Politics - Philosophy Blog

March 4th 2012 13:46

Recently saw this announcement. Found the ideas intriguing. Hopefully, the the writers won't mind me reposting, so here goes:

***

Hi there!

It’s that time again. Time for the Big One. Or in the case, the Big One-Nine.

Yes our fine fetish friends, The Hellfire Club turns 19 years old on Friday March 23rd 2012.

This is an extraordinary achievement and a credit to you all. Seriously.

Collectively, we have managed to create Australia’s longest-running club night of any kind. Who would’ve thought? Certainly not us. We didn’t even know it would last 19 weeks, let alone 19 months or even 19 years.

There are now newbies attending who weren’t even born when we started. Even weirder, we are now seeing The Hellfire Club cross the generation gap, as mothers and/or fathers bring sons and/or daughters along to see how they live and love and who they really are.

Those of us who have been there since the very beginning have aged, changed, grown up a little, but we still rage against the bland conformity of mainstream limitations on joy, pleasure, experimentation and liberation.

We still believe in creating an alternative world, where things pan out differently than they do everywhere else. We still believe that when no-one fits in, then everyone can fit in. We still believe that mainstream definitions of beauty are limited and wrong, that everyone can be beautiful and desirable and lead a fulfilling and exciting love and sex life. We still want to subvert the dominant paradigm.

We hope you can join us on Friday March 23rd to help celebrate an amazing social experiment, one that you all helped create and further. Join us on the night to celebrate life and love and lust and those we’ve lost along the way as well. We’ll raise a glass to absent friends, to those present and to those we haven’t met yet.

It’s a special time, see you there...

Cheers
Master Tom & Ultra
The Hellfire Club

Vote

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Nonymous - Category: Politics

Email this Post to a Friend

Monoculture, etc

July 11th 2011 01:26

When I was younger, I perceived society as a uniform mass, and as a somewhat suffocating one. I say "perceived". But I also want to say, "It presented itself; society presented itself." I'd want to suggest that there are plenty of forces in society (and not just in brains) that presume to treat everyone the same, or that presume to speak on behalf of everyone -- and that this created/creates an illusion that concealed/conceals a diverse reality.

The very word "society" adds to the illusion, since there seem to be presumptions in nouns that: (a) they name something definite, something identifiable; (b) they name a unity, something that can be considered a single piece or a whole -- perhaps because of its connectedness, difference from other wholes, or homogoneity.

***

I'd also claim that Australian community is less a "monoculture" than it was 20 or 30 years ago. I think my perception of uniformity was in some sense illusory, but also in some sense accurate.

I don't think anyone would much dispute this as a broad statement, but here's a few more details on my spin on it.

-- I'm not really thinking about ethnic diversity, though that's obviously a big part of it. Rather, I'm thinking about sheer amount of culture. Books stay on bookshop shelves for a certain period before being returned to publishers. Movies play in cinemas for a certain period before making way for new ones. I believe (but haven't verified) that this time frame has decreased -- that if you compared stats from 1980 with stats from 2010, you'd find that all media is more disposable.

-- To mention the obvious, there's new media. Our attention is more split than it used to be. Podcasts, mailing lists, social media, MMORPGs, game consoles, amusing websites, infinities of music, movies, images ready for download.

The figures for amount of content on YouTube are something ridiculous. Something like: the amount of video uploaded each month is equivalent to all major American broadcasters broadcasting 24 hours a day for 40 years.

-- Thirdly, monoculture has been confronted with customisation of media. Catering for the consumer. You can choose which news outlets you want news from. You can choose who you want to associate with -- if you're into bugs, it's easier to meet people who share your enthusiasm. And you also have incredibly enhanced ability to find things -- via Amazon, eBay and so forth. We don't have culture thrust upon us in the same way we used to.

-- Fourthly, tolerance. For instance, more styles of clothing and appearance are acceptable than previously was the case. More ways to fuck are acceptable. More genres of music are alive.

From this splintering, there are at least five ramifications. Forgive me if this is all obvious:

-- Devaluation. We have more stuff, and it's easier to get, so each bit of stuff isn't worth as much.

We don't, like Victorians, spend days pouring over a few pages of a novel. We don't generally stay up all night discussing Beatles lyrics. Our politicians are more focused on sound bites than speeches.

There isn't that level of love paid to each detail, and there usually isn't the same analysis, discussion, about interpretation or significance. We move onto the next controversy, the next movie, the next celebrity, the next book, the next song...

-- Different skills. And different mentalities and people. Different abilities needed to function. For instance, the abilities to process quickly, to adapt, to categorise and discard, and to find or create patterns. Know-how to do with accessing information.

-- Splintering of knowledge. You can get your knowledge from all these different sources, and they contradict each other, so what should you now regard as true?

Alternatively: how do you operate without certainty?

The question of what the facts are is no longer, for the general public, the province of a few encyclopaedia publishers.

