Is It Fair To Say That...

[kyser_soze]

TBH it makes reading your stuff even harder, as does the constant use of ellipsis at the end of sentences.

 

[Dillinger4]

Depends who I'm talking to. Now, with children like you [see your silly, crude and offensive posts above, obviously written from some serious sense of insecurity ] it's quite useful... You just might get the drift... one hopes...

I wasn't attacking you there.

 

[kyser_soze]

Me either...even tho he has me down as a social Darwinist...

 

[Dillinger4]

Yeh, and I am a child, based on one post.

We used to have such good debates Gorski.

 

[gorski]

I wasn't attacking you there.

ooooppppsssss........... My sincerest of apologies!!!!!!!!! A mistake done in speed - it was the Dumbo, not you......... Sorry again!!!

 

[kyser_soze]

What's really interesting is your defensiveness as well - insults, accusations of people being children, and all because someone has dared to question both you and your dogmatically held modernity...

 

[gorski]

No, honest, I wrote it way too quickly, believing I'm responding to Dumbo - sorry, m8! Not intended for you!!!

[Prepping my presentation for Friday, doing my MA and done it with one eye elsewhere, hence... Silly me! ]

 

[Dillinger4]

The only reason I am not posting more extensively here is because I am stressing over essays.

 

[gorski]

What's really interesting is your defensiveness as well - insults, accusations of people being children, and all because someone has dared to question both you and your dogmatically held modernity...

Nope, you got it wrong: it's the other way around! The insults and nasty stuff came from Dumbo! That IS childish and uncalled for, as he knows not how to debate the issues. What can you do with such like? Not much but return the favour and carry on...

Please, read the link I provided and tell me where is the alleged homogeneity in Modernity? Who is agreeing so much and how come there are so many dissenting and questioning voices?

Also, answer my few points from above, please - so we can get debating something with some sense: what is the basis of Modernity?

 

[gorski]

The only reason I am not posting more extensively here is because I am stressing over essays.

Maybe I should take your advice and continue with my self-imposed silence for a bit longer...

 

[kyser_soze]

Soz, will read the link when get the chance...

 

[Dubversion]

Please, read the link I provided and tell me where is the alleged homogeneity in Modernity? Who is agreeing so much and how come there are so many dissenting and questioning voices?

so the dozens of thinkers and commentators who rejected modernism in favour of something pluralist and heterogenous were all wrong and you're right?

that's fucking excellent.

 

[gorski]

Modernity by definition is heterogeneous, you twat! Elementary stuff, my dear Watson...

You know nothing of it and yet you're so bloody vocal, flaunting your ignorance...

 

[Dubversion]

Modernity by definition is heterogeneous, you twat!

except of course it's not, is it?

 

[gorski]

Let me give you a hint: if you search for Post-stuff you get an article.

But if you search for the very basis of it - nowt...

http://plato.stanford.edu/search/searcher.py?query=Modernity

So much for the alleged oppressive dogmatic consensus...

 

[Dubversion]

oh get a fucking grip, you self-regarding spunkstain. I've got a pile of books on my desk critiquing the very thing you're suggesting doesn't exist. It may well be a matter of opinion, but your attempt to pretend the debate doesn't even exist makes you look like the cunt I already figured you to be.

 

[Fruitloop]

The derailing of every thread in this forum into the same shite is rather depressing.

 

[gorski]

You really can't think for love or money, can you, Dumbo?

The debate does exist, of course, as you pointed out to the pile of books - however, what is it about? From which grounds? You do realise there is such a thing as going backwards, don't you?

Answer the Q's, I dare you!

Btw, Chomsky's Q's/challenge to the PoMo's are quite jolly...

 

[kyser_soze]

The derailing of every thread in this forum into the same shite is rather depressing.

It's all depressing today. Best thing I've posted is a desire for Rose and Martha from Dr Who to have a storyline in which they become quantumly entangled...

 

[Fruitloop]

N.B. I find that above a certain density my eye skips over emoticons entirely, as they are too much trouble to read when their meaning is relevant to such a tiny chunk of text.

