Postmodernism and Critical Theory. Or why the Empress has no clothes.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

I think free speech muscling out 'freedom of speech' is an illustrative example of how complex and unexpected outcomes can be, as nothing is set in stone.

[noddy]

for most progressives ive seen the current conundrum is tolerating intolerance, which is the aspect attacking freedom of speech.

i still think its mostly a lost battle , its been several generations of schooling now that have taught kids that free speech is toxic and its unlikely to go away, at best it will moderate.

ironically, just this moment, youtube has cancelled the channel of Sky News in Australia and this has triggered another round of free speech complaints.

Sky News is actually a product of American news corp, aimed at Americans, giving them a secondary view of Fox news that hits all the same talking points but pretends to be Australian - its not actually viewable in Australia outside some mining camps that get it on cable.

when 2 globalist american corporates are attacking each other about who gets to control the propoganda streams, is this even a matter for progressive/conservative left/right analysis or is this something far more boring and more related to setting fire to each others offices in the wild west.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

i still think its mostly a lost battle , its been several generations of schooling now that have taught kids that free speech is toxic and its unlikely to go away, at best it will moderate.

If anything, the last few years should teach that there are no lost battles and nothing is ever finished.

The caveat is summed up by Burn's famous lines, “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men. Gang aft a-gley”.

Our concern about progressives tearing down the old progressives is that they tend to harm everybody when tossing their toys from the pram.

ironically, just this moment, youtube has cancelled the channel of Sky News in Australia and this has triggered another round of free speech complaints.

Sky News is actually a product of American news corp, aimed at Americans, giving them a secondary view of Fox news that hits all the same talking points but pretends to be Australian - its not actually viewable in Australia outside some mining camps that get it on cable.

when 2 globalist american corporates are attacking each other about who gets to control the propoganda streams, is this even a matter for progressive/conservative left/right analysis or is this something far more boring and more related to setting fire to each others offices in the wild west.

Well, it highlights something a century old now: 'free speech' was a watchword of industrial-sized journalists as justification of themselves as ruler.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

Well, it highlights something a century old now: 'free speech' was a watchword.

Free Speech by Zechariah Chafee was first published in 1920 as one of many responses to the Palmer Raids

[noddy]

Our concern about progressives tearing down the old progressives is that they tend to harm everybody when tossing their toys from the pram.

this is already the case - their are many topics that my opinions on are public suicide in Australia at the moment and i need to keep my name away from those.

then again, I used to be a counter culture loon when I was young, so it was the same, from the other direction - i had to keep much of my opinion to myself if i didnt want to lose work back then aswell - the real difference now is that all of this is permanently recorded on the internet so takes on a life of its own, without context.

so for me, its always about the permenant record more than the postmodern twats - they are currently in fashion and it is annoying not poking their sacred cows sometimes, but we cant kid ourselves that its the first moral panic in the west.

[noddy]

Well, it highlights something a century old now: 'free speech' was a watchword.

yes, its always the people on the unfashionable side of the argument who defend free speech, much like its the folks trying to break into an industry who defend free markets.

I cant say its particularly important to anyone that has control in Australia, politeness and passive aggressive middle class niceties are far more dominant here.

Which Is awfully tedious , but its not going anywhere in a hurry.



----

Zechariah Chafee

He and his wife both suffered nervous breakdowns and his son, Robert, committed suicide.

yikes, mayhaps he did take other peoples speech a wee bit seriously

[noddy]

isnt woke just the new version of born again.

a protestant cult that thinks the only real crime is the hypocrisy of not being your 100% instinctual self, everyone would be Jesus if they let themselves.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

Well, it highlights something a century old now: 'free speech' was a watchword.

yes, its always the people on the unfashionable side of the argument who defend free speech, much like its the folks trying to break into an industry who defend free markets.

I cant say its particularly important to anyone that has control in Australia, politeness and passive aggressive middle class niceties are far more dominant here.

Which Is awfully tedious , but its not going anywhere in a hurry.



----

Zechariah Chafee

He and his wife both suffered nervous breakdowns and his son, Robert, committed suicide.

yikes, mayhaps he did take other peoples speech a wee bit seriously

I stepped away before finishing the post but the point I wanted to work towards is the that mistake is thinking its a tactic for the unfashionable or a minority position; it has always been a specific political tool to erode the older sense of freedom of speech, and its core goals from the beginning were in line with what these so called anti-free speech people running about want.

The importance of Chafee, because he was extremely influential, is that he's both an inflection point where the idea jumps from the fanatics to the respectable. And then Chafee is there to spread it for two decades, he updated free speech in the 1940s and even ended up with his own television program in the early 50s, I believe.

To keep things short, the purpose was to place speech in a mediated position-- first in the hands of the lawyers, then the media, then with a marriage of both.

