Postmodernism/Poststructuralism, Re: Smoking Gun

[RyanS2]

Post-modernism and post-structuralism are very similar, but there are
key differences which mark them differently. Post-modernism was a
disgust at contemporary modernism and an ultra-relativistic system of
interpretation, post-structuralism was born as a theory against
structuralism in which there is a structure to every literary/artistic
work which contains immutable laws which govern the system. Sort of
like a capitalistic system in which the players change but the system
does not.

Ferdinand De Saussere started the whole thing, so let's look at his
contributions to the field of structuralism, (not post-structuralism
yet). First, there is a 'de-centring of the subject', in the jar-GONE
of Saussere, (couldn't resist), which translates into that the subject
of the study is irrelevant. It doesn't matter if your studying an
individual, (Napoleon, Lincoln, Washington, Marx, etc.), or a group of
collective individuals, (political parties, Social Movement
Organizations, religious groups), what matters is the languages and
codes, and the consequent culture and ideology formed from this basis.
The people change but the structure doesn't.

This leads into the self-enclosed system. The signified, which is the
idea of a tree, is different from both the signifier, which is the
word "tree", and the referent, which is an actual "tree". The best
example Saussere came up with was the word "bark", in which bark has
no meaning or contextual derivation unless used in a sentence, because
"bark" can either refer to a dog's bark or the bark of a tree. The
more often used example in structuralism is the clitoris, for those
who want to delve into this more, (that's the example that Robert
Scholes' "Semiotics snd Interpretation" uses). What Saussere never
grasped was that if we take a diamond and cut it with another diamond,
and never once utter a word, only allow the actions to take place
without discussion of the referent, the signifier, and the signified,
the action still took place.

Next was the emphasis away from the diachronic (historical), dimension
of speech, and onto the "synchronic" (timeless) dimension of speech.
In order to be complete, the study of linguistics had to eliminate any
dimensions of time, and the true understanding of language is rooted
in the study of the synchronic dimension.

Last, was the critique of induction. The ability to look at the past,
accumulate facts, and so forth are not possible, all that a person
does is utilize their own pre-existing prejudice to deduce conclusions
from their own theoretical framework.

Post-structuralism is started by Jacques Derrida, which is a mix of
Martin Heidegger and Saussere. "What is real life is itself a text",
according to him, because everything only has contextual meaning
within a theoretical framework. Structuralism holds that language is
not about words and objects, but words and meanings, while as
post-structuralism holds that there is no fixed meaning, and hence, is
all about words. According to Derrida, the more one insists that there
is a message, the less of a message there actually is. When applied
upon his own paradigm, Derrida would usually resort to threats and
curses. Hmm....

In Deriddian thought, a text never says what the author actually wants
it to say. Each text creates multiple meanings, meaning is simply
created by the differences of meaning. To prove his point, Derrida
liked to use meaningless phrases that sounded fancy, to use a few of
them:

"epistemic self-stabilization, .... canonizing canonicity,";
"Europhallo-geocentrism"; "Metaphoricity is the logic of contamination
and the contamination of logic"; "the good writing can be designated
only through the metaphor of the bad"; "Bad writing is for good a
model of linguistic designation and a simulacrum of essence"; "In
dissolving any finite determination, negative concepts break the tie
that binds them to the meaning of any particular being, that is, to
the totality of what is"; and so forth.

The other famous post-structuralist was Michael Foucault. Foucault
combined Saussere with Nietzsche, and came to the conclusion that it
is not a person who speaks, but rather, it is language speaking
through us. Thus, it is not I, RyanS, who writes these words you see,
but rather, it is language speaking through me, but that will not stop
I, RyanS, from responding fervently against any criticism against an
author which does not exist. Things like "free will" and
"consciousness" are all horse-pucky invented by the naive. According
to Foucault's "Order of Things" everything is related to an
'episteme', an era of structure or thought, so that 'in any given
culture and at any given moment, there is always only one episteme
that defines the conditions of possibility of all knowledge.'

The fact that anyone ever took what are some of the goofiest theories
ever invented in the history of philosophy is staggering enough. It's
not a wonder that almost all of them were Nazi-sympathizers, (not
slander, everyone of them up until their dying days, especially
Heidegger, wrote that his theories were for the glory of Nazism), or
ex-Marxists trying to explain away the reason why Marxism failed as an
ideology. The other thing which affected it was Einstein's theories,
which caused such an amazing rift of cognitive dissonance that the
only self-preservation mechanism left was to totally abandon any
notion of reality.

In the Nietzsche/Heidegger version of post-structuralism, it's not so
much post-structuralism as it is anti-modernism. Nietzsche rejected
the idea that science/history was cumulative, and that it was even
rooted in anything concrete. Thus, we should teach creationism and
evolution in class, neither has any empirical basis for being taught.
Heidegger wanted to reject modernism/humanism, (which makes Sartre's
comment that "Existentialism is a form of humanism" somewhat strange),
and return to pre-modern modes of interpretation.

The newer 1980's version was formed by a mix that throws
meta-narratives, ironically what structuralism was even formed out of,
away because they are seen as trying to explain the unexplainable,
there should be no context for history or society, (since none can be
given anyway).

Post-structuralism lost most of its credence after the mid-80's
because the theory that civilization is ruled by unconscious laws was
shattered through investigation of societies, and by the fact that
evolutionary biology explains more evidence, with greater scope and
depth, than even the best of Levi Strauss' theories.

> If people in the ToS make it a general initiation rule to "know" reality
> (well, as best as it can be known if you mean it ultimately - no need to get
> into that)... and if they are then supposed to impose their SUBJECTIVE
> views from magical experiences into that reality, THAT IS post
> structuralitm - aka post modernism.

That's a loose definition, certainly not a Foucaultian/Derridian
version. There is no *objective* it's all *subjective*, no difference
between this and that, right or wrong, and so forth. It's all
interpretated through linguistic signifiers which have no meaning in
the first place. The word "reality" and "fiction" are used to decieve
people working within your theoretical framework, and have no real
meaning, and the more you insist upon meaning, the less they actually
have. It's kind of fun to play that game, but ultimately it's a
tautology. As Roy D' Andrade put it in his critique "Science works not
because it produces unbiased accounts but because its accounts are
objective enough to be proved or disproved no matter what anyone wants
to be true." The ability to test post-structuralism is not possible,
and what few times they have tried, have shown to fail.

For example, Foucault writes:

"Each society has its regime of truth, its 'general politics' of
truth: that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes
function as true; the mechanisms and instances which enable one to
distinguish true and false statements, the means by which each is
sanctioned; the techniques and procedures accorded value in the
acquisition of truth; the status of those who are charged with saying
what counts as true."

Yet it's not a great philosophical challenge to prove this wrong. If
what is true is always relative to a particular society, then no
proposition can be given which is true for all societies. Yet, the
proposition Foucault gives here is claimed to be true for all
societies. It's a self-contradiction.

>Deconstruction - which is PART of post
> structuralism (hence post modern) does not destroy anything.

Again, this isn't post-structuralism as from Derrida, who wrote that
deconstruction was always deconstructing, nothing has any basis. What
post-structuralist are you using? The closest person I know who has
what you describe is Ken Wilber's writings on post-structuralism, but
he completely rejects both Foucault and Derrida, making him a
structuralist rather than a post-structuralist, and he rejects most of
Saussere's theories as well. Any true post-modernist would criticize
you for being too clear and lucid.

They would also accuse you of using your writings as a way of
imprisoning your Ural-Altaic ancestors. That's why one
post-structuralist, De Certeau, says that Michael Foucault used his
writings to oppress the prisoners, insane, and other people Foucault
proclaimed to be giving a voice to, he accused Claude Levi-Strauss of
using his work on tribes to further his own means and gain academic
credence, and so forth.

[People's Commissar]

Ryan,

Well, this is from an email where someone FINALLY explained this kind of 3rd
ordered abstract blah by writing something very concrete and understandable.
Consider that I travel also in a circle of writers/fans/readers and some of
these people, even professors, couldn't fathom how I coujldn't understand a
word that was written "ABOUT" these techniques when I consistently and
repeatedly APPLY them to anything I read - and I jump paradigms notoriously,
which they notice tends to make stupid people imagine that "I - the AUTHOR"
have changed my personal mind (INTENT). Heh, no I didn't. Now, I know I
notoriously deconstruct and post structure because every single professor I
dealt with in my entire time in ANY school, including Dr. Burleson who
teaches these techniques in colleges who is an acquaintence, not a teacher
of mine, TOLD me I do it. I never tend to innately have the structuralist
approach, I read way too analytically. I can very easily, according to
Burlseson and some others that teach this) give a person a specific text to
read, a story, and then go about in the most simple ways, show them HOW to
deconstruct, HOW to apply post structurlasm and they found my very simple
way of teaching with this kind of hands-on method GOOD. Why? Because way
too few people understand a word of that 3rd ordered abstraction LINGO those
"into this" tend to speak. I wonder if they use it! I think Burleson did,
but I'm not sure. I know he used that story that I used. It's a short
story, easy to read, FAST to read but cram packed with PERFECT stuff that
lends itself to these techniques. Anyway, here goes:

QUOTE
Here goes, Comrades,

I hope you understand it.

As soon as you bring social reality into a novel, that is, commenting on the
world, real events, the reader's experience (rather than just the text),
that is post-structuralism. T, you notoriously do this but I've seen you do
the complete reverse which is where you notice and ask "Can't those people
fucking read?" Post structuralism considered subjective in the extreme (and,
in fact, all experiences are subjective hence post structuralism is
stretched beyond the literary/artistic realm).

I see the term here used in conjunction with deconstruction as if this is a
separate school. This is not quite so. Deconstruction is a method that
developed within the post structuralist school. But yeah, it's very VERY
different.

First of all, structuralism. Structuralism cares only about the text that
is written, much like deconstruction does. Post structuralism expounds the
idea that the meaning of a text is greater than the structuralists would say
because it does involve the author's experience, reader's experience, and
social reality. Structuralists claim that this is subjective to bring such
things into a text. Post structuralism denies "objectivity" in any textual
interpretation citing as proof that all experiences are subjective.
Deconstructionists are more radical in that they eliminate rules of reading
so long as you keep to the text.

Deconstruction is more radical than structuralism. In deconstruction, they
completely discard authorial intent. Deconstructionists also take opposites
and turn them around and by opposites I mean as-given "dualisms" (I can hear
that coming) that are just here in our society. Example: a character is
written about in a novel, but in some places, this character is "speaking"
and his speech is in quotes. Most people think that the character himself
is more present, more visible, in the lines that are quoted as "his speech."
But Deconstructionists would say that this is not necessarily true. The
character might be more present and visible in what other things the author
says about him and not in things put into his mouth in quotes. If you say
to a deconstructionist "these are the key words," they will challenge it.
All assumptions are challenged.

Deconstruction can best be described as a theory of reading which aims to
undermine the logic of opposition within texts. Deconstruction is not
synonymous with "destruction." It is in fact much closer to the original
meaning of the word 'analysis', which etymologically means "to undo" "to
de-construct." If anything is destroyed in a deconstructive reading, it is
not the text which is never changed, not even a word. What is destroyed is
the claim to absolute domination of one mode of signifying over another. A
deconstructive reading is a reading which analyzes the specificity of a
text's critical difference from itself (not as related to society, or
anything outside the text). This is not to say that the political movements
that picked up on this were in fact not trying to DESTROY the perceived
enemy - and that would be white, male, straight values and modes of rigid
thinking as a "norm." It's a real agenda-buster when applied to societal
"norms."

Structuralism has rigid rules of interpretation, for instance, how to
"logically" interpret a text. They do stick to the text and try to be
objective. You identify the protagonist, the helper, the mentor, the
adversary, and so forth. In other words, in "Othello" Iago *is* the
adversary, period. Polonius *is* the helper, period. Who is sending and
receiving information, what motivates the subject (main character) and what
object is he seeking, what is the motivation for the search. These are some
of the "rules" of interpretation in structuralism. Maybe there is no
subject or object, say the Deconstructionists.

Structuralism is specifically applied to literature. Post structuralism and
deconstruction is not just applied to literature, it's applied to history,
philosophy, ideology, and even laws (legal treatises). What T called
reconstruction can be seen in "revisionism" and even "post revisionism" in
politics. Now, post revisionism, as I've heard it used, seems to mean "go
completely outside of both original and revised interpretations." It is
outside paradigms. This is in fact a form of deconstruction and so is
revisionism.

Deconstruction usually works "within an opposition," (see above, yes it's a
dualism, but it's as-given in society) but upsets the oppositional hierarchy
by producing an exchange of properties. This disrupts not only the
hierarchy, but the opposition itself. Note how this is different from simply
reversing an opposition. For example consider these reversals of a
culturally prevalent opposition:

· Lex Luthor is nicer than Superman (reverses notion of the hero).

· women are smarter than men (reverses chauvinistic "common knowledge").

Reversal is a valuable move, but deconstruction is way more, because it
"deconstructs" the underlying hierarchy. For example:

Superman is a special kind of villain because he cripples humanity. He
co-opts, he is insidious, he takes over the realm of humans without anyone
noticing that he is taking control of your destiny.

· Men's illusion of their intelligence is dependent on a belief that women
are bimbos.

Another one would be that there can be no conception of "heterosexuality"
without there being a concept of "homosexuality." Without the concept of
"homosexuality," "heterosexuality" would not exist as a concept at all.
These are the oppositions. The as given in society is that one is normal,
better, good and the other is abnormal, lesser, bad. Those are the
hierarchies. I had to get that one in here :)

Notice how these statements cripple the underlying hierarchy by
"deconstructing" the opposition that it depends on. Deconstruction doesn't
simply reverse the opposition, nor does it destroy it. Instead it
demonstrates its inherent instability. It takes it apart from within, and
does NOT put some new, more stable opposition in its place!

Notice what any school of thought, or any dogma takes to be natural, normal,
self-evident. Next, notice those places where a text is most insistent that
there is an absolute distinction between the examples above, almost as if
they are binary opposites (dualism, yes). Show how something represented as
primary, complete and originary is derived, composite, and/or an effect of
something else. Show how something represented as completely different from
something else only exists by virtue of defining itself against that
something else. In other words, show how it depends on that thing. Example,
Truth depends on error or falsehood. Without the concept of error or
falsehood, truth does not exist. Truth is opposed to error, or falsehood.

Deconstruction is actually a term that applies to all this but the term
exists within the Post Structuralist school. Post structuralism is a
philosophical school, not just a literary technique. Deconstruction also
proves that the reader is always creatively structuring a text. So
actually, there is not really a separate "thing" called "Deconstructionism,"
and I see everyone using it, LOL. They'd flunk you in a course for saying
"deconstruction-ISM." :)

Deconstruction can best be described as a theory of reading which aims to
undermine the logic of opposition within texts. Deconstruction is not
synonymous with "destruction." It is in fact much closer to the original
meaning of the word 'analysis', which etymologically means "to undo" "to
de-construct." If anything is destroyed in a deconstructive reading, it is
not the text which is never changed, not even a word. What is destroyed is
the claim to absolute domination of one mode of signifying over another. A
deconstructive reading is a reading which analyzes the specificity of a
text's critical difference from itself (not as related to society, or
anything outside the text). This is not to say that the political movements
that picked up on this were in fact not trying to DESTROY the perceived
enemy - and that would be white, male, straight values and modes of rigid
thinking as a "norm." It's a real agenda-buster when applied to societal
"norms."

Structuralism and modernism applies to art and literature. Post modernism,
like post structuralism AND deconstruction applies to everything, not just
art and literature.

Structuralism/Post-structuralism - a definition of this and some explanation
since this is pretty abstract:

First of all understand this because you won't get a word of it if you don't
get this part. Think of your entire self as a kind of system. Everything
you do, think, feel, etc. is part of that system. At the core or center of
your mental and physical life is a notion of SELF, of an "I," of an identity
that is stable and unified and coherent, the part of you that knows who you
mean when you say "I." This core self or "I" is thus the CENTER of the
"system," the "langue" of your Being, and every other part of you (each
individual act) is part of the "parole". The "I" is the origin of all you
say and do, and it guarantees the idea of your presence, your being. This
is the premise of Structuralism. Now, what came before Structuralism is
HUMANISTIC or ROMANTIC approach.

ROMANTIC HUMANIST premises: (this does not refer to romance, as in love,
love stories)

1.) That there is a real world out there that we can understand with our
rational minds.

2.) That language is capable of (more or less) accurately depicting that
real world..

3.) That language is a product of the individual writer's mind or free will,
meaning that we determine what we say, and what we mean when we say it; that
language thus expresses the essence of our individual beings (and that there
is such a thing as an essential unique individual "self").

4.) the SELF--also known as the "subject," since that's how we represent the
idea of a self in language, by saying I, which is the subject of a
sentence--or the individual (or the mind or the free will) is the center of
all meaning and truth; words mean what I say they mean, and truth is what I
perceive as truth. I create my own sentences out of my own individual
experiences and need for individual expression.

STRUCTURALIST arguments

1.) that the structure of language itself produces "reality"--that we can
think only through language, and therefore our perceptions of reality are
all framed by and determined by the structure of language.

2.) That language speaks us; that the source of meaning is not an
individual's experience or being, but the sets of oppositions and
operations, the signs and grammars that govern language. Meaning doesn't
come from individuals, but from the system that governs what any individual
can do within it.

3.) Rather than seeing the individual as the center of meaning,
structuralism places THE STRUCTURE at the center--it's the structure that
originates or produces meaning, not the individual self. Language in
particular is the center of self and meaning; I can only say "I" because I
inhabit a system of language in which the position of subject is marked by
the first personal pronoun, hence my identity is the product of the
linguistic system I occupy.

In structuralism, the individuality of the text disappears in favor of
looking at patterns, systems, and structures. Some structuralists called
Formalists propose that ALL narratives can be charted as variations on
certain basic universal narrative patterns. (Remember when you are taught to
see the climax of the story? That is a structure.)

