So, I guess this can be treated as a general discussion thread on philosophy in general, because I'm kinda into that shit and like arguing about it. Besides which, it's looking to be probably one of the most important topics of discussion fairly soon, as we're currently in a shitposting war over the soul of the western world.
Not actually kidding on that.
But that's not the reason I'm starting it. See, I noticed you lot like to cite instances of absolute crazy, and bring up the e-drama where it happens. That's great and all, but I also notice there's some misunderstanding over the thinking that leads someone to be a screeching social media harpy that wants to cancel everyone and everything - don't take that the wrong way, NOT understanding is likely an indication you're of sound mind and not a complete fucking loon. Does leave you a little disarmed though.
Figure it's worth having a place where we can discuss ideas and sharpen that particular understanding.
Otherwise, as I actually have a degree in this shit, you can treat me like an in-house [insert public intellectual here], except what I lack in experience I make up for in fapfics, waifufagging monogatari characters, and the occasional cunnyposting.
So, to get the ball rolling on something I think really matters and is pertinent to the existence and role of the Varis Hangout:
In the spoiler tag below, I've got a rant about what I suspect is the philosophical bedrock behind Antis. It's very long, but read if you wanna know how the rabbit hole starts.
If anyone's wondering why I think philosophy matters enough to put up a thread about it... well, you know the whole idea of 'culture is downstream from politics'? I think it's more like 'everything is downstream from philosophy', politics included. Take that how you will.
Not actually kidding on that.
But that's not the reason I'm starting it. See, I noticed you lot like to cite instances of absolute crazy, and bring up the e-drama where it happens. That's great and all, but I also notice there's some misunderstanding over the thinking that leads someone to be a screeching social media harpy that wants to cancel everyone and everything - don't take that the wrong way, NOT understanding is likely an indication you're of sound mind and not a complete fucking loon. Does leave you a little disarmed though.
Figure it's worth having a place where we can discuss ideas and sharpen that particular understanding.
Otherwise, as I actually have a degree in this shit, you can treat me like an in-house [insert public intellectual here], except what I lack in experience I make up for in fapfics, waifufagging monogatari characters, and the occasional cunnyposting.
So, to get the ball rolling on something I think really matters and is pertinent to the existence and role of the Varis Hangout:
In the spoiler tag below, I've got a rant about what I suspect is the philosophical bedrock behind Antis. It's very long, but read if you wanna know how the rabbit hole starts.
So Essay got so long on me that I put spoiler tags within spoiler tags to keep it neat.
Now, as you're not an expert on a topic unless you can tl;dr it, let me show you how expert I fucking am:
tl;dr: Postmodernism is the philosophy of "Everything is just an opinion."
And the implication is "If everything is just an opinion, including morality, then bullying people to conform to my opinions is perfectly okay."
Saved you 3000 odd words.
Everything past this point, is me explaining it in detail.
Thank you for putting up with my colossal bullshit.
Now, as you're not an expert on a topic unless you can tl;dr it, let me show you how expert I fucking am:
tl;dr: Postmodernism is the philosophy of "Everything is just an opinion."
And the implication is "If everything is just an opinion, including morality, then bullying people to conform to my opinions is perfectly okay."
Saved you 3000 odd words.
Everything past this point, is me explaining it in detail.
So you've probably heard of this one before, maybe from a youtube clip someone forced you to watch but you didn't get what they were banging on about. Problem with a lot of people 'in the know' on things - they tend to assume you're already at least part of the way up to speed. Overstatement on the shock value, because the youtube algorithm rewards it, but they don't let the ideas breathe so you can see why it all matters.
So I'm going to try and break it down for you Barney-style because I need to justify my degree somehow (they gypped me on the Barista training see).
Before we start though, because I want to make it abundantly fucking clear that this isn't the tinfoil hat ravings of someone failing at the sheer meme wizardry of a certain water filter salesman, here is a link to a page hosted by the University of Idaho promoting the philosophy. This shit is very real.
(Also that link has done more to open the eyes of some of my normie friends than some of the insane shit on Twitter ever could because of that veneer of 'respectability').
To put bluntly, it's the philosophy of "That's just, like, your opinion man."
EVERYTHING, is reduced to an opinion. Beliefs, fact, hell that link above even makes it clear science is a matter of opinion under it.
Yeah, I've kinda flopped that one right on your chin already, and I know this all ain't useful... yet. Don't worry, we'll build up to it and come back to this, because to really get through just what it is, we need to work through the foundations that led up to it.
I have to make one thing extremely clear: Postmodernism by nature is Atheistic, which you'll notice in the structure of my subheadings going forward is a point I'll focus on.
