Against action.

I was lambasted by a professor today for my attitude of wanting to forgo action at all costs, and privilege theory absolutely. In response, I sent him the following in an e-mail.

The liberal discourse is saturated with an urgency to cut theory short, to put it in its place and act now, for what is theory but the necessary ground for action? We can see this sense of urgency given shape in the outraged cries that “in the time it will take you to read this paragraph, ten children have died of hunger, four women have been raped,” and so on, and so on, and so on. It is precisely this kind of pseudo-urgency that allows us to participate in an impotent, useless brand of theorizing, all the while pointing the blame elsewhere! When I am accused of coldly theorizing while all these poor young children are dying of starvation, I always take immense pleasure in the fact that the person doing the accusing is acting no more than I – what has given them the upper moral ground? Is their theorizing (which is usually no more than a string of hypocritical accusations) making any practical differences? Emphatically not. As an absurd example, Bill Gates recently asked rhetorically, and patronizingly: “What do computers matter when millions are still unnecessarily dying of dysentery?” To take his question seriously, we have to actively ignore the fact that his very brand of corporatism is responsible for producing, reproducing and sustaining conditions that prevent millions from accessing basic health care. Against this kind of hypocritical moral outrage, we might juxtapose what I think might be the only appropriate thing for us to engage ourselves in: critical analysis. Stop the impetus to act blindly and analyze rigorously the systems that are in place, the systems out of which particular instances of tragedy present themselves to our moral consciousness. The point is not to combat on an individual basis each and every instance of tragedy, each case of starving children, of abused wives. This is impossible, ridiculous, and absolutely beside the point. The point is to critically analyze the systems responsible for producing the conditions within which these particular instances manifest themselves. Only then can we hope to do anything worthwhile. As Zizek put it, what we need is an analysis “which offers no clear solution, no practical advice on what to do, and provides no light at the end of the tunnel, since one is well aware that this light might belong to a train crashing toward us…” Of course, expressing this, I am often met with the condescending rhetorical: “Do you mean we should do nothing at all?” “YES! Precisely that,” says Zizek, and I faithfully echo.

What is interesting is that these fake outrages never condemn the socio economical systems that allow such instances to flourish from the start.

Alot of the second and third world nations are exploited into that situation that they exist in when it concerns human depravity because the first world nations willingly allow those socio economical conditions to exist.

In all actuality the first world likes the poverty of the second and third world nations because it allows resources or commodities to be bought up cheaply which in turn creates higher profit ratios over here.

The first world nations thrive on human suffering elsewhere. It's very cost effective and allows the greater socio economical success of our own nations. [Western civilization.]

Modern liberal socialism is entirely contradictive.

Since you pissed off your professor and his biased ideology chances are he will give a negative grading.

This is why colleges are never places of ideological change anymore but instead places of political and social conformity that simply maintain the status quo.

I hope you have learned somthing from this expirience.

It's all groovy considering the west is about to go through some turbulence here pretty soon financially which will inevitably bring a flat line economically to where that economical privilege we've been expiriencing for the last couple hundreds of years through the military industrial complex will wither away and die.

When that happens the tables will turn to which the east will enjoy the new economical sense of privilege where history will just end up repeating itself like it always does.

Quote :

In all actuality the first world likes the poverty of the second and third world nations because it allows resources or commodities to be bought up cheaply which in turn creates higher profit ratios over here.

Certainly! Thus, the inherent hypocrisy in Gates' claiming that we oughtn't be preoccupied with computers when so many people are dying. How absurd.

Quote :

Since you pissed off your professor and his biased ideology chances are he will give a negative grading.

I'm thought of as the "grumpy Nietzschean" plague of our philosophy department, as one professor told me last term. This doesn't mean I'm given negative grades, though. Just the opposite. Academia is boring: so many thoughtless sheep, no real convictions. Many of my teachers have enjoyed the antagonism -- they begrudgingly grade my papers high, all the while condemning my thought, and I condemning theirs. I did have a Teacher's Assistant intent on failing me because of my views on inequality; after much argument, I came out the better -- with a paper on the matter published in a local Academic Journal and an article written in the University's newspaper about the polite liberal bias of modern academics, and how my absolute antipathy with it has earned me a reputation. I now have quite the reputation at my school, among students and teachers in the philosophy department. Most people try to stay away from me though -- give me my space. I don't mind.

without-music wrote:

“Do you mean we should do nothing at all?” “YES! Precisely that,” says Zizek, and I faithfully echo.