In this way of looking at narratives, the author is canceled out, since the
text is a function of a system, not of an individual. The Romantic humanist
model holds that the author is the origin of the text, its creator, and
hence is the starting point or progenitor of the text. Structuralism argues
that any piece of writing, or any signifying system, has no origin, and that
authors merely inhabit pre-existing structures (langue) that enable them to
make any particular sentence (or story)--any parole. Hence the idea that
"language speaks us," rather than that we speak language. We don't originate
language; we inhabit a structure that enables us to speak; what we
(mis)perceive as our originality is simply our recombination of some of the
elements in the pre-existing system. Hence every text, and every sentence we
speak or write, is made up of the "already written."

In erasing the author, the individual text, the reader, and history,
structuralism represented a major challenge to what we now call the "liberal
humanist" tradition in literary criticism.

This is also where deconstruction starts to come in. The leading figure in
deconstruction, Jacques Derrida, looks at philosophy (Western metaphysics)
to see that any system necessarily posits a CENTER, a point from which
everything comes, and to which everything refers or returns. Sometimes it's
God, sometimes it's the human self, the mind, sometimes it's the
unconscious, depending on what philosophical system (or set of beliefs) one
is talking about.

There are two key points to the idea of deconstruction. First is that we're
still going to look at systems or structures, rather than at individual
concrete practices, and that all systems or structures have a CENTER, the
point of origin, the thing that created the system in the first place.
Second is that all systems or structures are created of binary pairs or
oppositions, of two terms placed in some sort of relation to each.

Derrida says that such systems are always built of the basic units
structuralism analyzes--the binary opposition or pair--and that within these
systems one part of that binary pair is always more important than the
other, that one term is "marked" as positive and the other as negative.
Hence in the binary pair good/evil, good is what Western philosophy values,
and evil is subordinated to good. Derrida argues that all binary pairs work
this way--light/dark, masculine/feminine, right/left; in Western culture,
the first term is always valued over the second. (As members of this
organization, I'm sure that everyone here is probably a deconstructionist
without even realizing it.:)

In his most famous work, Of Grammatology, Derrida looks particularly at the
opposition speech/writing, saying that speech is always seen as more
important than writing. (Woah, we just talked about that in terms of media!)
This may not be as self-evident as the example of good/evil, but it's true
in terms of linguistic theories, where speech is posited as the first or
primary form of language, and writing is just the transcription of speech.
Derrida says speech gets privileged because speech is associated with
presence--for there to be spoken language, somebody has to be there to be
speaking.

No, he doesn't take into account tape recordings and things like that.
Remember, a lot of what these guys are talking about has roots in
philosophic and linguistic traditions that predate modern technology--so
that Derrida is responding to an opposition (speech/writing) that Plato set
up, long before there were tape recorders.

Anyway, the idea is that the spoken word guarantees the existence of
somebody doing the speaking--thus it reinforces all those great humanist
ideas, like that there's a real self that is the origin of what's being
said. Derrida calls this idea of the self that has to be there to speak part
of the metaphysics of PRESENCE; the idea of being, or presence, is central
to all systems of Western philosophy, from Plato through Descartes (up to
Derrida himself). Presence is part of a binary opposition presence/absence,
in which presence is always favored over absence. Speech gets associated
with presence, and both are favored over writing and absence; this
privileging of speech and presence is what Derrida calls LOGOCENTRISM.

"Let there be light" is an example. The statement insures that there is a
God (the thing doing the speaking), and that God is present (because
speech=presence); the present God is the origin of all things (because God
creates the world by speaking), and what God creates is binary oppositions
(starting with light/dark), in Western philosophy. You might also think
about other binary oppositions or pairs, including being/nothingness,
reason/madness, word/silence, culture/nature, mind/body. Each term has
meaning only in reference to the other (light is what is not dark, and
vice-versa), just as, in Saussure's view, signifiers only have meaning--or
negative value--in relation to other signifiers. These binary pairs are the
"structures," or fundamental opposing ideas, that Derrida is concerned with
in Western philosophy.

Because of the favoring of presence over absence, speech is favored over
writing, as with Freud, masculine is favored over feminine because the penis
is defined as a presence, whereas the female genitals are defined as
absence. Temple of Lylyth, take note! Kaiden, you did something with
metaphors once, where everything was enfolded, or something like that. It
was all put into womb metaphor. One might posit the absence of a nurturing
and birthing womb and after-birth food (breasts) as major absences in the
male, and major presence's in the female. "Let there be light," yes; Logos,
yes, but what gave birth to it? The Eastern metaphors are heavily mother or
womb-centered. "Womb of Darkness," "Gave birth to," "Embryo in Darkness,"
etc., all female imagery if one must put a gender on such a thing. A male
can not give birth to this Light. These concepts were also part of
"Western" philosophy prior to patriarchy taking it over.

What Derrida does is to look at how a binary opposition--the fundamental
unit of the structures or systems we've been looking at, and of the
philosophical systems he refers to--functions within a system. He points out
that a binary opposition is algebraic and that two terms can't exist without
reference to the other--light (as presence) is defined as the absence of
darkness, goodness the absence of evil, etc. He doesn't seek to reverse the
hierarchies implied in binary pairs--to make evil favored over good,
unconscious over consciousness, feminine over masculine. Rather,
deconstruction wants to erase the boundaries between oppositions, hence to
show that the values and order implied by the opposition are also not rigid.

Here's the basic method of deconstruction: find a binary opposition. Show
how each term, rather than being polar opposite of its paired term, is
actually part of it. Recognize "Diamat?" Then the structure or opposition
which kept them apart collapses, as we see with the terms nature and
culture. Culture is a result or effect of our nature and in turn our nature
is an effect (or sometimes a result if you include what we eat as part of
culture) of our culture. Dialectical in the extreme. Ultimately, you can't
tell which is which, and the idea of binary opposites loses meaning or is
put into "play" - it becomes dialectical. This method is called
"Deconstruction" because it is a combination of
construction/destruction--the idea is that you don't simply construct a new
system of binaries, with the previously subordinated term on top, nor do you
destroy the old system--rather, you deconstruct the old system by showing
how its basic units of structuration (binary pairs and the rules for their
combination) contradict their own logic. The essay on the org website on
"Diamat" explains this in full, better than anything here, I might add.

What is Post Structuralism - a definition:

By the mid 20th century there were a number of structural theories of human
existence. In the study of language, the structural linguistics of Ferdinand
de Saussure (1857-1913) suggested that meaning was to be found within the
structure of a whole language rather than in the analysis of individual
words. For Marxists, the truth of human existence could be understood by an
analysis of economic structures. Psychoanalysts attempted to describe the
structure of the psyche in terms of an unconscious.

In the 1960's, the structuralist movement, based in France, attempted to
synthesize the ideas of Marx, Freud and Saussure. They disagreed with the
existentialists' claim that each man is what he makes himself. For the
structuralist the individual is shaped by sociological, psychological and
linguistic structures over which he/she has no control, but which could be
uncovered by using their methods of investigation.

Originally labeled a structuralist, the French philosopher and historian
Michel Foucault came to be seen as the most important representative of the
post-structuralist movement. He agreed that language and society were shaped
by rule governed systems, but he disagreed with the structuralists on two
counts. Firstly, he did not think that there were definite underlying
structures that could explain the human condition and secondly he thought
that it was impossible to step outside of discourse and survey the situation
objectively.

Jacques Derrida (1930- ) developed deconstruction as a technique for
uncovering the multiple interpretation of texts. Influenced by Heidegger and
Nietzsche, Derrida suggests that all text has ambiguity and because of this
the possibility of a final and complete interpretation is impossible.

What is Post-modernism - a definition:

Post-structuralism and deconstruction can be seen as the theoretical
formulations of the post-modern condition.

Modernity, which began intellectually with the Enlightenment, attempted to
describe the world in rational, empirical and objective terms. It assumed
that there was a truth to be uncovered, a way of obtaining answers to the
question posed by the human condition. Post-modernism does not exhibit this
confidence, gone are the underlying certainties that reason promised. Reason
itself is now seen as a particular historical form, as parochial in its own
way as the ancient explanations of the universe in terms of Gods.

The postmodern subject has no rational way to evaluate a preference in
relation to judgements of truth, morality, aesthetic experience or
objectivity. As the old hierarchies of thought are torn down, and new
paradigms are formed, what hybrids of thought will metamorphose, interbreed
and grow is this clearing is for the future to decide. Perhaps it will be
the quantum dynamic view of the Cosmos and of Being.

"RyanS2" <ryans...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:7fa9b259.02102...@posting.google.com...

[People's Commissar]

Posted it, had no time to reply to this that you wrote.

"RyanS2" <ryans...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:7fa9b259.02102...@posting.google.com...

> Post-modernism and post-structuralism are very similar, but there are
> key differences which mark them differently. Post-modernism was a
> disgust at contemporary modernism and an ultra-relativistic system of
> interpretation, post-structuralism was born as a theory against
> structuralism in which there is a structure to every literary/artistic
> work which contains immutable laws which govern the system. Sort of
> like a capitalistic system in which the players change but the system
> does not.

PM got co-opted by politicals that probably didn't understand post str very
well. In speaking to such people, they tended to NOT grasp it when I post
str'd their own texts. LOL. And this is NOT when a person says "So, what
you are saying is that...." or "So, what you mean is....." No no. That's
a whole other literary system called the shit-disturbist approach. LMAO.
Oh dear. Anyway... ya see, sometimes, or most times, when people say they
dislike or hate something, they really mean that they dislike or hate it -
period. And there is often NO dual opposition going on. And oftentimes, if
you say you really have no connection to someone, it means you have no
connection to them, despite mistaken appearances to the contrary. People
who are finally just told this, but who then still insist to the contrary,
are applying the shit-disturbist technique. You have experienced it. 1.
from someone who made truly a mistaken assumption. 2. from someone who is
making no mistake, but accusing right on here. That's AD HOM. They are
thus the ones who truly believe that language has no meaning at all. Yes
means no. No means yes. Yes also means yes. No also means no. So why say
anything? Language is truly meaningless. Anyway....

>
> Ferdinand De Saussere started the whole thing, so let's look at his
> contributions to the field of structuralism, (not post-structuralism
> yet). First, there is a 'de-centring of the subject', in the jar-GONE
> of Saussere, (couldn't resist),

I don't get the joke. Is that how you say jargon in French? The lingo
jargon of the PM CLIQUE of FANS of it is almost jibberish - and none of them
can take a simple text and show you HOW to apply these techniques. As Prof.
Burleson noted, they don't understand it. Neither did many of his students
that couldn't even grasp that no two people CAN read a text the same way -
or even this no-brainer - that if YOU read a text 2 times, it's not the same
text the 2nd time around. That's a no-brainer. I can show a person how
that works hands-on. Explaining it is no use, Ryan - it's too abstract to
explain it in any other way except to give a real example. If the intent
was to "teach" this - well then. They failed in their purpose. PM became a
movement to trash the as-givens in society, more or less to trash white,
male, heterosexual and often patronizing ethics. I can see PM as a REaction
to a past system as illogical as the PMers that never understood post
structuralism.

which translates into that the subject
> of the study is irrelevant. It doesn't matter if your studying an
> individual, (Napoleon, Lincoln, Washington, Marx, etc.), or a group of
> collective individuals, (political parties, Social Movement
> Organizations, religious groups), what matters is the languages and
> codes, and the consequent culture and ideology formed from this basis.
> The people change but the structure doesn't.

Yup. That is explained a lot better in the paste-mail I just showed you,
with examples. The people and the structure, I'd say, change each other.
You can see this easily enough with emergent "lingos" within the greater
"language" we all exist in. EG, "cool." "You are cool." "Cool dude." The
technology we create inspired by the labor we actually do, can also change
the language we exist in. Lingo becomes part of language proper. EG, the
word "website." It's dialectical, not linear one way. You know, you'll
understand this. Anyone else? Concrete example of lingo meanings within
the greater language we exist in: "You hear what I'm SAYin?" That is not a
question that is asking about your hearing, or asking if you are deaf, or
asking even if you are paying attention. It's a specific kind of question
that has "time" attached to the meaning.

>
> This leads into the self-enclosed system. The signified, which is the
> idea of a tree, is different from both the signifier, which is the
> word "tree", and the referent, which is an actual "tree". The best
> example Saussere came up with was the word "bark", in which bark has
> no meaning or contextual derivation unless used in a sentence, because
> "bark" can either refer to a dog's bark or the bark of a tree. The
> more often used example in structuralism is the clitoris, for those
> who want to delve into this more, (that's the example that Robert
> Scholes' "Semiotics snd Interpretation" uses). What Saussere never
> grasped was that if we take a diamond and cut it with another diamond,
> and never once utter a word, only allow the actions to take place
> without discussion of the referent, the signifier, and the signified,
> the action still took place.

LMAO! I think he grasped it. I think his critics don't grasp what he's
saying.

>
> Next was the emphasis away from the diachronic (historical), dimension
> of speech, and onto the "synchronic" (timeless) dimension of speech.
> In order to be complete, the study of linguistics had to eliminate any
> dimensions of time, and the true understanding of language is rooted
> in the study of the synchronic dimension.
>
> Last, was the critique of induction. The ability to look at the past,
> accumulate facts, and so forth are not possible, all that a person
> does is utilize their own pre-existing prejudice to deduce conclusions
> from their own theoretical framework.

In other words, the person's subjective "ideas" of that past is all he can
really see. Theoretical framework = paradigm. Subjective idea of the past
"Columbus, that great man, discovered America." Obviously, anyone saying
that is unable to look at the past or accumulate facts. Such a person IS
utilizing their own pre-existing prejudice (paradigm) and making
conclusions. Yes. Add the rest of the information to Columbus's story.
You know - the American Indian view. Now add the more obscure fact that he
was a Marano Jew and a member of a Weaver's Guild as was his father and
other facts that put a whole knew light on just what this place they were
looking for was. Maps DO exist. DID exist, guilds had them. Little known
facts. My view of Columbus? I have none. But here is a concrete example
of it. Do you think that these people DO NOT know this stuff in the
concrete to begin with? Oh, they DO. Their fans don't and their critics
don't even understand it.

>
> Post-structuralism is started by Jacques Derrida, which is a mix of
> Martin Heidegger and Saussere. "What is real life is itself a text",
> according to him, because everything only has contextual meaning
> within a theoretical framework.

Well, gee, in the 1950's post structuralism didn't exist, but we sure
learned it in school as KIDS as "intepretations of literature." So who
invented it? PLATO and the gang did! Sure. Ok, concrete example of "only
contextual meanings." You're cool. What did I just say? Did I say "you
ain't so hot?" "you are cool - so put on a jacket?" "you are an aloof kind
of person with no warmth?" "you are nice?" Not only would you need to know
the context, but you'd need to know what lingo jargon I'm using since it's
not exactly standard use in The Greater Language System we inhabit. This IS
giving a concrete example.

Structuralism holds that language is
> not about words and objects, but words and meanings, while as
> post-structuralism holds that there is no fixed meaning, and hence, is
> all about words. According to Derrida, the more one insists that there
> is a message, the less of a message there actually is. When applied
> upon his own paradigm, Derrida would usually resort to threats and
> curses. Hmm....

LOL, he probably was realizing that people don't have a CLUE what he's
talking about.

>
> In Deriddian thought, a text never says what the author actually wants
> it to say.

I can prove that's true (unless the author I use to show this actually
INTENDED his own writings to be deconstructed like this - which might be the
case! It IS the case when I write a fiction, or well, SOME fiction that I
take my time with, I intentionally make it very amenable to both decon and
PSt. :) ) But there is also a lot of evidence to show that the author did
NOT write his texts ready made to be deconstructed - and that would be his
own personal life and letters. In which case, the texts do NOT say what he
intended them to say - unless heh - unless he unconsciously intended it. Oh
boy. After all, it's IN the text, in black and white. He put it there.
Did he KNOW what he wrote, or not? Irrlevant! I READ it. That's relevant.

Each text creates multiple meanings, meaning is simply
> created by the differences of meaning.

That's way too abstractly put - it can be shown concretely. I think
Burlseon used the text I suggested, I'd have to find his letters to be sure.
I KNOW he used the same author! He definitely told me this. He may have
used a shorter text than the one I suggested. You see, the text I suggested
is also a VERY VERY interesting story! "Can't put it down" type. So
students would be likely to read it, get absorbed into it. That kinda helps
if one wants to show how this works. Not that one is strapped with some
turgid boring shit and as he reads, he's really thinking about his date.
Hence, NOT reading, not carefully at least. This has to be hands on. I
would imagine that Derrida formulated this FROM HIS OWN hands on. Instead
of giving hands on examples from a specific text, these guys just go all 3rd
ordered concepts on us and talk over heads.

To prove his point, Derrida
> liked to use meaningless phrases that sounded fancy, to use a few of
> them:
>
> "epistemic self-stabilization, .... canonizing canonicity,";
> "Europhallo-geocentrism";

That last one sounds like something I'd say as a laugh - and it does have
meaning. It means, white, male, colonial mindset, as if white males are the
center of life and their sphere is center stage.

"Metaphoricity is the logic of contamination
> and the contamination of logic";

I agree with this. But I still think few know what the fuck he's talking
about. Example then, concrete: When people that have had life problems in
the past that bother them now, and they try to SPEAK about it to get help or
advice, they OFTEN deteriorate into some kind of metaphor, as if I'm
supposed to relate to, or understand, the metaphor. Usually it's a TV
metaphor from shows I never heard of or watched. It's a way of distancing
themselves from the trauma that is close to their heart, felt. As such, it
is also a way to even more distance themselves from the LOGIC of it, or
application of logic that would enable them to get a grip on this past
trauma. Getting them to STOP using that, which is definitely both obscuring
their logic and ability to communicate what happened, and preventing them
from communicating it to others AND to themselves; they can't because it's
too painful for them to SPEAK it bluntly/concretely. Their use of metaphor
is done in order TO obfuscate their own logic - and keep emotions from
boiling over too much. Their use of metaphor distances them from the Self!
It distances them from logic and feeling, too.

