(no subject)

[kingtycoon]

Reading Zizek on the bus everyone looks at the cover.  Today is a day where people do a double take when they see me, people.  At work I loom over the cubicle, I don't enter the cubicle, I lean over to talk to you, elbows up, and almost a spit take.  Almost.  A lady walked into the restaraunt while me and Antonio were taking the bookstore man out for dinner, he bought our books, we went for wraps, a lady walks in and stares, for seconds, and then notices she's staring.  Everyone stares at me today. 

That's kind of usual?  But today it's a notable thing, people staring, "where have you been?"  is what a stranger is supposed to say to you, when they meet you. 

I read about violence, theories and ideas, I think of things I've seen said and about the social media..  I think of conversations with Zizek.  Having just finished Slant  - an alright book, a decent read, guarded recommend, to the right kind of reader, maybe not you.  And then break into violence.  Violence.  You know I think that Facebook is violent, I think it is, I think that twitter is violent, I think that when people stare at you there's an implicit violence - which Zizek comes talks about - Biological Libertarian state?  Something.  I'm not getting out of bed to read or check - he says that the other becomes regarded as unreal as liberty devolves into a sense of entitlement about your own comfort.  That your comfort is your essential right and to achieve it you monsterize everyone around you.  Maybe.  I think about it on the bus and talking nicely to the people around me, just nicely, not a lot, I'm kind, kind of good-natured, but not friendly.  Not me.  And that I think?  I don't know.

I told Agatha one day, she was asking about something, maybe it was ruffians a school?  Ratting out the other kids, or avoiding or being in fights.  I told her:  "everything that happens is an opportunity to demonstrate grace and dignity."  Which I hadn't even thought that I thought before I said it.  It was one of those things, and then I said it again, and I realized I might be kind of tightly wound.   But yeah, no, protocols and boundaries, conscience and benign indifference, I say to those things:  "Okay."

I don't know, there's plenty of things about me that I never have or never will say to another person, I don't know if people are like that.  On the bus there are damaged people, at work, they'll tell you the lowest, saddest thing about them.  They want you to know?  I don' t know why.  They'll tell you their political affiliation, or their opinions, out of nowhere.  That's violence right? 

Be serene.  The ocean is, at the bottom. 

Comments

[mordicai.livejournal.com]

I think a lot about courtesy as the exercise of power. In a lot of contexts it is patronizing poison-- like "being a gentleman" is often code for hidden misogyny-- but stripped of that context it really is a weird little clip of noblesse oblige? Sure, I'll hold the door open for you, guy, I have that ability!

[kingtycoon.livejournal.com]

You've spoken a bit about ethics, but I think that your analysis is... I want to say too inverted. Ethical behavior is, to my mind, not inwardly focused, but a method of managing external interactions. You are about intent, which speaks to Sincerity - one of my constant virtues. This matter speaks to Compassion, one of my big 3.

To me - in life, I see a man sweeping the filth on the sidewalk, I pay him no attention - because in my experience I don't want attention when doing my menial tasks. Subtlety in compassion is a big deal, I think, not brazen acts of compliance/demonstrations of gallantry, but rather I mean innocuous, unconscious propriety. Do for others as you expect to be done for you, the maintenance of social symmetry, or parity, or equanimity. In this respect I think that Compassion means being alert to situations of advantage and disadvantage and making appropriate effort to deny exertions based on advantage.

You can speak of the misogyny in masculine gallantry, and I more than most am hostile to White-Knighting - but there is a coincidence of what I'm talking about with some amount of gentlemanly behavior. Because in a situation where one is awarded primacy through no effort it is proper to deny oneself the benefit of that primacy. Being a gentleman does relate to misogyny because one can't be a gentleman outside the patriarchy. Still, consider the alternatives to gentlemanly behavior. Since the Patriarchy is in a state of decay 'gentlemanly actions' can be demonstrated to be acts meant to reassert male privilege, undermine female authority/agency or to be a nice thing to do - largely based on the social position of the target of these actions with their psychological perception of that position.

A girl who appreciates gentlemanly behavior is likely to perceive herself as socially equal to a man, or is willing to cede agency to him (as in the case of romantic affiliation). A girl who is opposed to these actions is likely to perceive herself as being socially inferior to the man, or unwilling to cede that kind of agency to him (as in the case of the man being unappealing).

In all those cases misunderstandings and hard feelings come from people misjudging their social rank in the context. So I think that this awareness is very important in terms of correct action.

[mordicai.livejournal.com]

I think first we're conflating semantics; social systems versus person ones-- yes. & one obviously stems from the other, but just as obviously one can't participate in one without doing so in the context of the other. Thus, cheaters, or your example of gentlemanly versus patriarchy. You are correct about the context heavy displays of gendered behavior, but then I might go even further to assert that gender itself is primarily a context, & not a construct. If that isn't too much word salad. Still, gender is performative, it is a matter of positions & roles & entirely created by how things are presented-- & while often tethered to biological sex, that is not a necessary linkage (to say nothing of the fact that biological sex is a bi-polar continuum, no a binary).

I wonder what my three would be. I'm curious; I like Sincerity since a complex expression of Sincerity can allow for cleverness; I don't think Sincerity undercuts deception, for instance, because it is Sincerity, not Honesty. Anyhow, that is a side point; I don't know that I'd put Compassion in, but then, your virtues are, as you said, Social & not so much Personal. & behaving with compassion is something I would support, I would just rate it as second tier-- that is, I wouldn't consider it axiomatic, or moral, but I think you can logically justify it from a position of "Selfishness While Understanding Longterm Consequences."

[kingtycoon.livejournal.com]

It's very clear that these are all performative and that constructs are not elemental but consequential - but of language or of the real is not for me to say. But to say that this is a semantic difference is missing the essential within my position vis-a-vis yours that is:

By othering the external and engaging in performative acts e.g.: devising an ethical code of conduct toward others - one exerts violence in the respect of othering that which is not the self.

Because I have begun to suppose that ethical systems that account for an other are failures - "do unto others" is a contextual statement of violence- the violence of creating a separation. "as you would have done to you." is a formative statement of the evolution of the sinister 'self' - to which all things are the other.

[mordicai.livejournal.com]

Shit, you HAVE been reading a lot of Žižek.

I disagree! I think a Theory of the Mind is probably the most important component of ethics. To wit, I offer the pragmatic observation that individuals with damaged Theories of the Mind-- borderline personality disorders, sociopaths, paranoid schizophrenics, whatever we're calling them-- often have severely jeopardized behaviors, super unethical.

[kingtycoon.livejournal.com]

Now I disagree with you based on your own diagnostic assessment - because the hyper-attenuated individualism of the mentally disadvantaged is precisely the element that causes their antisocial outbursts! A lack of empathy and of communal integrity is the origin of violent activity no? So having an inability to integrate into the greater self of the society has a dooming quality.

[mordicai.livejournal.com]

Then I guess my answer to that is: