#81
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i'd stay away from steppenwolf, it'll get angry
#82
Mike Nelson here.
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One idea I thought was interesting in Zizek was his point on Jung. He says that in Jung there is a sort of complex core to your mental world and that, in turn, you see other people as projections of yourself. That is, we categorize the mental life of other people as being directly related to our own positions, and see their lives as living out aspects of our own full personality. For example, when we think of a person as greedy, we immediately think of times in our own lives when we have felt greed, so we project that person as playing out greedy aspects of ourselves.

What Zizek (or Lacan) says is that the truth is almost the opposite to Jung: We are participants in a mental life that is founded on the (pre)existence of others around us. That is, we have no complex core that sustains views of others, so much as others sustain the somewhat illusory idea that we have a core personality. In other words, we are founded in the aspects of others, as playing out a role that is constructed after contact with others. Our selves are built around a very active mimicry of others.

One issue with the above though is that this process of mimicry (from a wide range of sources and associated interpretations) is always centered on an internal crisis, and always as an ad hoc solution to a crisis that only becomes a sense of self afterwards. Without this crisis the self wouldn't even exist. That is, without our constant bodily crisis of drives, we wouldn't be aware of the world in any way. So the mind sort of senses a crisis and then explains the crisis through a constructed narrative that is drawn from the behaviour of others. Which all sounds interesting.
#83
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getfiscal, this is a very interesting subject, what book is that from? tia
#84
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that seems true to me, but then what do i really know about myself
#85
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it's fascinating to me, on the base level, i think the jung conception (as i understood from the paragraph gf wrote, i clearly never read any jung) is true in a sense that the foundation of our 'mental world' is gradual, and past a certain threshold of 'past projections' your mental self will already have pretty firm ideas about reality which will act as a filter to the way you interpret the actions of others.

yet Zizek's conception seems true to me in the sense that the very framework of your 'mental self' is completely dependent on your perception of other people around you, and how they helped you 'resolve your conflicts' , we're an animal who's completely reliant on its ability to socialize with others of our kind in order to fulfill our internal drives, it makes sense to me that our perception of ourselves is derived from how we think others view us.

but i might be completely missing the point
#86
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well the point i think is that there is a collective fiction going on, that everybody is constructing their behaviors based on the observed behaviors of others: if you think about this for a moment, you realize that there are no really original or authentic behaviors, only imitations of imitations of imitations, and so on and so on
#87
[account deactivated]
#88
Mike Nelson here.
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SomeIsraeliFuck posted:
getfiscal, this is a very interesting subject, what book is that from? tia

it is basically a small aside (maybe a paragraph) in the collection Contingency, Hegemony, Universality

edit: well the aside is part of a large discussion between the various authors on subjectivity.

Edited by getfiscal ()

#89
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Impper posted:
well the point i think is that there is a collective fiction going on, that everybody is constructing their behaviors based on the observed behaviors of others: if you think about this for a moment, you realize that there are no really original or authentic behaviors, only imitations of imitations of imitations, and so on and so on



i think that's not really true, it kind of depends on how you define authentic i guess. and what exactly you think constitutes as a 'behavior' i guess, humans do not only learn by mimicking, there is a vast scope of experiences which can shape a human personality, and there isn't always someone to mimic.

social interaction is not always a straight forward assimilation process, it is often dialectic and conflicts can create polarized worldviews, etc.

i'm rambling incoherently but my point is that while the process which creates what we eventually view as our 'mental self' might include mimicry, its end result is always authentic in that it is formulated by a more or less unique set of experiences.

#90
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edit: apologies for offending anyone

Edited by tapespeed ()

#91
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nice evopsych
#92
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edit: apologies

Edited by tapespeed ()

#93
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tapespeed posted:
Impper posted:
well the point i think is that there is a collective fiction going on, that everybody is constructing their behaviors based on the observed behaviors of others: if you think about this for a moment, you realize that there are no really original or authentic behaviors, only imitations of imitations of imitations, and so on and so on


kids figure out intercourse/masturbation all the time having no idea what it was and no idea what to imitate. if a dude and a girl end up on a desert island as adolescents they eventually figure out "i like cramming my shaft in wet warm places," "hey i like big hard rods put up my wet warm pussy"

i had so little concept of masturbation that the day i came up with it spontaneously when i was 11 i literally thought i had invented the beginnings of a new branch of medicine or something i was going to get rich from
Edited by tapespeed (today 14:03:19)



you realize you could've illustrated your point without being so creepy, right?

#94
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hes tape speed
#95
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SomeIsraeliFuck posted:
you realize you could've illustrated your point without being so creepy, right?



not exactly. i'm not disagreeing with you/saying you are incorrect, but if you could explain what you mean a bit more thoroughly i would appreciate it.