"the good writing can be designated
> only through the metaphor of the bad"; "Bad writing is for good a
> model of linguistic designation and a simulacrum of essence";

He's saying simply that people cubby hole "good writing" only by formerly
cubbyholing "bad writing." You know the concept of truth only because you
have a concept of falsehood. You know beauty - as compared to what?
Ugliness? It's a dualistic framework that IS as-given in most of society.
People who speak outside of it heh - well, you know. We get flamed. Called
names. And if you think a person is beautiful, or a food tastes good when
"everyone else" thinks ugly, bad tasting, you are then made to feel the
JOYS of peer group pressure, and all that shit. You are made to feel as if
you need glasses, or your mind doesn't work right. I despise this in humans
with a passion.

"In
> dissolving any finite determination, negative concepts break the tie
> that binds them to the meaning of any particular being, that is, to
> the totality of what is"; and so forth.

Who is supposed to understand that? Well, most people don't understand what
he's saying. Read the Superman example in the pasted email. And what do
YOU think the reaction of the "standard types" was when I went off on
Superman as a kid and saw him as a villian, as despicable, a worthy to be
loathed - because the emailer DID use my example of this. "What? You don't
LOVE Superman?" Or "truth" is a concept we know due to knowledge of lie,
falsehood. He sounds as bad as Bush with words like "metaphoricity." Why
not say "metaphoratude?" LOL.

But I DO know what he's saying only because I tend to deconstruct without
trying - and have been accused of it and post structuralism (when that word
came to be used to call it that) all my life, in school, etc. Decon and
Post Str. I do both. I don't read into a text what's not there, either.
Inferences PST I make from the text that are not in it, are provably
logical, from real life. Using the text of a story on vampires: Are
vampires monsters or are they an ethnic group that is little known? Are
they more monstrous than exploitative capitalists in the worst sense?
Vampires are small scale. Are they more monstrous than man? No. That is a
WAY "outside there" interpretation. And then most of the structuralists
(usually males!) "into" that kind of story are just little sublimators
mentally "getting off" on the Idea of Big Bad Predatory Vampires and hate it
when I portray them as Poor Weak Victims maybe or maybe not victims of
unfair curses hurled on them, even when I can prove they are that from the
same text we both read.

>
> The other famous post-structuralist was Michael Foucault. Foucault
> combined Saussere with Nietzsche, and came to the conclusion that it
> is not a person who speaks, but rather, it is language speaking
> through us. Thus, it is not I, RyanS, who writes these words you see,
> but rather, it is language speaking through me,

Well, understand this then. First YOU RYAN are a person with a
feeling/concept. THEN you frame the language from the Language Environment
to make a post and chat with me. Get it?

but that will not stop
> I, RyanS, from responding fervently against any criticism against an
> author which does not exist. Things like "free will" and
> "consciousness" are all horse-pucky invented by the naive.

Well, wait. Check BF Skinner on just what this free will is. Do we really
(absolutely, ultimately) have it? Well, yes and no. Dark Tradition = it is
samsaric WITHIN samsara (free will) We have a keen sense of it, i.e., a
FEELING of it (LMAO), what it is, what it is for someone to obstruct it,
too, also all in the realm of FEELINGS. But is that REALLY free will? Read
BF Skinner on that - it's quite good. Neurologists, when they get really
reductionist, reduce the "I" to neurons and somatic markers and all that
other stuff. And we do, understand, and they can PROVE, that the "I" that
is you CAN BE CHANGED - and I Ryan would no longer be any Ryan that anyone
else would recognize as YOU. If you could even remember the old I Ryan,
you'd know this. "I am no longer me." HA!! Wel, no, not Ha. It's spooky.
That can be done. It can happen accidentally, too. So then, what's the I?
Well, there is the organic "I". And that organ can be harmed, or tinkered
with and the "I" can be altered. But try BF Skinner.

According
> to Foucault's "Order of Things" everything is related to an
> 'episteme', an era of structure or thought, so that 'in any given
> culture and at any given moment, there is always only one episteme
> that defines the conditions of possibility of all knowledge.'

He's talking about paradigms. BIG ones. Paradigms can determine what
scientists CHOOSE to study - and also choose NOT to study - resulting in one
kind of technology but not any other, and the other is not only not
possible, but not even an Idea in anyone's head. Remember, he said
CONDITIONS of possibility of all knowledge. In other words, what kinds of
knowledge are possible within the confines (conditions) of that society.

>
> The fact that anyone ever took what are some of the goofiest theories
> ever invented in the history of philosophy is staggering enough. It's
> not a wonder that almost all of them were Nazi-sympathizers, (not
> slander, everyone of them up until their dying days, especially
> Heidegger, wrote that his theories were for the glory of Nazism), or
> ex-Marxists trying to explain away the reason why Marxism failed as an
> ideology.

Derrida? Ryan, I learned "interpretation of literature" in 5th grade
grammar school. The term post structuralist didn't even exist yet. No one
defined what this kind of analysis was back then, not yet. This whole
thing comes from Plato and the Greeks! It's not new! Not at all. It was
called construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction of literature - and
this I think was before all this stuff you speak of was even around; it was
the 1950's. And it's 100% valid! It's been done to the constitution.
Laywers do it all the time! That's what I learned that young in school.
That's why I do it so easily and know it so concretely. All of this was
highly dialectical and considered to be an application of LOGIC. These guys
did not invent a word of this - it's as old as Plato and the gang. One
might say that the French gang obsucred the fuck out of it - or made t
impossible to grasp unless in the original language it IS more concrete
(Burleson says IT IS; he can read it). The fans used it politically and
completely misunderstood it - and their critics don't have a clue what it
is.

The other thing which affected it was Einstein's theories,
> which caused such an amazing rift of cognitive dissonance that the
> only self-preservation mechanism left was to totally abandon any
> notion of reality.

Forget Einstein. Quantum physics is where it's at and yea, that stuff is a
LOT like Dark Tradition stuff. But you call what they are saying nonsense?
Come on - ok - example. You can clearly see "notions of reality" right here
on this newsgroup, though I can only see one part of it unless he (the
person being - flamed? or something) leaves in what someone else said.
It's regarding the ToS again (yawn). Yet both sides are saying the complete
opposite. So which one is "reality?" They both KNOW their own personal
experience - hence a type of reality. Consider I'm not even addressing the
reality of sub atomic particles here. Just MUNDANE shit! I can, as a
reader and experiencer, ONLY subjectively stick in my own experience and
that tells me this: :"the TOS does NOT fuck with people that are hostile to
them or who critize their sacred doctrines even." I can absolutely state
that this is true - SUBJECTIVE experience which is what amounts to "my
reality on that subject." This is all that means, Ryan.

Derrida is not a Nazi - I don't even think Derrida is white. But that a
person was once a Nazi does NOT subtract from the merit of what they had to
say, not for me. If they have something of value to say - then fine. For
the mindless, just pointing out that "he said that FOR the Nazis" is enough
to close down the damned class or get teachers that truly love the technique
to say "oh, I better NOT teach that." That, in itself IS the Fascist Heart
that can censor that way. As for Marxism, it can NOT work in an
environment of military build up. Marxists should have known that from the
start. Btw, your favorite author, Michael Levin, is considered a supreme
racist. And? He gets feces mailed to him at school. And? He wanted to
get an ordinance to ban black males off NYC subways. Did you know that?
Does that change the merit or truth of anything he has to say? If one were
to implement certain things along the lines he pursues, you'd HAVE a Nazi
society, in the racial sense. The book "Why Race Matters" outdoes Shockley
and Jensen. His accounts of history, especially on music, are completely
full of shit. Provably wrong. His biological data on all aspects of group
general biology are used to make inferences about behavior - but they don't
explain why "the bad bad blacks" were peaceful and docile and supremely
community oriented in the past. He uses this data to "explain" that. Does
this make you NOT use anything he had to say that had merit?

>
> In the Nietzsche/Heidegger version of post-structuralism, it's not so
> much post-structuralism as it is anti-modernism. Nietzsche rejected
> the idea that science/history was cumulative, and that it was even
> rooted in anything concrete. Thus, we should teach creationism and
> evolution in class, neither has any empirical basis for being taught.
> Heidegger wanted to reject modernism/humanism, (which makes Sartre's
> comment that "Existentialism is a form of humanism" somewhat strange),
> and return to pre-modern modes of interpretation.
>
> The newer 1980's version was formed by a mix that throws
> meta-narratives, ironically what structuralism was even formed out of,
> away because they are seen as trying to explain the unexplainable,
> there should be no context for history or society, (since none can be
> given anyway).
>
> Post-structuralism lost most of its credence after the mid-80's
> because the theory that civilization is ruled by unconscious laws was
> shattered through investigation of societies, and by the fact that
> evolutionary biology explains more evidence, with greater scope and
> depth, than even the best of Levi Strauss' theories.

Ever read "Tree of Destruction?" That explains societies in a Over
Paradigm, manner (synthetic in the extreme). It does not disagree with
sociobiology, btw.

>
> > If people in the ToS make it a general initiation rule to "know" reality
> > (well, as best as it can be known if you mean it ultimately - no need to
get
> > into that)... and if they are then supposed to impose their SUBJECTIVE
> > views from magical experiences into that reality, THAT IS post
> > structuralitm - aka post modernism.
>
> That's a loose definition, certainly not a Foucaultian/Derridian
> version. There is no *objective* it's all *subjective*, no difference

First of all, one applies these techniques to literature, or to a way to
analyse history, to gauge society. One does not PARROT the guys talking
about it. This kind of analysis way predates all of them. Well, the word
objective comes in from the TOS side of things "objective reality" is
something they insist on - or so I'm assuming now. But inserting subjective
magical experiences into that, IS PM. If you want to talk about quantum
reality - and that is the real stuff we are actually MADE of (sub atomic
particles, atoms, etc), then there is NO reality we can know, none. Not
even "walls are solid" is true. But to us, they seem solid.

> between this and that, right or wrong, and so forth. It's all
> interpretated through linguistic signifiers which have no meaning in
> the first place. The word "reality" and "fiction" are used to decieve
> people working within your theoretical framework, and have no real
> meaning, and the more you insist upon meaning, the less they actually
> have.

I'd have told such people to stop fictionally brushing their fictional
teeth and just waited for them to get a really BAD toothache. There's
reality for ya! OUCH!! No, I think that you are either paraphrasing it,
or getting it from someone who really did not understand it, like some of
the critics of it - they really DO NOT
understand it, even if I show them with a simple story how to do it - they
have a very strong resistence to it - which makes me want to call them
names, like "STUPID FUCK" and wonder if they can read or apply simple logic
at all. . I'm serious. Most critics of it just CANT READ well enough or
THINK well enough to even do something really simple along these lines -
even when it's in the damned text they just read. They INSIST on seeing it
"their way" and that's the only right way there can be. These are not
thinkers. Consider that these people teaching this DO have lives. They
have families. They treat their families and jobs as if they are real. So
something is not right here. The problem is that I've always read snips
"about" this from people mostly against it, or essays you know "Tani, check
this out" from people who actually are professors that teach it. Most of
it? Boring turgid shit. And why read about something I just DO with texts
all the time? What for? No use reading what the ones who just don't get it
have to say, I KNOW they don't get it when they flame me or call me crazy
for having a different view of van Helsing and Dracula - a highly NON
structuralist view in every sense. My ultimate view of the universe is NOT
one of good/evil or even right/wrong. And that's innate. Sure I can play
in paradigms. It's fun if the others play too - NOT fun when they resort to
name calling and worse if my friends jump in and defend my view, even if
they share it - just worse. My definition of "bad" is "NOT FUN." My view
of this so called reality is that well, there are many levels of reality -
which one do you think we can know or not know? Can you really know your
own reality? IF you get sick, it's your body - someting invaded it. Do you
KNOW, can you KNOW if it's virus or bacteria? Don't bring in the doctor or
lab tests. I mean can YOU Know. (as a matter of fact, you CAN, but most
can't, they don't know how). Do you "know" atoms because you ARE atoms?
Most folks don't know things in that way. They know what they are TOLD
reality is, TAUGHT reality is, indoctrinated as to what reality is. Ergo,
they know almost nothing, imo.

It's kind of fun to play that game, but ultimately it's a
> tautology. As Roy D' Andrade put it in his critique "Science works not
> because it produces unbiased accounts but because its accounts are
> objective enough to be proved or disproved no matter what anyone wants
> to be true." The ability to test post-structuralism is not possible,
> and what few times they have tried, have shown to fail.

TEST post structuralism? LOL - well, give a person a story, step one. That
has to be the funniest thing I ever heard in my life!

>
> For example, Foucault writes:
>
> "Each society has its regime of truth, its 'general politics' of
> truth: that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes
> function as true; the mechanisms and instances which enable one to
> distinguish true and false statements, the means by which each is
> sanctioned; the techniques and procedures accorded value in the
> acquisition of truth; the status of those who are charged with saying
> what counts as true."

This is correct, thus far. In the USA the "truth" is that Bush won by
votes. Oh, but he didn't win, he TOOK. In the USA the truth is that
terrorists are bad. Are they? It is true only that they are BAD FOR US,
YOU AND ME. It's subjective, not objective. Then again there is the
inability of most citizens to GET the truth - all of it. So they only know
what they are told. They are TOLD "this is real." Neurologically, people
that lack the organic "I" which is something provably prevalent in the West,
"can not know, that they DO NOT know." And for such people, they can't do
better than to rely on - "those charged (with the responsibility) of TELLING
THEM what is true or false. And if the regime is telling lies? They have
no ability to ascertain this. Even with the organic "I" present, no one has
the ability to get their hands on full data that would enable them to know
the truth in that regime.

>
> Yet it's not a great philosophical challenge to prove this wrong.

I just proved it right using baby simple examples - and that's the key,
Ryan. BABY SIMPLE, 100% concrete. What kind of truth are you talking
about? MATH? No way. They don't mean math. They are talking regimes,
politics. In the Nazi regime, "Aryans ARE superior" was The Truth.
Believing that truth thoroughly, I have to admit that they heh - LAUNCHED
into the freaking rocket age before any one else even thought rockets were
anything but science fiction. It took the entire world to beat them. For
them, with the regime of that truth, it WAS the truth. Plato said it about
the "pernicious lie" he called what he invented about the men of gold,
silver and bronze I think it was. He said it was a pernicious lie - but if
you TOLD that to a society, again and again, it would become a truth and you
would SEE it in society. So the regime of truth would be "there are gold,
silver and bronze types of people and this is their CASTE or CLASS....." and
that would be "the truth."

If
> what is true is always relative to a particular society, then no
> proposition can be given which is true for all societies. Yet, the
> proposition Foucault gives here is claimed to be true for all
> societies. It's a self-contradiction.

Oh come on! LOL. It is true for ALL societies, that "what is true, is true
TO that particular society" and we are NOT talking about math, here, but
ethics, morals, politics. It does not stand to reason that "what is true is
always relative to a particular society" ergo then "no proposition can be
given which is true for all societies" - oh, well except that they determine
their own truths in certain types of things. They have their own tabboos,
their own standards of appropriateness. ALL societies have this. No

contradiction.
>
> >Deconstruction - which is PART of post
> > structuralism (hence post modern) does not destroy anything.
>
> Again, this isn't post-structuralism as from Derrida, who wrote that
> deconstruction was always deconstructing, nothing has any basis.

I'm the one that tends to see deconstruction as distinct and separate from
post structuralism. However, I was being corrected in the email - that
deconstruction is part of the post-structuralist approach, it's another
aspect of it. I see them as the opposite of each other since in decon, you
NEVER stray outside the text itself. In post structuralism, you DO.

What
> post-structuralist are you using?

I didn't write that, it's a paste of an email from someone that did take
courses in it. I know this, I'll say it again. I know what I DO when I
read anything. Every single teacher, professor or what not accused me of
doing BOTH decon and post structuralism with things I read. Every single
one. What this email I pasted is describing IS what I do. Perhaps you
don't understand Derrida. Burleson has a Ph.D. in literature AND a main
Ph.D. in mathematics. He MET Derrida, he does not read any of this in
translation. He teaches this, he went to France to teach a course too,
using the author I suggested too, but I don't remember which texts he chose.

The closest person I know who has
> what you describe is Ken Wilber's writings on post-structuralism, but
> he completely rejects both Foucault and Derrida, making him a
> structuralist rather than a post-structuralist, and he rejects most of
> Saussere's theories as well. Any true post-modernist would criticize
> you for being too clear and lucid.

Everything is clear and lucid - the ones who are not clear and lucid do not
understanding what they are talking about. Burleson said it, and I can see
it. They are just bandying around the "words" of the clique.

>
> They would also accuse you of using your writings as a way of
> imprisoning your Ural-Altaic ancestors.

My writings have very little to do with Ural Altaics, as a matter of fact.
I can clearly see that what I did write about it (actually, historical
pointers and nothing much else from Chinese sources) might tend to hold them
in stasis for others that read about them. I do offer up urls from other
people. Well, not my intent, since I did put dates on historical pointers.
They are not current dates. LOL. If people didn't ask me about
specifically what ethnic I was, as if that matters, I'd not have been STUPID
enough to think they were sincere and tell them. But I write VERY little
about that since I don't give a fuck about it.

That's why one
> post-structuralist, De Certeau, says that Michael Foucault used his
> writings to oppress the prisoners, insane, and other people Foucault
> proclaimed to be giving a voice to, he accused Claude Levi-Strauss of
> using his work on tribes to further his own means and gain academic
> credence, and so forth.

You think I do that? HA! Go read the Dark Tradition stuff I wrote. I'm
using anything BUT ethnic-familiar words. I do not give a voice to the
UA's. I give urls to that for anyone interested in ONE measly article that
only hinges on "the satanic arena" because it mentiones Sumeria and
Pelasgians; I did not even write that article. Dark Tradition is clearly
defined in "unity of" article - and many things are mentioned in there. I
know the stuff inside out. True. But not once did I ever use UA
definitions or words - aside from that, the concepts would be TOO alien, too
outside any more familiar occult system.

