a little too obvious
I was really amazed to read the reports of Iran's president saying Israel should be "wiped off the map." He defended his statements today saying, "My words were the Iranian nation's words. Westerners are free to comment, but their reactions are invalid."
Ask Saddam about how invalid our reactions are.
Most Westerners have known for years that Iran was loaded with religious zealouts and political imbeciles, but I really wasn't prepared to hear such an open admission of idiocy from the President, of all people. As it so happens, for years now the government has been organizing ralleys and protests every year at the end of Ramdan to "show solidarity with the Palestinian struggle" by chanting "death to Israel" and burning their flag.
Existing as a respected nation in the modern world means not saying things like, "you're stupid and I hate you and I wish you were dead" to other countries, especially not when you're openly pursuing the development of nuclear weapons. That's called "showing your hand", that's called "being too obvious." Why not keep your terrorist intentions on the dl? It seems doubly ludicrous with the United States, Israel's strongest ally, working in your backyard to rebuild the mess they left in the wake of obliterating the regieme of that other totalitarian idiot.
It's also worth noting that these are not the words of many Iranians. As Standingout covered earlier this year, the election was a close one, and this president's victory looked about as honest as a Mafia pancake breakfast.
Keep talking, Mr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. We're listening, and when we react, we'll see if it's worth your attention.
posted by RJ @ 1:16 PM
24 comments
24 Comments:
We need to get those Tehran students laptops, iPods, blogs, power bars, Starbucks, and golf like yesterday.
Check out http://regimechangeiran.blogspot.com for first hand accounts of whats going on in Iran as well as links to other Iran-related (and some Iranian produced) blogs and web-content.
I agree with Chalres. Mac and crap for everyone!
Um, you can go ahead and change the title of my link now...I really dare you to actually.
I think situations like this prove the need for an empowered CIA. I don't think the course of action is to topple Iran from the outside, but to weaken it internally and make it easier for Starbucks drinking students to change the course of their own country. Whether that involves smuggling in resistance money or resistance Ipods, I'm not sure.
Charles, I am always a little unclear about your argument when you bring up Starbucks as the means of regime change. Why do we have to ruin culture through corporate capitalism to fight repressive regimes?
I think his point is that one of the easiest ways to induce regime change is to make citizens aware of the oppression (economic, political, what have you)heaped on them as opposed to the free world. People don't respond to absolutes, only relatives. If we show the power of free economics that allows you to pay five dollars to put ice in your coffee instead of scraping by with dirt in your camel milk, then people will be too busy sating their caffeine addictions to participate in the daily jew hunt. More or less..
Well, it may be the easiest, but is it right?
I'll leave ethics to you J. Morgan, but I would say that the success of corporations like these in the free world has more to do with fulfilling a need (or want) inherent to the human condition (quick easy food, portable music, free expression) than any form of exploitation. Is it right? I don't know, but I don't see anything WRONG with it.
Jackscolon stated that, “I would say that the success of corporations like these in the free world has more to do with fulfilling a need (or want) inherent to the human condition (quick easy food, portable music, free expression) than any form of exploitation.”
I would like to respond to that in itself. Hopefully, via implications of the trajectory of my response, this can serve as a comment on the point of this thread in the first place and on Charles’s contention. So, my response:
Yes and no. It isn’t exploitation in the sense that corporations set up power structures and then brainwash potential consumers into craving their product against their will. There is a real, felt need for quick, easy food, portable music, free expression, and delicious coffee treats among those who freely consume them. Nobody, in this sense, is tricking anybody. People really do want Starbucks and Starbucks really does meet that want without coercion.
I would argue, however, that these aren’t needs or wants that are “inherent to the human condition.” The needs and wants are constructed by societal processes, just like “the human condition,” human identity, moral creeds, boundaries, etc. are also. Phenomenologically, there is no such thing as “the human condition” – or even “the human” - apart from the meaning that is constructed and legitimated in society. As a result, the human condition, individual identity, one’s relation to one’s physical body, etc. are all quite fluid. These continually-negotiated concepts are caught in a feedback loop of individual self-conception and self-definition and environmental, societal, and cultural conception and definition.
