conspiraloons

[Bob_the_lost]

Well you have two choices - you either think about things for yourself, or you seek an authority to do the thinking for you. What you describe is the complete absence of 'thinking'.

Is there any difference between using the Sun to do your thinking for you and logging into a website to do the same? That's the more irritating habit of some people who go with conspiracy theories, including Azrael23 at first glance.

 

[laptop]

Is there any difference between using the Sun to do your thinking for you and logging into a website to do the same?

1. Conspiraloon reads the papers
2. Conspiraloon:
   • finds lots of bad shit there; and
   • doesn't find their current delusion there.
3. Conspiraloon - by definition - concludes that it's a conspiracy: (b) must a priori be because the papers are controlled by the lizards
4. Therefore, everything in the papers and all "official" sources is lies
5. Corollorary: the more unofficial a source, the more conspiraloon likes it.
6. Also, of course, the more "unofficial" a source the more likely it is to publish the kind of anti-reasoning that makes them go "yeah! this must be really sikrit knowledge!" - while giving them the warm feeling that there are others like them.

Of course conspiraloons aren't consistent, though. Failure to understand "consistency" is a minor defining feature of being a conspiraloon - as failure to understand causality is a major one.

If they were consistent, since 9/11 was widely reported in official sources, they'd have to argue that it never happened.

 

[Blagsta]

Well you have two choices - you either think about things for yourself, or you seek an authority to do the thinking for you. What you describe is the complete absence of 'thinking'.

Except you don't think for yourself do you? You believe any old shit that David Icke writes. That's not thinking, thats being a gullible fool. We all learn from people who are authorities on subjects - the trick is to evaluate the likely authenticity of their knowledge. Something you really need to start doing Jazzz.

 

[pembrokestephen]

Read the articles check the sources, the legal cases are real and i have plenty more.

Your all pathetic, you stand in the light of day as intellectual cowards and whther willing or not, traitors and cowards.

You may find this useful.

 

[pembrokestephen]

My god, you're right! She's not really studying psychoanalytic psychotherapy! She's studying to be a lizard!



P.S.
We're not actually married, but never mind.

Wow, and there was me considering doing my Master's in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Fuck, but that was a lucky escape, I coulda been a lizard.

So what do you turn into if you do a master's in systemic psychotherapy? Something k3wl?

 

[Blagsta]

an owl

 

[phildwyer]

an owl

Oh do shut up you tedious old git.

 

[phildwyer]

Well, perhaps that was a clumsy way to say it, but I'm thinking here about Wittgenstein's stuff on logical necessity in "Philosophical Investigations" and "Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics" when I say that. Perhaps another way to say it is that under close scrutiny, none of the traditional philosophical claims of priviledged status for logical necessity seem to stand up, but the bridges (mostly) still do.

Unlike the imaginary structures reared by neoclassical economics, which not only collapse themselves with notable regularity but also seem almost *designed* to bring the rest of the world crashing down with them.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Going back to your earlier remarks Phil, I think there might be some milage in the idea that, given the magical origins of property rights, money etc, that magical thinking as an expression of alienated labour (or something like that) is quite understandable. I just tend to doubt that it's likely to be useful for anything much.

 

[laptop]

I just tend to doubt that it's likely to be useful for anything much.

Except for delusional attempts to found a new religion on the assertion that money is "spirit".

OK, your point is made

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Just to expand on that a bit. A witch accusation (which is what some of this conspiracy theory stuff looks like to me) is sometimes functional. It acts as a social mechanism for revenge or whatever. In our culture though, a "witch accusation", along the lines of what we've just seen from our eccentric chums, is normally quite ambiguous. It probably has some propaganda effect, particularly on people who don't discriminate between Marx and Icke, but that's heavily tempered by the tendency to make the accuser look like a nutter in the eyes of a majority and to taint anything else they may say.

What seems to be missing, except in special cases like the 80's 'satanic panics', is the social apparatus that turns the "witch accusation" into an effective social action.

 

[phildwyer]

Going back to your earlier remarks Phil, I think there might be some milage in the idea that, given the magical origins of property rights, money etc, that magical thinking as an expression of alienated labour (or something like that) is quite understandable. I just tend to doubt that it's likely to be useful for anything much.

