L.B. Neill
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Thanks LBird,
“What are your criteria for picking up any ‘tool’, as opposed to any other ‘tool’?”
I can give you one example of using structural and poststructural ideas- for fear of turning this into an autobiography.
Theory and practice are ‘tools’ to be put to use. When I say I use these as a skill- it is in the field of counselling. using Social constructive/construction knowledge and practice (Third wave CBT, Discourse theory, anti-oppressive Practice [social sector centred] and Narrative Theory). You might say I use integrative tools too encompassing Jung, and Lacan… so very broad and can’t be summerised in a post. It would be better for me to say using the best practice intervention that is evidenced based and has efficacy that has been proven (modern and postmodern)
I use these ‘tools’ as it fits with my identity as a helper, alleviating cognitive and emotional distress.
One example should suffice. Marx has informed so much thinking in social research and practice- and it is what draws me here, that we can consciously change the mode of production and socialism would reduce many forms of suffering in today’s jurisdictions…
It is an example you ask for. And hope my tired attempts help (it has been a long year).
Stay safe
LB
ALB
“That’s interesting (and reassuring — at least you’ve got your feet in the ground !). So some actually do see “matter” as a human creation. Do you know which one of them came up with the idea that the Sun moved round the Earth when that was the common view?”
If I had read that as a fundamental requirement to read postmodernism- I would have smiled and ran back to modernism.
I think, I read post structural thought mostly in the field of social science- and challenging ‘taken for granted ideas’: this is the way things are- and accept it. It is always good to challenge oppressive practices- and work anti-oppressively.
The are always divisions in any ‘movement’- and poststructuralism is a field that seems in a flux. Matter matters. What we do with it structures our thinking about it.
My feet are firmly on the ground, ALB!
There are some quirky ideas in any mode of thought- and there are some that would think we created existence out of our own thinking- but I think they have fell into their own thoughts without consulting any external reference and pass pataphysics off as science… Its fine, they just need to openly declare it- would hate to stub my toe on something that I was told was ethereal!
Oh, must have missed that book on poststructural thought- the Earth doth Stand Still- and the Sun Moves ‘Round it!
LB 🙂
LBird,
I appreciate your debate, and your challenges.
I said I use post modern theory- I did not say I am form my World View by it- they are just tools.
Any construction or science needs many informative disciplines- a scientist, a teacher, a mechanic, et al… can read Marx but they are also informed by many influences.
Yes it is good to expose pre-existing assumptions. Marxist ideas also compliment so many other methods, and helped shape them…
Be well,
LB
LBird,
You mention democracy- and yet a loop- you dismiss twc as being late to the discussion.
I use post structural ideas- but yet matter must sign. It is known through observation that the Earth goes around the Sun- and all our thinking will not change that.
In the past I had been accused of deconstructing an event, and just leaving it there. But I know deconstruction is a tool that then leads to reconstructing something (rather than nothing- like a manifesto that has no purpose). Not all post moderns see matter as immaterial- as I said, I can stub my toe on it: and it hurts.
Best to occupy subject positions that make room to all the narratives, and then decide.
LBird you will know, though it is an assumption to knowledge, that there are many meaning making practices out there (read some Geertz); and even poststructuralists are cautious about making matter into a relativism- Derrida concluded that society needs a quasi- transcendental signifier. Matter is bound to a signifier we produce (less it goes undifferentiated- but it is still there), and we can use whatever term- but it is still material and subject to a scientific narrative, and its field of discourse…
twc raised interesting points- and not late at all- and I notice you use signifiers to label him according to your choosing. Why not ask him and explore it!
Be kind when you debate, stay safe..
Before, during and after the Tudor era- the use of power has continuities, and traces: a genealogy of its own parentage- and it sires the ownership and accumulation of wealth, legitimizing its own authority. Call it feudalist, call it the Rule of the Rump, call it the early modern state.
The ethical differentiation of Western social formations into ‘greater’ and ‘lesser’ beings has been around a long time, and the modern period was contingent on those traces and powerful apex elites (be it royal or oligarch, or capital) having to ‘let in some, and not let in the many to its structural and institutional power.
I have always observed in social, economic and political power the same concentration of power into a ruling few.
The current use of ‘unities of discourse’ between the liberal and the conservative owes its traces back to the ‘letting in some’ to its power club. They are troublesome siblings who quarrel over their possessions- and unite if their shoeless little cousins (bonded and enslaved) even dare call on the scientific change that lay ahead- ending the traces of this division of greater: lessor beings and the hoarding of ‘things’.
