The two bodies

Douglas, Mary 1996. Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology. 2nd edition. London; New York: Routledge.

Ch. 5. "The two bodies", pp. 69-87.

The social body constrains the way the physical body is perceived. The physical experience of the body, always modified by the social categories through which it is known, sustanis a particular view of society. There is a continual exchange of meanings between the two kinds of bodily experience so that each reinforces the categories of the other. As a result of this interaction the body itself is a highly restricted medium of expression. The forms it adopts in movement and repose express social pressures in manifold ways. The care that is given to it, in grooming, feeding and therapy, the theories about what it needs in the way of sleep and exercise, about the stages it should go through, the pains it can stand, its span of life, all the cultural categories in which it is perceived, must correlate closely with the categories in which society is seen in so far as these also draw upon the same culturally processed idea of the body. (Douglas 1996: 69)

Thus the dual body consists of the social body and the physical body and the formed restricts the latter.

In any kind of communication whatever, if more than one band is being used, ambiguity would result if there was no smooth co-ordination of meanings. hence we would always expect some concordance between social and bodily expressions of control, first because each symbolic mode enhances meanings in the other, and so the ends of communication are furthered, and second because, as we said earlier, the categories in which each kind of experience is received are reciprocally derived and mutually reinforcing. (Douglas 1996: 72)

It almost sounds like what I call concursivity. That is, here the social and symbolic categories touch upon bodily expressions by way of "concordance". While concouse is "coming together", concord is "agreement".

The scope of the body as a medium of expression is limited by controls exerted from the social system. Just ast the experience of cognitive dissonance is disturbing, so the experience of consonance in layer after layer of experience and context after context is satisfying. I have argued before that there are pressures to create consonance between the perception of social and physiological levels of experience (Douglas, 1966:114-28). Some of my friends still find it unconvincing. I hope to bring them round by going much further, following Mauss in maintaining that the human body is always treated as an image of society and that there can be no natural way of considering the body that does not involve at the same time a social dimension. (Douglas 1996: 74)

Ah, my dear Douglas, even you are taken by Leon Festinger!

Consequently I now advance the hypothesis that bodily control is an expression of social control - abandonment of bodily control in ritual responds to the requirements of a social experience which is being expressed. Furthermore, there is little prospect of successfully imposing bodily control without the corresponding social forms. And lastly, the same drive that seeks harmoniously to relate the experience of physical and social, must affect ideology. (Douglas 1996: 74)

This is actually very useful for my purposes (concerning bodily self-censorship).

It seems not too bold to suggest that where role structure is strongly defined, formal behaviour will be valued. If we were to proceed to analyse a range of symbolism under the general opposition of formal/informal we would expect the formal side of every contrasted pair to be valued where role structure is more dense and more clearly articulated. Formality signifies social distance, well-defined, public, insulated roles. Informality is appropriate to role confusion, familiarity, intimacy. Bodily control will be appropriate where formality is valued, and most appropriate where the valuing of culture above nature is most emphasized. All this is very obvious. (Douglas 1996: 75)

Not bold at all. Also, very obvious indeed.

So far we have given two rules: one, the style appropriate to a message will co-ordinate all the channels; two, the scope of the body acting as a medium is restricted by the demands of the social system to be expressed. SAs this last implies, a third is that strong social control demands strong bodily control. A fourth is that along the dimension from weak to strong pressure the social system seeks progressively to disembody or etherealize the forms of expression; this can be called the purity rule. (Douglas 1996: 76)

These simple equations could be very useful.

Social intercourse requires that unintended or irrelevant organic processes should be screened out. It equips itself therefore with criteria of relevance and these constitute the universal purity rule. The more complex the system of classification and the stronger the pressure to maintain it, the more social intercourse pretends to take place between disembodied spirits. Socialization teaches the child to bring organic processes under control. (Douglas 1996: 76)

Relevant for concursivity: some writers choose to screen out all bodily behavior ("organic processes") to make it look as if the dialogue is taking place between disembodied spirits.

The physical body is a microcosm of society, facing the centre of power, contracting and expanding its claims in direct accordance with the increase and relaxation of social pressure. Its members, now riveted into attention, now abandoned to their private devices, represent the members of society and their obligations to the whole. At the same time, the physical body, by the purity rule, is polarized conceptually against the social body. Its requirements are not only subordinated, they are contrasted with social requirements. The distance between the two bodies is the two bodies is the range of pressure and classification in the society. (Douglas 1996: 77)

I think there is something missing. I'd propose a third body, a "personal" body that is free from social pressure. This is the body one possesses when no one is around and looking.

Natural symbols can express the relation of an individual to his society at that general systemic level. The two bodies are the self and society: sometimes they are so near as to be almost merged; sometimes they are far apart. The tension between them allows the elaboration of meanings. (Douglas 1996: 87)

Alas, for Douglas, the physical body is the self.

Millard, Thomas L. 1962. Human Relations in a Changing Society, Trends and Principles. Journal of Educational Sociology 35(5): 228-235.

Within the basic value-orientation of a free, open society, Human Relations as a professional discipline seeks to enable individuals, groups, and communities in achieving the highest possible degree of social, mental and physical well being. (Millard 1962: 228)

I am instantly reminded of Jurgen Ruesch's Semiotic Approaches to Human Relations.

As Human Relations is attuned to the multiplicity, of causative factors in intergroup conflicts, it deploys its professional skills in the development of constructive, insightful information and with assistance in helping groups in conflict to rethink basic value concepts, thus heightening their adaptability to changing institutional and human needs.
Towards this end, the human relationist needs to assess in workable terms, the socio-cultural environment from which such conflicts or group members come. What is the nature of the problem, what does the conflict symbolize for them and how does it clash with their value orientation? (Millard 1962: 228)

Sounds like some goody-two-shoes ish, but the interesting part is how liberal this guy is with -ism.

The effectiveness of meaningful human relations depends upon the rigidity of the value system of the group involved and the degree of internalization of basic democratic values.
However the capacity of man to espouse social justice in the content of his social experience is probably the most fundamental and unique character of man. But society cannot control every possible social situation, and then too, groups with opposing value-orientation can always create social situations that give vent to their beliefs.
This process through which basic value disagreement leads to physical dissociation is the prerequisite to social conflict and this is perhaps the most important area for study by the human relationist. (Millard 1962: 229)

It is likely that my value-orientation is divergent from this authors' as I don't believe human relations can be reduced to values. Especially when values are used as a means for social control, as the case seems to be here. The remarkable thing is that "physical dissociation" quite possibly designates #avoidance.

And where social conflict is charged with human emotions, the more it tends to become detached from reality and take on the characteristics of a free-floating symbol. And free-floating symbols have become useful devices for individuals and groups who elect to move in opposite direction of social change. By such ego-investment in time, and energy, some of these groups find it increasingly difficult, if not impossible to reverse their flight from reality turning their fears, hostility and perhaps their collective sense of guilt into a kind of "legalistic" logic which makes it possible for them to exist. (Millard 1962: 229)

Hot damn! Did I just find a proto-theory of empty signifier? P.S. The typeface/font this text is in is incredible. I must write some of my own texts with it. Aww snap, its "Monotype Century Old Style" and a form of "Century" font is pre-installed with Ubuntu. Guess who just set it as default font on gedit? moi.

Indeed, a central requirement of human relations for the future must be how to work with those with whom we differ to make a goodness of life for all - for we cannot allow our differences of value application to divide us to the point where we are incapable of social action for the common good. The dynamic aspects of culture demonstrates that striving for achievement, although accompanied by temporary discomfort, frustration and even pain - is essential to full growth and development of social groups. (Millard 1962: 230)

Apparently this author is clipping together various expressions without any further thought. E.g. dynamic aspects (plural) demonstrates (singular). Also, I'm beginning to notice that this text is a bit ideological and lacks any citations. And man is not distinguished from "lower" animals by its social nature - many species are social. And "human relationism" could just as well be replaced with "sociology" - the essence seems to be same. The sub-title "defective human relations needs authoritative priming" is really off-putting. Enough of this, Millard.

Gottdiener, M. 1985. Hegemony and Mass Culture: A Semiotic Approach. American Journal of Sociology 90(5): 979-1001.

Hegemony theory is reductionist because of its primitive understanding of human subjectivity. By asserting that class consciousness is controlled in the interests of the bourgeoisie through the mediation of mass culture, hegemonists assume the unity of all thought and beg the more essential theoretical question concerning the constitutive nature of the human subject. Consciousness itself can never be controlled in the manner suggested by this theory because it implies the existence of a homogeneous human subject who has been produced by modernity and whose mental state has a reflexive thought capacity that is indistinguishable from either consciousness or even subconsciousness. (Gottdiener 1985: 982)

This reminds me of the assumption of "transcendental subjectivity" in cultural semiotics (the culture as a whole, "culture as the consciousness of society").

