Capitalist pudding

[J Tracy]

The quote was from a long essay by Iain Davis about technocracy. I did not mention Davis because I am no fan in general of his work or political positions, but he does deep dives into some interesting territory focused on WEF and Technocracy and in this case the history of  technocracy and the Neo reactionary movement figures around Trump; Musk, Peter Thiel, Vance and others. As some may know I despise our 2 major political parties and their reliance on  top down power structure  and citizens not caring about truth, or genuine freedom of debate and thought, but looking for easy salvation from party power structures  and agendas, none of which represent real reform for the majority of citizens. Citizens reconcile themselves to voting against who they hate the most, which often is the last party with executive power. 

 I don’t want to initiate a political argument here. But I find it useful to try to understand the deeper social, moral, practical ,philosophical and ecological issues at play,  and finding writers who are looking in that direction helps. So much of day to day politics obscures the question of what we want as people, nations, communities, and what hurts us most and needs to be reformed.

Most ideas have been around for a long time, but technology introduces patterns that have mixed and hard to foresee effects.  

On Mar 7, 2025, at 5:38 AM, matthew cissell <mccissell at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> As a small town kid off to Uni in the 90's, I was lost among the names and concepts being bandied about. There was a subtle and invisible pressure to learn the lingo and use it: the Other, aporia, deconstruction, and, most importantly, postmodernism. And all those names like De Man, Baudrillard, Lacan, etc. I bought the books and dug in. I started to realize that the way academia embraced all this was rather exceptionally a US phenomenon. Moreover, it was mostly the English Dept. with its subdivisions of Rhetoric and all the Whatever-studies that were gobbling it all up without really digging any deeper. Almost none of the people I encountered had read anything by Husserl, for example. Or Merleau-Ponty for that matter. Forget the Analytical cats. That is how I came to have no admiration for certain so-called thinkers. Zizek is a great a example. Frederic Jameson is another. And to that list I would add Lacan and Lyotard along with others. They constitute the Second Betrayal of the Intellectuals. While they were thinking of cool things to say (Baudrillard: "Americans may have no identity, but they do have wonderful teeth. " Idiot hadn't seen the teeth, or lack of, in Kentucky.)
> 
> To tackle the very complex issues you mention, I have found it much more illuminating to delve into Pierre Bourdieu's work. Unlike some so-called sociologists, he actually carried out studies and analyzed the data collected and incorporated it into his books ("Distinction", "Homo Academicus", etc.). Of course that would not be sufficient in and of itself. To understand what workers want or other values or desires they have come to hold would involve looking at how Unions are perceived now as opposed to 80 years ago, shifting voting patterns, NAFTA, Hardhat riots, Vietnam war, and more. (Oh, and a deep look at how post-WWII Capital - Banking and Industry - along with fascists set about the slow dismantling of western liberal democracy, working toward manufactured consent and engineered ignorance.) Some of that would align with the discontent felt by workers in other countries and their turn to the right instead of traditional workers parties focused on economic issues above "culture war battles". I mean, Alternatif Für Deutschland has gained working class voters in the former West Germany.
> 
> In Solidarity,
> mc otis
> 
> 
> 
> On Thu, Mar 6, 2025 at 8:42 PM J Tracy <brook7 at sover.net <mailto:brook7 at sover.net>> wrote:
>> Echoing the “conspicuous consumption” theories of Veblen, French philosopher and sociologist Jean-François Lyotard posited that consumerist workers in modern capitalist societies did not want emancipation. Their materialistic desires meant they enjoyed “swallowing the shit of capital,” Lyotard wrote.
>> 
>> 2 responses: 1)modern philosopher restates plato’s cave allegory 2) one of the more disturbing scenes in  Gravity’s Rainbow 
>> --
>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l