Tag: politics

54

generalising/expanding Badiou’s notion of the scandal – the notion that scandal is a [morality] device by which [an] ideology persuades people that particular problematic consequences of that ideology are in truth events that [morally] contradict that ideology and that thus don’t undermine/discredit it – thus a culture framing/interpreting events as scandals thus functioning as a kind of defense mechanism… or, in short: something being a scandal implies that it is an aberration – that things are normally not as bad, the scandalous event therefor noteworthy:

Morality and moral judgement/condemnation/prohibition in general perform the same function, just on a more abstract level – & especially what could be called progressive morality, by which I mean morality that continuously seeks/finds new moral frontiers to define[/re-define] itself with/along:

For a newly-emerging/visible domain of problematic consequences of an ideology, a new [phase of progressive] moral norm emerges, proliferates and predominates – which (pre-emptively or retro-actively) positions the ideology as standing in opposition to the bad stuff, as standing on the right side of emerging debate/struggle/conflict…

Furthermore: the morality that an ideology’s culture pushes most is an indication of the issues the ideology/culture is most fearful of discussing (instead of denying/repressing) – feels most guilty about.

This seems the principle/universal of which Badiou’s notion of scandal is the particular.

entry 18

an easy way to spot racism & bigotry:

Whenever an ethnicity, religion, class or gender is blamed for something: just try to notice whether someone accepts this without considering whether the blamed group is just a scape-goat(De: Sündenbock). 

The phenomenon and concept of scape-goating is so familiar and obvious that, whenever there is some problem that is causing pain in society and a specific class or sub-set is blamed for the problem, any non-racist will naturally react by [first] asking themselves whether the blamed group is just being scape-goated.

And it is easy to notice the opposite – when someone accepts the blaming/judgement of an ethnic or cultural group without pausing to ask themselves whether this might just be another case of selecting and using a scape-goat to deflect discontent/resentment away from wherever the true responsibility lies.

scape-goating: There is a simple and broadly well-understood phenomenon of the master in a master-slave relationship using a slave or category of slaves as a scape-goat for problems that would otherwise impact the master’s standing in some hierarchy or power-relation, e.g. would reduce the respect or loyalty that the master commands. And this can be expanded beyond literal slave-masters to include individuals or groups or classes that control or preside over whichever processes/structures/institutions are actually* causing or contributing to the problems in question – or even just to the [economic, societal or other] structures themselves in cases where nobody is really in control and nobody really understands what’s going on or how we got here.  

* – at least in the minds of those people who are in control, as this subjective picture/model is what is causing them to feel a need to deflect blame – so this is actually independent of where the true cause is.

entry 12

Many prominent & vocal leftists condemn successful capitalists as greedy, and this moral accusation of greed plays a major role in leftist polemic. Billionaires and bosses are called ‘greedy’, and so-called corporate greed is criticized.

However, it is not greed – at least not in any relevant or non-trivial way – that drives capitalists and corporations to do what they do. Moral defects or character defects aren’t really the cause of capitalists’ problematic behaviour patterns.

The true cause is the reality within which they live and within which they actually try to do the best they can. What I mean by that is: like most normal people they are believers, in part consciously and in part unconsciously, in mainstream reality and its principles – principles that produce a specific, fixed structure of culture and morality within which they try to behave and do well, and especially try to behave rationally. If their reality is flawed at a deep level and thus behaving according to its culture ultimately must produce problematic results, then this is not due to them, but rather due to history.

And indeed the notion that greed is the problem – that the problem is that each bad actor has this problematic personality trait – is itself individualist thinking as opposed to collectivist/structural thinking, i.e. it is anti-leftist and both reinforces individualism and provides a very easy way for the criticised to counter the polemic with individual justification that is provided by standard rationalist ethics.

So the left should focus on the structural critique – criticizing the ideology that produces the capitalist reality that capitalists are unwitting and dogmatic agents of.

 

And if one insists on making an individualist criticism of capitalists, greed wouldn’t even be the most fitting criticism: It would be that capitalists lack the awareness and courage to notice that their reality and ideology are fundamentally flawed. But, again, that would be a flawed criticism, as it consists of stating facts that are easily explained by the structural factors: Capitalists are normal people who, like other normal people, grow up in and are formed by capitalist realist social structures – a culture that is so dominant and all-pervasive that it would simply require statistically infrequent levels of rebelliousness or alternativeness for a random mind to thoroughly resist, traits which of course tend to result in marginalization.

entry 8

Surplus [of production] isn’t bad per se. The question is what the surplus is used for/transformed into:

Is it transformed into

a) more energy, light, consciousness

or into

b) more power? – with power here meaning power over others & the environment, & appearing in the form of money in its most general sense: money as credit that ideology-society-state make to function as power-over by guaranteeing the holder of the credit a freedom [& practical ability] to do something that is in logical conflict with another agent’s freedoms (Deutsch: Befugnis)

– maybe relevant to marxist theory