In Althusser's original formulation he strove for a more complex view of the human subject as a somewhat contradictory amalgam of mental states that include post-Freudian-like subconscious influences. Althusser makes the distinction between consciousness and a second feature of thought that is a mental capacity organized around the "imagery," a capacity that is qualitatively separate from the ordinary consciousness of everyday life. The concept of the imagery is close to Berger and Luckmann's (1966) notion of reality construction, because it represents the individual's interpretation of reality, constructed through reflexive thought contemplating the experience of social interaction. According to Althusser's original formulation, people cannot understand the real forces in the social formation that produce social events, because these function in ways not readily apparent. Their interpretation of the events perceived by consciousness, therefore, is an imaginary one, and it is the representation of this realm that Althusser terms "ideological." (Gottdiener 1985: 983)

This may perhaps even prove useful for concursive approach. Since we derive some or even most of our interpretations of bodily behavior from culture (e.g. the folklore of gestures, literary descriptions, everyday speech), all attempts to interpret bodily behavior is always already invested with not-so-readily-apparent ideological aspects.

The essential difference betwene the semiotic approach to culture and those better known in the United States (such as ethnomethodology and symbolic interactionism, which also focus on symbols and social interaction) is the emphasis in semiotics on objective systems of signification and the intersubjective basis of meaning. That is, following Saussure, the production of meaning takes place only by virtue of a social relation, because language is a sui generis social construction. (Gottdiener 1985: 985)

If semiotics is concerned with "the socially sustained system of signification" (ibid) then what the hell are ethnomethodology and symbolic interactionism concerned with?

First, symbolic interactionism does not possess a theory of the cultural object. In this sense it is an idealist inquiry that lacks a material basis for the grounding of individual behavior and social relations. In addition, because its main focus is on "interaction" rather than the "symbolic," it virtually ignores the role of language and meaning systems in the analysis of culture (Davis 1981). Second, intrasubjective theories of social interaction such as ethnomethodology fail to address the producer/object or producer/user relation, although studies of creator/object do exist within this tradition. Such a limitation might be expected of a microsociology. In this way, however, ethnomethodology assumes that micro distinctions can be explored separately and autonomously from the larger social context, even at the formal level of abstraction. Accordingly, current theories of symbolic exchange are inadequate for an analysis of mass culture in the global sense outlined above. (Gottdiener 1985: 985)

I don't agree at all with these arguments. Gottdiener does not cite any examples but makes generalized statements. Does not G. H. Mead explain extensively the nature of the symbolic? Why should ethnomethodology dwell on material production of objects? I think Gottdiener is looking for theories of mass culture in all the wrong places.

According to Barthes (1964), every object becomes a sign of its own function. Thus an automobile functions not only as a mode of trnasportation but also as a commonly (almost universally) recognized sign of that function. (Gottdiener 1985: 986)

Thus a rifle functions as a means if injury and becomes a sign of killing.

According to Krampen, the logical extension of Barthes's early work would be an assertion that all of culture is accessible through linguistic analysis, and this statement is a fallacy. The "linguistic fallacy" implies that "since all languages are made up of words and all words are signs, all things made up of signs are language" (1979, p. 34). This "translinguistic" (Eco 1976) approach to culture has unfortunately come to characterize "pop-semiotic" analysis, just as fashion, non-verbal gestures, architecture, and so on have all been endowed analogically with the fallacious status of language. (Gottdiener 1985: 986)

Amen. This goes for body language, the language of flowers and handbags etc. Concursive approach must meticulously avoid falling prey to this fallacy.

For Barthes (and Julia Kristeva and Jacques Derrida, among others) semiotics after 1969 became the study of the text or discourse, most especially in written form (such an inquiry is sometimes known as "second generation" or "philological" semiotics). For example, although Barthes showed that the objects of Dress constituted a system of signification and that Dress was therefore amenable to semiotic analysis, he observed that the dress sign existed only in Fashion, that is, in the discursive world of writing and speaking about clothes rather than as something intrinsic to the object itself or to its function. (Gottdiener 1985: 987)

The case is similar with "the discursive world of writing and speaking about bodily behavior" e.g. concourse.

Recognition of these two aspects of mass culoture - its inherently polysemous nature and its audience of relatively heterogeneous subculture - also leads to the establishment of two long-recognized principles in the semiotic analysis of culture. First, I acknowledge the multicoded nature of social life and the multiplicity of sign systems that coexist in any given society (Lotman and Uspensky 1978). The concept of polysemy as characteristic of cultural perception has been an established tenet of semiotic analysis since Barthes's pioneering work (1964). Second, by grounding analysis of the threefold mass cultural relation in the group life of individuals, I recognize the primacy of meanings in all other typifications of social behavior. This means that, before there is "mass" culture, there must be "culture," that is, the conceptual forms of accumulated knowledge by which social groups organize everyday experience within social and material contexts (Clark et al. 1975; Lotman and Uspensky 1978; Sahlins 1976). Sahlins, in particular, has insisted productively that human behavior is always meaningful and that, consequently, social life is organized first and fremost around systemic, symbolic modes of interpretation (1976). Thus, group life possesses its own "relative autonomy" from economic and political processes. The impact of mass culture must always be understood within the social context of this ongoing, localized process of meaning creation and group interpretation. (Gottdiener 1985: 990-991)

Sahlin: Culture and Practical Reason. Lotman and Uspensky: "On the Semiotic Mechanism of Culture" (New Literary History).

According to Eco, any object (e.g., an automobile) can be considered in any of five separate ways: (a) physically, as a material object; (b) mechanically, as an instrument or tool that performs a function, that is, possesses use value; (c) economically, as possessing exchange value; (d) socially, as a sign of some status; and (e) semantically, as a cultural unit that can enter into relationships with other cultural units in a discourse about automobiles and transportation (1976, p. 27). (Gottdiener 1985: 991)

From A Theory of Semiotics. Compare these to Lotman's five cultural relationships.

In effect, i reject the radical reductionism of Baudrillard, which views all objects in society as possessing sign values. In my approach there can never be a pure semiotic analysis of culture at the level of the text itself, because all cultural objects are produced by nonsemiotic processes of economics and politics and are used nonsemiotically to perform first-order functions and to provide the second-order status of sign value. For example, the wearing of a raincoat for protection from rain, and for no other purpose, may "mean" that the use of that raincoat is an indicator of climate. In this case, mass culture interposes itself only when the raincoat, through fashion, is worn for second-order effects as well (see Delaporte 1979).
This distinction has important implications for criticism of mass culture. It can be used to argue against the standard way in which ideological hegemonists perform textual analysis by endowing cultural objects with meanings that derive solely from the critics' own analytical sensibilities. (Gottdiener 1985: 993)

Gottdiener is in my opinion here grappling with the age-old question of intrinsic coding.

Discourse by Laclau

Laclau, Ernesto 2007. Discourse. In: Goodwin, R. E. and P. Pettit (eds.), A companion to contemporary political philosophy. 2nd Edition. Oxford: Blackwell, 441-447.

The basic hypothesis of a discursive approach is that the very possibility of perception, thought and action depends on the structuration of a certain meaningful field which pre-exists any factual immediacy. A transcendental enquiry as an investigation of the conditions of possibility of experience starts with Kant, for whom space, time and the categories of understanding constitute the a priori dimension in the constitution of phenomena. (Laclau 2007: 541)

This sounds fairly familiar, specifically from cultural semiotics and the notion of modeling as it is developed in cs discourse. Of course now I have some hints on Kant from Cassirer which could help me translate this insight into the concursive approach.

If formalism strictly applies, this means that the substantial differences between the linguistic and the non-linguistic have also to be dropped - in other terms, that the distinction between action and structure becomes a secondary distinction within the wider category of meaningful totalities. This point has been particularly stressed in Laclau and Mouffe (1985), and it brings discourse theory close to the conclusion reached by the work of the later Wittgenstein, i.e. the notion that 'language games' embrace both language and the actions in which it is woven (Wittgenstein, 1983, p. 5). (Laclau 2007: 543)

Sounds simple but useless until demonstrated how.

The main contributions of discourse theory to the field of politics have been linked so far to the conceptualization of power. The same broad division pointed out earlier applies here: we have, on the one hand, analysts whose theoretical roots are to be found in the post-structuralist theory of the sign and, on the other, those which are mainly linked to the reformulation of Foucault's intellectual project in his later work. (Laclau 2007: 545)

I don't yet see need to differentiate these but rather view them as part of the same effort.

Sylvan, Richard 2007. Anarchism. In: Goodwin, R. E. and P. Pettit (eds.), A companion to contemporary political philosophy. 2nd Edition. Oxford: Blackwell, 257-281.

