Thought Dump

What would it mean to study class from a purely economic standpoint? Class is a social process, dogg.

Soma is right. Try this instead.

Honestly thinking about beginning doctoral work centered around a theoretical situation wherein Captain Hook weighs the pros and cons of purchasing a hook attachment dildo for sexy time, and how this theoretical can be relevant to real world application of Nye's treatise on hard, soft and smart power. Subtopic: when, how and in what order should we appeal to the psychological desires vs the physical ones. How does this apply to warfare, forging alliances, and promoting geopolitical compromise? In terms of sexytime, is it better to have that real-world practical application of a dildo-hook to fall back on, or can you cause more (mental leading to physical) stimulation in your partner by using the time-tested "badass intimidating guy with a sharp hook hand causes ladies to get aroused" strategy?
There are layers and layers of intelligent discussion to be had here.

Fucking do it.

Nick wrote:I feel like I do most of my boarding waiting in airports now. The most amazing people walk by in these fucking places. I hate being rushed to my gate because I legit value my time sipping coffee and people watching.

Let me know if you are doing any people watching from Heathrow and I will join you for a tasty beverage.

Wait.... What ever happened to Andy T?

Also, somewhat serious question for you guys....

I'm applying to grad programs right now so I've been thinking about what I'd like to research/write about if I continue down this path and become an academic. One of my biggest problems is thinking about what my audience would be other than just people taking my hypothetical classes in the future. Obviously academia is a pretty insular thing and there a lot of reasons for that and it isn't necessarily a bad thing.

But, my research proposal as of right now is to do a Nietzschean/Foucauldian critique of urban sociology of the last century. Starting from the Chicago school and into the present day. A lot of urban sociology is hyper-concerned with statistics in order to make claims about poverty, welfare, crime, etc. So basically I'd like to write a critique of the discipline and show the ways in which the contours of this kind of thinking, which has come to dominate the social sciences, actually produces a certain sort of truth and obfuscates cultural issues (class, race, gender).

These sorts of "post-structural" interventions are really interesting to me, especially politically. My question is though, if I ever got around to writing something like that and did a good job of it would any of you ever bother to sit down and read it (assuming is was like 150 pages or less).. Be honest, it doesn't really affect my life decisions either way I'm mostly just curious.

I'd certainly read an article about it and maybe listen to you talk about it on Fresh Air or something.

Do you guys ever think about the 20th century and just feel like

It's pretty amazing. Two global wars. A global financial disaster. The birth of visual media. The explosion of so many popular art movements. The Communist movement. Independence movements throughout the "Third World." The pace of the century is astounding. I really am not good at talking in these grand manners but all of this stuff casts such a huge shadow on the present. Every time someone like Bowie dies I start contemplating the world and time in this manner and I'm just totally awestruck by all of it.

The global population went from 1.5bn to 6bn during the century...in terms of cumulative human experience, you may as well compare it with the previous 500 years.

I was 10 when my Dad got me this for Christmas.

Read it from cover to cover over the next few months...scared the shit out of me much more than the pirated copies of "video nasties" that I was watching at mate's houses.

What exactly scared the shit out of you?

This is going to be seem really tangential but hopefully I can keep this thought lucid enough.. I'm reading Fanon (he is only one of many figures that give me this feeling) and I'm really taken by the imaginative possibilities of his work. He is super aggressive and is an advocate for revolutionary violence (although that is very circumstantial and is only in response to colonial occupation, and probably even something even more specific than that).

But regardless, I get this same feeling from a lot from artists, writers, social critics and theorists from that generation. There always feels like something was being transgressed or that a lot was at stake. Something about this current historical conjecture seems really boxed in, predictable, and just boring. The possibility to think in really radical terms (politically, artistically, etc.) seem to be closed off or just internalized in weird, neurotic ways.

Is this just a really subjective biased reading that I have that is informed by a naive, child-like worship of these cultural icons of the past?

Ҩ wrote:What exactly scared the shit out of you?

The frequency and volume of violent death.

Every two pages represented a month of the century and it was presented as contemporaneous reportage. I'd spent the previous couple of years obsessing over maps, capitals, populations etc. and my brain was pretty sponge-like at the time so I just got swept away on a tide of assassinations, famines, executions, uprisings, wars and genocides. I'd always been fascinated by the macabre and I think my parents where tired of trying to explain the chaos and shield me from worst stuff.

