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U-Know! Forum » The weak forum project.. |
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handofdave 3515 posts |
Jan 20, 2009, 20:40
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PMM wrote: I suspect you may be right. Oh no! Out-Englished by an American :( Ah, but are we not the offspring of Blighty? There's still some lime juice in me veins.
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Moon Cat 9577 posts |
Jan 20, 2009, 21:57
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Shelby Mustang wrote: mooncat. dare i not be reactionary and say that's as clear as it's gonna get. beautifully put mate. you really are a bright spark aren't you...not sure about your sexual habits though dearie x Cheers! Hey, here's cock in yer eye!
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handofdave 3515 posts |
Jan 20, 2009, 22:47
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Moon Cat wrote: Shelby Mustang wrote: mooncat. dare i not be reactionary and say that's as clear as it's gonna get. beautifully put mate. you really are a bright spark aren't you...not sure about your sexual habits though dearie x Cheers! Hey, here's cock in yer eye! Oy! If we ever meet I'll have to remember to wear goggles.
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stray 2057 posts |
Edited Jan 20, 2009, 23:50
Jan 20, 2009, 23:14
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handofdave wrote: 'Stay sharp, because there's someone always ready to take away what you've fought for.' Oh its definitely that and not the other, as I said in the VP I've noticed, at least here in the UK, a serious step backwards culturally in terms of the representation of women, as well as a near on complete sidelining of feminist politics in general. I would even go so far as to lay the blame for that at the door of some Third Wave Feminist theories. Its interesting you raise the similarity with the African American struggle. In fact, to me it relates to most of the movements that appeared or were radicalised in the late 1960s. This is where I feel the D&G article I posted among the links above about May 68 is an interesting read. Purely interesting though only as a possible analysis, it offers no solution of course. Edit : Well, no real solution anyway. I really must read some Paul Virilio again, now I'm a grown up. I could go on whining for a very long time on this subject, but I've found an advert from the US that does it a lot more eloquently than I could. Check this image.. http://img223.imageshack.us/img223/7366/shepardfaireysaksfifthaca7.jpg heh, Feminism and revolutionary politic subsumed and destroyed in one fell swoop. It's quite impressive.
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stray 2057 posts |
Edited Jan 20, 2009, 23:31
Jan 20, 2009, 23:29
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Moon Cat wrote: I certainly think there might have been flame out instances on U-Know in the past that might have put people off sticking their heads back in here again. I know I've looked at some threads and groaned cos someone's gone off on one and shit is flung hither and thither. Thing is, if Head Heritage is to function as the thing it seems to have become i.e. evolving from essentially an artists info website into a community, then I suppose it's only natural that the sense of community might take priority over the urge to harangue and cajole a debate into action. Call me a wuss, but I certainly favour the "play nice" line over "Do you want some you reactionary Capitalist Dog" simply because I like this place and the people in it and I think a bit of harmonious banter is fairly welcome at this moment in time. I think U-Know is a thing worth having and for myself, have read interesting things on it and I think it functions pretty good in the context of Head Heritage as a whole. Well, yeah, I've come to pretty much the same conclusions over the last couple of days. Guess I'm a bit nostalgic for the old rants and raves, that and I'm going through a kind of resurrection of my old activist self due to the work I'm up to at present. Yes, it has become quite a community here, a quite closed one though I feel. I have no problem with that really though, how could I, I'm a poster from FBB ffs. ;) I'm beginning to see its not being a wuss as you describe, its just a very, very different place for discussing issues to the norm online. I think the conclusion I've come to is that, yeah, we don't bother talking much about the big issues of the day because, well, we know we are pretty much going to agree entirely on them so what would be the point. It does also I think serve as a good sounding board to sharpen your theories in, as PMM suggests. So, it's not a political forum exactly, it's more of a serious spin off from the VP. As in, its a place where your issues will stay on the front page of the forum long enough for people to see/digest and get into. Yeah ? I would like to apologise to everyone for getting into this so damn seriously, it's all down to some odd changes I'm going through. ;) As you know I don't post that much really and I've had a bit of splurge here and there recently. It'll pass soon, promise, it has to, I should be working.