How will you know that the time for doing nothing has passed? How do you know the actions of (some) others are not based on sufficient analysis - or, hell, lucky guesses?

Can people actually do nothing? Does this include consumption? their current jobs?

Does it include posting in forums?

I actually wish more people did nothing, I am just not sure everyone should listen to this injunction or can or how complete it is.

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How will you know that the time for doing nothing has passed? How do you know the actions of (some) others are not based on sufficient analysis - or, hell, lucky guesses?

This is a question to think about certainly. And so much the better!

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Can people actually do nothing? Does this include consumption? their current jobs?

Important questions, doubtless. I think the concept of "doing nothing," taken in this way, is wholly illusory. I intended it only in the sense that it's opposed to "practice," with all the political-activist weight attached to the concept.

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I actually wish more people did nothing, I am just not sure everyone should listen to this injunction or can or how complete it is.

Noted. Might you expand on your wish?

without-music wrote:

Quote :

How will you know that the time for doing nothing has passed? How do you know the actions of (some) others are not based on sufficient analysis - or, hell, lucky guesses?

This is a question to think about certainly. And so much the better!

I was reacting to what seemed implicit: we are outside of life and can choose to enter and act or can stay outside and analyze. But we are acting all the time, even the analysts, perhaps, compared to many in the world, especially the analysts are acting - I am sure they are using up more of the world's resources, while they 'merely' theorize, than most homo sapiens. So it's not really a choice of entering the world and acting or not. You can always adjust, change acts or choose new ones, while analyzing. But you are going to act, unless you radically minimize and wander off in the woods.

Quote :

Can people actually do nothing? Does this include consumption? their current jobs?

Quote :

Important questions, doubtless. I think the concept of "doing nothing," taken in this way, is wholly illusory. I intended it only in the sense that it's opposed to "practice," with all the political-activist weight attached to the concept.

So political actions - not going along with the whole personal is political. Despite my feeling that all our actions our political, I wish more people dropped away from political action - even if this is the regular, primarily passive going along with/approving of government actions - 'bomb those towelheads', or whatever. I wouldn't expect much positive to come out of most people sitting around analyzing, though it might keep them off the political streets. I'd love to throw them at someone like Paolo Freire, see if he could help them connect their words to reality. Which makes me sound like a naive realist, and I am not, but I would prefer they were naive realists to naive hallucinators.

The executive branch has long been using the mob in Roman ways and if the mob stopped going along with this and analyzed, well, it would be a fruitless blessing, but a blessing from their non-action.

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I actually wish more people did nothing, I am just not sure everyone should listen to this injunction or can or how complete it is.

Noted. Might you expand on your wish? [/quote]I suppose some of it is implicit in the above. Reagen managed to make the working class think that people who did nothing - hypothetically, granting Reagan his hallucinations - were their big problem. Of course the people doing things are much more likely to cause other people problems. Related: it is rarely those with little power who are causing your problems. It is vastly more likely that it is people with a lot of power. And in those instances - say, street crime - where people with relatively little power caused your problem, it is likely that people with more power had a hand in the context.

I don't think doing nothing is neutral, there is no neutral. But it is a damn chunk better than many actions.

So I have sympathy for your position, but I am not sure what it really entails.

And I suppose hovering around in my reactions is a deep skepticism of 'analysis', as it presents itself. I see people analyzing their way to the most assinine solutions and interpretations, many of which are very tricky to disprove. I see intellectuals spending twenty mental minutes trying to pick up a pen with their mental toes instead of just reaching down and picking the damn thing up. And then of course some people, like say Marx, did spend a great deal of analyzing before acting or other people moving along with his analyses, and bang, man did messes get made, despite the investment of time in analysis.