So, in so far as we are static, self-defined selves whose interactions with our environment, society, and culture don’t shape that very self, the simplistic explanations that corporation merely provide a service or good that potential or actual consumers want or need is true. However, there is more going on. By interacting, consuming, listening, etc., we are continually reshaped as subjectivities. Our self in redefined and reconceptualized.
As a result, the market is a force of redefinition. By providing new - and recasting old categories, our understanding of our selves, wants, needs, motivations, inclinations, goals, beliefs, morals, etc. are continually redefined. In as much as corporations knowingly manipulate this reality to their own material advantage, then there is exploitation at the most basic level. I would argue – as T.J. Jackson Lears has in “From Salvation to Self-Realization” – that the entire concept of modern advertising, marketing, and product development is fundamentally rooted in this very sort of exploitation in a very self-conscious way.
Yes! I've been waiting for one of those J. Morgan responses on a non-religious topic for like three weeks...
A couple of questions:
"The needs and wants are constructed by societal processes, just like “the human condition,” human identity, moral creeds, boundaries, etc. are also."
Am I correct in assuming that this is, at least to some extent, a denial of absolutes about the human condition?
If so, it seems to me that it would be almost impossible to assign a "right" or "wrong" quotient (going back to your statement that this "ruins culture") to this "exploitation at the most basic level," unless you assumed that the previous state of humanity was more natural or "right". Since humanity's self conception is so "fluid", are the assumed needs that corporate America addresses merely fads, whereas a nation's previous culture reflects a more enduring, concrete truth?
jackscolon:
“Am I correct in assuming that this is, at least to some extent, a denial of absolutes about the human condition?”
Yeah, to a degree. I am not sure how far I would take it, but I think I am rejecting the naive, positivist position that everything – particularly one’s self - can be taken at face value or understood apart from society, culture, language, etc. That is not say that there is no objective reality, it is just to say that, phenomenologically, nothing is necessarily (in the true sense of that word) a constant or given.
“If so, it seems to me that it would be almost impossible to assign a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ quotient (going back to your statement that this "ruins culture") to this ‘exploitation at the most basic level,’ unless you assumed that the previous state of humanity was more natural or ‘right’.”
Well, I don’t want to assume anything here, but I think there is something “more right” about early cultural environments, at least with regard to meaning, identity, authority, truth, and purpose. Life was materially horrible until about 200 years ago, but was never lacking in any of these areas.
I would say, then, that “right” and “wrong” judgments about Starbucks in Iran is impossible in the positivist sense that I rejected above. See my next comments for the sense in which we may be able to make those judgments, however.
“Since humanity's self conception is so "fluid", are the assumed needs that corporate America addresses merely fads, whereas a nation's previous culture reflects a more enduring, concrete truth?”
Um, not exactly. Bear with me while I try to explain how I can make the judgments I make and why I make them.
Michel Foucault spent nearly all day and night in the gay bathhouses of San Francisco during the last years of his life. When asked about life there, he said that it is “important that sexuality is able to function as it functions in the bathhouses. You meet men there who are to you as you are to them: nothing, but a body with which combinations and productions of pleasure are possible. You cease to be imprisoned in your own face, in your own past, in your own identity.” He spent his time there playing a little game with himself: he would see how many men he could knowingly infect with HIV/AIDS during the day. In so doing, he was being a perfectly consistent Modern; he was living out Nietzsche’s call, “to become what one is.”
If I am right that identity – what one is – and culture are in continual symbiosis, then we now have a starting point in Foucault’s biography for making some judgments.
So, I will make these judgments on four levels:
Existential – Modernity has proved unprecedentedly valuable in material provision, but has failed to keep every single promise it has made about meaning, identity, authority, truth, and purpose. Excluding the material, then, why would anyone want - by the standards of Modernity - to live by the dictates of Modernity (feel free to reread my mini-biography of Foucault at this point)?