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handofdave 3515 posts |
Jan 21, 2009, 01:02
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I think it all just proves that revolutionary energy dies quickly when people are comfy. And when people are starving, the impetus towards progressivism takes a back seat. Perhaps the entire world would benefit if everyone were lower middle class... just well fed enuf, but not too much.
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handofdave 3515 posts |
Jan 21, 2009, 01:07
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Good thread starter, man... this is a good forum after all.
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stray 2057 posts |
Edited Jan 21, 2009, 01:46
Jan 21, 2009, 01:22
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um... yes, and... NO. Nononononononono... *deep breath* Noooooooo.... ;) Your doing that thing of attaching causality after the event there, yup, thats what your doing. I don't think it has much to do with the energy, or general comfiness of potential revolutionaries. Have you read that D&G article I linked ? The modern revolutionary is on the whole indifferent, mainly as it's the only sane state to maintain when 'they know perfectly well that nothing today corresponds to their subjectivity, to their potential of energy.' So to speak, right ? We all have a sense of social justice irrespective of our current personal economic state. It is more true to say that the tools used by those movements, and their slogans were easily co-opted and made useless, even by those who used to wield them, or those that benefited from them. No, the problem is none of the old models as relates to tactics, as in revolutionary tactics, work in our current social enviroment. The old tactics do work in the more industrialised and poorer areas of the world, as can be seen by the old style politcal left movements that are functioning and growin in other parts of the world (such as S.America, Sri Lanka etc). That stuff just don't work here, 'sieze the means of production' is a hollow joke here. Hey, I write software, I have a compiler on my machine, I have the means of production in this information economy. Er... now what. Edit : Sri Lanka, that is also a nationalist struggle, so the marxist idea of a nationalist struggle being fundamentally a class struggle stands quite well there. Same goes for the Kurds and their revolutionary movement. Over a million people can protest against something in the streets, and it has become perfectly normal, politcally acceptable if you will, for nothing to change. So we need to develop alternative tactics, more importantly to develop a way of sustaining the energy as part of the tactic as well as part of the politic. A constant mutating form (not to be confused with Permanent Revolution theory which is equally invalid in our current situation), that can press the right buttons and effect the right changes at the right time. Kind of like Virilios's 'accidents'. Of course I haven't the first fucking clue what this form would be. Hey I'm a Post Structuralist Anarchist don't expect me to provide an answer. But there are more reasons for things failing, and things regressing, than the simple comfort factor of the first world, of that I am very sure. EDIT : OMG I forgot to say something important about Deleuze. When he uses the term 'bifurcation' he is not talking about a main body splitting into two. He's a big fan of the maths of topology (which, tbh, he doesn't really understand well enough to use in his work) and its that meaning of bifurcation as in "a bifurcation occurs when a small smooth change made to the parameter values (the bifurcation parameters) of a system causes a sudden 'qualitative' or topological change in its behaviour." that he means. A change in behaviour, not an actually splitting, caused by a small change to the systems/surfaces inputs.
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stray 2057 posts |
Jan 21, 2009, 01:32
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thanks, cheers yeah, I'm enjoying this. Its forcing me to sort out all the millions of ideas and analysis I've got spinning round my head at the moment. I was planning to quit this too, I probably still should tbh.
