) The ancient Israelites, or the Akkadians or the Babylonians or t...

There's something fundamentally unserious about politicians.  When I think of the most important people of the 20th century: Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrödinger, John von Neumann, Jane Goodall, Frans de Waal, Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett , etc., none of them are politicians.  I just don't think politicians matter that much.  I don't think they've ever accomplished anything particularly noteworthy - and that goes for both positive and negative accomplishments, although they certainly seem much more capable of negative accomplishments - wars, genocides, atrocities, etc. - than positive ones.  The art of being a politician seems to belong to the realm of entertainment and public relations.  (Zappa had that famous phrase, of which there are a few versions: "Politics is the entertainment wing of the military-industrial complex," or the one he explicitly advocated but did not claim to originate, "Politics is the entertainment wing of industry.")  To me, this...

The art of thinking dialectically means: not disappearing up your own asshole. It means not only seeing things from your own perspective.  Trying to stay in dialogue with people who don't see things the same way you do. You have to use language that someone who isn't playing the same game as you are could understand. People who find themselves arguing with someone (especially online) and thinking (or saying) "This idiot has no idea what he's talking about," and thus conclude that the argument is pointless, are missing the point.  Let's assume it's true.  You don't realize how precious that is - to meet someone who has no idea what you're talking about.  Now you're in contact with a truly outside perspective.  A rare opportunity.  Now dialectics can begin.  Unless you can say what you mean to someone who isn't in your culture and doesn't use your language, you yourself don't understand it at all.

    Start at the Beginning Previous Chapter: Day 1 Part 11 As you walk through the woods, there's a side road that splits off from the road you're on.  Next to it is a sign: "PRIVATE ROAD".   Sam points down that way.  "Up there.  That's where the prophet lives.  But this is where I stop.  I'm not going anywhere near there.  He's a bad man.  All the kids are scared of him." Gestas pipes up.  "Kid's got a point, Dismas. What are we even doing here?  This isn't any of our business." "If we have a chance to save Jesus, we have to take it." "I'm sorry," says Sam. "That's okay," you reply.  "Thanks for your help."  You and Gestas carry Jesus up the path.  Pretty soon you come to another sign: "NO VISITORS" Right in front of the sign is a great big bear!  It seems young.  It's munching happily on some berries.  The two of you try to sneak past it without bothering it, but ...

I have, in the past, identified as an anarchist.  Really, none of my opinions or positions on any major issues have changed since then.  But I think the label "anarchist" is misleading and unhelpful for a lot of people and so I usually avoid using this label (see my essay on the "Eminem strategy").  But for exactly the same reasons, I think it's mostly unhelpful to use terms like "communist" or "socialist".  If I need to sum up my political opinions, I can do so in a three word phrase: Own Your Job .  I've asserted before that I believe in worker ownership of the means of production.  But this is a bunch of jargon.  What does it mean?  What is the "means of production"?  Most people picture buildings, machines, and raw materials.  And that's true, in a way.  When Marx writes about the "sublation" (Aufheben) of private property, he distinguishes private property from personal property.  In a just social order, peopl...

  I don't think capitalism is evil.  I don't.  I think it's essentially neutral, or that there is no essence.  Because it's so decentralized and uncoordinated - not completely, but to some extent, capitalism is just people doing things.  Different people, all over the world, doing all kinds of different things, somewhat spontaneously, on their own - not completely, to some extent that's an illusion, but to some extent it's real.  It's sort of anarchic, not anarchic, anarchists would be very mad at me for saying that, and they're right - but chaotic, sprawling, huge, not chaotic either, because definite patterns emerge.  And some of those patterns aren't so good.  And then there definitely eventually is planning, because people start to see the patterns and plan for the patterns.  But there's no one person in control.  It's very difficult to control, it's very difficult even to categorize, to understand what is going on here - it's so ...

  Years ago, I wrote about the prospect of fascism coming to the United States.  At that point, I was unsure.  But recent events make it more and more clear.  People like Steven Crowder are now openly saying that "We need fascism."  To some extent, of course, that's just trolling/bait/empty gestures in the desperate hopes to get people to click on his videos, but it's also a calculation that this is no longer something that will instantly end his career.  That, in itself, should be concerning. But now I have to reiterate what I said then, even more forcefully: that if the fascist threat is real, then we must form a broad coalition to defeat it.  No potential ally should be prima facie turned away.  Now, some people are convinced that the "political compass" is garbage.  Fine.  I myself can think of ways that it's not well-defined.  But it serves as clear enough means of communication for my purposes today. Personally, I'm deep in ...

  When the Hartsburg Empire crumbled, the various ethnic, linguistic, cultural, and religious groups that had lived there all asserted their right to national self-determination, as was the fashion at the time.  The problem was that these "nations" massively overlapped, geographically, economically, and sometimes in the very same person, who might have, say, Slovenkian, Kirkosian, and Dragestani anscestors.  The result was the brutal, 31 year long Pekmeniy Civil War, followed by another, 8 year long war whose name is itself a matter of much controversy.  But by the end of this second conflict, the young Yvgeny Przenk, a rising star in the diplomatic corps, came up with a remarkable and unique solution, which managed to restore what was then presumed to be a temporary, fragile peace, but which has since proved surprisingly durable, in a way.   The Przenk Compromise was as follows: there would now be 108 sovereign nation-states, all of them with exactly the s...

