११ फेब्रुवारी, २०२०

"[I]n the liberal individualist way of thinking, the individual is always an adult male in his prime, who, just at this particular moment when we encounter him, happens to have no needs and dependencies that would bind him to others."

Masha Gesson prompts Judith Butler, in "Judith Butler Wants Us to Reshape Our Rage" (The New Yorker). Butler answers:
That model of the individual is comic, in a way, but also lethal. The goal is to overcome the formative and dependent stages of life to emerge, separate, and individuate—and then you become this self-standing individual. That’s a translation from German. They say selbstständig, implying that you stand on your own. But who actually stands on their own? We are all, if we stand, supported by any number of things. Even coming to see you today—the pavement allowed me to move, and so did my shoes, my orthotics, and the long hours spent by my physical therapist. His labor is in my walk, as it were. I wouldn’t have been able to get here without any of those wonderful technologies and supporting relations.

Acknowledging dependency as a condition of who any of us happens to be is difficult enough. But the larger task is to affirm social and ecological interdependence, which is regularly misrecognized as well. If we were to rethink ourselves as social creatures who are fundamentally dependent upon one another—and there’s no shame, no humiliation, no “feminization” in that—I think that we would treat each other differently, because our very conception of self would not be defined by individual self-interest.

५८ टिप्पण्या:

Lincolntf म्हणाले...

Fear and loathing of the individual has always been a hallmark of Leftism.

rehajm म्हणाले...

Self-interest gets a bad rap. Turns out humans often have similar and complimentary self-interests.

Shouting Thomas म्हणाले...

I'm not enraged... well, occasionally, but not that often.

Who wants to nurse their enragement?

Ann Althouse म्हणाले...

I'm so amused by "the pavement allowed me to move."

stevew म्हणाले...

You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.

I don't assert that I am wholly independent - selbstständig - rather I'd just like to be left alone, to engage with others and the "community" when and how I see fit.

Rocketeer म्हणाले...

Blah blah blah blah dee blah blah

Jaq म्हणाले...

The good stuff is when she explains how, as a privileged white lady, she has no right of self defense. That’s a paraphrase, she would never use such loaded language, but that’s her point. Plus it’s always fun when she uses some lefty article of faith as if she had cited something known to be absolutely true, like the behavior of bodies falling in a vacuum.

She is onto something though, when she points out that people who go to work everyday at jobs making stuff or doing services for other people are serving others too. Not that she does anything with the insight. She wants to change the world, take stuff away from some people and give it to others based on some concept of “justice” that her group has agreed to, and so she should not be surprised if her fellow lefties, many of them, understand that this is going to require violence and that the people on the receiving end of this violence may well reply in kind.

Lucid-Ideas म्हणाले...

Islam is right about women.

Big Mike म्हणाले...

There are no females who are individualists? Not to her! Seems to me she should enlarge her circle of acquaintances.

Jaq म्हणाले...

"No man is an island.” She is right about that. It’s just not a new thought.

WK म्हणाले...

You didn’t walk here on your own.... it took the entirety of the earth to support those few steps.

Earnest Prole म्हणाले...

This just in: No man is an island. You read it here first.

Tom T. म्हणाले...

There was a time when it would have been considered anti-feminist to insist that a woman is necessarily dependent on men.

Who does she think laid that pavement, for instance?

Jersey Fled म्हणाले...

I have no idea what she is talking about.

rhhardin म्हणाले...

Both parties come out ahead in voluntary deals, which is why you want individuals.

Birkel म्हणाले...

Jersey Fled:
She is arguing for Leftist Collectivism. There is nothing more to say about that. If nobody is self-sustaining then we must all depend on something.

And Big Government is always that something.

I Have Misplaced My Pants म्हणाले...

If we were to rethink ourselves as social creatures who are fundamentally dependent upon one another—and there’s no shame, no humiliation, no “feminization” in that—I think that we would treat each other differently, because our very conception of self would not be defined by individual self-interest.

Holy shit! What a fresh and blazing insight! Let me introduce you to something you've obviously never heard of that you're really going to dig: it's called two thousand years of Judeo-Christian intellectual tradition!

Oh my sweet LORD these people are ignorant and I get SO tired of their lectures and their condescension. SO TIRED

narayanan म्हणाले...

