Thread by @yungneocon, Many of the critiques I see on here boil down to the [...]

Many of the critiques I see on here boil down to the claim that the truth value, consistency, coherence, symmetry & correct assumptions of an idea matter less than its rhetorical power & convincing as many people as possible. This has many important assumptions & consequences.

The issue—that goes back to the beginning of left theirization—is that if ‘ideas’ and correct analysis truly don’t matter, then there’s no point in doing it, and all disputes about it are really just disputes about power, preference, & social allegiance.

But if they do matter, they have to matter in a certain way—whether as an idea grasped by a vanguard that sacrifices the finer grained aspects of a truth to more successfully implement its capital-T truth, or as a project where one must convince as many people as possible.

If either of these mass formulations are correct, however, then the consistency, coherence, symmetry, correctness, implications & assumptions of models matter less than their diffusion.

If *this* is the case, then the only empirics & concept’s relevant to theory are not philosophical or scientific or even practical, but boil down to:
1. Psychological biases of individuals
2. The sociology of knowledge/culture/ideas
3. Rhetoric
4. Their nexus

In this frame, rather than trying to undo peoples associations or convince them of correct ideas or to push back on their own, one should gain mastery of the mass of social & rhetorical biases to exploit, rather than push back on them.

In many ways, i try to focus on aims that are the opposite—in academia itself, my focus on the sociology of knowledge, science & technology, is ultimately oriented toward making these *better*, & deconstructive critique is just an important step there

In politics, I don’t subscribe to some mix of mass politics, vangurdism, idealism, liberalism, electoralism, ideas as matter bc correctness & usefulness matter, bc they orient our fundamental goals, they solidify social bonds & they serve as useful tools.

Ideas do not motivate history and politics, but one cannot do history & politics without them. Thus my aim is trying to push people (incl. me) to be more consistent, symmetric, coherent & self aware of their assumptions & biases in applying their ideas, whatever they are.

This is on top of, & complementary to, but in some ways independent, of trying to convince people of the models I think are correct.

While I believe that symmetry, coherence, consistency & truthfulness are on the side of my ideas, I’d honestly prefer those who are opposed to my ideas (but who share my stated general goals) to be consistent, coherent & symmetric even if they disagree with me.

This is why so many of my threads analyze other critiques & their immanent logic, rather than explicitly counterposing my own—Altho, I try to be up front about what my *own* is, to let people account for them.

This is so called ‘immanent’ critique. The reason I think it’s important is that unless my interlocutors and I come to some shared set of assumptions or a frame of translation, than all of our discussions boil down to the above—rhetoric, interest, bias, social affiliation etc

Which is to say, obviously getting rid influences of the above is impossible, but unless we find a shared frame—even a provisional one—that’s *all* our conversations will be. The problem is finding this shared from is *hard work*, especially online.

In person, building such shared frames across workdviews is much easier (tho by no means trivial), whereas online, it requires very patiently laying out one’s ideas & analyzing them bc we lack other means of shared framework making.

This raises another issue—the project of convincing people or defeating an opposed ideas, absent this framework building, is fundamentally opportunistic, bad faith, biased, rhetorical, prejudiced & interested. It’s also unavoidable.

The projects of scholarship, or of shared framework building for politics, are fundamentally in conflict with these other aims in many cases. Vsnguardism & mass politics call for surrendering to this fact. Scholastic idealism calls for surrendering to the other facts.

My own view is tries to balance these aims—among friends, by which I mean allies, people I respect, people I can plausibly convince, & people who share my goals, I try to follow a no bullshit rule. Among those who don’t fall into these, ill be as rhetorical as anybody.

I call this tit for tat. A corollary of this is that if you don’t want to do the shared framework building and good faith work, i assume you aren’t interested in it, and just want to do an opportunistic dunk fest.

I can, and do, do the opportunistic dunk fest. It’s fun for catharsis, for solidifying social boundaries, for expressing one’s views, for finding like minded people, and for sloganeering. It’s not very useful as scholarship or as practical political framework building.

It isn’t hard to opportunistically dunk on others and their ideologies. It’s especially not difficult to do so when I consider their ideas fundamentally flawed and I don’t like the people in question. It’s just not very useful.

My biggest uphill battle I’ve found for the ideas & goals I am most involved in are that people superficially like them, or find them aesthetically or otherwise useful, but don’t analyze how they’re inconsistent with other aspects of their worldview

In terms of reductionist slogans, my fundamental views are simple:
1. Don’t throw living beings in cages
2. Don’t destroy the planet
3. The work of continual emancipation is never done
4. Respect the fundamental ‘right to rights’ among all (for lack of better terms)

More formally, I can state these in modern political theory format (1 i find increasingly ill suited) in several axioms:
1. Respect the fundamental right to rights & conditions of possibility thereof
2. Leave the commons as good as or better than it was received on average

3. All decisions should be autonomous; discretion should be proportional to impact
4. Emancipatory work is never done & we must constantly expand the circle of who/what projects we include in our struggle
5. Don’t cage, coerce or dominate living beings
6. Don’t destroy the planet

These are deceptively simple and many people find them unobjectionable on first statement. They also are often critiqued for not including this or that worldview of issue to people.

