--- On Tue, 9/22/09, Dwayne Monroe dwayne.monroe at gmail.com> wrote
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This explains a lot and helps me understand your obvious (and often repeated) disdain or distaste for conferences...and perhaps any sort of political activity not directly tied to ceaseless movement. --------------not that it matters, but you completely missed my point. i was asking, and i gave an example of how 'words can be weapons'. there's just a lag (and while i may come across an anti-intyellectual, i'm the one always proposing that, since is the 21 centry, we can do some up to the moment political economy, and try to calculate the lag (a version of the transofmration problem, and cockshott has some stuff on that). -------------i have met a ton of peop,le who say 'direct actuion gets the goods'. (in the past they trty to goad me into doing shit like wasting my time to go across the counrty fro some protest. In such cases, again, its not a book, but what does, say G20 accomplish. (i weas going to go if we could stop on the way to look at the mountains, but a cost/benefit analyses conveinced me even though it was EF!ers i would go with, they would just let me out for ten minutes at a rest stop, and i'm for 'total liberation'. -------------------------- I note that your response to Gar Lipow's post about the upcoming Ecoconvergence Conference was the pithy, "such garbage".
---------------------a) this was cuz i chomsky and dereck jenson prominently listed. i looked again and saw korten (who i think is more on track). jensson had one good thing, a quote from R D Laing. other than that he seems to have become a cult celebraity by going on stage and through a whining baby thing about how he wants to blow up dams to save the salmons, and he feels really hurt by life. (i'm the type who would go, ok, thats good so lets see your performance you really get j-cked up by the homies.) also, he say the 'liberals and sierra clubs promote recycling and using the system to take out dams (which they are doing). but for him, he's on the moral highest ground of radicalism, and that shit he knows is bs. So instead he's going to sit in front of his computer like academics and such and do book tours---i.e. direct action. ---as for chomsky, i think hias linguistics theory s-cks (or has problems) to his face (in a nice way, and saying what his critics say) and he's arrogent then *(and his groupies treat you like a leper then). he's way over exposed, so now i can't handle it----i dont think he has much to say which isnt trivial (like wallerstein). (i may be missing something, but i think alot of these people are fronting, and also just have this bad habit----every time some issue comes up (eg 1492) chomsky puts his name on it to add to his CV; meanwhile the people who know the shit possibly better or different get ignored by the left groupies.) . but sometimes its ok to have these Pop Icons show up, because then you get the innocents or the lazy to possibly see the lesser lights, and maybe learn something. (This is why i always chose Michael Jackson open for me , and now i'm up sh-ts creek and have to find a replacement with similar pulling power. ) i told lipow he did good analyses on solar roofs, etc. for Grist. But then he f-kd up on wind farms, by not specifying that we dont need to trash everywhere just so he has a job at grist and needs electrdcity for it. -------------------------
Liza Featherstone, Doug Henwood, and Christian Parenti called this "Activistism". It's described in their instructive essay from a few years back, "Action Will Be Taken":
---------------------yeah, i sent an email to him on it, and he didnt reply.. But i never got around to subbing to LBO so i dont think he owes me any thng and i 'use' his stuff for free ---the question is whether it is worse than, say Steel Reserve (8.1%). I was curious why we needed a LBO when there is Dollars and sense. Diversity of tactics? -------------------------------
"We can't get bogged down in analysis," one activist told us . --------------------i probably shouildnt say it here but you got it wrong. (My letter actually said we need to take the analyses to a higher level, or you will neverr get anywhere. Its like physics------yeah you can do Newton, but eventually you are going to have to introduce reimann geometry,(red?) emma noether's theorem, minkowski space. All this talk about 'neoliberalism', 'ruling elites' and sh-t goes nowehre except un der the same lampost.) your take is like the one when i do on occassion venturte to protests, partly for guilt or belief, people sometimes think i'm a cop, partly because i dont flock. (I have decided maybe the way to do protests might be like Ded Prez did it; i'll use the parecon 'balanced job complex' and dorthe music, party, etc. while y'all go to jail or do the fundaraising for the