Keep it Real Spooky

Beyond Folk Marxism: Mind, Metaphysics, and Spooky Materialism | Salva☭e

China Miéville’s prose is a specific kind of joy: dense, academic, fascinating, and incredibly enriching. But if you're not in the mood for it and -- like me -- need to be willing to do some look-ups while reading, I can see it being off-putting. No shame ... I found myself looking up tout court, au fond, au fait as I was reading -- not to mention the actual philosophical terms. (Could he have just used the word "simply" instead of tout court? Maybe. Probably? But some measure of richness and nuance would've been lost.)

So, if you aren't eager to read Miéville's prose to begin with, why read his essay and the responses to it at all? What are the stakes here? I'm not convinced they're as high as all involved seem to think, but I was intrigued enough to do the reading anyways.

The concluding paragraphs read:

[O]ne thing is undeniable. Once you’ve argued your way out of an ontologically materialist universe, of the many varieties of metaphysical idealism on offer, theism is probably not the most unlikely.

Of course, it also raises its own manifold problems, not least that of theodicy – evil. But of all Richard’s ‘alarming things’ perhaps the most so is that theism also, in fact, solves an awful lot of problems ...

are you going to figure if that's where all this is going, why bother? Because theism is a dead-end and no amount of poking at materialist, dualist, and idealist answers to questions about what consciousness even is are going lead us to appeal to the divine. Asserted undeniability of theism's greater than least unlikeliness notwithstanding.

My hot take: Miéville isn't trying to sneak spirituality or a "ghost in the machine" back into left-wing thought -- but I do think he's being a bit of a provocateur and deliberately inviting speculation that this feint towards theism is a precursor to a reactionary turn. What I haven't got a bead on is how that move advances his diagnosing of a profound theoretical failure that directly leads to deep political frustrations. 

I was looking for Miéville while dismantling the watery weak emergence metaphor as sufficient basis for understanding consciousness to theorize some kind Weird Emergence strong enough give Marxists an actionable understanding of consciousness. Not a project I'm capable of taking on. Just a blogger here who took some 100s and 200s level philosophy classes decades ago. Fluss and Frim have an informed, thoughtful response that advances the discussion in ways I'm not equipped to, so I recommend taking in both sides of the exchange of ideas as well as Breht and Alyson's discussion on Rev Left / Red Menace. (Finding the youtube link for this post and letting it start playing, I realize what I called "my hot take," may actually have been implanted by Alyson in her prefatory remarks when I first listened and decided to check out the essay. Ah well, everything's a remix anyways.) 

They Ruin Societies ...

A mad world: capitalism and the rise of mental illness | Red Pepper:

Image via Red Pepper

Another key aspect of capitalism and its impact on mental illness we could talk about of course is inequality. Capitalism is as much an inequality-generating system as it is a mental illness producing system. As a Royal College of Psychiatrists report noted: ‘Inequality is a major determinant of mental illness: the greater the level of inequality, the worse the health outcomes. Children from the poorest households have a three-fold greater risk of mental ill health than children from the richest households. Mental illness is consistently associated with deprivation, low income, unemployment, poor education, poorer physical health and increased health-risk behaviour.’

Some commentators have even suggested that capitalism itself, as a way of being or way of thinking about the world, might be seen as a rather ‘psychopathic’ or pathological system. There are certainly some striking correspondences between modern financial and corporate systems and individuals diagnosed with clinical psychopathy, as a number of analysts have noticed.

Robert Hare for instance, one of the world’s leading authorities into psychopathy and the originator of the widely accepted ‘Hare Checklist’ used to test for psychopathy, remarked to Jon Ronson: ‘I shouldn’t have done my research just in prisons. I should have spent some time inside the Stock Exchange as well.’ ‘But surely stock-market psychopaths can’t be as bad as serial-killer psychopaths?’ the interviewer asks. ‘”Serial killers ruin families,” shrugged Bob. “Corporate and political … psychopaths ruin economies. They ruin societies.”‘

New ☆ Tweet from @MarkAmesExiled

Any country that still has billionaires has potential energy that could be released by revolution https://t.co/Oow0yTESyj

— Mark Ames (@MarkAmesExiled) November 8, 2015

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The Iron Man Analysis I Didn't Even Know I Needed To Read

My new post at Eruditorum Press: Solid Dick, or Why 'Iron Man' is Objectively One of the Most Evil Films Ever Made http://t.co/vFGTRT7ql4

— Shabogan Graffiti (@_Jack_Graham_) September 16, 2015

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The Launch of Eruditorum Press

Eruditorum Press: A Manifesto | Eruditorum Press: 

One of the most absolutely satisfying things about my blogging career over the past few years has been the fellow travelers I’ve met and befriended. I’ve become a part of an intellectual circle of critics, not through any active attempt to create a critical empire, but just because I’ve had the honor of meeting cool and brilliant people doing cool and brilliant work. Which, now that I think of the implications under late capitalism, is appalling. I should absolutely have a critical empire, dammit, and so now I’m making one.

Many of us on the left are fuming about MSNBC's gradual conversion into Fox News Lite, kneeling to shine the shoes of fascist buffoon Donald Trump, so this comes as great news. It's not answer to that problem, but it is the answer to a host of others. If ever a website could brandish a "This url kills fascists" sticker, what we've got now with Phil, Jane, and Jack under one roof, ought to be it.

Add them to your sidebars, RSS feeds, whatever you do to keep up with your favorite websites.

The Smartphone Society

The Smartphone Society | Jacobin:

Today, in a period characterized by financialization and globalization, where “information” is king, the idea of any commodity defining an era might seem quaint. But commodities are no less important today, and people’s relationships to them remain central to understanding society. If the automobile was fundamental to grasping the last century, the smartphone is the defining commodity of our era.

I carry a Samsung Galaxy S4 (yes, still) these days. Have to admit I don't think often about the supply chain. Knowing there is one, and assuming it's every bit as much a horrorshow as Apple's, loads every tweet I favorite about white male privilege (either demonstrating, or reacting to its omnipresence, there's almost no other kind?) with all kinds of meaning I/we generally choose not to see.

~squeezed by the Invisible Hand, the author moves on to the next article~

Blogpost of the Week: "Koba the Ape" | Shabogan Graffiti

Blogpost of the Week is a new feature here, an attempt to highlight the best post I've read on a proper blog in a given week. (Give or take.) What you won't find honored with the shiny new graphic* are: essays in the New Yorker, or posts on a site like Vox or Medium. This is for the internet's red-headed stepchild only: posts written by a blogger on a that humble relic, the oft-eulogized but not-dead-yet labor of love, the independent blog. (Whenever possible, it will be one on such a tight budget that it's still got the '.blogspot.com' in the URL.) 

Based on my reading habits, it was almost inevitable the first selection would come from a blog that that posts about Doctor Who frequently, and sure enough Jack Graham's Shabogan Graffiti gets the first nod, but not for a DW post. The highlighted post is actually a review of a movie I haven't seen, and which there's no better than 50/50 chance I ever will, but it's so well-composed, insightful, and freaking righteous it displaces its subject as the artifact that should be preserved for posterity. 

* Made using Canva