Culture War Futility: Why Self Expression Beats Action (Distributism 5)
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- čas přidán 8. 07. 2021
- In this concluding segment from the 2021 Summer Seminar on Distributism, I discuss why it is so hard to imagine actually changing the economy in any meaningful way. Our capacity for collective action has been hollowed out and replaced by an expressive identity politics that cannot satisfy but works wonders to keep us all working and buying. It very effectively stops any real change from happening. The seemingly radical idea that contemporary protests are largely ineffectual and should be replaced by direct action is introduced.
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Cutting through the rage and fury to reveal an idea of what's actually happening in our time. This channel is a treasure, especially to those who are exhausted by the ever intensifying squabbling over increasingly silly things.
It’s interesting to me that everything you said could describe what’s going on in a lot of people on the right AND the left.
That's definitely what I was trying to get across. People don't recognize it as the same problem because they tend to be invested on one side or the other.
You have a very attractive, librarian look.
@@saddamhussein4367 okay saddam
Excellently described
Lasch's culture of narcissism on steroids then. Although "on dopamine" would be more appropriate.
@~5:30 - Interesting point about religion and collectivity versus ‘individual salvation.’ The last of which was - am I correct? - foundational for the Reformation and Protestantism. A lot to think about there in terms of those Christian threads, pathological individuation, modernity and capitalism. Cheers and thank you.
Good point but we just need to tease out what is really meant by what you're saying. Well certainly in my own mind sorry maybe you already have done that.
Neither boycotting or protesting is sufficient, and not even both of them together, will take on the systems of extraction/exploitation and mitigate climate change. Stopping buying is half of the formula. We need alternatives for the products we buy, locally sourced, by companies that are part of the communities they serve. Greenwashing multinationals can't make that work.
Your channel is really interesting, keep it up! By the way, what sort of audio set up do you have?
Thanks! I've got a Yeti mic and a quiet room:)
Expression is affirming a culture
Who is #1. YOU ARE, #6.
Did this talk not end abruptly?
Yeah, I tried to find a decent end point. It's a snippet from the larger seminar I held this summer on Distributism.
@@maurinacademy important topic, looking forward to further discussion in the future
i feel like this got cut too short to hit the end of the problem being outlined.
i agree overall except on three points:
1) the left has a problem of terms being commodified (there's a history of leftist ideas being consumed by capitalism, see che guevara shirts for an old example), but conflating leftist worthless protests to the far right is a bit insidious, considering far right talking points get aired with regularity on one of the biggest media outlets in the USA, usually under language encoded within far right circles for the explicit purposes of palatability for the social conservative right (such as 'social marxism' itself morphed from 'social bolshevikism', a term from nazism). thus, the actions of the far right at charlottesville become examples to point to in a 'i'm not like those people', while speaking or thinking many of the same points (social marxism, frankfurt school, 'if a protest was blocking me from work i'd drive right through those idiots'). this is mainly necessary to distinguish because the overton window slides further right, and the USA has no leftist party in actuality.
2) i think it's also remiss to say terms like critical race theory offer nothing but commodity. embedded within CRT, for example, are frameworks for how to change things, such as how history of the USA can be taught without focus solely on white history. it was originally designed to analyse and change law, with a focus on systemic problems and effects on black people, with a focus on changing the justice system which is currently and historically harsher on black people than white people, and often, a visualising punitive justice away from punishment to other systems, often restorative justice (moving away from punishment towards helping people through working through their underlying problems, such as poverty, addiction, mental health, etc). yes, it is commodified but that doesn't negate the discussions and demands anymore than selling cross necklaces negates christianity or buddha statues at asian supermarkets negates buddhism.
3) while i agree that consumerism (even consumerism-but-now-green ahaha) solves nothing, and extinction rebellion isn't doing anything, it would be easy for someone who found this because they're beginning to realise that, oh, this doesn't seem to make any difference, to walk away in despair.
idk if you touch on this elsewhere, perhaps you do but i think mark fisher also never hits on this about capitalist realism and it's this: younger people (i can speak for
i want to add that i don't mean to excuse these actions but to explain why, in my endeavour to solve the problems, my age peers resort to 'buying green' and nonsolutions, as well as the pull of consumerism and exploring why we collectively do not have futures. media made by millennials show fantasy or present, but never futurecraft. my age peers don't talk or imagine them either. but in all it makes sense and this has to be addressed too.
ultimately, the worthless activism of banners, tshirts and lysol green wipes is a kind of despair: the future will be a decrease in living standards, or same empty promise as the idea of owning a home (and marriage and a good career), or a breakthrough technology we have no part in. whatever is done now is individualistic (but it takes individuals to drive collective action) and negated by other factors (ie driving to recycle). the government is still in a kind of denialism and doesn't care. (some not insignificant portion of the USA outright denies it is happening, and another not insignificant portion knows but doesn't care because they won't have to deal with the consequences in 20-30 years and/or just want to have a good time before the consequences collapse in on them/us.) efforts strain relationships with family, friends and partners in various ways, made worse if they're not committed or if they're one of the aforementioned denialists. the message is loud and clear: business as usual please, but with crossed fingers that someone will magic tech it all away. alternative to capitalism? no other system has been tried and tested to work! buy green and stop complaining and stuffing up the economy on lattes over houses.
the activism is the despair, the despair as displayed by people who don't have the time to figure out what they can do and don't have the skills to make something that displays that despair in their own creation, their own way. capitalism doesn't make money off folks making things, just buy a shirt to show your aesthetics or, in this case, woes.
to not address this is to miss the point, i think.
