I'll show you mine if you show me yours....

[NAOS]

Should I make jokes about third eyes or the coming Mayan Baktun enlightenment here? This paragraph is the reason I miss the Lorentzian Aintnuthin. He'd fit into the discussion much better than I ever will. Maybe One Brow can replace him, but on the other end of things.

My opinion of what makes people tick is continual improvement, which generally translates into acquiring material. I don't see how a society can transition from what we have now into an enough stuff is enough state of mind while staying happy. Wouldn't it take special individuals, highly intelligent, and with passions outside of material consumption to make what you have in mind work? I'm thinking guys like Warren Buffett. Enough is not in the vocabulary, but enough isn't restricted to matter.

I don't think the majority of us are lucky enough to fit that mold. This is how life seems to work for me anyway. When I hit what I saw as my consumption ceiling, I traded a drive to become more productive with drinking and posting on Jazzfanz. Maybe there is a replacement, but I haven't found it. Unfortunately, talking to old people in rest homes for hours isn't exactly satisfying.

Am I completely off base here?

There is no question that these issues are 99.9% confounding. But, I'll state right off the bat that while it may in fact be true that in our society continual improvement does equal material accumulation, that is not a natural order. This is only true because a long habit of instantiating the mechanisms that produce those effects. This much, at least, must be recognized.

You ask an insightful question about the ability of individuals. For now I'll just tell you that the knee-jerk reaction to analyze the productivity of the individual and his ability to change is a QUINTESSENTIALLY liberal analysis. The very center of my work involves rethinking WHAT IS PRODUCTIVE on a scale that doesn't privilege the cunning of the individual. In short, we must look elsewhere.... to new collectivities, new ways of affiliating with people. I see no reason why some solution to this problematic can't catch on like wildfire.

More broadly, I fully expect these changes to emerge from outside the USA (if they are non-capitalocentric), which is why I dedicated my life to anthropology. At the very least, the shift in capital accumulation to East Asia will have qualitative repercussions, and you might notice changes in your abilities to consume and MOVE (in its most abstract and broad reading) -- which may bring your attention to the seams of our affiliations, and make you desire a different kind of movement, to bust thru them and re-sew.

This is all pretty wacky sounding. But I'm thinking more and more in terms of desire and movement, habits and sensation, infinite serializations of affects without restriction (and paying attention to restriction when I find it at every scale), etc.

 

[One Brow]

1. Decentralization on a grand scale: not just of government, but of corporate or other state-like enterprises, along with a focus on energy and food independence of smaller regions. That would go a long way.

Companies centralized without government assistance, and often fought teh government to do so. If you decentralize them, they will will re-organize.

2. more esoterically: a re-imagination of the material. The mechanistic theory of matter that undergirds (a) the birth of all modern sciences and (b) theologies involving a transcendent, rational, and disinterested God HAS GOT TO GO. You could say that I'm calling for a new mysticism if you need a short hand. The "nothing new under the sun" perspective will eventually eat our hearts out.

Are you suggesting going back to a Aristotelian conception of reality, imbuing form and purpose back into the universe? I don't see why 1) you think this will be iluminating, since no one was forced to go down to two causes in the first place, and 2) why it might be useful.

 

[One Brow]

There is no question that these issues are 99.9% confounding. But, I'll state right off the bat that while it may in fact be true that in our society continual improvement does equal material accumulation, that is not a natural order. This is only true because a long habit of instantiating the mechanisms that produce those effects. This much, at least, must be recognized.

You referred to "our society". Are there societies where material accumulation is not a facet/result of continual improvement? How long did they last?

In short, we must look elsewhere.... to new collectivities, new ways of affiliating with people. I see no reason why some solution to this problematic can't catch on like wildfire.

While I don't know that it won't, one of the hurdles is our biological separateness. If populations of males cooperated to inseminate populations of females, than many of the individual mandates would be decreased (or so it seems to me). What strategies to you see as being able to overcome such issues?

More broadly, I fully expect these changes to emerge from outside the USA (if they are non-capitalocentric), which is why I dedicated my life to anthropology. At the very least, the shift in capital accumulation to East Asia will have qualitative repercussions, and you might notice changes in your abilities to consume and MOVE (in its most abstract and broad reading) -- which may bring your attention to the seams of our affiliations, and make you desire a different kind of movement, to bust thru them and re-sew.