What its useful for is introducing an ethical critique into the notion of autonomous representation. People like Baudrillard, Lyotard, Judith Butler and their acolytes burble on about how simulara are politically liberating, freeing us from the tyranny of essentialism and teleology. Their allies, the neoclassical economists, claim that money is an autonomous and self-generating sign, thus denying the fact that it is alienated labour. Both of these contentions can be countered by pointing out that previous ages viewed the efficacious sign as Satanic. In fact, anti-logocentrism is Satanic by definition, since the logos is God. Only by stupidly denying the "existence" of Satan and God (as if these were entities akin to the Loch Ness Monster) can postmodernist philosophers and neoclassical economists conceal the nature of their thought from us and from themselves.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

In your mind that might be an effective 'counter' and I sort of vaguely see what you mean, but to most people I bet it just sounds like weird gibberish.

Is there any concrete social or material consequence you can draw from it?

 

[Jazzz]

Except you don't think for yourself do you? You believe any old shit that David Icke writes. That's not thinking, thats being a gullible fool. We all learn from people who are authorities on subjects - the trick is to evaluate the likely authenticity of their knowledge. Something you really need to start doing Jazzz.

yawn. It is simply not worth discussing anything with you, you will seek to misrepresent anything I saw.

phildwyer is right - tedious old git.

 

[phildwyer]

Just to expand on that a bit. A witch accusation (which is what some of this conspiracy theory stuff looks like to me) is sometimes functional. It acts as a social mechanism for revenge or whatever. In our culture though, a "witch accusation", along the lines of what we've just seen from our eccentric chums, is normally quite ambiguous. It probably has some propaganda effect, particularly on people who don't discriminate between Marx and Icke, but that's heavily tempered by the tendency to make the accuser look like a nutter in the eyes of a majority and to taint anything else they may say.

What seems to be missing, except in special cases like the 80's 'satanic panics', is the social apparatus that turns the "witch accusation" into an effective social action.

Are you aware of the recent anthropological work done on the recent resurgence of witchcraft in Africa, Asia and South America? I`m thinking of Michael Taussig, Jean and John Comaroff, Peter Geschiere and so on. And there are third-world thinkers like Ngugi Wa`ThiongÒ who make much the same points. They argue that witchcraft allegations are a critique of capitalism and a money economy, which have been newly introduced into many third-world societies in the last 20 or 30 years. I´d argue that the "witch craze" in early modern Europe was a similar response to nascent capitalism. Witch trails did not die out because witchcraft ceased to exist, but because the witches took over society.

 

[longdog]

What its useful for is introducing an ethical critique into the notion of autonomous representation. People like Baudrillard, Lyotard, Judith Butler and their acolytes burble on about how simulara are politically liberating, freeing us from the tyranny of essentialism and teleology. Their allies, the neoclassical economists, claim that money is an autonomous and self-generating sign, thus denying the fact that it is alienated labour. Both of these contentions can be countered by pointing out that previous ages viewed the efficacious sign as Satanic. In fact, anti-logocentrism is Satanic by definition, since the logos is God. Only by stupidly denying the "existence" of Satan and God (as if these were entities akin to the Loch Ness Monster) can postmodernist philosophers and neoclassical economists conceal the nature of their thought from us and from themselves.

What does that mean in English?

 

[Blagsta]

yawn. It is simply not worth discussing anything with you, you will seek to misrepresent anything I saw.

phildwyer is right - tedious old git.

Good response.

 

[Blagsta]

What does that mean in English?

precisely fuck all

 

[phildwyer]

In your mind that might be an effective 'counter' and I sort of vaguely see what you mean, but to most people I bet it just sounds like weird gibberish.

As does Karl Marx´s _Capital_. How many people have read and understood that work? Probably less than ten thousand, in all history? And yet it had rather a huge impact, did it not?

 

[phildwyer]

Is there any concrete social or material consequence you can draw from it?

Oh, just that capitalism is the earthly manifestation of a metaphysical evil power which is attempting to destroy all human souls and is succeeding in destroying the world. Nothing *important,* you know...

