Why Conspiracy Theories?

[constant escape]

Where would could a genealogy of hegemony begin?

 

[luka]

And the kind of psychic condemnation/expulsion that one stands to receive is enough to frighten one into compliance, effectively overriding and commandeering their judgement. Not that the punishment is entirely incorporeal, but the incorporeal punishment is liable to extend to such intensities as eternal torture, etc.

There's something about consistently being identified as a weirdo, even a good or interesting weirdo, that can be not always a nice and a positive influence on your life.

These days I mostly avoid those situations but that means when it happens it hits harder. Nothing's changed.

That's why I really liked that Creep essay that was posted recently.

 

[constant escape]

I'd imagine Foucault has already been all over this, perhaps the puritan orthodoxy mapping onto the disciplinary society, and the (neo)liberal orthodoxy mapping onto the society of control.

 

[constant escape]

There's something about consistently being identified as a weirdo, even a good or interesting weirdo, that can be not always a nice and a positive influence on your life.

These days I mostly avoid those situations but that means when it happens it hits harder. Nothing's changed.

That's why I really liked that Creep essay that was posted recently.

This would be the social/ideological currents that would push one outside of the area of the orthodoxy, as if there is some kind of centrifugal force that one perpetually needs to resist in the effort of adjusting to orthodoxy's standards. Thus adjustment requires a constant repression/self-pathologization.

If you get pushed out of the central/orthodox area, you're in the woods. In the puritan framework, this makes you some shade of pagan. In the (neo)liberal framework, this makes you some shade of deplorable.

The model can actually, now that I think about it, be made considerably more complex by nesting the neoliberal orthodoxy within the puritan orthodoxy, and thus have crystalizing layers of ideological dominance and its residuum. But that is an entirely new thought, hasn't been worked out.

 

[luka]

I'm not totally sure what you mean when you use the word Puritan. I've seen its entered your vocabulary recently but I haven't go put a handle on what it's standing in for.

 

[constant escape]

Historically my understanding is limited, but I mean it as a sort of Christian, perhaps protestant, rigidity of faith wherein any deviance from the divine mandates, or hegemonic interpretation thereof, could entail eternal damnation, and thus an ultra-conservatve culture is enforced. In this culture, deviance wasn't merely pathologized like it is now, but outright demonized. Hysteria as possession, etc. Sexuality on a tight leash.

 

[luka]

Yeah, but you're saying it operates today? Or you are using it as a metaphor essentially?

 

[luka]

As a rigid adherence to the articles of faith of a given society?

 

[constant escape]

The reign of puritanism as the specific orthodoxy of its time is being overthrown by (neo)liberalism, according to the model at least.

 

[constant escape]

Although "overthrown" is a loaded term. I just mean there is a transition between orthodoxies. The specific ideologically dominant framework is changing, seemingly in the manner of a phase shift, rather than a purely gradual transformation.

 

[constant escape]

The model meshes with America seemingly more neatly than other settings, but it seems to apply in general terms.

 

[luka]

Ok then. You work on that but as I keep saying I'm not comfortable with the word ideology as you employ it. It makes it seem too rational and coherent.
Whereas a lot of this stuff works as, for instance, affect, what is an appropriate intensity, what is decorum, this sense of adjustment and attunement, what spectrum of intensity you are expected to occupy on whatever occasion and in whatever situation

 

[constant escape]

The benchmarks of pathology ought to be lowered, as hitherto extreme cases are becoming increasingly normal. If diagnostic standards, and by extension cultural standards, will change, I don't know. Theres a mean market for pills, but I know little about that. Somehow I'm not medicated.

 

[luka]

So if you take the post that made Tea say I sounded ill what he is saying is I transgressed the limit of intensity, I've put too much mustard on it. Which I knew I was doing but equally I wanted to indicate just how important this is to me. I wanted to make that faux pas.

 

[luka]

It's not so much a question of ideology as a question of intensity. In most situations you are supposed to indicate the appropriate degree of disinterest, distance, irony etc

 

[constant escape]

Ok then. You work on that but as I keep saying I'm not comfortable with the word ideology as you employ it. It makes it seem too rational and coherent.
Whereas a lot of this stuff works as, for instance, affect, what is an appropriate intensity, what is decorum, this sense of adjustment and attunement, what spectrum of intensity you are expected to occupy on whatever occasion and in whatever situation

Yeah I use ideology as a broad term for systems of value, which can be defined generally/categorically, as in conservatism, or individually, as a specific mixture of ideological influences.

But its rarely clean/crisp, which is why its such a nebulous thing to study/understand. Are you even conscious of your values, or can they operate beneath/beyond your recognition of them? Does "value" apply to the conscious and unconscious elements of the metric(s) by which you make decisions?

 

[luka]

That you don't take yourself or the situation too seriously. The specifics of this vary according to social class and all sorts of other factors.

 

[constant escape]

It's not so much a question of ideology as a question of intensity. In most situations you are supposed to indicate the appropriate degree of disinterest, distance, irony etc

But we could also argue that the appropriate/acceptable intensity is constitutive of a given ideology. The belief that one can go too far.

 

[luka]

How you embody and communicate your mode of being as opposed to your value system and belief system

 

[constant escape]

The belief that one can go too far is very general, and can find expression in nearly every ideological framework.