#96
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Impper posted:
well the point i think is that there is a collective fiction going on, that everybody is constructing their behaviors based on the observed behaviors of others: if you think about this for a moment, you realize that there are no really original or authentic behaviors, only imitations of imitations of imitations, and so on and so on

agree, but isnt through Deleuze-Badiou we can see that repetition is the site of the New (political examples: Spartacus being forgotten until the Haitian Revolution, then again with the Spartakus League)

#97
tardy on these heaters
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jung is dung

getfiscal you should read adrian johnstons book on zizek's ontology next
#98
Mike Nelson here.
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babyfinland posted:
jung is dung

getfiscal you should read adrian johnstons book on zizek's ontology next

"look out honey cause i'm learning ontology / ain't got time to make no apology." - iggy and the stooges, "search and destroy"

#99
[account deactivated]
#100
Mike Nelson here.
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i enjoyed the elementary particles.
#101
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it owned didnt it. i need to reread it soon but i have way too much stuff to be readin to reread shit
#102
Mike Nelson here.
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it is obvious but i really liked how he just tore into new agers the whole time but then ended with a historical narrative that said new agers literally ended up shaping (both directly and indirectly) the events that inaugurated a new age lol. it was a really brave book. i mean can you imagine sending that manuscript in and being like "no, i insist that the poem about how black people are inferior stays in" or like "no, i know you are queasy, but the leering at teens really needs to be central."
#103
tardy on these heaters
Post rating: +

getfiscal posted:
it is obvious but i really liked how he just tore into new agers the whole time but then ended with a historical narrative that said new agers literally ended up shaping (both directly and indirectly) the events that inaugurated a new age lol. it was a really brave book. i mean can you imagine sending that manuscript in and being like "no, i insist that the poem about how black people are inferior stays in" or like "no, i know you are queasy, but the leering at teens really needs to be central."



lol at calling it "bravery" for a frenchmen needing to justify racism and pedophilia in the name of art

#104
desire be, desire go
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im getting near the end of wages of destruction which is good and im wondering if anyone knows of a similar book for ww1, not necessarily about germany specifically
#105
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getfiscal posted:
i mean can you imagine sending that manuscript in and being like "no, i insist that the poem about how black people are inferior stays in" or like "no, i know you are queasy, but the leering at teens really needs to be central."


haha yeah i thought that too. but a good novel transcends any clumsy PC reading

Edited by animedad ()

#106
Mike Nelson here.
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babyfinland posted:
lol at calling it "bravery" for a frenchmen needing to justify racism and pedophilia in the name of art

haha stereotypes!

#107
Mike Nelson here.
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tsargon apparently the FN candidate for president of france 2012 is marine le pen. a july poll put her at 20% which means a good campaign and she could actually get in the runoff. she'd get destroyed in the run-off against a socialist though, like chirac-le pen 2002 numbers. funnily enough if both candidates are right wing (sarkozy versus le pen) in the run-off, she polls as high as 37%. any major socialist versus sarkozy wins right now, but probably only because all the attention is against sarkozy and they are only floating all the attributes of a socialist they like. once a specific socialist shows up then the campaign will begin and we'll see how close it gets i guess. that is all.
#108
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getfiscal posted:
tsargon apparently the FN candidate for president of france 2012 is marine le pen. a july poll put her at 20% which means a good campaign and she could actually get in the runoff. she'd get destroyed in the run-off against a socialist though, like chirac-le pen 2002 numbers. funnily enough if both candidates are right wing (sarkozy versus le pen) in the run-off, she polls as high as 37%. any major socialist versus sarkozy wins right now, but probably only because all the attention is against sarkozy and they are only floating all the attributes of a socialist they like. once a specific socialist shows up then the campaign will begin and we'll see how close it gets i guess. that is all.



#109
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getfiscal posted:
it is obvious but i really liked how he just tore into new agers the whole time but then ended with a historical narrative that said new agers literally ended up shaping (both directly and indirectly) the events that inaugurated a new age lol. it was a really brave book. i mean can you imagine sending that manuscript in and being like "no, i insist that the poem about how black people are inferior stays in" or like "no, i know you are queasy, but the leering at teens really needs to be central."


ya it owned. actually he does a lot of interviews among the sort of urbane set that that stuff doesn't play too well in and he always says that he just pretends he's already dead when he's writing these sort of things

#110
Mike Nelson here.
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what's haruki murakami's deal. i see him on a bunch of hipster girl profiles.
#111
San Francisco
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getfiscal posted:
what's haruki murakami's deal. i see him on a bunch of hipster girl profiles.


He writes romantic, often surreal novels that include explicit pornography.

Edit: I recommend South of the Border, West of the Sun. I liked it because it is a moving existential romance, but not surreal at all. And it's short, ~200 pages.

#112
Mike Nelson here.
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reading okcupid profiles is bizarre for me because i feel, simultaneously, a wistful romantic love of humanity, and an absurd, largely unfounded, incredible contempt for most people.
#113
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i don't like hurakami much at all. i've sat down with his books but never read a whole one so i can't tell you much. he doesnt inspire revulsion in me, but he doesnt seem to be worth reading either. almost nothing a liberal girl reads is worth reading. hello david sedaris
#114
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oops you said hipster not liberal. well there's some amount of overlap there, sometimes hipsters are good about literature but murakami is low tier imho
#115
[account deactivated]
#116
tardy on these heaters
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murakami is really boring

hes basically donnie darko over and over again
#117
Mike Nelson here.
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cool. tell me about what novelists you guys love. i will post something about a dude or dudette or genderfuck in a bit.
#118
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hm... i like to read maurice blanchots essays on literature. they own. he has one of the best essays on suicide ive ever read ("death's space" in "the space of literature"
#119
tardy on these heaters
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william gaddis...

http://vitoexito.blogspot.com/search/label/william%20gaddis
#120
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faulkner, melville, a bunch of russian reactionaries