Sunday, November 4, 2012

Juxtaposition VII: Narcissism, But Also Tribes and Epistemology


I get uncomfortable when a labelled tribe and I agree about everything, because then I can't tell the difference between reaching conclusions because they're true and reaching conclusions so as to acquire social rewards. Though come to think, shared premises are more important, and if I'm reaching conforming conclusions, I've probably flinched away from questioning the premises enough.

It looks like self-labelled anarchists do not recognize me as anarchist, and moreover for reasons I see as consistent with other anarchists. Excellent.




I took anarchist theory and then kept going. I often do this first, as a way of checking for contradictions. Here I was able to fix the contradictions, but it turned out that a true anarchy, in the Greek sense, could easily look like the status quo, because contracts aren't inflexible. I just have serious doubts that anyone would sign the necessary contracts - I certainly wouldn't.

And because I'm addicted to snarking, I'll add that if anyone seriously believed the 'consent of the governed' nonsense, shouldn't they conclude that getting those contracts signed would be easy? Shouldn't they think that my system would exactly reduce to their system?




Ideologies and reality differ in characteristic ways, but sadly I don't know how to describe them, I just recognize the intuitive readouts that correspond to the difference. Though if you want you can watch me grope towards a rational understanding. I could try to supply examples, but I think the mind-feel is definitive: reality does not feel human and familiar, or even human and creepy; it does neither what you want nor what you fear; it feels alien.