As an example, anyone who claims to be both a Christian and a Postmodernist (like many of those cringe-inducing TicTok pastors), are engaged in a really intense form of moral hypocrisy. Whenever a conflict between the two positions emerges, watch for which belief their actions let win - that is what they truly are.
So I'm going to try and break it down for you Barney-style because I need to justify my degree somehow (they gypped me on the Barista training see).
Before we start though, because I want to make it abundantly fucking clear that this isn't the tinfoil hat ravings of someone failing at the sheer meme wizardry of a certain water filter salesman, here is a link to a page hosted by the University of Idaho promoting the philosophy. This shit is very real.
(Also that link has done more to open the eyes of some of my normie friends than some of the insane shit on Twitter ever could because of that veneer of 'respectability').
To put bluntly, it's the philosophy of "That's just, like, your opinion man."
EVERYTHING, is reduced to an opinion. Beliefs, fact, hell that link above even makes it clear science is a matter of opinion under it.
Yeah, I've kinda flopped that one right on your chin already, and I know this all ain't useful... yet. Don't worry, we'll build up to it and come back to this, because to really get through just what it is, we need to work through the foundations that led up to it.
I have to make one thing extremely clear: Postmodernism by nature is Atheistic, which you'll notice in the structure of my subheadings going forward is a point I'll focus on.
As an example, anyone who claims to be both a Christian and a Postmodernist (like many of those cringe-inducing TicTok pastors), are engaged in a really intense form of moral hypocrisy. Whenever a conflict between the two positions emerges, watch for which belief their actions let win - that is what they truly are.
This one's hard to explain, but really easy to wrap your head around once we're on the same page. It's sort the observation that "I see the world differently to you", and because of that I think and believe differently, I understand reality differently, and what I presuppose as facts is different.
Essentially, what I can possibly understand is limited by my senses. What I see, hear, touch, taste, smell. You and I cannot have the same understanding of reality, even if we did literally everything together, we'll still diverge just enough that we'll tell the story differently.
Now that you're up to speed, you'll realise just how obvious and braindead the observation is. No one argues over whether or not this relativism happens, only what it ultimately means.
Question here though, is what do we do about it?
Because, it's actually something of a sticking point. I can't trust that you could possibly understand the facts of a situation the same way as I do, as the moment I explain anything to you, we're now playing a game of Telephone and I have to take on faith you understand.
Now, if you're religious, you can just appeal to God's Plan or Karma or whatever: "you don't have to do anything about it, it's not your problem" - it's a non-answer that absolves you from any responsibility.
If you're not religious, things get a little more difficult, and you wind up arguing whether or not there is such a thing as Objective Truth.
If you're like Sam Harris, you believe there is such a thing and that science can work it out. Humanists default to that position largely. It's making the claim that the universe has an outermost limit of observable understanding we can draw from it, and if we just work at it long enough, we eventually will understand it. Essentially language offers us a way by which we can communicate the observations, we name objects, physical things in the universe, so we can talk about them. By talking about them, we help people understand what they are and what they do.
Essentially, you're taking the position that Truth is a shattered mirror, and we're all holding a broken fragment of it. If we glue together enough fragments, we can build the full mirror back up to some extent - with some work, we might even make the mirror good as new.
There's a few philosophies that went the other way, Nihilism and Postmodernism chief among them. They argue, that there is no universe to understand as such. See, it's not that the universe is this finite thing that we can just chip away at it and eventually we'll call it a day - that's just wishful thinking. Their take is rather that we project our understanding onto the universe. There's physical things, sure, but they have no inherent value or meaning: "Would a rock name itself a rock? no, it doesn't name itself fucking anything, don't be absurd". Rather, we project meaning onto those things by way of language. In essence the act of calling it a rock implies a value or a meaning that we're ascribing onto it. "Rock" as a word contains (even if it's infinitesimally tiny) a moral judgement or a subjective value, that by naming it, we're denoting the "worth" of a rock (I get more into this later, but this is also where a lot of critique from postmodernism on the topic of capitalism comes from - this tiny part here is really fucking important).
In essence they're making the case that Truth is contained in a small hand mirror, and each of us have our own little mirror with our own little Truth. Everything we see through the mirror are just worthless things that we make our personal opinions about based on how much those things benefit us in our goals.
Essentially, what I can possibly understand is limited by my senses. What I see, hear, touch, taste, smell. You and I cannot have the same understanding of reality, even if we did literally everything together, we'll still diverge just enough that we'll tell the story differently.
Now that you're up to speed, you'll realise just how obvious and braindead the observation is. No one argues over whether or not this relativism happens, only what it ultimately means.
Question here though, is what do we do about it?
Because, it's actually something of a sticking point. I can't trust that you could possibly understand the facts of a situation the same way as I do, as the moment I explain anything to you, we're now playing a game of Telephone and I have to take on faith you understand.