Not that there is anything wrong with analysis. But it is almost a meaningless term when used as a general injunction.

Last, can analysis end with its own processes? I don't think so. A little like Gödel's Incompleteness Theorum. Analysis is mental actions in language and in the end some impulses/qualia/intuition will have to be trusted, if nothing else, to say, there, we have done enough analysis. Or this solution is a good one - ideas in the head often suddenly finding themselves inadequate out there in the real world.

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Without Music: Certainly! Thus, the inherent hypocrisy in Gates' claiming that we oughtn't be preoccupied with computers when so many people are dying. How absurd.

This is merely the case of the slave master making a show and spectacle on Christmas eve by giving his slaves one extra loaf of bread in order to better position or image himself as being highly benevolent.

The fact of the matter is that the master could care less about the slaves where the act itself is all about better positioning himself in the public spotlight.

So far with today's media public relations it works fantastically because it can make giant corporate ceo execs look like saints or jesuits.

Starving foreign population being paid $1.00 a day for various forms of back breaking manual labor?

No problem!

Let's build a school that most of the children of that nation will be unable to attend so that it looks like were doing other things there beyond partaking in their massive social exploitation.

Look at us! Were humanitarians! Nevermind our nation and way of life requires the massive exploitation of others.....

Hey look at me, I'm a saint for my good deeds! Please ignore my horrible social inequality track record on my international capitalistic business ventures.

Yay! Now I can brag about how my corporation is so very internationally humanist trying to make a difference in the world where in the meantime everybody can't tell what my other hand is really doing.

This works fantastically!

Meanwhile the populance is so stupid and idiotic to know any better where public relations works very effectively on their account of extreme gullibility.

All that is next is for me to use a minimal amount of environmentally green technology in my factory production assemblies so that I can say that I am a protector of the environment where then I am all set to carry on my more saintly than you attitude everywhere I go as a business exec.

I protect the environment also!

[25% of our production does anyways!]

[Pay no attention to that other 75% as that is a need to know basis where you don't need to know!]

Nothing in excess.

phoneutria wrote:

Nothing in excess.

What do you mean?

In the context of this thread, I mean that too much action with too little thought is bad, but that the opposite is also bad.

phoneutria wrote:

In the context of this thread, I mean that too much action with too little thought is bad, but that the opposite is also bad.

None of it matters. Absolutely none of it.

It's all a dog and pony show that always ends up the same.

It's good for the self.

phoneutria wrote:

It's good for the self.

Can you be any more vague?

without-music wrote:

I was lambasted by a professor today for my attitude of wanting to forgo action at all costs, and privilege theory absolutely. In response, I sent him the following in an e-mail.

The liberal discourse is saturated with an urgency to cut theory short, to put it in its place and act now, for what is theory but the necessary ground for action? We can see this sense of urgency given shape in the outraged cries that “in the time it will take you to read this paragraph, ten children have died of hunger, four women have been raped,” and so on, and so on, and so on. It is precisely this kind of pseudo-urgency that allows us to participate in an impotent, useless brand of theorizing, all the while pointing the blame elsewhere! When I am accused of coldly theorizing while all these poor young children are dying of starvation, I always take immense pleasure in the fact that the person doing the accusing is acting no more than I – what has given them the upper moral ground? Is their theorizing (which is usually no more than a string of hypocritical accusations) making any practical differences? Emphatically not. As an absurd example, Bill Gates recently asked rhetorically, and patronizingly: “What do computers matter when millions are still unnecessarily dying of dysentery?” To take his question seriously, we have to actively ignore the fact that his very brand of corporatism is responsible for producing, reproducing and sustaining conditions that prevent millions from accessing basic health care. Against this kind of hypocritical moral outrage, we might juxtapose what I think might be the only appropriate thing for us to engage ourselves in: critical analysis. Stop the impetus to act blindly and analyze rigorously the systems that are in place, the systems out of which particular instances of tragedy present themselves to our moral consciousness. The point is not to combat on an individual basis each and every instance of tragedy, each case of starving children, of abused wives. This is impossible, ridiculous, and absolutely beside the point. The point is to critically analyze the systems responsible for producing the conditions within which these particular instances manifest themselves. Only then can we hope to do anything worthwhile. As Zizek put it, what we need is an analysis “which offers no clear solution, no practical advice on what to do, and provides no light at the end of the tunnel, since one is well aware that this light might belong to a train crashing toward us…” Of course, expressing this, I am often met with the condescending rhetorical: “Do you mean we should do nothing at all?” “YES! Precisely that,” says Zizek, and I faithfully echo.

