Touchy Subjects

Chris Hedges and the Justification for Non-Violence

I have been concerned about how the police state  developing in this country may lead the masses of people who live here but don’t benefit from it’s wealth to resort to violence. If people get desperate, it would be natural to think that they would engage in acts of violence to protest, to vent frustrations, or to get a little pay-back.

I have been concerned about what Chris Hedges has said because I thought, from what he said, that people in this country would be understandable and not surprising if they resorted to violence in order to redress the country’s inequalities. It would be understandable and unsurprising because this is what the people of other countries have done in similar situations.

I thought that Hedges did not say out loud but implied covertly that Americans would be justified in resorting to violence because the crimes of the police state left them no choice.

I thought this was a terrible position for Hedges to have, and I thought he had such a position.  I thought it was a bad position not because I thought the police state was a good thing, or I thought that the powers-that-be are justified in stealing from and murdering people foreign and domestic. I thought that violence itself would be wrong, a mistake in how we deal with hoodlums and sociopaths, as well as destructive both to the masses of people who are the victims of the police state, who presumably would engage in violence, but the country itself.

After all, the government alone spends a trillion dollars a year in defense-military-intelligence endeavors just to prevent any kind of effective countermeasures by the population at large which it oversees.

We should expect the blowback to be painful in unexpected ways.

Therefore, I am very interested in the following discussion of Occupy tactics by Chris Hedges. He makes a special point that violence as a tactic must be avoided because it would justify a  brutal response from the police. It would also scare off would be converts and allies in the general population.

I was impressed.

http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/the_critic_and_his_critics

_hedges_vs_the_black_bloc_20120407/

The question I continue to have is whether Hedges has addressed the issues adequately. Is there something that the Black Block gets that Hedges misses?

Rampant utopianism exposed // Krugman’s solutions and their solution

 

What I think about on a dismal Saturday evening,

I just spent some time commenting on a different venue about a discussion Krugman had about the economy. During the discussion he says, things are bad and they're going to get worse. We gotta make it easier to join and have unions. We have to strengthen health insurance provisions. yadda yadda.

I said, well, this is all well and good, but how are we going to do this? Krugman doesn't seem to have paid attention. There are people now who control the place who don't want to have unions or give out social or health protections. How does Krugman suppose we are going to get around them? He doesn't say.

Understanding Wittgenstein // What is a “philosophical theory” and are they of any use?

It seems to me that Wittgenstein was very much interested in the political goings on of his time. He was interested in the conflicts that had been causing great suffering in Europe and the world in general. I take it, his interest in Dostoevsky and his novel The Brothers Karamazov stoked this interest. The following example taken from an essay arguing that Wittgenstein was interested in the world, supports this claim.

from

Philosophy as a Service Industry, or, Reintroducing the Philosophical Life

by

ESA SAARINEN & T. P. USCHANOV, Department of Philosophy, University of Helsinki

…In the autumn of 1939, Wittgenstein and his friend Norman Malcolm were walking along the river Cam in Cambridge when they saw a newspaper vendor's sign announcing that the German government had accused the British government of instigating an attempt to assassinate Hitler. When Wittgenstein remarked that it wouldn't surprise him at all if it were true, Malcolm retorted that "the British were too civilized and decent to attempt anything so underhand, and . . . such an act was incompatible with the British 'national character'." Wittgenstein was furious, and the incident broke off his relations to Malcolm for some time (Malcolm, p. 30). Five years later, he wrote to Malcolm:

Whenever I thought of you I couldn't help thinking of a particular incident which seemed to me very important. . . . you made a remark about 'national character' that shocked me by its primitiveness. I then thought: what is the use of studying philosophy if all that it does for you is to enable you to talk with some plausibility about some abstruse questions of logic, etc., & if it does not improve your thinking about the important questions of everyday life, if it does not make you more conscientious than any . . . journalist in the use of the DANGEROUS phrases such people use for their own ends. (Malcolm, p. 93)

What is the use of studying philosophy if it doesn't improve your thinking about the important questions of everyday life? Contradicting the standard academic account of what Wittgenstein was up to, we believe that this is the pressing question he asked himself throughout his philosophical career. It was also a question Wittgenstein thought of as outweighing any specific philosophical theses or theories. But it is also exactly the question that has been forgotten and even laughed at by the mainstream of today's professional philosophy.

What is a “toxic idea” according to the powers that be?

 

A “toxic idea” is an idea  based on some kind of confusion or misunderstanding which when looked at superficially looks credible, but under closer examination turns out to be nonsense. It is “disguised nonsense.”

The claim that  some part of the United States government either knew about the plot to commit the 9-11 murders and did nothing effective to stop it, or itself planned and carried out that plot, is an example of such a “toxic idea.”

