This entry is somewhat unconvential, but I will place in the "brain & behavior" category because I want comments on my own feelings & attitudes from those who know some psychology. I am an individual with opinions about the world. I suppose you could say that I'm your typical individual with a scientific & operationally materialistic worldview. I'm also mildly right-of-center, and tend to have as many issues with Post Modern "progressives" thought as I do with Religious Right reactionaries. Like the Religious Right I do believe there are truths in this world which are sacred and worth fighting for, that not every human interaction need be broken down into "power relations," or scaffolded by an armada of faux jargon. Unlike the Religious Right I tend to reject the supernaturalist view of the world which is the human consensus, and, I am generally a dissenter from "conventional" traditional mores and preferences. I have my own peculiar values which are at sharp variance with most of humanity. Nevertheless, sometimes I play the boob, and pretend as if I am a Post Modernist victimologist (to use John McWhorter's terminology), or a religious traditionalist or an ethnic activist, and it feels very good. In As Good as it Gets Jack Nicholson said "I think of a man, and I take away reason and accountability" when he writes about women. When I play "the game" I simply remove all reason and accountability, and I start doing verbal "mash ups" without any coherency, and I feel like a kid in a candy store!
Here on this thread I pretended to be a Creationist. Over at the brown American blog Sepia Mutiny I sometimes pretend to be a left-wing ethnic activist "progressive" type with a lot of resentment against evil whites (it would should be evilwhites, because whites are by definition evil and the root of all ill), and sometimes I pretend that I'm a reactionary traditionalist who resents the influence of Western culture on brown Americans, especially the ladies (my line is "A+, not T & A"). On my own blog I strung together as much stupid bullshit as I could recall in 20-30 seconds to attempt to play the race card on Jake Young. Over at Tara's blog I was a humorless guilting victimologist.
I don't believe in any of this shit. I don't think that Western culture is bad, I think that it is superior to most every other culture for all its faults and warts, and I'm glad to live in the West. I think victimology is the exaltation of one of the meanest and most pathetic aspects of the human soul, self-pity and resentment. I happen to think that some of the bullshit that whites will tolerate from non-whites is patronizing, as if non-whites are clever monkeys who should be patted on the head for stringing together coherent sentences (some of them should be, but that's because they are rather stupid). I'm obviously not a Creationist, in fact, they are cognitive thugs who behave in a bestial manner that subborns all the best in the human intellectual spirit. They behave like animals who should be put down, killed & gutted mentally. I've argued with Creationists since I was 11 or 12, and they simply don't play by the normal rules, rather, they behave like pre-modern savages or little children, "mine, mine, mine!." They bring out the worst in my tribal instincts and my blood boils watching them use any tactic to win an argument when the method is what is truly sacred. I don't like to debate Creationists because I have a strong urge scream at them for the violence they do to the intellectual disciplines which I value and love as dearly as they do their god(s). Here is standard Creationist bullshit:
Admin - there is no evidence for scientific communism. That's my point.
So how many cells are there? How many evolved per year? Just curious.Razib - did you know your name is French slang for bizarre?
"Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah!" Can you hear the infant?1 I have less than 100 years to live on this planet, and around 1/3 of it I will be asleep, and this is the infantile shit that I have to process mentally! I don't want SEED to look bad if I say something really nasty and indefensible, so I'll stop there. The Romantics were wrong when they accused science of draining the mystery and emotion from the world, science infuses creation with unparalleled vigor of expression and the elucidation of the exquisite dances of structure and mathematical relations.
Nevertheless, I do occasionally play the game of the Creationist, the victimologist who renders non-whites operational monkeys who are held to lower standards because of the evil in the air and the magic of the white man's sneer, or the old time "burning man" brown. Why?
A few years ago at Foreign Dispatches I was bored and I said something about race + power = racism (I saw it on Real World New York in 1990, Kevin-the-angry-black-man would repeat it all the time) to the effect that Native American slaughter prior to the arrival of Europeans wasn't equivalent to what the whites did. It was just a line I threw out there when I was bored, but to my surprise Daniel Davies took up what I said and started moving the point forward. I was like, "No fucking shit, he believes this load of crap?" At the time I was like, "My God, and I can any fucking thing I want, and people will pick it up and make order out of it, like there's gold in my turds or something." After that I started playing mischief at Sepia Mutiny. I felt bad about this as I am friends with a founder of the weblog and I know how hard it is to keep noise and idiots off your comment boards, and I was a noise and idiot magnet. I was already a lighting rod for out of control commentary since I was the resident right-wing white-washed non-brown brown (or as Ikram Saeed has stated, part alien anthropologist and part member of the family). I violated bounds of discourse several times to the point where individuals lost it and started screaming at me on the comment boards. So why did I pile on by acting all weird? I couldn't help it, sometimes it just felt good to be all moralistic and going with the idiot herd (my comments weren't parsed and run through the analytic eye of the needle when many people agreed with me), as if I cared how other people carried themselves and how they "represented" the race or something stupid like that. I thought people would see through this as I had a long list of comments, but some morons (e.g., someone called "vurdlife" who would have been termed "turdlife," American & white hating asshole that he was) actually wanted me to "explain" myself, as I was expressing FOB sentiments (e.g., what I term "burning man" sentiments, that is, you burn female family members who commit dishonor, or whose husbands die, I guess. They're just women). Other times, I would go on a tear about how white people were responsible for all the evils in the world, and how the West raped India and all that stupid stuff. I didn't really try to make much sense of it, I just made sure it was grammatically correct and just threw in a barrage of words I'd seen around (e.g., "post-colonial," "oppression," "patriarchy," "Eurocentric," "linear thinking," etc.). Strangely enough, again, gold comes out of my turds! People picked up the shit and started tossing it at their enemies (I have a lot of facts in my head so I would brandish totally irrelevant points as if they were salient, and people sometimes bought into it, being brown gives you eastern wisdom, but not more intelligence).
