also look into theosophany for ideas about economics and the markets.
dm posted:
we're headed for another pretty big crash btw. the way they're managing it is creepy.
do you see a particular trigger or sets of triggers for a near term crash?
Crow posted:
"we've entered a post-labor economy"
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/14/opinion/brooks-the-materialist-fallacy.html
Murray neglects this research in his book. Meanwhile, his left-wing critics in the blogosphere have reverted to crude 1970s economic determinism: It’s all the fault of lost jobs. People who talk about behavior are blaming the victim. Anybody who talks about social norms is really saying that the poor are lazy.
Liberal economists haven’t silenced conservatives, but they have completely eclipsed liberal sociologists and liberal psychologists. Even noneconomist commentators reduce the rich texture of how disadvantage is actually lived to a crude materialism that has little to do with reality.
I don’t care how many factory jobs have been lost, it still doesn’t make sense to drop out of high school. The influences that lead so many to do so are much deeper and more complicated than anything that can be grasped in an economic model or populist slogan.
This economic determinism would be bad enough if it was just making public debate dumber. But the amputation of sociologic, psychological and cognitive considerations makes good policy impossible.
The American social fabric is now so depleted that even if manufacturing jobs miraculously came back we still would not be producing enough stable, skilled workers to fill them. It’s not enough just to have economic growth policies. The country also needs to rebuild orderly communities.
This requires bourgeois paternalism: Building organizations and structures that induce people to behave responsibly rather than irresponsibly and, yes, sometimes using government to do so.
Social repair requires sociological thinking. The depressing lesson of the last few weeks is that the public debate is dominated by people who stopped thinking in 1975.
i have slain their false god ahaha
dm posted:
my WDDP thread is dying now. at the same time, nobody wants to touch a different one i was posting in that got stickied because all but a few of them are complete cowards that can't handle it.
i have slain their false god ahaha
what did you post that they couldn't handle? i don't think anybody there wants to talk about anything other than videogames + livejournal posting. just post it here, broseph
AmericanNazbro posted:dm posted:
my WDDP thread is dying now. at the same time, nobody wants to touch a different one i was posting in that got stickied because all but a few of them are complete cowards that can't handle it.
i have slain their false god ahahawhat did you post that they couldn't handle? i don't think anybody there wants to talk about anything other than videogames + livejournal posting. just post it here, broseph
i got locked up at a sort of cultish facility and subjected to all kinds of bad shit. it's pretty hard for me to talk about for a bunch of reasons, but i might post about it here sometime. someone posted a thread about the type of places and so everyone sort of ritually acts shocked and then i popped in and started talking about it really seriously and candidly and then it went quiet before i could even say much
it felt kinda like interrupting a theatrical performance. it was ok as long as it was at a safe distance
Edited by dm ()
i'm still gonna be mad about the dehumanizing shit about zombies while i'm trying to explain how they work in the first place though
dm posted:Crow posted:
"we've entered a post-labor economy"
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/14/opinion/brooks-the-materialist-fallacy.html
Murray neglects this research in his book. Meanwhile, his left-wing critics in the blogosphere have reverted to crude 1970s economic determinism: It’s all the fault of lost jobs. People who talk about behavior are blaming the victim. Anybody who talks about social norms is really saying that the poor are lazy.
Liberal economists haven’t silenced conservatives, but they have completely eclipsed liberal sociologists and liberal psychologists. Even noneconomist commentators reduce the rich texture of how disadvantage is actually lived to a crude materialism that has little to do with reality.
I don’t care how many factory jobs have been lost, it still doesn’t make sense to drop out of high school. The influences that lead so many to do so are much deeper and more complicated than anything that can be grasped in an economic model or populist slogan.
This economic determinism would be bad enough if it was just making public debate dumber. But the amputation of sociologic, psychological and cognitive considerations makes good policy impossible.
The American social fabric is now so depleted that even if manufacturing jobs miraculously came back we still would not be producing enough stable, skilled workers to fill them. It’s not enough just to have economic growth policies. The country also needs to rebuild orderly communities.
This requires bourgeois paternalism: Building organizations and structures that induce people to behave responsibly rather than irresponsibly and, yes, sometimes using government to do so.
