Me for the most part: “Come on Zinn, you could have ended up a fascist like these chuds under the wrong circumstances. You were lucky to find the resources that you did to become a lefty, not your big brain.”
Me slowly more and more: “Actually, maybe it is your big brain that makes you a leftist.”
I don’t actually believe this, but I’d be lying if I said that snarling misanthropy isn’t a problem I have.
I get some dark ideological temptations myself sometimes, especially when "material conditions" mantras feel a little hollow when two different people can be from the same neighborhood, have almost exactly the same poverty conditions, can both struggle well into adulthood, but one becomes a comrade and one becomes a nazi. Many such cases... including within families.
Srsly, though, I don't think anyone has a really good explanation for why people arrive at such different places, but it legit could be butterflies and typhoons stuff. Like one house watches football, the other watches, idk, whatever libshit kids cartoons have secret revolutionary messaging. Someone makes friends with a queer person, someone doesn't.
The thing about nature vs nurture is that people always imagine "nature" to be genetic instead of whatever random chemical bullshit happened in the womb while your brain was growing, and "nurture" to be Important Conversations with your parents and teachers instead of that one time you overheard some phrase that you completely misinterpreted because you were five and fully incorporated that misinterpretation into your worldview for years. But the total quantity of random bullshit outweighs the "important" parts by orders of magnitude.
I'm not going to be some "radical freedom" advocate here.
Show
That said, I think the "check bank balance and rent agreement paperwork to decide whether to be a chud or not" kind of vulgar materialism is also bullshit. I don't have all the answers, but I think the questions haven't even been set up well enough to receive good answers.
Attention, people of Bikini Bottom! You have been cheated and lied to! The gentle laborer shall no longer suffer from the noxious greed of Mr. Krabs! We will dismantle oppression board by board! We'll saw the foundation of big business in half! Even if it takes an eternity! With your support, we will send the hammer of the people's will crashing through the windows of Mr. Krabs' HOUSE OF SERVITUDE!
almost the same material conditions can still include the guy who works in a supermarket for a living and the guy who became a taxi driver for a living
I think a good point can probably be made here about not mixing different pairs of socks. One thing is talking about class or category, and acknowledge that there's some tendencies here and there. Another is individuals, and individuals are up to their personal history. So the real punchline here is neither (which does not prevent me from having a certain... experience with taxi drivers in particular).
I think compatibilism pisses almost everyone off to some degree, but when free will absolutists sound like the New Age clowns that they are and the capital-D determinists tend to be insufferably smug reductionistic assholes, what else is there?
Substitute tendencies for propable outcomes/distributions, the pair of socks with initial state, and personal history for variance. Any small variance could have radically different outcomes according to Lorenz. I could see this making any kind of analysis of outcomes from arbitrary cohort extremely complex. This is outside my area of expertise and I'm definitely not a scientist (though I use it constantly). Perhaps I'm looking at this from the wrong perspective? It just seems that for any cohort the amount of variance would be so high that if you were to draw a conclusion from data it could already be wrong. And that's just 1 issue of many I can think of.
I could see this making any kind of analysis of outcomes from arbitrary cohort extremely complex. This is outside my area of expertise and I'm definitely not a scientist (though I use it constantly). Perhaps I'm looking at this from the wrong perspective? It just seems that for any cohort the amount of variance would be so high that if you were to draw a conclusion from data it could already be wrong.
These would be two distinct yet connected sorts of data. The qualitative and the quantitative. One can disprove or question theories defined by the other, which is one reason why social sciences are in a permanent state of revision. Another reason is because your understanding of society is contingent on the very questions and framing devices you utilize.
Let's say you are investigating the birth of a city from an economic standpoint. Meaning that you wish to know what sort of trade or productive activity jumpstarted those first few cycles of capital accumulation. In the Americas you have cities like Rio de Janeiro which are so new that the documentation goes back to when there were only a few hundred families in the urban center + surrounding hinterland. So you have both the potential to realize patterns and variance, or the quantitative and the qualitative sides of your analysis.
