Anyway, not trying to psychoanalyze you :) I'm glad you're happy with the status quo; I'm not even demanding an immediate revolution. Just careful thinking about what it means that society is organized the way it is, what that means for ways of thinking and living and feeling.

Let me ask you a question.

Shoot.

Is there a time in the past that you would rather have lived in than the present time?

There's plenty I would love to visit. Wouldn't it be cool to see the birth of language or writing or computers? :)

Visit, sure! But I mean spend your entire life in.

A time that was on average better than our own.

Is it "please continue to the bottom of the mail for an English version" or "please continue to the end of the mail for an English version"?

End.

@Cerberus Thanks

You could use bottom, but I would prefer end for a non-physical thing.

@OliverSalzburg also I would think you want to say "letter" or something instead of "mail". Just in passing.

@JosephWeissman It's an email, does that change how you feel about your statement?

@OliverSalzburg Understood -- it just reads a bit awkward to my ear. (I might use "e-mail" here.)

@JosephWeissman Thanks

I think mail is less commonly used for e-mail in English than in some other languages (but it is possible).

In Dutch, most people say mail in casual writing/speech.

@Cerberus so I have to admit I feel like this question about the past seems to have some blackmail dimensions; are you trying to trick me into loving corporate nationalism and the repressive global capitalist regime? :)

@JosephWeissman Haha, blackmail...

My point is not that our time is good in absolute terms: it just is. There are good and bad things about it, and we must strive to change the bad things. But I think there were tons of bad things in the past as well.

I'll certainly concede that many are prosperous and happy today -- but I definitely wouldn't want to take a global lottery on which social-economic situation under modern conditions I'd end up in.

If any of you wouldn't mind, I'd really appreciate if someone would take a brief look over the English part of e-mail one of our clients is about to send out: haseke.de/fileadmin/newsletter/request.html

Undoubtedly. Reactionary madness is the order of history...

@OliverSalzburg In the last sentence "question" should be pluralized. LGTM otherwise.

So do you feel that we have more, less, or the same amount of problems as the best period in history?

@JosephWeissman Thanks a lot

@OliverSalzburg no problem!

@Cerberus I'm not sure what the question means -- we certainly have different and more complicated problems than ever before.

But my question is precisely about whether we're free to determine the problems ourselves!

That's what Enlightenment means to me.

@OliverSalzburg Maybe change the addressee.

> Dear valued client

I feel that "dear valued" sounds a bit odd.

@Cerberus You don't like that?

@Cerberus This is one of my worries with science today, especially humanities and human sciences -- that they're quickly becoming "expert systems" used by technocratic administrations to more effectively "manage" the population

I would use only one adjective.

And I think dear would be the better choice.

Interesting

(The morbidly depressing end result: they don't get to decide their problems themselves. They're formulated and framed from the effectively reactionary point of view of the state.)

The opening line is highly conventional. Would you use two adjectives in German?

Sehr geehrter is also a single adjective.

Sehr is not an adjective.

@Cerberus Would you have any idea how to make it possibly a bit more personal? Somehow "Dear client" seems a bit "neutral" :\

The repetition of "in case" to begin the last two sentences is also somewhat jarring. Alternate it somehow -- I might rewrite the last as: "Please let us know if you have any questions! Feel free to get in touch with us at <contact-info>"

@OliverSalzburg I'm afraid it would sound too weird for my taste, because "dear x" is so strongly limited by convention.

"Esteemed client" could be an option...

But it sounds a bit old-fashioned.

I like it. But it does sound a bit hollow in our cynical day.

@Mitch Sure it does.

@JosephWeissman I like that. Thanks

Hehe.

In German, could you say "Sehr geehrter [adjective] Kunde"?

I don't think so?

@Cerberus I guess I was thinking along the lines of "most valued something"

So I ended up with "Dear valued client"

I can't think of any English way of doing it with two words.

"Dear client" it is

Hehe.