Most of the seminal and interesting work on anarchism has come from outside universities and standard intellectual circles. Academics have contributed histories (e.g. Ritter, 1969), surveys (e.g. Woodcock, 1962) and (usually not-so-sympathetic) criticism (e.g. Miller, 1984). With a very few exceptions, however, they have contributed little original anarchist thought. (Sylvan 2007: 257)

Ritter's work is titled Anarchism: A Theoretical Analysis. I tend to agree. In my mind the most potential anarchist theorizing is hidden away in pamphlets and zines dispersed in anarchist info shops (and sites such as theanarchistlibrary.org).

Philosophically, anarchism is the theory, principles or practice of anarchy. It refers, according to the dictionaries, to the 'lack of coercive government', the 'absence of a political state', the 'want of authoritarian political heads or leaders, institutions or organizations'. In its normal politicla form, the term is applied to societies or communities, territories or countries. Politically, there are three key structural components: authority, coercion and, normally comprehending both, the state. The notion has recently been extended beyond political arrangements to apply to other institutional forms, such as the church, science and law, to mean alternative forms lacking authoritarian structure and coercive methods. Thus appear such varieties as epistemological anarchism and philosophical anarchism. Although it is political anarchism upon which this essay focuses, those other far-reaching analogies should not be lost sight of. They matter. Anarchism is to political authority as atheism is to religious authority, and rather as scepticism is to scientific authority. (Sylvan 2007: 258)

The comparison with atheism is a good one. Also, my own works seems, in this sense, to involve an anarchist approach to bodily behavior. It relies on the notion of "expressive order" as the agent that regulates and normalizes human behavior, thus protecting the privileges of the powerful.

With anarchy as with many other valuable terms, tehre has been a concerted effort at confusion or destruction of meanings - part of an extensive terminological vandalism in human intellectual affairs. Rather than reconcile ourselves to sacrifice of the damaged term 'anarchism', let us salvage the term explicitly for the pristine notion, isolating the conventional associations under the term 'degenerate anarchism'. Most of the fictional anarchists depicted by authors supportive of the present state system are degenerate and thus unrepresentative of real anarchists. (Sylvan 2007: 259)

Ah, finally a solution to the disreputed understading of anarchism.

While organization and government are entirely compatible with anarchism, that most conspicuous modern institution - the state - is not. it is the paradigmatic archist form. Nor are ancient power formations such as the empire and the kingdom really compatible with anarchism, owing not only to their authoritarian character and their extensive use of coercion and violence but also to their central organization. (Sylvan 2007: 260)

That is, non-authoritative and non-violent forms of government and social organization are compatible with anarchist ideals.

[The state is] a distinct and sovereign body[:] ...it claims complete authority to define the rights of its subjects... Second, the state is a compulsory body, in the sense that everyone born into a given society is forced to recognise obligations t the state that govern that society. Third, the state is a monopolistic body: it claims a monopoloy of force in its territorial area, allowing no competitor to exist alongside it. (Miller 1984: 5)

From Miller's book Anarchism. "Compulsory" [kohustuslik, sund-] is exactly the word I was in search of. It means: (1) Required by law or a rule; obligatory. (2) Involving or exercising compulsion; coercive.

There are, analysis reveals, two interacting foci: (1) a top or centre; and (2) control or dominance flowing from this top, by what an adjudged inadmissible (in particular, authoritarian and coercive) means. A chief both stands at the top of a power hierarchy and exercises authoritarian control from there. Under this elliptical double-foci refinement, anarchy entails structure and organization without inadmissible top-down or centralized means. Let us look at the foci in turn, beginning with the more independent one: the top.
Topologically, 'without a top' amounts to 'without a centre', because by topological transformations ('bending') what is a top transforms to a centre, and vice versa. Thus, in excluding top-down relations, anarchism also excludes arrangements structured with a controlling centre, such as a ruling centrla government. Anarchism thus implies decentralization, but in a precise sense. Eliminating the centre does not thereby also remove all structure. It leaves available the possibility of a rich variety of structures, including network arrangements with no centres or with multiple 'centres' (federal structures, and suchlike). (Sylvan 2007: 261)

The relationship between top and center in this sense could well improve cultural semiotics which speaks of centers, but not tops.

As varieties of anarchy diverge widely so too, correspondingly, do motivations and justifications for these divergent forms. These motivations range from entirely theoretical (conceding the warranted force of politicla scepticism) to practical (schanging the local world); from personal and perhaps selfish (getting the state off one's back, or out of one's business and one's till) to other-directed (elminating a state oppressing its people) or environmental (disestablishing another vandalistic state). Common motivations trace back to the common character of anarchism: repulsion by or opposition to oppressions, perhaps generalizing still further to all gross power relations. (Sylvan 2007: 262)

My motivations personal and theoretical.

There are many types of authority relations, not all of which are objectionable. Consider, for example, the relation of a student to an authority in some field of knowledge, who can in turn back up expert judgements by appeal to a further range of assessable evidence. Such an authority might be called 'transparent' (or 'open'), because anyone with time and some skill can proceed past the authority to assess claims made. Contrasted with these are 'opaque' (or 'closed') authorities, who simply stand on their position or station; such authority is objectionable in part because of its dogmatic character. Closely allied is the category of 'substantially opaque' authorities, who appeal to a conventional rule or procedure ('that is how things are done' or 'have always been done') without being willing or able to step beyond some rule book. Rule-book authorities are commonplace in bureaucracies, which often encourage such practice in lower-level official. With 'indirectly opaque' authorities, the justificatory procedure stops a step further back: there is a set of rules, which has been enacted (for reasons not open to, or bearing, examination) by a further substantially opaque authority. (Sylvan 2007: 263)

These forms should be carefully compared to the social psychological "bases of power". From the top of my mind I can say that the case of student is related with the so-called "expert power".

Beyond the theoretical arguments for principled anarchism, the main argument for anarchism can be concentrated in a detailed critique of the state, and therewith of state-like institutions. Anarchist critiques of the state assert that: states and state-like institutions are without satisfactory justification; such institutions are not required for organizational purposes; such institutions have most inharmonious consequences, bringing a whole series of social and environmental bungles or evils in their train. In brief, they [states] are unnecessary, unjustified evils. (Sylvan 2007: 264)

Pretty much the same formulation I have heard from the mouth of a local anarchist philosopher [that states are illegitimate].

States are enormously expensive, and constitute a heavy drain upon regional resources and accordingly on local environments. In poorer regions they are not merely a heavy burden but a main cause of impoverishment. One reason for their voracious appetite is an excess of over-remunerated and often under-productive state employees. Another connected reason is that many state operations are far from lean and efficient; instead, they incorporate many duplications, drag factors and dead weight. Under anarchisms of all varieties, these heavy cost burdens, weighing down subservient populaces, would be shed. Costs of organization would be very significantly reduced. (Sylvan 2007: 265)

Sounds exactly like the situation in Estonia.

States are major impositions on everyday life. They are intrusive and demanding. Never has this been more forcefully expressed than in Proudhon's famous denouncement of state government:

To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction, noted, registered, enrolled, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized, extorted, squeezed, mystified, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, despised, harassed, tracked, abused, clubbed, disarmed, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and, to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, outraged, dishonoured. That is government; htat is its justice; that is its morality. (1923, p. 294)

(Sylvan 2007: 265)

From Proudhon's General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century.

The state is not a self-justifying object. But none of the justificatory arguments to the state are cogent. A familiar theme concedes that the state is problematic but claims that it is a necessary evil. But the contrary seems more nearly correct: states, though generally evil, are hardly necessary. It needs stressing, furthermore, how weak the necessity claimed has to be. For it is becoming increasingly easy, with the advances in logical modellings and computer simulations of other worlds (involving 'virtual states', and the like) to envisage accessible worlds organized without modern states. (Sylvan 2007: 267)

This argument is pretty solid: before the advent of information technology it would have been very difficult to coordinate society without the state. Nowadays we have sophisticated models which can coordinate the work of all the necessary social benefits almost automatically.

According to a condescending pragmatic argument, simple primitive societies may have been able to struggle along without state structure or organization, but it is entirely out of the question for the practical operation for modern industrial societies. No recent anarchist societies have worked. A short response is again that but few have had an opportunity to succeed. There is extraordinarily little room for social experiment in modern state-dominated societies. Moreover, where anarchist societies have had some chance to flourish (as, briefly, in Spain before they were suppressed), some of them appear to have funtioned moderately well. (Sylvan 2007: 272)

First shoot rifles at anarchists who have made their organizations work and then shoot down future anarchist with arguments like "but no anarchist society has succeeded."

Gone or seriously reduced with the demise of the centre are several stock political worries, directed against anarchism, such as those of coup, takeover, insurrection or invasion. These usually involve capturing the centre and its command structure, no longer there to capture; there is no command or control structure that could be taken by an invader or through internal insurrection. Community defence is thereby rendered much easier. The stock problem of who controls the controllers is also largely removed, partly because control is so diffused and partly because a main controller is the federated communities (which is one of the advantages of more direct democracy). (Sylvan 2007: 275)

I've never thought about it but it makes perfect sense. Takeovers operate by "taking over" existing central structures. If the structures are not centralized then what is there to take over?