Ayn Rand's favorite poem

The Westerner - Poem by Charles Badger Clark

My fathers sleep on the sunrise plains,
And each one sleeps alone.
Their trails may dim to the grass and rains,
For I choose to make my own.
I lay proud claim to their blood and name,
But I lean on no dead kin;
My name is mine, for the praise or scorn,
And the world began when I was born
And the world is mine to win.
They built high towns on their old log sills,
Where the great, slow rivers gleamed,
But with new, live rock from the savage hills
I'll build as they only dreamed.
The smoke scarce dies where the trail camp
lies,
Till the rails glint down the pass;
The desert springs into fruit and wheat
And I lay the stones of a solid street
Over yesterday's untrod grass.
I waste no thought on my neighbor's birth
Or the way he makes his prayer.
I grant him a white man's room on earth
If his game is only square.
While he plays it straight I'll call him mate;
If he cheats I drop him flat.
Old class and rank are a wornout lie,
For all clean men are as good as I,
And a king is only that.
I dream no dreams of a nurse-maid state
That will spoon me out my food.
A stout heart sings in the fray with fate
And the shock and sweat are good.
From noon to noon all the earthly boon
That I ask my God to spare
Is a little daily bread in store,
With the room to fight the strong for more,
And the weak shall get their share.
The sunrise plains are a tender haze
And the sunset seas are gray,
But I stand here, where the bright skies blaze
Over me and the big today.
What good to me is a vague 'maybe'
Or a mournful 'might have been,'
For the sun wheels swift from morn to morn
And the world began when I was born
And the world is mine to win.

Charles Badger Clark



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Charles Badger Clark
Charles Badger Clark (1883 - 1957 / Albia, Iowa)

poet Charles Badger Clark

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Poems by Charles Badger Clark : 57 / 60

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Ignorance is Bliss म्हणाले...

You didn't build that.

अनामित म्हणाले...

Aunty Trump: "No man is an island.” She is right about that. It’s just not a new thought.

It's just that unlike people like Butler and Gesson, most of us don't dedicate ourselves to destroying the conditions necessary for the natural development of healthy human relations of dependency before noticing that.

Bob Boyd म्हणाले...

Politics as religion.

J Melcher म्हणाले...

Huck Finn?

Patrick Henry was right! म्हणाले...

If everybody is leaning on everybody else, who holds the world up?

Browndog म्हणाले...
ही टिप्पणी लेखकाना हलविली आहे.
Browndog म्हणाले...

I think it goes deeper-

When you are nothing more than part of a collective, your life, your fate, is in the hands of others.

It's strips the individual of free will. Free will was given to man by God.

narciso म्हणाले...

there was a politico piece, that argued there was no free choice, to legitimate Obamacare, they make the sophists sound straight forward,

Doug म्हणाले...

Patrick Henry was right! said...
If everybody is leaning on everybody else, who holds the world up?


It's turtles all the way down.

Calypso Facto म्हणाले...

Ahh, the seductive opiate of freedom from individual striving and responsibility.
“Will you walk into my [collectivist] parlor?” said the spider to the fly ...

Roger Sweeny म्हणाले...

Your individual self-interest depends on co-operating with various people (and not co-operating with some others). That's about as shocking and original as "water is wet".

However, it does not mean, "what you want isn't important--at least if me and the other good people want you to do something different."

Lucid-Ideas म्हणाले...

"No man is an island"

I have wondered about that phrase for a long time. Every time someone says that the first thing I think of is Tom Hanks in 'Castaway' or Robinson Crusoe. Obviously, "No man is an island" is not directly the same thing as "One man on an island", but they are most definitely linked.

I like to call this concept lethal loneliness. Whether it be Castaway or Crusoe or Gary Paulsen's Hatchet, it is a concept that is almost completely and exclusively masculine. Similar works in feminine literature almost always are A) not lethal and B) focus on the concept of being alone mentally, but often being surrounded by people even to the point of having a rich social life.

Could anyone imagine a female version of Castaway, Hatchet, Crusoe, or Jeremiah Johnson? She'd be dead in a week. My point is that women have a hard time imagining this 'bootstrap' idea because - quite frankly - they can't do it...they 'can't' build that. To quote Camille Paglia, "If women were in charge and ran the world we'd all still be living in grass huts." I caveat this by saying that while women 'can't' there are a ton of men that couldn't survive either. Dying of shame in the wilderness is absolutely real.

A man by biological destiny is far far more capable of 'being an island' than any woman ever born. Moreover, there's a certain expectation for him to be and do so. There are tens of millions of men the world over living lives of quiet desperation, completely alone with no friends or family, acting pretty much like isolated islands in a sea of people - including this author - that could give zero fucks about their existence. Homeless men outnumber homeless women in this country 100 to 1. Are those men not islands?

Guildofcannonballs म्हणाले...

"Santa Fe" by Bon Jovi

"They say that no man is an island
And good things come to those who wait
But the things I hear are there just to remind me
Every dog will have his day"

I always took it to mean men can move, they aren't in one spot for their entire existence.

