HTML banned?!?!

[crackerjack]

and simple and common fantasies of violent social upheaval on a mass scale does not a fascist make either.

Maybe not. But if you've no clear idea of where it's going to lead and would welcome it anyway, just cos you can't bear the thought of the other guy winning, then it's odds on you're gonna wind up there.

 

[zhao]

Maybe not. But if you've no clear idea of where it's going to lead and would welcome it anyway, just cos you can't bear the thought of the other guy winning, then it's odds on you're gonna wind up there.

"the other guy winning"? i doubt this has anything to do with Gek's thinking. it's more like "can't bear the thought of this oppressive and unjust system which causes so fucking much suffering continuing for another century" or just plain inevitability.

 

[crackerjack]

"the other guy winning"? i doubt this has anything to do with Gek or my thinking. it's more like "can't bear the thought of this oppressive and unjust system which causes so fucking much suffering continuing for another century" or just plain inevitability.

Except Gek has explicitly welcomed the idea of more oppression and suffering in the hope it will lead to capitalism's demise without ever once (that I've seen) giving a clear idea of what might take its place.

 

[zhao]

oh you mean the "acceleration" and "over-identification" thing. this line of thinking may be many things but how ever you look at it, applying the "fascist" label is beyond the realm of the plausible.

 

[crackerjack]

oh you mean the "acceleration" and "over-identification" thing. this line of thinking may be many things but how ever you look at it, applying the "fascist" label is beyond the realm of the plausible.

Well I wouldn't use it, personally. But I do think indifference to mass suffering (and if you check this http://www.dissensus.com/showthread.php?t=6155&highlight=live+earth you'll see he explicitly acknowledges a situation where things get massively worse as a prelude to his own vague something, anything promised land) will almost inevitably lead to totalitarianism.

 

[nomadologist]

What if there actually was a correlation between skin colour and IQ, would it be OK to acknowledge that? Would it be racist? Would it then be OK to racist? Would it not be stupid to not be racist? Or could it be that someone who thinks there is a correlation between skin colour and IQ might just be wrong, and not racist. Or maybe right and not racist. :slanted:

I suppose *my* error in even bothering to click on that thread was in assuming that people with a 10th grade education who have taken high school level biology already know that there is no biological basis for the concept of "race" especially as currently defined and consisting of four or five groups called "races" whose sole basis for being identified as such is skin color and roughly similar features. Maybe it was silly of me to assume that basic level of education and understanding on the part of ostensibly intelligent, rational, and educated people.

I also assumed wrongly that people were educated enough to understand that IQ tests are considered sloppy shorthand (when used at all in the psychiatric/scientific community) for measuring the sorts of intelligence (and of course we now understand that there are several, dozens, maybe hundreds of types of "intelligence", many of which could be "measured" to at least the same extent those types that are involved in traditional IQ tests can be) that our society values over other types. IQ tests are unduly left-brained, focus on forms of mathematical intelligence that are overly valued in the community that originally designed IQ tests but often very irrelevant in the average person's everyday life, and their results cannot be easily mapped onto any valid mathematical representation of the human mind as such (which would be the only way to fully validate IQ tests).

If you have been educated to this fundamental and basic level in biology and regarding IQ tests, then the idea that you can even begin to study the link between "intelligence" as measured only by IQ tests, a largely outmoded shorthand for pointing out "who has been brought up in a comfortably wealthy home with proper stimulation from infancy onward and who has no learning disabilities that might skew the results, and who hasn't", then they would understand that any claims being made to a "scientific" "study" of the collective and comparative intelligence (or lack thereof) of "races" is impossible to conduct on any scientific basis and is therefore by definition is being conducted at very best in ignorance and most likely (much worse) being conducted with certain findings regarding the "superior intelligence" of certain races obviously in mind.

That Saletan article IMMEDIATELY looked utterly ridiculous to me, and what's worse is that I don't even think that guy is a racist at heart. The problem is, you can have no tangible hatred for certain races and still SPEW RACISM such as was the very conceptual basis of Saletan's article. You don't have to feel hatred to make racist statements, unfortunately.