Unfortunately it is hard to find, anywhere, even in the worst of states, much anarchist planning, and - worse - there is little visible evidence of constructive anarchist movements anymore; what gets exhibited in ongoing crises of states is degenerate anarchism. There is undoubtedly more scope for anarchism proper to become involved in those crisis situations, for instance by influencing and organizing active dissatisfied groups, and for it to flourish. (Sylvan 2007: 280)

Sparrow, Robert 2007. Anarchism since 1992. In: Goodwin, R. E. and P. Pettit (eds.), A companion to contemporary political philosophy. 2nd Edition. Oxford: Blackwell, 282-284.

The decline in the popularity of Marxism subsequent to the collapse of the Societ Union has left a vacuum on the left which has partially been filled by anarchism, which has to some extent become the default politics od radical dissent in English-speaking nations and much of Western Europe. (Sparrow 2007: 282)

This may be the reason why much of modern anarchist discourse smacks of pseudo-marxism.

The development of the World Wide Web has also had a significant impact both on the popularity of anarchist ideas and their theoretical elaboration. The decentralized nature of the internet and the fact that it is beyond the power of any state to regulate have led many critics to note important parallels with anarchist political ideas (Ludlow, 1999; 2001; Moglen, 1999). There has also been a resurgence of contemporary anarchist writings for the purpose of distribution via the Web. (Sparrow 2007: 282)

Sounds familiar.

Anarchism - Definitions and ancestors

Ward, Colin 2004. Anarchism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.

Ch. 1. "Definitions and ancestors", pp. 1- 13.

The word 'anarchy' comes from the Greek anarkhia, meaning contrary to authority or without a ruler, and was used in a derogatory sense until 1840, when it was adopted by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon to describe his political and social ideology. Proudhon argued that organization without government was both possible and desirable. (Ward 2004: 1)

Well, to many it is still a derogatory term. People for whom an anarchist social organization seems possible and desirable are a minority.

The anarchists and their precursors were unique on the political Left in affirming that workers and peasants, grasping the chance that arose to being an end to centuries of exploitation and tyranny, wer inevitably betrayed by the new class of politicians, whose first priority was to re-establish a centralized state power. After every revolutionary uprising, usually won at a heavy cost for ordinary populations, the new rulers had no hesitation in applying violence and terror, a secret police, and a professional army to maintain their control. (Ward 2004: 1-2)

In Estonia the centralization of power is getting worse by the day; more and more it seems like there is Tallinn and then the rest of Estonia. It may be a matter of time until the rest of Estonia realizes that they're being impoverished by the center and an insurgence begins. Presently I see the latter - secret police and professional army with their violence and terorr - as the prime enemies. Although these are merely means to and end, I believe these ends cannot be grasped before the means are investigated. And by investigation I do not mean ideological spew, but actual research and study.

For anarchists the state itself is the enemy, and they have applied the same interpretation to the outcome of every revolution of the 19th and 20th centuries. This is not merely because every state keeps a watchful and sometimes punitive eye on its dissidents, but because every state protects the privileges of the powerful. (Ward 2004: 2)

The watch kept on dissidents I am studying in dystopias. The privileges of the powerful are more complicated.

There are, unsurprisingly, several traditions of individualist anarchism, one of them deriving from the 'conscious egoism' of the German writer Max Stirner (1806-56), and another from a remarkable series of 19th-century American figures who argued that in protecting our own autonomy and associating with others for common advantages, we are promoting the good of all. (Ward 2004: 2)

Max Stirner should be studied more closely, luckily he is one of the authors already on the readings list for this seminar.

Pacifist anarchism follows both from the anti-militarism that accompanies rejection of the state, with its ultimate dependence on armed forces, and from the conviction that any morally viable human society depends upon the uncoerced goodwill of its members. (Ward 2004: 3)

Pacifism is a beautiful thought but not very viable. That is, it is very easy to attack pacifism.

These and other threads of anarchist thought have different emphases. What links them all is their rejection of external authority, whether that of the state, the employer, or the hierarchies of administration and of established institutions like the school and the church. (Ward 2004: 3)

Of course it should be studied further in what sense is authority external, whether power is a force coming from the 'outside' or rather something something that works through us. These are murky matters, but generally it can be stated that anarchism is against coercion [sundus].

It is customary to relate the anarchist tradition to four major thinkers and writers. The first was William Godwin (1756-1836), who in his Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, published in 1793, set out the anarchist case against government, the law, property, and the institutions of the state. [...] The second of these pioneers was Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-65), the French propagandist who was the first one to call himself an anarchist. He became famous in 1840 by virtue of an essay that declared that 'Property is Theft', but he also claimed that 'Property is Freedom'. [...] The third of the classical anarchist luminaries was the Russian revolutionary Michael Bakunin (1814-76), deservedly famous for his disputed with Marx in the First International in the 1870s, where, for his successors, he predicted with remarkable accuracy the outcome of Marxist dictatorships in the 20th century. [...] The last of these key thinkers was another Russian of aristocratic origin, Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921). ... The Conquest of Bread (1892) was his manual on the self-organization of a post-revolutionary society. (Ward 2004: 3-7)

Godwin's book is available on archive.org. Proudhon's essay is most likely included in his What is Property?. Bakunin's Marxism, Freedom And The State is readily available on the web and on our bookshelves. And Kropotkin's The Conquest of Bread is included in this seminar.

In all these revolutions the fate of the anarchists was that of heroic losers. but anarchists do not necessarily fit the stereotype of believers in some ultimate revolution, succeeding where all others had failed, and inaugurating Utopia. The German anarchist Gustav Landauer delcared that:

The state is not something which can be destroyed by a revolution, but a condition, a certain relationship betwene human beings, a mode of human behavior; we destroy it by contracting other relationships, by behaving differently.

(Ward 2004: 8)

Firstly, "heroic losers" also describes the heroes of my dystopian literature - Winston, John and Montag - who sacrifice their own life for the fight against inhuman forms of social organization. Secondly, Landauer's contention on relationships and behavior sounds very much like David Graeber's statement about revolutionary action.

Anarchism has, in fact, an enduring resilience. Every European, Noth American, Latin American, and Asian society has had its anarchist publicists, journals, circles of adherents, imprisoned activists, and martyrs. Whenever an authoritarian and repressive political regime collapses, the anarchists are there, a minority urging their fellow citizens to absorb the lessons of the sheer horror and irresponsibility of government. (Ward 2004: 10)

Our current society does not seem to produce sheer horror but it does seem to possess a very irresponsible government who only serves for its own interests.

Anarchist ideas were brought to Japan by Kotuku Shusui [Shūsui Kōtoku] in the very early years of the 20th century. He had read Kropotkin's writings while in prison during the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-5. When released he visited California, making contact with the militant anarcho-syndicalists of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and returned to Japan to publish an anti-militarist journal, Heimen. Kotuku claimed that there was always an anarchist undercurrent in Japanese life, deriving from both Buddhist and Taoism. He was one of 12 anarchists executed in 1911, accused of plotting against the Emperor Meiji. (Ward 2004: 10)

Makes me wonder if we should look into Estonian anarchism as well, surely there must be some.

In the entry for 'Anarchism' that Kropotkin wrote in 1905 for the 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, he began by explaining that it is

the name given to a principle or theory of life and conduct under which society is conceived without government - harmony in such society being obtained, not by submission to law, or by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements, concluded between the various groups, territorial and professional, freely constituted for the sake of production and consumption, as also for the satisfaction of the infinite variety of needs and aspirations of a civilised being.

Implicit in this definition is the inevitability of compromise, an ordinary aspect of politics which has been found difficult by anarchists, precisely because their ideology precludes the usual routes to political influence. (Ward 2004: 13)

That is to say, it is difficult to take the usual routes of political influence if you oppose submission to law and obedience to any authority. The horrifying and irresponsible deeds of the governments go unpunished exactly because they are lawful and follow the pre-set lines of authority.

Trivialization

Cassirer, Ernst 1932. Kant. In: Seligman, Edwin R. A. and Johnson Alvin (eds.), Encyclopaedia Of The Social Sciences. Vol VIII. London: Macmillan and Company Limited, 539-542.

At the center and focus of Kant's thought there is always to be found the concept of transcendentalism and the transcendental problem of freedom. But freedom here means for him not chance or arbitrariness, not an antithesis to law; it signifies rather the highest realization of the idea of law in the universe. Man is free as an ethical subject; for although as an ethical subject he is governed by a universal system of laws, the system is not one which is imposed on him from without through the impersonal compulsion of things or through the command of an external authority but rather one that he has given to himself. The concept of freedom thus coincides for Kant witht the concept of self-legislation, or autonomy. (Cassirer 1932: 539)

Self-legislation sounds neat.