Now, if you're religious, you can just appeal to God's Plan or Karma or whatever: "you don't have to do anything about it, it's not your problem" - it's a non-answer that absolves you from any responsibility.
If you're not religious, things get a little more difficult, and you wind up arguing whether or not there is such a thing as Objective Truth.
If you're like Sam Harris, you believe there is such a thing and that science can work it out. Humanists default to that position largely. It's making the claim that the universe has an outermost limit of observable understanding we can draw from it, and if we just work at it long enough, we eventually will understand it. Essentially language offers us a way by which we can communicate the observations, we name objects, physical things in the universe, so we can talk about them. By talking about them, we help people understand what they are and what they do.
Essentially, you're taking the position that Truth is a shattered mirror, and we're all holding a broken fragment of it. If we glue together enough fragments, we can build the full mirror back up to some extent - with some work, we might even make the mirror good as new.
There's a few philosophies that went the other way, Nihilism and Postmodernism chief among them. They argue, that there is no universe to understand as such. See, it's not that the universe is this finite thing that we can just chip away at it and eventually we'll call it a day - that's just wishful thinking. Their take is rather that we project our understanding onto the universe. There's physical things, sure, but they have no inherent value or meaning: "Would a rock name itself a rock? no, it doesn't name itself fucking anything, don't be absurd". Rather, we project meaning onto those things by way of language. In essence the act of calling it a rock implies a value or a meaning that we're ascribing onto it. "Rock" as a word contains (even if it's infinitesimally tiny) a moral judgement or a subjective value, that by naming it, we're denoting the "worth" of a rock (I get more into this later, but this is also where a lot of critique from postmodernism on the topic of capitalism comes from - this tiny part here is really fucking important).
In essence they're making the case that Truth is contained in a small hand mirror, and each of us have our own little mirror with our own little Truth. Everything we see through the mirror are just worthless things that we make our personal opinions about based on how much those things benefit us in our goals.
You definitely have heard this phrase. Natural outgrowth over the argument over Objective Truth.
In the interests of keeping us on the same page though, I will go through it.
So the formulation is something like this: "if cognitive relativism exists, and our thoughts and beliefs are limited by what we can sense, does that include our moral compass?"
The religious knee-jerk and say no. They appeal to faith, God, etc.
The non-religious have an issue though. They can't make that appeal, because they reject the concept of God before the debate even starts. But, there's an out (thank you Buddhism for providing it), and that's 'suffering exists and it's universal enough'. Effectively, I can take it on faith that we have at least some of the basics in common (which we can prove because we both know what stubbing our toes feels like), and from there I can sort of infer that I can explain shit to you and it won't be too far off the mark (which helps with the Cognitive Relativism). From there, because we both know suffering fucking blows, we can build enough of an informal template of what we should(n't) avoid that we can kinda imply that there's such a thing as Objective Morality (We have a floor of the ultimate bad result, it's called dying, and we can work backwards from there), the only debate we have is how do we rank order it and why (In some jurisdictions, Arson carries the same penalty as Murder because they're both premeditated. That's the kind of thinking this line of logic tends to engage in).
There's a few philosophies, Postmodernism is one of them, where you just say "Yes" to the above question and move on.
This is about the time where most would leave the argument - essentially handwaving the details away with this utopian kind of "sounds good right? you get to work out what's right for you!"
The problem is, no simple answer goes unpunished. You end up with one further, more vicious problem one step down.
Morality, frankly, isn't about you by definition. "What's right for you" sounds nice right up until it inevitably careens head-on into "But it fucks over your neighbour."
So, if morality isn't universal, because that by definition is what a Subjective/Relative Morality means, then how do we work out who's morality gets to win? Yours' or your neighbours'?
The answer given by hippies, soylent abusers and others who don't think about this stuff too deeply is: "Tolerance man! If we were all respectful of each others' differences-"
Ignoring the hypocrisy in that statement (because they're appealing to Tolerance as the highest, and perhaps only, value on an absolute moral scale), all that does is maintain an untenable status quo: Your neighbour is still shitted off, and you've still fucked him over for your own benefit.
We just kick the can down the road and still left with the question.
So what gets to decide who wins morally, if all moral questions are subjective and left up to "Well it's what's right for me"?
Well, that's simple. Might.
In flesh, this manifests in armies. Online, this manifests as dogpiling. Same thing ultimately, bodies for the meat grinder. Theatre is just different.
Because 'Tolerance' in the end becomes 'a tolerable state for me'.
In the interests of keeping us on the same page though, I will go through it.
So the formulation is something like this: "if cognitive relativism exists, and our thoughts and beliefs are limited by what we can sense, does that include our moral compass?"
