The PC and Perpetually Offended Brigade

[Pedrito]

What are these potential societies and what form do they take? And I´ m geniunely asking out of interest. (Please do not say Venezuela, Cuba, former Soviet Union, China, Vietnam or your post will be automatically deleted) 

[mugz]

...

[mugz]

...

[Pedrito]

You need to get out  onto the bog, smell the heather, a nice ham sandwich and a flask of tea to get your mind off all that stuff. That kind of thinking is only tying yourself up in knots.

[mugz]

...

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

You´ re going for the melodramatic again with the `  economic and psychological misery of the average exploited "have-not" worker´.  In Starbucks? McDonalds? 

Soul-destroying corporatism is in the eye of the beholder? Perhaps. But I think there is a strong objective case to be made for an observation that has been made since the 19th century (this time by FN rather than KM, you'll be glad to hear); the most wasted resource on earth is the human mind. What I was trying to get across, and mugz has put it perfectly just two posts above, is that I think anyone working in McDonald's or Starbucks incapable of contextualizing their shiny-happy-suddenly-eco-aware workplace within the global society it's emblematic of, who just go through it with a smile, shouldn't be seen as a positive sign of human resilience and optimism, but as a symptom of the kind of engineered docility that is worked into the economy. So, sure, it is possible to work at McDonald's and be happy, but that itself is a crime to the potential of the human mind, from my point of view. And yeah, that's a melodramatic perspective... but it's also uncompromising, which is what it has to be, because uncompromising is what they, the multifarious Koolade factory owners, are.

In short, the way I see the world today, if your first port of call for improving things is prodding individuals to just buck up, then you're 100% playing the game that has been imposed from above. I've regularly worked 16 hour days for days straight to get past particular obstacles and arrive where I am now (which, financially speaking, is nothing at all to speak of), but it would be ludicrous for me to tell everyone to do that, because the reason I had to do it is precisely because there's very little room at the top (edit: I should say middle, as I'm still several obstacles away from the "top" and will likely never make it there), but loads and loads and loads of room at the bottom, all of which has to be occupied in order for things to work. That's the fact of the matter.

[Pedrito]

Ok all great points and I´ ve certainly felt like a cog in the wheel at many stages throughout my life. The Nietzschean perspective is by his own admission reserved for the few as opposed to the masses. I´  m not so sure he was pushing everyone towards it. So we have hierarchy, an that certainly has it´  s ills..a society somewhat similar to ours in which money and wealth is really the true freedom. Or else we have a society where  everything is equally shared and it raises the obvious issue of competition, and the lack of competition not pushing people to overcome and better themselves, the very point Nietzsche was making. I think you´ ve hit the nail on the head saying there is plenty of room at the bottom and very little at the top, though it could be argued that at least one has a path to the top, despite all the obstacles, whereas in societies where everything is equal, that is supposedly anulled?

I´  m still waiting for this type of society that could solve all these ills. I´  d actually love to live in one like it. Does it exist? And don´´  t say Norway either with their low population and endless resources or Switzerland with their banking system and Nazi gold 

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

You can't have a society where everything is equal. Everything is not equal. But you can have a system where achievement isn't measured above all else by owning stuff. And by (let's just run with controversial vocab) purifying the mental/spiritual state of the broadest common denominator, you lift the mental/spiritual state of the exceptions. One way of reading those parts of Nietzsche is that the exceptions are a function of the mass, meaning that the nature of the former is informed by the nature of the latter. Pride in national athleticism is a decent example here; it stems from a few exceptional individuals, who will be all the more exceptional depending on the average level of athleticism in the national population, and what it encourages the mass towards is something that is of good mental and physical benefit to both the individual and the whole. But you first, as was the case in, say, the Greek city-states, need a society, and therefore a mass, which has athletic health as an integral built-in social value. Now compare to competition within capitalism under the powerful influence of consumerist marketing; the mass, more than anything else, is encouraged towards possessing more, they are literally surrounded by cues to consume and this is what they aspire to (in other words, marketing works). And what kind of exceptions rise up from this mass? Well, just look around at what passes for a cultural and/or intellectual elite today compared to even 30 or 50 years ago and compare to how we regard celebrities (more than ever of whom are famous literally only because they were made famous in order to increase the number of celebrities) and their lifestyles.

You can't lift the mass by prodding individual members of it. It requires engineering, vision, a shift in perspective away from chastising individuals in the lowest tiers and towards something, well, grander.

[Eoin McLove]

Lads, your dystopian versions of reality are so far from my own experience that it's hilarious. It's like you are describing some other distant planet. What's the gravity like over there?

I can't even make an argument as we are describing two distinct and utterly irreconcilable realities. No wonder you find all this PC horseshite legitimate. If my experience of life was as bleak as all that I'd be equally deranged I'm sure.

My sympathies to you both.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Lads, your dystopian versions of reality are so far from my own experience that it's hilarious. It's like you are describing some other distant planet. What's the gravity like over there?

I can't even make an argument as we are describing two distinct and utterly irreconcilable realities. No wonder you find all this PC horseshite legitimate. If my experience of life was as bleak as all that I'd be equally deranged I'm sure.

My sympathies to you both.

I don't think I could possibly enjoy life any more than I do! 

And I don't care about the PC stuff either. But that's the thing; I genuinely don't care about it. It's all local phenomena, local in space, local in time, and reaction to it is almost universally just as local and misguided and over-wrought. I'm wrestling in the mud here, but I've no vested interest (and I know I'm not the only one in these discussions in that boat) in who wins; just enjoying it for what it is! Attempted psych-outs included   

[Eoin McLove]

For someone with no vested interest in it you have fairly heavily contributed to the discussion 

I simply can't buy into the argument that people who are happy or content only actually think they are but really they are miserable because the power structure yada yada yada... fucking meaningless nonsense.  It's impossible to make any kind of point against such insincere, invalid arguments.  A waste of oxygen from all sides really.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

can't buy into the argument that people who are happy or content only actually think they are but really they are miserable because the power structure yada yada yada

Ah, yeah, I see how you got that from what I said. It's not exactly what I intended. People who think they are happy are happy; what I was saying is that the tendency towards docility that allows them to be (genuinely) happy, despite being exploited for someone else's profit, all the while helping to sell a product that is ultimately harmful to humans and the planet, is abused by the owners of corporations, abused by the architects of consumer capitalism. Folk disgruntled with the least well-off in society would, imo, do better to focus on that level of things rather than encouraging them to jump into the machine to be ground up, so to speak  . It is, in fact, an optimistic view of the possibility of a much better, cleaner, healthier, more mentally stimulating, less docile society. But it's one that I don't believe can be brought about by any method sold by the likes of Peterson, Pinker, Harris, all of the 'IDW' aimed at "individual" improvement. All they're selling is how to up your game within the current game, which is a game I personally know how to get on just fine with. But I can still imagine much, much better games. That's where I'm coming from.

[Eoin McLove]

Yeah but that's an entirely separate argument. We are operating within this particular structure. They are offering a way to deal with that for people who may be struggling within it. I mean, would it be better for them to say, just sit there in your despair and wait for a massive revolution to come and fix all the problems that exist in society and reconfigure the way it is structured so that you'll be on a more even footing? That is about as helpful as mugz's tangled web of misery that he has woven for himself. Who does it benefit?

[mugz]

...

[Eoin McLove]

Nice act.