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

[aestetix]

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I'm not familiar enough with Judaism to comment on the first
paragraph, but I'm pretty sure that the US mainstreamed male
circumcision primarily for health reasons. IIRC, it reached its peak
in the 1970s and 1980s, and has seen a steady decline since*.

I'm also aware of some people who perform circumcision because they
believe sexual pleasure is 'evil' or something, but if you circumcise
a child at birth, they don't know what they are missing. As opposed to
a friend of mine who was born sans-circumcision, and had to be
circumcised at the age of 18, for health reasons.

Female genital mutilation (removal of the clitoris, etc) is a
completely different thing, and a practice I believe is torture.
However, that seems to go beyond the scope of this discussion.

aestetix

*I don't have a link handy, but there's actually a social movement to
help men regain their foreskins, although the results of the
stretching exercises are dubious.

On 5/4/13 11:04 AM, rachel lyra hospodar 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 some of its markers are outdated or overtly misfit.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 
> <mailto: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 <mailto: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
>>> <mailto:sudo-discuss at lists.sudoroom.org>
>>>> http://lists.sudoroom.org/listinfo/sudo-discuss
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
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>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> -- -steve
> 
> 
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> 
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