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

[Romy Ilano]

One of my nyc roommates started Heeb Magazine in the 1990s... she got some
$ from a foundation and made the "new jew review"

http://heebmagazine.com

heeb was originally an ethnic slur... it's interesting how they turned it
around. i think it pissed a lot of people off.

things to think about for people starting a sudo newspaper / magazine...


On Sat, May 4, 2013 at 11:04 AM, rachel lyra hospodar
<rachelyra at gmail.com>wrote:

> One of the ways Jews maintained cultural cohesion is through a systematic
> mutilation of their children that, while overtly hidden, marked them as
> separate from the culture around them.
>
> In this context it is interesting that the US has mainstreamed
> circumcision, and based on first person reports I have heard, in some ways
> this does contribute to a global drop in anti-semitism, which increases
> cultural diffusion.
>
> Re gender assumptions, 'someday' we 'might' move beyond... feel free to
> stop making them at any time. That is something you can do that would help
> with our cultural evolution.  People often keep their name, for all the
> other reasons elucidated here, even when some of its markers are outdated
> or overtly misfit. I know female-bodied people who go by male-marked names.
> Move past your assumptions.
>
> Further discussion of names might be informed through reference to
> neuroscience, as our name is encoded pretty deeply in the brain, and we
> respond to it with a unique signature even in sleep.
>
> R.
> On May 4, 2013 10:28 AM, "GtwoG PublicOhOne" <g2g-public01 at att.net> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Steve & Yo's-
>>
>> Yes and yes.  Similarly in a range of ethnicities: name-constructions
>> such as "Peterson" implying or directly meaning "Peter's son" (and in some
>> parts of Northern Europe at least, similarly for "daughter") or a
>> geographic origin (last name prefixes that mean "from" or "of" referring to
>> a city or a family or clan: common all over Europe), or including both the
>> mother's family name and the father's family name (common in Central
>> America).
>>
>> All of these are deeply meaningful in establishing that one is related to
>> others and connected to a wider web.  But today those social relations are
>> strung across countries, continents, and the globe, where solidarity and
>> mutual support can be difficult at best.
>>
>> To be clear:  I don't want to throw away all of those babies with the
>> surveillance-dystopia bathwater.  In many ways I'm very square and very
>> traditional.  But the future we face is one where we are f-o-o-d for the
>> oligarchy, and social relations are subordinated to economic relations,
>> unless we make a concerted effort to overturn the economic relations and
>> assert the primacy of the social relations.
>>
>> Now something just occurred to me, and the following may be in the "not
>> even wrong" category, but none the less I'd be interested in what you have
>> to say about this:
>>
>> The Jewish people were until recently a complete diaspora, "strung across
>> countries, continents, and the globe" at times when there were effectively
>> no rapid communications as there are today.  Yet somehow the Jewish
>> community on a global scale managed a degree of resilience that is truly
>> amazing, including during the Holocaust.
>>
>> We can learn from that.
>>
>> Somewhere in that history are important lessons that we can apply in our
>> present struggle with an oligarchy that is downright benign in comparison
>> to the types and degrees of oppression and existential threats faced by the
>> Jews throughout history.
>>
>> Is this something that can be taught and learned, or is it only something
>> that can be inherited over the course of generations of history?  And if
>> the former, then how can we begin to understand the lessons?
>>
>> I'll be AFK until this evening but I'll pick up the thread then.
>>
>> -G.
>>
>>
>> =====
>>
>>
>> On 13-05-04-Sat 10:04 AM, Steve Berl wrote:
>>
>> Seems to me that traditional Jewish convey family connections, and
>> geography. So until very recent times in history, to my Jewish ancestors, I
>> would be Steve, son of Lou (and Benay added in more modern times), from New
>> York. It helps to identify just which Steve you are talking about when
>> gossiping about Steve, and just what social connections there might be
>> between Steve and other people. So the name evokes questions like, Oh, your
>> from New York, do you know xxxx? Or Lou is your father. Are you related to
>> my 3rd cousin Fred, who has a brother name Lou?
>>
>>  Humans are social animals and our social connections are important. You
>> are you because of some combination of what you do, who you know, and who
>> you are related to. Encoding some of that information in the name has been
>> a convenience developed over the past 10,000 or so years, and we should
>> consider carefully whether you are ready to throw it away.
>>
>>  -steve
>>
>>
>> On Sat, May 4, 2013 at 6:07 AM, GtwoG PublicOhOne <g2g-public01 at att.net>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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>>>
>>
>>
>>  --
>> -steve
>>
>>
>>
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