Quatschen

[16.12.25, 13:54:32] gonzalo: and i guess the question is “why empathy is good”, and that there is were rationality stops, because one can only feel empathy is good, rationality can only describe the process of feeling, but not how it feels, it can only describe there’s a warmth, that emotions make themselves be felt but not describable, and often they can only be described with metaphors, poetry, music, paintings, etc. it’s basically a non describable thing that says to us “help someone”, and i guess this is what i call “trascendental objectivity” lol, the shared capacity of everyone regarding of culture to feel empathy, and this “wam” constellation of emotions around

and then culture is what shapes us and tries to convince us that we only came to the world to consume, compete, etc in the case of advanced consumer capitalism. and then somewhere around this constellation is what religion describes as god (god represents love, empathy, good), and tried to organise as a way to “create” order, but then this order from above crated a hierarchical class-based society, which is why people is protestant in places were catholicism had material power, and started to find ways around spirituality besides religion, ( i believe spirituality can be described as feeding our capacity to feel empathy), which is a warm emotion, and feels good somehow which is why we do it, but then in a way different that fucking someone up for your own advantage doesn’t, is a “good” good, the same way psychedelics feel good in a way that coke and all this stimulants feel “bad” good you know what i mean?

which is what i like about the adorno critique, is not only capitalism but the enlightenment that we need to check, cuz capitalism is a product of enlightenment, and already religion shaped society in a way in which it removed the freedom from people to live life with community and warm, not feeding the spirit with religion, but using the institution of religion to administer lives. arbitrary rules as religions/states started to administer peoples with the idea that reason is the ultimate value and not only that, saying and convincing everyone of what “reason” is, and then capitalism and communism both used instrumental reason to justify the killing of people, so maybe the problem resides not only besides capitalism, but besides communism as well, and that is what points back to the enlightenment, were we stop to even try to categorise this, and just feel again 🙂

i guess this is why marx says “every critique starts with the critique of religion”, because enlightenment in some sense is the critique of religion, but then enlightenment failed, this is also what adorno says in dialectic of enlightenment, which is basically warning against even communism, warning against a deeper problem in modern thinking, so for me i interpret it as: marx was right, but beware even of communism (ofc also of fascism that out of question) but even of communism because it’s still using reason to reach a goal using and disposing of people, and this is what my father fold me yday “the real bad is using intelligence to hurt others”, our societies still use a notion of domination to rule and exploit, how to not fall into this? feeling again 👍 [16.12.25, 13:54:49] gonzalo: second try. sorry, i hope it makes more sense, i read too much of this and almost never talk about it to anyone, so it’s hard to express it and put myself in a different perspective that didn’t obsessed over this for the last years lol and these mfs make things complicated anyways [16.12.25, 14:37:13] gonzalo: i hope makes more sense, but i guess that’s were love politics and art comes to the healthy diet, and maybe then come back to philosophy [16.12.25, 14:41:28] gonzalo: it’s hard to love without someone, but i guess that’s what god tries to represent, love from inside even if there’s no one to wake up with [16.12.25, 16:58:11] gabi: gonzo my dear, excuse me for not answering, but I have a meeting with my prof tmrw on methods for my Bachelor. [16.12.25, 16:59:29] gabi: I think it is profoundly present today. Especially if persistent things, like the democracy, power and belief system of US f.e, are in crisis, the fight for power becomes brutal - anything goes. Immanent to this are obviously social conflicts and tension, which could align between classes or populistic ideas of elites vs the people. And they do align themselves between the perceived good and bad.

Transcendental ethics as a means of overcoming that tbh reminds me human rights. They can be understood exactly the way u understand them. As an all encompassing, all human integrating ethic that leads to the reduction of suffering. And this has been pursuit, since its beginning and political implementation in the 18th, by the people who were conceptually and deliberately excluded - women, slaves, morons, POCs. The Haitian revolution and the women in Iran recently, called on the same values that u r believing to be righteous: The end of suffering, by equality, through empathy.

Haha yes same here for me. A thousand words.

What I don’t understand is the persistence on the difference between Ethics and morality. This outside, objective and social set of Values - the ethics - and the separation from subjective Motors of value, of right and wrong - morals - seems to me like something which needs to be overcome in general. Like didn’t we understood, that pure subjectivity is a hoax? And that pure social-objectivity isn’t as well? Isn’t it (always) a procedure cocktail of both? Which means imo, that ethics and morality aren’t separable.