 

[Fruitloop]

It's all depressing today. Best thing I've posted is a desire for Rose and Martha from Dr Who to have a storyline in which they become quantumly entangled...

There hasn't even been a post on the most depressing news story of the day (IMO)

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article3198876.ece

 

[gorski]

Who cares, it's the fookin' foreigners we don't wanna understand, entertain or feel obliged to in any way... Dignity? What dignity? Rights? What rights? Only Brits 'ave them. Well, maybe Amuuuuricans, too...

 

[gorski]

Post-Modernism was a critique whereas Modernism just 'was' - it wasn't a critique in itself, simply a term applied to a series of shifts and movements. That modernism didn't adopt a 'critical stance', as such.

or not?

So, going back to the issues: Modernity, by definition, is CRITICAL, as it rises up against Pre-Modernity, the injustices of Feudalism and subsequently of the "transitional" period, namely that of Absolute Monarchy! Only a very ignorant person can set the question in such a manner!!!

It brings Universal Rights and dignity to all, as all here should know.

Unfortunately, it was only "potentially" so, as that period did not last very long, and a conservative two steps back ensued. Yesterday's revolutionary force [bourgeoisie] became a counter-revolutionary force and turned on its yesterday's ally, the proletariat, without whom they couldn't have pulled it off, as it were. Slavery, colonialism, subjugating women etc. was no big deal to them, for as long as they could hold it all together, exploiting everything and everybody as much as possible!

Anyone knowing anything about Italian Renaissance knows this to be true. They rose against the dogma of their time! They paved the way to it! Modernity, with Enlightenment onwards, with all it's doubtful outcomes, brought with it the potential of a better, more equal and dignified life for all.

Inter-subjective strand of Modernity, however, gave way to the other, Subject-Object, strand. Exploitation and domination extended and had to be fought, tooth and nail, on the barricades and so forth.

Universal suffrage, abolishing of slavery, de-colonisation and so on took a little time to achieve but we did it, even if it still isn't as good as it can be, by any stretch of imagination, in a variety of sectors. Together with many other things.

Sure, loadsa stuff to be subjected to a critique, as one does, if one has any brains.

However, the top premises are loaded and simply inaccurate, to say the least. They are misleading for a reason.

As in "against Reason"! Sturm und Drang shite, I presume...

 

[Fruitloop]

By definition "public morality" = contradiction in adiecto!

The spheres [bourgeois society and political state] were never separated in principle, as they were made on/from the same principle. Marx eventually learns this and says that political state is bourgeois society's principle raised on N-th power...

The recognition of it keeps coming back to haunt us in a variety of ways, slowly, bit by bit...

To be discussed ad nauseam...

What is interestingly public about the morality of Big Brother is that it is one of the few actually existing examples of direct democracy, to the extent that the public have a veto over anyone who is ejected from the game, and can also punish those that transgress. So it reflects what the general public want to see in this absolutely integrated public/private space (completely horrifying to previous nations of propriety etc, which concern the willing separation of public and private sphere). And what is noticeable watching it is that the morals displayed therein are quite different to the familiar morals of the bourgeoisie - completely the opposite. If you take a typical example of the previous eudaimonea or whatever to be something like that expressed in Hesse's Glass Bead Game then these values have been completely inverted - everything that was invested in individual Bildung is instead directed towards this Veblen-esque social advantage, but in an alienated spectacular version of the social. Quintessentially post-modern, in other words, in that it arrives at the inverse of the modern through being the same, only more so.

 

[ViolentPanda]

you're a pompous, self-regarding tit

It's taken you this long to realise?

 

[gorski]

Entertain. That's THE function. Obsession with other people's lives, as "we" have very little of ours, it seems to me. That's if you are cynical. If they don't entertain - out...

Or do you see anything more in there?

I mean, most seem to need to be told what is and what isn't "on" by the guardians writing columns - in the Fun, Daily Crap, Bleurgh of the World and such like...