The religious knee-jerk and say no. They appeal to faith, God, etc.
The non-religious have an issue though. They can't make that appeal, because they reject the concept of God before the debate even starts. But, there's an out (thank you Buddhism for providing it), and that's 'suffering exists and it's universal enough'. Effectively, I can take it on faith that we have at least some of the basics in common (which we can prove because we both know what stubbing our toes feels like), and from there I can sort of infer that I can explain shit to you and it won't be too far off the mark (which helps with the Cognitive Relativism). From there, because we both know suffering fucking blows, we can build enough of an informal template of what we should(n't) avoid that we can kinda imply that there's such a thing as Objective Morality (We have a floor of the ultimate bad result, it's called dying, and we can work backwards from there), the only debate we have is how do we rank order it and why (In some jurisdictions, Arson carries the same penalty as Murder because they're both premeditated. That's the kind of thinking this line of logic tends to engage in).
There's a few philosophies, Postmodernism is one of them, where you just say "Yes" to the above question and move on.
This is about the time where most would leave the argument - essentially handwaving the details away with this utopian kind of "sounds good right? you get to work out what's right for you!"
The problem is, no simple answer goes unpunished. You end up with one further, more vicious problem one step down.
Morality, frankly, isn't about you by definition. "What's right for you" sounds nice right up until it inevitably careens head-on into "But it fucks over your neighbour."
So, if morality isn't universal, because that by definition is what a Subjective/Relative Morality means, then how do we work out who's morality gets to win? Yours' or your neighbours'?
The answer given by hippies, soylent abusers and others who don't think about this stuff too deeply is: "Tolerance man! If we were all respectful of each others' differences-"
Ignoring the hypocrisy in that statement (because they're appealing to Tolerance as the highest, and perhaps only, value on an absolute moral scale), all that does is maintain an untenable status quo: Your neighbour is still shitted off, and you've still fucked him over for your own benefit.
We just kick the can down the road and still left with the question.
So what gets to decide who wins morally, if all moral questions are subjective and left up to "Well it's what's right for me"?
Well, that's simple. Might.
In flesh, this manifests in armies. Online, this manifests as dogpiling. Same thing ultimately, bodies for the meat grinder. Theatre is just different.
Because 'Tolerance' in the end becomes 'a tolerable state for me'.
You would have heard this phrase before too, but may not have really known what it was getting at.
So this fundamentally is the natural outgrowth of the above two Relativisms. It comes out of Cognitive Relativism, because it's really the same issue just networked across a group of people who've banded together for whatever reason - just because you all agree on a few things, doesn't mean any of you are right about it. Where it comes out of Moral Relativism is another braindead observation I have no doubt you'll realise before I even spell it out: if each of us holds a different moral compass on the individual level, then it stands to reason that works on the level of culture too.
Now, this relativism kicks you real fucking hard in the taint when you realise that it's got the same problems as the above two relativisms, just on a much bigger scale. If you're familiar with Jordan Peterson's whole shtick about 'clean your room before you try and judge the world' (or the 'wash your dick' meme), this is what he's getting at, but he's not explaining it terribly well. Because the problems are identical, but the difference in scale in this context means the solution is a difference in kind - trying to apply individual level solutions on the cultural level is how you get the moral brigade coming to artists on Twitter, and trying to apply culture level solutions to the individual is how we get shit like the Soviet Union. Which of the two scales is easier for rando cunts like us to contend with? It ain't the culture level shit, smarter people than me have fucked it up worse over less.
And it manifests in a real fucking ugly way when you play it out in real life. Because playing out the 'Tolerance' card as the answer for Cultural Relativism is how you get culturally enriched to borrow the /pol/ meme. I don't wanna get too political, so instead I'll refer to something covered by this very forum - the people dogpiling onto Japanese artists for not conforming to matters of Californian taste. Like I said above, Tolerance loses to Might, and so Might is used to force conformity, and thus an acceptable state by which the mighty can allow themselves to be tolerant.
'A tolerable state for us.'
Where Postmodernism specifically comes into it here is that part of their stated goal in their efforts is the deconstruction of grand narratives (that is, overarching grand scale ideas. Like religions, nations, sciences, etc.). If you've ever heard the term 'poststructural' from some asshat who thinks he's smarter than you, it's referring to 'what we have after the deconstruction's taken place'.
And if you're wondering what deconstruction means in context? "Write essays tearing it a new fucking colon". Not an exaggeration, the goal of the critique is to reduce it to the idea equivalent of rubble.
