Solving a Puzzle-- Understanding Some People's Reactions

[George H. Smith]

Subject: Nice Try, George

> why the same four or five people are usually hostile to your posts...the reasons have been explained many times before [GHS]

Yes, and the "reasons" given are not the real reasons. They are i) rationalizations, ii) psychologizing, iii) personal insults and other ad hominems, iv) evasions, etc.

And I've explained -that- many times before. E.g., saying you're a schoomarm who needs attention just because you are not willing to hear a criticism -or- that I have a "hole in my soul" is not a well-meaning, benevolent 'reason' from a thoughtful unbiased source that I'm just "unwilling to hear."

What you guys are doing is that you are furiously trying to paint the messenger as at fault because you deeply resent the message. You've been trying to do that for several years.

The problem is that you are a "messenger" who carries his own self-serving messages. Of course you are not going to listen to anyone else about this matter. That's a given. A is A, and Phil is Phil.

Ghs

[Brant Gaede]

What you guys are doing is that you are furiously trying to paint the messenger as at fault because you deeply resent the message. You've been trying to do that for several years.

Yes, I seriously resent the message. I think it's crap. I seriously resent you pushing it off on OL. However, I recognize you're so purblind about what is going on that there is no penetrating your Dominate Discourse as far as you personally are concerned.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

Flouncing was frowned upon by Ayn Rand. It’s in Galt’s speech. I don’t care if it a shemale flounce or a female flounce. The topic of this thread is “Solving a Puzzle-- Understanding Some People's Reactions,” and Seymour is now understood to be a flouncer. Therefore, the topic is open to other flamboyant mediocrities who want to be the center of attention for a while. I would disconnect from the thread but something interesting might be said by Phil or George, or whoever “Hon” is, or those others who are intrigued by a two year old wearing a big flowered hat, or my favorite, the hat with owl ears and eyes.

Peter

What page number? I'm interested.

"BROTHER, YOU ASKED FOR IT!"

Strange you forgot Francisco's flounce.

--Brant

[George H. Smith]

While reading some articles about Foucault's fascination with the Iranian Revolution of 1979, I ran across a review of his book (a collection of articles) on the subject. I am posting this excerpt because the reviewer (Babak Rahimi, Literature Department, University of California, San Diego) typifies the kind of pretentious language that both Foucault and his followers use. Is there any wheat among the chaff here? Yes, in the sense that it is possible to extract a somewhat coherent meaning from all the verbiage, but this process quickly gets very tiresome. The strange thing about this summary is that it is actually more clear that Foucault usually was.

Whether studying his views on the history of madness or the practices of modern medicine, Foucault's main concern lay in the normative relations of experiences, the technologies of domination and the truth-seeking discourse of modernity, with its hegemonic (and self-applauding) claim to validity and its triumphalist vision of history that characterizes it as a break with tradition. Though his late texts from the 1980s offer a revised conception of modernity as an ethical-philosophical movement (Enlightenment), for Foucault, modernity (at least in its Western European form) identifies a regime of power relations that is constituted in the proliferation of discourses and various disciplinary practices through social institutions.

Transgression in terms of an act of disrupting certainties of conventional norms plays a central role in redefining the boundaries of modernity. "Problematization," as Foucault once told his research assistant François Ewald, is central to his thoughts as "the ensemble of discursive and nondiscursive practices that makes something enter into the play of the true and the false and constitutes it an object of thought (whether in the form of moral reflection, scientific knowledge, political analysis or the like)."[2] It is with the transgressive act of "problematization" that Foucault is able to engage in a conceptual game to challenge the history and ideas of modernity by questioning, disclosing, dislocating and interrupting discursive and nondiscursive practices so as to show the multiple and contingent trajectories that render unintelligible a monolithic model of sociopolitical processes.

Respective to this spirit of thinking, the Iranian Revolution (1978-79) provided Foucault a new opportunity to broaden his problematization of modernity. The mass-based revolution, with millions of participants (both men and women) and which in the course of fifteen months brought down the autocratic regime of Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi (1941-1979), presented Foucault with the possibility of breaking down the binary logic of modernity that pits "tradition" against "modernity" and "religion" against "progress." During his two visits to Iran, one in September 1978 and another in November 1978, Foucault was able to advance his problematization of modernity by describing the Iranian revolution as a new form of "political will" to which no other revolutionary movement can be compared (p. 221)....

Perhaps it was this kind of muddled thinking that enabled Foucault to praise the Iranian Revolution to the extent he did. For the entire review, see:

http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=12437

Ghs

[9thdoctor]

I read your "review" of Moneyball, and I have seen the movie. What you call its "dominating discourse" and "Foucauldian Grid of power/knowledge in linguistic action," other people would call its theme, plot, and dialogue.

Shoot, I haven’t seen Moneyball. But I have seen Rollerball, and find it fits well into the Spenglerian civilization model grid, specifically, where Democracy transitions to Caesarism.

I love pearls of wisdom by mass murderers. Do you have anything by Hitler or Stalin that might fit the occasion?

It is always more difficult to fight against faith than against knowledge.

Adolf Hitler

[caroljane]

I read your "review" of Moneyball, and I have seen the movie. What you call its "dominating discourse" and "Foucauldian Grid of power/knowledge in linguistic action," other people would call its theme, plot, and dialogue.

Shoot, I haven’t seen Moneyball. But I have seen Rollerball, and find it fits well into the Spenglerian civilization model grid, specifically, where Democracy transitions to Caesarism.

I love pearls of wisdom by mass murderers. Do you have anything by Hitler or Stalin that might fit the occasion?

It is always more difficult to fight against faith than against knowledge.

Adolf Hitler

Ow, my daughter-in-law just had a Caesarism, it hurts like hell afterwards!

Meanwhile, elsewhere, the soiree continues.

M. Forgeron addresses Mme L'Abbee in his rough suburban dialect. Naturally she refuses to respond in kind, although she knows it well. Frau Angela then approaches with a question about biography, and Mme kindly but firmly responds that the gnadige frau does not understand biography or its standards; and the company gives ear to this exchange, as she is privy to the latest arbiter of literary biography, a M. Quelqu'un who has written a book about diaries. She then sweeps into the supper-room on the arm of M. Manteau.

[George H. Smith]

I read your "review" of Moneyball, and I have seen the movie. What you call its "dominating discourse" and "Foucauldian Grid of power/knowledge in linguistic action," other people would call its theme, plot, and dialogue.

Shoot, I haven’t seen Moneyball. But I have seen Rollerball, and find it fits well into the Spenglerian civilization model grid, specifically, where Democracy transitions to Caesarism.

I liked Moneyball a great deal; in fact, I watched it twice, even though I'm not much of a baseball fan. But I don't recall the "Foucauldian Grid of power/knowledge in linguistic action." I thought it was a just good sports movie that happens to be true. Maybe the Foucauldian stuff happened during the locker-room pep talk. Not being versed in Foucauldian analysis, I may have missed the the complex subtleties that are previewed here:

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

A Dormouse responds to Phil's complaints:

(Sorry, but this video did not merit a separate thread, so I had to figure out some way to work it into a thread.)

Ghs

[caroljane]

I read your "review" of Moneyball, and I have seen the movie. What you call its "dominating discourse" and "Foucauldian Grid of power/knowledge in linguistic action," other people would call its theme, plot, and dialogue.

Shoot, I haven’t seen Moneyball. But I have seen Rollerball, and find it fits well into the Spenglerian civilization model grid, specifically, where Democracy transitions to Caesarism.

I liked Moneyball a great deal; in fact, I watched it twice, even though I'm not much of a baseball fan. But I don't recall the "Foucauldian Grid of power/knowledge in linguistic action." I thought it was a just good sports movie that happens to be true. Maybe the Foucauldian stuff happened during the locker-room pep talk. Not being versed in Foucauldian analysis, I may have missed the the complex subtleties that are previewed here:

Ghs

Maybe "Making Love" better yelled "Cut!" through the DD when gay hockey player Michael Ontkean doffed his gear to skate postmodernly around the rink.

[Ellen Stuttle]

(Who am I forgetting? Ah yes! "La Precisonist" Stuttle. She wants footnotes and page references and quote functions as a reward for her insults. To top which she doesn't necessarily provide them herself.)

Just the quote function, which automatically provides a link. Or alternately a manual link.

Judging from your extreme distortion, which you then did again in another post today:

who is too lazy to provide encyclopedic backup

I think that you know what's asked for, and that you know you're irresponsible in not linking to material you quote.

A comical consequence of your refusal to link came up in another of your posts today:

As a side aspect, not the main reason, other people years later even may read it and take the trouble to trace the whole thing and see "Geez, those guys really treated Coates unfairly. He answered their points but all they did is more ridicule. [....]"