Man can never be considered and treated as a mere means, as a cog in the social machine; on the contrary, he is and remains, ethically considered, an unconditioned end in itself. This self-legislation includes the state of being an end for oneself: autonomy includes autotely (Cassirer 1932: 539)

And yet man is still today treated as a cog in the social machine, having no other prime purpose than to serve his country or culture.

In this sense the key to the problem of knowledge lies for him in the fact that knowledge must not be regulated by things, but that things as empirical objects must be regulated by the fundamental condition of the faculty of knowledge. For as objects of experience (as phenomena) they can be given to us only in the form of experience and according to its fundamental and universal laws; these laws in turn depend, however, on the form of the understanding and on its a priori basic functions. (Cassirer 1932: 539)

Translating this insight into nonverbalist terms: knowledge is not regulated by behavior, but behavior is comprehensible through knowledge.

In this way he [Stammler] avoids what he regards as the formalism and circularity of the legal positivists, who confine themselves to what the law is and never discuss its relation to the human purposes which it seeks to express. (Cassirer 1932: 542)

Simon, Linda, Jeff Greenberg and Jack Brehm 1995. Trivialization: The Forgotten Mode of Dissonance Reduction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 68(2): 247-260.

Cognitive dissonance theory was part of a wave of theories in psychology that emphasized balance among cognitive, affective, and conative components of the person. Festinger (1957) assumed that behavior, by and large, must be guided by accurate information about the environment and the self. Therefore, any discrepancy between relevant information and knowledge of one's own behavior would be psychologically disturbing to the person. Consequently, the presence of "nonfitting" relations among cognitions would motivate the individual to reduce this negative affective state, which Festinger labeled dissonance. (Simon, Greenberg & Brehm 1995: 247)

Thus, Festinger, L. A. (1957) A theory of cognitive dissonance. Evanson, IL: Row, Peterson. is the beginning of dissonance theory. This is useful information as it enables one to test persons who freely abuse the dissonance theory, by asking them "Do you know who is Leon Festinger?" As many students-and-tutors-alike presume this theory to be important and well known they lack even the most basic knowledge that dissonance goes hand in hand with consonance and irrelevance.

According to dissonance theory, the existence of dissonance leads to pressure to reduce the tension, and this pressure covaries with the magnitude of the existing dissonance. The magnitude of the dissonance is determined by a number of factors: the number of dissonant cognitive elements, the number of consonant cognitive elements, and the importance of the cognitive elements. The more important the cognitive elements involved in the inconsistency are to the individual, the greater the dissonance. Thus, inconsistencies involving cognitions central to the self-concept or to valued goals, such as economic prosperity, or basic needs, such as survival, will arouse particularly high levels of dissonance. This is important to keep in mind because Festinger argued that, as with other motivational states, dissonance reduction will occur only when the dissonance reaches a level sufficient to motivate action. (Simon, Greenberg & Brehm 1995: 247)

Dissonance theory arose at the time of behaviorisms reign over psychology and was one of the first to be wholly unexplainable in behaviorist terms, as it relied on so-called "cognitive elements" to explain certain actions. It is indeed concerned with behavior, but only insofar as behavior stems from motivations and motivations are driven by cognitive elements (any belief, opinion, attitude, perception, or piece of knowledge about anything).

According to Festinger (1957), when the magnitude of dissonance is high enough to motivate action, people will use one of three modes of dissonance reduction. The first mode consists of changing one of the dissonance elements, that is, simply changing an attitude, value, opinion, or behavior, with behavior typically being the most resistant to change. The second mode of dissonance consists of adding consonant cognitions that reduce the overall level of consistency and includes active attempts to seek out new information. (Simon, Greenberg & Brehm 1995: 247)

The first two modes of dissonance reductions are thus: (1) changing the cognitive element that causes dissonance; and (2) presenting evidence which counteracts the inconsistent cognitive element.

The third mode posited by Festinger (1957) is "decreasing the importance of the elements involved in the dissonance relations" (p. 264). We refer to this mode of dissonance reduction as trivialization. Although cognitions can be added to help the individual reduce the perceived imortance of the relevant cognitions, this mode differs from that of adding consonant cognitions in two important ways. First, when consonant cognitions are used to reduce dissonance, the strategy is to add cognitions that make the attitude-behavior relationship seem more logical or justifiable. In contrast, the purpose of trivialization is not to reduce the inconsistency, but merely to reduce the level of inconsistency by reducing the importance of one or more of the dissonant elements. Second, if, as Festinger posited, the importance of the cognitions is an initial determinant of dissonance, then, in trivialization, rather than adding new cognitions, a basic characteristic of one or more of the relevant cognitive elements - its importance - is changed. (Simon, Greenberg & Brehm 1995: 247)

Thus trivialization consists of changing the importance of dissonant elements, not adding more (consonant) elements. The everyday case of "It's okay" seems to be an exaple, although not a good one as it generally fails to reduce dissonance. Rather, perhaps, an argumentative approach, "it's not important because it's..." is effective. Perhaps trivialization has been ignored in dissonance theories following Festinger because it is difficult to modify importance?

This capacity for change depends, in part, on the number of a cognition's consonant relations to other cognitions comprising the individual's view of reality. It also depends on the extent to which cognitions are related to fundamental perceptions of both social and physical reality. Thus, opinions and social judgments are often fairly easy to change, whereas cognitions regarding physical reality are usually more difficult to change. (Simon, Greenberg & Brehm 1995: 248)

For example, it would be impossible to convince a religious believer in the non-existence or non-importance of God if there is a large number of consonant relations in the believer's sense of reality. To put it bluntly, if one has a wealth of mutually reinforcing beliefs, attitudes and knowledge of something, then changing the importance of merely one or some elements will not be effective. The authors do emphasize that changing an elements and reducing it's improtance should be distinguished.

...when Cooper and Mackie (1983) had politically active participants write a counterattitudinal essay about a central political belief, participants did not change their attitude in the direction of the counterattitudinal essay but did denigrate those who supported that counterattitudinal position. (Simon, Greenberg & Brehm 1995: 248)

Denigrate - criticize unfairly. The practical deduction here is that writing an essay supporting an idea you don't believe in does not change your opinion of the idea but makes you more critical towards those who hold the idea to be true.

At this point, we have little conceptual or empirical basis for specifying in a given situation which cognitive elements will be most likely to be trivialized. The participants could reduce dissonance by reducing the importance of either the attitude or the behavior they engage in. Presumably, participants will reduce the importance of whichever element or elements are low in resistance to being trivialized, which probably depends on the plausibility of doing so and the extent of links between a particular cognition and other important attitudes and values. (Simon, Greenberg & Brehm 1995: 249)

Seems logical - that which affords less resistance to being trivialized is most likely trivialized.

Consistent with results of prior self-affirmation research, the self-affirmation treatment reduced attitude change. In addition, as expected, it also led to trivialization. Steele (1988) proposed that dissonance is reduced either directly, through minimization of the threat caused by the specific inconsistency, or indirectly, through affirmation of the self and restoration of global self-integrity. The present results indicate that the two routes to dissonance reduction may occur together in that when participants self-affirm, they also reduce the perceived importance of one or more of the relevant cognitions. (Simon, Greenberg & Brehm 1995: 254)

The theory of self-affirmation is a psychological theory that was first proposed by Claude Steele (1988) with the premise that people are motivated to maintain the integrity of the self. The ultimate goal of the self is to protect an image of its self-integrity, morality and adequacy. On the whole, integrity is defined as the sense that one is a good and appropriate person and the term "appropriate" refers to behavior that is fitting or suitable given the cultural norms and the salient demands on people within their culture. This theory explains why people respond in such a way to restore self-worth when their image of self-integrity is threatened. (Wiki: Self-affirmation)

Gunnery, Sarah D., Judith A. Hall and Mollie A. Ruben 2013. The Deliberate Duchenne Smile: Individual Differences in Expressive Control. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior 37(1): 29-41.

The Duchenne smile, typically called an enjoyment or genuine smile, is often said to be a spontaneous reflection of concurrent positive affect. It is operationally defined in the literature as the activation of the orbicularis oculi (cheek raiser) muscle that makes crow's feet at the outer corner of the eye, called Action Unit 6 (AU 6) according to the Facial Action Coding SYstem (FACS; Ekman et al. 2002), in combination with the zygomatic major muscle that extends the mouth (lip corner puller, AU 12; Ekman et al. 2002). (Gunnery, Hall & Ruben 2013: 29)

Orbicularis is the part above the eye and extends from the nose to the temple; oculi is the part below the eye, basically the "saggy eye" area. Orbicularis oculi's function is to open and close the eyelids, which makes me wonder if it can be trained by doing eyelid exercises. It is said that the orbital portion is subject to conscious control.

