rhisiart at earthlink.net wrote:
>
>
> "Nothing would be what it is. Because everything would be what it isn't.
> And contrary-wise --what it is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it
> would. You see?'
> - Alice in Wonderland
>
> think it over next time you say you don't "give a fuck."
>
I'm familiar with the passage -- and it is spot on. The apparent (intentionally so) incoherence of the actually quite coherent syntax catches nicely the incoherence of imagining oneself to be other than oneself.
It is just incoherent to speak of a world in which anyone with Cox's views is in a position to affect what the government does (except as a member of a mass movement to checkmate that government).
One who wastes time giving a fuck about what the enemy does is deceiving him/herself. We of course need to estimate, roughly, what our enemies can or will do, but it is not for us to sit in their chambers and think for them. The government, incidentally, does not give a fuck what anyone on th is list things.
Carrol
P.S. I recommend that you read Carrol B. Cox, "Citizen Angels: Civil Society and the Abstract Individual in _Paradise Lost_," _Milton Studies_ 23 (1987), pp. 165-196, and see the quotation from John Arthos on p. 166 in which he contrasts the worlds of Dante & Milton. You would be right at home in Milton's world where the individual finds him/herself "at any moment in history and at any place entering upon an unknown life." You imagine yourself existing outside of and indepently of any social relations, like Er in Plato's Republic choosing abstractly what kind of a person you will be no matter what life you choose. Bizarre! You might also try reading the _Grundrisse_. You are Adam in PL VIII 249-282.