Since your failure to link means that anyone trying to trace would more likely give up faced with the unnecessary effort and time expenditure of searching for the posts you've quoted, the net result would be your undercutting your own case to spite your critics.

Ellen

[Philip Coates]

> How would you like it if you quoted "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step" in aid of the point that you have to start somewhere with a simple step, and someone asked you if you had any other quotes from mass murderers? [Me]

> You are obviously unaware of Foucault's "Maoist period." Do you think it is just an accident that Janet quoted Mao? More than a few fans of Foucault are also fans of Mao. [George]

That's not really relevant to my point George. I don't know whether its an accident and neither do you.

[9thdoctor]

A Dormouse responds to Phil's complaints:

I suggest an animal that communicates closer to Phil's intellectual level:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_QoDpd6sDQ

BTW, well, needless to say the Rollerball Spengler connection was a joke, the trouble with it being that it actually makes sense, if you know the movie and Decline of the West. I really just wanted to get the Hitler quote in, and figured a Spengler connection was the way to go.

[George H. Smith]

> How would you like it if you quoted "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step" in aid of the point that you have to start somewhere with a simple step, and someone asked you if you had any other quotes from mass murderers? [Me] > You are obviously unaware of Foucault's "Maoist period." Do you think it is just an accident that Janet quoted Mao? More than a few fans of Foucault are also fans of Mao. [George] That's not really relevant to my point George. I don't know whether its an accident and neither do you.

Wanna bet? I have been dealing with this mindset for years. When a fan of Foucault quotes Mao, the odds of a coincidence are roughly the same as when a Presbyterian quotes Augustine.

Ghs

[seymourblogger]

Your signature line appears with every post. If you don't come here but do your work thru email you may not see it.

--Brant

if you delete it all that info will disappear--which I don't want--from all your previous posts--you need an OL place to park it

How do I park it? I still don't get it but will try to figure it out.

I'd start a thread consisting only of your signature line with all that info for a point of base reference. Maybe an additional comment or two.

--Brant

Thank you. I think.

[Philip Coates]

> I liked Moneyball a great deal; in fact, I watched it twice, even though I'm not much of a baseball fan. But I don't recall the "Foucauldian Grid of power/knowledge in linguistic action." I thought it was a just good sports movie that happens to be true. [GHS]

Seymour, George can be a bit of a jerk sometimes and the quality of his intellectual offerings vary wildly, but he often makes good points and here his advice would probably be --> get rid of the jargon and explain things in simple English; we don't know the people you are quoting (like Foucault).

At least that would be my advice, no offense. Keep it short, simple, and unambiguous. [Apologies to his majesty, podium boy king george if I'm putting ideas in his mouth.]

[Philip Coates]

Notice how ND only jumps in to post another brief insult.

He doesn't have the intellectual wherewithal to offer more on this thread or most others. And he never graduated from the cartoon channel.

[Brant Gaede]

Thank you. I think.

Good news! You, you, you--YOU ARE!

--Brant

[caroljane]

> How would you like it if you quoted "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step" in aid of the point that you have to start somewhere with a simple step, and someone asked you if you had any other quotes from mass murderers? [Me] > You are obviously unaware of Foucault's "Maoist period." Do you think it is just an accident that Janet quoted Mao? More than a few fans of Foucault are also fans of Mao. [George] That's not really relevant to my point George. I don't know whether its an accident and neither do you.

Wanna bet? I have been dealing with this mindset for years. When a fan of Foucault quotes Mao, the odds of a coincidence are roughly the same as when a Presbyterian quotes Augustine.

Ghs

> How would you like it if you quoted "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step" in aid of the point that you have to start somewhere with a simple step, and someone asked you if you had any other quotes from mass murderers? [Me] > You are obviously unaware of Foucault's "Maoist period." Do you think it is just an accident that Janet quoted Mao? More than a few fans of Foucault are also fans of Mao. [George] That's not really relevant to my point George. I don't know whether its an accident and neither do you.

Wanna bet? I have been dealing with this mindset for years. When a fan of Foucault quotes Mao, the odds of a coincidence are roughly the same as when a Presbyterian quotes Augustine.