Functional – Those aspects of Modernity that are most valued by most people – the material, the comfortable, the secure, the hopeful, the actionable, etc. become impossible to sustain or further as soon as the full implications of Modernity are felt with regard to meaning, identity, authority, truth, and purpose. Society - particularly its institutions and structures larger than the self - becomes impossible.
Self-referential – Modern identity and culture is unsustainable and fails by its own criteria with regard to meaning. Internal to itself, it does not have the resources to justify, legitimate, and sustain those things that are considered goods. Modernity, then, collapses under its own weight. It is a hollow shell – all the time getting thinner - of claims about the world and the human agents who inhabited. Since the core is as least as shifty as Foucault lived it out, then the shell cannot be supported from within.
Historio-critical – Modernity – and to a great degree, Foucault himself – has provided a method of historical investigation that understands all value claims of the past as a)contingent on the circumstances under which they were articulated and b) inherited from some previous generation of value claim-makers. This has been a very convincing method of both undermining and validating the claims of the past because it is so thoroughly Modern in its sensibilities. When this method is turned on Modernity itself, however, we begin to understand that Modernity is nothing more than the end of a cultural logic that was set into motion several generations ago. Its value-claims – on which, among everything else, this method of investigation is based – are historically contingent. As such, Modernity’s investigation of the past is rendered impotent. The entire project of historio-critical investigation collapses, taking with it Modernity itself. When the rubble is cleared, we are left with only the pre-Modern. While we are outside of this – and so can only make speculative claims at this time – we can reasonably infer that from this vantage point, a great deal more work can be done in the realm of value claim-making.
All this is to say that Modernity is a failed project. The market, particularly the form of the market that we know today, is an integral part in Modernity. In fact, the market as we currently know it is only possible within Modernity. It is, at most, the distillation of everything Modernity believes and, at least, incapable of providing anything beyond Modernity itself. It seems to me, then, that there are at least three compelling and completely consistent ways of making “right” and “wrong” judgments from inside our current circumstances (the Existential, the Functional, and the Self-Referential) and at least one compelling and completely consistent – although only speculative at this point – way from outside (the Historio-critical).
As such, I think there are some very compelling reasons that my claim that the introduction of corporate capitalism in Iran would ruin culture is justifiable as right despite my “denial of absolutes” as you call it.
j. morgan, correct me if this is an accurate summary of your statement last comment:
modernity, while quite benefically at providing for material needs, leads to nihilism, making the life of the soul impossible.
Your argument then is that Starbucks, while filling a very desirable need, is a product of our form of market, which is itself a product of modernity, which destroys the soul. So Starbucks is in some respects bad because it destroys our ability to "really live."
While I'm in a bit over my head here, it seems like all of your analysis still leads back to some very modern-sounding assumptions about life, society and individuals, namely your criterion for possible and impossible societies, the value of life and the soul, the notion that a inconsistent system of logic is worse than a consistent one, etc. I'll absolutely agree that our notion of the self and the individual and identity are hard to separate from our culture and surroundings, but I can't agree with you that this sums up the whole of what we call "the human condition." I still see enough evidence to justify some a priori set of conditions that we're all assuming and living under and, to some extent, a group of undesirable facets of our being that we're struggling with to one end or another. I'd call this the human condition, and whether it becomes "the social condition" when 2 or more of us are gathered or not does not negate it's existance.
j. morgan, correct me if this is an accurate summary of your statement last comment:
”modernity, while quite beneficially at providing for material needs, leads to nihilism, making the life of the soul impossible.”
Well, yes, but it is more than that. First of all, I wouldn’t say that it leads to nihilism; I would say that it IS nihilism in the truest sense. Secondly, I would say that it is not so much individual – although it is certainly that, too – as much as it is societal. Not only is the life of the soul impossible, then, but the body, the mind, community, society, culture, belief, etc. are all made impossible. Literally NOTHING is possible in Modernity because EVERYTHING is possible (I sort of lifted that from Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov).
“Your argument then is that Starbucks, while filling a very desirable need, is a product of our form of market, which is itself a product of modernity, which destroys the soul. So Starbucks is in some respects bad because it destroys our ability to ‘really live.’”