Sorry.

Perhaps the other gentlemen can think of a way to personalise the address.

If you have their name in your data model, it's much more human to address them by their first name (or salutation/last name.)

@JosephWeissman This is the mail that should establish that data model

I pushed for it

They previously used opt-out. This is the mail to move to opt-in

Much less evil, definitely :D

Which wasn't easy to sell to our client, to say the least :P

@JosephWeissman Hmm how are they becoming repressive instruments of the state? I am rather afraid of their becoming instruments of capitalism, i.e. of commercial interests.

So now I want to get the best result possible. Meaning that people can understand the mail and feel comfortable subscribing

@Cerberus sure, that's definitely a problem too... :)

So, thanks for your help guys :)

No problem, esteemed contributor Mister Oliver Salzburg.

:)

@JosephWeissman Good luck!

I guess my real worry is how "transparent" these problems tend to be.

They're the background noise; we have trouble perceiving the real problems because they're so omnipresent.

So but I asked my Question to gauge the degree of your optimism or pessimism about the present situation and the future.

Zizek makes a really good distinction between the violence that occurs as an everyday part of a repressive social-economic order -- and the violence that shatters this system, that makes some other kind of order possible.

I'm pessimistic, for sure. Things are pretty discouraging in a lot of ways.

I am optimistic enough to be angry, if that helps :)

Not completely consumed by despair yet.

But...

Do you see history as a downward line? A horizontal line? A line that is mainly horizontal but with large ripples up and down?

It's a plane -- a landscape. Pushed in different directions by subterranean forces.

History is in fact the entire cosmos -- I worry about reduction to pure geometry here :)

Thought thinks against the time in which it arises, against history and its givens. It makes something else possible to be thought, and so at long last felt.

It fights against all the stupid fictions reactionaries endlessly fall for -- including the messianic hope of progressives that history "progresses," tends towards infinity

Again, a very beautiful dream. It's most powerful in Marx; this faith in the general intellect...

So...you could not have an opinion on the state of the world at a certain point in time?

We can definitely talk about historical events....

And the state of the cultural situation generally.

Which today is pretty plainly degenerate.

It is, in a way...

As I see it, we have always had problems, in the past and now. Some were solved, some changed, some new ones developed.

This is true.

But I would not want to live in any other period in the past rather than now.

And in this sense I certainly concur.

This tells me that I feel that the present is better than the past.

Then if I compare two periods in the past, say, the 19th century to the 11th, I much prefer the 19th century.

Of course this does not always apply.

Can we maybe explore this a bit? I'm curious about what happens if we unpack this rich and subjective sense of historical progress -- I think there are important complications almost immediately.

Such as?

One point that might help connect this back is the one about the psychoanalytic problem of knowledge.

Science as subject-supposed-to-know, but more generally...

Consider again all those "problems" we face today: global warming, intellectual property, genetic manipulation.

We know very well what we are doing is pushing various complex ecological systems (whether physical or psychic or social) towards collapse, but nevertheless we act as though we did not know.

But I do not believe that.

Which?

This collapse.

Maybe we are just talking past each other to some degree here, then :)

Hehe.

Yes, I think we have certain different premises.

But I would have expected you to be more positive about the past.

If you think we are moving towards collapse. Or stand a high chance of doing so.

Look, I am not some raving apocalyptic person here -- it's more: relax, it's just the end of the world, let's think about this a little bit.

Hahaha.

Just the end of the world, whew, that's a relief!

To my mind the problem is precisely introjecting ourselves into the past -- seeing how the crises could have been retroactively diverted.

Time warp!

Whether it's decline of cultural, social, ecological, financial, etc., spirits and forces.

I rather mean that we had so many problems in the past: why should our current problems be so very different, so much worse that we are suddenly facing total collapse?

We have solved or contained so many problems in the past.

Can I fairly classify this objection to our "collapse" hypothesis as basically -- human nature will prevail? We'll conquer all the problems?

