April 2017

academicianzex:

balioc:

So.  This “missing mood” idea that’s been getting super popular of late…

…it’s just a generalized tone argument, right?

And, like, I am totally fine with that.  To be clear.  Tone arguments get a bad rap these days.  Sure, “that’s nasty and you’re out of line” doesn’t reflect on the truth or falsehood of a proposition – in exactly the same way that “you have a missing mood” doesn’t – but it is in fact very useful to be able to say “this discourse has rules, because it’s important that as many people as possible be able to participate without fear, and if you break those rules we’re going to smack you down for reasons unrelated to whether you’re right or wrong.” 

But, for better or worse, “missing mood” is a tone argument.  It’s saying: Whatever you espouse, you’re supposed to be espousing it somberly and gravely, with a profound appreciation for the costs of your preferred policies.  If you seem too cavalier or aggressive about scoring points, if you seem too happy about winning, that’s going to earn you some Distrust Points and we’re going to take you less seriously overall.  And this logic applies to literally any discursive position that someone might take.

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Except that I think a lot of the “missing mood” enthusiasts don’t realize how content-neutral this idea actually is.  Based on the structure of the arguments I’ve seen, it seems like they expect the “correct” mood to point in exactly one direction for every issue – like, even if the evidence turns out to mandate Solution B, obviously every decent person is going to want Solution A, and a failure to feel that way is an indication of Something Being Wrong With You.  Evidence of suspiciously non-moral thinking, at any rate. 

Which is of course total nonsense.  This kind of meta-argument isn’t actually that different from regular argument.  Whatever your preferred position is, you’re going to be able to put together an argument for why decent people should want to agree with you. 

Like…the archetypical display of a missing mood, according to that Bryan Caplan essay (and according to most of the discourse I’ve seen), is the chest-pounding aggressive joy of the nationalist hawk.  “The reasonable hawkish mood is sorrow – and constant yearning for a peaceful path.”  A hawk who doesn’t display those things is probably insincere or evil or at least very thoughtless.  War is hell, dontcha know?

And to this, the actual (American) hawk replies:

The United States is better at war than any other polity in the world.  We have developed the power to exercise our will across the globe through military means.  When we do, the benefits for our nation are immense.  The people, who are normally so fractious and so riven, are bonded together in patriotism. The economy soars.  Young men (and women) are given the chance to forge their character in the only crucible of spirit that has ever really meant anything.

What do we seek to do with this great power?  We seek to make things better, for everyone.  We seek to overthrow dictators and tyrants.  We seek to win freedom for oppressed peoples.  We seek to spread democracy and prosperity. 

Maybe, when all the evidence has been weighed, it’ll turn out that this doesn’t work; maybe all we can do, when we flex our military muscle, is cause more damage.  Maybe we’re actually so powerless that we can’t defeat the wicked and bring a better life to the downtrodden.  Maybe there’s no just war we can fight that will turn our feckless youths into heroes.  But if that’s true, it would be a great tragedy.  And if you’re fucking laughing and singing about it, if you seem thrilled to turn our symbols of martial valor into badges of shame amongst the smug elite set, this does not inspire me to think of you as a moral agent acting in good faith.

You can do this for pro- and anti-immigration positions, for economic authoritarianism and for libertarianism, for transhumanism and Leon Kass metaphysical biodeterminism, on and on and on.  It’s not hard. 

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And if your response is “well, some of those alleged missing moods seem totally reasonable to me, and some of them just seem like empty argumentation – ”

– well, congratulations, you’ve discovered that humans sometimes have different moral values.  Which is really where this whole thing should have started and ended.

This is an excellent post, but I think your example cuts against your point. That’s a really good steelman of the hawkish position - one that would be advance by a Prussian general, or maybe a Spanish-American war advocate. In the modern era, you almost never hear people exulting on the character building qualities of war, at least since the end of WWI.

It’s considered gauche to claim that the actual fighting of a war, as opposed to its consequences, is what makes a war worthwhile. And yet people really do like killing people and seeing our soldiers kill people on TV. So you’ll have people say in one breath “we’ve exhausted all other options with Saddam,” and in the next create YouTube compilations of bombed being dropped over “God bless the USA.”

Your steelman doesn’t have a missing mood. A good steelman won’t. But the actual existing American war hawks that try to reconcile their bloodlust with the Somme absolutely has a missing mood.