Take the example of a djihad terrorist: He believes that he will end up in heaven, bc he bombs himself up and kills a bunch of people. This value is morality, right? But he’s (partly) getting these values from some sort of Iman in a mosque, or his family, or his social and historic entourage. And then believes them to be right, but he could also not become a terrorist, bc he thinks they r wrong. How he gets to the point of feeling that this wrong, also comes from a personal/social-subjecitivy/objectivity process. There is no distinction between them, I think. This also enlarges the

Which gets me to the transcendental part in general. I still believe that there isn’t one single value that whole humanity is striving for - especially with the same means! I do believe that u r absolutely right, that humans r feeling this feeling of empathy, your transcendent [16.12.25, 17:02:43] gabi: understandable. lets keep this dialog running. [16.12.25, 17:11:31] gabi: your idea of transcendental empathy, forged into ethics very much sits, as I see it, on a fundamental problem of inclusion. What I mean by that is, that eventually something like transcendental empathy ethics, needs to be politically articulated and henceforth constructed. Like your flirt with anarchosyndicalism. But to make something reality-constructing, meaning powerful and (hegemonically) established it needs some sort of intersubjectivity, which is bound to a certain set of arrangement, that need to be ligned out = Making them difficult to feel. I think this isn’t theoretically solvable, but maybe strategically and tactically in a political sense. [16.12.25, 18:17:44] gonzalo: beautiful brother you’re so good at writing [16.12.25, 18:21:27] gonzalo: > Take the example of a djihad terrorist: He believes that he will end up in heaven, bc he bombs himself up and kills a bunch of people. This value is morality, right? But he’s (partly) getting these values from some sort of Iman in a mosque, or his family, or his social and historic entourage. And then believes them to be right, but he could also not become a terrorist, bc he thinks they r wrong. How he gets to the point of feeling that this wrong, also comes from a personal/social-subjecitivy/objectivity process. There is no distinction between them, I think. This also enlarges the

here it broke for some reason [16.12.25, 18:23:41] gonzalo: ⁠How he gets to the point of feeling that this wrong, also comes from a personal/social-subjecitivy/objectivity process.

I both agree and disagree with this, but yea I see your point now [16.12.25, 18:25:08] gonzalo: the fact that we can hijack people and convince them to kill speaks for the fact that not all people feel the same, and that their surroundings play an immense part, such as coming to the conclusion to kill, yes [16.12.25, 18:48:08] gabi: great! Tell me :) [16.12.25, 18:48:33] gabi: Nothing else came after that [16.12.25, 18:52:04] gonzalo: yes! i was writing but a friend called 🙂 [16.12.25, 19:39:43] gonzalo: i agree with it also [16.12.25, 19:42:43] gabi: Yeah me too [16.12.25, 19:43:33] gonzalo: i think my problem really is this rousseau idea of human nature, that there’s an intrinsic “good” core in humans that make us feel empathy, which then for example class based society and domination doesn’t fulfils, contrary to the idea of hobbes that humans before society live in a complete state of anarchy and disaster [16.12.25, 19:43:55] gonzalo: like there’s this idea of progress that sees human = bad and tries to dominate nature [16.12.25, 19:44:03] gonzalo: i should read bruno latour maybe [16.12.25, 19:44:29] gabi: Haha idk maybe. I like him. [16.12.25, 19:46:57] gonzalo: and as a theoretical point i maybe think it’s important as a tool to navigate aesthetics, how can art be made such that it represents something that is core to our experiences, which is also making it such that it cannot be absorbed by capitalism for example, something that speaks to our sensibilities and cannot be instrumentalized either as a commodity or as a tool of control [16.12.25, 19:50:05] gonzalo: and in politics speaks to the idea of what you described as the human rights movement [16.12.25, 19:53:55] gonzalo: ⁠Like didn’t we understood, that pure subjectivity is a hoax? And that pure social-objectivity isn’t as well? Isn’t it (always) a procedure cocktail of both? [16.12.25, 19:54:18] gonzalo: yes you’re right [16.12.25, 19:56:30] gabi: I think both r a way of constructing social collectivity and its rules, while being obviously historically embedded in their conceptualization. Hobbes wanting to find an end to religious civil war fe. I think it it’s absolutely right to believe in a fundamental set of anthropogenic mechanisms, if u want to be political. This is ontological, and something which we need to give positive meaning to being human in the present and in the future. But I do think this ontological foundation has to be based on epistemology, or without it, it isn’t possible to create this new ontological foundation. But this only an intuitive feeling, a un-thought idea, which came in mind and I want to think about. [16.12.25, 19:57:28] gabi: Oh man, so much! This empathy can be in there so much. [16.12.25, 21:07:03] gonzalo: read a bit more about what you said with hobbes and it’s very interesting, he was really looking for a solution to bring peace… !

