Posted on 05/19/2003 9:53:42 AM PDT by betty boop
They have no real objective reference to things in the world, but are merely by-products of social construction ...
There is a level on which I believe this, but the bit about domination is pure Freudian projection. Contract law is is full of potential verbal snares, so the law has a simple concept called the meeting of the minds.
Because words are slippery, two or more people attempting to have a conversation must each agree to accept on faith that the other person is making sense, and that differences in connotation can be explored and ironed out.
So one can choose to approach problems of communication as a zero-sum game in which one person plays "gotcha", or one can grant enough slack in a conversation to allow a meeting of the minds. This is a personal choice, and the choice defines the person.
This is true -- I have a friend who tends toward the "gotcha" approach. As a result she's lonely and unhappy.
I agree with your insight, js1138. Just need to point out that, for deconstructionists, "the meeting of the minds" is considered impossible on principle. Of course, I think such people are totally insane (literally).
I certainly agree with this, which I think is very well-stated: "...two or more people attempting to have a conversation must each agree to accept on faith that the other person is making sense, and that differences in connotation can be explored and ironed out.
"So one can choose to approach problems of communication as a zero-sum game in which one person plays 'gotcha', or one can grant enough slack in a conversation to allow a meeting of the minds. This is a personal choice, and the choice defines the person."
That latter alternative does seem to involve effort, for which many people these days "don't have the time" or inclination to make. That "personal choice" seems to have moral implications.
It seems to me that when I lay all the “isms” aside, what I can walk away with is that some people toy with the meaning of words and the language itself. I also gather that it might indicate insanity - or a desire not to communicate - or a fear of being “found out” - or a desire to change the “debate” in order to win.
And I have seen this willful failure to communicate, even on this forum. Betty boop, you have notoriously offered definitions of terms on various threads when there has been a failure to communicate. Strangely, when the air is clear and the definitions are on the table, the participants often seem to change, some newly join in while others leave.
Very interesting. Thank you!
I intended it to sound that way. It is one thing to say to a friend, or even a fellow FReeper, "I think we are too far apart to have a useful discussion on this." It is quite another to use "failure to communicate" as an excuse for a power grab.
As for the language as dominance charge, I think we have to choose between intellectual productivity and the barrel of a gun as the source of power. We already know which source the Left has chosen, and which source capitalism has chosen.
Amen! to that, js1138.
I think they are more cause than effect, unspun. For they shape the very "climate of opinion" in which everything else happens. If I had said "Karl Marx," instead of Hegel or Derrida, my point probably would have been instantly grasped.
Marx got most of his "bright ideas" (i.e., his "dialectical method") from Hegel. He is too early on the historical timeline to be a full-blown "deconstructed self"; but he has been an incredibly influential thinker of the modernist, so-called "disinterested spectator" type, and (arguably) a true gnostic. He literally transformed the world.
He sees the world as something completely "objective" to himself -- that is, as already "complete" in time and "apart" from himself, as something he has the power to "master," to transform into shapes more pleasing to himself -- he's "free to rearrange the furniture" anyway he wants to, to his heart's content, in the interest of "perfecting" the institutions of human existence and, along with them, the human condition. (I assume he had a heart -- it's just not terribly obvious, given what his "students" -- among them Hitler and every communist living or dead) have done to society over the past 150 years or so.)
The fatal fallacy he commits, however, is to think of the world as something subject to his direction in the first place, as amenable to his will. Yet he is only a part of the world, not a directing genius that somehow stands outside of the world. That is to stand in the role of God (which is why Marx had to bump Him off to begin with). The part does not and cannot constitute the whole of which it is a part. The world is not our private "toy" to play with. To think that the part can do this is a total fantasy.
Yet a compelling fantasy, as it appears: Marx's "followers" are legion. His "thought" has been thoroughly internalized by many people, some of whom are incapable of even analyzing or critiquing it. It's just become part of the Zeitgeist -- or the "Kultursmog" -- the "climate of opinion." And it relentlessly continues to undermine human liberty and civil society, everywhere it gains a foothold.