Howard म्हणाले...

I find it quite sad that Lucid only analyzes the headline and not the body of the poem to extract the new once out of the phrase no man is an island. Instead he uses a simplistic Ian Rand analysis of a portion of the first line in the poem to justify his own as he calls it quiet desperation. No wonder you can't find American girls to love you. You still feel too sorry for yourself. But don't worry you're not alone we're all here for you even us assholes that make fun of your plight.

Howard म्हणाले...

Blogger Patrick Henry was right! said...
If everybody is leaning on everybody else, who holds the world up?


I know that math is hard for some of you people. The first part of that sentence answers the second part: The matrix, the fabric, the scaffolding the infrastructure yada yada yada some people might call it the web.

Whatever it is that is holding us all up none of us built it. That's where that stupid comment from that failed scientist who said we can see so far because we are standing on the shoulders of giants

Browndog म्हणाले...

Then, there's this:


The Atlantic
‏Verified account @TheAtlantic

The family structure we’ve held up as the cultural ideal for the past half century has been a catastrophe for many, @nytdavidbrooks writes. It’s time to figure out better ways to live together.

6:17 AM - 10 Feb 2020

Howard म्हणाले...

Well brown stain, isn't he agreeing with mainstream Conservative Republican theories on the breakdown of the American family for the last 50 years? because that doesn't cover the leave it to Beaver world that you people want to return to so maybe you actually agree with David Brooks in this case.

mockturtle म्हणाले...

'Liberal individualist' is an oxymoron, is it not? One thing all liberals I've known have in common is the notion that the good of the whole supersedes individual rights.

Lucid-Ideas म्हणाले...

That's where you're wrong Howard. Ian Rand was new once - just like you - a long time ago so very very sophisticated in the original meaning of the word. With age and time, she gained nuance and learned to appreciate, like myself, the excellence of large-breasted foreign women from around the world. I'm sorry this is something you'll never appreciate.

Ayn't it sad...

Seeing Red म्हणाले...

You didn’t build that.

mockturtle म्हणाले...

Lucid asserts: Could anyone imagine a female version of Castaway, Hatchet, Crusoe, or Jeremiah Johnson? She'd be dead in a week.

Lucid, read some survival accounts of both men and women and get back to me. Women are equally capable of surviving deprivation and are physically more capable of enduring starvation and dehydration. While I usually admire your posts, you are off the mark regarding women.

Browndog म्हणाले...

Well brown stain,

Heh- I haven't been called that by unhinged libs on-line in few years. So much so it was my unofficial screen name.

Creativity of the Collective, I guess.

HoodlumDoodlum म्हणाले...

*Real* men are wholly dependent on others--mainly through the government--to provide for their needs and in all ways take care of them. The New Soviet Man doesn't need to stand by himself, he knows that his strength is the soviet and the bundle will hold where the rod will crack.

Hey, quick question: do attractive, high-value women want to fuck those kinds of men? I mean every few days we get an article on how awful it is that successful women in big cities can't find suitable mates (all the men are underemployed, content to sit in a crappy apartment playing video games all day, etc) and the description of the kind of man those women WANT sure seems a lot like the kind of man/person this author says we shouldn't be.

What an odd and totally inexplicable disconnect. It's almost as though one line of thinking is bullshit as demonstrated by the revealed preferences of actual human desires and choices. But see, I'm not an academic philosopher nor a gender theorist, so what the hell do I know?

Howard म्हणाले...

Don't worry about me lucid. I'm a lover of all women that's one of the benefits of being a square head.

Howard म्हणाले...

You're right brown stain that was derivative my apologies.

Lucid-Ideas म्हणाले...

@Mockturtle

Appreciate your opinion. I do not think I'm off the mark. Thanks.

Ice Nine म्हणाले...
ही टिप्पणी लेखकाना हलविली आहे.
DarkHelmet म्हणाले...

Voluntary exchange for mutual benefit is not a complicated idea. You probably can't get a professorship or a book deal or a TV hosting job or a political office by saying, "Leave people alone -- they'll work it out."

Ordinary people can be rather dim on occasion but one has to be a special type of intellectual to be so god-awful stupid as this navel-gazer.

HoodlumDoodlum म्हणाले...

I'd take critiques of "radical individualism" a lot more seriously if they were made from a perspective that acknowledges the interdependence at the core of capitalism and how that market focus can crowd out other forms of community and engagement. The Left critique is usually more that we ought to redefine our place in the world to one of something close to utter helplessness and dependence--"if if weren't for someone else I wouldn't even have a road to walk on!" and then translate that feeling into a desire for big daddy government, Communism, etc.