I really appreciate this detailed and specific response. I understand that hearing that measures like we've all been told to do, lowering our carbon footprint, or allowing a variety of expressions to bloom, is not the solution and might be actually a part of the problem, is disheartening. But it's also clarifying. We have to absorb the truth so we don't spend more of our lives either in despair or in some false notion that we're having an impact on the central problem. Whether it's identity or ecological sensitivity, if it's about the individual re-orienting, it will not be good enough. That orientation "responsibilizes" the people, and leaves the power-brokers guiltless--because after all, we could all choose to just not play their game. Because we're all autonomous, free individuals, aren't we? Of course, we are not. So, I hear you and I think it's a question of how do people learn the truth of the matter in a way that's inspiring and not paralyzing.
you assume culture is downstream from politics. but this is not true. as i see it, the main problem is that there is not an actual culture at all, only commerce. in fact, i think the state wants to prevent a culture from emerging because it would challenge the power of the system itself. the state wants to prevent nations from emerging because the state enforces the transnational system.
one way a culture could emerge would be a coherent set of values between people, i.e. nationalism. if this emerges, if the people start talking to each other through social media--instead of being talked down to by traditional media--, they might find common ground and solidarity (or break into a couple identity groups that will move towards sovereignty, white nationalism, wokshevism, or christian identity (for e.g.)). and that is exactly what is happening. the people are talking to each other and discovering a shared identity beyond star wars. mostly they are discovering the traditional media was a big zionist curtain and means of conditioning. let's face it, that is what it is. or was.
only one nationalism was acceptable and preferred, but it needed international coordination to realize itself. now that this international coordination has broken down and people are talking to each other, instead of being talked down to by the big zionist facade, the leaders are panicking and trying to reclaim the media, as in the transformation of youtube from creator oriented (2009-2014) to basically an extension of traditional media that has dorky instructional videos (2015-present).
but here is a case of culture outmoding the political. hegemonic forms of power, more subtle and pervasive than formal assemblies of politics, have proved again they are dangerous to the formal system. this is because culture exists not in legal form but in concrete reality. and marxists (and zionists and everyone since montesquieu, or even before that) has known that controlling culture, that is, "legislating custom" through non-formal means, is the way to gain power in the long run, or "long march." as a political scientist you may likely believe in formal politics. you might believe that law and rules govern. but me, i think this ignores the meta-rules and the everyday law of simple behavior. controlling the latter has been the goal of marxists and any modern intelligence state. formal politics is just the formalization of the hegemony that precedes it. culture is the battleground, not legislation and not even actual battlegrounds so much anymore.
What I'm trying to say is that economics is the causal factor and politics and culture wars are the means of perpetuating the economic system and keeping it afloat. You know it's powerful when Angela Davis is selling tee shirts. Sorry it didn't come across, but definitely the economic system (capitalism) is primary.
@@maurinacademy that makes sense. and i used to hold that view. but now i think the whole idea of "system" works to hide the actual people and groups running it.
You still believe that protests are grass roots?
I don't believe I characterized protests as either grass roots or constructed--the motivation for joining in them, I think, remains the same.
@@maurinacademy Thanks for the response. I disagree. It is implicit in your presentation. Unfortunately the comment section of a CZcams video is a terrible place to carry out a debate like this, so I'll bow out, especially since my original comment was intentionally flippant. However, you might want to look at the works of de Jouvenel "On Power" or Chris Bond "Nemesis" if you are not already familiar. They outline the "high-low versus middle" theory of political dynamics in which the ruling class (high) actively promote "grass roots" movements (low) that are in line with their agenda, while simultaneously destroying those "grass roots" movements which are not in line, and weaponize the former against the middle class to keep any pretenders to power in their place. I would love to see your criticisms. (BTW, I too am a professor and a Catholic and a lover of Chesterton, but my field is hard STEM.)
You’ll have to take me at my word that I don’t care whether protests are constructed or “grass roots.” It doesn’t matter from the point of view of what motivates people to join them, only what motivates people to create them. Most followers of mass ideologies would not be cynical constructors of those ideologies. So even if every protest was actually a human construction designed to manipulate the political scene, the ordinary people who joined it would have other, more real or self-conscious motivations. I think I have my own position right.
@@maurinacademy We all have ideologies and feel that others are the ones with ideologies and are ‘extreme’. However, I think there’s more accurate way of assessing oneself and the world.