But herein lies the issue—the above are actually incredibly strict conditions & by necessity include all of, say, Marx’s critiques of exploitation, alienation, the social division of labor, private property, class, stratification & capitalism

They also more or less explicitly imply prison abolition, anti carceralism, the end of white supremacy, patriarchy, imperialism, colonialism & the state, the end of extractivism & enclosure, the end of ecocide, and the reassertion of the commons.

In my experience, there are several topics on here that provoke the most angry responses, many of which are openly agreed to in name, but in practice raise a lot of issues. And another aspect is the *more* good faith & syncretic my discussion of these topics the more they anger

1. Ecopolitics, environmentalism, the commons, energy, the state, animal rights, anthropocentrism, land, the biosphere, and the like
2. Prison, police, border & surveillance abolition, anti-carceralism/retrivutivism/punishment

3. Abolition of the state/statism, militarism, ongoing dispossession & coercion
4. Opposition to enclosure & extractivism
5. Antisemitism & more broadly kinds of prejudice & animus not usually theorized or taken seriously

6. My critiques of the left & left wing ideas, most usually from the perspective of hidden assumptions/prejudices/aesthetics, or from issues of symmetry, coherence, consistency, charity, & implication

7. My critiques of moralism, aestheticism, retributivism, idealism, anthropocentrism, and so on, which often overlap or subsume 5 & 6, and overlay with the rest of them

8. Discussions of reaction, anti intellectualism, misplaced concreteness, inherited dominant ideologies, ontological individualism, and bad faith, which arguably is the same issue as 7, but that’s for a different day

9. My views on Science, technology, knowledge, and my critiques of scientism, modernism, futurism, techno determinism
10. Overlapping with 9, Critiques of the ‘civilization’ ideology, teleology, culturalism, ethnocentrism, false universalism, and individual/social agency

On the face of it, these are an odd set of areas to provoke the most controversy, but on closer reflection it actually makes a lot of sense. For a couple reasons

1. The first is that many of these areas are already highly emotionally laden, and important to people & thus provoke strong varied opinions
2. The second is that they concern areas important to people’s self image as an intellectual and/or a radical

3. The third is that they concern areas which many of us would say we care deeply about, but which entail assumptions & implications inconsistent with other of our deeply held beliefs

4. They confront dead on peoples unstated prejudices, aesthetics, peccadilloes, personal morals, interests, opportunities, social cliques, ego ideals, self presentations, internalized assumptions, & unrealized commitments, especially the status quo.

5. They concern some of the most difficult issues known to humans, have no easy cut and dry answers, and imply strict conditions about our worldviews—i cant claim to be fully consistent with them or have solved them, because no one can. They seem immense & indissoluble

This, of course, is setting aside personal reasons, peoples dislike of me for other reasons, proxy conflicts, pure disagreement, and pure prejudices, aesthetic associations, internalizations of slanders, and past built up anger.

However, since this latter set is often the outcome & feeds the above, these aren’t cleanly separable. It also brackets issues arising from self presentation, rhetoric, personal framings, contexts of utterance, pedantry, and laundering of certain views.

Of course, I have a vested interest—as everyone does with regard to their own views—in believing these issues explain a minimum of disagremeements & conflicts with me, while those opposed have a vested interest in believing these explain most of them.

Since I am a fallible, biased, manipulable, embodied, social human like everyone else, it’s surely the case that some non trivial portion of conflict arises from these issues. It’s for this reason, I, barring other readons, leave my old incorrect posts up, & issue corrections.

It’s also my experience that people often claim that their disagreement stems from rhetorical framing, when in reality it’s because they want to avoid any substantive disputes issues it brings up.

Since I began by criticizing vulgar mass politics, electoralism, idealism, individualism, & vangusrdism—ideas which are more related than people realize.

In effect, they all assume that the key issue is ideas and convincing as many people as possible of them, en masse, but that doing so either requires a vanguard, watering them down, an idealized notion of the masses, emptying them of content, rhetorical manipulation or some mix

But I don’t subscribe to this view, because I think convincing everyone of our ideas is impossible, that mass coalitions are most prone to recuperation & reaction, that ideas don’t drive by are resources for & emergent paths within history, & don’t rc about individual behavior

I’d rather have a small group of highly committed, well thought out, self reflective, loyal, mutually aiding people, who strategically & tactically work with others, but don’t get subsumed under them, & which don’t aim to take power.

Since I don’t believe revolutions are concrete one off historically bounded events, don’t see history as completable & don’t see controlling others as our aims, the main issue becomes continual imposition, demand, critique, costs, subversion & detournment of the present order

The main aim is to undercut those conditions, constraint & causes of possibility & action that cause the harms we see as central, and prevent people from solving them, rather than creating the world anew from the top down.

Since I more or less trust other people, even though I know they won’t always agree, aren’t perfect, may be in conflict with me, and can’t all be convinced, that’s what I focus on.

This is also why I focus on the immanent critique of other peoples views, and finding shared frameworks or areas of unstated ageeement/disagreement, than on purely ‘owning’ other frameworks.

I expend a lot of time & energy highlight what I think the empirical & conceptual arguments for my views and against other peoples are, but this is only useful where the person either already agrees with me, OR where the above work has already been taken care of.

I have no delusions about convincing people who fundamentally disagree with me on axiomatic issues (especially online—it’s definitely more possible irl), nor that I’ve any hope of convincing people who refuse to find a shared framework of agreement/disageeement

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