jools posted:

i suppose you would like a machine to push the food down your throat as well?

I suppose this one's a goddamn ghost

swampman posted:

sounds like you need to get involved with your community.

i tried that but all they do is drugs

marimite posted:

Actually, coming from a 1st world petty-bourgeois background, it seems to me that (active) nihilism is the most revolutionary path.In the end you're better off dead, if you don't kill yourself you should kill who you are. Or at least who your friends are but lets face it that's usually who you are too. Deterritorialize like a motherfucker, fuck the consequences.

i think you have made a pretty egregious misreading here by seeing deterritorialization as an unmitigated good and carrying that with with an attitude of ignoring the consequences of this process, when the process that almost always follows is reterritorialization. this idea that the hypercapitalist globalization of the world-system is a force that erodes the classical hegemonic categories of traditional structures, is a f*cking delusion mate, the increasing incorporation of the periphery into the capital flows of the globalized world-system only serves to universalize the superstructure of the core. the cyberfeminist dream that hypercapitalist deterritorialization would give birth to our militant queer cyberpunk robot liberators was utopian flailing, the reterritorialization that accompanies this was the very enclosure of the bodies of women, you start seeing deterritorialization as an inherently progressive force and you start seeing the institutionalization of rape as preferable to women wearing hijab

this is completely, and i don't use this term lightly, accelerationism. this term is thrown a lot around here totally incorrectly in my eyes, as simply this idea that "conditions have to get worse before they can get better", but in truth i think it's a lot closer to the position you unfortunately seem to fall into, that the deterritorialization enabled by the acceleration of capitalist process, the mechanisms of the market logic, operates in contradiction to actually existing capitalism. that is, contrary to how it defines itself ideologically, laissez-faire capitalism does little to actually promote market competition because it lends itself to the formation of monopolies. accelerationists buy the ideological aspirations of free market capitalism (and i don't mean this in a polemical way, nick land literally promotes austrian school economics, like "skeptical of graeber's debt because it disputes mengerian accounts of the origin of money" level of promoting austrian school economics) but see these aspirations as being at odds with their material reality. i don't want to go too deep into all this because it's a whole can of worms but it is no coincidence that the two founding members of the university of warwick's "cybernetic culture research unit", nick land and anna greenspan, relocated to shanghai - where this ideology leads is monstrosity of revisionist china, state regulations against the supposedly "free market' allowing the street market, the "marketplace of ideas" of the internet (their internet may be policed by the state but ours is policed by private companies, illegal filesharing is becoming increasingly difficult here but it is completely unmitigated in china's own networks), the speculative frontiers of technological development, to flourish. beyond simply a skepticism that the proletariat exist in any meaningful way in the first world, accelerationism doubts that a proletariat exist in any meaningful way at all. it's a position close to that of the kurzweilian technological singularity, revolution is not under current conditions possible or even desirable, but taking into consideration the contradiction between the market and the "free market", the acceleration of capital flows and technological development, the deterritorialization enabled by hypercapital, will reach an inertia so powerful that it will be unable to be controlled by the bourgeoisie and eventually eradicate them entirely, leaving us with a world of sexy cyberpunk 90s cyborg warriors

which is self evidently ridiculous for a mountain of reasons (and this is not lost on nick land, who has for a long time dropped any pretense of liberatory philosophy in favor of an open acknowledgement of fascist ideas and "race realism", he has more in common with pinochet than any marxist thinker, the theoretical intrigue of his early works notwithstanding he is an absolutely vile theorist who has ceased to have anything valuable to say and mark fisher's affinity for his philosophy is pretty clear case for mark being a complete pseud) but the most glaring fault is that it just ignores the existence of reterritorialization completely, which you are also doing. there is no reason to believe the theoretical idealism, racism and misogyny of the hypermodern bourgeois as being in any way more progressive than the classical forms of theoretical idealism, racism and misogyny they replace. as a third worldist i also see absolutely no reason that the cultures and traditions of the peripheral nations and internal colonies of the core nations are inherently reactionary in the first place

but have fun with your japanese comic books i guess

marimite posted:

don't you think it's best to say fuck it? Doesn't the 1st world working class have to be re-proletarianized to do any good? I don't really see any way out so I think I'm probably going to move to the third world, but in a way I feel like I'm avoiding the most difficult question of all if I did that.

weeelllll as a person in a similar place (first world petite-bourgeoisie japanese comicbook fan shiteater) who has struggled with the question of 'what is to be done?' i can see your position, but I think the idea of moving to the third world is a bit silly. there is A LOT of good work to be done in these United States; whole countries worth of land lay dissolving under layers of corn and poison, children have their imaginations replaced with shallow consumerism and are stuffed full of drugs when they protest, the world gets harder to even survive in and every answer society gives is actually just a scheme to squeeze a bit more money from the underclass, the midwest bakes, the gulf is toxic, hurricanes batter and cripple thousands each year - you know, all that shit.

the third world is alluring to us because they actually have culture that they can stage resistance from; we see their traditions that are more than a cloaked call of buy buy buy buy and think yes! let me be a part of that. But adopting/cooping another's culture is an easy way out, and even if you are sincere and would die for them, how can you be trusted if you take the easy way with your beliefs? and do they even need you? what can you bring to a group that has lived in the land and dealt with the struggle for generations except for the international prestige that the paleness of your skin brings; at worst your just another person to feed in a world where food and water are becoming ever more scarce.

what needs to be done is, i think, creation. creation of a new culture (the only respectable parts of the white american left generally come from religious or environmental inspiration because litterally every other part of the culture is completely toxic) not in the sense of We Must Build a New Man but that we must learn how to even be human again. the material basis for bourgeoisie mentally must be destroyed and there must be a new material basis to replace it because humans cannot live off of air. i don't mean to disregard the revolutionary potential of cities but the pathetic mewl of the occupy movement has shown that white america is still going fucking nowhere and the real legit urban cultures (minorities okay) self-create new strategies anyway so our dumbasses aren't really needed there.

go to the basics, destroy what material elements of bourgeois life (cars, teevee, etc.) that exist in your life and start working on sustainable food creation, try to create a community of people willing to not be capitalist fuckshits and work on securing a place to harbor those most abused by society. nihilism is ultimately correct in that modern life is meaningless because modernity is designed to be meaningless. kids matter more than sex, food more than spices, and land more than dreams - the crushing despair that meaningless life brings cannot be overcome by acceptance or rejection; only by the creation of meaning.

Shennong and BlinkAndWheeze had a good conversation a while back over whether or not the flight to the countryside is abandoning the masses to a selfish survivalism. I think it kind of is, but if I have to choose between being a dumbass on a street consuming the energy of 1 person screaming at a building or being a dumbass on a field harvesting the energy of 30 people tending crops i'm fucking useless either way but my family + others don't die of starvation in the latter so i choose that (trick question you shouldn't have fields FOOD FORESTRY MOTHERFUCKER).

oh and if your not white than lol this is so self-conscious but you have an anime avatar so you can't blame me for assuming you know

love god and family (if you have neither create them) peace

Edited by Scrree (Feb. 12, 2013 20:31:48)