This is then where I think the paradoxes really set in with "progressive" democracies.

The ways in which we solve the problems aggravate the problems. This is Heidegger's basic insight, in a way.

The issue is ontological, whether it's science or art of philosophy -- the questions of what we take as given in our approaches to these.

Hmm I'd rather classify it as "our current problems don't seem especially dangerous" and "why should our time be nay different than any time in the past?".

Our approaches to chaos; and the "kinds" we come back with: variables for the scientist, variations for the artists, variances for philosophers.

@Cerberus hmmm.

Perhaps that's not a classification.

@JosephWeissman This is certainly possible, but...are you saying this is happening with all our problems?

Certainly. Technology is one easy way to see this.

Our very techno-scientific approach to solving problems limits the range, scope and quality of the problems, their ability to connect with other problems.

Basically, it's that first point I was making: about the "meaning" of science, which is invisible to progressives -- since it figures as the necessary messiah which will save us from problems.

I'm not trying to attack progressivism; I just want to point out the piety I think necessary attaches to science (and in particular cybernetics) as a concession to the deification of technological progress

Isn't it rather that we use this approach because we don't think we have the power to try any other approach? That is, a researcher can devise technological solutions, but he cannot change the mentality of a billion people.

(It's Singularitarian, effectively; is the gist of the critique.)

@Cerberus Sure, but what does that constraining image of thought owe its constraints to?

Who does it serve to have a fixed image of thought?

I would say it is because we cannot change human nature?

Deleuze says something to the effect that philosophy has served as a fixed image of thought that precisely stops people from thinking.

How does that work?

I think basically along these same lines, though it might be worth tracking that down and unpacking it.

But I want to go back to the Heidegger briefly

I'm having trouble imagining what all this would mean in practice. What should we do, and what should we refrain from doing that we do now?

OK.

That science cannot solve even all the problems it creates, is another way of stating Heidegger's insight with respect to Western civilization here.

I would bring up Adorno -- this conversation is so far from being a fully-formed critical discourse that asking "what should be done?" is a little lit being a cop, demaning your papers, in other words: to make the conversation confess its sins, and come back to thinking "clearly" -- which is to say, to think like everyone else...

Which brings us back to images of thought. Let's talk about stupidity here briefly.

Haha.

So there are two kinds of stupidity.

On the one hand, stupidity considered as simple baseness of thought.

The mystifications and fictions it falls for are the reason reactive forces prevail.

(It's just that you have brought up many very general theories and questions that I am not always sure how to interpret/understand.)

@JosephWeissman What was the first kind?

*one :D

Oh haha.

The other hand would be a "virtuous" stupidity, the stupidity of geniuses and saints and great artists, etc.

What is that?

In other words, the "stupid" stubbornness to be able to somehow avoid managing to know what "everyone" knows.

Ah. I'm not sure I would call that stupidity, or how it is similar to baseness of thought, but go on.

To evade the majoritarian and dominant image of thought -- cosmically-, socially-, psychically-, organically-imposed

They're just two major senses of stupidity that I'd like to draw out in this context.

Right.

I understand what you mean by them.

I want to make an analogy between the Freudian triplet and the basic modes of social organization.

Uhh what is this triplet?

It's a fun little Zizekian-Hegelian game; we don't have to go through it but it can be fun.

So Freud's psyche consists of three parts.

Like Plato's soul, right?

Yes.

Ego, Id and Superego.

We can read these in a bunch of ways -- three is a good number for poetic imagination.

To connect this through a cultural psychoanalysis, we could say: paranoid, neurotic and schizophrenic.

So do these Freudian parts correspond to the Platonic parts?

I have to say I don't know much about Freud.

We can definitely go that direction, and maybe come back via the Republic to forms of social organization.

I mean anyway the triplet isn't the important thing. The point would be that social organization as such is problematic to some degree; similarly for psychic and biological and so on.