Tani

[RyanS2]

Whoever wrote that has an excellent grasp of the subject. Kudos to
them. What he/she doesn't mention is that another one of the defining
points of post-structuralism is that the information source doesn't
matter. E.g. attributing quotes to their sources properly.

Foucault discusses this in his book "The Order of Things", in which he
wants to show us how Chinese taxonomy is different from Western
taxonomy. According to him, a Chinese Encyclopedia lists this as a way
of distinguishing animals:

Belonging to the Emporer
Embalmed
tame
sucking pigs
sirens
fabulous
stray dogs
including in the present classification
frenzied
innumerable
Drawn with a very fine camel brush
et cetera
having just broken the water picture
that from a long way off look like flies

The point of this classification, writes Foucault, is that "there
would appear to be, then, at the other extremity of the earth we
inhabit, a culture.. that does not distribute the multiplicity of
existing things into any of the categories that make it possible for
us to name, speak and think." What Foucault is trying to prove is that
this system of classification is totally incompatible with any
Westernized idea of how to categorize animals, and since the Asians
have a totally different idea on how to classify animals, it means
that they have a different level of thinking, hence, postcolonialism
should seek to emphasize how THEY think and how THEY experience
things, rather than just our own ethnocentric prejudice.

At first, this seems to be a plausible case, however, there are some
flaws. First, Foucault knows that this isn't found in any Chinese
Encyclopedia. Indeed, throughout the vast literature of the Chinese,
there isn't one hint anywhere that this idea can be found. Instead,
this comes from an Argentinian short story by Jorge Luis Borges, which
makes this a Westernized classification. The fact that this relevant
fact has slipped by unnoticed indicates how sloppy the field of
anthropology has become when a Westernized piece of fiction can be
cited as cultural evidence for Eastern nations. Rather than doing
anything to improve upon the Eastern perspective, or give them any
voice, it in fact, greatly hinders any knowledge that we might hope to
glean from them about their own culture. Hence, Foucault is actually
counterproductive in his aims.

Another person to take on the same piece of thinking was the American
ethnographer, Marshall Sahlins. Sahlins is a bit smarter than
Foucault, he uses the faulty piece of evidence that Foucault did,
(without researching it for validity, even though Foucault gave the
source of his as being fictional, albeit in footnotes apparently
hoping no one would call him on it. Same thing happened with a recent
anti-gun book published where the writer was found to have doctored
and invented most of the evidence for the book), but he also adds some
real anthropology evidence to his case. For example, the Chewa people
of Malawi classify certain mushrooms in the same group with game
animals, rather than with plants, on the basis of similiarites of
their flesh. The Kalam people of the New Guinea highlands classify
animals and plants not by size and color, but by smell.

However, this type of empirical claim can be easily contested. The
case that erudite professional historian Keith Windshuttle gives is
that if you look at a chart from the National Heart Foundation of
Australia, you will find one table putting skim milk, lean red meat,
skinless chicken, fresh fish, and eggs whites, (all animals products),
with bread, pasta, fruits and vegetables, legumes, water, tea, coffee,
and fruit juices. In another category, it lists cream milk, fried
meat, bacon, coconut, milkshakes, and croissants. With the
Sahlins/Foucault vision of taxonomies, this table should demonstrate
the mentality of a radically different culture. If we accept Sahlins
argument as being serious, only a non-Western mind would want to put
skinless chicken together with bread and coffee. The taxonomy of the
National Heart Foundation must come from a radically different group
beyond our logic. Naturally, the fallacy is pretty simple to show, the
NHF was simply classifying things according to low cholesterol or high
cholesterol.

Since it is obvious that even within one culture, radically different
versions of taxonomy and classification and general can arise, human
beings can obviously work off the same rational means and come to
totally different methods for classification. The difference is that
the Western or what is facetiously called the "colonial" method uses
the methods of science as well to classify things, using biology.
However, anyone who reads "Darwin's Ghost", an updated account of
Darwin's "Origin of Species", written by Stephen Jones, will find his
example that animal domesticators are constantly in a battle about
when to count something as a new species. In fact, I would highly
recommend the book to anyone who wants to see how easily dismissed
Sahlins whole historiographic method is. Still, the method of science
gives us reasonable parameters, (though humans have a hard time
figuring out where they want to set those parameters, e.g. a radar
will tell you how fast someone is going over the speed limit, but
various cops have different ideas on how much is too much), for
defining a given species, and this is universal, not just limited to
what Sahlins/Foucault blithely dismiss as "colonial imperialism".

I digress. The point being that who says what is completely
overlooked in favor of a *prejudiced* standpoint, the very thing which
they rally against ad nauseam in their writings. Imagine how much
confusion we could have on this board if we misattributed quotes and
their sources.

[People's Commissar]

See inside. But yeah, it's the ONLY thing I ever read that explained
exactly what it is I "do" when I read any text. Well, I mainly refer to
fiction. I do not do it when I read biology, heh, wellll... like on
invertebrate zoology, that kind of thing, or do math! LOL, even if there
is no "right" way to count. LOL. Binary? Trinary? Decimal? Etc. OH,
hmm, consider how hard it is to switch from our number system and even do
addition, in a trinary system. You can do it, but you have to translate
it. your brain still THINKS 0 to 9. What about people who HAVE a trinary
system? Very different. But still, 2 plus 2 is gonna come out 4. LOL.

See in.

"RyanS2" <ryans...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:7fa9b259.02102...@posting.google.com...

> Whoever wrote that has an excellent grasp of the subject. Kudos to
> them. What he/she doesn't mention is that another one of the defining
> points of post-structuralism is that the information source doesn't
> matter. E.g. attributing quotes to their sources properly.

I didn't post it all. Too long and consider I'm saying that and I'm known
for long posts. I know that the source doesn't matter - in fact, I
practice "source doesn't matter" LMAO. I have only very recently taken to
giving sources for the parrots who "need written authority." You know
"Marpa said so, chapter, verse, page, etc." Well? How about "I SAY SO?"
Heh, I'm notorious for not being able to cite ANY sources, or neglecting to
cite them, or worse, if I have them, refusing to give them to people I
dislike LOL. I WAS the source for Dr. Price a few times when he could NOT
understand something and no one else would really explain it. He's the
professor, not me. But I was the source. I was the source for Kaiden's A+.
And so forth. I'm the type to give a person I dislike the wrong directions
if they are looking to get to the ER. I practice dislike when I dislike -
albeit it's a passive form of it and takes NO effort! :) For me, seriously,
it makes no difference if Plato said it - I might not even know Plato said
it. I use something in "my text narrative" and that's that. They are my
own formulations of the concepts. I never read the "philosophers." I find
it a ROYAL bore. They never say anything I didn't think of myself,
seriously, - I mean ANYTHING, and half of it I can argue with stuff I also
thought up myself. I.e., boring. I'm not saying I'm some genius or
something - it's just everything they think up to say in their Great
Philosophy seems like such simple shit. It's so damned obvious - even the
arguments against it are obvious. They can all be reduced to adhom examples
for KIDS even - it's all that obvious. This got mailed to the group because
the person mailing it KNOWS I notiously do this with texts and I never was
able to explain it the "proper way." Wait. What is the proper way? Imo,
the proper way to explain it is to do it in a way that will SHOW OTHERS what
it is. NOT obscure it. That's the proper way!

Well, that's obvius - but first let a Chinese person that also speaks
perfect English EXPLAIN what this impossible to figure out stuff means.
Chinese aren't stupid. Far from it. The translations might be off. But I
agree with what he's saying. The E. has a very non-dualistic outlook - and
so do I. I can hardly even relate to protagonist/antagonist in any given
story - and I'm talking about a simple story. I can always prove how one is
the other. EASILY. Kids stuff.

>
> At first, this seems to be a plausible case, however, there are some
> flaws. First, Foucault knows that this isn't found in any Chinese
> Encyclopedia. Indeed, throughout the vast literature of the Chinese,
> there isn't one hint anywhere that this idea can be found. Instead,
> this comes from an Argentinian short story by Jorge Luis Borges, which
> makes this a Westernized classification. The fact that this relevant
> fact has slipped by unnoticed indicates how sloppy the field of
> anthropology has become when a Westernized piece of fiction can be
> cited as cultural evidence for Eastern nations. Rather than doing
> anything to improve upon the Eastern perspective, or give them any
> voice, it in fact, greatly hinders any knowledge that we might hope to
> glean from them about their own culture. Hence, Foucault is actually
> counterproductive in his aims.

Well, same page then. I said let's ask a Chinese person that speaks
English.

Well, today we have genomes and that, imo, would be THE way to classify
them.

>
> I digress. The point being that who says what is completely
> overlooked in favor of a *prejudiced* standpoint, the very thing which
> they rally against ad nauseam in their writings. Imagine how much
> confusion we could have on this board if we misattributed quotes and
> their sources.

LMAO. My statement on all of it would be that despite the mistakes, their
reasoning on it was valid. People constantly misinterpret "survival of the
fittest" too. See "Evolution, Christians and Setians" by Phil Marsh - tho
it mostly deals with the Christian Paley's errors or cognitive inability to
grasp how evolution works. Survival of the fittest does NOT mean "might
makes right" by any stretch of the imagination. But most satanists thinks
it means that. They don't grasp that if a disease were to eradicate all of
humanity except for Down's Syndrome people, then the Down's WOULD BE the
fittest. When applied (yeah, by colonials) to societal paradigms, it
becomes THE excuse for (pseudo)scientific racism - and it did become this.

[RyanS2]

>For me, seriously,
> it makes no difference if Plato said it - I might not even know Plato said
> it.

The problem is that if people are free to randomly make up quotes, and
randomly make up attributions for these randomly made up quotes,
there's no context to anything. Realistically, I can say that "Tani
Jantsang said, 'I will kill all humans, I want to eat cats raw'" and
you can't argue against that. It's a goofy concept, IMHO.

>They never say anything I didn't think of myself,
> seriously, - I mean ANYTHING, and half of it I can argue with stuff I also
> thought up myself.

Uh, it's a self-contradiction. If you haven't read them, you don't
know what they say, ergo you can't have thought of what they said w/o
somehow knowing what they said.

>What is the proper way? Imo,
> the proper way to explain it is to do it in a way that will SHOW OTHERS what
> it is. NOT obscure it. That's the proper way!

That's anti-postmodern. That's modernism. Jacques Derrida said that
clear writing is the sign of the reactionary, and Mas'd Zavarzadeh
wrote that criticism against Derrida could be rejected on the a priori
basis because their 'unproblematic prose and the clarity of (their)
presentation, which are conceptual tools of conservatism' (Journal of
Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 1982, vol. 40, pp. 329-333). You have
to distinguish between sources the same reason why you can't mistake
Marxism for Nazism. Different ideologies, different things, different
contexts.

> Well, that's obvius - but first let a Chinese person that also speaks
> perfect English EXPLAIN what this impossible to figure out stuff means.
> Chinese aren't stupid. Far from it. The translations might be off.

That's the point. That's not a translation of anything, that's a
piece of Westernized fiction. I.e. a Western guy from a Western
standpoint invented that, it's as Eastern as fortune cookies.

> Well, same page then. I said let's ask a Chinese person that speaks
> English.

Some of Foucault's critics have been Eastern/Oriental, but Foucault
would simply say that by speaking our language, (nothing outside of
the text), he has subjected himself to our imperialistic mind and
paradigm, our theoretical framework, and has lost his nationality of
being Oriental/Eastern. Nothing is outside the language. In fact,
one of his critics, (not of Foucault but of one of his followers), was
that apotheosis was a strictly Indo-European idea, and Foucault's
followers had transplanted an Indo-European idea onto an indigenous
population which had no idea of apotheosis. He himself was of
Eastern, non-Indo-European roots.

> LMAO. My statement on all of it would be that despite the mistakes, their
> reasoning on it was valid. People constantly misinterpret "survival of the
> fittest" too. See "Evolution, Christians and Setians" by Phil Marsh - tho
> it mostly deals with the Christian Paley's errors or cognitive inability to
> grasp how evolution works. Survival of the fittest does NOT mean "might
> makes right" by any stretch of the imagination. But most satanists thinks
> it means that. They don't grasp that if a disease were to eradicate all of
> humanity except for Down's Syndrome people, then the Down's WOULD BE the
> fittest. When applied (yeah, by colonials) to societal paradigms, it
> becomes THE excuse for (pseudo)scientific racism - and it did become this.

Well, survival of the fittest is determined by random factors. E.g.
meteor hits Earth and big, strong lizards get beat by small, adaptive
mammals. Ice Age comes in and those with small bodies and excess body
fat tissue can survive while tall, lean bodies disperse heat and cause
a loss of internal thermogenics. Fast-forward and tall, lean bodies
can exert greater kinetic energy over a prolonged space, but then add
in increased age and they have knee and joint damage. The word "fit"
has to have context. Where can I find Phil Marsh's piece called
"Evolution, Christians, and Setians"?

[RyanS2]

I think what Derrida was talking about contextually, (applying context
to the man who doesn't believe in context, or rather that context is
invented by the author as a measurement of ensuring that others
operate within his theoretical framework which is itself only a part
of a greater theoretical framework, whatever), was that using a
metaphor posits that you are working within a perspective or frame
which comes to dominate a particular outlook. This outlook,
theoretical perspective, theoretical framework, paradigm, whatever,
eventually becomes "cannonized" so that it is accepted, (the
theoretical perspective), and loses its meaning. This forms a figure,
or rather a system of figures, which need to be deconstructed.

Come to think of it, I like your explanation better than Derrida's.

> That's way too abstractly put - it can be shown concretely.

The greatest piece of fictional literature by post-modernism is
William H. Gass's "The Tunnel". It's a book that denies any
consequential distinctions between morality and aesthetics. Murderer
and the victim, rapist and the raped, altruist and the egoist, there's
no differences between any of them.

> He's saying simply that people cubby hole "good writing" only by formerly
> cubbyholing "bad writing." You know the concept of truth only because you
> have a concept of falsehood. You know beauty - as compared to what?
> Ugliness? It's a dualistic framework that IS as-given in most of society.
> People who speak outside of it heh - well, you know. We get flamed. Called
> names. And if you think a person is beautiful, or a food tastes good when
> "everyone else" thinks ugly, bad tasting, you are then made to feel the
> JOYS of peer group pressure, and all that shit.

Pretty much accurate. This sentence that Arthur Plotnik criticizes:

"Having spoken to you without having had the least notion of one's own
intent, one would not be so adverse to discouraging an incipient
misunderstanding."

Is seen by Derrida as being one of the greatest sentences of all,
contextually meaningless yet grammatically correct. His theory
actually runs close to the Nietzschean concept of the "other" and
Michael Foucault's ideas about how once the bad in society were
labeled, it led to systematic persecution. Foucault tries to show
this using mental health patients, unfortunately, since he likes to
report fiction as fact, his actual evidence was mostly forged.
Embarrasingly, for the topic he picked, it actually worked the other
way. Mental health patients had it worse when they were considered
regular lunatics than when we concieved of them in relation to the
'normal' man. Good writing is studied by labeling bad writing, and
that's bad. It seemingly begs the question though, "is good writing
studied by learning bad writing?" Does English in college teach
Shakespeare as the model, or does it teach Derrida?

> "In > > dissolving any finite determination, negative concepts break the tie> > that binds them to the meaning of any particular being, that is, to
> > the totality of what is"; and so forth.
>
> Who is supposed to understand that?

No one, which is the reason why Derrida wrote that. Certainly I don't
have a damn clue what he's saying, but from his passages, he's trying
to get rid of the diachronic elements which are binding them to a
particular theoretical framework. To use the easier example, langua
is the formal dimension of language, which is an abstract set of rules
with no history, (according to their linguistic structure). Parole,
which is the sounds made by people, is diachronic, or it exists in
real time. Seemingly, Derrida is trying to break a concept away from
the parole and into the langua.

> Inferences PST I make from the text that are not in it, are provably
> logical, from real life.

You sound much more structuralist, (via Saussere), than postmodernist.
The fact that you do make value judgments is anti-postmodern. I
think you are mistaking textual criticism for textual deconstruction.
Deconstruction is what I just said above, removing the diachronic from
the synchronic. In the Superman example, a post-modern piece of it
would be that Superman and Lex Luther are the same person, no
differences between them.

>Read
> BF Skinner on that - it's quite good.

I just read Stephen Pinker on the issue. Also very good.

>Neurologists, when they get really
> reductionist, reduce the "I" to neurons and somatic markers and all that
> other stuff.

They tend to operate on the flip-side of postmodernism, it's not all
interpretation, it's all objects. Instead of nothing but the text and
nothing outside the text, it's nothing but the neurons, chemicals,
impulses, etc., and nothing outside of that. Love is seen as nothing
but an emotion invented to keep us rearing a family and forming bonds
with people who could help fight off predators, and so forth.

> He's talking about paradigms. BIG ones. Paradigms can determine what
> scientists CHOOSE to study - and also choose NOT to study - resulting in one
> kind of technology but not any other, and the other is not only not
> possible, but not even an Idea in anyone's head. Remember, he said
> CONDITIONS of possibility of all knowledge. In other words, what kinds of
> knowledge are possible within the confines (conditions) of that society.

True, but he's also speaking about a direct rejection of any kind of
accumulated knowledge. Specifically, that we impose our subjectivity
to what would otherwise be a World of chaos, and that this in no way
reflects what really is reality. (Which is just a construct anyway).

> Derrida? Ryan, I learned "interpretation of literature" in 5th grade
> grammar school. The term post structuralist didn't even exist yet.