 

[nomadologist]

Well I wouldn't use it, personally. But I do think indifference to mass suffering (and if you check this http://www.dissensus.com/showthread.php?t=6155&highlight=live+earth you'll see he explicitly acknowledges a situation where things get massively worse as a prelude to his own vague something, anything promised land) will almost inevitably lead to totalitarianism.

Is there a huge difference between saying this and saying that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified because they brought a swifter end to the suffering of those under Nazism and Japanese imperialism?

Remove Hiroshima and Nagasaki, replace them with X first-world cultural landmarks, and replace Nazism/Japanese imperialism with American imperialism and there you have what Gek said.

 

[nomadologist]

Something else that is annoying, is that I seem to be the only "racist", yet Guybrush started the goddamn thread, and numerous people were arguing along similar lines to me (i.e. this it's interesting and should be approached in a mature, non-normative way).

Actually, several people were accused of racism in that thread. At least by HMLT.

 

[nomadologist]

Oh my god

That's the whole bloody point!!!!

Yea, I know that you claim that was the point. And *my* point was that didn't work at all, because the irony in your use was not at all clear, and I would even argue that it was non-existent until you were pressed to explain why you would possibly claim Gek was a fascist in any literal sense of the term.

The best way to illustrate that someone said something stupid is hardly by doing the same thing without indicating the satirical intention. In that case, it was not at all self-evident that (if) you were making a "point" rather than literally calling Gek a fascist.

 

[nomadologist]

What if there actually was a correlation between skin colour and IQ, would it be OK to acknowledge that? Would it be racist? Would it then be OK to racist?

Do you have any idea what lengths you'd have to go to in order to properly control an experiment in order to get even slightly meaningful data about the potential link between skin color and anything, let alone something as dynamic and process-oriented as "intelligence"? It is nearly impossible to link skin color and other concrete physical characteristics across populations in any tangible DNA-based way or even on a cellular level. There is no way to scientifically draw tangible "boundaries" between traits among different populations in a way that can scientifically prop up social constructions like "race". This is where race and gender differ--you *can* find a biological basis for sex, for male and female, a concrete set of characteristics that you can dig deep and find a genetic basis for. Of course, the biological basis of sex STILL doesn't account for "gender"...

It is PARAMount that we differentiate between concepts we've socially constructed and biological facts. It's not always easy to do, but with regard to race, it is easy to say that race is not a "biological fact."

 

[mixed_biscuits]

That's all well and good, nomadologist, but it didn't do much to answer Neol Emit's question, which is germane to the consideration of any potentially unpalatable 'truths.'

 

[zhao]

That's all well and good, nomadologist, but it didn't do much to answer Neol Emit's question, which is germane to the consideration of any potentially unpalatable 'truths.'

but nomad has eloquently demonstrated that such a question is more than beside but actually point-less because the "what if" scenario will never happen.

it's like asking: what if there really is a God and he really does hate gays, then is it OK to lynch them?

 

[crackerjack]

Is there a huge difference between saying this and saying that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified because they brought a swifter end to the suffering of those under Nazism and Japanese imperialism?

Remove Hiroshima and Nagasaki, replace them with X first-world cultural landmarks, and replace Nazism/Japanese imperialism with American imperialism and there you have what Gek said.

Rubbish. American objective was clear - to end the war, preferably before the Soviets entered the Far East - and the dirty rotten yankee imperialists actually did a pretty good job of rebuilding Japan afterwards.

If you read that thread i linked to, it's clear Gek has no conception of what might come after economic and environmental meltdown (he even at one point admits a return to feudal capitalism is the most likely outcome), but would welcome it anyway. So that's tens of millions dead on the offchance something soft and fluffy might arise as a result.

 

[zhao]

If you read that thread i linked to, it's clear Gek has no conception of what might come after economic and environmental meltdown (he even at one point admits a return to feudal capitalism is the most likely outcome), but would welcome it anyway. So that's tens of millions dead on the offchance something soft and fluffy might arise as a result.

but much, much more than tens of millions have already died under the current global systems. and many times that enduring levels of suffering incomprehensible to you and i as we speak.