I tend to think that humanity has as much a histroy for doing well as doing badly, people just pay more attention to when something bad happens. It is more memorable. But I think the concept of non-action is reasonable, to a degree. But one can take it to an extreme. People need to act less in the sense of trying to change things for others, and consider that others might should be aloud to choose their own change. Yet at the same time it can sometimes be worth taking the more severe action in order to make another's action canceled, and thus balance the sum of action to non-action? Primarily I think people need to start working on conceptualizing less active action. People need to see that often trying to get the bug out of the glass by penching at it forcefully doesn't work... you have to manuever it to the side of the glass where it gets stuck and then you can pull it out...

Too many people see a pit...and people falling in it, and deside to get rid of it by filling it up...but then they dig another hole to do it don't they. So how do you fix the hole then? I would think that if we look at the problem not being the hole but that people are falling into it then we can see that if we fill it by digging dirt from a bunch of really really small holes. Nobody will fall into the really small holes, and thus the problem can be fixed.

THe key to fixing a problem is knowing what it is...and it is really hard to find out what the problem really is. Really hard.

TheJoker wrote:

phoneutria wrote:

It's good for the self.

Can you be any more vague?

You don't need me to think for you.

phoneutria wrote:

In the context of this thread, I mean that too much action with too little thought is bad, but that the opposite is also bad.

I doubt you mean to focus on quantity to the exclusion of quality, but that very issue comes up for me in reaction to the OP. All these intellectual political (potential) activists sitting around deciding not to act (politically) until they have finished? analyzing. Seems a prescription for mental wanking of Guiness Book proportions. So despite my being doubtful you think quantity is the key, the quote above fits with that.

Do you mean to say that I wrote a sloppy sentence? Moi?

phoneutria wrote:

TheJoker wrote:

phoneutria wrote:

It's good for the self.

Can you be any more vague?

You don't need me to think for you.

I suppose.

Quote :

Even after Sade’s time, men of letters still continue to dominate the scene. Romanticism, Lucifer-like, in its rebellion, is really only useful for adventures of the imagination. Like Sade, romanticism is separated from earlier forms of rebellion by its preference for evil and the individual. By putting emphasis on tis powers of defiance and refusal, rebellion, at this stage, forgets its positive content. Since God claims all that is good in man, it is necessary to deride what is good and choose what is evil. Hatred of death and of injustice will lead, therefore, if not to the exercise, at least to the vindication, of evil and murder. – Camus, Albert

With the weak ineffective forms of today's political social activism you might as well do nothing because it achieves the same existence of things.

The world exists the same whether it exists or not.

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Kovacs: Can people actually do nothing? Does this include consumption? their current jobs?

Can you think of any other historical period that is as apathetic and indifferent as this one when it concerns individuals living amongst themselves?

Abstract wrote:

without-music wrote:

I was lambasted by a professor today for my attitude of wanting to forgo action at all costs, and privilege theory absolutely. In response, I sent him the following in an e-mail.