My argument is that, at minimum, the market – an institution that can only operate within the bounds of Modernity – cannot provide anything beyond Modernity and, at most, the market is the fullest institutional expression of Modernism, providing a full and distilled dose of what can be found in all the other aspects of Modernity. Either way, it destroys everything.
As for the specifics, though, I would argue that needs and wants as categories are continually negotiated between provider and consumer in the context of the market. I would add that the consciousness of lacking is necessarily negotiated in the process, often as a byproduct. As such, needs and wants are both constructed (and, in that sense, are totally negotiable) and real (in the phenomenological sense). So, in the case of Starbucks, in “filling” a need, they also create a need.
Therefore, I would think that the introduction of agents of the market into new territory is also introducing the full extent of Modernity into that territory. And with that comes the process of negotiation that I outlined above.
”...it seems like all of your analysis still leads back to some very modern-sounding assumptions about life, society and individuals, namely your criterion for possible and impossible societies, the value of life and the soul, the notion that a inconsistent system of logic is worse than a consistent one, etc.”
Well, the assumptions aren’t necessarily mine. Rather, they are the assumptions imbedded in and central to Modernity. My point is simply that the dictates of Modernity fail to meet the standards of Modernity. In such a system, it is literally impossible for anything to be possible.
“I'll absolutely agree that our notion of the self and the individual and identity are hard to separate from our culture and surroundings, but I can't agree with you that this sums up the whole of what we call ‘the human condition.’ I still see enough evidence to justify some a priori set of conditions that we're all assuming and living under and, to some extent, a group of undesirable facets of our being that we're struggling with to one end or another.”
Well, I would be interested in knowing what that evidence is. My point wasn’t that “our notion of the self... [is] hard to separate from our culture...;” it was that there is no such thing as the self apart from culture, society, language, negotiation, etc.
“I'd call this the human condition, and whether it becomes "the social condition" when 2 or more of us are gathered or not does not negate it's existence.”
My point was that the human condition doesn’t exist apart from the social condition precisely because “the human” doesn’t exist apart from the social condition. There literally is no self, no individual, no “me” apart from society, culture, language, beliefs, values, norms, etc. Having the correct society and culture, then, is of vital importance because, in so far as the self does it exist, it is only constructible with the resources available in culture.
Now, that is not to say that there isn’t an objective, hard-and-fast reality apart from culture, it is just that it has no embedded meaning. So, homo sapiens, as a biological organism, surely exist apart from culture, but there is no consciousness, no self, no identity - in short, no “me” – in, attached, or associated with that organism. Something as basic as interiority itself is only possible in society through language.
Good Lord, I didn't know my tongue-in-cheek comment about regime change would set off such a debate, touching the very roots of the human condition!
Let me first state my non-humorous point: regime change should come from the inside, a la 1989 East Germany, and not from the outside, a la the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the US. That corporate culture often accompanies regime change is incidental to my argument. So I'd have to disagree with both j. morgan AND jackscolon.
Now, to the current discussion:
The first thing I have to take issue with is this overstatement by j. morg:
There is something “more right” about early cultural environments, at least with regard to meaning, identity, authority, truth, and purpose. Life was materially horrible until about 200 years ago, but was never lacking in any of these areas.
You don't really mean that, do you? If you want to say "don't take this at face value, charles, I was exaggerating for the sake of argument," then I'll back off, because I can't believe that you really think that "life," whatever that is, was NEVER lacking "meaning, identity, authority, truth, and purpose" until 200 years ago and the Industrial Revolution. I think plenty of people lacked those things, even if they didn't question them as much as people do (rightly) today. I might have to give you authority and truth, but it was BAD that authority and truth were so prevalent, as they were forced down people's throats by whatever institution or empire was currently in charge. I could never let you get away with saying that something as subjective as meaning was never lacking in anyone's life before the 19th century and the advent of modernity.
Your critique of modern corporate culture, to summarize, basically says that corporations insidiously create needs even as they pretend merely to meet pre-existing needs. This critique could stand by itself and does not need the above weirdness as support.