i think your point about ontology based on epistemology makes sense, in a way adorno does this by critising cultural products, to understand society we need to understand what our culture produces, and this translates to knowledge as well as a cultural product

and that’s also what i think i’m trying study for myself too, a way to navigate cultural products, capitalist reality etc, with some kind of foundational ethics, that could also inform which direction to take in terms of practical life. a philosophy that still feeds hope in the trust of sensitivity, empathy, human connection, in spite of what capitalist culture rewards, this being objectivisation, domination, identity politics, accumulation of capital etc

then how to positively describe an ontology/philosophy sounds hard, i know deleuze has some kind of ethics based on spinoza’s composition that tries to resist capitalist instrumentality, but haven’t read the entirety of it [16.12.25, 22:16:16] gonzalo: I’m glad I could share it with you man! thanks for your replies too :))

⁠Take the example of a djihad terrorist: He believes that he will end up in heaven, bc he bombs himself up and kills a bunch of people. This value is morality, right?

yes i think this is morality, having a concrete idea of good and right based on a set of concrete rules. a counter example could be this pacifist strain of west african islam that sees jihad as a non violent resistance - how do they arrive to this conclusion with seemingly the same text as its base? will be interesting to to look the social context but is interesting how such a break occur

⁠But he’s (partly) getting these values from some sort of Iman in a mosque, or his family, or his social and historic entourage.
⁠And then believes them to be right, but he could also not become a terrorist, bc he thinks they r wrong. How he gets to the point of feeling that this wrong, also comes from a personal/social-subjecitivy/objectivity process. There is no distinction between them, I think.

i guess this can be a point that helps me -empathy cannot be actualized in isolation, it requires others (social context) to actualize itself- only once we recognize others as equal we can feel empathy, and here i ask myself and maybe where i get woo woo mystical 👻 because some people in different cultures come to the idea of peace and empathy and equality via spirituality or psychedelics or some other means but MAYBE this is were the tension is, what you said “there’s not one single value that the whole humanity is striving for” there’s no concrete categorical imperative, but cirmcumstancial and context dependent instances of action motivated by empathy but one cannot make it universally concrete

so maybe a person can still decide for itself that there is something wrong in blowing himself up and killing ppl even if it goes against its constructed social/moral environment, but this feeling of empathy is actualized by actions and social context, a daily life example could be the father that one day stops working so much to take care of his children after a fight or smth, but this still requires empathy as a core ground

because I’m interested in the cases in daily life even, like choosing to stop certain things, in the negative, or choosing to participate in politics, in the positive, where do this motivations come from, there’s a decision of right and wrong that goes against a culture that asks us to not care, to be individualistic. and how can we feed this to our art, our politics, our daily life so that we can feed this instead of being conformist

