Tacherus
3d ago
Can you point me to some instances of people self describing in that way from the 70s and 80s? That is the most compelling argument I think—that they described themselves this way until it became a liability.
I didn’t mean it as an argument, my point was I haven’t had to chance to ask someone what they mean so I’m eager to seize the opportunity.
If those are decent nutshell descriptions then let’s take “oppressor/oppressed analysis” for instance. What’s the justification for calling that Marxist specifically? Is the claim that he invented or pioneered it in the form of his class war analysis? It just seems incredibly vague making the tie to Marx specifically tenuous to me.
Tacherus
4d ago
DEI is just Applied Cultural Marxism. And I'm allowed to say this because I learned about it in university in those terms before its activists started to pretend that correctly identifying their ideology is a conspiracy theory.
I’ve heard this term bandied about for years but never directly encountered someone who uses it. Can you explain what on earth it means?
Some potential meanings I’ve considered and discarded:
- dividing the world into oppressor and oppressed
- some sort of natural outgrowth of Marx from the Frankfurt school
- Marxist analysis somehow applied to culture?
- centered on critique of capitalism
- use race or sex instead of class
Most of the “applied cultural marxists” and postmodernists seem to outright reject Marx and any similarities in their thinking (e.g., oppressor and oppressed) seem to pre-date Marx.
So I’m left not understanding what people mean by it precisely. It seems to me at this point the phrase is meant to just tar by association, but I’d really like to hear if there’s something more meaningful to it.
Tacherus
18d ago
My impulse is that the urge to flee is tied into the idea that “their side winning” is equivalent to the system functioning properly. A loss of popular support of this scale can only be interpreted in terms of the whole thing falling apart.
That being said I’m sympathetic to being freaked out. I don’t go looking for it yet pretty consistently find myself sucked down “leave before it’s too late” rabbit holes that are pretty effective at freaking me out when I’m doomscrolling at night.
Tacherus
1mo ago
I’m inclined to give him a little more slack than that. Just the other day I had the experience of reminiscing about a friend I had 10+ years ago who I knew for a fact was an incurable bullshitter. He lied about the most inane things and I knew this at the time.
He ran a store when I met him and it closed after a year or so and it only occurred to me now, more than a decade later, that he probably lied to me about why he had to close.
I think there are two pieces here that I’ve experienced firsthand: one is it’s very difficult to retro-actively scrub for lies. I also experienced this after leaving Mormonism in college. For years after I was uncovering random new things I’d been taught that were easily seen to not be true.
The second is it’s difficult to spot a lie if it is about something it would never occur to you to lie about. It’s like if someone always lies to you about what he had for lunch that day. Then over time lies get built on that. It can be very hard when a major lie is uncovered to realize it goes back to what was for lunch.
Tacherus
3mo ago
I’ve noticed this before too. I’d go further and say it’s not just the dinner party metaphor but a fixation on formal power.
This mainly manifests in my experience when discussing power dynamics between men and women. The idea that a pretty intern could have “power” over her boss simply does not compute. It’s a form of mistaking the map for the territory I think.
I agree with your definition as the ability to get things done, but that doesn’t yield as readily to systematic analyses and also I suspect doesn’t quite align with the story they want to tell.
I think there’s a category of error of reading too much into how things look on paper. Like another example I use is to ask whether or not an infant has power over her parents. To me the answer is obviously yes, but if you’re caught up in systemic analyses and legalism and dealing with formal “power structures” you will struggle to explain why or might even deny it outright.
Tacherus
3mo ago
It's probably not the best way to do it, but it's fun and it's been a learning experience.
Story of my life. Sounds fun!
Tacherus
6mo ago
Right, exactly. I watched a talk from Elizabeth Warren when she was a professor about this years ago. She encouraged people to splurge on things like restaurants and vacations rather than cars and houses because if things go south you can easily just not go out to eat versus having to unwind an expensive car or house payment.