I also agree with you that modernity as project was a failure.
You don't want to free Iran and ruin Iranian culture by Americanizing it, but an Americanized Iran is better than a fascist, fundamentalist Iran, right?
Charles:
“You don't really mean that, do you?”
Yeah, I think I do. Let me try to explain via my responses to some of your critiques.
“I can't believe that you really think that ’life,’ whatever that is, was NEVER lacking ‘meaning, identity, authority, truth, and purpose’ until 200 years ago and the Industrial Revolution. I think plenty of people lacked those things, even if they didn't question them as much as people do (rightly) today.”
You are absolutely right to draw attention to the word “life.” That is the pivotal part of my – and your – argument. Let me be clear: my argument is not that there was never a case of an individual who lacked meaning, identity, authority, truth, and purpose. To be sure, St. Augustine wrestles with most, if not all of these issues. My argument is that society, culture, and individual consciousness was not lacking any of these things. Identity crises, nihilisms, meaninglessness, the “unbearable lightness of being” were nearly impossible before Modernity. Augustine was a remarkable exception, certainly not typical of and mostly unintelligible by other intellectuals of his time, let alone common people.
Why do I say that it was nearly impossible? I saw that because human consciousness is dependent on language and the culture that constructs and legitimates that language. In other words, one could not even conceive of certain doubts before Modernity because one didn’t have any way of doing so; language and culture did not allow that as a possible subjective posture (in the same way that Americans 100 years ago didn’t have any way of wanting the Internet because it was simply not part of the horizons of their consciousness).
Now, I qualify that with “nearly” because, if one were incredibly aware of the whole of culture, extremely well educated in the history of the world, and skilled in the understanding and use of language, it would be possible. Even among those who were very well educated though, this was, for the most part, impossible because it was so removed from their consciousness. Literally, there were only a handful of people before Modernity who were able to follow the cultural logic of their present centuries forward to enable doubt.
So, I literally think that people were unable to lack those things, let alone question them. It just wasn’t a part of their consciousness or their context.
“I might have to give you authority and truth, but it was BAD that authority and truth were so prevalent, as they were forced down people's throats by whatever institution or empire was currently in charge.”
I completely disagree. Nothing was forced down anybody’s throat in the past with regard to meaning, identity, authority, truth, and purpose in the same way that half-caf, triple soy lattes aren’t forced down anybody’s throat now. The horizons of existence are created, furthered, and sustained through continual negotiation. To a liberal (and I don’t mean that politically), 21st century mind, absolute authority and truth could only be part of human consciousness through naiveté or, as your suggest, force. That has not always been the case. The terms of existence and the experience of reality were so radically different that your claim about the culture and consciousness of authority and truth in the past are completely meaningless.
“Your critique of modern corporate culture, to summarize, basically says that corporations insidiously create needs even as they pretend merely to meet pre-existing needs. This critique could stand by itself and does not need the above weirdness as support.”
No, that isn’t my argument. I don’t think it is insidious, I think it is inevitable. Corporations aren’t tricking people; they are changing people and the terms by which they exist. And, in so far as that inevitability is because the market and the corporations that act in it are inextricable from Modernity itself, it cannot stand on its own (or at least cannot be judged in such a state).
“You don't want to free Iran and ruin Iranian culture by Americanizing it, but an Americanized Iran is better than a fascist, fundamentalist Iran, right?”
That is a complicated question. Iranians, at least many of them, are already Americanized (or, more precisely, Modernized). Iran is “fascist” and “fundamentalist” – in both the way it is experienced and in the way it is valued by Modernized Iranians/Modernized Americans - because the society, culture, and institutions aren’t Americanized (or, more precisely, Modernized). The conflicted between these two causes lots of problems, but not the Iranian state model as such. An “Americanized Iran” is better than the current situation in Iran, but is probably not better than a thoroughly pre-Modern Iran.
j. morgan:
I see a little more clearly what you're saying, and I agree with parts and don't agree with other parts.