The question isn’t whether this hawk is displaying a missing mood.  (Which, to be clear, he absolutely is – as you imply, he’s failed to learn the lessons of the Somme, and there are good reasons to look askance at that.) 

The question is whether he sees a missing mood in you.  Which he is, assuming that you’re a standard-issue American urban elite dove type.  He sees your lack of interest in patriotism, your lack of respect for the sacrifices and the heroism of the military, etc. etc. etc., and thinks that you’re not reacting to the evidence like a decent person would, and therefore he probably trusts your evidence a little less than he would if you made the appropriate rhetorical genuflections.

So.  This “missing mood” idea that’s been getting super popular of late…

…it’s just a generalized tone argument, right?

And, like, I am totally fine with that.  To be clear.  Tone arguments get a bad rap these days.  Sure, “that’s nasty and you’re out of line” doesn’t reflect on the truth or falsehood of a proposition – in exactly the same way that “you have a missing mood” doesn’t – but it is in fact very useful to be able to say “this discourse has rules, because it’s important that as many people as possible be able to participate without fear, and if you break those rules we’re going to smack you down for reasons unrelated to whether you’re right or wrong.” 

But, for better or worse, “missing mood” is a tone argument.  It’s saying: Whatever you espouse, you’re supposed to be espousing it somberly and gravely, with a profound appreciation for the costs of your preferred policies.  If you seem too cavalier or aggressive about scoring points, if you seem too happy about winning, that’s going to earn you some Distrust Points and we’re going to take you less seriously overall.  And this logic applies to literally any discursive position that someone might take.

Except that I think a lot of the “missing mood” enthusiasts don’t realize how content-neutral this idea actually is.  Based on the structure of the arguments I’ve seen, it seems like they expect the “correct” mood to point in exactly one direction for every issue – like, even if the evidence turns out to mandate Solution B, obviously every decent person is going to want Solution A, and a failure to feel that way is an indication of Something Being Wrong With You.  Evidence of suspiciously non-moral thinking, at any rate. 

Which is of course total nonsense.  This kind of meta-argument isn’t actually that different from regular argument.  Whatever your preferred position is, you’re going to be able to put together an argument for why decent people should want to agree with you. 

Like…the archetypical display of a missing mood, according to that Bryan Caplan essay (and according to most of the discourse I’ve seen), is the chest-pounding aggressive joy of the nationalist hawk.  “The reasonable hawkish mood is sorrow – and constant yearning for a peaceful path.”  A hawk who doesn’t display those things is probably insincere or evil or at least very thoughtless.  War is hell, dontcha know?

And to this, the actual (American) hawk replies:

The United States is better at war than any other polity in the world.  We have developed the power to exercise our will across the globe through military means.  When we do, the benefits for our nation are immense.  The people, who are normally so fractious and so riven, are bonded together in patriotism. The economy soars.  Young men (and women) are given the chance to forge their character in the only crucible of spirit that has ever really meant anything.

What do we seek to do with this great power?  We seek to make things better, for everyone.  We seek to overthrow dictators and tyrants.  We seek to win freedom for oppressed peoples.  We seek to spread democracy and prosperity. 

Maybe, when all the evidence has been weighed, it’ll turn out that this doesn’t work; maybe all we can do, when we flex our military muscle, is cause more damage.  Maybe we’re actually so powerless that we can’t defeat the wicked and bring a better life to the downtrodden.  Maybe there’s no just war we can fight that will turn our feckless youths into heroes.  But if that’s true, it would be a great tragedy.  And if you’re fucking laughing and singing about it, if you seem thrilled to turn our symbols of martial valor into badges of shame amongst the smug elite set, this does not inspire me to think of you as a moral agent acting in good faith.

You can do this for pro- and anti-immigration positions, for economic authoritarianism and for libertarianism, for transhumanism and Leon Kass metaphysical biodeterminism, on and on and on.  It’s not hard. 

And if your response is “well, some of those alleged missing moods seem totally reasonable to me, and some of them just seem like empty argumentation – ”

– well, congratulations, you’ve discovered that humans sometimes have different moral values.  Which is really where this whole thing should have started and ended.

kontextmaschine:

So if I told you someone was using century-old hand-crafted artisanal methods to adapt traditional folk tales into a quaintly obsolete art form from the American Golden Age that would sound like the most twee, precious, non-normie thing ever and I just described Disney animation.

