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sophiaserpentiaI'm going to make an effort to wean myself out of the echo-chamber of political polemic.
This is going to be difficult, because polemics are so gripping and sticky. Plus, like everyone around me I've been trained to follow the well-worn grooves of popular political discourse. So I'll probably backslide from time to time -- it's hard to avoid getting angry sometimes -- but I want to type this up as a reminder to myself.
Another reason this will be difficult is that I am concerned with analyzing human power dynamics. Discourse and analysis is a way of chopping up experience in order to explicate certain patterns, with the effect that other aspects of reality are excluded. So ultimately every argument is a straw man.
Of late, I've been interested in the emotional wavelength of discourse. By this, I mean that certain strains of discourse seem to float atop the waves of unconscious flow of emotion throughout society. Particular keywords and phrases become triggers for specific kinds of feelings. One who is an astute manipulator can learn how to play or even design and install these emotional triggers in hir audience.
This makes polemic discourse dehumanizing in two ways. The first, is that we find ourselves responding to the emotional triggers in a speech or a text before we can respond to the intellectual content. So it becomes increasingly difficult to really hear what the other person is saying because the negative emotions triggered by their keywords echo inside the brain.
The second is due to the fact that our conscious mind has varying degrees of control over what we do and say. It is not uncommon for people to act in accord with the contours of human power dynamics without being aware of why they are doing so, or even give a good reason for doing it. Even people who have made a life out of examining race or gender politics find themselves perpetuating patterns to which they ideologically object. Polemic discourse is largely concerned with placing blame -- and when you blame someone for something they do not believe they have done (even if they have in fact done it but are unaware of doing so) they get indignant and become incapable of hearing what you are saying. So polemics degenerates into a shouting match where no one hears anyone else anymore.
So it may be more useful to examine human power dynamics through the lens of flows or unfoldings which occur through people rather than from people.
This is going to be difficult, because polemics are so gripping and sticky. Plus, like everyone around me I've been trained to follow the well-worn grooves of popular political discourse. So I'll probably backslide from time to time -- it's hard to avoid getting angry sometimes -- but I want to type this up as a reminder to myself.
Another reason this will be difficult is that I am concerned with analyzing human power dynamics. Discourse and analysis is a way of chopping up experience in order to explicate certain patterns, with the effect that other aspects of reality are excluded. So ultimately every argument is a straw man.
Of late, I've been interested in the emotional wavelength of discourse. By this, I mean that certain strains of discourse seem to float atop the waves of unconscious flow of emotion throughout society. Particular keywords and phrases become triggers for specific kinds of feelings. One who is an astute manipulator can learn how to play or even design and install these emotional triggers in hir audience.
This makes polemic discourse dehumanizing in two ways. The first, is that we find ourselves responding to the emotional triggers in a speech or a text before we can respond to the intellectual content. So it becomes increasingly difficult to really hear what the other person is saying because the negative emotions triggered by their keywords echo inside the brain.
The second is due to the fact that our conscious mind has varying degrees of control over what we do and say. It is not uncommon for people to act in accord with the contours of human power dynamics without being aware of why they are doing so, or even give a good reason for doing it. Even people who have made a life out of examining race or gender politics find themselves perpetuating patterns to which they ideologically object. Polemic discourse is largely concerned with placing blame -- and when you blame someone for something they do not believe they have done (even if they have in fact done it but are unaware of doing so) they get indignant and become incapable of hearing what you are saying. So polemics degenerates into a shouting match where no one hears anyone else anymore.
So it may be more useful to examine human power dynamics through the lens of flows or unfoldings which occur through people rather than from people.
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no subject
Date: 2005-05-10 03:28 pm (UTC)"We wrestle not with flesh and blood, but with Powers and Principalities"
The Powers that Be are not necessarily a bunch of people sitting around a table rubbing their hands together and cackling, but forces and ideas and perspectives that have a momentum of their own and work through people.
On the other hand, some of your post seems to me to be dangerously close to anti-rationalism, but maybe that's just my cracked lens.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-10 03:50 pm (UTC)Yes, that perspective has been on my mind a lot. OTOH it makes no sense to go so far with that that one overlooks the fact that specific people takes specific actions.
Ironically, those people -- the mystics -- who draw a lot of attention to the illusion of ego are also those who possess the means for focusing and empowering individual will.
I can understand how you'd be concerned about anti-rationalism in this post. Far be it from me; I have been trained as a mathematician, after all. But learning to use math as a tool has the additional important benefit of making me aware of its limitations. So what I want to do is attempt to overcome our culture's absorption in rational analysis to the exclusion of other dimensions of human concern.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-10 03:53 pm (UTC)This reflects what led to my "beheading feminism and the patriarchy both" rant the other day. If we're going to empower gods that walk ampongst us (which, generally, I think is a good strategy overall) we have to be really choosey about which ones we're going to incarnate.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-10 03:50 pm (UTC)