Social repair requires sociological thinking. The depressing lesson of the last few weeks is that the public debate is dominated by people who stopped thinking in 1975.
hes right
dm posted:
i'm still gonna be mad about the dehumanizing shit about zombies while i'm trying to explain how they work in the first place though
have you ever read any viktor frankl? his seminal work is a really quick read and the point you were making on the 'dp is basically what it was talking about
thirdplace posted:dm posted:
i'm still gonna be mad about the dehumanizing shit about zombies while i'm trying to explain how they work in the first place thoughhave you ever read any viktor frankl? his seminal work is a really quick read and the point you were making on the 'dp is basically what it was talking about
wddp would read that and complain about how theres not enough poc in auschwitz.
thirdplace posted:
have you ever read any viktor frankl? his seminal work is a really quick read and the point you were making on the 'dp is basically what it was talking about
nope, i might check him out some time. i'd rather avoid the nazi thing though because people always mention it and it's like "nope, America. you're living it."
also i was just venting. talking about this shit really does bother me. i'll post a thread about it sometime here on my own terms when i'm ready
A former European commissioner who leads an interim government in Rome, the nonpartisan Monti said Greece is being put under unbearable strains and traced the origins of the crisis to moves by prior German and French leaders to soften the euro’s deficit rules.
“The very tough approach being taken toward Greece today may lead us to regard this as being excessive, and it probably is,” Monti told the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France yesterday. “There are no good guys and bad guys. We all need to feel jointly responsible.”
the weirdest thing is derek jensen bloviating in hedges' piece about how occupy hasnt gone through the liberal process far enough to justify violence, when he's on tape on youtube saying that blowing up cell phone towers is both justifiable and should not be criticised by other activists
all i gotta say is revolutionaryism is really arrogant folly and a terrible waste of good people
babyfinland posted:
i watched that documentary about the ELF arsonists.
all i gotta say is revolutionaryism is really arrogant folly and a terrible waste of good people
my take from that doc was that it all boils down to emotion and dignity
thirdplace posted:babyfinland posted:
i watched that documentary about the ELF arsonists.
all i gotta say is revolutionaryism is really arrogant folly and a terrible waste of good peoplemy take from that doc was that it all boils down to emotion and dignity
hows that
graeber posted:
During one 15-minute period in Occupy Austin, I was threatened first with arrest, then with assault, by fellow campers because I was expressing verbal solidarity with, and then standing in passive resistance beside, a small group of anarchists who were raising what was considered to be an unauthorized tent.
lmao im just.. wdjgfnladjkfgnlajdhnfa
babyfinland posted:thirdplace posted:babyfinland posted:
i watched that documentary about the ELF arsonists.
all i gotta say is revolutionaryism is really arrogant folly and a terrible waste of good peoplemy take from that doc was that it all boils down to emotion and dignity
hows that
well like the showdown over those trees in seattle or portland or whereever it was was mentioned by multiple people as being this really radicalizing experience. y? it's not like a few dozen old trees surrounded by miles of concrete humanity are an important ecosystem; in the grand scheme of things they were irrelevant. but the actual experience of being there, of being disregarded, treated with contempt and as irrelevant, would be very potent on a human, emotional level--especially when the people involved are not just united by politics, but by a very clear and consciously chosen culture; it becomes a matter of tribal pride imo
or as a viewer, the scene with the q-tips and the pepper spray was deeply affecting. the outrage at that person being treated as an object, and honestly some very patriarchal urges of "those pigs are assaulting our helpless women," i think can be way more of a prod to action than any sum of dry knowledge
of course, in both cases, you can cast the radicalizing event as realizing the exact nature of the forces against them/us. i would definitely expect that to be the intellectualization of the emotion (someone probably said as much), and i'm sure it's part of the picture. but my gut says that ultimately the main driver is a more visceral thing--"you have chosen to not treat me as a Person, so All Bets Are Off." anger, rage, the thrill and hope of justice & reclaimed humanity
i strongly suspect that insurgencies in iraq and afgahnistan are governed by approximately the same dynamic
I remember my surprise and amusement, the first time I met activists from the April 6 Youth Movement from Egypt, when the issue of non-violence came up. “Of course we were non-violent,” said one of the original organizers, a young man of liberal politics who actually worked at a bank. “No one ever used firearms, or anything like that. We never did anything more militant than throwing rocks!”
