by Narkissos 29 Replies latest jw friends
I think you have curiosity combimed with a healthy dose of self-doubt, which is no bad thing. It's a shame we only get half an hour to edit now isn't it? I could have deleted my post before Narkissos saw it. |
Your post was honest and direct. I'm glad you didn't get an opportunity to delete it.
slimboyfat
I'll be briefer than you (I think) but I appreciate the time you have taken to express your reactions and thoughts.
If memory serves, I once told you half-jokingly that you seem to be striving after the goal of consistent nihilism (or something to that effect), which is a heroic but untenable posture imo (as Camus writes about "being a saint without God"). I would add today that along with this consistency you seem to expect something it cannot offer: authority, or at least a right to speak (or write) your mind. Or mine, for that matter.
I don't see things that way -- if I happen to be "amused" or "irritated" at something I can express that feeling -- or not. If I feel like trying to understand what it is about I can just do so, in a tentative, non-authoritative way (that's what I meant to do in that particular case, I thought I made it clear right away but perhaps I might have made it even clearer), and offer this for discussion. So can you, and everybody else of course. Btw, if I feel like wondering about my feelings about it in a more reflexive way I can equally do so -- I happen to do that sometimes, too!
Similarly pointing to posters by name or not I regard as a matter of choice, which I feel no need to justify. If you regard this as unethical, or if others have no idea of what I'm talking about, so be it: I simply suffer the consequences of my choice in communication...
I don't exactly agree with your summary of my "perspective". For instance, I don't regard any "conspiracy theory" as not worthy to be tackled on its own terms. To the contrary, I think it is very useful for everyone that specialists of related fields engage in the painful task of detailed discussion; I have not avoided lengthy debates on (other) topics I happen to know something about. But here I simply express my feelings and reflexion as anybody sitting in the audience. (Btw I don't think they are limited to "right-wing" affinities either, although I seem to observe that they lean rather that way lately.)
I very much agree that all "understandings" of "reality" are constructions. That doesn't make them conspiracy theories: I think your metaphorical use (which is a literal misuse) of that term in characterising all theories is deliberately provocative, but it may be worth making that clear. A conspiracy involves a hidden and conscious agreement of wills, persons and/or organisations (political, religious, economical leaders, Jews, Freemasons, "Illuminati," aliens, angels, demons...) to make sense of it. More importantly, conspiracy theories tend to ignore or minimise "chance" and "coincidence," which other theories don't. This as and of itself doesn't make them false, of course: there have been conspiracies in history. But the current thriving of this paradigm on the worldview market is a notable phenomenon I think.
More generally (in the line of previous discussions), I don't think forsaking the ideal of comprehensive "truth" must reduce us to silence. If conceptual tools and patterns of intelligibility are made rather than found or revealed, why not share in the making, along and against others? And if in the process we happen to "laugh at ourselves," as you put it, that may be a very helpful by-product of the experience...
I was reading about Derrida's ideas about democracy and messianicity without messianism. Very interesting. Does that form any part of what you mean when you say "symptom" before it is figured out.
Hmm... no, I can't see any direct connection.
Derrida's "messianicity without messianism" would rather be similar to Lacan's understanding of symbolism which rests on a radical openness to the "Other" -- minus the capital, because to Derrida the "other" is not an empty placeholder nor a Father figure as in Lacan but "the other person" (much like Lévinas' autrui).
Lacan's real (aka the "symptom") is that which we "stumble across" in a very basic sense, with the insistence of repetition, before we can name it (symbolic order) and figure it out (imaginary order).
One possible connection is that Derrida's "other", being a real "other," meets us in a "symptomatic" way too...
But in spite of a general familiarity those are quite different thinkings, oriented to different fields (philosophy and psychoanalysis, although quite original in both), so that term-to-term correspondence is out of the question.
thanks narkissos, I don't know anything about Lacan and a little about Derrida and was fascinated by what he had to say about messianicity. I didn't mean in connection with Lacan but I see now that the context of your discussion on symptoms with slim was to do with Lacan.
Thank you Narkissos for that response.
I agree with you that naming who you were talking about or not is a personal choice and there is no way of determining whether one way or another is more "ethical". It felt right for me to take a certain stance on that earlier. Now I look back on it in light of what you say and it looks silly. It is often the way. You are also right it is good to be able to laugh at ourselves.