Nietzsche and Saussere were writing about this time, (or at least
known in schools), but I suspect you are confusing deconstructional
approaches with other theories, like textual criticism. Textual
criticism is very old, in history the first example of it that I can
think of is Tacitus. It's part of the reason why he's praised by
current historians. Hell, even one of your favorites, Jules
Michelet, does this. He was a romanticist. I know that a full
articulation of literary interpretation, (which depends if we're
including meta-narratives), is Jacob Burckhardt's "The Civilisation of
the Renaissance in Italy", which is nineteenth century. Also the guy
who made the JEDP theory of Biblical writing, (four different groups
of authors), was a interpretator of literature, (I think his name
would be Wellhausen). That is old. The idea that it doesn't reflect
an objective interpretation, but rather it reflects a meta-narrative
system which is self-contained, is new.

> Forget Einstein. Quantum physics is where it's at and yea, that stuff is a
> LOT like Dark Tradition stuff. But you call what they are saying nonsense?

According to the supporters of Post-modern theory, your Dark Doctrines
would get thrown out the window. Why? Because it incorporates
genetic models, evolutionary theories, and so forth, which are drawn
from science. After Einstein showed his relativity theories, a group
of scientists came to believe that they were wasting their time with
science. Nothing was absolute, all was relative. Thus, they debated
that it is equally valid to teach creationism and evolution in
schools. Saying that a dog is really a cat is valid. (What's the
difference anyway?) If someone believes they were created by God as a
special race, then they were right. And I'm not engaging in
hyperbolic rhetoric either, they actually went before judges and
debated this kind of interpretation! I can only imagine the perplexed
ballistic officer trying to convict a criminal who had to learn that
everything he learned about equal and opposite reactions, blood
splattering, trajectory, exit wounds, and so forth, were all invalid
and that what is obviously a cold-blooded killer is really just a man
being imprisoned by the chains of science.

>I can, as a
> reader and experiencer, ONLY subjectively stick in my own experience and
> that tells me this: :"the TOS does NOT fuck with people that are hostile to
> them or who critize their sacred doctrines even."

Well, you state a subjective opinion objectively. It's like the
statements here:

Ryan is a nut.

Ryan can be nutty.

I think Ryan is a nut.

The last is subjective, but the first and second are objective
statements, Ryan is a batty fellow, or else is sometimes a batty
fellow. Subjectively, it'd be "In my experiences with the ToS". You
are presupposing that your treatment of the ToS versus what other
people have done would give the ToS a greater reason to harrass you
versus them, a fortiori, the other claims are false.

> Derrida is not a Nazi - I don't even think Derrida is white.

Derrida wasn't, but his primary influence, (Heidegger) was until his
dying days, even claiming it was he who was the true German Messaih.
Derrida was a Jew, but after this was found out, Derrida started
defending Nazism, (self-hating Jew?), and it left an uneasy feeling
amongst followers. Particularly his defense of Hendrik De Man, a Nazi
collaborator during WWII.

>But that a
> person was once a Nazi does NOT subtract from the merit of what they had to
> say, not for me.

No, not at all. Still though, when you take into account that most of
the founders were Nazi's or Nazi sympathizers, (Martin Heidegger,
Ernst Junger, Arnold Gehlen, Carl Schmitt, Bertrand de Jouvenal,
Hendrik de Man, and so forth), it makes you wonder why they came up
with their theories. This has particular relations for history
professors, because of Niethammer's "Posthistoire: Has history come
to an end?" In which he examines post-Nazi attitudes and finds them
all to be in-line with postmodernism. From that viewpoint,
post-modernism looks like nothing more than a very weak attempt by a
bunch of ex-Nazi's to explain why their Third Reich failed. That is,
of course, if you take that viewpoint.

>Btw, your favorite author, Michael Levin, is considered a supreme
> racist.

I know that, so is another historian I used for writing the Civil War
pieces on my website. It didn't bother me because both managed to
keep their more racist tones hidden, unless it could be shown they
were inventing things for racist purposes. Levin in particular is
fond of using black authors and writers to bolster his arguments.

>He wanted to
> get an ordinance to ban black males off NYC subways. Did you know that?

No, had no clue. Do you have a webpage link to the story?

>Does
> this make you NOT use anything he had to say that had merit?

I can tell when he's full of shit and when he's not. My own theory of
black rage has been that it's been through our systematic deprivation
of thymos in the black community, coupled with a system that leads to
the disintegration of the family, which I believe to be key to the
formulation of morals. This along with our constant reminder to
blacks, "We whites fucked you" makes them develop the same attitude,
"I want to fuck the whites." It's a multi-factual problem, at least
in my viewpoint. I tend to take Thomas Sowell more seriously on black
issues than I do Michael Levin.

> No, I think that you are either paraphrasing it,
> or getting it from someone who really did not understand it

I've read a fairly hefty amount of postmodern literature. It is
confusing, contradictory, and willfully deceitful, (as shown, using
quotes from a Chinese Encyclopedia that's not a Chinese
Encyclopedia!). As best anyone can understand that subject matter, I
think I do a reasonable job.

>even if I show them with a simple story how to do it

Your examples so far have been along the lines of literary criticism,
perhaps even what could loosely be called "hermeneutics", but
post-modernism not by a far cry. The post-modern superman would be:

"Superman was loved in America, because his signals, gestures, and
appearance were in conformity with the indigenous population. One day
across Superman's travels, he came across the Kaikai. The Kaikai was
a population where it was a World of traveling, of succession, where
periods were marked by the natural order of things. In contrast to
superman, who traveled the World to see the sights, the Kaikai
traveled their region to understand themselves.

Upon entering this new region, the outsider had arrived in the month
of Lon-Lon, the God of War, and a foreign sacrifice was needed.
Superman's gestures and movements, were out of season, they were done
for the sake of commandment of property and discipline. Superman was
thus eaten by the Kaikai, who were wholly satisfied at the outcome."

The main point of reference here is that Superman is working from a
referential point entirely different from the Kaikai. The death of
superman is treated within the perceived kaikai paradigm, them being
"wholly satisfied by the outcome", but no moral judgment is made on
this, or an aesthetic judgment of superman's "travel to see" versus
kaikai "travel to know themselves."

For a mythical story, this is all fine and dandy. The problem is when
postmodernists apply this to history, (as did Foucault), it provides
some of the most screwball literature ever written. Seriously, go
read one of his books on history.

they know almost nothing, imo.

> TEST post structuralism? LOL - well, give a person a story, step one. That

> has to be the funniest thing I ever heard in my life!

I've already shown Foucault's, but I'll take some direct from him.
This is from his first book, "Madness and Civilisation". He writes
that there was a "Ship of Fools" prior to the Enlightenment period in
which a band of lunatics roamed about the World on a ship looking for
their destiny. His source for that quote is fictional, (doh!), and he
invented that story himself to try and explain how enlightenment
destroyed other people. Putting it bluntly, "Foucault invents things
to fit his theory as he sees fit." Within the Foucault system,
there's nothing wrong with that either.

> This is correct, thus far. In the USA the "truth" is that Bush won by
> votes. Oh, but he didn't win, he TOOK.

You negate the Foucault argument with that statement, because you are
arguing from two different paradigms within the same society.
Remember, he just said one paradigm, one set of truth, one set of
knowledge to get at that truth, and so forth. Your argument is
actually a refutation.

> I just proved it right using baby simple examples - and that's the key,
> Ryan.

Actually, you proved it wrong in baby simple steps.

>MATH? No way. They don't mean math.

It extends to all fields, nothing is outside of the text. Unless you
can explain math without language, (*or even sign language, anything
which constitutes a signifer acting for the signified in place of the
referent*). Rather, I think you're reinterpreting these people based
on what you want them to say. Your arguments are actually better than
anything Foucault/Derrida ever produced in their lifetime.

> Oh come on! LOL. It is true for ALL societies, that "what is true, is true
> TO that particular society"

Let's break this down:

There are no absolute truths which apply to all societies.

All societies are governed by rules that they put forth and have no
cross-cultural basis.

The conclusion does not follow the premise, e.g. it's a philosophical
dilemma. The relativistic contradiction is "Everything is relative."
Yet that statement is a 100%, bona-fide, certifiable, absolute truth
statement, which it disavows. Going back to Plato, he knew that a
self-contradiction cannot be sustained.

>They have their own tabboos,
> their own standards of appropriateness. ALL societies have this. No
> contradiction.

You are reinterpreting what he said as you see fit. The two criteria
he gives are that no culture can have the same standards, and that
these are not cross-cultural. Yet every society has laws against
murder. Another baby-simple contradiction.

> Everything is clear and lucid - the ones who are not clear and lucid do not
> understanding what they are talking about. Burleson said it, and I can see
> it. They are just bandying around the "words" of the clique.

I'm speaking of Foucault/Derrida, and their other contemporaries.
They invented the clique.

> My writings have very little to do with Ural Altaics

You constantly interject thoughts about the Turanians and your
descendants. By very mentioning, you are subjecting them to your
imperialism. (Granted that now it's your
Logo-Euro-Vulvic-Geocentricism, instead of
Logo-Euro-Phallo-Geocentricism). Granted, that's if you take the
post-structuralism argument seriously. I don't.

> You think I do that?

No, I'm just reporting what a post-modernist/structuralist would tell
you, (granted here that I'm negating the differences and lumping them
in one group.)

[People's Commissar]

This is from Professor Burleson, permission to share his thoughts. Then
please see below.

QUOTE:
Hi, Tani-- Many thanks for sharing that piece with me, and good for you--
anyone by now who doesn't know how important poststructuralism is, just
hasn't been paying attention.... As you know, I used to argue endlessly
with Darrell Schweizer and others in the pages of Crypt of Cthulhu about
this sort of thing. You're quite right to tell the mob that HPL's tales
lend themselves remarkably well to deconstruction, the point I tried to make
in my book Lovecraft: Disturbing the Universe. Your description of
post-structuralism is admirably clear, should open a lot of eyes. I've
always liked the definition of deconstruction that some (to me) unknown soul
put forth-- "Disturbing a text along its own fault lines." And I think it
was Jonathan Culler who said, "Meaning is context-bound, but context is
boundless." Kind of gives me a chill every time I think of it. Funny, no
one criticizes an art browser who walks into a museum, stands looking at a
painting on the wall, and feels free to imbue it with all the interpretative
power of his or her own experience, but when one does that in literature,
you'd think it was a crime.... To me, deconstruction has *returned*
literary criticism to the task of interpretation, where it belongs. Feel
free to share these remarks with the discussion group, and all best wishes--
Don Burleson UNQUOTE.

Btw, that was copy/paste :) a real quote.

"RyanS2" <ryans...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:7fa9b259.02102...@posting.google.com...

Tani previously said:
> > Example then, concrete: When people that have had life
> > problems in
> > the past that bother them now, and they try to SPEAK about it to get
> > help or

> > advice, they OFTEN deteriorate into some kind of metaphor, .... etc.

> I think what Derrida was talking about contextually, (applying context
> to the man who doesn't believe in context, or rather that context is
> invented by the author as a measurement of ensuring that others
> operate within his theoretical framework which is itself only a part
> of a greater theoretical framework, whatever),

Here: "Meaning is context-bound, but context is boundless." I understand
that! Come on! I managed to upset the fuck out of people for beinging into
the context of mythos fiction, man's inhumanity to man, real life, etc, for
a reason to be PRO the creatures in the mythos. I got accused of a bunch of
shit I didn't do. Fans chimed in (who also write fiction, create ideas) and
got called socks (THAT AGAIN?) and their chiming in only made it worse in
terms of NOT-FUN. And whatever other nauseating other shit with some
remailer shit-disturber trying to start real trouble now. Logical
conclusion then: The INTERNET NEWSGROUP is a mode of communication that
DESTROYS FREE SPEECH. You better watch out about voicing ANY sincere
opinion on here, because unlike in real life, people can get in your face
over nothing and you can't just ignore them or tell them to leave your table
or room. But, that, what I did, was taking real life context and inserting
it into a fictional context. Basically, I'm trashed because I LIKE the Deep
Ones. Now let's discuss the Lumley-esque view. (You probably never heard
of it)... I'd have to resort to cursing all over the place to do that. And
venom. Not fun. But I now see the Lumley point of view very clearly. He no
longer writes anything to entertain his fans. He writes to make money and
no longer in that genre that was so much FUN for millions of people that
really did want MORE to read, and different stuff (not pastiche) to read.
No more. It's GONE, thanks to the internet. So then, what is supposed to
advance free speech, really only advances slander, real harassment, and
negativity all around, pure gang up mentality. Now I will take another look
at Ashcroft's agenda.

was that using a
> metaphor posits that you are working within a perspective or frame
> which comes to dominate a particular outlook.

OH, definitely. As I said, the framework/perspective of some kind of pop
TV soaps or shows that a lot of RPG fans like to watch or whatever, the
metaphors being used are from the show! It's stuff I never even heard of
or watched. Some of them even blame their self-destructive notions of
"romantic relations that consistently turn horrific" on TV shows that "tell
them" that it should be this or that way. I'm still scratching my head on
that one. No, I don't get it. I can't fathom it. But they are doing
exactly that, "contaminating logic by use of metaphor." I told you, you
really DO have to give examples to make it understood. And Ryan, yes,
Derrida et al DO WANT to be understood! LOL.

This outlook,
> theoretical perspective, theoretical framework, paradigm, whatever,
> eventually becomes "cannonized" so that it is accepted, (the
> theoretical perspective), and loses its meaning.

Yes, it loses meaning in that you don't even realize that you are LIVING in
that paradigm, not just thinking paradigmatically. As such, you "sift"
things from events, occurences, in the society and you make hierarchies in
terms of thought "what gets NOTED, put up front" versus what gets put on the
back burner, made into a footnote. What is losing meaning is that you ARE
in a paradigm, imo. I'm explaining something at rock bottem here, not
little "games" critics played with these people, like a lot of that adhom
stuff said against them.

This forms a figure,
> or rather a system of figures, which need to be deconstructed.
>
> Come to think of it, I like your explanation better than Derrida's.

HA! well, thanks.

>
> > That's way too abstractly put - it can be shown concretely.
>
> The greatest piece of fictional literature by post-modernism is
> William H. Gass's "The Tunnel". It's a book that denies any
> consequential distinctions between morality and aesthetics. Murderer
> and the victim, rapist and the raped, altruist and the egoist, there's
> no differences between any of them.

I never read it, but I can definitely relate to what you just said it's
about (heh!) and/or how one could formulate that kind of idea (and get
FLAMED for merely saying it....). I think many altruists ARE egoists that
don't ever really help those they are "helping." I see it, it's not just an
abstract idea. That's the only safe one here for me to give as an example
since newgroup internet no longer represents freedom of thought/speech. Ok,
here goes. The altruist has self-defined himself, set up an image of
himself as such. In order for him to "be that," he has to find people that
NEED him. If he were to truly help them, they'd no longer NEED him and his
entire reason for being (The Altruist) would vanish. Therefore, the ego
construction "I am The Altruist" would be smashed. Metaphor: the roads to
hell are paved with good intentions. Therefore, one must ask, where those
intentions really good? No. Egoists often do altruistic things without
intending to. The effects of their deeds are good for others, not just for
themselves. Where is the distinction? Gone. The other things you said,
well, heh. I'm not going there. But I COULD.

>
> > He's saying simply that people cubby hole "good writing" only by
formerly

> > cubbyholing "bad writing." ..........And if you think a person is

beautiful, or a food tastes good when
> > "everyone else" thinks ugly, bad tasting, you are then made to feel the
> > JOYS of peer group pressure, and all that shit.
>
> Pretty much accurate. This sentence that Arthur Plotnik criticizes:
>
> "Having spoken to you without having had the least notion of one's own
> intent, one would not be so adverse to discouraging an incipient
> misunderstanding."

Nono, I don't mean that. Having spoken to you and clearly knowing my
intent.... and I just realized (on another subject) that I'm guilty of the
grevious sin of intertextualization. My bad. (The narrator is truly NOT
named in the tale - other writers named him....oh dear...) I was talking
about where the intent, what you are saying, is very clear and someone gets
all in your face for your opinion and paints you up as a monster. But OK,
Plotnik... Is this saying that the speaker doesn't know his own intent? Or
that he allowed himself to speak to another person without knowing HIS (the
person he spoke to's) intent? He's NOT adverse to DIScouraging? LOL, oh
man. He is adverse to encouraging a misunderstanding. Therefore, he is
against the incipient misunderstanding. He is in favor of encouraging
understanding. In other words, (LOL) he wants them to explain themselves
and what they mean.

>
> Is seen by Derrida as being one of the greatest sentences of all,
> contextually meaningless yet grammatically correct.

Meaningless? Well, it's a LOUSY way to say something. But it has meaning.
Who is the "one's own?" The person that spoke? Guess so, since he didn't
say "your own intent."

His theory
> actually runs close to the Nietzschean concept of the "other" and
> Michael Foucault's ideas about how once the bad in society were
> labeled, it led to systematic persecution.

Well, wait. You mean your (and perhaps a shared) view of what Nietzsche
meant by the "other." You are assuming I know what N's "other" is. Is that
someone interpreting Nietzsche? (quote please?) Did Sartre interpret N
with that word (note: I forgot ALL of Satre, did read it, tho - his fear of
jelly-things "The Viscous" was hilarious)? I don't know what you refer to.
Define the "bad" in society. Pot smokers? Gays? Sure, humans are tribal.
When the regime declares Orwellian 1984 Hate Hour, the tribe responds.
Despicable. This is why I think it is so crucially important for these
techniques to be really, seriously, taught to children - and to do that,
you can NOT use words like "metaphoricity" or "originary." I think it's
crucial for civilization. Anything tribal (herd-think) in this day and age
of nuclear weapons is pure barbarity and a real threat. Imo. I was
emphatic, so much so that I tried to bring PS/D to grammar school here -
only to find out that most of the kids couldn't even READ, I mean really
read. Understand what they are reading. So what do we have? Well, to
stray outside the subject (but not really) we have bullies and the bullied,
often the bullied are smarter kids with no recourse. Hello Columbine. This
shit gets me real life depressed and really worried - as in "FEEL FEAR."
Anyway - back to topic. Oh, but consider that I'd bet money that Derrida
ALSO had similar thoughts about society and where it's going.

