``I've long believed this though seldom said it aloud because I encounter resistance from both those in my life who swing to the right (in defense of supposed traditions) and those who lean towards the left - the "celebrate diversity" crowd who reify culture and those who want me to be some kind of 'pure'-Black person...'' .d.
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Imagine a surprise birthday party held for you, in which your friends and acquaintances from the different parts of your life were brought to together.
This happened to me once in college. A girlfriend decided to surprise me and she resourcefully dug up my `different' friends and got them together. A few moments after I walked in the door and got the `Surprise!' cheer, and everybody clapped, I soon became horrified. It was the worst party I ever went to. Everyone agreed (silently to themselves) this was terrible and left in less than an hour.
They were all white, but from entirely different parts of the age, class, social, and education spectrum. And worse, their sensibilities mixed together like oil, water, and bits of glass. They were complete strangers to each other, sufficiently so that they couldn't socialize together and didn't want to. It wasn't helped at all that there were more men than women---which thinking about it now, I realize was a consequence of Pamela doing the selection. Bad girl. It might have been a much better party with some old flames collecting around to start a Hate-Chuck campaign...
Such an experiment might be even worse today because the differences would be more extreme. Although it might amuse me a lot more than it did long ago.
Anyway...I have to dismantle my computer for a few days to paint my apartment, so I am going to unsub briefly. I'd like to get back to M-theory. I had to look it up because I didn't recognize the name. The new version of superstrings? Hmm. Ian and others used to discuss some of the new physics stuff, back when there was a future. It is interesting that the need to find a unified theory of everything has to reach levels of abstraction that make Einstein look like a carpenter. About a year ago Ian posted something on Paraconsistancy which got me to buy the book and I followed it up to a point---the point at which I had exhausted my limited understanding of the technical arguments in logic and sets. But I got the general idea, which was a meta-critique at a level of abstraction not unlike that of M-theory.
At some point I have to ask myself the dumbest question of all. Can any of this ever be `real' in any concrete sense at all? I think it is, but not in the way that would be obvious. These levels of abstraction have a curious way of reflecting the socio-cultural currents or metanarrative of late capitalism---much like Dennis Redmond likes to point to---although I am not a fan of videogames and miss most of his metaphors.
Gotta start stripping this room. It's eleven-thirty and I just got up...
CG