[sudo-discuss] Power: nyms, part 1: improper nouns.

Sat May 4 06:07:58 PDT 2013

Aestetix & Yo's-

Names are nouns, but I puzzle over the term "proper noun," because a
name is an arbitrary character-string that only appears noun-like
because we say so.  A "proper" type of noun should be one with some
degree of linguistic meaning, for example through etymology ("bike" is a
contraction of "bicycle", that has "two things that rotate", from which
we also derive "motorcycle" that is also colloquially a "bike"), and
names should be "improper nouns" because they don't follow that rule.

The linguistic meaning of "given names" is limited, though perhaps
sufficient for their historic purposes.  Conventionally they convey
gender, which is only useful in remotely assessing whether someone is a
potential sex-partner.  By geographic origin they often convey
ethnicity, though this is starting to break down through cultural mixing
(most of us are mutts, with two or more ethnicities in our families). 
Sometimes they convey religion, usually by inference from geographic
origin or resemblance to historic names identified with specific
religions.  At one time they conveyed occupation, as with "Baker" and
"Smith," though thankfully we have overcome mandatory hereditary
assignment of jobs. 

There was a time when we could infer, for example, that "John Smith" was
almost certainly male, probably Christian ("John" as Biblical name), and
probably an ironworker ("blacksmith").  Bluntly put, this would tell you
whether John Smith was someone you could mate with, someone with whom
that mating would be approved by your own church, and where he stood in
the socio-economic hierarchy.  The use of "Miss" and "Mrs." for women
("Miss Jane Smith") further emphasized that in a patriarchial culture,
males had a prerogative of ascertaining the eligibility of females as
mating partners.   

Today all we can be reasonably sure of is that John Smith is male.  He
might be a Buddhist or an atheist by his own choice, and he probably
works at a desk rather than a forge, and his ethnicity might be a
combination of English, French, Kenyan, and Chinese for all we know. 

Some day perhaps we'll have to guess at John Smith's gender.  That would
be progress.

-G.

On 13-05-03-Fri 11:30 PM, aestetix wrote:
> You've opened a can of worms here :)
>
> Since elucidated discussion seems to be the modus operandi lately, I
> have a few thoughts on this matter that are worth contributing. Feel
> free to ignore at your pleasure (free listening is just as important
> as free speech).
>
> I think that the two key elements of your essays, food and power, are
> rather interchangeable depending on the contexts. It's (hopefully)
> obvious why we need food. Power in a more abstract sense is
> fascinating to me, though. Other words that come to mind are drive,
> charisma, persuasion, but also intellect, and most important, control.
>
> IMHO, one of the most fundamental elements of control is language, as
> shared patterns are effectively a way to communicate and attain
> various levels of self-mastery. An easy way to experience this is to
> try to understand a foreign language: there might be some hints of
> familiarity within the chaos, and as we find them, it's a bit like
> setting markers around, and using the markers to control the direction
> of your ultimate understanding. You can extend that to vocabulary and
> concepts as well. One of the hallmarks of a good education is the
> ability to curse someone out without using the generic "fuck shit
> damn" slurs.
>
> Language is composed of words, symbols which point to meanings, and
> one of the most interesting set of words is our names. And you all can
> guess where I'm going with this one ;)
>
> Hail Eris,
> aestetix
>
> PS: it might be worth doing another cryptoparty soon.
>
> On 5/3/13 7:58 PM, GtwoG PublicOhOne wrote:
>
>
> > 2)  Where the power is, and where it isn't.
>
> > Now we come to the proletariat and the lumpenproletariat.
>
> > For this, credit also goes to a good friend of mine who I won't
> > name here, but who's welcome to name him/herself if s/he so
> > chooses: s/he got me thinking down this trail a few months ago.
>
> > The proletariat is the working class: basically defined as people
> > who have full-time jobs or at least jobs that provide sufficient
> > income for the core necessities (shelter, clothing, food,
> > transportation, sanitation, communication), but who have little or
> > no ownership stake. This includes people who are in business for
> > themselves, but earning a working class income: they own their
> > employment, but their economic wellbeing is at the same level as
> > that of a wage-worker.
>
> > The lumpenproletariat is the level below that: basically defined
> > as people whose employment is marginal at best, and whose access to
> > the basic necessities is frequently interrupted in some way.  The
> > unemployed, homeless, couch-surfers (another form of
> > homelessness), people who live at the margins of the law in order
> > to survive, and people who earn their livings on criminal activity.
> > This also includes wage-workers whose wage income is not sufficient
> > to provide their basic necessities from month to month: they have
> > jobs, but their economic wellbeing is at the same level as that of
> > someone who's marginally employed at best.
>
> > Decades ago, the Bay Area left/radical community made the deadly
> > strategic error of embracing the (essentially Maoist) analysis that
> > the lumpenproletariat is the revolutionary class.  This error
> > continues to this day, in the ideology of Black Block tactics,
> > which are founded on the idea that expressing rage and provoking
> > police over-reaction will somehow spark The Revolution.
>
> > The very same tactic in more obviously violent form pops up in the
> > ideology of the extreme right: such as the Hutaree, a group that
> > was busted by the FBI for planning to shoot a bunch of cops and
> > then set off bombs at their funerals, in the attempt to provoke
> > martial law and thereby set off a "revolution" from the extreme
> > right.
>
> > But here's the nexus of the problem:
>
> > To the oligarchy, the lumpenproletariat is disposable: their roles
> > in production and consumption are so minimal that they can be
> > totally disregarded.  They have NO power.  N-O power.  As
> > individuals or as any kind of collectivity or class.
>
> > When a social movement identifies with the lumpenproletariat
> > and/or attempts to organize the lumpenproletariat, the movement
> > effectively short-circuits its efforts into something that is
> > inherently doomed to failure.  They may as well be trying to
> > organize the squirrels on the Cal Berkeley campus to strike for
> > better teaching-assistant salaries. How seriously do you think the
> > UC Regents would take the threat of a squirrel strike?
>
> > The proletariat is where the power is: the power to produce and
> > consume at the level that drives the engine of oligarchy, is also
> > the power to refuse consent in a meaningful way.
>
> > The power of the proletariat takes two forms:
>
> > One, the power to remove themselves from the oligarch's engines of
> > production: by going on strike (which translates to the power of
> > collective bargaining), by going into business for themselves, and
> > by developing alternatives to conventional capitalism such as
> > cooperatives and other forms of production that subordinate capital
> > to labor.
>
> > Two, the power to remove themselves from the oligarch's
> > consumption matrix: by boycotts (consumer strikes), by
> > anti-materialist or "simple living" principles that reduce
> > consumption levels (the equivalent of consumer general strikes), by
> > shifting their consumption to alternative institutions such as
> > coops, credit unions, and small local producers (e.g. buying
> > veggies at the farmers' market rather than Safeway), and very
> > importantly for _us_ as hackers/makers/etc., the power to build
> > for our own use.
>
> > This is real power.  It's the power that makes the oligarchs quake
> > in their boots and have nightmares.  And it's the power that gives
> > the oligarchs strong incentive to keep us distracted, digressed,
> > and disempowered by wasting our time trying to organize a squirrel
> > strike.
>
> > -G.
>
> > _______________________________________________ sudo-discuss
> > mailing list sudo-discuss at lists.sudoroom.org
> > http://lists.sudoroom.org/listinfo/sudo-discuss
>
>
>

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