I do think that life before 1800 was such that most of the problems of modernity were not accessible to people, who mostly had to struggle to get by. Depression; mid-life crises; nihilism; relativism; etc. were not Jamesian "genuine options" for most people. Augustine, as you correctly assert, was an exception, as was Pascal, who is my candidate for the father of post-modernism. Let me know if we are now agreed on this part.
HOWEVER, I still don't think this makes your original point by itself, and you weaken the strength of your original case by bringing in a new word that occurs just twice in this whole thread, both times in your most recent comment: DOUBT. If you were to change what you said to something like
"Modern or post-modern conceptions of meaning, truth, authority, identity, purpose and doubt were not as accessible to pre-1800 people because of their cultural circumstances"
which we could call j. morgan prime, I could get all the way on board. If you insist on your original, strengthened point, I wish merely to note my dissent and move on to other matters, like this:
"Nothing was forced down anybody’s throat in the past with regard to meaning, identity, authority, truth, and purpose."
That is manifestly not the case. The scientific climate, for example, or pseudo-scientific climate, was dominated by the church during the middle ages. That Cardinal Bellarmine was asked to settle the controversy between Galileo and his foes is proof of this. Thus, we need to modify another point of yours; this one:
"The horizons of existence are created, furthered, and sustained through continual negotiation"
to
"Most of the time, the horizons of existence are created, furthered, and sustained through continual negotiation."
Other times, they're broken, distorted, and forced down people's throats, as in medieval, totalitarian, and fascist societies, where there is no "negotation."
"Corporations aren’t tricking people; they are changing people and the terms by which they exist."
Aren't they doing both?
"An “Americanized Iran” is better than the current situation in Iran, but is probably not better than a thoroughly pre-Modern Iran."
I can give you that. Look, I don't want to Starbucks-ize Iran; I merely want a revolution from the inside that takes the power away from the mullahs. To get a little historical, we might both agree that Iran was on this path in the 1950s under Mossadegh; unfortunately, the US derailed this train by installing the Shah, who in turn made the ascent of the fundamentalists possible.
This is getting rather advanced, but I'll try to say a few things before this whole conversation screams "past the horizon of my consciousness."
First, I agree that language limits thinking. However, I don't agree that just because previous cultures couldn't voice certain opinions doesn't mean they don't exist. Eskimos have more words for snow than we do, but just because I can't tell the difference in the snows doesn't mean that I can't experience them without cognisance. I would assume that many earlier people felt the same way about doubt, meaning of life, etc... Just because an illiterate goatherder didn't have the education or language to express deep discontent in the current state of life doesn't mean that he was unable to be unhappy with it or get the feeling that something was missing. Ignorance isn't bliss.
(Since I'm over my head going deeper can't hurt)- I'd liken this to the anecdotal evidence I've heard of people feeling empty or incomplete before finding religion. Many couldn't sit down and spell out what was wrong, they just felt unfulfilled and experienced a "longing" for something more. In the same way, some pre-modern slave to the caliphate can't define the US Constitution, but I'm sure plenty of them desired freedom.
With your internet analogy, sure people couldn't dream up computers, but I'm sure plenty of people sat back and said, "I wish their was a way for instant communication, I'd like to talk to my mom two towns over while I churn this butter."
I would also argue that an Americanized Iran is better than a pre-modern Iran. I think a large portion of the success of nations is their ability to align governmental policy to meet INHERENT needs and demands of the populace. I think the desire for economic, political, religious, and expressive freedom comes pre-built into the human animal and isn't a result of some campaign saying "Question everything, obey nothing" (to be overly dramatic).
Will I agree that there are parts of modernity that don't lend well to eternal truth? Sure, I'll go with the Richard Weaver idea that the middle class' pursuit of comfort and security doesn't lend itself well to deciphering the meaning of life, but I think that it is better to be free and capitalist, than enslaved and ignorant.
and Michel Foucault is the anti-christ, there I said it.
(I had to write this quick at work, so after J. Morgan shreds it to pieces I'll rebuild it better.)
You know what, just ignore everything after the internet analogy paragraph there. It gets a little disjointed and I don't think it conveys what I mean very well...
except for the Foucault part, he is still the anti-christ.
