Explanations?

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Individual and Community: Individualism is Fucking Retarded

Within political and everyday discourse there is, at base, a fundamental contention manifest over the question of which conception of humanity takes precedence: Either the focus is upon individual human beings or the focus is upon the community of human beings taken together. This contention has been articulated throughout history with great thinkers arguing for each side. Some maintain that "individual" is the proper ontological status while others argue for "community" as the proper ontological status.

The problem is that, really, the entire concept and platform for the "individual" argument is pretty god damned stupid.

Ontologically speaking, unless it is maintained that an individual is a Cartesian cogito floating about thinking naught but tautologies, an individual human being is a biological creature. Individual human beings survive as a result of their interactions with, at the very least, the biological habitat which sustains them. No human being thinks into existence its own oxygen, its own water, its own food. Oxygen, water, and food come to be obtained via an interaction with a community, a going beyond one's self into an other. Were there but one human being, this one human being would still not be an individual, ontologically speaking, provided that the human being's existence was in some way dependent upon an other manifest as oxygen, water, or food. An isolated vegetarian human being would still have a relation to the carrots it consumed, or at very least the one carrot it consumed.

Biological concerns aside, in the year our lord 2010 no human being is completely self-sufficient. A particular individual does not make its own rope, make its own paint, grow its own food, craft its own garments, etc. The previous paragraph dealt with the conception of a hermit alone in the woods eating nuts and berries by articulating that even the relation of the hermit to the nut and berry dissolves any conception of "individual". But hermits aside, it is entirely asinine to maintain that an individual who exchanges society-manifest currency for bread at a Wal-Mart is somehow an individual. To utilize others is to fundamentally undermine an ontological conception of self as individual.

Usually there are sensible articulations of each side to an argument. So, in the case of individual v community it would seem sensible to suppose sensible arguments on each side. Unfortunately, the individual argument is fundamentally "Individualism is the case, provided that the wealth of evidence to the contrary is ignored." To argue for radical individualism, or even a modest version of individualism, is to ignore reality. It is to argue: "Individuals rely upon others to maintain their existence, but this reliance does not count!"

Which is, again, fucking stupid.

A particular human being arguing for the individualist position could attempt to admit the ontological issue but maintain that a particular human being can conceive of itself as an individual. Somehow this conception of individualism could provide a foundation for an individualist position. Unfortunately for this argument, wrong-headedness is not commonly accepted as an effective argumentative strategy. To think one's self a carrot is not to be a carrot. To think one's self an individual is not to be an individual.

It can be argued that individualism has its merits, or that individualism may be preferred. But individualism is simply not the case either ontologically, biologically, or argumentatively for human beings. To inhale oxygen is to manifest a relation. To purchase food is to manifest a relation. To talk or work or run is to manifest a relation.

So what does this all mean? Why the fuck does it matter?

There exists the state of being selfish; one can be selfish. Individualism is a position for which arguments can be made. But these are less than illusions; these are positions maintained by those who decidedly ignore the way things are. To sit in one's home proclaiming that one is an individual is to fail to recognize the causal story of that home's coming to be. To consume a meal by one's supposed lonesome and laud selfishness and individualism is to fail to understand that meal's coming to be. To maintain individualism and live in the world is to fundamentally fail to grasp, at the most basic level, that this conception has fundamentally two parts, a relation, between the individual and the world.

Linguistically there is an articulation for an individual; there is a noun for "self". Conceptually it is possible to divide the community of humanity, the community of existence, into discrete parts. In its living in the world a particular human being manifests a first-person perspective and an internal monologue.

But these are not arguments for individualism; these do not prove that there exists a discrete self-sufficient, isolated individual. These are not evidental points of fact upon which selfishness can be argued or maintained. These are subsets of a larger whole; these are not wholes unto themselves.

This is the real, important, question to address in the community v individual debate: Which is the whole? Which is the part? Does "I" denote "whole" or "part"?

The answer is pretty fucking obvious.

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Leo is very nice to this very stupid women.

Winter Olympics....OF DEATH [chat]!!!!!!

If you didn't hear about the LUGE OF DEATH you ought to go read about it. If only because you'll be treated to sentences such as:

With that, tears began flowing across the close-knit sliding world and throughout the Olympic family.

Rachel Maddow and the John Birch Society

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Joe Stack: Planes are Ineffective Tools of Change

It is probably not the case that flying a plane into a building solves any problems. This is, of course, unless the building has become sentient and is running amuck, destroying downtown Tokyo. However, in the case of Joe Stack, while no problems were solved...I hesitate to label this as the senseless act of a madman. And, maybe, Joe Stack's flying his plane into a building housing IRS employees merits some thought and consideration.

