Gagged! benefit gig 11th November

[llantwit]

strange people.

S'true. Wierd as fuck in here innit?

 

[Dic Penderyn]

ain't that the truth!!

 

[kate44]

question- whats the difference between the on screen manifestation of a "virtual robot" and a "real human-being" ?
ps i know how THEY tell la difference

 

[kate44]

PPS a jewish author called erich fromm wrote a very interesting book about necrophilia- psycho-political analysis that is NOT sick joke stylee. cant member the name offhand

 

[Udo Erasmus]

PPS a jewish author called erich fromm wrote a very interesting book about necrophilia- psycho-political analysis that is NOT sick joke stylee. cant member the name offhand

His book "Fear of Freedom" (or sometimes published as "Escape from Freedom") does have a chapter that touches on this theme but the book is mainly an exploration of the idea of freedom from the middle ages through to the renaissance through to the rise of fascism.

I don't actually think he is talking about necrophilia in terms of a sexual attraction towards dead people but rather metaphorically about people being drawn towards self-destructive, anti-social and destructive behaviour. It's essentially a demystified version of Freud's "death instinct".

It's quite an interesting book linking a marxist socio-political analysis of fascism with a psychoanalytic exploration of fascism - and also interesting because it was written during the 1940s before the Nazis were defeated.

"Fromm believed that freedom was an aspect of human nature that we either embrace or escape. He observed that embracing our freedom of will was healthy, where as escaping freedom, through the use of escape mechanisms, was the root of psychological issues. Three main escape mechanisms that Fromm outlined are automaton conformity, authoritarianism, and destructiveness. Automaton conformity is chaning one's ideal self to what is perceived as the preferred type of personality of society, losing one's true self. The use of automaton conformity displaces the burden of choice from the self to society. Authoritarianism is alowing oneself to be controlled by another. This removes the freedom of choice almost entirely by submitting that freedom to someone else. Lastly, destructiveness is any process which attempts to eliminate others or the world as a whole to escape freedom. Fromm said that "the destruction of the world is the last, almost desperate attempt to save myself from being crushed by it" (1941)."

 

[kate44]

thanks for the elaboration. i used to read his stuff when i was at oxford, as an alternative to doing my uni. work