Revolution!

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I don't see the connection to what I wrote.

In my classes, I deconstruct the oppressive ideologies (racism, classism, ableism, ethnicism, sexism, heterosexism, colorism, etc.) underlying American power everyday. However, I think that these problems can effectlvely be addressed when people join with others to deconstruct oppression. I doubt whether I, alone in my own mind, would have much of an influence on oppression.



But after I take control of my thinking, what do I do? Don't I need to work with others to reconstruct knowledge? What you are proposing sounds to me a bit like post-anarchism, a poststructural approach to anarchism:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-anarchism

Merle,

I sometimes get frustrated when I see how the American political process works. People make all sorts of promises during election campaigns, but, once elected, they gravitate toward the middle, and nothing much gets accomplished.

Again, I'm not about getting hung on a label, I just advocate a standpoint more than anything, not a set of rules and parameters to be imposed.

When you see people playing soccer in the park, and there's a referee, people don't listen to him because he will kill them, but because they want to play a game of soccer where everyone plays fair. If the referee doesn't make good calls, everyone will get angry, and they will get a new one. These changes can be rapid, fluid, and specifically tailored to each party's desires simply by virtue that there is no coercive element at play which can allow the to disproportionately exert their influence.

It is a voluntary association formed for a specific purpose, where nobody is there who doesn't want to be there. I think this approach can be used as a model for most of our activities.

There is no more need to belong to ONE clan, you can belong to several at once, independent of geography, existing in various degrees of overlap.

We don't all need to play soccer, we can play whatever we want, groups will form and like will attract like.

The referee doesn't need a gun.

I respect your views. However, personally, I do not believe in an innate sense of behavioral norms. Children are taught by their parents how to behave. That process of socialization can be seen as a kind of coercion.

Then, there are some people who, for whatever reason, refuse to behave according to accepted norms as adults. There needs to be an option to coerce them them to do so.

I would be rather careful about recommending coercion for social behavior outside traditional norms. Society progresses when innovative people work out new ways of relating to each other. Not all innovation is bad. And there is no society that cannot be improved.

Mark,
This sounds like dictatorship of the hegemony, is that what you are suggesting?

Merle

Hi, Merle,

I am a strong advocate of Jeffersonian democracy. Jefferson, who was not only a U.S. president but also president of the University of Virginia, believed that democracy, as he conceived it, could only work with an informed electorate.

I would, however, go beyond Jefferson is suggesting that, in formulating the values to be presented to the young, we need to place oppressed peoples, their lives and struggles, at the center of our thinking.

How interesting you mention Jefferson. I live in a ecological bio-region district known as "Jefferson State." Our flag proudly shows a miner's gold pan with a double cross on it, one for Salem the capitol of Oregon and one for Sacramento the capitol of California. The point is it was geographically and socially too far from either one to have informed governmental support from either seat of legislature. Jeffersonian democracy was the basis for all this kerfuffle. A historical aside, the State of Jefferson was going to declare on Dec 8th, 1941 and was set up to petition Congress to make it's own state, but was put on the back burner due to the attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, starting the Second World War in the Pacific, and was never again attempted in Congress.
We now honor Jefferson by naming everything "Jefferson State" our public radio stations, our wineries, our highways, etc.

Also I dwell in the county of Jackson, named for that American original himself ( no matter what you might think of his selling out of those he thought 'less than' he certainly put his stamp on American politics) Oregonian politics are amazingly bi polar as we have the horseshoe shaped political spectrum that puts the 'progressives' and 'regressives' living right next door to each other because here we have more in common (i.e. living independently) than we do with the 'mainstream'.

This sets the stage for the whole West Coast of the States to secede from the rest of the US into our own Eco/bio region. I mention this because revolutions are not always universal.

Merle

Merle,

I began to appreciate Jefferson when I served as an assistant dean for social sciences at a branch college of the University of Virginia (back in the 1980s). One of our political science professors was a Jeffersonian scholar.

Do these "oppressed people" I should be placing "at the center of my thinking" include Jewish people like yourself?

Last edited by codarac on 01 Dec 2007, 1:36 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Personally, I have never experienced my Jewishness as an oppression. I grew up in a New York City secular Jewish intellectual context. Until I was in my teens, almost everyone I knew was Jewish. I know some people have had other experiences, but I have rarely been bullied for my Jewish background. Anyway, I don't practice Judaism.

Why do you ask? Are you Jewish?

No, I’m not.

I’ll admit right away that reading some of your posts and learning that you are a college professor lends support to a lot of things I’ve read about modern social science, and those things I’ve read make me grateful I didn’t studied social science at college myself. Sorry to sound harsh. But I doubt I am going to influence your thinking with what I’m about to say anyway, whereas you are in a position to influence the thinking of a large number of people.

The philosophy of Foucault, the man in your avatar (one of the godfathers of political correctness aka cultural Marxism) is just a dishonest “intellectual justification” for expropriation and social revolution. It is just like classical Marxism in this respect, with its own designated “opressed class” and “oppressor class”. No wonder it is so popular among ethnic minorities, feminists and homosexuals, who are its main beneficiaries along with self-interested academics and politicians jostling for status. I wonder how many of these people are aware that cultural Marxism serves their own interests, and how many of them have deceived themselves into actually believing in it. For example, do most non-whites who support affirmative action actually think it is fair and just, or do they do so because they know it is good for them?

As for yourself, nominalist, I guess much of what you teach your students you learnt from your college tutors before you.

It is not “oppression” but human nature that explains why non-whites feel like outsiders in majority white nations. It is not “oppression” but human nature that explains why heterosexuality is considered normal and homosexuality is not.

One can have respect for people of all ethnicities without pretending that the white majority populations of the West have no right to oppose their own dispossession. One can have respect for people of whatever sexual orientation without pretending that homosexuality and heterosexuality are equivalent.

The cultures of the white, Western nations are not “social constructs” imposed on the people, but natural expressions of the character of those people. The transformation of these nations does not serve the common good; it serves the interests of a self-interested elite, and their agents: the designated “oppressed class”.
Of course, the cultural Marxists won’t have any of this. They won’t be happy until Western culture is destroyed, and the people who created it are replaced.

The connection is, those who advocate despotism in the name of progress or security, deserve a painfull. brutal death.

I did not advocate despotism. I said that I sometimes think (i.e., in my more pessimistic moments) that a benevolent despotism, where socialism was forced on Americans, would be preferable to the "free market" status quo.

now you're talkin'! whoopee! death to the fascist insect that preys upon the lives of the people, smash the state, kick out the jams, motherf**kers!!

you give me reason to live,



Merle