I know I have deviated from a historiography on the Tudor: but that genealogy of possession and power in the few- and the unity of discourse in its modern formation is a continuity (but with newer agents or political actors)- it has a threshold and it has a point of rupture. It seems a Tudor Revolution just means more of the same- but more centralised.
Sorry for being a little vague,
LB
“Put simply ‘one’ only ‘knows matter’, because ‘one’ has been taught to ‘know matter’.”
And that is the same statement I had made supporting an idea.
I must have a ‘logical loop’ in my argument- to make a statement and then counter it.
“We can change this teaching, and introduce theories and concepts suitable for the building of a democratic socialist society, where humanity as a whole determines its own ‘reality’.”
And we can change it. We can engage in a rhetor and never find any closure-
But here is one take:
We are social beings. We socially construct our mental/material world. We put that construct into practice. Call it social constructivism/ social constructionism.
You see, the thing is, I am not materialist (dividing the world into ethical divisions of reality)- what you see is reality. Or worse: what you see is my reality, and no other may exist.
There are some articles by Geertz on the fact the working class can construct variations of reality- and independent of the ruling elite. See Ideology, an old text- but still full of promise.
So it is matter for me- as I have a collective who concurs. But now and then I might disagree. And go against it- but it is not anti-matter!
The best matter unites us. The worst divides us.
You see LBird, I agree with you- we are taught to know matter- I could go all social science from here- but will temper it.
My earlier claims are out of context in your last comment. Logical loops aside.
“The key political question is: ‘who (or what) has the power to determine ‘matter’?‘”
And this is the pivotal point LBird. Those who are in control often determine it.
Look, I know matter is matter. The thing is, the material matter of our world is so subject to change, and change according to our current understanding. And I share the idea it is socio-historical, and therefore in a flux- but an observed flux, and a flux that can be managed.
The subject is not an ‘active individual’ in and of itself. The idea I can feel pain while stubbing my toe on matter is an act of biology- but my response to it is a social construct.
A rock does not tell me it is a rock- my socially informed construct tells me it is a rock.
When I am oppressed- I know it- not that the wage slave job tells me so- but I consciously cognise it as so.
It might sound odd, or how I explain is odd, but I am agreeing with you, and yet I know there is so much data waiting to come to light around this matter.
ALB- I smiled at your Sun around the Earth- Not a Copernicus revolution after all…
Stay safe
LB
Sorry ALB, I am a bit of a post modern- so it makes me premodern and modern.
I think debate can be limited and confined by the current time- but- if we dare debate outside of it so much more is possible.
I am a paradox ALB: of faith, of postmodern, of science… of socialism.
Never ask a post modern that… way too fragmented, and way too sure.
The best answer I can give is the simplest- I share your concerns, I am but a small voice, but I will say that little voice is for socialism- no matter the ‘modern’ prefix or suffix.
We need to keep the dialogue open.
LB
Thought I would post this vid. There has been so much the mind and body can handle in 2020. Yes it is silly. But I had the first smile in a long while- I had to attend zoom meetings today with a grin because of this vid111 And try to keep a serious demeanor.
LBird and ALB,
If the forum failed to debate a broad range of ideas- we are in trouble!
The modernist thinkers had been accused of engaging in mimetic echoes- nodding approvals to one another as if a mirror confined their own image or that camera obscura took real photos!
I would prefer a parrot, looking at me square on, challenged my statement- or else it all becomes… immaterial!
Matter has no voice until our thinking gives it so… and yet… it still hurts when you stub your toe on it.
Keep the debate active!!!
LB
Rod,
“Leaving economy issues aside (if only we could), there is also the argument that even from the aspect of general health and wellbeing, a lockdown is worse than the problem it’s trying to solve”
This statement is a crucial point in managed public health during any lockdown (and financial cost of health burden narratives should have no part to play).
The inadvertent social/health problems with any COVID restrictions should come into public health planning. Lockdown impacts on early diagnostic screening for serious health issues- screening attendance declines. In AOD (addictions therapy) people who live with substance dependencies experience disruption to supply, and some in lockdown, undergo very dangerous self detox (or receive helfty fines for breaching restrictions). Family violence episodes also increase- with increased risk of lethality. Suicidal ideations and serious mental health symptoms and their unmanaged morbidity increase too.
A total health response is required in public health policy. It involves interdisciplinary approaches (health sciences of the physical and the social/mental health and protective (D/V) sectors).
Many domains of health science frontline practitioners discuss this often- and money is absent from the debate. Long may it be so- or I might feel I have served in my own little way to reduce the health spend and its urgency (social costs). When health and social care become captured by economic burden capital interests of keeping the economy ‘open’ will always stand at the front of the line (adverse health outcomes become an acceptable risk or economic ‘friendly fire’)
Matthew: Lets put the money on the cart- and bid it farewell. Get that flu shot!