incarcerated's lawyers. I suspect just as elections are only for NBC and PR people to get paid from ads, the 'anti-capitalist' movement is actually just for the NLG (i have a professor cousin in it ----so i'm an 'influential' ). i'm actually more into the 'give up activism' mode. my critic of conferences and academics is that, as Tilly puty it, they opportunity hog. Chomsky has too many books, too much money, too masny followers, and a place that is too nice compared to average. (I'm actually a bit like marx inn that i've done alot more or less living in pu-bleak libraries, and some employees actually help you though i never could spleep there (just outside was ok). But unlike marx i dont have much reason to write it up----i muast first check to see if one of the books i havent read has what i might write, first. I'm also trying to decide how much of the internet and wikipedia i should print out since i dont like reading on screen. 50%? But then i might have to be like academics, and spend all my time writing grant proposals to pay for ribbons. So what is the ideology of the activist left (and by that we mean the global justice, peace, media democracy, community organizing, financial populist, and green movements)? Socialist? Mostly not - too state-phobic. Some actvisits are anarchists - but mainly out of temperamental reflex, not rigorous thought. Others are liberals - though most are too confrontational and too skeptical about the system to embrace that label. And many others profess no ideology at all. So over all is the activist left just an inchoate, "post-ideological" mass of do-gooders, pragmatists and puppeteers?
No. The young troublemakers of today do have an ideology and it is as deeply felt and intellectually totalizing as any of the great belief systems of yore. The cadres who populate those endless meetings, who bang the drum, who lead the "trainings" and paint the puppets, do indeed have a creed. They are Activismists. -------------------------To an extent i agree with that. They actually seem tio be, to me, almost like people who have gone through MBA programs (and io hav e family member who does that, and essentially reduces our relationship to one of Boss and financial mazimizartion). lots seem to be into this scripted 'nonviolent communication' thingm, and all those consensus procedure. When i go to those i think maybe i'm getting into some satanic cult or scientology/moonie/mormon thing. they'll beast you down to like prison interrogations----you know 5 hour meetings. also of these 'activist' i think are possibly like Tom Hadyn, or maybe much worse that anarcho-street fighting man in leather, Ficher of german greens. i think haydyn shas stayed more consistant. or that guy Obama was with who is a prof but once a wetherman, and like the radical he has always been (even if now rejects violent strategies) he now uses non-violent direct action, such as sending his kid to Princeton, Rhides scholarship, maybe a job at Demos or the Nation. these people are 50% pulling something-----hoarding opportunities, acting as provacateurs so other people give up their education, and then when the chance comes say 'suckujh---you in jail' and i'm getting tenure or becomiong one of ruling politicians.-------------- This brave new ideology combines the political illiteracy of hyper-mediated American culture with all the moral zeal of a nineteenth century temperance crusade. --------------------i'm sortuh a poxz on both your houses person. the hypermediated shallow 'blac block' or 'street party ' thing with its faux-non hierarchy can be seen to be the perfect eflection of the shallow, redundant, preach to the choir crap that is published from the ivorty tower, allot of which is just opretentious bs used to fool thwe masses that they should eiother support it or learn this sort of religious ritual or try to join the guild/gang who produce that second rate crap and control who gets the academic jobs. as i said i cant really tell what is real and what is fake (derrida? badiou? mark lance? the people on Horowitz list, many who do seem prety lightweight (maybbe Churchill, or those education guys in California). In science alot of people cant tell what is rteal or fake either----look at string theory as a case example. (At least alot of that is self-consistant. ) Amother case is S Shelah in logic-----i wonder if Badiou mentions him (he's the absolute number one now, but its unclear to many what he is talking about. I tend tio think maybe he could spend a few minutes and give a shot out to Peace Now or some other moderate group (electronic intifiada), and deal with the real world a bit, though maybe that uis what he is doing---fronting, stalling...) To which the workers obediently reply: "Action will be taken!" ----------that is suggestive. I wonder if you can steal it too; its more my approach.