why do we resist, and strive to do (real) left politics and how we can feed this and share this, and make sure it cannot be used to justify violence [16.12.25, 22:18:05] gonzalo: ugh, long again, but i’m v glad we could discuss it a bit more in detail - helped me a lot to bring down some ideas. thanks broder!! [16.12.25, 23:59:24] gabi: Thx u brother! always love to share these ideas with u [16.12.25, 23:59:51] gabi: Gonna think and answer ur latest text tmrw [16.12.25, 23:59:57] gabi: Good night [17.12.25, 14:35:03] gonzalo: easy [17.12.25, 14:35:07] gonzalo: have a good day man [17.12.25, 14:49:51] gonzalo: Deleuze and Guattari kind of on a relevant topic: how to have meaning (hope in empathy for e.g. i can only hope this is good) in a not completely fluid but also not rigidly structured (religion fundamentalism) way [17.12.25, 14:51:17] gonzalo: this is where i find adorno interesting because deleuze points to capitalism as the cause of the losing all or surrender to fixed meaning, but adorno would say, it’s actually the enlightenment and not only capitalism that we need to critique [17.12.25, 14:51:20] gonzalo: a bit more radical [17.12.25, 15:12:35] gonzalo: also why i’m interested in religion, because there is where the break occurs, “every critique starts with the critique of religion” says marx somewhere, it’s like we’re trying to break out of the absolute but we end up fucking it up always because we try to capture and make its principles concrete [17.12.25, 15:14:26] gonzalo: and if we cannot say the rules by word, we create social abstract structures (capitalism) that dictates life and becomes the absolute [19.12.25, 11:34:42] gonzalo: i kept on thinking why i said we here [19.12.25, 11:34:59] gonzalo: i hope that’s what marx meant by immanent critique [19.12.25, 11:35:37] gonzalo: enough trying to understand the system time to fuck it up [19.12.25, 12:48:02] gonzalo: all homies spitting truth lol [19.12.25, 12:48:07] gonzalo: sorry man i get excited [20.12.25, 15:29:27] gabi: Gonz [20.12.25, 15:29:43] gabi: Excuse me I didn’t answer [20.12.25, 15:32:18] gabi: Yes i do agree. They aren’t seperable. Would be interesting to find out, how the idea and belief of unlimited growth and the enlightenment are concretely tied totgether [20.12.25, 15:33:00] gabi: Can u elaborate a bit more on that? [20.12.25, 15:33:27] gabi: I think I dont we really get it [20.12.25, 15:36:45] gabi: Yes absolutely right, that’s why I believe that it needs to be politically articulated and can henceforth not withstand an actual assertion of power. [20.12.25, 17:47:03] gonzalo: It seems that there’s a pulsion for domination in most cultures (?), which is specially noticeable in the big ones (Catholicism, Islam, Liberal Democracy, Communism), but then there are cases of tribes which are both hierarchical and non hierarchical, this is Anarchist Anthropologist David Graeber on the origin on Enlightenment too, when the Europeans coming to America to colonise saw the existence of tribes without hierarchies and reflected about Kings.

In some sense this pulsion for domination, seems to come from a certain cultural notion (meant to give some order and peace I suppose) that in turns comes from certain “Ideal”, “Absolute” (if we say that a culture is composed by a system of meaning and belief). These Ideals are the teachings of Christ for Christians, Buddha for Buddhists, Dao for Daoists, Reason for the Enlightenment, Tupá for the Guaraní culture which is basically Paraguay’s culture mixed with Christianity and semi-periphery liberal democracy. I guess Liberal Democracies have Capitalism as Ideal? anyways.

This is what I meant by “trying to capture and make its principles concrete” it seems that most religions and sciences, philosophies, cultures at some point are trying to describe some core universal principle, but this core principle is just a principle, and it seems to be dynamic and context-dependent, but one can say that all of these “cultures of domination” exploit universal principles we can all relate to, for domination and centralisation of authority with hierarchies (religion is the Opium of the people) they’re deeply true but also deeply exploited and used for coercion and control.

Even fucking Communism, I guess that’s why I’ll stand w mfs anarchists in the Spanish Civil War, centralised hierarchical authority is just nonsense, it’s like saying that we’re all too stupid. Ofc we need communities but not with world-central, I drive Lamborghini’s type leaders, and all communities can be as different as they can be, this is real plurality I feel, not fake capitalist integration.

This is were I like the first woman to win an Economic’s Nobel Prize, Elionor Ostrom, with her “Governing the commons”, she’s saying, there’s a third way to the “Tragedy of the Commons” problem, which says that the Commons need not a centralized state or a free market that regulates them, but to prefer small(er) local communities that just talk to each other, also why I think anarcho-syndicalism sounds like it could work so well, specially in times of so much information and free education (Internet is Ivan Illich’s dream with “Deschooling Society”). But yea people should own their labour via syndicates not states, I feel. Value of labour should always to the labourer, no way around it, no centralization of capital, no heavy destructive power. And culture is also labour I feel, so culture labourers should also own their own labour not be managed by the cultural industry (either state or specially not global capitalist culture industry). [20.12.25, 17:47:21] gonzalo: exactly [20.12.25, 17:47:25] gonzalo: scary but yea [20.12.25, 17:48:17] gonzalo: I guess my last text maybe touches it, but I’m not sure neither, I think what Adorno critiques is the usage of “reason” to dominate, and I guess domination leads to unlimited growth?