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grufty jim 1978 posts |
Edited Jan 21, 2009, 02:08
Jan 21, 2009, 01:50
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I don't disagree with all of your points in this thread (and certainly don't want this to descend into another stray Vs. jim shout-a-thon), but I believe you're overstating things a little with regards to this particular forum. I do think that the tone of U-Know! has become considerably less radical of late. Part of that -- I'm sure -- is a relative thing, and can be ascribed to my own increasing radicalism (or "extremism" if you're on the other side of the fence), but that's far from the whole story. For instance, I've been genuinely taken-aback by the level of active support for Obama on this forum. Now, I'm the first to acknowledge that he was probably the lesser of two evils in the recent election, but I was amazed that any member of the corporate-political elite could generate such a positive reaction on this board. It's not a discussion I'm looking to revisit but the idea that Barack Obama, or indeed anyone so entrenched in the US political mainstream, might be capable of dealing with the real problems facing the world (resource depletion, climate change and the destruction of the biosphere... NOT the credit crunch) just seems bizarre to me. On the other hand, I disagree with your view that this place is embarrassing or redundant. There have been a fair number of threads over the past few months that would have been extremely incongruous in the Village Pump alongside discussions of Saxondale, Vic'n'Bob and winklepickers (just to pick three at random from the current front page). I'm certainly not putting down the VP (for everything a place, and all that), but I think it's a good idea to keep some kind of focus over here at U-Know! I know for a fact that I'd almost certainly stop using this place if the two were merged. That's not meant as some kind of weird threat, just an acknowledgement that "general discussion forums" tend not to appeal to me (and the only reason I visit the other boards here at HH at all, is because I get on well with some of the people I met here on U-Know! and there's a degree of cross-over... also I dig much of the music that's discussed on Unsung). When I post something on U-Know! I'm doing so in the knowledge that this place has a specific brief and my post won't end up next to a chat about fluffy biscuits. Context can be pretty important, even here on the net (perhaps especially here on the net, where "something completely different" is always just a click away). As for this being "the slowest forum on this site", I think that's always been the case. But I also think that these things are cyclical. I've been on U-Know! for more than a decade now (I just worked that out and it's a bit bloody mad) and there have been times when I was taking part in several fairly involved discussions at once, as well as times when I've gone weeks without posting a single thing. I guess when there's a relatively small number of regular posters (though I'm assured there are quite a few more non-posting readers) there will be inevitable quiet periods as most of us go through phases of slow net usage when pesky "life" stuff demands our time. Regarding the actual content, and picking up on one specific topic you mentioned: Gaza. I admit that I've become reticent about discussing the Israel / Palestine situation online as it tends to descend into a very predictable rehash of a thousand past discussions. Also, given that my own position on the conflict is heavily informed by group psychodynamics, I suspect it wouldn't be of much interest to you personally anyways. In fact, I'd go further and suggest that my thinking on most of the topics that get discussed here has a strong group psych flavour of late. And part of the reason for my recent low post count is down to a reluctance to sound like a broken record and elicit the same negative responses on every single thread, or else turn every thread into a defence of my own way of looking at the world. (incidentally, and at the risk of reiterating a previous point, I think you're rather inaccurate when you try to place me within the Evo Psych fold. "Group Psychodynamics" is my field, and without wanting to get all technical and pedantic, that's rather different to Evolutionary Psychology. I'm not saying that some of your criticisms of Evo Psych might not also apply to Group Psychodynamics, merely that they are two distinct fields) And on the subject of the "privileged" nature of the forum... well, as you yourself acknowledge, there's a certain inevitability in that. If you speak English and have regular internet access plus the time to spend on a web forum, then -- chances are -- you're one of the privileged few (globally speaking). There's really not much that can be done about that, and yes, it definitely restricts the perspectives available here. Though having said that, I like to think that I've experienced enough of the world (from living on a council estate, to living in a mansion, to honest-to-badness homeless poverty... from first world through to third, plus a glimpse of the second -- thanks to my partner who grew up behind the Iron Curtain) to at least be aware -- genuinely aware -- that my own perspective is a limited one, and is just one among many. We can all pay lip-service to that reality, but I'm not sure that most of us really get it. All in all, your broad point is a good one; this place has indeed seen better days and sometimes I despair at how safe and mainstream it has become. On the other hand, the fact that it evolved towards that mainstream rather than arrived here by design suggests that it can just as easily shift back (or forwards?) again. So I wouldn't be too harsh on it as -- if nothing else -- it still provides a place where a few of us stalwarts can gather in (generally) friendly company and shoot the breeze about the issues that are concerning us on a given day. Which is no bad thing in my book. Oh, and one last thing... stray wrote: The racist prince thread threw up some semi interesting arguments about the U-Know hivemind. Technically speaking, that's "group mind" and not "hivemind". Given my reputation for pedantry, I just couldn't resist. ;-)
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