Disney’s pretty weird like that. Like, take the parks. They’re combinations of Coney Island and World’s Fairs with this undisguisable midcentury earnestness. These are places that get seriously psyched about the potential of novel transit modalities.

And the theming - “Let’s look forward to the wonderful future of space exploration, celebrate our roots in farm towns and the frontier west, AND enjoy the exotic charm of the South Pacific and Old Dixie!”

THERE IS A PAGEANT WHERE ROBOTS PAY TRIBUTE TO EXECUTIVE-DRIVEN WHIG HISTORY.

Oh. Oh. And. “The rides aren’t very thrilling, but your kids will love the chance to explore the worlds of all their favorite authors - A.A. Milne, J.M. Barrie, Kenneth Grahame, Mark Twain, AND Lewis Carroll - while you’ll marvel at the exquisite background design.”

(Sun-dappled Edwardian neoteny and obsessive set decoration. Wes Anderson makes movies like Walt Disney made parks.)

And we’d recognize this all as a weird thing to exist in 2015 if we weren’t just used to it as the background noise of America. Like, I don’t really watch TV so I don’t see commercials much these days.

Oh man, they’re a trip in their own right if you’ve stopped taking them for granted. Like, “oh hey, for the next 30 seconds some of our best artists are going to use all their techniques and leverage all your emotions and desires and every social value in a masterful, unapologetic, and unforgettable bid for you to give us money, and then everyone will move on and no one will acknowledge this even happened.”

But the Disney World commercials in particular - you notice they don’t really make a case for going to Disney World, or even really explain what Disney World is. Because they’re not pitching Disney World, they’re reminding you of Disney World. It’s not “hey, Disney World is a thing you could go to”, it’s “hey, maybe it’s time for this generation’s pilgrimage”.

Disney’s weird. It’s kind of a company, but also custodian of some of the cultic functions of American culture, something like the priestly colleges of ancient Rome.

Like, they maintain sites of pilgrimage. I’m not saying that as a joke. Back of the envelope calculation, Americans go to Disney parks at a rate 7 times higher than Muslims go to Mecca. (The line between “tourist trap” and “religious site” has always been thin.)

And they’re custodians of the national narrative. Like I’ve said, they pitch “continuity with midcentury small town and earlier frontier culture” as a fundamental, almost taken-for-granted aspect of Americanness with a confidence and charm you don’t often see these days. And I mean, hell, the Disney animated canon itself basically is to America what Grimm’s was to Germany.

And as custodians, they curate that narrative - like, we joke about “you know your identity group’s made it in America when you get your own Disney princess”, and laugh at the people reediting Disney character designs to look like their specific subgroup, but that only works because it’s fucking true, your identity group’s made it in America when you get your own Disney princess. I’ve worked with Disney Channel casting, and they mix ethnicities with the same care, precision, and scale that Pfizer mixes drugs.

And that robot pageant, the Hall of Presidents? Look at this history. It started out in the ‘70s as a celebration of consensus history and popular triumph, with character actors playing great men and Civil War tensions understood as a challenge to national unity. In 1993 it was reworked by Eric Foner to be narrated by Maya Angelou, use “regular people” unknowns to portray more vulnerable takes on historic figures and re-frame the Civil War in terms of slavery as a moral challenge. In 2009 they redid it again, mostly keeping the changes but bringing back some of the old Hollywood charm and putting Morgan Freeman as the voice of civic authority.

And like, as a representation of how America understands itself and its history, correct. That is absolutely, in every way, 100% correct.

(In the other direction, Walt Disney originally wanted to call it “One Nation Under God”, which yikes)

They say American copyright terms keep getting extended under pressure from Disney who wants to keep hold of all their founding properties, I almost wonder if it wouldn’t be less of a corruption of the civic system to just carve out special protections for Disney in recognition of their distinct role in America.

But… at the end of the day, it’s all just a strategy to maximize profits.

I used to be a lot more libertarian than I am now, and one of their tribal boogiemen, the idea of a “Ministry of Culture” - a government that sees the national culture as its domain, to shape as it will, “as it will” meaning as it always does with governments “through the instrument of bureaucracy” - that still rankles.

But what’s the alternative, though? You think about it and you realize it’s this - the national mythos rests in the hands of a publicly traded corporation.

(And then you maybe start to appreciate WHY having your king as the head of your church once made sense as a symbol of liberty and self-determination.)