You can look at specific families, what they did for a living, how they did well for themselves, what happened to their estates, what economic role mothers and fathers played, etc. And you can look at all families at once to find patterns. The quantitative analysis might help you make blanket statements such as 'the first and most primary form of capital accumulation for Rio de Janeiro was slavery, specifically the enslavement of native groups as part of allied wars and enslavement campaigns'. But if you go on to make another blanket statement such as, say, 'social mores in the wealthier sectors of colonial society followed a rigid patriarchical structure', then you'll find numerous examples of families where sometimes 3 full generations were outright led by the mothers and wives rather than the fathers and husbands. Sometimes because they appear to just be better at it than the men, sometimes because there were no men.
I'm framing it like this because that's how it works. We write our sociological narratives, and then someone else re-frames things a little differently and comes up with new and interesting inputs. It's not often that we completely disprove old, well supported theories. Rather, we end up refining them as scholars argue forever to the smallest detail.
I can understand the methodology involved. I did have some education on the fundamentals of social sciences like 20 years ago. I appreciate the refresher and it triggered some part of my memory. My brain has rewired itself over time to a certain rigid scientific modality that can sometimes be restrictive. Humans are chaotic systems lol. Then you put us together and it's just ...complex and ever-changing.
oh, yeah, all those Chuds growing up in an environment saturated with white supremacy, police worship, imperialism, and transphobia? yeah, I wouldn't know what that's like.
Reminds me of those posters who describe being a Nazi at 17, before watching breadtube and becoming anarcho-syndicalist at 18, and if you're skeptical of their sincerity, they'll say it's purity policing and it's actually privileged to be a communist from the start, and not have phase of flirting with genocidal racial supremacism.
I’m with you. Especially since 2020. I see lots of people with similar material conditions to me who have access to all the same information as me and largely are exposed unwillingly to the same shit as me. How am I the only one in the group that came to the conclusion “Getting covid 1000 times is bad” for example?
How are you like “idk maybe I should support Kamala Harris” when I know what your instagram feed looks like bc you have the same friends I have? Do you just care less about the dead children you keep seeing?
It’s honestly difficult to see people land where they are when given the same access to things as I am, and not be like “Damn, maybe I’m just smarter and have clearer morals than you.”
According to one of my favorite psychological models, Timothy Leary’s 8-circuit-brain, the first circuit is survival, the second circuit is emotional, the third circuit is intellectual, and the fourth circuit is moral.
People get stuck in certain circuits and are easily exploited due to their stuckness. For example, Red MAGA is stuck in the emotional circuit, which is why appeals to their fears and “patriotism” work so well. Blue MAGA is stuck in the intellectual circuit, which is why they want to feel smarter than everyone else, even at the expense of having values.
By the time you have a moral code, you’re way beyond the comprehension of at least half of American adults.
I see the things you're seeing and have come to the opposite 'conclusion' you have been fighting. During the rise of trump's popularity I've been forced to reevaluate my understanding of intelligence. Friends and family i considered 'too smart' have fallen for these thought-terminators time and time again. Through my terrible, terrible memory I even recall brain-worms i have shed. Only through time and effort have i overcome them, and more remain. Instead of hating humanity for its credulity i use their failures as warning signs against my own foolishness. The ego is our primary weakness against intelligence and grace, and the narrative makers know that.
I think you're on to something, since the primary way so many marks are made (both in carnival cons and in political propaganda) is to convince the mark that they're too smart to be fooled. It's an ego trick.
Me for the most part: “Come on Zinn, you could have ended up a fascist like these chuds under the wrong circumstances. You were lucky to find the resources that you did to become a lefty, not your big brain.”
Me slowly more and more: “Actually, maybe it is your big brain that makes you a leftist.”
I don’t actually believe this, but I’d be lying if I said that snarling misanthropy isn’t a problem I have.