You confirm that much of my reaction to your post is based on my own reading rather than what you feel you put into the post to start with. I acknowledged this possibility. I can see what you are saying about those with special knowledge of those areas concerned more fruitfully getting engaged in conspiracy debates. However I also liked your earlier formulation: "I'm not trying to refute conspiracy theories because (1) I think they are already doing a good job at refuting each other"; which I took to mean that conspiracy theories tend to refute themselves anyway by holding mutually exclusive assumptions about the world. Maybe I misread that though.
I don't agree with your attempt again to make a clear distinction between conspiracy thinking and other forms of making sense of the world. You say conspiracy theories ignore chance and coincidence which other theories don't. But I can't agree with that. The process of developing a theory always involves smoothing over the element of chance and coincidence. Even the most austere empiricism does this to some extent. At most there is a difference of degree not of kind. For example the protestant movement and the rise of capitalism is what happened in history. (But without the words to describe it at the time, I am being as bare as I can be in catching it in description) Only by smoothing over chance occurrences and injecting a strong sense of sociological causation can anything like Weber's theory about the protestant work ethic and the rise of the spirit of capitalism be read into the series of events. All theories about the world slice up the real world in ways that cannot be objectively, independently reproduced. Any attempt to make sense of the world involves being selective in your use of evidence. It is true that there is no Illuminati spectre or other personal villain lurking in Weber's theory, but it still imposes a sense of meaning on the world that is constructed, not found. In any givien theory the force that imposes itself on the interpretation of real events can be a general sense of the force of history, or material/economic force (with Marxism), or supernatural force (with Christian eschatology), or unseen human agency such as the Bilderberg group (as with some conspiracy theorists), or cultural force (with your attempt to interpret conspiracies as a cultural phenomenon with clear lineage). You claim that my attempt to categorise all theories about the world as conspiracy theories is deliberately provocative. I counter that your attempt to draw a distinction between conspiracy theories and what you view presumably as a "sensible" alternarrative/alternative reading of the world is a provocative way of attempting to cover over the clear similarities I have here outlined. The opposition - conspiracy thinking/reasonable reflection on how the world operates - breaks down under scrutiny. The world does not naturally divide itself between conspiracy theorists and sensible onlookers. So I can certainly agree aesthetically, as I am often inclined to do, with how you choose to carve up the world and sit with you in sharing a certain perspective. But I can't escape awareness of what I am doing, that it is arbitrary and in some sense indefensible.
It is because I find myself agreeing what you say that I find it so objectionable. So I am going to disagree with myself for a moment too. Earlier I wrote:
As someone who is coming to terms with no longer believing as a Jehovah's Witness, I can identify with the "unbearable freedom" of a world not made coherent by some outside organizing force outside my control. For some who leave the Witnesses I get the feeling that the strain is too great, and the desire for meaning so powerful that they are inclined toward accepting conspiracy theories almost as a substitute for Jehovah.
That's a conceited view of course. It could just as easily be said from a conspiracy theorist's perspective that it is my JW background that prevents me on a psychological level from accepting the reality of the situation that unseen human agencies really are orchestrating events such as 9/11 and the current economic crisis. Those former JWs such as myself who masochistically cling to the "unbearable freedom" of a world without a "big Other" because they view that position as more "realistic" are the ones who are deceiving themselves.
To return to the original topic I disagree to some extent with your statement:
It is critical and pessimistic about the overall "system" as its (hypothetical) "forefathers". It is fatalistic as Christian eschatology was (it doesn't try to change the course of things) but unlike it, it seems to expect no global "salvation" (from either God or history)
There does seem to me to be a strand of thinking within conspiracy thinking relating to the current economic crisis that while events have thus far been orchestrated by unseen interests for their own gain, things are now out of their control. They see salvation coming in the form of an inevitable return to a pure sort of capitalism (a demotic capitalistic answer to the Marxist narrative) in which large special interests will be confounded, fiat currencies must be abandoned, and true believers in the market, the little guy with his gun and his stash of gold coins, will have an opportunity to stake out what he see as his fair share within a truly meritocratic system rather than the plutocratic charade we currently endure.
