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

[aestetix]

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Just a thought:

I believe the etymology of "proper" is "belonging to", or, in another
sense, being inside a system. Thus we get words like "property"
(something that belongs) and "appropriate" (an action or behavior that
belongs). So to me, it seems natural to ascribe "proper name" to be "a
name which belongs", generally to the person in question.

There is a much larger discussion on who or what words (and what they
represent) belong *to*, of course...

On 5/4/13 6:07 AM, GtwoG PublicOhOne wrote:
> 
> 
> 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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