Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Apr 04, 2023 2:30 pm
iambiguous wrote: ↑Mon Apr 03, 2023 8:40 pm
But most of us can recall instances in our past where, had that happened instead of this, our lives might have been very different. The only reason it has to be imagined is because this instead of that happened.
For me it always comes back to being born on March 23rd. Why? Because in being born on that day I was eligible for the draft. Had I been born on March 22nd or March 24th I might never have been drafted at all.
And being drafted changed everything. That resulted in my being sent to Vietnam and meeting soldiers there that completely upended my own value judgments. I went over there a devout Christian, a political conservative, a born in the belly of the white working class racist, a gross sexist and fiercely opposed to all "faggotry". I came back an atheist and an Marxist-Leninist.
What you link to (your writing on other sites) is
incomprehensible to me. Your writing-style is terribly annoying at times. Other times you write clearly. I quickly scan it and then click away. FYI. If the movies are worthwhile I'm interested. But there must be a YouTube link, no?
What interests me in what I have quoted here is the path of your transformation. It is a germane topic and I wonder if you have read any of Kathleen Belew's books? Like
Bring the War Home. Belew has been called before congressional groups and there is one interesting
video of her encounter with Candace Owens. Though half of this forum is made up of barking lunatics I would suggest that there is a serious and thoughtful way for people to think about the issues of our day without succumbing to blockading and bickering.
I've read both
Bring the War Home and her more recent book
A Field Guide to White Supremacy.
Her argument in BTWH is that it was Vietnam and the experience there that politicized numerous different groups and empowered people of various ideological orientations. It can easily be seen that if Americans were enrolled in military operations against *communists* and *communism* in S. Asia, and if that use of violence was legitimized there, then those who came home from that war and that experience justified their own violence against those they described as radicals and communists at home, it is not hard at least to understand the *logic* of their thinking. Similarly, those who were politicized into the Left Revolutionary camp determined that violence and even the tactic of guerrilla warfare were both justified and needed to defeat the identified enemy (their own State and nation).
It is wise to consider the pattern, if you will, of the American Civil War as it continually plays out. For this reason the question of *patriotism* and *allegiance* are always at the core of the dramatic differences of opinion and view in respect to what is going on today in America. How 'patriots' define themselves, what their values and beliefs are, and also their sense of ownership of America and the fate and destiny of America -- all of this must, in my view, be taken into consideration when examining social and political conflicts today.
In your case (and the case of the larger part of a generation I think) you went from one belief-set to a belief-set known to offer to a person a radical interpretive framing, a near-absolute critical framing which, as I often say, operates like an *acid*. With this *acid* then, a generation used it to attack, melt, deconstruct, invalidate and undermine not simply the State that sent them to fight in a war with a dubious casus belli. And, as most agree, it was that war, at that time, that quite literally tore the nation apart.
Come on, what does this latest "wall of words" from you really have to do with my point above? How is the gist of it not applicable to you in terms of your own experiences? You think what you do now about homosexuality given the life that you've lived, but you then encounter a new experience, a new relationship, a new source of information and knowledge and you find yourself questioning what you now believe.
Instead, in my view, what the objectivists do [re the "psychology of objectivism" above] is to settle in on one or another ideological/deontological/theological font, convince themselves it is the most rational and virtuous manner in which
to think about homosexuality and then hammer in any new experiences, relationships, information, etc., to fit their own "my way or the highway" mentality. Hell, I did that myself for years. First as a Christian, then as a Unitarian, then as a Marxists-Leninist, then as a Trotskyist, then as a Democratic Socialist, then as a Social Democrat, then as an existentialist, now as a nihilist. A year from now? Five years from now? Taking into account dasein and the Benjamin Button Syndrome? Who knows? Certainly not me. I can't know what "out of the blue" realities might await me down the road. And neither can you.
Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Apr 04, 2023 2:30 pmSo, though you have been, in relation to me, involved in amazing projections and externalizations of deep paranoia, you are quite mistaken if you actually believe I am allied with Nazism or any of the particular evils that captivate your imagination in your barking performances here and apparently in other places as well.
Then back to this...
Okay, in regard to homosexuality, how is "mass formation" as encompassed [in the video above] different from your own assessment of it...as opposed to Satyr's even more extreme assessment of it...as opposed to the truly extreme Nazi assessment of it back in the 1930s and 1940s Germany.
That's why I would be curious to explore an exchange between yourself and Satyr at KT. What would the two of you agree on? What would piss him off if you didn't go far enough? How does Satyr differentiate himself from the Nazis in regard to things like race and homosexuality and Jews?