In the non-Duchenne smile, often called a non-enjoyment, false, fake, or social smile, the eye muscle movement is lacking (Ekman et al. 1990; Frank et al. 1993). Non-Duchenne smiles are widely believed to be under far more volitional control than Duchenne smiles . The distinction between Duchenne and non-Duchenne smiles can potentially help explain the nature and function of smiling in situations in which concurrent positive emotion may be weak or absent, as in greeting strangers, signaling reassurance, or appeasing powerful others, and in situations in which the expressor is actually experiencing negative affect, as when showing or masking feelings of discomfort, dislike, disappointment, embarrassment, or anxiety. (Gunnery, Hall & Ruben 2013: 29-30)

Non-Duchenne smiles are more volitional, it is under conscious control. I am interested in bringing the Duchenne smile under similar conscious control, by way of training. Or whether deliberate Duchenne smile can be trained and how.

There are good reasons why people might want to use the Duchenne smile deliberately. Research shows that people have insight into the nature, message value, and social utility of the Duchenne smile. Naive observers, even children age 9-10, attribute more happiness to Duchenne than non-Duchenne smiles; observers also have more favorable emotional reactions to people showing the Duchenne smile and attribute more desirable characteristics to them (e.g., likeability, competence). Observers also find such expressions to be more authentic and intense. Furthermore, people often have insight into what distinguishes Duchenne from non-Duchenne expressions; in two studies, approximately half of the adult observers reported using the expressor's eyes as a guide to making their judgments. Thus, research whos that people understand both what the Duchenne smile consists of and why it would be advantageous. (Gunnery, Hall & Ruben 2013: 30)

Ergo, it would be beneficial to develop some sort of training program for it.

Participants who successfully imitated the Duchenne photograph were more likely to make a Duchenne smile when not imitating the non-Duchenne photograph, but there was no relationship between producing a Duchenne smile in either of the roleplays and successfully imitating the Duchenne smile. (Gunnery, Hall & Ruben 2013: 36)

This is interesting. It sounds as if people who have more voluntary control over Duchenne smiles are more prone to react with a "genuine" smile to social smiles. I think the social functioning of smiles could be further investigated by studying how people with more deliberate control react to other stimuli.

Most writers on the Duchenne smile have talked of this smile as involuntary, spontaneous expresison of concurrent positive affect, using adjectives such as real, genuine, enjoyment, and felt (e.g., Bernstein et al. 2008; Ekman and Friesen 1982). We, like other recent investigators (Gosselin et al. 2010; Krumhuber and Manstead 2009), questioned this assumption and showed that a nontrivial number of participants could willfully produce a Duchenne smile when acting out role-plays that conveyed certain social messages, and a greater percentage deliberately produced a Duchenne smile when imitating a photographed Duchenne smile. This study also provided preliminary evidence that the ability to deliberately make the Duchenne smile is an individual difference. (Gunnery, Hall & Ruben 2013: 37)

Actually a remarkable feat, and a plusgood addition to the rubric of "history of body language", especially recent years.

This study further showed that people with the ability to produce a deliberate Duchenne smile reported being better able to put on false expressions in their raily lives and reported that they had done a better job putting on the expressions in the experimental tasks. This indicates that people have some introspective knowledge of their own smiling behavior and ability and likely value the ability as a social skill. (Gunnery, Hall & Ruben 2013: 39)

I was once stunned to find out that an aquaintance had trained herself to use both eyebrows precisely for it's value as a social skill.

Digital Natives

Donskis, Leonidas 2005. George Orwell: The anatomy of fanaticism and hatred. In: Baranova, Jūratė (ed.), Contemporary Philosophical Discourse in Lithuania. Lithuanian Philosophical Studies IV. Washinton: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 71-95.

The quest for enemies and the invention of adversaries may be said to have been Orwell's major themes that permeated his fiction and political essays. He penetrated the politics of organized hatred that resulted from the phantoms and forgeries of the modern troubled imagination as nobody else in modern literature and philosophy. (Donskis 2005: 71)

Specifically, the invention of goldsteinism and the three minutes of hate directed at Goldstein's bleeting face.

By "nationalism" I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labeled "good" or "bad." But secondly - and this much more important - I mean the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognizing no other duty than that of advancing its itnerests. [...] By "partiotism" I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force upon other people (Orwell 1970: 155-156)

Citation: Orwell, George 1970. Notes on Nationalism. In: Orwell, George (ed.), Decline of the English Murder and Other Essays. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. By these definitions I am neither a nationalist nor a patriot. I am not an estonian, I am a person from the internet.

If the liberal facet of nationalism implies the critical questioning of one's society and culture, patriotism, in most cases, is a kind of attachment to, and identification with, a certain country, its territory, history, landscape, language, and symbols of power. This sort of attachment and identification usually is devoid of any critical approach. The principle "my country, right or wrong" may well be said to have always been the quintessence of patriotism. (Donskis 2005: 74)

Sounds about right. The common local rhetoric is "fatherland borne and raised me, [for this] I will always be thankful and stay true to you until I die" (loosely translated from the national hymn).

Whereas a nationalist would criticize sharply any deviation from what he or she assumes as the moral substance of the object of his devotion or her commitment, a patriot would insist that no fact or event could prevent him or her from keeping fidelity to his or her country. Any form of government or political regime, in the patrior's perception, is an inalienable part of his/her country, and as such has to be supported. Loyalty to it is as necessary as opposition to those who too critically judge it or those who do not wish it well, both from within and from without. Therefore, the dividing line between small-scale, timid, and apologetic patriotism on the one hand, and imperial attachment to, and identification, with the territory as a symbol of the crown or of majestic history, i.e., Landespatriotismus on the other might not be as sharp as Orwell imagined it. Both rest on a vague territorial sentiment and a loosely bound idea of superiority of one's country over the rest of the world. Both reject critical perspective in viewing one's country, which is perceived as an object of pride and of defense against those wishing it ill, rather than as an embodiment of a link between moral imagination and a social relaity. (Donskis 2005: 74-75)

"Loose" is an exact qualifier. As far as I understand it, the Finnish hymn for example is about how there is luckily no gold in Finland so no one is keen to invade, yet for some reason it it "the land of gold" for fins themselves.

Nationalism, if it operates in a liberal-democratic setting, does prevent us from ideological and political fanaticism, not to mention myriad travesties of human attachment, loyalty, collective memory, and collective sentiment. After all, our attachment to our culture, language, and landscape is among fundamental human needs. If we lose the primary object of our love and attachment, or if we are deprived of it, we will transfer out loyalty. We will find a new object of attachment elsewhere. It can be another country to which we will attach an alternative, no matter whether real or imaginary - a revolutionary political program or a dissenting religion or a rival civilization or an opposing value-and-idea system. (Donskis 2005: 79)

Well, for me it seems to be an imaginary alternative - the "I'm from the Internet" meme which characterizes the World Wide Web affiliation - I may be physically here but I have as little to do with the here I'm at as possible.

If people deny their primary linguistic and cultural identity, they have to forge a new one. If they feel that they had lost or had not found yet their homeland, they will search for one somewhere else. If they abandon an earthly homeland as such, they are condemned to fabricate an ideology as a substitute for one. Suffice it to recall a most telling hint that Marx drops concerning the proletarian, who has no homeland by definition. The proletarian's guiding principle and salvation come from the otherworldly reality, since he or she represents the home-free class with no attachment to bourgeois/this-worldly values and traditions. This sort of ontological placelessness, cultural homelessness, and historical rootlessness logically lead to an assertion that they have nothing to lose in this world. Instead, they have Communism, which is their real homeland. In fact, it might be suggested that this is much of a modern travesty of early Christianity with its idea of the populus Christianum, i.e., the people in Christ, or a spiritual ensemble of human individuals who become so insofar as they meet in christ. (Donskis 2005: 80)

This is exactly what I mean - "People from the Internet", or a virtually interconnected ensemble of human individuals who communicate by means of the www.

It should never be forgotten, however, that such global, all-embracing and exclusive ideologies as National Socialism and Communism functioned as secular religions. (Donskis 2005: 86)

I was not aware that this expression - it certainly makes comparison with religion simpler to know that this phrase can be used.

Orwell's mistrust for intellectuals, as we shall see, reaches its climax in his portrayal, in 1984, of the character O'Brien, a sinister mental technician dwelling far beyond good and evil, Oceania's top specialist in brainwashing and indoctrination, and a modern equivalent of the Grand Inquisitor. (Donskis 2005: 86)

An apt description.