Foucault tries to show
> this using mental health patients, unfortunately, since he likes to
> report fiction as fact, his actual evidence was mostly forged.

Well, that's awful. Why did he do this? Now I'm questioning his personal
motives. Money? Fame? He didn't have to forge data.

> Embarrasingly, for the topic he picked, it actually worked the other
> way. Mental health patients had it worse when they were considered
> regular lunatics than when we concieved of them in relation to the
> 'normal' man.

I am not familiar with any of this, Ryan. Mental heath patients here are
gauged in relation to "normal" man or these days: "given norms of
behavior - wide berth." At least, they are now. Often, they are diagnozed
with biochemical imbalances which makes their condition a physical illness.
They are not at fault for being sick.

Good writing is studied by labeling bad writing, and
> that's bad. It seemingly begs the question though, "is good writing
> studied by learning bad writing?" Does English in college teach
> Shakespeare as the model, or does it teach Derrida?

Shakespeare? Oh - that's BAD English (or Elizabethan... or Yoda style?)
and he (Wil) wrote that to the dregs of that society, to be performed for
them - the threatre was NOT a respectable place to be in or go to. He's
FULL of pun and metaphor - x-rated stuff too for back then. You are with
this familiar, I assume. Er, wait. Familiar with this you are, I assume.
With this you are famil....Ahhhhh. (smacks face) I'm assume you are
familiar with this. :) The problem with the concept of "good writing" is
that English as a language has been kept in stasis by what are often called
grammar/spelling Nazis. Meanwhile, many 100% valid forms of it (according
to the linguists) have evolved; things we call slang, or improper English.
Catch what I be saying? Good writing, in my definition (for now, here and
now), would be writing that is actually saying SOMETHING and making it
clear. 2 plus 2 before. LOL. Ok, I'll stop. I have no idea what they
meant by "bad writing." I know what I mean by bad writing.

>
> > "In > > dissolving any finite determination, negative concepts break the
tie> > that binds them to the meaning of any particular being, that is, to
> > > the totality of what is"; and so forth.
> >
> > Who is supposed to understand that?
>
> No one, which is the reason why Derrida wrote that.

Well, I kinda explained it with that example. I agree that the way his
words are translated - well, too abstract.

Certainly I don't
> have a damn clue what he's saying, but from his passages, he's trying
> to get rid of the diachronic elements which are binding them to a
> particular theoretical framework. To use the easier example, langua
> is the formal dimension of language, which is an abstract set of rules
> with no history, (according to their linguistic structure). Parole,
> which is the sounds made by people, is diachronic, or it exists in
> real time. Seemingly, Derrida is trying to break a concept away from
> the parole and into the langua.

I think I explained what he is actually saying with simple examples. He's
actually applying dialectics with "dualisms" as-given in society or in a
text. He's rearranging "hierarchies" imo. I know what I got accused of
doing by every single teacher/professor - so that got to be what he's doing.

>
> > Inferences PST I make from the text that are not in it, are provably
> > logical, from real life.
>
> You sound much more structuralist, (via Saussere), than postmodernist.
> The fact that you do make value judgments is anti-postmodern.

Oh no, they make judgements - they are just different judgements, judgements
upon judgements. If they did not, they'd be writing nonsense, saying
nothing. What I'm doing is absolutely post structuralist and in doing that,
one can REstructure in many ways. That's what all that "dissolving any
finite determination, negative concepts break the tie" means. "The coffee
is hot." You understand that sentence. It's not cold!

I
> think you are mistaking textual criticism for textual deconstruction.
> Deconstruction is what I just said above, removing the diachronic from
> the synchronic. In the Superman example, a post-modern piece of it
> would be that Superman and Lex Luther are the same person, no
> differences between them.

Yup, did that one too, but in the example it was only used to show REVERSING
it, not destroying, showing how Superman is another KIND of villian. It
doesn't necessarily mean that Lex is not a villian too, or the same kind of
villian in essence. I DO see Lex and Superman as the same, actually.
(They are both assholes, despite the good they often do for society.....
LOL, now that is putting it simple). Superman is this guy that picks up a
child when it falls, as it's lerning how to walk and balance and then
continues to hold up the child. Lex pushes the child down to the floor.
Net effect: clumsey kid. Lex says "stay down" and so does Superman since
he can do the walking FOR the child. Same.

>
> >Read
> > BF Skinner on that - it's quite good.
>
> I just read Stephen Pinker on the issue. Also very good.

Don't know him. But in psych class oh, what debates I made. Turned out to
be right too. Back then neurophysiology was virtually unknown and I don't
think they knew the biochemical (physical) causes of a lot of things, even
diet related things. Their idea of "mind" was MYSTICAL, I argued. Mind IS
brain and possibly nerves or senses connected to the body. I argued that
the whole system works with itself, not that the brain is in control. What
feels when you touch something? Fingers? Brain? BOTH. But I couldn't
prove it. As such, if brain can be altered - then YOU are altered. That
idea got resistence like you'd not believe - and I think because it
(emotionally) terrified people. Their emotions made them incapable of even
reasoning this out.

>
> >Neurologists, when they get really
> > reductionist, reduce the "I" to neurons and somatic markers and all that
> > other stuff.
>
> They tend to operate on the flip-side of postmodernism, it's not all
> interpretation, it's all objects. Instead of nothing but the text and
> nothing outside the text, it's nothing but the neurons, chemicals,
> impulses, etc., and nothing outside of that.

Yes, but these chemicals are as objective as you can get, they are REAL, in
that sense. Hydrogen is hydrogen.

Love is seen as nothing
> but an emotion invented to keep us rearing a family and forming bonds
> with people who could help fight off predators, and so forth.

I agree with that concept but I'll restate it more specifically. Btw, That
does not mean that I don't feel love for things and people (which only a
person applying the shit-disturbist approach would hurl at me as an
accusation....:) ok, I know what love is, it shines out and feel very nice;
it's just THERE - or it's not. But could I convey what this "feeling" is
to an insect if it could speak? No. We can share language, Ryan, here
goes. "I like coffee." Ok, you know what coffee is, you have taste senses
and you know what "like" is. Love is not an invented emotion; it's a word
we use to define what we CALL a specific thing we designate "emotion" (ie,
"love" is not the same specific "emotion" as anger or fear); it's a
biochemically specific and measurable thing that mammals have. I.e, it's not
measurable as anger or fear which is also measurable and chemical.
Obviously, something different keeps life going in non-mammalian species.
Plus, they've been here longer. :) I am definitely not one to assert or
even think that insects keep their perfect society going due to "just
instinct" - (implied, when people say that, is that instinct is somehow
lower in a hierarchy). Insect society works. Pheromones. Chemisty. Take
also into consideration their form and structure (the insect's) - they CAN
do what they do, so they DID do what they did. It's not that they "evolved
wings" in order to fly (teleological). They have wings. These enable them
TO fly. But all of that, their needs, etc. their society works.

>
>
> > He's talking about paradigms. BIG ones. Paradigms can determine what
> > scientists CHOOSE to study - and also choose NOT to study - resulting in
one
> > kind of technology but not any other, and the other is not only not
> > possible, but not even an Idea in anyone's head. Remember, he said
> > CONDITIONS of possibility of all knowledge. In other words, what kinds
of
> > knowledge are possible within the confines (conditions) of that society.
>
> True, but he's also speaking about a direct rejection of any kind of
> accumulated knowledge.

Well, humans, unlike insects, are not born "knowing." We have to relearn
all the time. We do NOT, as a fact, accumulate the paradigms of the past,
or even the whole knowledge of the past. The accumulated knowledge of the
ancient world was pretty much destroyed by simple-minded morons about 2000
years ago or so. So what accumulated knowledge do we have? Only a very
very small part of anything. And do most humans have that at all? No, they
sure don't. I prove it to you: this convo we are having. We have some
kind of knowledge that WE two people accumulated and we are chatting about
it (and it's FUN!!:). And? The people I pal with could chime in. Others?
Most others? 99% of others? This doesn't mean we are geniuses. It means
we are nerds that like to get INTO what most people probably find boring as
hell and not understandable. LMAO. :)

Specifically, that we impose our subjectivity
> to what would otherwise be a World of chaos, and that this in no way
> reflects what really is reality. (Which is just a construct anyway).

Well, in terms of quantum reality, we definitely do do this. Plato said it
too, with shadows/forms. Heisenberg I think? Maybe Shroedinger? even told
Einstein that the construct of the electron was nothing but a SHADOW of what
IT really was. Einstein insisted on knowing the Thing Itself since it can't
be both particle AND wave - it must be something Else. No matter - we can
work with that shadow and make things. In my culture - there are levels of
reality within the greater samsara. The ONLY reality is The Void! That
doesn't mean we don't live lives, like things, care for things, etc.

>
> > Derrida? Ryan, I learned "interpretation of literature" in 5th grade
> > grammar school. The term post structuralist didn't even exist yet.
>
> Nietzsche and Saussere were writing about this time, (or at least
> known in schools), but I suspect you are confusing deconstructional
> approaches with other theories, like textual criticism.

No. Not at all. What I learned in school is one thing, and they wouldn't
be teaching Nietzsche in the 5th grade, Ryan. It was very Platonic, however
(Plato and the gang, that kind of technique). What I have been told that I
always do by later teachers, professors, etc is PS and D. Every single
time. Even by people who teach this and like it, or hate it.

Textual
> criticism is very old, in history the first example of it that I can
> think of is Tacitus. It's part of the reason why he's praised by
> current historians. Hell, even one of your favorites, Jules
> Michelet, does this. He was a romanticist. I know that a full
> articulation of literary interpretation, (which depends if we're
> including meta-narratives), is Jacob Burckhardt's "The Civilisation of
> the Renaissance in Italy", which is nineteenth century. Also the guy
> who made the JEDP theory of Biblical writing, (four different groups
> of authors), was a interpretator of literature, (I think his name
> would be Wellhausen). That is old. The idea that it doesn't reflect
> an objective interpretation, but rather it reflects a meta-narrative
> system which is self-contained, is new.

No, it's not new at all. Definitely not in any esoteric traditions. That's
"PRDS" which is all about meta narratives and levels of narration! LEVELS.
Which narrative are you reading (note, it's the same exact text).

>
> > Forget Einstein. Quantum physics is where it's at and yea, that stuff
is a
> > LOT like Dark Tradition stuff. But you call what they are saying
nonsense?
>
> According to the supporters of Post-modern theory, your Dark Doctrines
> would get thrown out the window. Why? Because it incorporates
> genetic models, evolutionary theories, and so forth, which are drawn
> from science.

I have no idea what they'd think of it. These are typically of the esoteric
school. WE incorporate metaphor and modern day explanations for a lot of it
using science. Do post modernists deny the existence of hydrogen or h2o
(water)?

After Einstein showed his relativity theories, a group
> of scientists came to believe that they were wasting their time with
> science. Nothing was absolute, all was relative. Thus, they debated
> that it is equally valid to teach creationism and evolution in
> schools. Saying that a dog is really a cat is valid.

They didn't understand Einstein, then.

No, in terms of the only reality on that subject I can possibly know, my
subjective statements were put forth objectively, LMAO. I was very clear.

>
> > Derrida is not a Nazi - I don't even think Derrida is white.
>
> Derrida wasn't, but his primary influence, (Heidegger) was until his
> dying days, even claiming it was he who was the true German Messaih.
> Derrida was a Jew, but after this was found out, Derrida started
> defending Nazism, (self-hating Jew?), and it left an uneasy feeling
> amongst followers. Particularly his defense of Hendrik De Man, a Nazi
> collaborator during WWII.

I didn't know all this. But I regard it as irrelevant, really. A Jew need
not be self-hating to objectively see what Germany was going thru and what
Naziism actually did FOR their people. I'm not familiar with any of this.
It's hard for me to even imagine HOW PM could be put forth by a Nazi. Nazis
were about Order. PM tends to kinda make chaos.

>
> >But that a
> > person was once a Nazi does NOT subtract from the merit of what they had
to
> > say, not for me.
>
> No, not at all. Still though, when you take into account that most of
> the founders were Nazi's or Nazi sympathizers, (Martin Heidegger,
> Ernst Junger, Arnold Gehlen, Carl Schmitt, Bertrand de Jouvenal,
> Hendrik de Man, and so forth), it makes you wonder why they came up
> with their theories.

Yah, you bet it does. I didn't know that about all of them. I heard it
about DeMan. I never thought Heidigger was a PS/D. Shows you what I don't
know. You bet I wonder. A theory that makes chaos as most people see it,
put forth by people in a society that's about Order and One Way Thinking?
Yeah, why did they come up with that? I'm showing this to Prof. Burleson
since I guess he's interested. I can't even come up with a clue (YET)....

This has particular relations for history
> professors, because of Niethammer's "Posthistoire: Has history come
> to an end?" In which he examines post-Nazi attitudes and finds them
> all to be in-line with postmodernism. From that viewpoint,
> post-modernism looks like nothing more than a very weak attempt by a
> bunch of ex-Nazi's to explain why their Third Reich failed. That is,
> of course, if you take that viewpoint.

No, I'd be more likely to chime in with most critics of PM and point out how
post-Nazi post ww2 fans misused PM due to shocking relevations, man's
inhumanity to man and well - a lot of precious notions about "man's
nobility" shot to hell full speed to the max - the atomc bomb, all of that.
A person defending Naziism who is NOT a Nazi often can defend it better than
people who are in favor of it (like neo-Nazis). I did that myself (won't do
it again....). I'll say this then and let people think for themselves
clearly and objectively. What if the Nazis won? 0. I'd not have been
born, HEH! 1. Germans would have been the rulers of a United Nazi States of
Europe. 2. There'd have been no Soviet Union. That's a LOT of MAJOR
changes. MAJOR. There was a movie - oh, it was good - about that.
Kennedy's father was the USA's president, Hitler was still alive, and the
Nazis had won. One American reporter in cahoots with an SS man (a nice
police officer - the SS having been turned into just that - regular cops,
nice ones) uncovers the truth about what happened to those people that are
thought by the world to be living peacefully in the East. Jews. But would
that have even happen? Face it, Christians don't much like Jews at rock
bottom. Without intent to offend any Slavic people here, neither do most
Slavs. Perhaps these people have reasons to not like them. I'm not judging
this, Ryan. People like and hate what they like or hate. It's neither
right nor wrong. Everyone has REASONS even if they don't exactly know what
those reasons are. I know that by telling poor Derrida that "NAZIS
formulated that stuff" it was an intent to harm him, an intent to use
irrelevancy to attack him, or bend his will away from the literary system he
loved. So he probably deconstructed it. By someone exposing his own
Jewishness to the world (as if that even mattered) it was an adhom attack,
Ryan. I'm not fooled. Was he Jewish? I mean, religious? So as a Jew out
to prove his firmness on deconstruction, he probably did his decon with it.
Lemme analogize this then. I have this great toy that I LOVE to play with.
NAZIS invented it. NAZIS sold it and used the money to do genocide. What
are they really trying to do? Destroy my love of this great toy? You bet.
Works on most people. Does not work on me. I recognize such people that do
that as spiritual enemies. Now - that is not subject to literary criticism.
I FEEL what they are trying to do - and they often focus their entire Will
on it. Their beef is not so much with the great toy. Their beef is that I
LOVE the toy. All of that adhom is out of court. Irrelevant, imo. But
now, I feel sorry for Derrida.

>
> >Btw, your favorite author, Michael Levin, is considered a supreme
> > racist.
>
> I know that, so is another historian I used for writing the Civil War
> pieces on my website. It didn't bother me because both managed to
> keep their more racist tones hidden, unless it could be shown they
> were inventing things for racist purposes. Levin in particular is
> fond of using black authors and writers to bolster his arguments.

Ryan, when I read Levin, my jaw was on the floor through most of the book.
Well, he has a right to say what he wants to say since he is not PERSONALLY
attacking any person. Rushton, however, almost got accused of hate crimes
in Canada for saying what he said, you know - Levin quotes it all. Anyone
can use black authors to "prove" that all black males are insane rapists at
heart: Eldredge Cleaver? "Soul on Ice?"

>
> >He wanted to
> > get an ordinance to ban black males off NYC subways. Did you know that?
>
> No, had no clue. Do you have a webpage link to the story?

Webpage? It was a long time ago, and on TV. Morton Downey I think, it came
up on there for sure.

>
> >Does
> > this make you NOT use anything he had to say that had merit?
>
> I can tell when he's full of shit and when he's not. My own theory of
> black rage has been that it's been through our systematic deprivation
> of thymos in the black community, coupled with a system that leads to
> the disintegration of the family, which I believe to be key to the
> formulation of morals. This along with our constant reminder to
> blacks, "We whites fucked you" makes them develop the same attitude,
> "I want to fuck the whites." It's a multi-factual problem, at least
> in my viewpoint. I tend to take Thomas Sowell more seriously on black
> issues than I do Michael Levin.

You have the same viewpoint I have. Exactly the same to the letter. I call
it dialectically evolved racism. Sowell is great.

>
> > No, I think that you are either paraphrasing it,
> > or getting it from someone who really did not understand it
>
> I've read a fairly hefty amount of postmodern literature. It is
> confusing, contradictory, and willfully deceitful, (as shown, using
> quotes from a Chinese Encyclopedia that's not a Chinese
> Encyclopedia!). As best anyone can understand that subject matter, I
> think I do a reasonable job.
>
> >even if I show them with a simple story how to do it
>
> Your examples so far have been along the lines of literary criticism,
> perhaps even what could loosely be called "hermeneutics", but
> post-modernism not by a far cry. The post-modern superman would be:

Not according to Professor who teaches it. I'm using PS. I can explain
superman, and why he's such a "GOOD GUY" for most people too.

Never read that, but I can see how European enlightenment destroyed other
people and the results/effects of that interference is still seen today in
other places.

>
>
> > This is correct, thus far. In the USA the "truth" is that Bush won by
> > votes. Oh, but he didn't win, he TOOK.
>
> You negate the Foucault argument with that statement, because you are
> arguing from two different paradigms within the same society.
> Remember, he just said one paradigm, one set of truth, one set of
> knowledge to get at that truth, and so forth. Your argument is
> actually a refutation.