Now, sometimes, as in the comments on Tara's message boards I say stuff that is really hard to defend, but, I kind of like being a total freak and seeing if people will say anything! I mean, I was being an incomprehensible moron, but "DFX" tried to at least engage me as if I was semi-serious. The thing is, I barely know what I'm saying when I spout that drivel, I just have a lot of words, I toss 'em out, make sure they refer to the fact that I'm colored (ergo, downgrade standards of critique since I'm oppressed & all) and they're not, and voila, it seems to work. A lot of times the righteous gig is really transparently dumb, and perhaps people just don't want to get into it with me. Recently I upbraided Nick of Scientific Activist for using the word "chicks." The reality is that I type "chix" and post pictures of smokin' hot chix, so this is really pretty dumb and hypocritical. But it still feels good, even if I am a hypocrite, and I don't mind backing off, I got my high of "hey, you're being bad!" Same sort of stuff when I tack from the Right and criticize people for being lascivious and what not, I don't really think this matters that much, but boy does it feel good pretending like I'm on high looking down at the sinners who are in the hands of an angry God.
Now, I'm telling you all this because I'm kind of disturbed as to why I feel this good. I mean, I kind of wonder, do the morons who spout all this stupid shit feel this good all the time? I mean, it's like mental masturbation without a refractory period! I'm the little cognitive bunny that could. Do the idiot Creationists who post on my message board go through life blissfully secure in their sure knowledge of the moron's mental universe? Do the victimologists who live to crap on whitey feel better for knocking down others instead of pulling themselves up? Do the Po-Mo faux intellectuals enjoy the fact that they never defend a position but just spout out incomprehensibilities which put the onus on the "Other" to interpret their verbal diarrhea?
But I am thinking I'm not being fair. For me, production of discourse I disagree with is pretty easy, and I hold myself to low standards. I don't "double check" the facts, I am totally cool with making shit up and being nasty and brutally instrumentalist in my debating tactics. When it comes to stuff I believe in, I care about, I take more time. Means matter to me, a dirty victory soils the whole point if it all, to get closer to Truth, to know more, to grow more, and to explore all there is around us and within us. So, perhaps Creationists, victimologists and old-time-burning-boys don't live a world filled with secure truths, perhaps they also have values which they care about and don't just toss out a mish-mash to the rest of us. And yet, the reality is that I suspect they might as well do such a thing, as I can certainly "pass" at 10% cognitive capacity. They might get as much of a kick as I do out of "playing another role" where there is no accountability and the stakes are nothing. I don't know. I don't take any of the junk I talk about seriously, but the types that do take it seriously probably can't enjoy how moronic they behave as I do.
But hey, perhaps I'm the retard hey? I guess I don't care, I live to live and do what I need to do before the worms get me.
Addendum: Yes, I use "Post Modernism" in the vulgar colloquial way that we naive materialists are wont to Chris & Clark. After you white boys walk in this camel jockey's shoes I'll listen to your racist criticisms.
1 - I resent every animal who wastes my time, mark my words, I remember all of you.
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At the time I was like, "My God, and I can [say] any fucking thing I want, and people will pick it up and make order out if, like there's gold in my turds or something."...Strangely enough, again, gold comes out of my turds!
Have you ever read the Source magazine? That is probably the best example of this kind of thing...
http://www.thesource.com/
dis?
If you're such a materialist, why do you complaign about a "left" that dosn't even really exist outside the fever dreams of madmen like Rush Limbaugh (other then as a few powerless samples isolated from any sort of power)
why do you complaign about a "left" that dosn't even really exist outside the fever dreams of madmen like Rush Limbaugh
i live in a town where 80% of the people voted for john f. kerry. you don't know me, and you don't know my life. simple as dat bro. though i will tell you that it is a left-wing site that profiled me as a right-wing-racist-homophobe and posted a picture of me, not a right-wing one.
also, is that pic by that oksana chik for reelz, or iz it a "myspace angle."
This is a really weird post. Thanks.
By the way, you should check out Bitch PhD again. She seems to be a person who perfectly walks the line dividing abnormally sane Leftism from the utter insanity of victimology without ever falling in. Kudos to her, it makes for interesting reading.