((And start to recall the CIA going around giving grants to the avant-garde with a certain fondness.))

We live in the capitalpunk AU.

kontextmaschine:

Disney’s pretty weird like that. Like, take the parks. They’re combinations of Coney Island and World’s Fairs with this undisguisable midcentury earnestness.

This is a lot less true than it used to be, specifically with reference to the parks.  By this point I think I’m willing to say that it’s not true at all, except as a legacy feature; the Powers That Be are positively champing at the bit to strip out all the midcentury earnestness, so that they can replace it with all that Hip Marketable Shit that the kids love, and they do so given the slightest excuse.  If you care about that oddball, magical, We’re-Totally-Into-It atmosphere, it’s enough to make you cry.

You can see this most easily with EPCOT, which is really a shell of its former self.  World of Motion, a diorama ride about how the world is going to be saved by the labcoated heroism of General Motors, is now basically a roller coaster.  Universe of Energy, a diorama ride about how the world is going to be saved by the labcoated heroism of General Electric, is now mostly about Bill Nye and Ellen DeGeneres (!).  Maelstrom, once a lovably dorky thing about how the grand old Viking spirit still lives on in the oil-focused Norway of today, is now a showcase for the characters from Frozen.  On and on and on. 

(It’s happening more slowly in the Magic Kingdom, largely because the old Magic Kingdom stuff has more of a vocal fanbase to get upset about changes.  But it reaches a sort of hellish apogee in the revamped Enchanted Tiki Room, where the quaint old singing-parrot animatronics are interrupted by Iago and Zazu talking about how lame and out-of-touch the old version of the attraction was.) 

*****

What lesson is to be learned from this?  I dunno.  I don’t think there’s a general point to be made here about some kind of sea change in the Guiding Geist of Disney; the movie wing, at least, seems to be just as serious about its artistry as ever.  Probably it just boils down to “corporations are not actually magic egregores, they are messy conglomerations of people with different agendas and interests, we should probably stop trying to totemize them.” 

So there’s this weird narrative trope that I call the Masculine Ideal of the Brave Dumb Jock.  You find it sometimes in fantasy novels, especially bad ones, and in media that’s trying to portray (American) high school culture.  I’m sure it has other native habitats as well.

When this shows up, it’s almost always set up as a generally-accepted social standard that applies exclusively to men (hence the name).  Under the rules of the Ideal, proper men are supposed to be:

* physically capable;

* physically courageous;

* socially dominant, or at least very confident; and

* kind of stupid, or at least un-intellectual. 

With regards to physicality, the Ideal favors brute strength and bulk over agility.  With regards to comportment, it favors  bluff extraversion over reflectiveness of any kind.  With regard to decision-making, it favors straightforward valor over strategy.  (“We charge straight at the enemy.  Anything else is for cowards!”)  Men who are too thinky – or who are physically small – or who aren’t interested in being part of the alpha male’s posse – are basically faggots of one kind or another. 

(In fiction, the Ideal usually gets trotted out right near the beginning of the story, where it’s used to establish that our handsome brainy lithely-athletic wish-fulfillment protagonist is nonetheless a Relatable Social Outcast.  The characters who espouse (and embody) the Ideal are petty bullies, or occasionally tertiary-hero Big Macho Idiots to whom our main heroes get to feel superior once they’ve come into themselves.)

The important thing about the Ideal is that it exists only as a strawman.  No actual real-life culture has ever endorsed it.  It has discernible features in common with extant Codes of Masculinity, to be sure, but…the resemblance is not strong.  In particular, it’s really hard to find anyone who valorizes stupidity as a masculine virtue. 

That is what I thought, anyway.  Recent Tumblr trawls have caused me to wonder whether this is actually becoming a real thing amongst the woke set. In particular, there have been an awful lot of posts on the theme of omg how great is it when bro-tastic bros are also nice?!?!…and not a few on the theme of gosh i really want a big burly masculine dude who just listens to me and makes me feel protected and doesn’t have opinions…

…and, well, it all somehow ends up feeling weirdly similar to the way that certain men used to valorize stupidity in women.  (And still do, I’m sure, although it’s not nearly as much of a thing as it once was.)  The Nice Bro, as far as I can tell, is a parallel figure to the Dumb Doting Girlfriend.  He provides all the benefits of masculinity to a very substantial degree, and he is endlessly good-natured and supportive, and he doesn’t have any independent mental anything going on that might interfere with your stuff.  

