[Edited]
----- Original Message ----- From: Leigh Meyers To: Michael Pugliese Sent: Thursday, December 30, 2004 7:49 PM Subject: Re: >>> [lbo-talk] Adbusters: Debate: Is this another hippie conspiracy theory
----- Original Message ----- From: Michael Pugliese To: lbo-talk Sent: Thursday, December 30, 2004 5:08 PM Subject: [lbo-talk] Adbusters: Debate: Is this another Jewish conspiracy theory - or a truth people deny for fear of being labeled 'anti-semitic'?
<URL: http://adbusters.org/magazine/52/jewish_debate/comments.html >
-- Michael Pugliese ~~~~~~~~~~~~
The funny thing is... If you are culturally attuned to the style and attitude represented by the people posting on the forum link above...
You would look at something like this...
----- Original Message ----- From: Manjur Karim To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Sent: Wednesday, December 29, 2004 9:03 AM Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Reich on sex & religion
(Note: Earlier today I posted this block quote to [newsroom-l] and titled it "Defining IMHO")
But see, even a simple statement such as "there are two chairs in the room" makes sense only if we agree on what is a chair, what is number two, and what is a room. There is nothing given about any of those concepts. Truth is a matter of consensus. If memory serves me right, I think it was Kolakowski who once asked since a dog or a fly doesn't see the same shape, size, or form (of two chairs, for instance) as we do, what gives us the right that what we see is the absolute reality?
However, I am not saying that an objective reality does not exist. Even Derrida, whom every realist loves to hate, never made that argument. I refuse to believe that every time I turn around, those two proverbial chairs cease to exist, just because they are not part of my immediate construction of reality any more. The point is that our understanding of those two chairs is always a mediated understanding- mediated by language, conceptual framework, historical experience, or even our uniquely human perceptual capacity.
If you argue that those two chairs exist for me (or for us) because they are practical, they are concrete, then it makes sense. This is the kind of argument the old man made in a refreshingly pragmatic moment in the "Second Thesis of Feurbach." But that pragmatism does not assume any notion of absolute truth. Marx's pragmatism here is relational through and through. If by "simple truth" you mean that kind of practicality, an intersubjectively produced, accessible, generalizable construct, I have no problem with that. But if by "simple truth," you mean something is TRUE, just because it is empirically accessible to us, I strongly disagree with <> {blahblah yadayada}
...And laugh yer fucking ass off! You'd think it was the biggest waste of bandwidth.
I guess it's activist vs theorist, and neither can possibly win without the other.
Personally, I run somewhere in between.
I've spent at least 20 hours a week for the last year + standing on a streetcorner in the downtown shopping district using Adbusters graphics for a little one on one agitprop/eduprop with the "masses" that everyone likes to theorize about... (I live simply so I don't need to work a lot of hours).
I know what adbusters graphics are for...
You take a BIG picture, Lessee.. my favorite early on was a 2 page spread of a loaf of Wonder Bread (tm) above which I had written in big block letters 'DON'T YOU' {wonder bread picture} and undeneath 'WHERE THE WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION ARE?'
I'd hold it out to pedestrians or traffic and just "go fishing" (for souls!).
Another was a "hardball" picture when I was in a bad mood that showed a wounded Iraqi kid, under which I put 'COMPLICIT', with the dictionary definition in smaller print below.
It was like being a lightning rod, and a very interesting free form sociological study.
I wasn't hollering, or threatening... no chanting (definitely no chanting).
Just standing there listening to my walkman or talking to a local hippie, or... and this is the imperitive part:
Talking with absolutely anyone who wanted to discuss the issue... ...whether they agreed with me or not, no argument.
My very actions were obviously designed to take sides, therefore there was no reason to verbally joust with anyone... I just let them have their say.
The two sensations that I felt the most when talking to people were, fear... ...especially the fear that somehow, something really fucked up happened (911 AQ war in Iraq... different triggers) and there is no turning back.
The other was typically a profound sense of despair that there's absolutlely nothing anyone can do about it. The teenage kids have it especially bad like that, but they don't show it... Bravado. (Spent alot of time talking with kids downtown after school.)
You want to know why no one gives a damn about marxism? Because no one thinks it can help.
Theorize on that for a while.
Adbusters... they aren't really for coffee tables... any more than Burning Man festival (tm) was supposed to be a rich yuppie shindig in the desert.
Here's one that I leave rolling on my laptop when I'm outside at the coffee shop having a cig and the computer's alone:
http://www.adbusters.org/jams/history/flash.html
L
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