 

[crackerjack]

but much, much more than tens of millions have already died under the current global systems. and many times that enduring levels of suffering incomprehensible to you and i as we speak.

Zhao, did you even read this? If you're gonna tear something down you should have some realistic notion of what's going up in its place. Simply hating the current system (to which you apparently attribute all ills while whitewashing Communism's even more atrocious record) isn't good enough.

 

[vimothy]

wait, Gek is not the only one accused. apparently me, the "tree-hugging California mystic hippie primitivist", is also a "fascist". presumably because of my comment: "if i had real balls i would become (what the imperialist oppressors would call) a 'terrorist'"

there are 1 or 2 differences between armed resistance to oppression and fascism, Vimothy.

and simple and common fantasies of violent social upheaval on a mass scale does not a fascist make either.

Sorry, I was annoyed at how casually Gek chucked my name in with the charge of racism. You’ve been as guilty of that as anyone else has and it all got chucked together in my head.

And I think that the actual phrase you used was “suicide bomber”. However, that and the nature of your ideological bedfellows like Zerzan and the Unabomber, your valorisation of the fascist ur-myth of Eden lost and a people betrayed and beset by nasty liberal progress, to say nothing of the obvious outcomes of all previous attempts at creating such utopias, are beside the point. I could construct arguments like that all day. I’m sure that you could too, and so could everyone else. My point really is that it’s not very nice when people just throw hateful terms like that around, when they don’t explain why or seek clarification, when it’s not done in the spirit of free exchange of ideas, but just for the sheer hell of it.

So what happened -- did we all have a sense of irony bypass yesterday?

We should think of this as an experiment in alternative social structures, an anarchist or pirate utopia of self-reinforcing contracts. (We are veering dangerously close to a reducto ad absurdum of that theory at present). Are we going to spend all day calling each other names, or are we going to try to have interesting and contested debates about subjects that matter to us? I think that the benefits of free interaction, exchange and collaboration will always greatly out way the possible costs in terms of having to read ideas we disagree with. But then, I am a neo-liberal-con-Nazi-paedophile wankaaaaaaaaa….

 

[vimothy]

but much, much more than tens of millions have already died under the current global systems. and many times that enduring levels of suffering incomprehensible to you and i as we speak.

Zhao you're assuming perfection then comparing what we have to that. And not only that but I've heard it said repeatedly that we shouldn't help to try to aid failing systems or states because that will only strenthgen the hands of the evil capitalist hegemon.

 

[vimothy]

Yea, I know that you claim that was the point. And *my* point was that didn't work at all, because the irony in your use was not at all clear, and I would even argue that it was non-existent until you were pressed to explain why you would possibly claim Gek was a fascist in any literal sense of the term.

*Adopts patronising tone of voice, with slight shades of hysteria*

If you know that that was my point, then in what sense was it not clear that that was my point?

mad

 

[zhao]

Zhao, did you even read this? If you're gonna tear something down you should have some realistic notion of what's going up in its place. Simply hating the current system (to which you apparently attribute all ills while whitewashing Communism's even more atrocious record) isn't good enough.

read the "destroy capitalism" thread? i followed that first time around.

neither me nor Gek have all the answers (and we've had our major differences in regards to the topic), but i think what we agree on is that what has been happening on this planet during the past few hundred (or thousands if you ask me), is very, very wrong. we welcome change, as brutal as it may be. we welcome destruction, even if we are not certain of what will rise from the ruins -- because it simply means another chance.

and i do believe i used the plural of "system" above, meaning that i don't just blame capitalism.

i just now felt the urge to go back and finish reading all the Foucault books i started in university...

 

[vimothy]

Rubbish. American objective was clear - to end the war, preferably before the Soviets entered the Far East - and the dirty rotten yankee imperialists actually did a pretty good job of rebuilding Japan afterwards.

Real Per Capita GNP (1950/1980 = 1980 $)

Country------Growth (%)-----1950 ($)----------1980 ($)
US------------2-----------------6,330-------------11,500
Japan---------7.4---------------1,060-------------8,900

(Related question: how the hell do you draw tables in this thing)?