From there the more popular story of the creative types and colleges of the 50s and 60s throwing off the old shackles; and so on and so forth.

===================

As a story it's whatever, and there's no use arguing against it for a variety of reasons.

But there are a lot of unexamined implications to mediated speech.

One being how it has eroded the use/mention distinctions in speech.

[Typhoon]

. . .

From there the more popular story of the creative types and colleges of the 50s and 60s throwing off the old shackles; and so on and so forth.

My first education US 1960's politics came from a mentor who was a grad student back at that time.
Back when a physics lab was blown up by the Weather Underground, killing a janitor.
Turns out the department that was their intended target was in another building.

How the Students for a Democratic Society were in favour of free speech as long as the speaker agreed with their dogma.
And how they splintered, one splinter group becoming the radical and violent Weathermen/Weather Underground faction.

Interesting how the intellectual descendants [and in some cases, actual descendants] of the Weathermen have become "The Man".

[noddy]

its hard for me to pin point the correct perspective on these issues, because the reference points are pretty variable.

my grandad lived the ww1, great depression, ww2, collapse of the british empire - hard as nails, pretty much a psycho by modern standards.

ever since then, its been reactionary nonsense after reactionary nonsense - hippies, terrorists, yuppies, ferals, and now wokelings.

my state is now 40% immigrants, from places that dont know or care what the original local culture was, and the original culture was mostly do your own thing, friends and family groups anyway, and it displaced the original original culture of aboriginals without a care for their outcomes.

the post modern relativity, and multiple versions of the truth, is reality, has been for quite some time.

wokelings are just a reaction to the ultra selfish, zero concept of public spaces and goods , neocon liberals.

a world with no public infrastructure , user pays commodification on every aspect of life.

that deserved a backlash - modern cities are shitholes.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

wokelings are just a reaction to the ultra selfish, zero concept of public spaces and goods , neocon liberals.

It's the best opposition there is- paid opposition.

modern cities are shitholes.

Cities have always been sh*thole people sinks. There is a dark humor at our end of the tunnel when viewing the optimism that with the whole progressive program, we were gonna finally overcome the vexing, millennia old problems of city life.

[noddy]

wokelings are just a reaction to the ultra selfish, zero concept of public spaces and goods , neocon liberals.

It's the best opposition there is- paid opposition.

thats obviously true on the corporate level, the people promoting and pushing it - a globalised world of cheap labour is their wet dream and all the rest is just wank and dribble to create that context..

not so true on the folks in the community who want it to be real.

I dont like their agenda, I personally think its a contradictory mess of wanting cake and eating it, with a sprinkle of selfishness but thats neither here nor there to the numbers of em out there.

they do mean well, they are desperate to claw back a bit of something they feel they have lost, they have no idea what any of that is.

modern cities are shitholes.

Cities have always been sh*thole people sinks. There is a dark humor at the end of the tunnel when viewing the optimism that with the whole progressive program, we were gonna finally overcome the vexing, millennia old problems of city life.

the Christians sneaking the benefits into the afterlife was one their more astute moves.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

I don't think I agree with the sentiment that they mean well-- at least as a short answer.

But we are just dipping our toes in. Just wait to see what the kids have in store for us with the growing dissociative identity disorder rights crowd:

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

And in before, "it'll always be a small group of misfits yada yada yada....

1) We've heard that before too. (and as a 1a-- yes, we've heard about how people just magically grow out of things without facing any opposition, social pressure or arguments many times before too.) Complacency hasn't worked yet; we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas.

2) There's no social tool left to prevent these kids from stewing in an unhelpful subculture where they reify very adolescent, and ultimately incorrect in my opinion, lessons: the "me" in my head is not always successful embodied or expressed to others. Social norms take over and that is the extent of who I am to most people.

[noddy]

And in before, "it'll always be a small group of misfits yada yada yada....

1) We've heard that before too. (and as a 1a-- yes, we've heard about how people just magically grow out of things without facing any opposition, social pressure or arguments many times before too.) Complacency hasn't worked yet; we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas.

2) There's no social tool left to prevent these kids from stewing in an unhelpful subculture where they reify very adolescent, and ultimately incorrect in my opinion, lessons: the "me" in my head is not always successful embodied or expressed to others. Social norms take over and that is the extent of who I am to most people.

its the creepy thing I noticed, but could not vocalize when I first moved to the big city all those years ago - back then it expressed it self in role playing games and the goth subcultures.

teenagers are full of boundary pushing , inquisitive energy, and sensible inner city middle class environements are not healthy places to try and express those things - normal kids get put on drugs to make them easier to deal with, the parents are only one small step from nervous breakdowns themselves.

it IS a world inside your head, it IS a world of others crushing anything inconvenient to their self images and preceptions games, it IS a world of isolation for those that dont fit in.