The liberal discourse is saturated with an urgency to cut theory short, to put it in its place and act now, for what is theory but the necessary ground for action? We can see this sense of urgency given shape in the outraged cries that “in the time it will take you to read this paragraph, ten children have died of hunger, four women have been raped,” and so on, and so on, and so on. It is precisely this kind of pseudo-urgency that allows us to participate in an impotent, useless brand of theorizing, all the while pointing the blame elsewhere! When I am accused of coldly theorizing while all these poor young children are dying of starvation, I always take immense pleasure in the fact that the person doing the accusing is acting no more than I – what has given them the upper moral ground? Is their theorizing (which is usually no more than a string of hypocritical accusations) making any practical differences? Emphatically not. As an absurd example, Bill Gates recently asked rhetorically, and patronizingly: “What do computers matter when millions are still unnecessarily dying of dysentery?” To take his question seriously, we have to actively ignore the fact that his very brand of corporatism is responsible for producing, reproducing and sustaining conditions that prevent millions from accessing basic health care. Against this kind of hypocritical moral outrage, we might juxtapose what I think might be the only appropriate thing for us to engage ourselves in: critical analysis. Stop the impetus to act blindly and analyze rigorously the systems that are in place, the systems out of which particular instances of tragedy present themselves to our moral consciousness. The point is not to combat on an individual basis each and every instance of tragedy, each case of starving children, of abused wives. This is impossible, ridiculous, and absolutely beside the point. The point is to critically analyze the systems responsible for producing the conditions within which these particular instances manifest themselves. Only then can we hope to do anything worthwhile. As Zizek put it, what we need is an analysis “which offers no clear solution, no practical advice on what to do, and provides no light at the end of the tunnel, since one is well aware that this light might belong to a train crashing toward us…” Of course, expressing this, I am often met with the condescending rhetorical: “Do you mean we should do nothing at all?” “YES! Precisely that,” says Zizek, and I faithfully echo.

I tend to think that humanity has as much a histroy for doing well as doing badly, people just pay more attention to when something bad happens. It is more memorable. But I think the concept of non-action is reasonable, to a degree. But one can take it to an extreme. People need to act less in the sense of trying to change things for others, and consider that others might should be aloud to choose their own change. Yet at the same time it can sometimes be worth taking the more severe action in order to make another's action canceled, and thus balance the sum of action to non-action? Primarily I think people need to start working on conceptualizing less active action. People need to see that often trying to get the bug out of the glass by penching at it forcefully doesn't work... you have to manuever it to the side of the glass where it gets stuck and then you can pull it out...

Too many people see a pit...and people falling in it, and deside to get rid of it by filling it up...but then they dig another hole to do it don't they. So how do you fix the hole then? I would think that if we look at the problem not being the hole but that people are falling into it then we can see that if we fill it by digging dirt from a bunch of really really small holes. Nobody will fall into the really small holes, and thus the problem can be fixed.

THe key to fixing a problem is knowing what it is...and it is really hard to find out what the problem really is. Really hard.

And, what are these supposed "good" works you perceive humanity has accomplished?

Action:
A product of need.
One acts when one is motivated to act; one acts out of need.

To act is to display your need.

What is need?
Need is the sensation of absence.

I need because I lack.
I breath because I lack oxygen to survive: I eat because my cells lack nutrients to continue; I cook because I am hungry and I am hungry because my body lacks.

The more need, the more dependence.
Independence, power if you will, is the absence of need.
Omnipotence would be the absolute which lacks nothing; it is complete, perfect, whole.

Ergo the most active is the one in most need.

Satyr wrote:

Action:
A product of need.
One acts when one is motivated to act; one acts out of need.

To act is to display your need.

What is need?
Need is the sensation of absence.

I need because I lack.
I breath because I lack oxygen to survive: I eat because my cells lack nutrients to continue; I cook because I am hungry and I am hungry because my body lacks.

The more need, the more dependence.
Independence, power if you will, is the absence of need.
Omnipotence would be the absolute which lacks nothing; it is complete, perfect, whole.

Ergo the most active is the one in most need.

So it's true then, your only "free" when your dead.

Today I drink from the life spring for tomorrow I must die.

See how you must resort to absolutes to mock and to dismiss?

Boy, there is no absolute lack of need...ergo absolute power (omnipotence) is a myth.
There is only degree of power, of independence.
Asceticism can help you sharpen your mind and direct your energies so that you don;'t waste them chasing dreams and social bullshit.

Death can't save you, boy...it is the end of what you call self and so you escape the sensation of existence, not existence itself. Your parts go on and on.

Now, douche-bag, you can sit there and drink yourself silly, day after day and year after year...and it'll be fun for the first ten years...and you can asit there and find pride in fucking some moron on the streets or in fucking, in general, feeling like a "real man" every time...but in the end, boy...you will find none of it will fulfill you. Why/
Because the lack is in you, and no other anything can fill it, because it is also lacking in some way.