This is all pretty wacky sounding. But I'm thinking more and more in terms of desire and movement, habits and sensation, infinite serializations of affects without restriction (and paying attention to restriction when I find it at every scale), etc.

I'm very curious to hear more, when you feel you have time. If a want a forum more conducive to longer conversations, I'd be happy to put your position into it's own blog post.

 

[NAOS]

Companies centralized without government assistance, and often fought teh government to do so. If you decentralize them, they will will re-organize.

The question is Who is the "you" in your statement above? The State? Because if decentralization were to stop and leave the current post-Keynesian State apparatus in place, then, yes, they would either reorganize or be merely consolidated in the State itself, and thus my statement would have no teeth. BTW, I acknowledged above that decentralization was a long and conflict-ridden discussion and made no bones about fleshing it out here.

Are you suggesting going back to a Aristotelian conception of reality, imbuing form and purpose back into the universe? I don't see why 1) you think this will be iluminating, since no one was forced to go down to two causes in the first place, and 2) why it might be useful.

While I'll acknowledge the influence of the Aristotelian conception of reality on the whole of pre-modern European philosophy, I don't locate hope there. I draw heavily from what was called Vitalism and the philosophers that have riffed off of it, from Leibniz to Bergson to Deleuze.

1) Nobody knows WHY this will be illuminating! You privilege the question, plain and simple. Correct, nobody was forced to go down a certain path, but there is no denying the use-value that the new bourgeois class found in mechanistic theories... that, in and of itself, should spark reflection.

2) It is useful, I would argue, because we truly don't have a sustainable, just philosophy for inhabiting our postmodern world. Replacing transcendental philosophies with immanent philosophies seems like a pretty uncontroversial first step (at least to me).

 

[NAOS]

You referred to "our society". Are there societies where material accumulation is not a facet/result of continual improvement? How long did they last?

I'll just refer to the vast vast vast majority of human evolutionary history on this point. I think you'd find Aboriginal Australian philosophy pretty interesting, and it grew, changed, complexified, etc. for something like 30,000 years on the world's most desolate continent. . . . . . . . (until the people were basically purged for being savages by a settler society much like "ours"). Capital accumulation is BRAND BLOODY NEW to the world.

Also, thinking in terms of linear time and duration has its limits, particularly when the rupture of any society is the result of a rapacious expanding capitalistic society.

While I don't know that it won't, one of the hurdles is our biological separateness. If populations of males cooperated to inseminate populations of females, than many of the individual mandates would be decreased (or so it seems to me). What strategies to you see as being able to overcome such issues?

I'm not sure I fully understand you here. But, needless to say, the sex difference between male and female does not necessarily lead to a problem. In fact, difference can and should be celebrated.

I'm very curious to hear more, when you feel you have time. If a want a forum more conducive to longer conversations, I'd be happy to put your position into it's own blog post.

Conversation is nice. I'd love to have more time to do it. If there were some people on here that were interested in carrying on a conversation elsewhere, I'd be into it. It'd be dope if we could get together ESA for a Jazz game next year....

 

[One Brow]

I'll just refer to the vast vast vast majority of human evolutionary history on this point. I think you'd find Aboriginal Australian philosophy pretty interesting, and it grew, changed, complexified, etc. for something like 30,000 years on the world's most desolate continent. . . . . . . . (until the people were basically purged for being savages by a settler society much like "ours").

I'll look into it.

Capital accumulation is BRAND BLOODY NEW to the world.

I suppose that depends on how you look at it. Some insects have been choosing mates based on capital accumulation of resources for what is like millions of years. What is the collection of a pride by a male lion, if not capital accumulation?

I'm not sure I fully understand you here. But, needless to say, the sex difference between male and female does not necessarily lead to a problem. In fact, difference can and should be celebrated.

I was speaking of the competition for mates, as opposed to differences between them.

It'd be dope if we could get together ESA for a Jazz game next year....

Alas, I leave Illinois rarely.

 

[One Brow]

1) Nobody knows WHY this will be illuminating! You privilege the question, plain and simple. Correct, nobody was forced to go down a certain path, but there is no denying the use-value that the new bourgeois class found in mechanistic theories... that, in and of itself, should spark reflection.

No mathematician worth his salt should object to exploring new ideas just for the sake of exploring new ideas. It sounds fascinating.

 

[PearlWatson]

Oh, "Shelley", that is some super lol right there.

Oh Nose! It took butt boy 4 months to sniff out my super secret internet identity!

 

[franklin]

Are you being serious here Merlin?