The official story of 9-11 is considered to be “fact-based” and rigorous in its reliance on the best rules of reasoning our civilization can provide.

Supposedly, the arguments offered by the official story, and it's critics, are as different as night and day.

This is why in polite and credible circles, people acknowledge the official story and never consider or mention the critic’s “conspiracy theories.”

Understanding Wittgenstein // The Baby and the Bathwater

I want to summarize my argument for what philosophy was about in the twentieth century.

All philosophy after Socrates has held that (1) our understanding of everything is based on the way we argue, and (2) we argue best when we argue logically.

There have been many challenges and amplifications to this view.  In the twentieth century, Frege argued that there exists a foundation or basis for argumentation, upon which all arguments are held. He just restated what has been thought to be the case since ancient times. Upon this ground there is the possibility of resolving conflicts.

We care about Frege because he spoke about this baby. He explained why it was precious.

Wittgenstein argued that there exists in our culture certain philosophical  theories which lie at the source of the world’s conflicts. These theories include the allegory of the cave, the allegory of the playground, and the allegory of the zombie. If we paid attention to Frege’s account of meaning, according to Wittgenstein, we should be able to eradicate these troublesome theories. They are creatures of philosophy, and philosophy should be able to evaluate and do with them what must be done. Wittgenstein showed that on any theory of meaning involving “correspondence” or “coherence” these philosophical  theories can be shown to be disguised nonsense. That is, even though it seem to everyone that these theories are about real and troubling things, there’s really nothing to them. Concern about them is as nonsensical as worrying about vampires,  werewolves,  or  the boogey man.

We care about Wittgenstein because he showed these philosophical theories are like the bathwater you need to get rid of.

This was why at certain points Wittgenstein thought his work was a service to people.

However, Wittgenstein also discovered that when you make it impossible to hold onto these philosophical theories you have at the same time made it impossible to answer the skeptic’s challenge to the claim that there is a logical foundation or basis in logic upon which one can carry on and resolve arguments. It turns out that these troublesome theories are excuses for the failings of the foundational idea that came to us from ancient times and discussed by Frege.

These philosophical theories that so troubled Wittgenstein were not just philosophical  mistakes or what happens when people become confused about  what’s going on. It turns out that they exist to explain why  a  foundation involving logic only seems to fail,  because  when the big picture is taken into consideration, the big picture as put forward by these philosophical theories, our logical way of arguing is the basis for our understanding everything.  So, if we find that we have to get rid of these theories, then, along with them, we have to get rid of the account of  the logical foundation of our understanding.

That is, if we have to get rid of the bathwater, and Wittgenstein showed that we do, we won’t be able to keep the baby from going along with it.

Philosophy and our culture since Wittgenstein  is all about dealing  with this dilemma.

Understanding Wittgenstein // How philosophy is not like science

It’s important to understand what Wittgenstein was trying to do in philosophy. Some people think that philosophy should be more like science, and because it’s confused, it doesn’t pay enough attention to the facts about reality,  it needs to be reformed. They think that Wittgenstein was such a reformer of philosophy. He wanted to clear up its confusions, have it be more empirical,  so it would be more useful like science.

Understanding Wittgenstein // Why Philosophers are Ignored

Some philosophers come to controversies and want to set the existing arguments on some strong foundation. They want to make explicit just what everyone is assuming, the grounds on which the argument takes place, …and no one pays any attention.

Descartes is one of these. He wanted to find a way to resolve disputes. He thought, well, if we can all agree to our starting point, maybe we can get somewhere. But, what he ended up saying was that, well, it was hard to say exactly what anyone could agree on. He wanted to say that he could say, without a doubt, that he existed. Then things got controversial. He wanted to solve problems out in his community. He ended up showing that it might be impossible to even begin those arguments. He was not helping. So, people thought he made interesting philosophy, but not very helpful advice.

Songs to hear, paintings to see, art to do // part 1

I’ve been interested in music, and in this piece. My parents and grand parents lived and probably listened to this song. My dad liked country music.  His mom played a guitar, from what my dad said about her. My mom learned to play the piano.

This is a great song.

Understanding Wittgenstein // Dealing with Theories

I’ve been trying to make the point that Wittgenstein was not someone who spent his time exorcising any personal demons. He grew up in a rich family, met with and spoke with people who had a fair understanding of the political, intellectual, and cultural situation in Europe and the world, in general.

Wittgenstein expressed interest in literature that raised issues about the world. Ivan Karamazov spoke about how God could allow evil in the world.

I believe Wittgenstein did not slink away from these issues in order to worry about his own pimples.

Political Voice // Michael Hudson

 

http://michael-hudson.com/2012/01/hudson-keiser-on-2012-imperialism/