What then?
Boy, THAT's when the real lesson begins.
After you've peered into the void and discovered nothing there.

Until then...
Ta, Ta,

Need is a very fluid sensation.

phoneutria wrote:

Need is a very fluid sensation.

No, sweetie, need is the sensation of fluidity.

Learn to think.

I know your looks can get you far enough in this world, as it is governed by looks and superficiality, but if you wish to go further...just for the fuck of it....try harder.

Do it for your daddy...whom I look nothing like.
I suspect, and correct me if I'm wrong, that I also think nothing like him.

TheJoker wrote:

And, what are these supposed "good" works you perceive humanity has accomplished?

Beer.

Satyr wrote:

Action:
A product of need.
One acts when one is motivated to act; one acts out of need.

To act is to display your need.

What is need?
Need is the sensation of absence.

I need because I lack.
I breath because I lack oxygen to survive: I eat because my cells lack nutrients to continue; I cook because I am hungry and I am hungry because my body lacks.

The more need, the more dependence.
Independence, power if you will, is the absence of need.
Omnipotence would be the absolute which lacks nothing; it is complete, perfect, whole.

Ergo the most active is the one in most need.

I don't know that it has much to do with need, it has to do with desire.
One acts because they desire something...sometimes a person desires something because they think they need it.

Can anything really be needed... if one doesn't desire life, then nothing is needed, thus it all is a matter of desire in the first place, isn't it?

So one might think that such means that really the one most active is the one who desires the most... but that is not necessarily true either... really it is just that the person who is most active is the person who desires particular things that require that level of activity.

Satyr wrote:

See how you must resort to absolutes to mock and to dismiss?

Boy, there is no absolute lack of need...ergo absolute power (omnipotence) is a myth.
There is only degree of power, of independence.
Asceticism can help you sharpen your mind and direct your energies so that you don;'t waste them chasing dreams and social bullshit.

Death can't save you, boy...it is the end of what you call self and so you escape the sensation of existence, not existence itself. Your parts go on and on.

Now, douche-bag, you can sit there and drink yourself silly, day after day and year after year...and it'll be fun for the first ten years...and you can asit there and find pride in fucking some moron on the streets or in fucking, in general, feeling like a "real man" every time...but in the end, boy...you will find none of it will fulfill you. Why/
Because the lack is in you, and no other anything can fill it, because it is also lacking in some way.

What then?
Boy, THAT's when the real lesson begins.
After you've peered into the void and discovered nothing there.

Until then...
Ta, Ta,

The use of the word "boy" is such that it will offer resistance to your view point from joker.

Abstract wrote:

Satyr wrote:

Action:
A product of need.
One acts when one is motivated to act; one acts out of need.

To act is to display your need.

What is need?
Need is the sensation of absence.

I need because I lack.
I breath because I lack oxygen to survive: I eat because my cells lack nutrients to continue; I cook because I am hungry and I am hungry because my body lacks.

The more need, the more dependence.
Independence, power if you will, is the absence of need.
Omnipotence would be the absolute which lacks nothing; it is complete, perfect, whole.

Ergo the most active is the one in most need.

I don't know that it has much to do with need, it has to do with desire.
One acts because they desire something...sometimes a person desires something because they think they need it.

Can anything really be needed... if one doesn't desire life, then nothing is needed, thus it all is a matter of desire in the first place, isn't it?

So one might think that such means that really the one most active is the one who desires the most... but that is not necessarily true either... really it is just that the person who is most active is the person who desires particular things that require that level of activity.

You play with semantics, knowing exactly, what is being said.
Use any word makes you feel comfortable.

Abstract wrote:

The use of the word "boy" is such that it will offer resistance to your view point from joker.

And YOUR point is?

You think I seek for easy converts. Then I would tell them what they want to think and what satisfies their personal needs.
This shit is easy for me.

Such creatures can stay where they are, as they are, facing a world that will fuck them upside down and sideways.
Who cares?


They should stay away...and this is my method of keeping them away.