I get some dark ideological temptations myself sometimes, especially when "material conditions" mantras feel a little hollow when two different people can be from the same neighborhood, have almost exactly the same poverty conditions, can both struggle well into adulthood, but one becomes a comrade and one becomes a nazi. Many such cases... including within families.
Embrace the random bullshit absurdity.
Srsly, though, I don't think anyone has a really good explanation for why people arrive at such different places, but it legit could be butterflies and typhoons stuff. Like one house watches football, the other watches, idk, whatever libshit kids cartoons have secret revolutionary messaging. Someone makes friends with a queer person, someone doesn't.
The thing about nature vs nurture is that people always imagine "nature" to be genetic instead of whatever random chemical bullshit happened in the womb while your brain was growing, and "nurture" to be Important Conversations with your parents and teachers instead of that one time you overheard some phrase that you completely misinterpreted because you were five and fully incorporated that misinterpretation into your worldview for years. But the total quantity of random bullshit outweighs the "important" parts by orders of magnitude.
Word. Well said.
yeah people way overestimate the degree of determinism embodied in DNA.
Gene expression (epigenetics) are half, probably more, of the story.
Allow me to explain to Hexbear the hidden Marxism of Dragon Ball. As you see....
Wasn't Frieza's primary villain motivation to pave over entire planets for real estate reasons?
Yup. IIRC, Toriyama literally based him off a real estate 'developer'
I remember when Namek itself was being assessed by Frieza's computers and one of the attributes stated was "parking space: abundant."
I think a lot of young artists had their radicalizing moment with the economic crisis of the 80s and 90s in Japan
Based and Saiyanpilled.
I'm not going to be some "radical freedom" advocate here.
That said, I think the "check bank balance and rent agreement paperwork to decide whether to be a chud or not" kind of vulgar materialism is also bullshit. I don't have all the answers, but I think the questions haven't even been set up well enough to receive good answers.
"The Krusty Krab is unfair! Mr. Krabs is in there, standing at the concession, plotting our oppression!"
Attention, people of Bikini Bottom! You have been cheated and lied to! The gentle laborer shall no longer suffer from the noxious greed of Mr. Krabs! We will dismantle oppression board by board! We'll saw the foundation of big business in half! Even if it takes an eternity! With your support, we will send the hammer of the people's will crashing through the windows of Mr. Krabs' HOUSE OF SERVITUDE!
Right. Like just to make myself clear I recognize misanthropy is wrong and I fully condemn it, I just wanted to address that it is there.
For all similar comrades, I implore all of us, me included to recognize and silence the red bazinga that may lurk in many of us.
almost the same material conditions can still include the guy who works in a supermarket for a living and the guy who became a taxi driver for a living
Even then, sometimes people practically working side by side can split, one to comradship, one to chuddery. I've seen it with my own eyes.
Besides, which between the supermarket worker and the taxi driver is supposed to be the chud-in-waiting in your example?
I think a good point can probably be made here about not mixing different pairs of socks. One thing is talking about class or category, and acknowledge that there's some tendencies here and there. Another is individuals, and individuals are up to their personal history. So the real punchline here is neither (which does not prevent me from having a certain... experience with taxi drivers in particular).
I think compatibilism pisses almost everyone off to some degree, but when free will absolutists sound like the New Age clowns that they are and the capital-D determinists tend to be insufferably smug reductionistic assholes, what else is there?
Substitute tendencies for propable outcomes/distributions, the pair of socks with initial state, and personal history for variance. Any small variance could have radically different outcomes according to Lorenz. I could see this making any kind of analysis of outcomes from arbitrary cohort extremely complex. This is outside my area of expertise and I'm definitely not a scientist (though I use it constantly). Perhaps I'm looking at this from the wrong perspective? It just seems that for any cohort the amount of variance would be so high that if you were to draw a conclusion from data it could already be wrong. And that's just 1 issue of many I can think of.
These would be two distinct yet connected sorts of data. The qualitative and the quantitative. One can disprove or question theories defined by the other, which is one reason why social sciences are in a permanent state of revision. Another reason is because your understanding of society is contingent on the very questions and framing devices you utilize.
