DannyL

Wild Horses
For sure abuse exists. But untangling it, trying to get justice and readdress, preventing its re-occurence is best served by not "let[ting] yourself go to its darkest recesses" as Baboon puts it.
 

luka

Well-known member
This is something I have discussed briefly here, with poetix, in reference to the goblin nonce incident.
My feeling is that it is very difficult to fight myth with the mundane. And this is high stakes stuff and perhaps I'm very wrong but my instinct says that you need to meet that with counter-myth. So that you don't cede that ground to The Enemy. So that myth doesn't become de facto hierarchical, brutal, regressive. Am I making sense?
 

luka

Well-known member
I think that Marrianne Williamsom is right in this sense. That there are dark psychic forces on the loose and they have to be confronted on the proper plane. Or you will not have a chance.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Actually that makes a lot of sense to me. Brexit - national revival prevented by the stab in the back of the saboteurs, or a load of technocrats obsessing over details and economics no one understands. Farage can work a room better than his opponents, I'll give him that.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
... though perhaps relating this to electoral politics shows my own failure of imagination.

Just finished reading Kate Raworth's Doughnut Economics and she's all about the power of imagery to convey complex ideas. Which is kinda what we're talking about in a way.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
You don't need a poetic sensibility for that Danny it exists everywhere, as much in your reductive universe as in mine.

Perhaps unsurprisingly I disagree. If we're using 'poetic' as a near-synonym for 'mystical' then I think it's inevitable that a belief in invisible forces with moral intent is going to foster and amplify a conspiratorial view of the world. Nazism was a mystical project from start to finish and was only the most extreme manifestation of a prejudice based on superstition that went back centuries.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
It may very well be true actually, but at the same time it's reasonable to ascribe the instinct which immediately decides he must be MOSSAD (as opposed to CIA or whatever) is anti-Semitic. Which of course is why I ascribed it to Oliver.

Eh? What?
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
This is a very interesting piece about combating conspiracies - to wit, anti-vaxxer stuff in Italy: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...e9-b3b4-2bb69e8c4e39_story.html?noredirect=on

It strikes me that anti-vax stuff is probably a bit easier to contain and discredit, as its discreet, the consequences of anti-vax positions are measurable etc. More nebulous, grand, porous theories are going to be harder to hold in check. She doesn't mention the role of some state actors in pushing certain conspiracies but I suppose its outwith her concerns.
 

luka

Well-known member
Perhaps unsurprisingly I disagree. If we're using 'poetic' as a near-synonym for 'mystical' then I think it's inevitable that a belief in invisible forces with moral intent is going to foster and amplify a conspiratorial view of the world. Nazism was a mystical project from start to finish and was only the most extreme manifestation of a prejudice based on superstition that went back centuries.

Yes you disagree with everything I say on principle. It's something I can happily disregard.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
This is something I have discussed briefly here, with poetix, in reference to the goblin nonce incident.
My feeling is that it is very difficult to fight myth with the mundane. And this is high stakes stuff and perhaps I'm very wrong but my instinct says that you need to meet that with counter-myth. So that you don't cede that ground to The Enemy. So that myth doesn't become de facto hierarchical, brutal, regressive. Am I making sense?

This is true for the straightforward reason that everyone's psyche operates on the level of the mythic - as is seen again and again when 'rational' explanations of behaviour founder what people actually do. I do think however that because of the hierarchy of alleged rationalism, that any functional left must be fighting simultaneously on the level of the mythic and the mundane, because mundane rationalism is what people imagine that they're doing, and so a rightist critique of the Left's inability to be specific about what it would actually do, is very effective.

This is similar to a discussion I was having recently about why the Left so often fails: because it cannot seem to grasp that to sell something to the masses, you need to make 'them' see that their lives and souls would be enriched - not just harangue them on a moral level about how bad they've been. And that does require an appeal to the ineffable to be effective.

I think Danny's point about Corbyn's 2017 mythos is very pertinent here - he was presenting himself as defender of a generation's hopes and dreams, of the very soul of the future. Before he started talking about fucking Brexit.
 
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DannyL

Wild Horses
I think this might've been avoided by really democratising the party tbh. In an attempt to avoid derailing it into a discussion about party politics, maybe another therapeutic analogy could be useful here - do you open up, drop barriers, go against your own political beliefs for a greater good? Or do you tighten up, double down, attempt to suppress and manage dissent?

The former obvious very very hard to do in a pre-existing political party but this is kinda what was promised, is it not?
 

luka

Well-known member
I'm not suggesting the mundane should be neglected. If you forget to tie your shoelaces you'll fall flat on your face.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Not if you're flying.

The unfortunate thing is that both have been neglected in favour of sludge that will neither inspire nor reassure.

I think Corbyn's greatest failing above all else (above even what you think about his policies/views) is his intransigence, which of course is exactly the thing that enabled him to survive the maelstrom of abuse he faced in 2016-7 in particular. So yeah, the dropping barriers thing can't happen with him, because he's too much of a control freak.
 

droid

Well-known member
And if you deploy the mythos against the mundane, you will lose eventually.

How many divisions does the pope have?
 

droid

Well-known member
If you like - but otherwise a famous quote attributed to Stalin, Bismarck and (reworded) Napoleon.

We live in a time when mythos is hitting the hard limits of the mundane, notably, liberal myths of progress, western myths of dominance, scientific myths of solution, economic myths of endless growth and judeo-christian myths of man's relationship with nature.
 

luka

Well-known member
Yes but you needn't conceive of the two as mutually antagonistic. It's not a retreat into fantasy. It's another face of the real
 
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