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Are you aware of the recent anthropological work done on the recent resurgence of witchcraft in Africa, Asia and South America? I`m thinking of Michael Taussig, Jean and John Comaroff, Peter Geschiere and so on. And there are third-world thinkers like Ngugi Wa`ThiongÒ who make much the same points. They argue that witchcraft allegations are a critique of capitalism and a money economy, which have been newly introduced into many third-world societies in the last 20 or 30 years. I´d argue that the "witch craze" in early modern Europe was a similar response to nascent capitalism. Witch trails did not die out because witchcraft ceased to exist, but because the witches took over society.

I've read a couple of things in that area yes, although most of my reading on that kind of thing was a couple of decades ago. Taussig's "The Devil and Commodity Fetishism" hadn't been published back then as far as I know, but it sounds very interesting.

I do think there is something in the idea, but I don't see any useful place to take it. You can make a reasonable argument via Mauss that magical thinking always tends to crop up in times of increasing social stress, but in all cases that I'm aware of, it doesn't have significant social or political consequences unless some mechanism exists for it to generate effective social actions. Typically these days that probably means via propaganda.

 

[phildwyer]

I've read a couple of things in that area yes, although most of my reading on that kind of thing was a couple of decades ago. Taussig's "The Devil and Commodity Fetishism" hadn't been published back then as far as I know, but it sounds very interesting.

I do think there is something in the idea, but I don't see any useful place to take it. You can make a reasonable argument via Mauss that magical thinking always tends to crop up in times of increasing social stress, but in all cases that I'm aware of, it doesn't have significant social or political consequences unless some mechanism exists for it to generate effective social actions. Typically these days that probably means via propaganda.

Yeah, Taussig`s work (originally published in 1980) is the foundation for all the rest. The rest of the *Western* stuff that is, because third-world thinkers like Ngugi have been saying the same thing independently. As for your claim that magical thinking "doesn`t have significant social or political consequences," well, *capitalism* is magical thinking. And it has certainly had one or two significant social and political consequences, has it not?

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Yeah, Taussig`s work (originally published in 1980) is the foundation for all the rest. The rest of the *Western* stuff that is, because third-world thinkers like Ngugi have been saying the same thing independently. As for your claim that magical thinking "doesn`t have significant social or political consequences," well, *capitalism* is magical thinking. And it has certainly had one or two significant social and political consequences, has it not?

Wasn't Max Marwick saying similar stuff back in the 60's-70's though?

I'm not claiming that magical thinking doesn't ever or can't in principle, have significant consequences.

I'm suggesting that it does only when other conditions obtain. If you read Lea's "The Inquisition in the Middle Ages" for example it's pretty clear that those conditions were created by the existence of a more-or-less educated church bureaucracy. In the case of capitalism they are created, in the first instance through primitive accumulation and its associated enforcement structures.

So yes, money exemplifies magical thinking, but to produce capitalism we also require the creation, primarily by force, of a class with nothing to sell but their labour.

A witch accusation or similar symbolic act may therefore have existential significance for the utterer, but a social mechanism must also be present for it to have any other significant consequences.

So for me the 'witch accusations' we see conspiracy theorists making are mostly pointless at present and would probably be dangerous (because 'witch-hunts', even well-intentioned ones, are if history is a useful guide, indiscriminate about who gets hurt) if social mechanisms ever came into being that made them effective.

 

[phildwyer]

Wasn't Max Marwick saying similar stuff back in the 60's-70's though?

I'm not claiming that magical thinking doesn't ever or can't in principle, have significant consequences.

I'm suggesting that it does only when other conditions obtain. If you read Lea's "The Inquisition in the Middle Ages" for example it's pretty clear that those conditions were created by the existence of a more-or-less educated church bureaucracy. In the case of capitalism they are created, in the first instance through primitive accumulation and its associated enforcement structures.

So yes, money exemplifies magical thinking, but to produce capitalism we also require the creation, primarily by force, of a class with nothing to sell but their labour.

A witch accusation or similar symbolic act may therefore have existential significance for the utterer, but a social mechanism must also be present for it to have any other significant consequences.

Is there a "social mechanism" present in the realm of high finance? The fluctuating relationships between various kinds of money would appear devoid of any material or social referent whatsoever. And yet they determine the material, social lives of evry person on the planet. It seems to me that postmodern capitalism is a tangible refutation of materialist determinism, and especially of the prejudice that supernatural, metaphysical forces "do not exist."

