Propaganda and policemen, prisons and schools, traditional values and traditional morality all serve to reinforce the power of the few and to convince or coerce the many into acceptance of a brutal, degrading and irrational system.
(AS WE SEE IT - Solidarity)
Largely unconscious motives even influence the ideas of revolutionaries and the type of organisation in which they choose to be active. At first sight it might appear paradoxical that those aspiring to a non-alienated and creative society based on equality and freedom should 'break' with bourgeois conceptions... only to espouse the hierarchical, dogmatic, manipulatory and puritanical ideas of Leninism. [...] It might seem strange that those who urge people to think for themselves and to resist the brainwashing of the mass media should be filled with anxiety whenever new ideas raise their troublesome heads within their own ranks. Or that revolutionaries today should still seek to settle personal scores through resort to the methods prevailing in the bourgeois jungle outside. But, as we shall show, there is an internal coherence in all this apparent rationality.
Maurice Brinton - The Irrational in Politics
Mark
Ooh, grades, is it? I've had worse than an F before. Bring it on, "sir".
You don't think teachers, in general, have any role whatsoever in disciplining people in the society in which we live?
Not even the academics who enacted all the "psychic vampirism" against you?
Fucking teachers. It's all coming back to me now. Yeah, everyone gets along fine if you play their game. But if you step out of line or try to do things differently you're "stupid" or "unwilling to learn" or "lazy". And then we see whose side they're on, don't we? All that facade of matiness falls away and the "good" teacher is revealed as the soft cop in all its fascistic glory.
But of course, you're not like that, are you Mark? You never patronise anybody. You're a Good Teacher.
You teach, in fact, not only as a job - but in every aspect of your life. And of course, teachers need pupils, don't they? They demand their pupils shut up and listen. You'd have to be blind not to spot the hierarchies at work there.
You still think that people who reject your escapist bollocks about "cold rationalism" must be, by definition, "Irrationalist" and therefore presumably
irrational and not worth bothering with, don't you? But of course, you actually learn things from irrationalists every day. Everyone does.
You think that anyone who tries to communicate things in simple language is all about blokey beerishness? Have you read any of the TOPY texts?
As if, because I have the impertinence to stand up in class and try to criticise aspects what you're doing, that I'm unable/unwilling to read "difficult" texts. I do that for a living. I've sat around for large chunks of my life grappling with difficult texts, both in and out of work. Maybe I approach it differently to you, is all. Maybe I think there are more effective ways of using that knowledge than simply quoting massive chunks of it on internet bulletin boards and then calling people stupid if they criticise me for it.
So why do I write? Not to "teach" that's for sure. I write because I enjoy it (what's wrong with onanism? no room for a warm five knuckle shuffle in the world of the cold cold rationalist? You read any Austin Osman Spare?) and I like opening things up for discussion. To make a contribution. I write to raise questions which hopefully others can answer. I write to work things out for myself. I'm not a teacher, or any kind of authority. When I do talks, I'm much more interested in the heckles and the questions which get asked at the end than people telling me how much they've learned or how much they've enjoyed it.
So... was I right about that Badiou quote, or what?
And... what's this obsession you have with hippies and smoking dope? Is that supposed to be directed at me? LMFAO if it is - "must try harder".