And razib, just imagine how good it may feel when you are actually meaning that, not only pretending to be at the side of The Good and The Correct against all them evil racists and patriarchal oppressors.
Yesterday I read that discussion at the "science-loving feminists" blog and I really felt sorry for TangoMan. It was almost word by word a replica of my own discussion experience with LeftLibs. The facts are ignored, the sentences twisted and it's always "bigot, racist, oppressor" as the ultimative argument.
Frankly, although I know that you don't like Fred Reed's stance on evolution, I would prefer his opinions about science any time before those of the abovementioned blog. Because at least he never suggested that this or that research should have been forbidden and he actually understands the methods used in genetical research.
;-)
he actually understands the methods used in genetical research
i've seen an exchange between reed & a geneticist on a discussion list we both frequented. if he 'understands' genetical research, we have different definitions of 'understands.'
second, after this exchange, where the geneticist in question pointed him to textbooks and papers to ameliorate his ignorance of this topic, fred wrote a column where he declared he had asked scientists questions about evolution and they didn't respond within anything clear. this is false, the exchange consisted of giving fred a clear & concise reading list.
so yes, a liar is probably preferabble to a commissar, but just so.
At least Fred knows how RAPD's and RFLP's work which is more than one can say about most of the other camp ;-)
It's a power high, Razib. SES by other means. (You know what my theory is.)
Hilarous rants.
And yes I do think people derive lots of easy pleasure from battling morally inferior foes from a position of righteous certitude.
And yes, I think that is basically why it is so frequent, with various degrees of masking. Or none at all.
Leftist commissar types no less than right wing moralist types.
Assuming that this posting isn't a put-on in its own right ...
Hey, part of the high may come from the fact that you're discovering and experiencing the fun of make-believe, which is taking you close to the fun of art. The "creativity" thing is a rush, isn't it? It's giving yourself permission (a big part of creativity) to be/do anything at all, damn the consequences, and just see where it leads, because why the fuck not, and because causing buttkicking mischief is a major pleasure in its own right. Why else do you think people take part in the "art" thing? It's a high like no other, dude, and all it takes is guts and imagination.
Question for ya: Assuming that I'm semi-onto something here, how would you evoke/explain the fun-high-powertrip thing that you experience when you play this make-believe? Artists often compare it to getting in synch with the rhythms of the cosmos, or even merging for a few mintues with the pulse of god. It's like something overcomes you and sweeps you away, right? Well, what is that something? Is "god" a bad word for it? How about if we use the word as a metaphor for "some hard to nail down larger force"?
The "creativity" thing is a rush, isn't it? It's giving yourself permission (a big part of creativity) to be/do anything at all, damn the consequences, and just see where it leads, because why the fuck not, and because causing buttkicking mischief is a major pleasure in its own right. Why else do you think people take part in the "art" thing? It's a high like no other, dude, and all it takes is guts and imagination.
i used to draw. i've written stories (personal novels) as long as 450 pages. no, i don't think it is creativity, as that requires work, some yearning toward virtuosity. there is a measure, accountability exists. this is different because i'm simply moving from grammatical structure to grammatical structure and simply trying to fuck with people. i think david's point is closer, the reality is that i don't feel beholden to any 3rd party standard of truth because it doesn't matter. i always feel at a disadvantage when talking to creationist cretins, and now i know why, they don't care too much about the argument except as a means toward some other point. on the other hand, my set of arguments and methodologies is constrained by the fact that i am transparently and directly attempting to engage what is before us.
Artists often compare it to getting in synch with the rhythms of the cosmos, or even merging for a few mintues with the pulse of god. It's like something overcomes you and sweeps you away, right? Well, what is that something? Is "god" a bad word for it? How about if we use the word as a metaphor for "some hard to nail down larger force"?
i think that you are talking about satan, not god :) like i said before, i've done creative things, and that feeling of transcendence, this ain't. itz like kicking another kidz teeth in for the fun of it, basically, the sort of joy you get from bullying others (something i've done a few times, if not habitually, when i was younger).
i'm trying to give PoMo and Creationist types the benefit of the doubt in that they aren't just little 7 year old beasties. but their substance makes it easy in my opinion. granted, some who don't understand evolution but claim to believe in it can be priggish, but i rarely have encountered the sort of righteous rapid-fire faux critique of creationism from that end that moron creationists often engage in in the reverse (ie., they have their talking points and simply aren't influenced by anything you say). PoMo types are different in that they are slippery, and simply use another tack that might break the coherency of their argument without any shame constantly, and get bogged down in recursive analyses of subjectivity to the point where you start to move backward in the conversation....
That is very odd, I am surprised that you engage in this activity.
Dude, this was all obvious by the fact that you have SOMEONE ELSE'S PICTURE ON YOUR WEBPAGE!
Anyhow, you're a crazy fucker, but I love you anyway.
mnuez
So, mnuez, the seemingly normal person to the left isn't Recessive Razib??