Ghs

"To Carthage I came, and all around me simmered the cauldrons of unholy loves"

"O God, make, me good, but not today"

Carol

]ok, Anglican, but heredeterially Presbyterian

[caroljane]

> I liked Moneyball a great deal; in fact, I watched it twice, even though I'm not much of a baseball fan. But I don't recall the "Foucauldian Grid of power/knowledge in linguistic action." I thought it was a just good sports movie that happens to be true. [GHS]

Seymour, George can be a bit of a jerk sometimes and the quality of his intellectual offerings vary wildly, but he often makes good points and here his advice would probably be --> get rid of the jargon and explain things in simple English; we don't know the people you are quoting (like Foucault).

At least that would be my advice, no offense. Keep it short, simple, and unambiguous. [Apologies to his majesty, podium boy king george if I'm putting ideas in his mouth.]

Phil, you are entirely right here, but she cannot get rid of the jargon because the jargon is the point of her points. It is all semiotics. In simple English it would just be the usual ideas we deal with well or badly all the time.

[seymourblogger]

Mao and Foucault.

Hitler and Nietzsche.

See where this kind of thinking goes.

[seymourblogger]

> I liked Moneyball a great deal; in fact, I watched it twice, even though I'm not much of a baseball fan. But I don't recall the "Foucauldian Grid of power/knowledge in linguistic action." I thought it was a just good sports movie that happens to be true. [GHS]

Seymour, George can be a bit of a jerk sometimes and the quality of his intellectual offerings vary wildly, but he often makes good points and here his advice would probably be --> get rid of the jargon and explain things in simple English; we don't know the people you are quoting (like Foucault).

At least that would be my advice, no offense. Keep it short, simple, and unambiguous. [Apologies to his majesty, podium boy king george if I'm putting ideas in his mouth.]

Phil, you are entirely right here, but she cannot get rid of the jargon because the jargon is the point of her points. It is all semiotics. In simple English it would just be the usual ideas we deal with well or badly all the time.

Here's my link to my Moneyball. How could I be any clearer? Please. I am serious about asking this about this. http://moviesandfilm.blogspot.com/2012/01/review-moneyball-foucault-and.html

[seymourblogger]

> I liked Moneyball a great deal; in fact, I watched it twice, even though I'm not much of a baseball fan. But I don't recall the "Foucauldian Grid of power/knowledge in linguistic action." I thought it was a just good sports movie that happens to be true. [GHS]

Seymour, George can be a bit of a jerk sometimes and the quality of his intellectual offerings vary wildly, but he often makes good points and here his advice would probably be --> get rid of the jargon and explain things in simple English; we don't know the people you are quoting (like Foucault).

At least that would be my advice, no offense. Keep it short, simple, and unambiguous. [Apologies to his majesty, podium boy king george if I'm putting ideas in his mouth.]

Phil, you are entirely right here, but she cannot get rid of the jargon because the jargon is the point of her points. It is all semiotics. In simple English it would just be the usual ideas we deal with well or badly all the time.

Here's my link to my Moneyball. How could I be any clearer? Please. I am serious about asking this about this. http://moviesandfilm...ucault-and.html

And no you had to know about Foucault's grid to observe it in the movie.

An object does not exist until and unless it is observed. - Wiliam Burroughs

[George H. Smith]

> I liked Moneyball a great deal; in fact, I watched it twice, even though I'm not much of a baseball fan. But I don't recall the "Foucauldian Grid of power/knowledge in linguistic action." I thought it was a just good sports movie that happens to be true. [GHS] Seymour, George can be a bit of a jerk sometimes and the quality of his intellectual offerings vary wildly, but he often makes good points and here his advice would probably be --> get rid of the jargon and explain things in simple English; we don't know the people you are quoting (like Foucault). At least that would be my advice, no offense. Keep it short, simple, and unambiguous. [Apologies to his majesty, podium boy king george if I'm putting ideas in his mouth.]

I would love to see Foucault translated into "simple English." But the moment that is done -- assuming it can be done, which I doubt -- Foucault will lose his aura of profundity and appear as the mediocre thinker he was.

I've seen this sort of thing before, both on Atlantis II and on OL. Someone with a smattering of philosophical knowledge will come onto an O'ist forum and throw some names around, figuring that O'ist types are philosophically illiterate and will therefore be easily impressed and bamboozled. After my initial dismissal of Foucault, recall how Janet mistakenly assumed that I had never read anything by him and then told me that only an "expert" could legitimately criticize him. And then, when I suggested that Janet start a thread on Foucault and said that I would be willing to review some of his books in order to participate, notice how she called this a "trap" and came up with some other nonsense to rationalize her refusal.