 

[phildwyer]

So for me the 'witch accusations' we see conspiracy theorists making are mostly pointless at present and would probably be dangerous (because 'witch-hunts', even well-intentioned ones, are if history is a useful guide, indiscriminate about who gets hurt) if social mechanisms ever came into being that made them effective.

They are certainly effective in Africa, and their victims are not indiscriminate at all. In contrast to early modern Europe, where the victims of witch-hunts were generally (though by no means exclusively) also the victims of the new market forces, most African witches are the beneficiaries of market relations, which destroy traditional kinship structures and give access to an obviously metaphysical, supernatural kind of power. The "big men" who are known as "soul-eaters" throughout the continent are not the destitute old women of European witch-hunts, they are the nouveau riche. And, unlike many of the alleged European witches, these guys really *do* practice witchcraft--as in pacts with demons, human sacrifice, cannibalism, the lot.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Well, lets use the witchcraft in the middle ages example again. Threre was a vast amount of theological debate and speculation going on, both related to witchcraft accusations and to the terms used in them indepdently of those accusations, which was more or less entirely disconnected from reality, but there was also a bureaucracy with agencies and forces that went around burning people. In that case and in the case of the modern financial markets, you can reasonably say that a whole pile of entirely pointless and often dysfunctional symbolic action is occurring, but it is not entirely divorced from real material consequences. If you want to effect real material consequences though, you need to do more than just manipulate the symbols. You need to manipulate them a social context which gives them power to affect reality e.g. by being a broker or a right-wing political propagandist or something.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

They are certainly effective in Africa, and their victims are not indiscriminate at all. In contrast to early modern Europe, where the victims of witch-hunts were generally (though by no means exclusively) also the victims of the new market forces, most African witches are the beneficiaries of market relations, which destroy traditional kinship structures and give access to an obviously metaphysical, supernatural kind of power. The "big men" who are known as "soul-eaters" throughout the continent are not the destitute old women of European witch-hunts, they are the nouveau riche. And, unlike many of the alleged European witches, these guys really *do* practice witchcraft--as in pacts with demons, human sacrifice, cannibalism, the lot.

Sure but you see that in the anthropolgical studies too. First you get imaginary witch accusations, then you get people claiming to be sorcerers and scaring the shit out of their fellow citizens in order to gain power and make money.

 

[thought]

Sure but you see that in the anthropolgical studies too. First you get imaginary witch accusations, then you get people claiming to be sorcerers and scaring the shit out of their fellow citizens in order to gain power and make money.

O.k. just because you dont believe does it mean it dosnt exist?

 

[phildwyer]

Sure but you see that in the anthropolgical studies too. First you get imaginary witch accusations, then you get people claiming to be sorcerers and scaring the shit out of their fellow citizens in order to gain power and make money.

I agree that many (it is impossible to know how many) of the witchcraft allegations in early modern Europe were false. Not in the sense that the accused were not practicing magic--they usually were--but in the sense that they were practicing "white" magic, often they were just village "cunning men," folk healers or fortune tellers. The witch hunts involved the claim that there was no such thing as white magic, because *all* attempts to achieve objective effects by the ritual manipulation of signs was Satanic. So a whole class of people found themselves suddenly criminalized. Black magic had, of course, always been criminal.

The situation in modern Africa is very different. The witch accusations there are *not* imaginary, they are all-too true. Residual polytheism means that the distinction between white and black magic doesn´t really hold, but there is certainly a very powerful class of witches who overlap heavily with capitalists, and involvement in finance is quite correctly associated with witchcraft in the popular mind. A brilliant book about this is Ngugi´s novel "Devil on the Cross," in which the sorcerers go to great (and hiliariously comic) lengths to convince their peers that they are not practicing magic: "this feast is not a devil´s feast, and it has not been organized by Satan! It has in fact been organized by the International Organization of Modern Thieves and Robbers..." (ie the IMF) etc.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Ok. I was making a (probably fairly arbitary) technical distinction there.

Witch = someone who is accused of causing harm magically. (e.g. Evans-Prichard's 'Witchcraft among the Azande")
Sorcerer = someone who claims or aspires to have magical powers.

I'd argue that the former is the basic case and the latter is parasitic on it.