Is this related to Transaction Analysis, which is some academic guff taught to social workers so they can feel superior to their clients and ignore their actual needs?
This is one of those essays that makes explicit a bunch of half-formed ideas I've been carrying around my head for years. Thank you for writing it.
Would you say that being a "free thinker" boils down to being open to seeing merit in the values and assumptions inherent to different discourses, even apparently contradictory ones?
—been thinking similar things about another term and so that everyone is "social theorist" but we don't acknowledge that very well, so we do not learn to do it better.
and that the space that this theory happens in, (often label as the dialectic or dialectical arena —accurate when their are only two voices) is better called the world. And the world like the self does not really exist, and thus can be construed both mystically and gnostically in the same move, confounded thus, it is confusingly real.
Zealotry offers to calm those agitations, make the world good, the self will follow. Thus we double-down into intensities that end up unmindful, and where the self disappears so does the world; learning disappears, our wisdoms atrophy into narcissistic supply, and loyalty substitutes for reason.
Let's call it the Gulf of Aporia.
[The aggro queer theorists of old that trans-theorists have quadrupled-down on have made a massive error.]
Can you be a "theorist" and an advocate and maintain intellectual honesty? This is the intrinsic problem with today in that interested parties are trying to describe social patterns with one eye left on the outcomes they wish to see. This is the core breakdown of academia in the Humanities.
Re zealotry I think lots of that is a function of social psychology rather than politics or even ideology. For these aggressive activists their ideology-group has replaced their family/nation/tribe, that is why they manifest absolute loyalty to the group over and above any evidentiary considerations.
They literally *believe* they are under genocidal threat so they deem any "resistance" acceptable with nothing out of bounds. Once perceived existence is threatened constitutionality and rule of law are cast aside and anything goes - see this manifesting in the right wing as militias & Jan6.
100% this. I'd add that the need for an enemy to bind the group together also explains the tendency of advocacy groups/charities to expend much more energy amplifying and exaggerating the perceived threat than actually making life better for the constituencies they purport to represent.
(I think I meant 'theorist' as in active participant who may or may not advocate, punning more then its 'social' equivalent to the the physics 'theorist')
*believe* = doubled-down rashness = dogma (I'm a neo-pyrrhonist ---kinda).
" ideology-group" except we do not meet as such:
When I saw during covid, in Melbourne(Australia), the flash-mob style anti-vaccination demonstrators, I was struck by their ill-discipline and broken voices --- compared to demonstrations in the 70s, 80s & 90s where non-violent resistance training created team spirit and a common language.
Is this related to Transaction Analysis, which is some academic guff taught to social workers so they can feel superior to their clients and ignore their actual needs?
This is one of those essays that makes explicit a bunch of half-formed ideas I've been carrying around my head for years. Thank you for writing it.
Would you say that being a "free thinker" boils down to being open to seeing merit in the values and assumptions inherent to different discourses, even apparently contradictory ones?
—been thinking similar things about another term and so that everyone is "social theorist" but we don't acknowledge that very well, so we do not learn to do it better.
and that the space that this theory happens in, (often label as the dialectic or dialectical arena —accurate when their are only two voices) is better called the world. And the world like the self does not really exist, and thus can be construed both mystically and gnostically in the same move, confounded thus, it is confusingly real.
Zealotry offers to calm those agitations, make the world good, the self will follow. Thus we double-down into intensities that end up unmindful, and where the self disappears so does the world; learning disappears, our wisdoms atrophy into narcissistic supply, and loyalty substitutes for reason.
Let's call it the Gulf of Aporia.
[The aggro queer theorists of old that trans-theorists have quadrupled-down on have made a massive error.]
Can you be a "theorist" and an advocate and maintain intellectual honesty? This is the intrinsic problem with today in that interested parties are trying to describe social patterns with one eye left on the outcomes they wish to see. This is the core breakdown of academia in the Humanities.
Re zealotry I think lots of that is a function of social psychology rather than politics or even ideology. For these aggressive activists their ideology-group has replaced their family/nation/tribe, that is why they manifest absolute loyalty to the group over and above any evidentiary considerations.
They literally *believe* they are under genocidal threat so they deem any "resistance" acceptable with nothing out of bounds. Once perceived existence is threatened constitutionality and rule of law are cast aside and anything goes - see this manifesting in the right wing as militias & Jan6.
100% this. I'd add that the need for an enemy to bind the group together also explains the tendency of advocacy groups/charities to expend much more energy amplifying and exaggerating the perceived threat than actually making life better for the constituencies they purport to represent.
self-fulfilling paranoia, world-undoing
(I think I meant 'theorist' as in active participant who may or may not advocate, punning more then its 'social' equivalent to the the physics 'theorist')
*believe* = doubled-down rashness = dogma (I'm a neo-pyrrhonist ---kinda).
" ideology-group" except we do not meet as such:
When I saw during covid, in Melbourne(Australia), the flash-mob style anti-vaccination demonstrators, I was struck by their ill-discipline and broken voices --- compared to demonstrations in the 70s, 80s & 90s where non-violent resistance training created team spirit and a common language.
Your mate Peter Boghossian seems to be making valiant efforts to promote this. I’m curious to hear if you think his approach is good/useful/balanced?
Thanks for a nice breakfast read down here. 🙏🏽❤️🦘