Do we really want out?
I've only lived in Glasgow proper for a few years. I grew up in a scheme ten miles down the road. And I've lived in a few nice places but I've also lived in some real shitholes. Flats in the West End have high ceilings and bay windows but you're surrounded by University Yahs and the transport isn't great - the south is much better but even that's getting gentrified now
my inner circle is people I met an afters a few years ago who I really liked but didn't expect to ever see again. But we kept making an effort, mutually, via social media and messaging and now I can't imagine my life without them. We did a few sober get-togethers just to prove that we didn't need to be drinking and dancing to have fun and now we have managed it... we drink and dance together as much as possible.
shiels
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both these terms very contentious here arent they but i took your question to be 'is the left honest?'
and that question has to reckon with how desires, aspirations are produced (they aren't just ours... i like what i like cos i like it) and the boring hypocritical accusations that follow from there 'you use an iphone and yet...'
yyaldrin
in je ogen waait de wind
ain't that also depressive after a while? the next day these people are gone, sometimes you can't even remember what they said?
shiels
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was a joke mate
the way I see it, it can serve a function on both sides - Sometimes it's easier to open up to strangers precisely because of that lack of attachment and the unlikelihood of seeing them again. Not everyone can or should be a close friend, sometimes people wander into your life and back out and what value they bring is right for that circumstance and that only.
shiels
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The question is about limits. this prevalent idea of the kaleidoscopy of rave as a thrilling whir of perspective where boxedjoy council scottish gay and thirdform disabled muslim and shiels virgin catholic can find acceptance and project their hopes and dreams... and transform etc. but what do we do once certain drives are satiated or we get certain validations. have to go back to work etc
I remember this old advert for some Ministry Of Sound CD that was on TV when I was younger. It was a guy in a suit walking down the street to work with his headphones on and it cut between shots of him hearing a song on his headphones and him going wild in a club to that song, and the tagline was something cheesy like "part of the weekend never dies." I think about that advert a lot on a Monday morning when I'm listening to music on the bus or I hear something I've been dancing to in an unexpected (not dancing) context.
I think the goal is to escape your ambitions and make peace with it but I'm not sure if that's right either.
I think the goal is to escape your ambitions and make peace with it but I'm not sure if that's right either.
version
Well-known member
To a degree, but I wouldn't say opposing neoliberalism's exclusive to the left. There are plenty of people on the right who take issue with it, or aspects of it, too.
The two questions I'm asking are,
1) Do we really want out?
2) If we do, can we actually get out?
The "you use an iphone and yet... " line of thinking is irritating, but I think it has to be confronted. If I'm buying Deleuze and Marx and whoever from Amazon then does my reading them really do anything? I'm absorbing supposedly radical ideas, but I'm also propping up exactly what they're attacking by buying them from a company like that. Is it not ultimately just another form of entertainment, much like people buying Harry Potter books or whatever else from the same source? The content doesn't seem to outweigh or counter the transaction taking place.
I'm not taking the "there's no way out, so you might as well do nothing and be a bastard" route or claiming this stuff's worthless, but I am questioning whether the focus on capitalism itself is a nonstarter, given its ability to perpetually manufacture and absorb its own internal opposition. Surely if you sell a product, even a supposedly anti-capitalist product, then that's that? The anticapitalist aspect is immediately defanged precisely because you're taking part and selling it like anything else. It's just another market.
version
Well-known member
I think some of it amounts to knowing you can't doing anything, but wanting to feel as though you at least aren't under any illusions about it. A grasp for some measure of control. You can't stop the corrupt people being corrupt, but they at least haven't tricked you into believing they aren't corrupt.
No, no and no.
version
Well-known member
This is how I feel about the JFK stuff. What would it actually mean to discover the truth? Nobody could really do anything. It would just be a case of "We know we can't do anything, but we know it was you. You haven't pulled the wool over everyone's eyes, you bastards".