So this fundamentally is the natural outgrowth of the above two Relativisms. It comes out of Cognitive Relativism, because it's really the same issue just networked across a group of people who've banded together for whatever reason - just because you all agree on a few things, doesn't mean any of you are right about it. Where it comes out of Moral Relativism is another braindead observation I have no doubt you'll realise before I even spell it out: if each of us holds a different moral compass on the individual level, then it stands to reason that works on the level of culture too.
Now, this relativism kicks you real fucking hard in the taint when you realise that it's got the same problems as the above two relativisms, just on a much bigger scale. If you're familiar with Jordan Peterson's whole shtick about 'clean your room before you try and judge the world' (or the 'wash your dick' meme), this is what he's getting at, but he's not explaining it terribly well. Because the problems are identical, but the difference in scale in this context means the solution is a difference in kind - trying to apply individual level solutions on the cultural level is how you get the moral brigade coming to artists on Twitter, and trying to apply culture level solutions to the individual is how we get shit like the Soviet Union. Which of the two scales is easier for rando cunts like us to contend with? It ain't the culture level shit, smarter people than me have fucked it up worse over less.
And it manifests in a real fucking ugly way when you play it out in real life. Because playing out the 'Tolerance' card as the answer for Cultural Relativism is how you get culturally enriched to borrow the /pol/ meme. I don't wanna get too political, so instead I'll refer to something covered by this very forum - the people dogpiling onto Japanese artists for not conforming to matters of Californian taste. Like I said above, Tolerance loses to Might, and so Might is used to force conformity, and thus an acceptable state by which the mighty can allow themselves to be tolerant.
'A tolerable state for us.'
Where Postmodernism specifically comes into it here is that part of their stated goal in their efforts is the deconstruction of grand narratives (that is, overarching grand scale ideas. Like religions, nations, sciences, etc.). If you've ever heard the term 'poststructural' from some asshat who thinks he's smarter than you, it's referring to 'what we have after the deconstruction's taken place'.
And if you're wondering what deconstruction means in context? "Write essays tearing it a new fucking colon". Not an exaggeration, the goal of the critique is to reduce it to the idea equivalent of rubble.
If you think I'm scare mongering here, no I'm not. Michel Foucault, one of the big voices in this postmodernism stuff, made the argument that ALL human relationships are based on structures of power (which in turn, are backed by shows of might).
Frankly, he was honest - didn't buy any of that tolerance bullshit. He saw human society as one giant exercise in Social Darwinism. The innate nature of a human being, in his mind was "FUCK YOU, GOT MINE, SUCK IT CUNT."
That... might sound like it's overstating a little, but understand he was a very vocal supporter of Ayatollah Khomeini if that name means anything to you. Might is the only thing that carries moral weight here.
Now, hypocrisy time, Foucault was really critical of 'explanations of everything', but ended up using his theory of power to explain everything. As he defined power as "That which compels another". You've probably seen Twitter types refer to 'bodies' when talking about people - e.g. "how this impacts black bodies" - This is where all this comes from. A 'body' in this context is 'what which power is enacted upon' (understand, this theory even extends to the exertion of skill, by woodworking, you are enacting your power over a piece of wood. What an amazing godlike being you are). If that sounds a little dehumanising, yeah, it's supposed to be. 'Will' and 'Body' are used interchangeably in this context, because the theory basically comes down to 'if you pressure the body, the will follows'. The idea there's a separation between mind and body is delusional and religious thinking.
"But why should I care about Power Dynamics" I hear you ask?
Well, it's what allows the Twitter mob to give themselves the moral permission to do their thing.
So Foucault had three main categories of power: Sovereign Power (oppression dynamics and class disparity basically), Disciplinary Power (essentially reward/punishment paradigms) and Bio-Power (subjugation of bodies/will, also population control).
Sovereign Power is what they're referring to the moment they start talking about minorities.
But what gives them the permission to go after say Japanese artists for not having enough [insert minority here] character? That's Disciplinary power. Because it's a different category of power, it allows them the moral justification to apply it because it doesn't violate their moral statutes around the use of sovereign power. It's why they can apply power, but still act oppressed - it's because they regard both states as mutually exclusive and without overlap.
As for Bio-Power? Yeah, likely seen a nutcase post a picture of a family with eight kids and they'll call it 'bioterrorism' or some shit. That's a display of Bio-Power - the argument is that because the life and death of a king no longer holds sway over us, we can't regulate our society's 'eras' based on that anymore, so we have to do it in reproductive cycles instead (generations basically), so anything that effects generational paradigms, such as zeitgeists and birthrates. Also, because it loosely covers propaganda, (as it's about subjugation of bodies - it affects the zeitgeist), that means that propaganda exists as a different paradigm. Now, if you pull a CIA and start seeing art as potential vectors of propaganda- Oh, hello Cartoon Network, how nice of you to join us.