Wikipedia raises the problem of authority. If you want to argue, against Wikipedia, that knowledge is more than a matter of majority opinion, or more than a battle of editors, then what is it? Was knowledge ever anything more than this?

-- Splintering of experience. If a new movie comes out, fewer people will have the shared experience of having watched it. If a new computer game comes out, fewer people will have played it. They're busy with other stuff.

-- Splintering of values and ideals goes along with these. We don't agree on the facts; and we haven't been moved by the same moments.

***

So monoliths become fragments.

In the face of irreconcilable, incommensurable positions, and the end of certainty, the general model for politics can no longer be finding "the truth" or "the right thing to do", but finding something mutually or maximally acceptable to all the various camps and interest groups.

This in turn, as with the trend towards centralism in politics, might imply conservatism, inaction, maintenance of status quo. If you try to satisfy everyone, you end up doing nothing or satisfying no one.

So there is this irony: perhaps all the things we celebrate at an individual level -- the variety of choices, the ability to find what suits you, the absence of beliefs or values being forced upon you -- perhaps all these individual liberties end up handicapping our collective ability to make genuine choices and decide our fate. Government becomes no government. The individual feels free, but the group as a whole is at the mercy of larger forces, is swirled along with them.

Vote

Comments (3)

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Nonymous - Category: Politics

Email this Post to a Friend

Balancing rights

September 27th 2010 14:24

There's something to the idea that happiness and suffering are mental, and there's something to this idea even if the point is arguable (surely a coma patient who's raped can be said to suffer?).

Now, offence seems to be a purely mental thing. After all, it's not like being stabbed or shot, and a doctor can't point to a part of your body and identify the damage.

But from the perspective that all that we may enjoy and suffer is mental anyway, why should the "purely" mental be distinguished from what has more obvious material causes? -- If you feel a pain, isn't that still a pain, even if there's nothing physiologically wrong with you?

In fact, treating the mental as as real as mental-plus-physical isn't new to us in other contexts. Society now takes "mental illness" more seriously than it used to, though it still has the smell of dodginess around it; and the law has long recognised a tort of "nervous shock", which is basically where you harm someone, and someone else is disturbed and sues you (though this still has the smell of dodginess around it).

All this is by way of justifying the idea that people have an interest in not being offended -- perhaps even a right; and that this might count as a legitimate restriction of freedom of speech.

John Stuart Mill seems to have reasoned similarly, in On Liberty; and this idea is represented in laws against offensive language, in censorship laws, in Holocaust denial laws, and in the actions of governments when confronted by images that offend Islamic populations.

***

How does one resolve questions of balancing rights? If there's a right to freedom of speech, and a right to not be offended, which one wins?

I think that, if you want a reasoned answer to the question, you'd have to look for some way of comparing the rights. Otherwise, it's just apples and oranges, and nothing more could be said.

In other words, you'd have to examine the grounds of the relevant rights, and compare them in terms of this ground. What justifies any particular right being a right at all? What common currency can two different rights be reduced to?

***

Unfortunately, different people give different reasonable answers, so that's hurdle one -- deciding what framework in which to think (let alone hurdle two -- answering the reformulated question).

For instance:

-- There are various political philosophies, and each gives differing accounts of what the limits of state power are. For example, John Rawls might have said something like: a government may only do what rational agents in an ideal state of nature would have consented to.
-- There are countless individual-oriented ethical systems, and the duties, obligations, imperatives, values of these systems in effect create rights. For instance, a "Thou shalt not murder" arguably creates a right not to be murdered; a duty towards your parents arguably creates a parental right, and so forth.
-- There are systems that are both political and individual-oriented -- for instance, utilitarianism. Mill would have treated freedom of speech as ultimately a matter of maximising happiness -- it's a good right to give people, because in the long run (how long a run?) it leads to greater happiness for society.
-- Or someone might be quite positivist and say, "There's no grounds for any rights at all, whether human rights or civil rights, or anything else. It's just a pure matter of power, and, in the West, of voting."

Vote

Comments (1)

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Nonymous - Category: Politics

Email this Post to a Friend

Sexting

September 6th 2010 06:58

"The laws governing 'sexting' should be overhauled so naive teenagers sending raunchy images are not lumped with serious sex offenders, experts say. Under current legislation children who send sexually explicit images or video of themselves to others can face child pornography charges and even be placed on the Sex Offenders Register."

-- Jay Savage, "'Sexting' laws need urgent review: experts", Friday 12 June 2009

[ Click here to read more ]

Vote

Comments (1)

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Nonymous - Category: Politics

Email this Post to a Friend

Australian Sex Party

August 19th 2010 03:17

So, basically, the Australian Sex Party (the ASP) grew out of the Eros Association, an organisation that represents the sex industry, and it was formed in 2008 to oppose the proposed internet filter.