Adam Smith figured out in 1776 that "it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest" but this academic seems to believe it's some new insight that we depend in part on others for our daily needs. Smith understood, as this author seems not to, that our dependence isn't a matter of relying on charity on the part of others, but is instead a matter of our all, mutually, exchanging work and value for one another for our own benefit and thereby providing benefits to all.

If your big idea for redefining, as a society, masculinity fails to understand the moral philosophy of Smith from 240 years ago I'm not sure why a prestigious publication like the New Yorker thinks it's worth our time.


(Full disclosure: I haven't read the full article; possibly it's better than the excerpt suggests.)

mockturtle म्हणाले...

And, Lucid, a female 'Crusoe' would also have the assistance of Friday. And with benefits! ;-)

HoodlumDoodlum म्हणाले...

Lucid-Ideas said...Could anyone imagine a female version of Castaway, Hatchet, Crusoe, or Jeremiah Johnson? She'd be dead in a week. My point is that women have a hard time imagining this 'bootstrap' idea because - quite frankly - they can't do it...they 'can't' build that. To quote Camille Paglia, "If women were in charge and ran the world we'd all still be living in grass huts."

The comparison of 1 person, man or woman, living in a survival situation alone isn't really fair--most modern people wouldn't survive that and there are a number of historic examples of extraordinary survival by individual women and men.

The more interesting, applicable, and amusing comparison is to group survival. The go-to example is the Dutch version of Survivor (Expedite Robinson) from 2005 or 2006 where the contestants were split into 2 groups, 8 men and 8 women, on opposite sides of an island. The men worked things out, built shelters, foraged, etc, and the women bickered and fell apart. There used to be a funny YouTube video summary but all a quick search turns up is this image w/pictures of the two camps.

The UK Bear Grylls show the Island was criticized for being all male so in the 2nd season they had a men's team and a women's team and the women's team did much worse, requiring the producers to give them additional food and I think some other supplies. That ALSO got criticized as sexist so in the 3rd season they split by gender again but the women's team had several very capable, competent women (one was an amputee army vet, I think) and the men's team had several incompetent people (one guy had a mental breakdown at the very beginning, couldn't stop crying, etc) so the women did BETTER in that season and no one complained about sexism.

Anyway those are only TV shows so they don't say anything at all about the real world and differences between genders, unless of course they show that women are better, in which case they're solid proof and empirically sound.

But there certainly have been some extraordinary women who survived alone in the wilderness: Wiki - Ada Blackjack

frenchy म्हणाले...

Inasmuch as it all emanates from the simple fact humans are individual biological organisms, and each organism is imbued with its own individual instinct to survive at the expense of all else in a harsh and brutal environment, it's in the nature of magical thinking to believe that on command people will or can override that imperative.

Narr म्हणाले...

In '"the" liberal individualist tradition' . . . that's enough to reject her entire argument.

Is there a scary-sounding German word the author can throw in? That always provides a frisson.

Narr
I'm more of a large peninsula, myself

Lucid-Ideas म्हणाले...

@Mockturtle

Crusoe did not 'need' Friday. It was the other way around. Crusoe saves Friday's life.

This is all fiction we're talking about anyway. Real world examples for both sexes are exceedingly rare, but far and away rarer for women.

Women are very very poorly adapted to survival without civilization, much moreso than men. I stand by that point.

mockturtle म्हणाले...

Women are very very poorly adapted to survival without civilization

Nope. Maybe due to the current state of our affluent society, neither gender would adapt well to the wild. But there are plenty of historic examples--as well as recent ones--of women surviving alone in dire circumstances. The fact that fewer women are put into these situations might skew the data but to suggest that the female of any species is unable to conceive and apply survival skills is false on its premise.

pdug म्हणाले...

Judith Butler: "I'd like to thank the pavement, for always keeping me off the streets."

Birkel म्हणाले...

Best that society should Harrison Bergeron the young, fit men.

Bilwick म्हणाले...

Translation: "All of us, at one time or another, are dependent on someone--so that gives us the right to use State force to make you do what we want you to do!" Statist Logic 101.

roesch/voltaire म्हणाले...

Citing the fictional character of Robinson Crusoe to prove that no man is an island against a rather more the more complex and nuanced writing of Butler who points out how we might behave differently when we realize how connected we are is a weak argument.Historically folks have survived by working in groups and some suggest the ideal number is less than 400.

mikee म्हणाले...

Sure, I'll join the collective. I'd prefer, however, before doing so that my individual rights are exceptionally well protected. And we'll talk later about my individual self-interest, which is an economic concept, not a political one.