Here was a man who understood what it takes to win a non-violent revolution! He knew that if the police start aiming tear-gas canisters directly at people’s heads, beating them with truncheons, arresting and torturing people, and you have thousands of protesters, then some of them will fight back. There’s no way to absolutely prevent this. The appropriate response is to keep reminding everyone of the violence of the state authorities, and never, ever, start writing long denunciations of fellow activists, claiming they are part of an insane fanatic malevolent cabal. (Even though I am quite sure that if a hypothetical Egyptian activist had wanted to make a case that, say, violent Salafis, or even Trotskyists, were trying to subvert the revolution, and adopted standards of evidence as broad as yours, looking around for inflammatory statements wherever they could find them and pretending they were typical of everyone who threw a rock, they could easily have made a case.) This is why most of us are aware that Mubarak’s regime attacked non-violent protesters, and are not aware that many responded by throwing rocks.
thirdplace posted:babyfinland posted:thirdplace posted:babyfinland posted:
i watched that documentary about the ELF arsonists.
all i gotta say is revolutionaryism is really arrogant folly and a terrible waste of good peoplemy take from that doc was that it all boils down to emotion and dignity
hows that
well like the showdown over those trees in seattle or portland or whereever it was was mentioned by multiple people as being this really radicalizing experience. y? it's not like a few dozen old trees surrounded by miles of concrete humanity are an important ecosystem; in the grand scheme of things they were irrelevant. but the actual experience of being there, of being disregarded, treated with contempt and as irrelevant, would be very potent on a human, emotional level--especially when the people involved are not just united by politics, but by a very clear and consciously chosen culture; it becomes a matter of tribal pride imo
or as a viewer, the scene with the q-tips and the pepper spray was deeply affecting. the outrage at that person being treated as an object, and honestly some very patriarchal urges of "those pigs are assaulting our helpless women," i think can be way more of a prod to action than any sum of dry knowledge
of course, in both cases, you can cast the radicalizing event as realizing the exact nature of the forces against them/us. i would definitely expect that to be the intellectualization of the emotion (someone probably said as much), and i'm sure it's part of the picture. but my gut says that ultimately the main driver is a more visceral thing--"you have chosen to not treat me as a Person, so All Bets Are Off." anger, rage, the thrill and hope of justice & reclaimed humanity
i strongly suspect that insurgencies in iraq and afgahnistan are governed by approximately the same dynamic
thats all very true imo. my point was that in the end, to act on the basis of those feelings alone however is an act of ressentiment, and ultimately futile and wasteful. not to say that they are invalid in themselves, but that do not suffice.
thirdplace posted:
you're basically right, i'm just reluctant to criticize those who obtain a level of engagement few people ever manage to achieve in the first place because they are unable to channel it effectively
i follow only their own self-criticism
Two weeks before Election Day, Barack Obama's campaign was mobilizing millions of supporters; it was a bit late to start rewriting get-out-the-vote (GOTV) scripts. "BUT, BUT, BUT," deputy field director Mike Moffo wrote to Obama's GOTV operatives nationwide, "What if I told you a world-famous team of genius scientists, psychologists and economists wrote down the best techniques for GOTV scripting?!?! Would you be interested in at least taking a look? Of course you would!!"
Moffo then passed along guidelines and a sample script from the Consortium of Behavioral Scientists, a secret advisory group of 29 of the nation's leading behaviorists. The key guideline was a simple message: "A Record Turnout Is Expected." That's because studies by psychologist Robert Cialdini and other group members had found that the most powerful motivator for hotel guests to reuse towels, national-park visitors to stay on marked trails and citizens to vote is the suggestion that everyone is doing it. "People want to do what they think others will do," says Cialdini, author of the best seller Influence. "The Obama campaign really got that." (See pictures of Obama taken by everyday Americans.)
The existence of this behavioral dream team — which also included best-selling authors Dan Ariely of MIT (Predictably Irrational) and Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein of the University of Chicago (Nudge) as well as Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman of Princeton — has never been publicly disclosed, even though its members gave Obama white papers on messaging, fundraising and rumor control as well as voter mobilization. All their proposals — among them the famous online fundraising lotteries that gave small donors a chance to win face time with Obama — came with footnotes to peer-reviewed academic research. "It was amazing to have these bullet points telling us what to do and the science behind it," Moffo tells TIME. "These guys really know what makes people tick."
