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[Gavin]

What do you suppose is so threatening about welcoming a crisis that (ideally) collapses the current sclerotic and increasingly repressive political regime? Is it the possibility of the crisis itself, or a disbelief that it will happen (which some define in another thread as 'optimism')? An attachment to the current political system? A fear that a crisis means we won't get iPhones in our stockings?

 

[vimothy]

No, not at all, I think that you need to read back through what has been said earlier in the thread. I'm not referring to "any alternative" as distastrous, I'm specifically saying that people have a problem when Gek says things such as (in the context of environmental collapse)

Indeed:

Your argument also rests on other assumptions- primarily that reducing mean absolute poverty is the primary goal of human society. This seems to be an absolute with which it is impossible (in your opinion of course) to disagree. I'm not certain that this is the case, or that comfort at any cost is a goal which is a moral one.

Indeed, perhaps even a modicum of terror might be required to achieve what could be achieved, but that in and of itself does not mean that it is not worth the price. I strongly believe there are "interventions" to be made, but in a new and perverse manner, striking with not against the irresistible flow of capital...

NB: I'm don't want to participate in any anti-gek type "event" (ha!). I value his posts and find them interesting, even as I disagree with them wholesale. I also appreciate their oppositional nature (as with Badiou). What I'm interested in is the broader current that gek - in some sense - represents, despite frequent claims of many on dissensus that such views are a straw man. I want to be able to refute them, or at least address them, not be brushed off as paranoid.

 

[Gavin]

How can one political system or another provide anyone with 'meaning' in their lives? Life has no inherent meaning (does this make me a nihilist? existentialist? post-modernist? I'd happily settle for 'H.P.Lovecraft fan', minus the unfortunate racism...), it has whatever meaning you choose to give it.

This is what makes you a postmodernist. Meaning is a consumer choice: pick Lovecraft, or the Fall, or the Democratic party, there's your meaning, gained in the transaction. I'm interested in conceiving of a subjectivity not exclusively defined by preferences for consumer choices (authors, bands, political parties).... Something more like a subjectivity based on political action, a feeling, not only of control over one's life, but participation in the direction of society. The political system doesn't bestow meaning upon us like a holy anointment, but it could offer us the potential for meaningful action which could provide meaning (and if you'd rather hole up with Lovecraft for the rest of your life, so be it).

Right now, no one, not even majorities of the citizenry, could keep the UK or the US out of war, or get them to stop once "it all went wrong." How is this democratic in any meaningful sense?

 

[Mr. Tea]

I don't give a fuck about iPhones quite frankly, I give a fuck about having enough food to eat and clean water and electricity supplied to my house and a (free) hospital to go to in the event of illness or injury. Those things are available to me due largely to wealth generated in a fundamentally capitalist system - although it has of course been due to the various liberal, humanist and socialist movements of the last century that free health care, education and so on are available (and for which I am very grateful: I'm no vimothy when it comes to the welfare state). These are the things that are likely to cease to be available when the 'collapse' comes - unless there is a seamless transition from the current system to something that works well on an economic level as well as providing the 'meaning' and 'political engagement' which is apparently so desperately missed at the moment? Do you think this is likely?

 

[IdleRich]

"What do you suppose is so threatening about welcoming a crisis that (ideally) collapses the current sclerotic and increasingly repressive political regime? Is it the possibility of the crisis itself, or a disbelief that it will happen (which some define in another thread as 'optimism')? An attachment to the current political system? A fear that a crisis means we won't get iPhones in our stockings?"

But what I just highlighted only expected a collapse of the political regime due to a collapse of the environment. I find the collapse of the world's eco-system quite threatening because millions and millions of people, certainly the poorest but very possibly including you and me and everyone else, will die.

 

[crackerjack]

What do you suppose is so threatening about welcoming a crisis that (ideally) collapses the current sclerotic and increasingly repressive political regime? Is it the possibility of the crisis itself, or a disbelief that it will happen (which some define in another thread as 'optimism')? An attachment to the current political system? A fear that a crisis means we won't get iPhones in our stockings?

When people talk about "grandeur" and "heroism" in politics it's not the content of our stockings that bothers me but the likelihood they'll end up wrapped around our necks.

 

[Gavin]

NB: I'm don't want to participate in any anti-gek type "event" (ha!). I value his posts and find them interesting, even as I disagree with them wholesale. I also appreciate their oppositional nature (as with Badiou). What I'm interested in is the broader current that gek - in some sense - represents, despite frequent claims of many on dissensus that such views are a straw man. I want to be able to refute them, or at least address them, not be brushed off as paranoid.

Good, I think these are worth engaging with from any perspective, but it sounds like you're also interesting in diagnosing a pathology ("the broader current" he "represents," whatever that means) which will get incredibly tiresome, especially if gek isn't here. Will he show up already? We've invoked his name enough times.

 

[Gavin]

But what I just highlighted only expected a collapse of the political regime due to a collapse of the environment. I find the collapse of the world's eco-system quite threatening because millions and millions of people, certainly the poorest but very possibly including you and me and everyone else, will die.