Let's say you are investigating the birth of a city from an economic standpoint. Meaning that you wish to know what sort of trade or productive activity jumpstarted those first few cycles of capital accumulation. In the Americas you have cities like Rio de Janeiro which are so new that the documentation goes back to when there were only a few hundred families in the urban center + surrounding hinterland. So you have both the potential to realize patterns and variance, or the quantitative and the qualitative sides of your analysis.
You can look at specific families, what they did for a living, how they did well for themselves, what happened to their estates, what economic role mothers and fathers played, etc. And you can look at all families at once to find patterns. The quantitative analysis might help you make blanket statements such as 'the first and most primary form of capital accumulation for Rio de Janeiro was slavery, specifically the enslavement of native groups as part of allied wars and enslavement campaigns'. But if you go on to make another blanket statement such as, say, 'social mores in the wealthier sectors of colonial society followed a rigid patriarchical structure', then you'll find numerous examples of families where sometimes 3 full generations were outright led by the mothers and wives rather than the fathers and husbands. Sometimes because they appear to just be better at it than the men, sometimes because there were no men.
I'm framing it like this because that's how it works. We write our sociological narratives, and then someone else re-frames things a little differently and comes up with new and interesting inputs. It's not often that we completely disprove old, well supported theories. Rather, we end up refining them as scholars argue forever to the smallest detail.
I can understand the methodology involved. I did have some education on the fundamentals of social sciences like 20 years ago. I appreciate the refresher and it triggered some part of my memory. My brain has rewired itself over time to a certain rigid scientific modality that can sometimes be restrictive. Humans are chaotic systems lol. Then you put us together and it's just ...complex and ever-changing.
oh, yeah, all those Chuds growing up in an environment saturated with white supremacy, police worship, imperialism, and transphobia? yeah, I wouldn't know what that's like.
Reminds me of those posters who describe being a Nazi at 17, before watching breadtube and becoming anarcho-syndicalist at 18, and if you're skeptical of their sincerity, they'll say it's purity policing and it's actually privileged to be a communist from the start, and not have phase of flirting with genocidal racial supremacism.
Azov-something
I’m with you. Especially since 2020. I see lots of people with similar material conditions to me who have access to all the same information as me and largely are exposed unwillingly to the same shit as me. How am I the only one in the group that came to the conclusion “Getting covid 1000 times is bad” for example?
How are you like “idk maybe I should support Kamala Harris” when I know what your instagram feed looks like bc you have the same friends I have? Do you just care less about the dead children you keep seeing?
It’s honestly difficult to see people land where they are when given the same access to things as I am, and not be like “Damn, maybe I’m just smarter and have clearer morals than you.”
Morals are advanced.
According to one of my favorite psychological models, Timothy Leary’s 8-circuit-brain, the first circuit is survival, the second circuit is emotional, the third circuit is intellectual, and the fourth circuit is moral.
People get stuck in certain circuits and are easily exploited due to their stuckness. For example, Red MAGA is stuck in the emotional circuit, which is why appeals to their fears and “patriotism” work so well. Blue MAGA is stuck in the intellectual circuit, which is why they want to feel smarter than everyone else, even at the expense of having values.
By the time you have a moral code, you’re way beyond the comprehension of at least half of American adults.
I see the things you're seeing and have come to the opposite 'conclusion' you have been fighting. During the rise of trump's popularity I've been forced to reevaluate my understanding of intelligence. Friends and family i considered 'too smart' have fallen for these thought-terminators time and time again. Through my terrible, terrible memory I even recall brain-worms i have shed. Only through time and effort have i overcome them, and more remain. Instead of hating humanity for its credulity i use their failures as warning signs against my own foolishness. The ego is our primary weakness against intelligence and grace, and the narrative makers know that.
I think you're on to something, since the primary way so many marks are made (both in carnival cons and in political propaganda) is to convince the mark that they're too smart to be fooled. It's an ego trick.