If you ever hear people describing works of art as a form of colonialism, this is why.
Replace the word 'Power' with 'Rape' and you have Andrea Dworkin, and now you understand why this pops up in Feminism so much.
Frankly, he was honest - didn't buy any of that tolerance bullshit. He saw human society as one giant exercise in Social Darwinism. The innate nature of a human being, in his mind was "FUCK YOU, GOT MINE, SUCK IT CUNT."
That... might sound like it's overstating a little, but understand he was a very vocal supporter of Ayatollah Khomeini if that name means anything to you. Might is the only thing that carries moral weight here.
Now, hypocrisy time, Foucault was really critical of 'explanations of everything', but ended up using his theory of power to explain everything. As he defined power as "That which compels another". You've probably seen Twitter types refer to 'bodies' when talking about people - e.g. "how this impacts black bodies" - This is where all this comes from. A 'body' in this context is 'what which power is enacted upon' (understand, this theory even extends to the exertion of skill, by woodworking, you are enacting your power over a piece of wood. What an amazing godlike being you are). If that sounds a little dehumanising, yeah, it's supposed to be. 'Will' and 'Body' are used interchangeably in this context, because the theory basically comes down to 'if you pressure the body, the will follows'. The idea there's a separation between mind and body is delusional and religious thinking.
"But why should I care about Power Dynamics" I hear you ask?
Well, it's what allows the Twitter mob to give themselves the moral permission to do their thing.
So Foucault had three main categories of power: Sovereign Power (oppression dynamics and class disparity basically), Disciplinary Power (essentially reward/punishment paradigms) and Bio-Power (subjugation of bodies/will, also population control).
Sovereign Power is what they're referring to the moment they start talking about minorities.
But what gives them the permission to go after say Japanese artists for not having enough [insert minority here] character? That's Disciplinary power. Because it's a different category of power, it allows them the moral justification to apply it because it doesn't violate their moral statutes around the use of sovereign power. It's why they can apply power, but still act oppressed - it's because they regard both states as mutually exclusive and without overlap.
As for Bio-Power? Yeah, likely seen a nutcase post a picture of a family with eight kids and they'll call it 'bioterrorism' or some shit. That's a display of Bio-Power - the argument is that because the life and death of a king no longer holds sway over us, we can't regulate our society's 'eras' based on that anymore, so we have to do it in reproductive cycles instead (generations basically), so anything that effects generational paradigms, such as zeitgeists and birthrates. Also, because it loosely covers propaganda, (as it's about subjugation of bodies - it affects the zeitgeist), that means that propaganda exists as a different paradigm. Now, if you pull a CIA and start seeing art as potential vectors of propaganda- Oh, hello Cartoon Network, how nice of you to join us.
If you ever hear people describing works of art as a form of colonialism, this is why.
Replace the word 'Power' with 'Rape' and you have Andrea Dworkin, and now you understand why this pops up in Feminism so much.
Now I have to bitch about Jaques Derrida.
Well, I'll give him some credit, he was dismayed over how some of his ideas went. Some.
So the Deconstruction I mentioned before? That was his baby. Because in his mind, deconstruction is a means to justice, but as absolute justice is impossible, the pursuit never ends.
If you've ever wondered why the political activists seem to want to be on the losing side where they're the victims all the time, it's because of that formulation as being the pursuers of justice. Can't win a Nobel Peace Prize if everything's fine.
So his catalogue is fuckhueg and there's no fucking way I can cover all his ideas here. So I'll stick with the ones that immediately matter.
First is the hierarchical nature of language. Touched on this earlier, but essentially the idea is that words carry weight - even moral weight, as they're built upon inflections and inferences back to time immemorial. Go back far enough and one of the oldest words we have for a horse loosely translates as 'speedy thing'. Any linguist can back up this claim, so it's not a revelation.
The term Logocentrism comes up here at this point. So to vastly oversimplify, it's the idea that speech is treated as though it matters more than written word because it's 'closer to the original' thought. Basically if speech is a symbol or a thought, then text is a symbol of speech - a photocopy of a photocopy basically.
This is about the point where the earlier ranting on Cognitive Relativism should click into place. Our ability to articulate reality as we understand it is a degraded sketch of the original interpretation. It's the DeviantArt, Original Character: Do Not Steal, Sonic the Hedgehog OC version.
We don't want the Sonic OC, we want the original game, right? The claim then turns into one of hierarchy - see if speech is closer to the original, then naturally that would mean speech is more important, and thus has more moral weight, than the text. Expand this out further and you can imply that language itself hints at the existence of hierarchies, that a thing are naturally better than another thing because it's a closer representation of the original idea. If you wanna invoke Platonic forms here (you know, that parable of the cave stuff?) go nuts, it's not quite what Derrida was getting at, but it fits well enough.
