r/cushvlog

Really amazing to see Fox News blame capitalism for failing to capitalize on the capital with a capital C capitol celebrations (say capital more). Of course the great crime for which capitalism is guilty isn't all the death, but a dearth of treats and red, white and blue bunting.

The paperback just came out and I picked it up. Anybody reading it? Anybody have opinions about it or the individuals responsible?

Alright, so I'm an anarchist, the shitty liberal subject Matt hates. I love his thoughts and take them extremely seriously, and accept his critique of certain aspects of anarchism. I'm especially compelled by his criticism of The Dawn of Everything's conclusion, although I think Graeber et al is trying to do something very different than Matt wants him to. Anarchists don't foist theory on top of political action quite as religiously as marxists and their fellow travelers.

Graeber in particular is always far, far more interested in the political imaginary than in material conditions (see Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology for a great example, it's just not the kind of example Matt wants to read), but I don't see that as ignoring conditions so much as placing an emphasis on where his expertise lies. Matt makes a good point that the long time scale of environmental change militates against cultural or individual resistance, but once again it's hard to see this as relevant to ideology beyond a certain point. All political strategy operates at the human time scale!

But there's a deeper thing that bugs me: the idea that it is compulsion and violence that makes the difference in changing the consciousness of selves to adapt to changing conditions. I accept his point that selves have to adapt, and given that this will sometimes be a downward negotiation of the distribution of resources, this will require something perhaps harsher than an Occupy General Assembly meeting. Fair enough!

But where does he get off saying that anarchists are not conversant in the tools of compulsion and violence? Maybe Graeber isn't (although it's hard to see the realistic operation of some of these novel societies absent all violence just because c'mon) but plenty of anarchists have practiced propaganda of the deed.

There's another element here: has Matt not in fact argued that the Bolshevik violent takeover ended up perhaps not being the best way to advance socialism due to the lack of development in Russia at the time? That in forcing the issue, they put blood on the socialists' hands rather than the capitalists' as was supposed to occur in Marx's application of historical materialism? Couldn't one see this violence as a way to ignore the conditions that prevailed? It's like the violent inverse of the charge he lays at the feet of Graeber et al.

What am I missing here? Is Matt saying what's good for the goose is not good for the gander? Or have I left an equation unbalanced somewhere? Thanks comrades.

There’s a Bill Hicks bit that’s not really a joke, where he explores the satanic fascism of the group New Kids on the Block.  It inverts the structure of the typical joke you hear these days, where the buildup consists of rage-baiting, seemingly bigoted material, the room silent in awe at the arrogance–followed by a punchline that explains it all away while the audience goes “oh god of course.  LOL!  How could I ever think he was racist?  I’M the bigot for even thinking that!”

With the Hicks joke, the buildup is the funny part.  He does his signature satan-blowjob growl thing and everybody finds it hysterical.  He does the Reagan nazi voice; more laughter.  And then the punchline… isn’t funny.  People clap--it’s one of those.  But the thing is, this punchline doesn’t seem like it wants to be funny.  “Fuck that!  I want my rockstars dead!”  The buildup funny; the punchline not so much, especially considering Hicks died shortly after this.

In the modern world, art has replaced human sacrifice and serves the same function.  It is a physical sacrifice for those who produce the materials to create art, all the people and the plants and animals, and for the artist and audience a sacrifice of their time and a catharsis, a willing exploration of trauma, a little death.  In the case of many artists an actual death is required to truly command our full attention and respect--in some ways this death is almost encouraged.  We are taught, instead of sacrificing lifetimes worshipping God, to instead worship media; and everyone involved with this media is also involved in sacrifice.  Because media is unnecessary for survival, it is necessarily a sacrifice on many levels--just as killing a calf or a human as an offering to the gods is a useless waste that nevertheless serves an important function in satisfying the needs of a “society.”  We could all be farming or trying to heal the sick or doing something practical…

But the reality is we were not ready to abandon sacrifice when we collectively began to abandon religion.  The art of Damien Hirst has often been accused of cruel exhibitionism or performative gratuitousness–but in a way Hirst’s whole message is art as sacrifice, communicated in an honest, compelling way that seems a challenge directed at other artists to be more open about the sacrifices required to manufacture their own expression.  In the Middle Ages, monks created most of the artwork in Europe, and they didn’t even sign their name at the bottom of a painting–nor did they receive any compensation for producing artwork.  They sacrificed lifetimes to prayer but also to literature and art, as in their time art and religion were totally intertwined; fast forward to now and the name of the artist is scribbled on the front of the painting and the back of the check (assuming there is one, but these days that’s half the fun).  Still the role of artist as sacrificial lamb has not changed, even though it has been recontextualized as desirable.  People are so diluted within their egos that they don’t see themselves slipping into the shoes of the monk and stepping onto the funeral pyre, from notoriety into oblivion.   

Hirst’s work also challenges his audience to consider the sacrificial nature of our survival: life as sacrifice, life as art, religion, an entire history sacrificed to the art of existence.  For survival is sacrifice, too; survival is a coping mechanism, coping with the murder that must go on to sustain those of us at this level of the food chain; complicit, the cognitive dissonance weighing heavy in the background, always this pneumatic guilt drilling through our souls, warping every decision.  Because the foundation of all our decisions is a value judgment: we are worth more than the organisms we harvest to consume.  Every time we eat something, we choose ourselves again; eventually the choice becomes automatic. Why bother rationalizing it? We do this because we’re better.  Because we’re more intelligent.  Because that’s just the way it is; because whatever.  The reason doesn’t matter, all that matters is survival at any cost.  It’s what we are wired for, after all.  We value us over them.

But deep down we know that, if life is inherently valuable, then we’re the problem.  The solution is suicide, not more Taco Bell, because your sacrifice would save millions of lives otherwise murdered to sustain you.  Yet humanity decided against this, embracing an insidious hypocrisy which has been pressurized through history and extrapolated by globalism.  Collectively, we decided that, since survival is sacrifice, we’d team up and sacrifice everything below us.  And there is no inherent value in life, we just decided to make a value judgment that we deserve living more than practically everything else.  A decision had to be made, one way or another, and most of us arrived at it.  Some went the other way, but often not as a sacrifice but as an escape.  Certainly in the past sacrificial victims were also designated and had no choice in the matter, so it’s no wonder this mentality has persisted.

But when it comes to modern art we do have a choice; it isn’t required for survival, and yet we continue to choose sacrifice.  We love it: we love true crime, and awful news stories about war and terror, violent video games, fantasies of domination and subordination, rockstars living on the edge of dying–we love engaging with tragedy and trauma even if we can’t admit that to ourselves, even if most artists can’t admit it in the work they sacrifice their lives to make.  Perhaps because we’re taught to love this denial–a love of repression, of contradiction.  And so engaging with this repressed trauma vicariously, through art, feels fulfilling because we can at least touch on the subject we’re told to deny.  Only it is’t that fulfilling; we just want more and more. We need more art, as if it were food--just as gods and kings and entire civilizations once required more and more blood sacrifice.  We can’t consume it all fast enough, even if we don’t know what or truly why we are consuming, as long as we are alive–because that’s what counts, right?  Try not to think about it too hard.

this occurred to me randomly as a good name for one of matts streams. anyone else have some up their sleeves? id love to hear em