Two years ago, I shot them an e-mail. The relevant part went

[ Click here to read more ]

Vote

Comments (2)

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Nonymous - Category: Politics

Email this Post to a Friend

Arguments for legalizing drugs (Graham Long)

May 4th 2010 16:04

Recently went to a discussion with Graham Long, pastor of the Kings Cross Wayside Chapel (6.30pm, Tuesday 27 April 2010, Humanist House). This event was organized by Sydney Shove.

Long believes current government attitudes towards drugs are "insanity", and that drugs should be legalized. He didn't give a structured talk, but rather fielded questions from the audience

[ Click here to read more ]

Vote

Comments (4)

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Nonymous - Category: Politics

Email this Post to a Friend

Notes on waterboarding

April 9th 2010 04:06

Christopher Hitchens about to be waterboarded

* "Is waterboarding torture?" The question asked like this is unanswerable, for "torture" is not specified. Why assume that "torture" has just one meaning, and that this meaning is clear

[ Click here to read more ]

Vote

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Nonymous - Category: Politics

Email this Post to a Friend

Court jesters, deviants, and advocates of the devil

June 9th 2009 00:03

Wikipedia writes, about mediaeval comedians:

In societies where freedom of speech was not recognized as a right, the court jester -- precisely because anything he said was by definition "a jest" and "the uttering of a fool" -- could speak frankly on controversial issues in a way in which anyone else would have been severely punished for. Monarchs understood the usefulness of having such a person at their side

[ Click here to read more ]

53

Vote

Read More Comments (2) Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Nonymous - Category: Politics


Email this Post to a Friend

Reflections on Little Rock (Hannah Arendt)

January 23rd 2009 01:51

A while back, Hannah Arendt wrote in support of segregation in schools ("Reflections on Little Rock", Dissent, Winter 1959, pp 47-58).

Given who the author was, the position was surprising. "Like most people of European origin I have difficulty in understanding, let alone sharing, the common prejudices of Americans in this area... I should like to make it clear that as a Jew I take my sympathy for the cause of the Negroes as for all oppressed or underprivileged peoples for granted and should appreciate it if the reader did likewise

[ Click here to read more ]

54

Vote

Read More Comments (13) Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Nonymous - Category: Politics


Email this Post to a Friend

Some notes on modern-day slavery

September 9th 2008 04:48

If someone tells you that they're a slave, why do you doubt them?

Because such a situation is impossible -- in Australia, in 2008

[ Click here to read more ]

90

Vote

Read More Comments (3) Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Nonymous - Category: Politics


Email this Post to a Friend

Normalization

September 5th 2008 12:02

The obvious reason why Hollywood movies end up bland and all the same is reliability. There's a line in "The Three Amigos" where a studio boss tells Steve Martin "No, we're not going to produce any more movies like that. We learnt our lesson. We strayed from the formula, and we got burnt."

But there's another reason: market size. Of course, you can always target a niche audience. But if you're aiming for the centre of the bell curve, and trying to appeal to as many people as possible, then isn't it natural that there's a certain dumbing down, a watering down, a making-generic

[ Click here to read more ]

87

Vote

Read More Comments (3) Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Nonymous - Category: Politics


Email this Post to a Friend

About legalizing possession of child pornography

July 4th 2008 08:23

There was an American case not too long ago about child porn and whether it was within the power of the State of Ohio to ban it: Osborne v Ohio 495 US 103 (1990). There had already been a decision, a decade before, that allowed states to criminalize the sale of child porn: New York v Ferber 458 US 747 (1982). But does prohibiting possession or viewing infringe the First Amendment? -- One can imagine the defendant's arguments: I didn't pay for it; I haven't hurt anyone; I don't intend to hurt anyone; so is it justice to imprison me?

The majority found for the state. But there was also a dissenting opinion, expressed in the judgment of Brennan J (Marshall and Stevens JJ agreeing

[ Click here to read more ]

70

Vote

Read More Comments (5) Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Nonymous - Category: Politics


Email this Post to a Friend

Bluff

January 26th 2008 03:18

A friend, IW, tells this story:

A child drops a banana peel. The teacher on playground duty notices. In order to teach the child a lesson, the teacher orders her to carry the peel for the remainder of lunchtime. The child woefully complies

[ Click here to read more ]

129

Vote

Read More Comments (1) Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Nonymous - Category: Politics


Email this Post to a Friend

Civic virtue vs laws

December 27th 2007 01:27

More laws isn't always a bad thing, but perhaps, sometimes, there are better alternatives.

A couple of ideas on this frickin' huge topic

[ Click here to read more ]

104

Vote

Read More Comments (5) Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Nonymous - Category: Politics


Email this Post to a Friend

Next Page (15-28)

[ Philosophy Blog Home ] [ Create A New Post ]

Moderated by Nonymous

Copyright © 2012 On Topic Media PTY LTD. All Rights Reserved. Design by Vimu.com.
On Topic Media ZPages: Sydney | Melbourne | Brisbane | London | Birmingham | Leeds     [ Advertise ] [ Contact Us ] [ Privacy Policy ]