This also explains why they can't handle anime (because anime does tend to suffer from symbol drawing) or they keep assuming Orcs MUST be black people because 'they're coded that way'.
They crave things to be as real as possible: because symbols of symbols are impure and broken - We have to find the purer form, which is something 'real'.
Looking good so far? Well, how about Phallogocentrism because this man got paid for an unironic cock pun. Also, he did the work of feminism for it with this one, so there's that.
So Phallogocentrism is this: if we presuppose there is a hierarchy formed from language, and we also presuppose Phallocentrism (literally Patriarchy Theory), then if we combine the two, we get Phallogocentrism - the idea that language exists to ensure that the masculine persists as the head of that hierarchy.
Or to oversimplify: Language itself is patriarchy.
If you want to know what is behind all these weird made up words that they keep coming up with to describe increasingly niche ideas and concepts, or why they make up things like Germxn or Latinx (but to my eternal disappointment, not also Chinx), this is why. If we accept Derrida's ideas, then the end result of feminism, if we hold them to the goal of smashing the patriarchy, must then presuppose either the dissolution or deconstruction of language itself as part of that goal.
No I did not just take a hit of acid before I wrote this.
But what it means then, as art is fundamentally a language on its own that tries to capture a snapshot of reality, that necessarily means that art is also corrosive in much the same way.
Well, I'll give him some credit, he was dismayed over how some of his ideas went. Some.
So the Deconstruction I mentioned before? That was his baby. Because in his mind, deconstruction is a means to justice, but as absolute justice is impossible, the pursuit never ends.
If you've ever wondered why the political activists seem to want to be on the losing side where they're the victims all the time, it's because of that formulation as being the pursuers of justice. Can't win a Nobel Peace Prize if everything's fine.
So his catalogue is fuckhueg and there's no fucking way I can cover all his ideas here. So I'll stick with the ones that immediately matter.
First is the hierarchical nature of language. Touched on this earlier, but essentially the idea is that words carry weight - even moral weight, as they're built upon inflections and inferences back to time immemorial. Go back far enough and one of the oldest words we have for a horse loosely translates as 'speedy thing'. Any linguist can back up this claim, so it's not a revelation.
The term Logocentrism comes up here at this point. So to vastly oversimplify, it's the idea that speech is treated as though it matters more than written word because it's 'closer to the original' thought. Basically if speech is a symbol or a thought, then text is a symbol of speech - a photocopy of a photocopy basically.
This is about the point where the earlier ranting on Cognitive Relativism should click into place. Our ability to articulate reality as we understand it is a degraded sketch of the original interpretation. It's the DeviantArt, Original Character: Do Not Steal, Sonic the Hedgehog OC version.
We don't want the Sonic OC, we want the original game, right? The claim then turns into one of hierarchy - see if speech is closer to the original, then naturally that would mean speech is more important, and thus has more moral weight, than the text. Expand this out further and you can imply that language itself hints at the existence of hierarchies, that a thing are naturally better than another thing because it's a closer representation of the original idea. If you wanna invoke Platonic forms here (you know, that parable of the cave stuff?) go nuts, it's not quite what Derrida was getting at, but it fits well enough.
This also explains why they can't handle anime (because anime does tend to suffer from symbol drawing) or they keep assuming Orcs MUST be black people because 'they're coded that way'.
They crave things to be as real as possible: because symbols of symbols are impure and broken - We have to find the purer form, which is something 'real'.
Looking good so far? Well, how about Phallogocentrism because this man got paid for an unironic cock pun. Also, he did the work of feminism for it with this one, so there's that.
So Phallogocentrism is this: if we presuppose there is a hierarchy formed from language, and we also presuppose Phallocentrism (literally Patriarchy Theory), then if we combine the two, we get Phallogocentrism - the idea that language exists to ensure that the masculine persists as the head of that hierarchy.
Or to oversimplify: Language itself is patriarchy.
If you want to know what is behind all these weird made up words that they keep coming up with to describe increasingly niche ideas and concepts, or why they make up things like Germxn or Latinx (but to my eternal disappointment, not also Chinx), this is why. If we accept Derrida's ideas, then the end result of feminism, if we hold them to the goal of smashing the patriarchy, must then presuppose either the dissolution or deconstruction of language itself as part of that goal.
No I did not just take a hit of acid before I wrote this.
But what it means then, as art is fundamentally a language on its own that tries to capture a snapshot of reality, that necessarily means that art is also corrosive in much the same way.
Imagine being told one day that a DeviantArt Sonic the Hedgehog OC (Do not Steal) fanfic is now more popular and well regarded than the original comic, and in your opinion, it's fucking garbage.