However, what would be Modern and what Post-Modern in all that?

I have a problem with that because from the start of Modernity/Capitalism the same principle applied: market rules and even gives a certain Ethics. If one can't earn a living one is "good for nothing" in every sense. The private and public were one from the start, if slightly differently and to varying degrees. That changed with not only insisting on Status Negativus and Activus [Fundamental Rights] but ever more on Positivus, which do show that Capitalism is a relationship [not "a thing"] between Human Beings, which involves us all, hence all this "division" is not of principled sort but rather conditional.

 

[kyser_soze]

Entertain. That's THE function. Obsession with other people's lives, as "we" have very little of ours, it seems to me. That's if you are cynical. If they don't entertain - out...

If you take a very broad view of the word entertain, then yes, it's entertainment. The rest of your comment displays little knowledge of BB beyond what you've read in the papers. I'm not holding it out as some kind of paragon of TV or human behaviour, but housemates get voted in or out on far wider criteria than whether or not they are simply entertaining.

Unfortunately, it was only "potentially" so, as that period did not last very long, and a conservative two steps back ensued. Yesterday's revolutionary force [bourgeoisie] became a counter-revolutionary force and turned on its yesterday's ally, the proletariat, without whom they couldn't have pulled it off, as it were. Slavery, colonialism, subjugating women etc. was no big deal to them, for as long as they could hold it all together, exploiting everything and everybody as much as possible!

All you're talking about here is the sucessful evolution of the the social organism the hierarchy - modernity presented an alteration from the established environment, and what I think is the hierarchical instinct in humans, especially in large groups, adapted itself by co-option.

 

[Fruitloop]

Well, entertainment is one objective and someone who refused to entertain would be ejected pretty fast. Stil it wouldn't be framed in that way, but rather as a failure to 'play the game' i.e. to enter into & apply oneself seriously whilst maintaining a superficial attitude of non-seriousness. To be entertaining is not the whole story though - the most rapid and savage evictions have been on the basis of sexual morality, truth-telling and confidence-keeping, obedience to the authority of the systematic aspects of the game, open competitiveness and social climbing (as opposed to the covert varieties that everyone engages in and which are in fact the whole point of competition). Thsi is to an extent because the non-entertaining ones(nearly always the older generation who have frequently failed to grasp the 'rules behind the rules' anyway) have a better option, which is simply to remove themselves from the game and the public gaze - something that they have mostly done before needing to be evicted.

 

[gorski]

There is no greater arrogant, self-aggrandising twat than you, VP. You can't hide. You really feel like you are immensely above everyone else and that you can play with anyone any way you please, from any point of view you wanna take. Ridiculous!

Let me add a few points about Modernity and Pre-Modernity, to make it clear for all just how wrong it is to put the Q together as it is done in the TP:

When in 1750 Voltaire [at a public lecture] claims that “all Men are equal by birth!” - a few ladies in the audience faint.

It is a time when Fundamental Rights are proclaimed:

Liberal - status negativus, individuum’s demand for personal freedom, absence of state

Democratic - status activus, right to participate

Social – status positivus, demand for a minimum of social security and justice

Before that there are no Universal Rights to be had! Only mottled rights/privileges – according to different estates (nobility, clergy, serfs, free cities). I.e. estate privileges, no rights as an individual!

Universal rights – liberté, égalité, fraternité – founded in Reason - are to be fought for at that time! Not given on a sliver platter!!

For the first time we have as a programe that the only just laws are the ones democratically legislated.

People are posited as sovereign and Individual as subject (politically, economically, legally, as well as socially).

So, what exactly are we talking about here, if these are fundamental achievements of Modernity? Where do we wanna go?

 

[gorski]

...a failure to 'play the game' i.e. to enter into apply oneself seriously whilst maintaining a superficial attitude of non-seriousness...

Very well put!

I don't see much beyond this, though. Admittedly, from what little I saw. I just saw a very English "game", as it were. And I couldn't stomach it or waste any of my valuable time and any more of my life for that! I have many more meaningful things to do!