The image of an enemy restores our faith in ourselves as capable of supporting the right cause, the holy cause, the righteous and virtuous as against the vicious, spoiled, and incomprehensible. An enemy is what we can place beyond our reach of understanding. In so doing, we identify what is beyond our reach and understanding with what is uncertain inside us. At this point, hatred always comes from our self-contempt and self-hatred. Our enemies are nothing other than what we hate in ourselves the most, and what we externalize, projecting it onto the most familiar, though the least comprehensible, idiom of otherness. (Donskis 2005: 88)

I like the bit about understanding, because it implies that if you are able to understand everyone then you have no enemies.

Prensky, Marc 2001. Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. On the Horizon 9(5): 1-6.

Our students have changed radically. Today's students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach. (Prensky 2001: 1)

Of course someone was bound to blurt this out (in italics) sooner or lates, at today's youth is undoubtedly different from the pre-internet youth.

Today's students - K through college - represent the first generation to grow up with this new technology. They have spent their entire lives surrounded by and using computers, videogames, digital music players, video cams, cell phones, and all other toys and tools of the digital age. Today's average college grads have spent less than 5,000 hours of their lives reading, but over 10,000 hours playing video games (not to mention 20,000 hours watching TV). Computer games, email, the Internet, cell phones and isntant messaging are integral parts of their lives. (Prensky 2001: 1)

I'm suspecting the 10,000 hours thing has something to do with Malcolm Gladwell.

It is now clear that as a result of this ubiquitous environment and the sheer volume of their interaction with it, today's students think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors. These differences go far further and deeper than most educators suspect or realize. "Different kinds of experiences lead to different brain structures," says Dr. Bruce D. Perry of Baylor College of Medicine. As we shall see in the next installment, it is very likely that our students' brains have physically changed - and are different from outs - as a result of how they grew up. But whether or not this is literally true, we can say with certainty that their thinking patterns have changed. I will get to how they have changed in a minute. (Prensky 2001: 1)

Well, my own case - this blog here - is an example of this. Before information technology such quote-and-comment presentation would have been extremely demanding or even impossible; I do it as a matter of course because for me it is simple. But it also implies that I do not have to memorize everything that I read and I don't fuze everything into my own thinking. Rather I create associations and mark them down as comments. Later when I need the information I can revisit the association and use the quoted text in my texts with exact citations. The downside is that I seem to have little if any original ideas and the text that I create seems more like a fabric of quotes than a natural line of thought.

What should we call these "new" students of today? Some refer to them as the N-[for Net]-gen or D-[for digital]-. But the most useful designation I have found for them is Digital Natives. Our students today are all "native speakers" of the digital language of computers, video games and the Internet. (Prensky 2001: 1)

I am a digital native, but in the sense that I was acquainted with it by the age of 10 and grew so fascinated with information technology that I even studied it officially (vocational school since the age 16).

So what does that make the rest of us? Those of us who were not born into the digital world but are, at some later point in their lives, become fascinated by and adopted many or most aspects of the new technology are, and always will be compared to them, Digital Immigrants. (Prensky 2001: 1-2)

It sounds like "digital age" is a place.

There are hundreds of examples of the digital immigrant accent. They include printing out your email (or having your secretary print it out for you - an even "thicker" accent); needing to print out a document written on the computer in order to edit it (rather than just editing on the screen); and bringing people physically into your office to see an interesting web site (rather than just sending them the URL). I'm sure you can think of one or two examples of your own without much effort. My own favorite example is the "Did you get my email?" phone call. Those of us who are Digital Immigrants can, and should, laugh at ourselves and our "accent." (Prensky 2001: 2)

We're so accostumed to the digital technologies already that these seem like very antiquated examples - surely no one prints emails?

Lest this perspective appear radical, rather than just descriptive, let me highlight some of the issues. Digital Natives are used to receiving information really fast. They like to parallel process and multi-task. They prefer their graphics before their text rather than the opposite. They prefer random access (like hypertext). They function best when networked. They thrive on instant gratification and frequent rewards. They prefer games to "serious" work. (Prensky 2001: 2)

The note on information retrieval speed is important. I have at times felt during lectures that whatever the lecturer is going on about could be summed up into a paragraph of text with links to specific articles and webpages.

Schrems, John J. 1967. Ernst Cassirer and Political Thought. The Review of Politics 29(2): 180-203.

In the first chapter of the Essay on Man Cassirer sketched the history of man's knowledge of himself - "the highest aim of philosophical inquiry." The path traces man's gradual approach to freedom, but ends in what Cassirer calls the crisis of our age: the "loss of intellectual center." We have achieved a complete anarchy of thought in which each individual thinker gives his own picture of human nature and of culture. (Schrems 1967: 180)

Seeing as the situation Cassirer describes is that of his own lifetime, this probably doesn't translate to modern times.

The history of man's knowledge of himself, culture, is a history of man's progressive self-liberation. (Schrems 1967: 181)

But this is exactly what anarchy esposes: self-liberation.

Man's social consciousness depends upon a double act, of identification and discrimination. Man cannot find himself, he cannot become aware of his individuality, save through the medium of social life. But to him this medium signifies more than an external determining force. Man, like the animals, submits to the rules of society but, in addition, he has an active share in bringing about, and an active power to change, the forms of social life. (Cassirer 1944: 223)

This is from An Essay on Man (New Haven, 1944) and is comparable to the notion of homo duplex in Durkheim.

Kant's new and distinctive attitude towards life is one in which man achieves his distinctive dignity by "creating" freedom. Freedom, for him, is "a special kind of determinism" according to which "the laws which we obey in our actions is not imposed from without but ... the moral subject gives this law to itself." Freedom is given by the subject to himself. (Schrems 1967: 187)

Very much the same suggestion propounded by Berdyaev in relation with power.

...the greatest problem for the human race and the greatest concrete task placed before it become the attainment of a universal law administering civil society; i.e., a society which is not founded on a mere relationship of might, a relationship of rulers and ruled, but which considers every one of its members as an end in itself, as a free agent who participates in the constitution and administration of the whole and who to that extent heeds the laws only because he has given them to himself. (Cassirer 1932: 540)

This is from "Kant" in Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, Vol. VIII. [archive] and I tend to agree - I don't feel that I am rightfully obliged to follow the letter of the constitution [põhiseadus] as I have not had any say in it.

According to Cassirer, after Machiavelli's revolutionary but liberating blow only two paths are possible for men to follow: either the enslavement of totalitarianism which is the logical term of splendid wickedness, or the freedom of natural right which counterbalanced Machiavellism. For Cassirer, the first alternative is unthinkable; it is contrary to the highest aim of philosophy and human culture, that is, self-knowledge and self-liberation through self-realization. (Schrems 1967: 188)

Meritorious statement.

Cassirer intended a philosophy of culture which, while aware of the "various powers of man," does not lose sight of "humanity." In the philosophy of symbolic forms the various powers of man, seen in language, art, religion, science, are "looked upon as so many variations of a common theme." This common theme of "symbolic expression" is the "common denominator of all [of man's] cultural activities: in myth and poetry, in language, in art, in religion, and in science." Such a philosophy of humanity looks not at the results of the various human activities but at the "unity of action." What is sought is "not a unity of products but a unity of the creative process." Man in his activities "creates" myth, religious rites or creeds, works of art, scientific theories. (Schrems 1967: 191)

An outline of Cassirer's philosophy of culture.

The clue to the nature of man is "the symbol." "Hence, instead of defining man as an animal rationale, we should define him as an animal symbolicum." Here we have a profoundly new concept of man. He is an animal symbolicum who builds up his own world. "Symbolic thought ... overcomes the natural inertia of man and endows him with a new ability, the ability constantly to reshape his human universe." (Schrems 1967: 192)

Alas the well-known homo symbolicum.

With this understanding there is found a "clue of Ariadne," the philosophy of symbolic forms, which can lead us out of the labyrinth of our "mass of disconnected and disintegrated data" concerning human nature. Myth and religion, language and art, science and history, previously considered "disparate and heterogenous" are, with a philosophy of symbolic forms, "one subject." They are different roads leading to a common center." (Schrems 1967: 192)

In a similar vain nonverbalism unites disparate and disconnected sets of knowledge into one unity concerned with human behavior.

In the process of man's progressive self-liberation in the creation of culture, religion becomes less and less important. (Schrems 1967: 197)

Worthy of being an epigraph.

Insubordination Now

Valastro, Orazio 2010. Insubordination now. Online. Accessed 18th Feb 2013. Available: http://turbellaria.blogspot.com/2010/05/insubordination-now_08.html

INSUBORDINATION NOW
WE MUST DESERT THE ARMY to unmask its true nature, questioning the State's legitimacy and refusing to become accomplices and instruments of repression and the choice of death.

I think the premise here is completely invalid. One needs to join the army and go through the training process, perhaps even establish a higher rank, to unmask its true nature. It is easy to exude "the stale breath of ideologues" but it accomplishes little.

The army is one of the clearest manifestations of what is known as the State, instrument of coercion and social violence which represses in the name of the social order desired and supported by the bosses.