   Lenin as Petit-Bourgeois Socialist   In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels give 5 examples of proletarians: doctors, lawyers, poets, priests, and scientists - in that order.  Of course, they don't claim that these are the only kinds of proletarians - they're just the only ones specified.   It's interesting that, today, people tend to think that, in Marx's class analysis, doctors, lawyers, scientists, and so on are often thought of as "petit-bourgeois".  This is quite inaccurate.  (Perhaps a doctor who owns his own practice would be petit-bourgeois, but a doctor, who, let's say, works in a hospital - even if she is head of surgery - should be classified as proletarian.) So who are the petite bourgeoisie, then?  Of course, there's a section of the Communist Manifesto that concerns that, as well.  "In countries where modern civilisation has become fully developed, a new class of petty bourgeois has been formed, fluctuating betwe...

  Woke: 1. v. past tense of wake. 2. adj. (inf., AAVE) alert, aware, vigilant. 3. n. disbelief in the effectiveness of ideals of neutrality in political activism. 4. n. the legal theories that derive from this disbelief. Here is as brief a definition for that third definition of "woke" as I can muster: woke is disbelief in the effectiveness of ideals of neutrality in political activism.  That would include (but not be limited to) disbelief in the ideal of non-discrimination. I can understand why people find this confusing - for one thing, it contains a double-negative: disbelief in the ideal of non-discrimination.  (And by the way, yes, double-negatives exist in English, and a double-negative doesn't always equal a positive .)  This is one more example of a double-negative that is not equivalent to a positive (so, disbelief in the ideal of non-discrimination is not the same as belief in the ideal of discrimination). Wokeness can therefore be seen as a kind of di...

Ian MacKaye used to joke that there were two Ian MacKayes: (1) Ian MacKaye (rhymes with decay), a mostly media-invented symbol, who represented some pure, totalizing, moralistic force of the straightedge movement; and (2) Ian MacKaye (rhymes with guy), who was the real, fairly normal person. Similarly, sometimes I think that there are two entities: (1) Occam, the pure, simple, abstract being that emanated one of the fundamental rational principles of science, and (2) William of Ockham, the flesh-and-blood human being who historically lived in the 14th century and devised a system of theology that was, ironically enough, quite elaborate and complex.  But we needn't multiply entities beyond necessity. Why is the sky blue?  Why are good things good?  Why are bad things bad?  It's remarkable how "Because God wanted it that way" works as a catch-all answer for so many questions.  (Of course, so does "Because I said so.")  Does that mean that it's the simplest...

  The Lenin Maneuver Lenin was a brilliant strategist.  Anyone who wants to be a successful politician should study his example and the clever tactics he used.  For instance, I think Hillary Clinton is an example of a politician who might have been more successful had she learned a few things from his playbook.  (Steve Bannon, the Chief Executive of the Trump campaign in 2016, was unabashed about his being influenced by Lenin in political strategy.) One of these many tactics is a particular tactic that Lenin used so often and so effectively that I think it ought to be called "the Lenin maneuver," although I don't mean to imply that he was the only politician, nor even the first to use it.  Lenin used it so successfully that, in my opinion, it was his defining characteristic. The Lenin maneuver is useful when one is competing against rivals for leadership within a political movement.  The Lenin maneuver is a two-part move, a move in two, seemingly opposite d...

On this blog, I've argued that the aesthetic of materialism is boring. I've also stated that philosophy is whatever I find interesting. Therefore, to be a materialist philosopher means learning how to say something interesting about the boring. 

  If we understand the term "moral relativism" as meaning the belief that there is no such thing as good or evil, then it is, in my opinion, too simplistic a description for Nietzsche. It's true that Nietzsche wrote a book entitled "Beyond Good and Evil".  But don't be too quick to assume that, just because Nietzsche wrote a book with this title, that implies that Nietzsche believed that good and evil don't exist.  It's perfectly possible to believe fully that there is a real difference between good and evil, and, at the same time, to be able to speak of something that is "beyond" this distinction.  In an analogous way, "north" and "south" are real directions, but there are places where this distinction is no longer so clear or relevant - such as, floating in intergalactic space.  Likewise, "port" and "starboard" are meaningfully and usefully distinct, yet they have little applicability outside of a b...

Start at the Beginning Previous Chapter: Day 1 Part 9   Procula’s Castle     You, Dismas, press yourself against one of the pillars of the Domus.  You are confident, in your element.  You see a guard striding into the house.   You follow him in, pull out a bag, slip it over the guard’s head while putting the guard into a sleeper hold, and then drag the guard’s unconscious body into a supply closet.  Moments later you emerge wearing the guard’s clothing.  You sneaks further into the house.     You hear people talking nearby, and quietly sneak up and peak into the room.  You see a middle-aged, rich-looking woman, reclining on a sofa.  Beside her, standing nervously and slightly bowing is her advisor.  As you watch, suddenly a gorgeously-dressed young woman enters the room.  She displays the arrangement of her fine clothes to the older woman, with a little sashay.  Sitting at the feet of the middle-aged woma...