I can spot an intellectual phony a mile away. If I am wrong about Janet, then she can easily set the record straight by beginning a thread on Foucault and outlining some of his ideas -- and we can go from there.

Ghs

[seymourblogger]

Something seymourblogger just posted about NBI days made me realize something. I've wondered why when I post something critical, even if it's midly so and polite (like I think we shouldn't be so politics heavy and why a whole thread on a political event overseas), I get a very hostile response. Four or five people jump in and participate. And it's normally the same four of five. And if I persist it very often involves character and honesty and 'hypocrisy' attacks. I've always been the same kind of person - high school, college, companies I worked for, normal people I've hung out with. Willing to observe a criticism or offer advice. Not shy or a wallflower in that respect. Yet I've -never- gotten so unremittingly hostile (let alone often quite personal and vicious) a response as I have on several Objectivist boards.

Why so strong a reaction out of all proportion to the cause?

I suspect that the very people who attack me the most vehemently were often silent and acquiescent back in their NBI or Peikoff days (depending how old they are.) Now, it's as if you went through years of Catholic school and bowed your head and didn't talk back to the authority figures and now someone pops up on a discussion board and defends any kind of order, strict rules, grammar, etc.

Don't give me no stinkin' badges. From some deep level of your subconscious the displaced feelings of frustration, guilt, resentment well up. You get a chance finally to project onto that person all the authoritarianism, all the strict rules that you resented.

And perhaps in some cases, you may have felt squelched, felt that you should have politely questioned Rand, Peikoff, the 'in crowd', Objectivism earlier on.

[italics are mine, not yours]

Can you help me with a simple question? How can you (or anyone else) know what is going on in someone else's head as in understanding intention or motivation. In my entire life I have never been able to know anything about anyone else other than what I inferred from their externalities: speech, writings, public actions, body language, facial expression etc. Short of a real time PET scan how can anyone know what is going on in someone else's head?

I have been "mind blind" my entire life. I did not even begin to grasp body language until my mid 20s and for me body language is like a foreign language. I only know about it by purely empirical and external means. I cannot relate it to anything going on inside med. To put a point on it, I have not got the foggiest notion of what someone else is feeling other than by inference and guesswork. I have not the foggiest notion of what motivates others. So I simply take them at their word when they express a motive publicly. And even then I don't know - since they could be mistaken or lying.

Ba'al Chatzaf

You have seduced me into answering you. I am not sure. One could say a touch of autism, but that is clinical and I don't like it. Tell me more. Your ID indicates you are not American. Maybe that has something to do with what you wrote?

Your wonderings sound very much like Wittgenstein. Have you read him? Well you should. You will understand him easily. Not like the rest of us.

[seymourblogger]

> I liked Moneyball a great deal; in fact, I watched it twice, even though I'm not much of a baseball fan. But I don't recall the "Foucauldian Grid of power/knowledge in linguistic action." I thought it was a just good sports movie that happens to be true. [GHS] Seymour, George can be a bit of a jerk sometimes and the quality of his intellectual offerings vary wildly, but he often makes good points and here his advice would probably be --> get rid of the jargon and explain things in simple English; we don't know the people you are quoting (like Foucault). At least that would be my advice, no offense. Keep it short, simple, and unambiguous. [Apologies to his majesty, podium boy king george if I'm putting ideas in his mouth.]

I would love to see Foucault translated into "simple English." But the moment that is done -- assuming it can be done, which I doubt -- Foucault will lose his aura of profundity and appear as the mediocre thinker he was.

I've seen this sort of thing before, both on Atlantis II and on OL. Someone with a smattering of philosophical knowledge will come onto an O'ist forum and throw some names around, figuring that O'ist types are philosophically iilliterate and will therefore be easily impressed and bamboozled. After my initial dismissal of Foucault, recall how Janet mistakenly assumed that I had never read anything by him and then told me that only an "expert" could legitimately criticize him. And then, when I suggested that Janet start a thread on Foucault and said that I would be willing to review some of his books in order to participate, notice how she called this a "trap" and came up with some other nonsense to rationalize her refusal.

I can spot an intellectual phony a mile away. If I am wrong about Janet, then she can easily set the record straight by beginning a thread on Foucault and outlining some of his ideas -- and we can go from there.

Ghs

You are one of those people who wants everything reduced to a ready-made word or sentence. Go wiki Judith Butler as she has a great answer for you.