LOL, js1138!!!!! Powerless.... yet their powerlessness constantly feeds burning resentments. Which our great political magicians know how to exacerbate and direct for their own purposes. (Shades of Bill Clinton here, or left-progressive "liberal" democrats of the mindless Teddy Kennedy school -- not to mention Herr Hitler again.)
Personally, I think this sense of powerlessness is largely the product of near total ignorance. (Not stupidity -- please note the difference). As a society, we have been massively deculturated -- and effectively deracinated thereby. (Thank you, NEA!!!)
Funny you should mention that, A-G. I've noticed that, too. As far as people "leaving" is concerned, it's hardly the result I intend, and it makes me feel increasingly lonely.... I really miss some of the people who have "gone away" -- very, very much.
Darwin’s work is most important and suits my purpose in that it provides a basis in natural science for the historical class struggle.
I don't dispute the power of thinkers and theorists to manufacture ideas, but those who distribute them into marketplace and those who consume their communicable agents and use them for excuses for their graspings for power, money, fame and sex (or virtue) seem at least as significant to me.
I think Hitler, Lenin, Mao, Hefner, Friedan, and company (or the Adams brothers, Patrick Henry, the numerious post Great Awakening pastors, etc.) would have still grasped whatever rationale they could muster, to do make their assessments and plan their actions.
Also, it is most often the case to find not one singular theorist moving the world so to speak, but getting into the culture's Patent Office just a few days ahead of the next one, and all taking up where others leave off. Marx had many who went before to choose from and so did his mentors, and so did those who came after him. Often we find that there is one especially determined/creative figure in the "right time and the right place" who lays hold of more material and makes more advanced designs out of it all (hm, laying aside the matter of "thinker vs. doer": ...Plato, Machiavelli, Luther, Th. Aquinas, Marx, Edison, Frued, Beethoven, Einstein, McCartney?, Bill Gates, to name a few) but these are a part of the developmental flow too, with progenitors, peers, and offspring.
All economies seem demand driven, including those of thought and belief, eh?
Well, we know #1.
Yes, A-G -- looks that way to me, too. Begin with a conclusion, and then select whatever evidence supports it -- staying "blind" to any potentially relevant evidence that does not fit our hypothesis. We "edit reality" down to fit our need. This inversion of the normal process of inquiry has become all too common these days. Unfortunately.
Yes, I think history is replete with examples of this. Mostly I agree with the names you list -- except for McCartney (did you mean Paul???) and Gates. Not enough time has elapsed in their cases to make any judgment as to their long-term ideological/cultural impact.
Sure there is a marketplace of ideas. I tend to want to focus on the producers (so to speak), perhaps you want to focus on the distributors. Both, of course, are indispensable to "meeting the demands of the marketplace." Yet we have a kind of "chicken-and-egg" conundrum here. From the standpoint of the consumer, however, we are dealing with "poultry" regardless of where we want to put the emphasis as to "which came first," or which has the greater power to transform the culture. Wouldn't you agree that both are necessary?
Well, with them as Ludwig, I was thinking meso if not micro scale stuff.
...perhaps you want to focus on the distributors. ..."chicken-and-egg" conundrum here. ...dealing with "poultry" regardless of where we want to put the emphasis as to "which came first," or which has the greater power to transform the culture. Wouldn't you agree that both are necessary?
Right. Before I was done with that little observation, I thought of the documentary series, "Connections," forget the author/narrator. But right, poultry, and often the consumer has mass quantities of egg on his face. Some botulism and salmonella gets into the mix, too.
Even for the poor Russian peasants, going from one oppression to another... or chronically impoverished Somalians, the consumer tends to keep buying in, just like here, until they are in enough "pain" so that true change toward a solution is less discomfiting than the status quo.
That way of that dynamic does not speak well for America as it has not for our fellow ol' westerners. (Eastern Europe has been a pleasant breeze, though, except for the rush back into enforced religious orthodoxy.)
However, as you well point out, valid information, met upon a valid (very humble) basis can mean all the world and more. Without a vision, the people perish.
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