Charles:
“Depression; mid-life crises; nihilism; relativism; etc. were not Jamesian ‘genuine options’ for most people.”
Yeah, I think that is in some ways what I am arguing. I do want to hedge, however, a bit in two directions.
First, I don’t mean to imply that if peasants in the 14th century could just stop being bound to feudal lands or dying of plague for a few minutes and get a decent education and some time for reflection that all of the above would then be possible. It isn’t just that material circumstances limited horizons of consciousness for them, it was the nature of consciousness itself. In other words, “being human” in the 14th century was actually different in terms of what that entails than it is now in the 21st century.
Second, and related, I don’t know if I like the language of “genuine option.” In as much as I understand and have sketchily read James, he uses that language to describe adjudication between hypotheses. In other words, “genuine options” require options in the first place. What I am trying to stress is that humans, for the most part, couldn’t conceive of options in the first place with regard to meaning, identity, authority, truth, and purpose.
As an aside, I like your candidate for the “Progenitor of Postmodernity.”
“I still don't think this makes your original point by itself, and you weaken the strength of your original case by bringing in a new word that occurs just twice in this whole thread, both times in your most recent comment: DOUBT.”
Yeah, I really didn’t want to do that, but I didn’t have any other way to say what I wanted. I guess I see doubt as a form of authority more than I do a questioning or rejection of authority. Doubt is impossible in so far as there are no competing authorities that one could imagine.
I also, in your formulation of j. morgan prime, don’t like the way you attribute this to “their cultural circumstances.” Technically, I would agree with that, but my whole point was that “cultural circumstances” and “who we are” are inseparable from each other. In as much as you are stressing one side of the dialectic while I stress the other, I suppose that is a fine formulation. In as much as this is offered in opposition to my point, however, I cannot accept it.
“The scientific climate, for example, or pseudo-scientific climate, was dominated by the church during the middle ages. That Cardinal Bellarmine was asked to settle the controversy between Galileo and his foes is proof of this.” Thus... “’Most of the time, the horizons of existence are created, furthered, and sustained through continual negotiation.’ Other times, they're broken, distorted, and forced down people's throats, as in medieval, totalitarian, and fascist societies, where there is no ‘negotation.’”
I am not sure I understand your example above. How exactly is this an example of sometime being forced down someone’s throat?
Secondly – and maybe this is just picking at nits – I completely object to your labels “totalitarian” and “fascist.” They are completely meaningless when we are talking about medieval society. In labeling it that way, I take it that you are trying to convey something about the character of the medieval world. I just don’t think that you can do that by any terms other than those of that world itself.
Finally, let me clarify what I mean by “negotiate” and “negotiation.”
I DO NOT mean “negotiate” in the sense of “conferring with another or others in order to come to terms or reach an agreement.” I don’t think this is like the Teamsters sitting down with the Management. I don’t mean this by “negotiation” because I think that, due to the sheer lack of options, this was a impossibility.
I mean to be getting at something like the nature of options; more like “succeeding in accomplishing or managing” reality. What it means to be a conscious self is continually navigated or maneuvered or negotiated with the culture in which that self is constructed, as vice versa.
In other words, the negotiation is not going on between competing sources or forms of meaning, identity, authority, truth, and purpose, but between “culture” and “self.”
“Aren't they doing both?”
Not in so far as reality and self are symbiotic.
“Look, I don't want to Starbucks-ize Iran; I merely want a revolution from the inside that takes the power away from the mullahs.”
Look, I am with you that I want a revolution from inside Iran. I just don’t want anyone to think that the result is a wholesale victory. Given a long view, it is probably a total loss, but it at least solves some immediate problems.
Just a question, though: If we want power taken away from the mullahs, then with whom do you propose it be invested?
Jackscolon:
First of all, I am not going to shred this because it is really good. Secondly, I am with you about Foucault: he is freakin’ brilliant and blind, imaginative and myopic, brave and cowardice all at once, just as an Anti-Christ ought to be.