He refered to it being within a regime.

>
> > I just proved it right using baby simple examples - and that's the key,
> > Ryan.
>
> Actually, you proved it wrong in baby simple steps.

LMAO. He said within a regime! Not outside of it.

>
> >MATH? No way. They don't mean math.
>
> It extends to all fields, nothing is outside of the text. Unless you
> can explain math without language, (*or even sign language, anything
> which constitutes a signifer acting for the signified in place of the
> referent*). Rather, I think you're reinterpreting these people based
> on what you want them to say. Your arguments are actually better than
> anything Foucault/Derrida ever produced in their lifetime.

HA! Oh thanks!

>
> > Oh come on! LOL. It is true for ALL societies, that "what is true, is
true
> > TO that particular society"
>
> Let's break this down:
>
> There are no absolute truths which apply to all societies.
>
> All societies are governed by rules that they put forth and have no
> cross-cultural basis.

WOAH, wait. They do have a cross cultural basis (unless we talk about
tribes of Indians just discovered in the Amazon? They have them too from
further back). But they still have their own ideas of right/wrong,
true/false, taboo/ok. They might change due to cross cultural effects, but
they still have them.

>
> The conclusion does not follow the premise, e.g. it's a philosophical
> dilemma. The relativistic contradiction is "Everything is relative."
> Yet that statement is a 100%, bona-fide, certifiable, absolute truth
> statement, which it disavows. Going back to Plato, he knew that a
> self-contradiction cannot be sustained.

Imo, when there is a strong self-contradiction, eventually you end up with
something entirely new.

>
> >They have their own tabboos,
> > their own standards of appropriateness. ALL societies have this. No
> > contradiction.
>
> You are reinterpreting what he said as you see fit. The two criteria
> he gives are that no culture can have the same standards, and that
> these are not cross-cultural. Yet every society has laws against
> murder. Another baby-simple contradiction.
>
> > Everything is clear and lucid - the ones who are not clear and lucid do
not

> > understanding what they are talking about. Burleson said it, (people
don't get it) and I can see

> > it. They are just bandying around the "words" of the clique.
>
> I'm speaking of Foucault/Derrida, and their other contemporaries.
> They invented the clique.
>
> > My writings have very little to do with Ural Altaics
>
> You constantly interject thoughts about the Turanians and your
> descendants. By very mentioning, you are subjecting them to your
> imperialism. (Granted that now it's your
> Logo-Euro-Vulvic-Geocentricism, instead of
> Logo-Euro-Phallo-Geocentricism).

HAAAAA, no, more like heh - Turanian-minority-diaspora-centricism! Oh, I'd
agree with that! I mean, it does come up.

Granted, that's if you take the
> post-structuralism argument seriously. I don't.
>
> > You think I do that?
>
> No, I'm just reporting what a post-modernist/structuralist would tell
> you, (granted here that I'm negating the differences and lumping them
> in one group.)

:)

[People's Commissar]

Well, see inside.

"RyanS2" <ryans...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:7fa9b259.02102...@posting.google.com...

> The problem is that if people are free to randomly make up quotes, and

> randomly make up attributions for these randomly made up quotes,
> there's no context to anything.

I'm not talking about quoting anyone at all. I'm talking about just YOU
stating what YOU think. I said that to you once before. Instead of telling
me what John Locke said; why not chat with me what YOU say. Telling me
Locke said it lends it no authority for me at all. Telling me YOU say it,
means you think it. You are also not outside the entire socio-economic
environment, therefore how you read Locks might be very different from what
Locke intended :) Remember, you focused on the "I-RYAN?" Well? In the
past, the "I-RYAN" was rather absent from your conversations on here - and
I'm not the only one that pointed that out. So then, quoting others lends
your views no authority at all. It is presuming that their views (the ones
quoted) have authority. What ends up "having merit" in terms of use of
authority is that you would quote people who are presently considered
"right." You don't quite theologians on the flatness of the world, eg. Why
not? Because you know they are wrong. Ok. how about the curvature of space
or lack of that? Marx was 100% prophetic when it came to capitalism, a
subject he scientifically analyzed. He was 100% wrong when it came to
communism which didn't exist anywhere for him to analyze. The problem with
Marxists is that they don't WANT Marx to have been that wrong on Communism.
The problem withMarxists is that they have an ideology called Marxism. Marx
had no ideology; he had only a scientific method called dialectical
materialism and it has turned out to be prophetic.

Realistically, I can say that "Tani
> Jantsang said, 'I will kill all humans, I want to eat cats raw'" and
> you can't argue against that. It's a goofy concept, IMHO.

That's not deconstruction. That's misquoting. It's even libelous! Usually
when a person quotes someone, they copy paste it LOL. Easier than typing
it.

>
> >They never say anything I didn't think of myself,
> > seriously, - I mean ANYTHING, and half of it I can argue with stuff I
also
> > thought up myself.
>
> Uh, it's a self-contradiction. If you haven't read them, you don't
> know what they say, ergo you can't have thought of what they said w/o
> somehow knowing what they said.

I had to read SOME of these at one time or another or there was a professor
lecturing and quoting the obvious. I can definitely know what they had to
say when people accuse me of speaking their ideas ("you are an -ian...")
when I'm speaking my own ideas formulated by my own experiences and
deductions. So then, they said what I just said, inference is there. I
don't care if they said what I'm saying. That does not lend authority what
what I'm saying either.

>
> >What is the proper way? Imo,
> > the proper way to explain it is to do it in a way that will SHOW OTHERS
what
> > it is. NOT obscure it. That's the proper way!
>
> That's anti-postmodern. That's modernism. Jacques Derrida said that
> clear writing is the sign of the reactionary,

I disagree. Reason? I would believe, even emphatically state, that
Derrida, in his own language, was quite clear on what he, himself, was
saying and trying to say to others (otherwise, he'd have said NOTHING and
remained silent). He taught the course. He intended to teach Something.
Was this all so that Derrida could make money? Get famous?

and Mas'd Zavarzadeh
> wrote that criticism against Derrida could be rejected on the a priori
> basis because their 'unproblematic prose and the clarity of (their)
> presentation, which are conceptual tools of conservatism' (Journal of
> Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 1982, vol. 40, pp. 329-333). You have
> to distinguish between sources the same reason why you can't mistake
> Marxism for Nazism. Different ideologies, different things, different
> contexts.

OH, ok, here it comes (asbestos vest is on). Marxism as applied is a LOT
LIKE Nazism as applied, at least the roots of both and how both were
applied. Nationalism and Socialism - German WORKER'S party was very left
wing. It was a proletarian movement for One Nation - the Germans meant
"race" when they said that. Not only that, but the application of both
Marxism and Nazism actually applied in real societies got us totalitarian
regimes! Hey, totalitarianism is totalitarianism, one might say if they
live in those systems. In a very strong sence, Naziism was more pro-people
for Germans-only than Marxism was pro people for 11 time zones of various
peoples. That is, Naziism was easier on the German people than Marxism was
on the Soviet peoples (plural). Both were worker's movements. Both
escalated two societies into modes of modernization FAST. Both were 100%
collectivist movements. Both were left wing.

>
> > Well, that's obvius - but first let a Chinese person that also speaks
> > perfect English EXPLAIN what this impossible to figure out stuff means.
> > Chinese aren't stupid. Far from it. The translations might be off.
>
> That's the point. That's not a translation of anything, that's a
> piece of Westernized fiction.

Aside. It could have been a bad translation. Did the author know it was a
fiction? I doubt it. He made a mistake.

I.e. a Western guy from a Western
> standpoint invented that, it's as Eastern as fortune cookies.
>
> > Well, same page then. I said let's ask a Chinese person that speaks
> > English.
>
> Some of Foucault's critics have been Eastern/Oriental, but Foucault
> would simply say that by speaking our language, (nothing outside of
> the text), he has subjected himself to our imperialistic mind and
> paradigm, our theoretical framework, and has lost his nationality of
> being Oriental/Eastern.

I'd not agree with that entirely, but I do see both points. How can one
explain samsara? Well, I've tried and done quite well but it takes a heap
of words to explain it and none of it is academic-sounding. There is no
Western word for it. No Western CONCEPT of it - except maybe in quantum
physics.

Nothing is outside the language. In fact,
> one of his critics, (not of Foucault but of one of his followers), was
> that apotheosis was a strictly Indo-European idea, and Foucault's
> followers had transplanted an Indo-European idea onto an indigenous
> population which had no idea of apotheosis. He himself was of
> Eastern, non-Indo-European roots.

I agree. Reaching the pinnacle, "Now I'm God" is not Eastern at all, but
lingo jargon or street expressions (no different from Ebonics, actually)
that might make others think they are saying that need to be explained. "He
is an incarnation of Kali." It means basically, and you can expect it if
you bump into him (so DO NOT bump into him, LOL), that he is on a jihad
bloody war path and leading a group. Look at the image of Kali to know what
it means that "he has become." There is no pinnacle. There is Being - and
Becoming, constant Becoming - FLOWING. One might choose a path out of
necessity - war path in this case. Here is the problem, and consider many
of us are here now, we are still very much who we always were but we are
here. E understands W pretty well. W seems to never understand E. E is
inscrutable to W. Not the other way around. Metaphor for me on this would
be to say that the math professor understands addition and subtraction no
matter how you apply it; but the person studying addition/subtraction does
not understand higher math. And it's not just a case of multiplication
being another form of addition, either. There is a real cultural or
cognitive GAP there.

I would say, and I do know, that many Eastern concepts just have NO words in
English for them. People that are not metulously careful who also speak
thorough English, can EASILY say the wrong thing and grossly mislead people
on what something means. Hence, the ability to speak English and even
slang, enables me to explain the eastern esoteric tradition very well. But
it's not easy. Often I have to use science as a metaphor! Often it has to
be explained in an adhom manner specific TO an individual person that I'd
have to personally know in order to even use something very real from his
life or there is just no way they'll understand eastern esoteric tradition.
It has to be something a person FEELS or has felt and that's very very
different from abstract philsophy. Music has to be heard. Tone deaf
people? Well, they have to RELY UPON what people who can hear tell them if
they want notes written down on paper so they can "learn to play it" on a
keyboard (hit the right keys).

>
> > LMAO. My statement on all of it would be that despite the mistakes,
their
> > reasoning on it was valid. People constantly misinterpret "survival of
the
> > fittest" too. See "Evolution, Christians and Setians" by Phil Marsh -
tho
> > it mostly deals with the Christian Paley's errors or cognitive inability
to
> > grasp how evolution works. Survival of the fittest does NOT mean "might
> > makes right" by any stretch of the imagination. But most satanists
thinks
> > it means that. They don't grasp that if a disease were to eradicate all
of
> > humanity except for Down's Syndrome people, then the Down's WOULD BE the
> > fittest. When applied (yeah, by colonials) to societal paradigms, it
> > becomes THE excuse for (pseudo)scientific racism - and it did become
this.
>
> Well, survival of the fittest is determined by random factors.

I just said that if you expand "wipe out all except Down's Symdromes." What
would wipe out humans would be random, or some crazy mistake in a lab
oriented toward War Machines.

E.g.
> meteor hits Earth and big, strong lizards get beat by small, adaptive
> mammals. Ice Age comes in and those with small bodies and excess body
> fat tissue can survive while tall, lean bodies disperse heat and cause
> a loss of internal thermogenics. Fast-forward and tall, lean bodies
> can exert greater kinetic energy over a prolonged space, but then add
> in increased age and they have knee and joint damage. The word "fit"
> has to have context. Where can I find Phil Marsh's piece called
> "Evolution, Christians, and Setians"?

It's on www.apodion.com/vad/ look in alphabetical index, or easier, l can
email you a copy of it. It's long :) It's very VERY basic.

[RyanS2]

Most of my political theories are best expressed by Burke, but I had
them before I even read Burke. I simply like his language. Some
people like how I write, some don't, so be damned with what you think,
I'm going to write how I write. Love it or leave it, that's who I am.
I suspect it doesn't bother you too much, or you would have killfiled
me and stopped engaging in exchanges like this one.

Anyway, onward we march:

> That's not deconstruction. That's misquoting. It's even libelous! Usually
> when a person quotes someone, they copy paste it LOL. Easier than typing
> it.

Also more accurate in this case. Here's a prime example though of
post-modernism in general, and not deconstruction. There's a book out
called "The Great Cat Massacre", it's around 300 pages. I have long
forgotten the authors name, so please forgive. He based the entire
300 pages on a single pamphlet, about 3 pages, that he found, which
has no confirmation anywhere else. A regular historian would simply
have discarded it, or else looked for collaboration that there was
indeed a great cat massacre, but this post-modernist just wrote an
entire book off of it.

It's also not that I always disagree with post-modernism, I think they
simply overstate their case, in some instances. Prime example, Jean
Lyotard. Correctly, he states that it is a bit naive to assume
history can explain everything, because it necessarily depends on
using general words and verbs to describe specific action. This, he
claims, makes history false.

While granting the premise is correct, I do not believe his conclusion
is. It merely means that history is always going to be of limited
scope. Historians have known that for years. To use one example from
a Turanian perspective, there was a 18th century Turkish chronicle
which writes, "Forgive me, but if I put in all the details, I would
never have finished writing this book." (Paraphrased from memory).
So, the concept that we can't write down everything and must
necessarily gloss over things is not an invalidation of it, only a
necessary evil.

My thoughts on post-modernism in general are along with this. In some
cases, I can see their point, but they take it to such an extreme that
it negates the entire point. You state things more marginally than
they do, which makes your theory, in my opinion, better than theirs.

> I disagree. Reason? I would believe, even emphatically state, that
> Derrida, in his own language, was quite clear on what he, himself, was
> saying and trying to say to others (otherwise, he'd have said NOTHING and
> remained silent). He taught the course. He intended to teach Something.
> Was this all so that Derrida could make money? Get famous?

It's hard to say really. Derrida's criticism of his opponents, (and
what he said to his students, he wasn't exactly a friendly man),
almost makes one wonder about his level of sanity. The fact that he
had a morbid obsession with death, grief, and other such things kind
of like existentialists in France. I also know that while Derrida was
alive, he refused to have an easy to understand version of his works
made.

More or less, Foucault and Derrida both thought of themselves as
prophets. Foucault I know for a fact, his first book opens up with "I
am going to propose a theory that will change the world..."
(Paraphrased from memory, but that's how he put it.) He goes on about
how he is going to do something that has never been done before, and
once has been done, is going to completely change the entire world.
There's another post-modern book out about the Aborigines that has the
same kind of messaih overtones, it claims that it will give the
aborigines a voice about European invasion. The sad thing is the book
doesn't use one aboriginal source, while historians have been
compiling aborigini stories for over 3 decades. You're more familiar
with Marxism, the messaihic portion of Marxism, it's kin to that.
Certainly Marx didn't get great money from his writings.

>Marxism as applied is a LOT
> LIKE Nazism as applied, at least the roots of both and how both were
> applied.

They were both formed by German Socialism, which ironically, so was
Zionism. Still though, even accounting for the similarities there are
also still the differences, even if one is indifferent to the
differences.

> Aside. It could have been a bad translation. Did the author know it was a
> fiction? I doubt it. He made a mistake.

Which one? Foucault most certainly did, but as I posted about the
Great Cat Massacre, the reliability of a source is a non-existent part
of post-modernism. The other didn't list his source for the quote,
which is a dubious thing in history. It either means it was a grave
oversight, or else he knew it was a fiction and didn't want that to
interfere with his example.

> I'd not agree with that entirely, but I do see both points. How can one
> explain samsara?

Good question. It can't be done easily, but really explaining the
more complex pieces of Plato isn't very easy to do either. Plato was
a Western boy, even if his thinking was more in-line with Eastern
ideas.

[People's Commissar]

See inside.

"RyanS2" <ryans...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:7fa9b259.02102...@posting.google.com...

> Most of my political theories are best expressed by Burke, but I had
> them before I even read Burke. I simply like his language. Some
> people like how I write, some don't, so be damned with what you think,
> I'm going to write how I write. Love it or leave it, that's who I am.
> I suspect it doesn't bother you too much, or you would have killfiled
> me and stopped engaging in exchanges like this one.

Oh, don't take things so personally. I like how you write - even ASKED you
to write up something, remember? We'd put it up "by Ryan." No problem.
Still holds! It's information, the type of which we DO put up and share
freely (on Arabic Goddesses, I mean). But in a chat, quoting this or that
scholar lends it no credence for me and for a lot of people that think on
their own. It just doesn't. People might not even be familiar with the
authority. I happen to be familiar with Levin, Diamond, and a lot of these
people's ideas eg on the other thread conversation. That ENBALES us to
chat, you realize? I like you. Don't confuse me with someone else, please.
Your own conclusion regarding the other subject, is as valid as Sowell's,
eg. You in fact concluded what I concluded - and that's all from stepping
rather outside what any of these people are saying. Notice? Mine is from
first hand observation and interaction with people, over MANY years. I
don't know where your conclusions came from, they are identical to mine.
Anyway, that's the other thread :)

>
> Anyway, onward we march:
>
> > That's not deconstruction. That's misquoting. It's even libelous!
Usually
> > when a person quotes someone, they copy paste it LOL. Easier than
typing
> > it.
>
> Also more accurate in this case. Here's a prime example though of
> post-modernism in general, and not deconstruction. There's a book out
> called "The Great Cat Massacre", it's around 300 pages. I have long
> forgotten the authors name, so please forgive. He based the entire
> 300 pages on a single pamphlet, about 3 pages, that he found, which
> has no confirmation anywhere else. A regular historian would simply
> have discarded it, or else looked for collaboration that there was
> indeed a great cat massacre, but this post-modernist just wrote an
> entire book off of it.
>
> It's also not that I always disagree with post-modernism, I think they
> simply overstate their case, in some instances. Prime example, Jean
> Lyotard. Correctly, he states that it is a bit naive to assume
> history can explain everything, because it necessarily depends on
> using general words and verbs to describe specific action. This, he
> claims, makes history false.