But predicting (or even welcoming) the collapse doesn't make it happen, just as affirming that it will never happen (or condemning it) won't keep it away. I wasn't criticizing those threatened by collapse, but those lashing out at gek for thinking about what would come next. I don't relish mass death, but you've got to admit the status quo already facilitates it pretty well, and quite possibly is leading us to greater catastrophe. I think it's perfectly fine to imagine what comes next, and even get idealistic about it.

 

[vimothy]

Good, I think these are worth engaging with from any perspective, but it sounds like you're also interesting in diagnosing a pathology ("the broader current" he "represents," whatever that means) which will get incredibly tiresome, especially if gek isn't here. Will he show up already? We've invoked his name enough times.

Ok, poor choice of words. I just mean people who oppose capitalism from a radical leftist, illiberal, anti-post-modernist perspective, as I'm sure you knew. Really, it's got little to do with gek-opel in a biographical sense, as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Mr. Tea]

This is what makes you a postmodernist. Meaning is a consumer choice...

Now this I don't get. What am I 'consuming' here? What have I signed up to? Who has produced it? Who have I paid for the privilege?

It's the very fact that I don't reduce all meaning in my life to the bits of material culture around me that allows me to function from day to day without imploding in a crisis of existential post-modern angst (which, some people would have you believe, is an inevitable consequence of a shopping trip to Tesco; I went there just last week and somehow managed not to burst into tears or wet myself. Then again, I don't listen to Radiohead.).

 

[vimothy]

Gavin means that you are free to choose meaning, in the same way that you are free to choose what brand of washing powder you want to clean your clothes with - so it's all relative and superficial. Not very "heroic".

 

[Mr. Tea]

Heroes tend to end up dead. In fact being dead is almost a prerequisite quality for hero-dom.

I have mates and a great girlfriend and nice parents and I like good food and beer and decent music and a few pills now and then and reading books and thinking about stuff and talking crap with you guys on the Interweb. I have all the meaning I need, and I certainly don't feel as if I'm missing out because of a lack of 'heroism' or 'grandeur' in my life.

Also, the alternative to being free to choose meaning would seem to be to have meaning forced upon you, and we all know where that leads, right?

 

[vimothy]

Keeping the ball moving...

History will end when every state becomes a democracy. It could happen within our lifetimes, probably within our era. I certainly hope so. Check this out: http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/3448571.html

 

[Mr. Tea]

So much the better - although I certainly wouldn't hold up the USA as an example of the ideal democracy. It supports other democracies when it suits it, and has (in the case of the recent boycott of the Palestinian National Authority after Hamas's election victory) pursued action against states that have democratically elected their own governments.
Not that I think Hamas is exactly Palestine's best hopes for peace in the region, but they were the people's democratic choise and that should have been respected.

 

[IdleRich]

"But predicting (or even welcoming) the collapse doesn't make it happen, just as affirming that it will never happen (or condemning it) won't keep it away."

So what, what are you trying to say here? Because I can't alter whether or not something can happen I can't question the wisdom or morality of someone's desire for it? That just sounds as though you are saying that there is no point arguing with anyone about anything.

"I wasn't criticizing those threatened by collapse, but those lashing out at gek for thinking about what would come next. I don't relish mass death, but you've got to admit the status quo already facilitates it pretty well, and quite possibly is leading us to greater catastrophe. I think it's perfectly fine to imagine what comes next, and even get idealistic about it."

I have a problem with an ideology or idealism that seems to brush aside mass death as merely a minor inconvenience on the way to the brave new world that will follow. Wouldn't it be better to try and find an alternative?
If you read my points further back in the thread I asked a question something along the lines of "If your hypotheses lead you to the conclusion that the best you can hope for is complete collapse of civilisation, purely on the off-chance that what replaces it might (might!) be better then shouldn't you reconsider your hypotheses?" - but no-one answered.

 

[vimothy]

I certainly wouldn't hold up the USA as an example of the ideal democracy.

I'm not going to respond to that for fear of being involved in too many arguments at once!

Democratic peace clock - only eighteen years (if current trends persist) to go till every state in the world is democratic.

 

[Gavin]

I have a problem with an ideology or idealism that seems to brush aside mass death as merely a minor inconvenience on the way to the brave new world that will follow. Wouldn't it be better to try and find an alternative?

Interesting, that's what Vimothy's doing right now! Our "democracies" (and, Mr. Tea, your beloved NHS) are possible and desirable only because so many are precisely willing to brush aside mass death for the "brave new world" (a term used by George Bush Sr.) of universal capitalism. One reason some welcome the collapse (and I'm actually more ambivalent about it than I come off here) is because that's the only way to stop the mass death and misery caused by the current neoliberal imperial order. Maybe you should ask yourself if it would be better to try and find an alternative, and how that could possibly happen. Unless you prefer to brush aside mass death.

And Tea, I'm not calling for "heroism" necessarily (at least I've never thought of my scattered political beliefs in such terms), but a freedom realized through actions, through being able to DO THINGS to CHANGE THINGS, instead of harboring under the illusion that picking something from pre-set choices means the same thing.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Would you care to explain just how much 'mass death' is caused by, or requisite to, a) Britain's parliamentary democracy and b) the NHS???

 

[vimothy]

Our mass death beats your mass death!

 

[vimothy]

Right now, no one, not even majorities of the citizenry, could keep the UK or the US out of war, or get them to stop once "it all went wrong." How is this democratic in any meaningful sense?

Clearly not the case...