That said, I do want to respond to a few things:
“Eskimos have more words for snow than we do, but just because I can't tell the difference in the snows doesn't mean that I can't experience them without cognizance.”
I don’t disagree with you, but I want you to realize that this assumes that both you and the Eskimo have conceptions or experiences of snow in the first place. In the second place, cognizance of difference is in itself meaningless. It requires culture and language before that observations of empirically different types of snow have any significance, meaning, etc. Really, though, all I am trying to get you to realize is how much even your hypothetical is reliant on deep assumptions about meaning, identity, authority, truth, and purpose. To some degree, as soon as you start interacting with snow flakes and differentiating, you are constructing. That is all I am arguing.
Now, we can further debate about whether or not these deep assumptions are intrinsic to the biological organisms called Homo Sapiens. I don’t think they are, but I am open to the possibility.
“I would assume that many earlier people felt the same way about doubt, meaning of life, etc... Just because an illiterate goat herder didn't have the education or language to express deep discontent in the current state of life doesn't mean that he was unable to be unhappy with it or get the feeling that something was missing. Ignorance isn't bliss.”
“felt” “doubt” “meaning of life” “express” “discontent” “feelings”
These are completely inconceivable and unintelligible to the 14th century mind, not just as words, but as concepts or realities. My argument is that being able to feel or think in all these ways assumes interiority, which has not always existed. Just as interiority is not attributable to a tree, so it was not attributable to humans in the 14th century; with a very few, very notable exceptions.
“...sure people couldn't dream up computers, but I'm sure plenty of people sat back and said, ‘I wish their was a way for instant communication, I'd like to talk to my mom two towns over while I churn this butter.’”
I don’t think they could. Even abstracting “communication” was probably impossible for the majority of them. The human ability to abstract and the variety of similar tangibles or tangibles with similar functions are directly and proportionately correlated. Communication was not a category but an action before Modernity.
To what extent, j. morgan, is your particularly incisive brand of desconstructionism the product of modernity?
I'd argue, in your same line of reasoning, that it wasn't until modernity arrived on the scene that people were given the skills required to assess it, such as inductive and deductive reason, reliance on logic, circumstantial and cultural analysis, etc. The pre-moderns couldn't face the problems of modernity, but they could face the problems of pre-modernity, and this lead to modernity proper. Modernity in turn honed the tools required to spell out it's own shortcomings, which you've spelled out brilliantly in the last several posts.
Furthermore, if enhanced forms of "meaning, authority, truth", etc., were inherent in modernity, and not absences struggled with by most pre-moderns, I think it's disingenuous to speak as if they enjoyed these aspects of their culture. Certainly they did, but largely taking them for granted. This helped lead to the development of modernity, since efforts to retain such elements of culture were lost, and is very akin to what it sounds like you'd like to do. You're not cutting modernity any slack here, and sound like you'd be all for losing bathwater and baby both. Modernity has made huge strides forward, especially in the realm of material benefit, for human society, and though I'm far more poorly equipped than you to argue it's merit, I think it's a mistake to advocate the restoration of pre-modernity wholesale.
I think it's unjust to speak of modernity as a "failed project." It's as failed now as pre-modernity was, but it's given us the tools to develop better systems. I think we should actively promote the re-institution of pre-modern graces and the exclusion of modern failings, but not act as if either were perfect systems of being.
Sorry if I'm leaving anything out - I have to go. J. Morgan, if you'd like, email me a cogent summary of your position here, I'd be happy to re-post it as another independent post to keep this thread going and more bearable. Specifically, relate it to the market, why it's inherent in modernity, and why modernity is failed. Or we could move to something else, but I for one am finding this quite fascinating.
I had to cut the last post short because my wife was berating me to feed the dog. I think it's a good example of modernity's short comings that she can't see why it's of as much material and spiritual benefit for me to have 5 more minutes to think and formulate my thoughts on this facet of life's meaning as performing whatever task she has in mind at the time. Specifically, I think this shows how modernity has totally destroyed a healthy conception of marriage. Just kidding, but seriously, we should probably all be mormons.
"Shut up and make babies - we've got a whole planet to populate!"
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