That yes. Aside from the fact that no historian (usually one on the
conquering and winning side who gets to tell the story....) has access to
all the data.... OK, words, Israli Freedom Fighters. Palestinian
Terrorists. ??? Reverse the titles because while they both DO the same
types of things, they have tacked onto them (in most people's minds)
inferences of good/bad. I understand the point about use of words, verbs,
etc. It's why the visual/audio media is so much better than the written
media, imo.

>
> While granting the premise is correct, I do not believe his conclusion
> is. It merely means that history is always going to be of limited
> scope. Historians have known that for years. To use one example from
> a Turanian perspective, there was a 18th century Turkish chronicle
> which writes, "Forgive me, but if I put in all the details, I would
> never have finished writing this book." (Paraphrased from memory).
> So, the concept that we can't write down everything and must
> necessarily gloss over things is not an invalidation of it, only a
> necessary evil.

True, but in the further East the accounts are super-crunched so that you
end up with this Deity fighting that Deity, and a lot of higher ordered
conceptual things are written, or pictured in a complex drawing, that would
literally take PAGES to define - which explains things more akin to
CONCEPTS, to people that understand WHAT that is saying. The problem is,
well, take Columbus. For years people learned about Columbus, as Americans
learning about America. Indian tribes are left out of the story, for the
most part, or mentioned in passing. What at first seems like a noble thing,
freedom fighters, discovery, one big WOW with fireworks and all (culmination
of what Columbus did), becomes something drenched in atrocity, despicable,
AWFUL, one big feeling of dismay and disgust (PM?), when you put in a few
more details. PM also comes off sometimes as a kind of revulsion or disgust
at the whole concept of western civ. Perhaps they themselves realize that
they TOO had on rose colored glasses and ripping them off doesn't feel good?
Here is an interesting idea. Maybe they can NOT convey their ideas in a
concrete form as I did because they are distancing themselves from the thing
that might be too painful for them to just blurt out and see so nakedly.
That's an idea here. In which case, all their abstract language is serving
much as metaphor, to contaminate their CLEAR expression of their ideas. One
time a strong PSt/D Professor just outright said this to me: 'They Baptized
70 million of their babies and then proceeded to bash their brains out."
Now - THAT is a strong statement, Ryan. And it came out of the blue, on my
end. Hearing it was like: ok, pull back - woah. There was nothing abstract
about that statement. But when once, as a Western person, having the allure
and glamour of Cortez and his merry band of boys, the carpet gets ripped out
from under you and you see this kind of thing? I think the PM gang sees it,
very clearly. But they are also Western boys, so to speak, that perhaps had
the old concepts - YIPPEE Cortez and all that. They are disillusioned.
Some folks like illusions. They don't want to be disillusioned.

>
> My thoughts on post-modernism in general are along with this. In some
> cases, I can see their point, but they take it to such an extreme that
> it negates the entire point. You state things more marginally than
> they do, which makes your theory, in my opinion, better than theirs.

I'm sticking to the pure thing, Ryan. Sort of sifting out the "WHAT" of
what they are actually saying - or er, trying to say, LOL. After all, I've
been accused of PSt and D and called a PM by people pro and con many many
times. So then, what exactly is it that I said or thought (expressed
thoughts) that's causing this? I'm saying simple stuff AND presenting them
with infallable logic, step by step and not with some grand scheme of
things, but with something relatively very simple, so these experts are
clearly understanding me. No doubt about that. So then, what is this thing
I'm doing? Forget about reading a text on it - NO way. It's just too far
out abstract. I'm glad if I said something that got you to understand it,
at the core. One word I can come up with to say "what the core of all of
it" is: DOUBT. That's a good word. DOUBT. Everything they write is
expressing doubt about what was written before, or written within a text,
even. And then they most definitely DO proceed to make their theories and
they heh, STRUCTURE them along certain other lines. That's funny. If I had
to reduce it to one word? Doubt would be the word. I think the
structuralists wonder if you can even have a literary school founded on such
a thing, doubt. Yes, you can. I think structuralists are IDIOTS! They are
like lock-step paradigmists with rose colored glasses on. But, I also see
that their PM'd or PSt'd or even Deconed structure IS a structure; it's just
along very different lines. It almost reminds me of "levels of samsara" in
my culture - with the only really real thing being the Void. Is that what
they are chasing after? The Void? The difference is that for us, this is
liberating in the extreme, it's like freedom. For an adhom example of that
from me (levels of reality) just read adhom chats where I appear to be
switching sides, or talking out of 100 sides of my mouth. Which view is
mine? Well - DOH - ALL OF THEM ARE!! My personal core really real opinion,
as if that matters or doesn't change from day to day...? I have none, I
have to pay the electric bill. Western people DO NOT understand shit kind
of thing. Or few do. Here is an example of structuralist bullshit that I
got into a MAJOR argument with a teacher over. As such, on a stupid test I
took, I wrote in "first person narrator" when I KNEW it was not that; but
that was the "correct answer." You know "first person narrator?" And then
"omnicient narrator?" (my real idea is just fucking tell the god damned
story already, LOL) EG: story starts out "I wanted to go to the store
today and then decided against it. What I plan to do is go to the movies
.....": Omnicient narrator story would be more like "He wanted to go to the
store that day but then decided against it. He made plans to go to the
movies...." Like that, to give example. Well, when first person narrative
starts out really at the END of the tale, that is, you know he is telling
you "what happenED" to him, and from page 1 he proceeds to tell you what
happened...that is LIKE omnicient narrator. "I had wanted to go to the
store that day and then had decided against it. I had made plans, instead,
to go to the movies later...." It's NOT the same as a first person
narrative that tells the story oh, how to explain this? That tells a story
as it is presently happening to him where he has no idea what is going to
happen. I don't know if I'm explaining this right. Yeah, I know the AUTHOR
knows what he wants to write and how he wants to write it but - I mean
narrator - forget the author. This is not the same thing, they are two
different kinds of "first person narrative" where one is more like omnicient
narrator. You know, the Omnicient Narrator never says "I". Structuralists
say that the minute you say "I" in a story, you are no longer omnicient
narrator. I argued this for TYPES of "I" in a story. I think a story that
has "I" in it can also be omnicient narrator if he's telling the tale on
hindsight! I got accused. LOL. If I had answered the question on that
type of tale my way, I'd have gotten the question wrong. Heh. Also, the
"I" can also know what WILL happen in a story, like an omnicient narrator,
if someone writes a tale that way - but I'll drop that.

>
> > I disagree. Reason? I would believe, even emphatically state, that
> > Derrida, in his own language, was quite clear on what he, himself, was
> > saying and trying to say to others (otherwise, he'd have said NOTHING
and
> > remained silent). He taught the course. He intended to teach Something.
> > Was this all so that Derrida could make money? Get famous?
>
> It's hard to say really. Derrida's criticism of his opponents, (and
> what he said to his students, he wasn't exactly a friendly man),
> almost makes one wonder about his level of sanity. The fact that he
> had a morbid obsession with death, grief, and other such things kind
> of like existentialists in France. I also know that while Derrida was
> alive, he refused to have an easy to understand version of his works
> made.

Hmm, odd. Oh, he's dead? More of what I don't know. Well, Derrida is one
person. I'm not Derrida. You understand me. I'm not quoting anyone,
either. I have no obsessions with anything like that, negative shit. I
like to have fun. Bottom line. THIS IS fun - this convo. (HUGS!! /me hugs
Ryan..) Well, when one Professor taught in Austria, he never had a problem,
students had no problem. When he taught in Minnesota, the students were so
wimpy that they regarded the Professor as bashing their egos. Yet he never
attacked them, none of it was adhom or personal. He attacked only what they
were saying, or challenged it. The USA tends to breed a type of person that
takes challenges to their statements or thoughts as personal ego bashing.
And I refuse to talk to people like that; they are impossible to talk to!!
So I don't know if Derrida was unfriendly. Many people think I'm friendly.
Others think I'm an evil bitch. They can also manage to read "into"
something I said, some insult. Yet there is none there, there is only a
disagreement on an idea that's not personal at all. Existentialism can be
reduced to alienation. See akathartic article.

>
> More or less, Foucault and Derrida both thought of themselves as
> prophets. Foucault I know for a fact, his first book opens up with "I
> am going to propose a theory that will change the world..."

Well, I don't know if they felt/thought that, or if F thought that. I wrote
this (paraphrase, don't feel like looking for HC letter) to a person once:
"Oh yeah? Wanna bet? I WILL write THE article that will do down in infamy.
It will mind-bend some people forever; they'll never get over it; people
will grossly misread it because their buttons will be pushed beyond repair;
and they'll go into rants over it. Others will be shocked and still
bothered by it. They will hate me for just saying it despite the fact that
what I'm gonna write is common stupid shit that everyone knows anyway on any
street corner. Let's BET on it!" Well, I won the bet. I have no concept
of such things as prophets unless they PREDICT things 100% on the money - in
which case, heh, PROFITS? LOL. When I say someone is prophetic, I mean it
literally - that what he said was 100% right in terms of reality, deeds,
etc. Therefore, I can't know if they felt/thought of themselves as some
kind of Prophets in that sense. It doesn't matter if others thought they
felt this. :) That might be ego projection.

> (Paraphrased from memory, but that's how he put it.) He goes on about
> how he is going to do something that has never been done before, and
> once has been done, is going to completely change the entire world.

Ryan, they literally turned American society upside down on its head.
Frankfurt School and their effects? You bet.

> There's another post-modern book out about the Aborigines that has the
> same kind of messaih overtones, it claims that it will give the
> aborigines a voice about European invasion. The sad thing is the book
> doesn't use one aboriginal source, while historians have been
> compiling aborigini stories for over 3 decades.

Well, as one Arapahoe said to me "There are lots of books on us written by
the white man. All of them are wrong."

You're more familiar
> with Marxism, the messaihic portion of Marxism, it's kin to that.
> Certainly Marx didn't get great money from his writings.

Marx was also not a Marxist. He was a dialectical materialist. Yup,
utopianism.

>
> >Marxism as applied is a LOT
> > LIKE Nazism as applied, at least the roots of both and how both were
> > applied.
>
> They were both formed by German Socialism, which ironically, so was
> Zionism. Still though, even accounting for the similarities there are
> also still the differences, even if one is indifferent to the
> differences.

Well, Marxism-Leninism as actually practiced in the USSR was more akin to
Bakhuninism and Nechayevism with a lot of "Lenin Khan, Stalin Khan" thrown
in there. Accounts of it from outside are 100% pure bullshit on both the
pro and con sides. Period. The conceptualizations, based on somatic
markers, real school of hard knocks, that NON-Western peoples made of the
system (including my parents, relatives, et al), and even the
conceptualizations of the barely-western peoples, were FAR from Marxism of
any kind. Lenin's whole "What Shall be Done" (title?) is a rewrite of
Nechayev. We have Nechayev on website. Very short. The people actually
there IN it had no utopian illusions on such grand scales. No ILLUSIONS;
they weren't the type of humans that tended to live in illusionary pipe
dreams; life was HARD and the fit survived in the most brutal sense of man
against nature, Ryan. The Europeans made up the utopian illusions for them
and believed in them, like Faith. Can't blame the Soviet leaders then for
getting these duped morons to "work for them" when they pretty much
volunteered to do just that. For 90% of these native people, learning to
count and read was a Great Success. Stalin Khan's handing out of hundreds
of millions of toothbrushes with instructions was a Major Deal, to give you
an example. The Western peoples, seem to me, to be forever little boys
romping around with rose colored glasses on. Yippee Columbus, eg. Then,
when and if someone shows them the gory details and the enormity of it all,
they get all depressed and DIS-illusioned. For them, being disillusioned is
a catastrophic experience. It reminds me of spoiled kids that hog up the
toys, having the toys taken from them so that they can be shared. It's just
an image I have of it. For me, DIS-iilusion is destroying illusions and is
good - it even FEELS good. (Get a clue why I got labelled so many times?)
Big difference, Ryan. These are differences in the innate ways that people
actually structure reality and feel about it. After that, they do the
thinking and writing about it! First, they feel it, experience it.
Otherwise it's empty words on no foundation. It's a difference even in the
way people FEEL (not just think) about truths. Well, does truth, or do more
truths, set them free? Or not? The article on akatharsis talks about these
existentialists and their angst. On website. Why do they tend to feel such
agony when they are disillusioned? THAT is the question!

> > Aside. It could have been a bad translation. Did the author know it
was a
> > fiction? I doubt it. He made a mistake.
>
> Which one? Foucault most certainly did, but as I posted about the
> Great Cat Massacre, the reliability of a source is a non-existent part
> of post-modernism.

Well, my take on that is that they might be using "sources" almost as one
might use a "source" that's wholly invented in a fiction, like if they
invented a book by a non-existent author. The source is merely used to show
something. Then you counter the source with either your own ideas, or with
yet another fictional source. I've done that in fiction but by having
fictional characters speak for themselves - and all of them have different
views. Which one can you believe? NONE can be proven, btw. I'd ask why
not use a source that everyone else knows of and IS real in the sense that
it can be checked? I'd have asked them the negative. And asked them WHY.
I'd not just accuse them. Of course, I'd be accused of making excuses for
them. No, just being objective here. Maybe they wrote all that other stuff
just to make some cash, who knows. BUT: Another way to see this is that
they really do regard all "legitimate sources" as equally fictional as their
fictional source! Think about that. What if no one found out that the
source was fictional or fraudulent? Then it would have gone down in history
as a source. HA!! Well then, we have "what other people said he said"
regarding Anaximander. How do we know these sources didn't lie? Here comes
cultural type question: Nietzsche - you know what he said and thought? Do
you? You have ONLY Nietzsche's dead word. Surely, in his entire lifetime,
he thought many other things; and 99% of them you can't know. Perhaps all
those 99% other things he also thought would drastically alter the meaning
of what little he wrote that you can see. No one criticizes Nietzsche
because he was insane. He was! Take Rand (I'm sick of her). What good
were her words when she herself was the EPITOME of every single thing she
hated? Does what Rand Is have anything to do with assessing the merit of
her words? Some say yes. Some say no. She didn't practice what she
preached. But, so what?

The other didn't list his source for the quote,
> which is a dubious thing in history. It either means it was a grave
> oversight, or else he knew it was a fiction and didn't want that to
> interfere with his example.

Hmm, same page. The focus is on The Example. The sources, real or not, are
used in the narrative to show The Example. I tend to use ad-hom examples if
I know a person well enough, to demonstrate something.

>
> > I'd not agree with that entirely, but I do see both points. How can one
> > explain samsara?
>
> Good question. It can't be done easily, but really explaining the
> more complex pieces of Plato isn't very easy to do either. Plato was
> a Western boy, even if his thinking was more in-line with Eastern
> ideas.

What Plato was, was a Hellene and that is not exactly Western even today.
These people were all mixed up and intermarried with the Pelasgians too, and
they were not Western at all. The concept of "western boy" didn't exist at
that time. NO ONE was a Western Boy, not back then, not even aborigines
living in Scotland. "Western boy" is something, a term, shaped by a lot of
socio-cultural-economic events that went into making some people "western
boys." :)

TJ

[Lisa]

<<Oh, don't take things so personally. I like how you write - even ASKED you to
write up something, remember? We'd put it up "by Ryan." No problem. Still

holds! [...] I like you. Don't confuse me with someone else, please. >>

Translation: "Oh, RYAN! You're one of the few sane people still willing to
TOLERATE me out here; let's don't fall out, you and I! Consider this an
apology!"

<<But in a chat, quoting this or that scholar lends it no credence for me and

for a lot of people that think on their own.It just doesn't. People might not

even be familiar with the authority. >>

No shocks here; quoting a reliable authority on any subject whatsoever is not
exactly Phyl's forte. If it's not some crackpot "scientist," she just doesn't
want to know. Why prove one's knowledge to the Great Unwashed with a few
references? Just tell 'em anything: they'll believe it!

<<Can't blame the Soviet leaders then for getting these duped morons to "work
for them" when they pretty much volunteered to do just that. >>

Absolutely! Taking advantage of primitive peoples to further one's own
political ends is pretty blameless. This is okay for Soviet leaders to do, but
such stuff as the colonisation of India and Africa by Europeans in the 19th
century was BAD, very BAD. Now -they- are blameworthy.

All-righty. That's all straightened out.

<<Stalin Khan's handing out of hundreds of millions of toothbrushes with
instructions was a Major Deal, to give you an example. >>

Is this anything to be admitting in public?

<<The Western peoples, seem to me, to be forever little boys romping around
with rose colored glasses on. Yippee Columbus, eg.>>

ROTFL! Never before have I read a more scholarly representation of the Age of
Expansion. LOLOLOL.

<<For me, DIS-iilusion is destroying illusions and is good - it even FEELS
good. >>

Except when those illusions are regarding my "HEROS" Stalin and Lenin, not to
mention my own abilities.

<<Plato was a Western boy, even if his thinking was more in-line with Eastern
ideas.>>

<<What Plato was, was a Hellene and that is not exactly Western even today.
These people were all mixed up and intermarried with the Pelasgians too, and
they were not Western at all. The concept of "western boy" didn't exist at that
time. NO ONE was a Western Boy, not back then, not even aborigines living in
Scotland.>>

No shit, Olde Bat. Stop splitting hairs and absorb what Ryan is saying. He's
saying (let me translate here for you, oh feeble one) that our very
civilisation is based on ancient Greek and Roman thought. Plato's family tree
is not the issue; his ideas are.
It's not that we "CAUCASOIDS" are Greek or Roman, but by adopting Greek and
Roman ideas and studying their philosophers, we have made them our own: we have
"Westernized" them. Plato is an adopted 'son' of the West.

Now quick, start a rant about how all your detractors want to "CENSOR"
Satanists and Wiccans and are furthering "FUNDIE DICTATES." That'll work for
sure!

L.
*********
Nihil me terret.