Be safe,
LB
The term ‘philosophy’ is in contention and subject to the semiotic flux that most disciplines have experienced since the emergence of post-structural thought.
Some of you might have undertaken a PPE (no not a face mask): some kind of training in Politic Philosophy and Economics. Some might have many other forms of guild, Uni and experiential training.
Philosophy can be seen as modes of veridiction: kinds of methods of speaking a truth, according to training, purpose, and utility.
The ethical use of science is also a mode of veridiction, and it is simply a idea, a belief, in using a series of fact finding/fact using according to its discourse community.
To be an everyday philosopher is to liberate philosophy as a privileged mode of veridiction practiced by a controlling elite- and make possible a diverse knowledge system that can be occupied by many, interrogated, and talked about by a mass.
In its pure form, it is the software that drives our everyday activity (science, religion, meta and local narratives of life).
I am thankful that I have a local philosophy- when ‘shit happens’. It provides me with the veridiction to dare say a truth amid falsity or fake news.
Philosophies (plural) can be for, and not for science, but are signifying chains and organising principles linked and coupled to people’s beliefs (and their lived experiencing [real or fake ideology])
Philosophy and science are not at odds (they are locked in a relational dance) and one can’t be conceived without the other.
Better to say: who is the science in service to? and who is the philosophy in service of?- they are modes of truth telling, of veridiction. And they should be democratised, be openly available to all- not monetarised nor commodified, nor in the the hands of any ruling elite. They should not be subject to scorn either- by way of mocking dismissal.
Science and philosophy are subject to mock in these truth rhetor days- are these the first victims of ideological warfare in a battle for control…
If we ignore this, any argument is set to be an entrenched antagonism.
Science and the other (other than science) will always occupy the same space- it is why science and art are so crucial to society, and faith based practices too. To erase one mode of veridiction over another points to a elitism of one over another.
I like philosophical narratives, and really appreciate science.
Now how do I wrap this construct up- there is no closure!
LB
Marcos,
I relate to your comments on Woodward’s rage.
There is a reprehensible action sitting on such information during a global health crisis.
I wish his text was published by open commons- and extemporaneously- information in the here and now. But alas, profit from the sales meant he had to write it first- and all that time in book deals, chats and rewrites, editing, and so on. This is a sad and typical example of what you said: profit over people.
You know: the whole notion to withhold information to reduce panic- makes things worse. Sound and evidence based and immediate communication in society would have been a better public health response from the outset.
Well, I guess you can’t go to detention for making a profit. My general feeling of the political fallout for the Trump administration from this text… is… business as usual.
Wish the whole community would collaborate their intel- and not on a profit basis- will be good to hope that the roll out of any COVID vaccine does not get caught up in ‘Vaccine Nationalism’
LB
ALB,
I understand. My last post was emotive. It formed a binary division into pro/anti social criterion. Too simplified- and humans are too messy to be dropped into such criteria.
Dawkins is not anti-social…
You see any talk of Eugenics can prompt emotive reactions. Best to be more considered (note to self!) in responding. 19th Century Social Darwinism is best challenged in its small ‘d’ Darwinism- otherwise I would run the risk of sounding anti-science.
Science, and it ethical usage is a complexity- complicated more so by political narratives regulating it… what a mind-field!
🙂
Eugenics! The topic might as well focus on Darwin: the survival of the fittest (used to justify the potters grave).
It is the worst form of essentialism- the greatest justification for the weak dying out. Some Capital- Darwinists use this argument often. You only need to read the forward to Jordan Peterson in Archipelago to realise this:
https://scholarfactcheck.com/jordan-peterson-gulag-archipelago/
Okay, not the best link, as the links are subject to a variance- but if you manage to download the forward, it will cast a light on this ideology.
Dawkins is an antipode to prosocial behaviour. So he might be… ? His attitudes to the Self and its primacy over the collective is concerning.
We are not a material mime of the Platonic taken for granted world- WE are social beings. We re not reflections of other species- fighting for recourses, killing one another to ensure our social line’s survival over the other.
There will always be ‘show dogs’ in this realm.
The facts and results of any study in that field will always depend on their constructs- and best served with caution.
Eugenics and social Darwinism are best left to the rantings of Nazis and mongers bent on reducing human experience into its sedimented form (a mirror only reflecting their own image).
I have no idea where my own rant came from- only a very concerning feeling (both rational and irrational) with any mention of Eugenics and its bastard brother, Darwin.
Forgive me that,
L.B