More generally (in the line of previous discussions), I don't think forsaking the ideal of comprehensive "truth" must reduce us to silence. If conceptual tools and patterns of intelligibility are made rather than found or revealed, why not share in the making, along and against others?
Of course you are right. And in truth this is what I do, as I have done above, so my actions betray my words. But while the compulsion to speak and to say something is still there, I do feel mighty silly in the saying of it these days, because in a very deep sense I feel that everything I say, even everything I could possibly say, is, must be, wrong.
If conceptual tools and patterns of intelligibility are made rather than found or revealed, why not share in the making, along and against others?
To what end, if no "comprehensive truth" exists? What purpose? Mere amusment? In which case, the conspiracists seem to be having a lot more fun!
Slim.
return to a pure sort of capitalism (a demotic capitalistic answer to the Marxist narrative) in which large special interests will be confounded, fiat currencies must be abandoned, and true believers in the market, the little guy with his gun and his stash of gold coins, will have an opportunity to stake out what he see as his fair share within a truly meritocratic system rather than the plutocratic charade we currently endure.
Nothing ever lasts.
Iron law of oligarchy
And therein is a great deal of the source material for conspiracy fetishists.
BTS
After some time of silently watching the recent absence of postmodernist, "consternation" and "irritation" threads thriving on JWN and with a possible mixed bag of impossible relativist conspiracies to explain it, I suddenly felt like stepping back and trying to deconstruct the phenomenon in its historical decline.
It seems to me that the "anti-anti-conformist" flock of "open-wide-shut minds" who can "think outside of the box if such a construct actually existed outside what thinks" and "see through the establishment of the agendas" have been going noplace on the board for decades. In the 1970s they were into (mostly post contemporary) time travel. Then the English-speaking "enlightened" crowd parted ways (damned English-speakers always have to part ways, is the Continent not good enough for them?) from their Continental European counterpart (which tended to vanish into the future in what has become known as "le grande pouf" or "JWD Format Change") and moved on either to Fashionable Nonsense (especially of the Scat-ological, toad-smoking kind) or to "New Gimmick" spirituality (both being nebulous unspecificities of spun saccharine and expensive membership fees rather than "organisations"). Now (since the beginning of the 21st century) it seems that both movements are losing ground to a new "emanation" of counter-culture known as "Bamboozle Theory".
It is critical and pessimistic about the overall "system" as its (hypotesticle) "foreskinners". It is as fatalipstick as Fashionable Scat-ology was (it doesn't try to change the course of things (but what is(what was (god I love nested (oh theres (goodbye) another one) parentheses) the point again?) the point) but unlike it, it seems to expect no global "raghead ass-kicking" (from either JHVH1 or Dubya) -- interestingly, any notion of a "Knew Whirled" is diabolised as a kind of antiOrwellian Harmagetiton scenario: a Pizza Party without Big Brother or extra cheese. It welcomes a great deal of doctrinal and methodological inconsistency (as the "New Gimmick" did). What matters is "being in the bullshit circle" or at least "frisking the circle jerk" (also as a token of mutual recognition among the "confounded" in spite of wild theatrical conformities) and spreading its circle of boom (a neo-dysangelism which is rather a "evangelism" -- to borrow from Sneezy's redefinition of the "Sokal Affair"). Its "ass-kicking" reduces to a stockpile-ammo-gold-and-food mentality. Politically it is friendly with "libertarian" ideals (a of redefinition the ideas formerly represented by the oft misused term "Liberalism"), minus the optimism which makes them political and ideal (unless Ron Paul is on the ticket.)
Thoughts, refutation or correction welcome so that I can explain, as densely as possible, how none are "comprehensibly true" and are all a figment born from your social indoctrination.
I am transfixed by my own reflection (someone please drain this pool before it is too late),
Narkos-at-the-wheel
BTS aka Pierre Menard.
Where's Sancho Panza?
Wicked, oh do me next Burns!
Poor Narkissos never harmed anyone and yet comes in for all this abuse.
what I get from this discussion is to be aware that language itself has a polarising affect on our imaginative constructions and conspiracy theories reflect a further move away and towards even more polarising constructions. Self discipline is the key imo but at the same we do need to attend to our desire for expressing and experimenting with ideas and with life.