Similar logic applies here I think.
Also it seems like in most cases the lifetime spend for renting dwarfs the cost of ownership.
Tacherus
6mo ago
It’s related but not quite the same. If my savings are in the market for instance and I’m let go because of a recession, suddenly my obligatory expenses could mean I have to sell at the worst possible time.
I’m not saying renting is never a good idea but racking up fixed expenses poses risks.
Tacherus
6mo ago
I mean a network of people who know you and your work. Preferably from having worked with you. I checked in with school acquaintances for instance, many of whom were doing the kind of work I wanted to do.
The more you can be a “known quantity” the better I think during job searches. Someone who knows you and can say good things about you can be a major leg up.
As for how, I know there are often local tech meetups where you can meet people. My personal approach has been to make sure when someone works with me they like my work and they like working with me. It’s opened a lot of doors.
Tacherus
6mo ago
For me it all comes back to what kind of cash flow you need. Depreciation notwithstanding, if I lose my job I’d much rather have a car that’s losing value on paper than have a monthly payment I need to make.
Tacherus
6mo ago
Imho it’s a numbers game until you build out a network. My first job was the result of months of cold applying to things. Every job since has been joining someone I’ve already worked with which is so much easier.
Does your school have alumni job placement help? That can help bootstrap a network, along with talking to former classmates.
Are you getting interviews but not offers? Or just not hearing back after applying?
Tacherus
6mo ago
You can pretty easily query the price history of stock symbols to get sample time series data.
What type of plots do you want to test?
Tacherus
6mo ago
I listened to an interview with I think a psychologist a few years back who argued what we diagnose as PTSD in soldiers is often really the loss of the close relationships and the intense bonds that develop. The feeling of having someone’s life in your hands and willingly putting yours in theirs.
Returning to the world involves a grieving process, he argued.
Tacherus
6mo ago
Interestingly I’ve heard the same thing from the other direction, that honest portrayals, the best portrayals, are inherently anti-war.
Tacherus
7mo ago
When in doubt, listen to the view of the Japanese person, who will be getting all the subtleties. That said, I am of the belief that one person can't give the one right answer any more than any random American can tell you how to interpret a given social situation at the shopping mall in Columbus, Indiana.
Agreed.
Tacherus
7mo ago
Oh, sure. Sorry wasn't trying to be opaque.
The Ministry of Love is of course the organization that tortures and re-educates wayward citizens. It seemed to me the first time I read it like a deliberately absurd exaggeration to name something the literal opposite of what it is, but "reasoning from names" seems like a common strategy.
See, e.g., "antifa just means anti fascism -- why would you oppose that?" or "why would you oppose 'inclusion' initiatives, you worthless bigot?" or "a disinformation governance board makes you nervous? what, you want incorrect information to spread unchecked?"
It's a common trope that to name something is to wield power over it, for instance Adam names creatures in Genesis, demons keep their true names secret in much of fantasy, and there are plenty of folklore beliefs about the power of a true name.
The inverse also seems true to me. If you can't properly name a thing then you can't control it. Giving something reprehensible a benign-sounding name seems to really short-circuit something in our brains. It becomes difficult to even reason about it properly I think.
Orwell had a deep understanding of how language can manipulate people and I shouldn't have doubted him.
Tacherus
7mo ago
This is the death spiral though isn’t it? Responding to norm violation by violating more norms just leaves us with weaker norms overall. It’s one-step-ahead thinking.
Tacherus
7mo ago
I thought “Ministry of Love” was over the top long ago as well. I too owe him an apology.
Tacherus
7mo ago
For what it’s worth, I have heard of Ft Bragg before and this thread is the first I’ve ever heard of a Ft Liberty, let alone that it’s a renaming of a prior base.
I can’t speak to the writer’s intentions but it’s worth considering that using an older, more widely known term could be just about avoiding confusion.
This is extremely helpful and exactly what I’ve been looking for—thanks!
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