Plus, in terms of "serious philosophy" you are both more or less on the same "up in the intellectual clouds" page. Exchanging
ideas. Whereas I am always more inclined to bring the definitions and the deductions out into the world of actual human interactions that come into conflict over value judgments.
Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Apr 04, 2023 2:30 pmThe reason you (and others) get confused is because of the force and power of a mental syndrome I have labeled 'binary thinking'. I refer to a
malady of thinking. To Belinda I have described it as 'emotional thinking' and used words like 'shrill' 'deranged' etc. I submit that it is this style of thinking that has broken out as an irruption in the social body. It is
comparable to possession of the sort CG Jung talks about. And here's the thing: everyone is susceptible to it. And if one thinks that one is not or has not been infected by it (to one degree or another) that
right there is the fatal mistake. We are all susceptible to psychic infection.
And you tell me:
Are the moral and political objectivist ilk among us more or less likely to embrace "binary thinking" than the "fractured and fragmented" ilk among us?
Then [from my frame of mind] straight back up into the intellectual clouds you go:
Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Apr 04, 2023 2:30 pmSo you asked
me (in your totally skewed way with your bizarre introduction of the figure Satyr!) to say something about Mass Formation -- this somewhat half-baked term that is circulating on the Internet and functions as an 'interpretive device' for those who wish to label their enemies as being captured by psychological ailment.
If you are asking me what I think about that I would direct you to two essays by CG Jung on the topic of the European conflagration:
Wotan and
After the Catastrophe.
Tucker Carleson interviewed Mattias Desmet (PhD Psychology, University of Ghent) who has written
The Psychology of Totalitarianism on a recent show. It is worth watching. Except I would watch it from a place of a certain *distance*. I do not think that Tucker Carlson is in any sense outside of the possibility of being infected or contaminated (in the way I am referring to it here).
It is way
way to easy to constantly refer to the supreme example of Ontological Malevolence (Hitler, the Nazi eruption, the European wars and a great deal more) without understanding the nature of psychic conflagrations.
Okay, in regard
to homosexuality, fit your thinking into what you construe their thinking regarding it is or might be. And in regard to particular behaviors that generate the most controversy.
Also, this part:
Oh, and just out of curiosity, how would you make Jeane Kirkpatrick's distinction here between an authoritarian government and a totalitarian government in regard to homosexuality?
To wit:
"
According to Kirkpatrick, authoritarian regimes merely try to control and/or punish their subjects' behaviors, while totalitarian regimes moved beyond that into attempting to control the thoughts of their subjects, using not only propaganda, but brainwashing, re-education, widespread domestic espionage, and mass political repression based on state ideology. Totalitarian regimes also often attempt to undermine or destroy community institutions deemed ideologically tainted (e.g., religious ones, or even the nuclear family), while authoritarian regimes by and large leave these alone. For this reason, she argues that the process of restoring democracy is easier in formerly authoritarian than in formerly totalitarian states, and that authoritarian states are more amenable to gradual reform in a democratic direction than are totalitarian states."
In fact, how are the "my way or the highway" objectivists not actually closer to the totalitarian model? There's how you
think about homosexuality and there's how you either would or would not allow others to think differently about it in your own "best of all possible communities". And, most crucially, what
behaviors would either be prescribed or proscribed in this community?
The irony with Kirkpatrick being that American foreign policy over and over again [from Haiti and Chile to Iran and the Philippines] has always revolved not around democracy and human rights but backing [or even installing] autocratic regimes that sustained the pecuniary interests of Wall Street around the globe.
Then [in my view] this preposterous assessment of me...
Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Apr 04, 2023 2:30 pmSo, whereas in your case you were politicized in a situation of genuine and veritable trauma, and you
necessarily reversed all your *beliefs* and your platform of understanding, and then took up a doctrinal set that allows for a total critical position and, finally, the violent overthrow of that which is described as the origin of evil and oppression, I think it is wise to stand back from 'falling into' such a false-solution.
However, when people are *captured* by an ideology they seem to lose all sense of measure. The analytical tool dominates all of their thinking and interpreting method and indeed it is said to function like a
religion of True Believers. Religious fury, religious conviction, the easy solution offered by falling into a belief system that seems to solve all problems of analysis -- I say that we need to examine these tendencies to which we are all susceptible.
On the contrary, "here and now" "I" am "captured" by no ideology at all in regard to homosexuality. I note arguments made by those on many different sides embracing the many differing sets of assumption regarding both human sexuality and the human condition itself...and I am drawn and quartered, pulled and tugged ambivalently in conflicted directions. Instead, I have accumulated a particular collection of political
prejudices which, rooted existentially in dasein, may or may not stand the test of time.
I merely suggest the same is applicable to you. It simply depends on how deeply engrained the "psychology of objectivism" is in your head "here and now".