THAT is what they think is actually happening to the entire fucking world.
If that doesn't make sense because it sounds batshit (or just confuses you because, they're the ones who started the clown world, right?)
Well... How about I blow my load all over you right here and now:
So ever wondered why they can attack loli but leave actual pizza of the cheese variety untouched untouched as Twitter got into legal issue with the American DOJ over just recently?
Because loli is a symbol of a symbol in their mind. It's impure and degenerate.
Accepting the Derridian premise means that loli is, in actual unironic fact, morally worse than the real thing.
Art is a perversion of reality, an intentional distortion that corrupts the purity of the original.
If we accept the Foucault premises, that literally all things are expressions of power:
Art is a manifestation of power, that supports cultural sovereignty.
And so we can conclude that:
Art is a perverse, and subversive, act of cultural hegemony. (In this context, Patriarchy).
Now expand that thinking to the entirety of western civilisation and everything its ever produced.
Yeah, they think we've been in clown world since the invention of fucking language.
It gets worse:
because Might makes right...
because there is no such thing as truth, there are only group opinions...
and those opinions only exist because they help exact the group's power...
Then they're morally justified in everything they do.
If I'm making them sound like religious zealots...
Well...
They are.
THAT is what they think is actually happening to the entire fucking world.
If that doesn't make sense because it sounds batshit (or just confuses you because, they're the ones who started the clown world, right?)
Well... How about I blow my load all over you right here and now:
So ever wondered why they can attack loli but leave actual pizza of the cheese variety untouched untouched as Twitter got into legal issue with the American DOJ over just recently?
Because loli is a symbol of a symbol in their mind. It's impure and degenerate.
Accepting the Derridian premise means that loli is, in actual unironic fact, morally worse than the real thing.
Art is a perversion of reality, an intentional distortion that corrupts the purity of the original.
If we accept the Foucault premises, that literally all things are expressions of power:
Art is a manifestation of power, that supports cultural sovereignty.
And so we can conclude that:
Art is a perverse, and subversive, act of cultural hegemony. (In this context, Patriarchy).
Now expand that thinking to the entirety of western civilisation and everything its ever produced.
Yeah, they think we've been in clown world since the invention of fucking language.
It gets worse:
because Might makes right...
because there is no such thing as truth, there are only group opinions...
and those opinions only exist because they help exact the group's power...
Then they're morally justified in everything they do.
If I'm making them sound like religious zealots...
Well...
They are.
I mean, simply talking is an act of misogyny according to this thought process if you break it down deep enough. That's kinda hilarious on its own.
But in actuality?
That's a hard question. I mean, I probably sounded like a raving lunatic explaining all this shit, and I went through uni just to be able to follow it. If you're worried you'd sound like a loon trying to explain it yourself, valid fear man.
That link I posted right at the top of this essay does a lot of the heavy lifting if you feel the need to try though - because it's from the mouth of a university itself. Just highlight the part where it says 'Science is an opinion' and that usually gets people asking questions the begin with 'The fuck...?'
Understand: they want to kill art because it's a crude manifestation of Patriarchy under their worldview. Every genuine act of beauty is a revolt against their entire philosophical premise. Even art that celebrates women is perverted by patriarchy, for the male gaze exists to make it a crude symbol that tarnishes the beauty of a flesh and blood woman.
Yes, positive depictions of women are misogyny - because you're hurting women who themselves can't live up to the positive example.
My actual thought is simple: if they construe art itself as an existential threat then fuck it, be the biggest fucking existential threat you can manage.
But in actuality?
That's a hard question. I mean, I probably sounded like a raving lunatic explaining all this shit, and I went through uni just to be able to follow it. If you're worried you'd sound like a loon trying to explain it yourself, valid fear man.
That link I posted right at the top of this essay does a lot of the heavy lifting if you feel the need to try though - because it's from the mouth of a university itself. Just highlight the part where it says 'Science is an opinion' and that usually gets people asking questions the begin with 'The fuck...?'
Understand: they want to kill art because it's a crude manifestation of Patriarchy under their worldview. Every genuine act of beauty is a revolt against their entire philosophical premise. Even art that celebrates women is perverted by patriarchy, for the male gaze exists to make it a crude symbol that tarnishes the beauty of a flesh and blood woman.
Yes, positive depictions of women are misogyny - because you're hurting women who themselves can't live up to the positive example.
My actual thought is simple: if they construe art itself as an existential threat then fuck it, be the biggest fucking existential threat you can manage.
Thank you for putting up with my colossal bullshit.
If anyone's wondering why I think philosophy matters enough to put up a thread about it... well, you know the whole idea of 'culture is downstream from politics'? I think it's more like 'everything is downstream from philosophy', politics included. Take that how you will.
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