If you have not read a copy of what Joe Stack posted on his website prior to flying a plane into a building you may want to take some time to read it. It contains the usual bits of self-indulgent crazy and appeals to martyrdom couched in a somewhat sympathetic personal explanatory narrative. I do not know if I would call it a "manifesto", but it definitely has the feel of a "call to arms" or, more appropriately, a "call to planes". The ending has a nice little rhetorical flair to it, too:

I saw it written once that the definition of insanity is repeating the same process over and over and expecting the outcome to suddenly be different. I am finally ready to stop this insanity. Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let's try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well.

The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.

You do have to give him a bit of credit; that little capitalist creed is somewhat creative.

It would be incredibly simple to cast this aside as the writing of a madman who acted as a madman and who flew a plane into a building...like a madman. We could mock the writing, recoil in horror at the actions, and then simply move on. The problem is that in order to ignore this and move on, to cast aside the incident and words as naught but the ramblings of a madman, we need prove that Joe Stack was, in fact, a madman.

The difficulty with the "madman" diagnosis is that, apparently, his friends did not think him a madman. And if you read what he wrote there is a degree to which it is, in part, reasonable; it articulates a coherent narrative. Yes, he does call the IRS "big brother" and invoke tea-part-esque anti-government rhetoric, which is somewhat juvenile and silly. But, again, he tells a coherent narrative; he provides an explanation for his actions. And while his actions were terribly problematic I hesitate to call them "wrong" or "crazy".

Take note of this passage from his post:

I know I'm hardly the first one to decide I have had all I can stand. It has always been a myth that people have stopped dying for their freedom in this country, and it isn't limited to the blacks, and poor immigrants. I know there have been countless before me and there are sure to be as many after. But I also know that by not adding my body to the count, I insure nothing will change. I choose to not keep looking over my shoulder at "big brother" while he strips my carcass, I choose not to ignore what is going on all around me, I choose not to pretend that business as usual won't continue; I have just had enough.

Yes, it has a nice bit of racism with that "blacks and immigrants" line. It does have a bit of self-pity at the beginning. But the passage is written in a deliberate rhetorical style: "I know. I know. I know. I choose. I choose. I choose." An absence of sanity would not result in that writing style; the insane do not manifest rhetorical prowess.

This is not to say that Joe Stack was brilliant and correct. He writes that "I filed no return that year thinking that because I didn't have any income there was no need." He then complains that he was fined for not filing a return, which is a somewhat asinine complaint given that, you know, people need to file tax returns. So he made some mistakes. He maintained something of an overly developed victim complex. And, yes, he flew a fucking plane into a building.

But the guy had reasons. And for fuck's sake, he takes the time to explain Section 1706 of the IRS 1986 Tax Reform Act. Crazy people and madmen do not take the time to articulate and provide links to explanations of tax legislation!

I am not saying Joe Stack was right. Nor am I saying that Joe Stack was wrong. What I am saying is that we need not maintain a knee-jerk reaction to violence such that (violent act = crazy); Joe Stack may have had a point. And at the risk of being "that guy" I am going to invoke the American Revolution. Yes, I know, that is what the Tea Party dipshits do. But it is relevant.

I am not saying that Joe Stack is our time's Thomas Jefferson. But the United States came to be as a result of 13 colonies saying "I have just had enough" and so fighting a war for their independence. We exist as we do today because in 1776 a group of guys did something that was, by all accounts, crazy; our ancestors told Great Britain to go fuck itself. Our ancestors recognized a problem and so reacted to it. That being said...

The IRS is not Great Britain.
Joe Stack is not Thomas Jefferson.
Flying a plane into a building is not writing the Declaration of Independence.

But our country is founded upon the notion that if a government is composed of assholes we throw aside the asshole government and start a new one:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

When we have a visceral and negative reaction to violence, when we recoil at the thought of a disruption to normalcy, when we shun and cast aside extremists we fundamentally forget who we are.

Joe Stack may have needlessly killed innocent people. He may have over-reacted to his economic disenfranchisement. And he may have thrown his life away in a symbolic but, ultimately, futile gesture.

But the man recognized where he came from. And, at the very least, Joe Stack recognized that when words fail, you have to fucking do something.

He just misunderstood the "something".

XKCD: Tautology Club

Best XKCD, Ever.