I could never understand why they where so obsessed with pretending to be interesting, it was everything to them.

I get much the same from urban chinese too, for them its not gender identities , its more mundane role playing but its the same desperate need to be seen as not mediocre.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

Lots to digest

but I know all about the middle-class headspace guy or gal.

What is flashing through my mind is this guy who once insisted that we communicate in pop culture references, in-jokes (we had in-jokes before anyone was in!) and nonsense [nonsense really meant this wounded sense of intimacy.]

[noddy]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dandy

The dandy creates his own unity by aesthetic means. But it is an aesthetic of negation. "To live and die before a mirror": that according to Baudelaire, was the dandy's slogan. It is indeed a coherent slogan. The dandy is, by occupation, always in opposition. He can only exist by defiance... The dandy, therefore, is always compelled to astonish. Singularity is his vocation, excess his way to perfection. Perpetually incomplete, always on the fringe of things, he compels others to create him, while denying their values. He plays at life because he is unable to live it.


Seems awfully simmilar.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

teenagers are full of boundary pushing , inquisitive energy, and sensible inner city middle class environements are not healthy places to try and express those things - normal kids get put on drugs to make them easier to deal with, the parents are only one small step from nervous breakdowns themselves.

The counter-arguments would be:

- teenagers are just another recently made up category

- the boundary pushing/inquisitiveness, etc is wholly cultural, and maybe in a funhouse mirror sort of way at this point with all the top-down tweaking of the last 70 years.

- as for the drugs, it brings to mind something mentioned here:

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dandy

The dandy creates his own unity by aesthetic means. But it is an aesthetic of negation. "To live and die before a mirror": that according to Baudelaire, was the dandy's slogan. It is indeed a coherent slogan. The dandy is, by occupation, always in opposition. He can only exist by defiance... The dandy, therefore, is always compelled to astonish. Singularity is his vocation, excess his way to perfection. Perpetually incomplete, always on the fringe of things, he compels others to create him, while denying their values. He plays at life because he is unable to live it.


Seems awfully simmilar.

Yes, there is a resemblance.

it IS a world inside your head, it IS a world of others crushing anything inconvenient to their self images and preceptions games, it IS a world of isolation for those that dont fit in.

I agree that some noticeable portion of people organize themselves by thinking the world is happening in their heads. Duality is very strong.

Some of it though is that it is a world of heads; the whole edifice is man-made.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

[noddy]

teenagers are full of boundary pushing , inquisitive energy, and sensible inner city middle class environements are not healthy places to try and express those things - normal kids get put on drugs to make them easier to deal with, the parents are only one small step from nervous breakdowns themselves.

The counter-arguments would be:

- teenagers are just another recently made up category

- the boundary pushing/inquisitiveness, etc is wholly cultural, and maybe in a funhouse mirror sort of way at this point with all the top-down tweaking of the last 70 years.

- as for the drugs, it brings to mind something mentioned here:

Teenagers is a made up catagory but the realities of being in the transition from dependant child to independant adult are real in all animals, so it might aswell have a name, even if the explicit transition period was shorter before.

I disagree with it being cultural - just that some cultures havent thrown all their cultural heritage away and still have techniques for dealing with it better than indulging it.

cant really say the beating teenagers into compliance thing is particularly old - I was infact the last generation that got that treatment, they banned corporal punishment in schools the year after I left.

I recieved the full "man making" systems of boarding school, with regular canings, their was no shortage of drug addicts and suicides from the kids who couldnt swim in that sink or swim system.

the only difference now is some people care that it happened.

[noddy]

on one side we have the bisexuals, pansexuals and transexuals.
on the other side we have the straights, gays and lesbians.

may the best team win.

[noddy]

I agree that some noticeable portion of people organize themselves by thinking the world is happening in their heads. Duality is very strong.

Some of it though is that it is a world of heads; the whole edifice is man-made.

the levels of being stuck in your head, and unable to tell the difference between what you see on tv and media and the real world is at an all time low right now I fear.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

cant really say the beating teenagers into compliance thing is particularly old - I was infact the last generation that got that treatment, they banned corporal punishment in schools the year after I left.

No it isn't old; I was thinking treating boys like crap is as constant as it is universal. And while I know I've posted against feeding drugs to kids to get them to comply, it really doesn't break to far from the mold. Instead of hitting them, we just stupefy them.

[noddy]

cant really say the beating teenagers into compliance thing is particularly old - I was infact the last generation that got that treatment, they banned corporal punishment in schools the year after I left.

No it isn't old; I was thinking treating boys like crap is as constant as it is universal. And while I know I've posted against feeding drugs to kids to get them to comply, it really doesn't break to far from the mold. Instead of hitting them, we just stupefy them.

aah yeh, misread that.

trick being, boys arent meant to be compliant - or atleast, their is a certain level of timidity which is unhealthy.