Now, let's quote Eric Beck who, reacting to yet another mart outburst decrying academics (or perhaps any reflection at all) very crisply wrote:
Maybe you haven't noticed, but the world is not the same now as it was when pragmatism was first articulated over a century ago. It's a fine philosophy in its way, but things do change, and I appreciate thought that tries to change with it. --------------------------i'm agnostic, but Julian Barbour (who is unusual in making his living not as an academic but translator) does, like einstein, or Ellis (of s africa) believe in a timeless, platonic universe in a sense. (it may not have to be platonic but that would be one approach. ) there's a million of similar ideas (and then you get into these issues of like 'why does time seem to pass' (second law)). In this case there's nothing new under the sun . I also was making a specific reference, just as Alan Rudy mention someone named Conley who had bad stuff in his text. Some people are bullshitting, though sometimes they may not know----also some people are 'close to the edge about to lose my head' (a lyric which consitutes one my original discoveries, besides the internet, wikipedia, and the USA) or like Charley Parker or coltrane and you cant really tell. Its possible derrida is like that, and i just dont get it as some dont get jazz. but as they say, you can get with this, or you can get with that
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Which is precisely right. my point exactly. -----------------------------
I want serious political thinkers to sit their asses down and try to help us understand our world of not merely capitalism, but capitalism which commands bio-engineering and high speed communication and GPS. ========i am a bit sick of so-called 'serious thinkers'. they should somtimes be heckled into shutting up cuz they dont have shit to say except malignant platitudes. (For example, like that Barry Schwarz dude from swarthmore who speaks at these expensive confertences. He wrote an 'ok' book, and now he's done. Shut up already. ) also, the whole notion of a 'serious' thinker (and here's my bakunin/kroptotkin thing or CLR James surfaacing) smack of elitist programming. I dont think we should be looking to gods, massuhsm or 'serious thinkers' (who are goign to study how exactly people can, for example, find the bus or metro schedule and buy lentils instead of big macs) to explain shit. alot of stuff is basic and you dont need to fly to Oregon to be spoon fed by Chomsky about what we believe and you should do (ie the Hahnel/Alberts parecon theory ---how to participate in our economics..) I did tell Hahnel when we discussed putting his crappy model on a computer that if i was going to dfo it, was going to be up to date, and since i know more about the simulation stuff than him, i was going to (as a 'fellow worker' ) have some choice in exactly how i was going to do it. Since Albert had a slight knowledge of nonlienear dynamics hahnel referred me to him, and he said my idea was nonsense, so i was going to have use some 1940's style of programming that hahnel liked. the point of that----seruious thinkers often are not that serious. Oh, they did find someone to do it there way, and he now has tenure somewhere, and they didnt publ;iosh the model. Hahnel did mention it at one of those hocus pokus young trendy things but he he juyst used this for gravitas, to impress the young people in black. )
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I see you now mart. Your word smithy complaints -- which, once parsed, boil down to: why aren't we marching? -- are not helpful. ------------i know why i'm not; i'm too busy for activism, work, and other lowly activities for mere mortals; so i'll be dancing (maybe at the gogo www.axiomsandchoices.blogspot.com i am a philanthropist, and like helping, so i like to help that scene. or as i suggested to Alan Rudy, helping through doing the 'left brain' excercize (and excercize experts say is good for you though sometimes they front about smoking or global warming or round earths) and applying knot and field theory to elucidate Foucault to those unfamiliar with him (and perhaps to turn postmodernism into a branch of math, as was done with economics, which has shown to be very helpful, to at least some portion of the left---dean baker i think sold his condo before prices crashed, for example. Later one can turn math into a branch of genetic engineering, which was more my area. (see 2nd post on my blog). I'm sure that will helpful too---Frances Collins believes that, and people ill believe anything.) .. ( also, i dont see much reason to be of help. i'm more like those ents in tolkien movie. stop treading on me (im an endangered species, like ishi).
..d.
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