The internet didn't exist. I used to fantasise about a supercomputer that could show you anything that you wanted to see. That book was about as close as I could get to my fantasy searches. A lot of the black and white images are still etched in my memory.

shit like this:

Spoiler:

Ҩ wrote:Something about this current historical conjecture seems really boxed in, predictable, and just boring.

I'm no historian so I won't try to compare and contrast the 20th and 21st Centuries but I really can't imagine how anyone can possibly think this.

I wasn't ready for that photo..... Jeez.

And why do you say that, Duff? Is there some broad, politically relevant school of thought that seems to be an actual threat to liberal democracy or global capitalism today? The only threat is a form of religious fanaticism that is just kind of scary and confusing. Obviously you can attempt to historicize these terrorist attacks within a larger narrative of colonialism, but even if you did it gives absolutely no justification to that sort of action...

I'm just saying. I was born after the USSR was disbanded and the Berlin Wall had already been torn down and that seems really significant to me.

Ҩ, haven't you heard the news?

Ya. I know that book and that's sort of what I am taking this from. The professor that I work most closely with got his doctorate from Johns Hopkins where Fukuyama was a teacher.

I don't think I agree with his thesis but it is compelling and thought provoking and I'm basically just wondering what you guys think about it and whether or not it bothers you at all...

Do you want me to talk about how I always feel like I'm being turned into something I always feared and how that's not my greatest fear anymore?

No.

Okay.

Honestly, I more or less find my brain stuck on some Billy Joel, "Keeping the Faith" type positivity loop bullshit.

Dealing with the existential dread shit head on has the potential to just flatten me and results in 0 net gain for me, the world, or anybody. So I just remind myself from time to time that beer and sunshine are good.

Ҩ wrote:I wasn't ready for that photo..... Jeez.

Always a risky proposition looking at something Breugel has decided should be behind a spoiler tag.

Ҩ wrote:
And why do you say that, Duff? Is there some broad, politically relevant school of thought that seems to be an actual threat to liberal democracy or global capitalism today? The only threat is a form of religious fanaticism that is just kind of scary and confusing. Obviously you can attempt to historicize these terrorist attacks within a larger narrative of colonialism, but even if you did it gives absolutely no justification to that sort of action...

I'm just saying. I was born after the USSR was disbanded and the Berlin Wall had already been torn down and that seems really significant to me.

I guess it sounded like you were on some "Where's our Vietnam?!?" type shit and that seems to not be the case. Though I guess I'm not all that confident in the stability of liberal democracy.

I think I'm trying to pretend that my argument is more sophisticated then that but you've basically nailed it! We just had something similar to Vietnam (Iraq and Afghanistan was a longer war but considerably less costly to American lives). I'm not an expert on the Middle East and I hate talking in the language of geopolitics but it seems like the effect (although this began well before the 2004 invasion) was to destabilize the region and the world is still dealing with the ramifications.

But yeah. There was basically no protest to the War and any critique is "reformist" in that it doesn't really question the underlying motivations. The language of techno-politics and neoliberalism (Operation Iraqi Freedom, stabilizing the region, creating a world safe for democracy) as if any of those words or concepts are actually self-evident is never questioned outside of a few op-ed articles.

I'm not trying to be gloom and doom here. I'm just sort of interested in what you attribute this too. Perhaps I'm less concerned with "Where's our Vietnam?!?" and more concerned with where is our Howard Zinn's or Saul Alinsky's. Or in a more snobbish turn, where is our Sartre or Gramsci or Guevara or Fanon... I can't name a single living voice that has captivated the revolutionary political imaginations of the public in such a long time and I find that to be extremely depressing. Not that I worship any of those figures necessarily, all of them have their problems and oversights for sure and they shouldn't be put on a pedestal or thought of as the messiahs that they sometimes are. But the total lack of these kinds of figures is pretty bleak. If you disagree though, or if you have a different perspective, or if you have something else to add at all.... I'm all ears!

Ҩ wrote:There was basically no protest to the War

That's not been my experience. Anyway, the lack of a draft certainly explains why more conscription-aged americans didn't protest.

For all that other stuff, I dunno, revolutionary thought isn't something I have a lot of time for these days. I do notice that you lament a lack of figures, of names, and it seems that people these days put less faith in single figures. Probably because a particular person is always going to let you down in one way or another.