This is pretty much self-evident: the State holds a monopoly of value and the Repressive State Apparatuses - such as the army and police - are indeed the instruments of "maintaining order". The connotation here is that the present order is illegitimate and should not be maintained. I do agree with the aspect of coercion, specifically the military transforming servicemen into "instruments of coercion", mainly by being coerced themselves.

The Italian army is an example of this reality. It served for the forced unification of the peninsula under the Savoy monarchy and to control popular insurrections (elimination of banditry, the Milan massacre of 1898). From the beginning it unleashed its repressive nature, forgetting its claimed duty as "defender of the sacred frontiers" and beginning its colonial invasions (Eritrea, Libya) and the interventionist politics of the first world war. After the second world war, the greatest and most atrocious legalized genocide, armies have been used to enforce coups d'etats (Greece 1967), to restore "order" (Czekoslovakia, 1968; Poland 1970/81), or as arm of political blackmail (Italy, 1964; France 1968).

This is what happens when the army is used for political ends, and undoubtedly it oftentimes is. Even Estonia is taking part of the Mission to Afghanistan or whatever it is called, having almost no obvious bearing to defending Estonia.

Today therefore the existence of obligatory military service does not have the aim, as they try to make us believe, of an efficient defense of the "Nation" but maintains a purely political direction. This direction was clarified in the Atlantic Pact, signed in '49 as the NATO, through which the Americans had occasion to concentrate their strength in Italy and the rest of Europe in defence of the capitalist structures of the member countries of the alliance, leaving the Italian army with the legalised task of repression within the country of any form of class struggle, any revolutionary action by the exploited and any ideology which denies authority as a social system.

I am not sure how purely political the local military forces are, but there surely is a political investment. The connection with politics can be established from another point of view as well: the current "strenght" of the military, meaning obligatory service time, is justified with russofobia. It is clear that when they say "enemy" they mean russians, as this is basically the only aggressive neighbor we have.

The State also imposes consensus of the army and its structure as instrument of repression on the young through the obligation of military service.
Before being called to military service I already had fairly clear ideas as to what the army and its real function within society is, conception which I developed through my anarchist militance. Then, finding myself like thousands of young people every year faced with the hostile reality of life in the barracks, I have chosen to refuse the role of proletarian in uniform, to refuse the obligation of military service.

I am interested in the specifics of this "hostile reality" - and what can be learned of it. It is one thing to avoid and refuse it but completely another to infiltrate it and fight it with any means necessary (in my case, intellectual menas).

My act is directed towards underlining my critical attitude towards power and its repressive organisations, by denouncing the homicidal and destructive logic of the military structure and contributing to generalising the practice of desertion as struggle against the army, authoritarian appendix of the State.

I also am critical towards power, but then again who isn't? For a powerless person it is very natural to object power. Perhaps it is wise to "deny it battle" and win the only way it is truly possible, but this will not end the war itself. It is imperative to battle, to denounce the homicidal and destructive logic of the military structure but denounce it more severely after letting it take a hold of you. That is, you cannot blow up walls without going near them.

In fact, the carabinieri, as branch ! of the army and the police, as armed structure of the State, are invested in first person with repressive action and used to strike every initiative put into act by the exploited in their attempt to reappropriate what has been taken from them, to heavily dissuade any rebellion against constituted order and to convince the rebels to return to their posts of exploitation in the factories, country and schools.

The "taking back what has been taken from them" trope is not viable in every context - "reappropriation" should be well justified. On the other hand it is completely justified to stand against repressive action and exploitation.

These forces which defend exploitation and render it possible, often do not hesitate to assassinate the exploited in the streets and to terrorise with institutional violence: Modena 1950 - demonstration against lockout - 6 workers killed by the forces of order. Mussomelo 1954 - demonstration because of lack of drinking water - police shoot and kill three women and a man. Reggio Emilia 1960 - mass demonstration against the Tombroni government - 5 dead. At the same time 4 dead in Palermo and one in Catania. Avola 1968 - farm workers demonstrate - police kill two trade unionists. Battipaglia 1969 - demonstration for work - police kill two workers. Milan 1970 - demoristration one year after the State massacre and the murder of Pinelli - police kill Saverio Santarelli with a tear gas canister.
No less heavy is the use of the military in situations which are difficult to control: Orgosolo 1969 - shepherds are chased from the fields by firing maneouvres; parachutists and carabinieri intervene, the village is encircled and "mopped up". Rome 1969 - demonstration of 100,000 engineering workers, the Confindustria headquarters taken over by the military and surrounded by tanks.
I think these few examples will be enough to explain the true function of the Armed Forces.

These are indeed gruesome examples.

If I am here today it is to underline the repressive function of the State exercised against all those, who - like myself and many other comrades - desert the army and are struggling for a society without exploitation and without privilege.
So long as the State exists laws will exist which defend the dominant classes and their interests.
by anarchist deserter Orazio Valastro

To conclude: according to this text, the true function of army is to repress the people. This links up with what Guy Debord has written about the spartans. Basically, the military forces violently feed off of the people and defend the social organization which accomodates this.

Microecology

Ball, Donald W. Ball 1973. Microecology: Social Situations and Intimate Space. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

Irrespective of any other situational properties, all face-to-face social encounters take place within an intimate spatial context - a microecological environment within which interactants are territorially located; spatially defined vis-á-vis one another as their interdepartment outcomes, evaluations, and experiences are geometrically anchored. They sit, they stand, they posture and slouch, they gesture and jiggle - all the while positioning and repositioning themselves, both molarly and molecularly within the horizontal and vertical coordinates of intimate or immediate space - spatially communicating social meamings about themselves, their partners, and the situation around them. In short, all social activities are spatially located and variably structured. (Ball 1973: 3)

It almost seems as if these coordinates were significant - as if people who position themselves are aware of... numbers.

There appear to be at least three basic traditions in the relatively sparse social scientific literature on the subject. These are, (1) the microgeographical: distributional studies as prototheoretical statements of Robert Sommer and his colleagues; (2) the proxemics: space-as-communication orientation of Edward T. Hall; and (3) the kinesics: movement-of-the-body-as-communication tradition which starts scientifically with Darwin (1872), is carried on in the ethologists' concern with animal communication (Armstrong, 1965; Barnett, 1963), and among social scientists is most strongly associated with the writings of Ray L. Birdwhistell. (Ball 1973: 3)

I wonder if other suchlike fields could be similarly titled, e.g. oculesics as eye-movement-as-communication. Not a very useful thought, but an interesting one.

And since humans have the capacity for self-indication and the monitoring of their own acts, they may be in copresence with themselves alone, i.e., they may be audience to their own performances. Thus, we employ a social psychological perspective, more specifically one that is symbolically interactionist (Mead, 1934; Stone and Farberman, 1970), albeit bereft of verbalizations, the basic stuff of most analyses in this tradition. (Ball 1973: 4)

Ball gets right to the point of what I like to call self-communication.

Not only are these orientations culturally learned, the products of socialization, they are also interdependent: definitions of self and others are spatially-based, both physically and metaphorically. In other words, part of our definitions of "who we are" depends on answers to the question of "where we are." (Ball 1973: 6)

Very true.

Such [face-to-face or copresent] transactions take place in what may be called microspace: this defined as the bounded limits of naturally transmitted communication; that is, the spatial confines within which symbolic exchange between actors so located can take place without strain or artificial aid. These boundaries are set by visual auditory, tactile, and olfactory barriers, (especially the first) - e.g., sight restraints, sund levels, inter alia. Such limiting factors include the physiological, such as sensory acuity; the physical-mechanical, walls for instance; the psychological, e.g. cognitive engrossment (Goffman 1961a:1-81), selective attention, inattention, and perception; and the social, that is the rules that define the parameters of social settings. Examples of this last include the conventions regulating eye-contact (Argyle, 1969:105-110). The paradigmatic case of a bounded microspace is a room or a walled establishment (Goffman, 1956:66); but it could be the bench seat of a bus, a table in a noisy cafeteria, or for two prospectors meeting on the desert, the limits of the horizon itself. (Ball 1973: 8)

A definition of microspace. The role of selective attention (sensory gating) is noted. And the cafeteria table example relates directly to a scene in Orwell wherein many of these same factors play an inhibiting role for Winston to establish communicative contact with Julia.

[George] Simmel on the other hand, treated microspace more rigorously at the conceptual level, while as was his custom even less so at the empirical level, than did [Herbert] Spencer. One of Simmel's concerns was what he called the "ideal sphere" (1950:321-322). This is the zone of socially defined personal space (Sommer, 1959:247-248) surrounding the person, the violation of or intrusion into which leads to felt psychological discomfort and anxiety by those whose ideal sphere is so encroached upon by others. (Ball 1973: 10)

Another neat historical notion added to my ever-increasing inventory of basically useless scientific-philsophical terms.