I suppose this is part of the thing at which @raggedjackscarlet is gesturing when he talks about the “Sensitive Beefcake / Threatening Dweeb dichotomy.” 

And, like, OK?  Nothing wrong with wanting that, if you want it, I guess.  But it feels weird, in very much the same way that it feels weird to me that anyone would actively prefer a dumb girlfriend.  Except even more so.  The Dumb Doting Girlfriend at least has the ancient sexual-allure-of-the-feminine angel-of-the-home memeplex on which to rest her appeal, but the Nice Bro doesn’t seem to be hitting any cultural-programming buttons that I can identify, he’s pretty much just a Labrador that you can fuck.  

A clarifying note, because I’m pretty sure it will be needed: I am not saying that actual real-life “bros” are stupid.  I am saying that the idealized figure of the Nice Bro, who seems to be fashionable right now, apparently draws some of his appeal from being stupid.

raggedjackscarlet:

Y’know, @bambamramfan, I respect you. I think you’re one of the most insightful people on the Blue Hellsite. I especially love the posts where you get Lacanian. The Big Other might just be the most valuable concept for understanding politics in the age of the cultural panopticon.

But I stayed quiet when I shouldn’t have– when you made that introductory post to your philosophy that started be contrasting it with me and my supposed glibertarian ways.

I can stand being misinterpreted… but not when the interpretation is the exact opposite of what I meant. 

I should have said all this months ago. And I know– I KNOW– that I’m gonna sound like a whiny little bitch, but here we go anyway.

I’m going to explain exactly what I meant when I said “compassion is a brand, and I’m not in its demographic”

The Blunt Version:
“MAN, THE POLITICIZATION OF THE SELF-HELP INDUSTRY SUCKS!”

The Rambling and Excruciatingly Detailed Version:

It starts with this: social media forces us all into the limelight, it turns all online activity into spectacle, and gives everyone in the peanut gallery a direct link to you. Only a psychopath or a saint could remain unaffected by that. And here and now in the 21st century anglosphere, the loudest faction of the peanut gallery only cares about one thing: politics.

What I’m concerned with here is that happens when this process is inflicted on a certain kind of profession: the Guru. Those ersatz-shamanic figures who are supposed to guide the lost through the mists of modernity. Part preacher, part therapist, part “"philosopher”“, they tend to create miniature cults of personality around themselves, and the people in those cults have invested almost all their mental/spiritual well-being in the Guru’s words, largely in part because the poor bastards have nowhere else to go.  

So. Culture War eats everything. What happens when Culture War eats a Guru?

Keep reading

raggedjackscarlet:

And of course, this whole thing is absurd. you CAN’T mass produce spiritual healing. It’s like taking a hundred Beauties and a hundred The Beasts and trying to break all the curses by making them speed date.

have I got a LARP for you, boy, hoo boy

bambamramfan:

theunitofcaring:

Clinton is probably just calling for airstrikes in Syria because she believes in airstrikes in Syria but I would really like to believe she’s calling for airstrikes in Syria in the hope that Trump will reflexively do the exact opposite of that. It would be so satisfying. I think this is the emotion underlying the proclamations that Trump is playing 8-dimensional chess or whatever; it’s much nicer to believe that we’re in good hands and the scary stuff is the prelude to a better plan than to believe that the people in power are cruel, violent and bad at their jobs.

There was an extremely good book about how pinprick bombing designed to “send a message” to the enemy and look strong at home, without a clear path forward in mind, slowly dragged us into Vietnam even though most military assessments knew that ultimate victory was not possible.

Really, I do recommend the book, which is only boring in how thoroughly the author collects evidence to prove his case. Dereliction of Duty. It’s exactly the sort of book you would read and think “I wish the people in power read this too.”

It was written by HR McMaster, who is the current National Security Advisor, and is credited with kicking Steve Bannon off the NS Council.

So I, uh… really don’t know what to think.

My first guess is “McMaster does not call the shots within the Trump regime security apparatus.”  And, really, it’s hard to see why he would.  There are a lot of people to whom Trump seems a lot likelier to listen. 

But who the hell knows?  Not me, that’s for sure. 

(I vouch for @bambamramfan‘s description of Dereliction of Duty.) 

Now that I think about it, I’m kind of surprised that the cuckoldry-fetish community hasn’t taken up King Arthur as a symbol/icon/mascot.