President Obama is still relying on behavioral science. But now his Administration is using it to try to transform the country. Because when you know what makes people tick, it's a lot easier to help them change.
some of it is nonsense and some of it is rather creepy but i'm wondering if it is a sort of new development in the neoliberal state. some of it is basically just about ways to get people to comply with all kinds of small shit that can eventually add up to a significant force. it's also not easy to perceive because the changes are always small and gradual
e: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cialdini
tpaine posted:
hehe raising an unauthorized tent...heh he
yeah tahts me everytime i sit down, fabric of my pants all seem to do that for some reason
dm posted:
does anyone know about this shit: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1889153,00.htmlTwo weeks before Election Day, Barack Obama's campaign was mobilizing millions of supporters; it was a bit late to start rewriting get-out-the-vote (GOTV) scripts. "BUT, BUT, BUT," deputy field director Mike Moffo wrote to Obama's GOTV operatives nationwide, "What if I told you a world-famous team of genius scientists, psychologists and economists wrote down the best techniques for GOTV scripting?!?! Would you be interested in at least taking a look? Of course you would!!"
Moffo then passed along guidelines and a sample script from the Consortium of Behavioral Scientists, a secret advisory group of 29 of the nation's leading behaviorists. The key guideline was a simple message: "A Record Turnout Is Expected." That's because studies by psychologist Robert Cialdini and other group members had found that the most powerful motivator for hotel guests to reuse towels, national-park visitors to stay on marked trails and citizens to vote is the suggestion that everyone is doing it. "People want to do what they think others will do," says Cialdini, author of the best seller Influence. "The Obama campaign really got that." (See pictures of Obama taken by everyday Americans.)
The existence of this behavioral dream team — which also included best-selling authors Dan Ariely of MIT (Predictably Irrational) and Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein of the University of Chicago (Nudge) as well as Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman of Princeton — has never been publicly disclosed, even though its members gave Obama white papers on messaging, fundraising and rumor control as well as voter mobilization. All their proposals — among them the famous online fundraising lotteries that gave small donors a chance to win face time with Obama — came with footnotes to peer-reviewed academic research. "It was amazing to have these bullet points telling us what to do and the science behind it," Moffo tells TIME. "These guys really know what makes people tick."
President Obama is still relying on behavioral science. But now his Administration is using it to try to transform the country. Because when you know what makes people tick, it's a lot easier to help them change.
some of it is nonsense and some of it is rather creepy but i'm wondering if it is a sort of new development in the neoliberal state. some of it is basically just about ways to get people to comply with all kinds of small shit that can eventually add up to a significant force. it's also not easy to perceive because the changes are always small and gradual
e: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cialdini
well the obama project broadly is to attempt to develop, or redevelop, support for the state domestically. that there is some veneer of science over the project only makes sense, even if time is sensationalizing it to try and create a What An Age We Live In type feel for the piece
The article is interesting. But it misses some key points. First, it claims that the North American bloc is cut off from the spaces of prole self-organization that existed in Europe in the days of the early "Schwarzer Block." But it ignores the obvious: today (e.g., in Oakland) the Occupy movement represents an analogous form of (what the article calls) "Soviet" self-organization.
Second, and more seriously, the article, while sensitive to the relation between strategy and tactics, misses the fact that the North American Bloc tactic is tied to a "propaganda of the deed" strategy, according to which a small but cohesive group of "courageous" individuals, by taking spectacular forms of "bold" action, can "spark a prairie fire" of resistance that can wake the "slumbering masses" from their "apathy." The implausibility of this strategy should not blind us to its influence, notably on the "Insurrectionist" form of youth anarchism, which infuses a lot of bloc activism. By contrast, the "Schwarzer Block" of the late 1970s/early 1980s was tied to a "base building" strategy, in some cases defending squatter communities from eviction by police, but in other cases defending neighborhoods from the construction of nuclear power plants, etc. What made it distinctive was that its tactics were meeting a community need, breaking with the "armed struggle" of the RAF, but also the fruitless legalism that was useless when the law was actually the enemy.
The Schwarzer Block was tied to the felt needs of a wider community for forceful defense against unjust state action; today's black bloc operates largely without that tie to a widely felt community need, from which it might draw legitimacy and popular support. This, I think, is the context for the debates that are going on now.
[Previous dude] is right. The strategy of the "propaganda of the deed" is usually adopted in lieu of organizing a mass social base. As a result, the criminal acts, such as property destruction, provide the pretext for the criminalization of dissent, the preferred method of political repression in this country. The goal of FBI/police infiltration is often not gain intelligence but to create such pretexts, and therefore propaganda of the deed is generally indistinguishable from agent provocation.
I agree, to me it is an almost de-politicized gesture, or, rather, subjectivizes destruction on the basis of individual ressentiment versus a constitutive destruction on the basis of communal need. And thus it serves as an extension of the War Machines prerogative for destruction and clearance, to make room for austerity, virtually indistinguishable from agent provocateurs.
Edited by Crow ()