A post that demonstrates that, in the final analysis, Ogged is the whitest of us all.
the things we've let (and continue to let) happen are more than enough to damn us all to hell.
On the plus side, if that's the crowd that's going to Hell, that's probably the after-life club I was going to be trying get into, anyway.
Who knew Ogged's hiatus was being spent on the Matt Taibbi writers' retreat?
Hey, give us a break, Ogged. As that guy on NPR the other day showed, you can start with $25 and a spot in a homeless shelter and by the end of the year have $5k in savings, a car, an apartment and a book deal. (*Assuming you are a single, childless, healthy, confident, white guy with a degree from one of the best public universities in the country.)
In other news, the vagaries of social structure, the division of labor, and moral luck are indeed a bitch.
Well let's all just kill ourselves and leave our estates to oxfam, then.
Wow, just as humorless in the opposite direction. I am in awe.
And here I was giggling about how white people like Juno.
Kill Whitey!
you can start with $25 and a spot in a homeless shelter and by the end of the year have $5k in savings, a car, an apartment and a book deal.
I don't know about you, but I'm sticking to my plan to ride the Brooklyn ferries and wait for opportunity.
I tried to explain this feeling to my Chinese roommate (a strong believer in America, meritocracy, the Ivy League and fiscal responsibility as a political issue), and he was very confused. "But, you come from an Irish background. Shouldn't the WASPs feel guilty and not you?"
Guys, you're not getting it -- he's telling you you don't have to recycle.
I don't feel like a villain. I feel benign and blissfully ignorant.
4: To be fair, I think sometime simple* lefties sometimes pull too far in the other direction. (See, for example, this post.) From the outside, it looks like things often suck for a lot of people because (a) we're not sure why they suck, and (b) even when we think we know why, those bad conditions are more resistant to change than we expected. But I suspect you are much, much better situated to make a strong claim about whether (a) and (b) are true.
* "Simple" not meant as a slur.
Is this going to be a recurring theme on the blog from now on? God I hope not.
Are we not allowed to burn shit down if we're white, then? That's disappointing.
13: It's all part of the celebration of Whitesuntide, which appears to have come early this year.
13: To a not-inconsiderable extent, it's the theme that has been driving the site, in some fashion or another, since at least close to the beginning. Death to earnestness!
I feel threads like this neutralize the benefits of white affluence.
I also basically disagree with this post. The world is designed that if everyone does basically good, incremental things, it will add up. The insufferable white elitests are doing incremental things; they're just mockable.
It's the fuckwads who vote for Bush, and vote against spending for education, and voted again for Bush, and on and on and on, who deserve the moral condemnation. It's the corrupt politicians. It's the people in power who do a great deal of damage out of greed and profits.
Jesus, Ogged, I banned myself last night for waxing earnest, serious and unfunny like that. Thanks.
I found an earnest blogger, thin and white,
On a white background, putting up a post,
Like a white person's self-reproachful boast.
In fact, it's idiotic to demand that every person of means has blood on their hands for going about life as a cog in the wheel. Schindler was sobbing because that car could've saved 10 more Jews at the end of the movie, but you know what would save a lot more Jews? Not having concentration camps.
Holy shit, bob got front page privileges.
If this is the point, I get it, but it's lazy. You're evil whatever you do, so why try to do anything good? Like Kotsko says, this is all mordantly bitter and recognizing that all of us reading this are damned for our exploitation of the poor and suffering, but its also permission to keep on fiddling while Rome burns because nothing makes any difference anyway.
Feh. I certainly don't do enough to make any difference, but I'm not going to console myself by saying that it wouldn't matter if I did, so there's no need to worry about it.
Yeah, unless you're taking the position of condemning anyone who doesn't dedicate themselves to creating positive political change (which is probably a bit hard for ogged to take), then I think heebie's point stands.
Bob's had front-page privs forever.
those fucked by our action or inaction
I can only assume that this is a reference for my failure to stop the War in Iraq.
Sorry, y'all. My bad.
This sort of thing is what's wrong with Peter Singer type arguments about your moral responsibility for the deaths of children in Africa. Their net effect is to enervate your desire to do anything rather than motivate you.
You all are fucking doing it again! The exact same fucking reaction as to the website!
18 is wrong -- again, in a characteristic way.
I'm not going to console myself by saying that it wouldn't matter if I did, so there's no need to worry about it.
You wouldn't believe how comfortable it is on that bench, LB. Fine Corinthian leather seats. By which I mean leather made from the shucked husks of dead Corinthians. Embrace the lazy Dark Side, LB.
Let me quickly defend ogged by saying that it could be that recycling and other marginal positive changes for which I assume ogged is using it as a metonym are simultaneously absurd and very morally important.
With that said, and this is a "pot kettle black" comment given some of my recent behavior, Don't Feed The Troll.
You, too, Kotsko. You wouldn't believe how delicious the blood of children is. Embrace anesthesized compliance.
18 is wrong -- again, in a characteristic way.
Technically, I missed that whole thread. So I like to think I'm reinventing the wheel here.
I like to think I'm reinventing the wheel here.
Exactly.
You're the second person to have responded to me with "Zing!" in relation to this topic.
If'n it's gonna be reruns all week Imma startin' my own blog.
I'd read it. It'd be nothing but LOLcats and jokes about Canada, right?
It's not that we're boring and earnest, it's that we are so jaded with life that only simulating being boring and earnest holds any glimmer of amusement. Next, mass suicide via sled.
That's the first time I heard "Enraged Caveman Uk" and thought "Ogged." Next thing I know, I'll be hearing him kinda sorta quoting Hamlet. Then we'll know we're fucked.
(Also: Kotsko, he's correct.)
It's really the Irsnians' fault. Before they invented horse-breeding and chariots, oppression on a large scale was impossible: peasants and their goats could run away faster than the thugs in armor and their spears could follow.
But once you have horses and chariots, we are all doomed.
Face it: no Iranians, and the world is a peaceful egalitarian paradise instead of its current messy state...
"You can't be a good person" is not synonymous with "you can't do any good."
Face it: no Iranians, and the world is a peaceful egalitarian paradise instead of its current messy state...
I fucking knew it! I bet a Lur rode the first horse.
"You can't be a good person" is not synonymous with "you can't do any good."
We are all sinners in the hands of an angry Ogged. Let us repent through good works.
If'n it's gonna be reruns all week Imma startin' my own blog.
I posted about facial hair, and no one cared.
45: Great. You've reinvented the doctrine of original sin. Remind me why this makes it productive or funny to mock people for trying to do good?
Has Ogged converted to Catholicism? Or his version of "original sin" an example of convergent evolution, the way that eyes have evolved three separate times?
Before they invented horse-breeding and chariots
This gene now expresses itself as a desire to own a black BMW.
Remind me why this makes it...funny to mock people for trying to do good?
You can't explain comedy, LB. Look, if it breaks, it's tragedy....
48: I did enjoy the post. But I had already seen the flickr pics. Which are awesome. I don't have much to say except, cool hair, and wondering whether Kriston rhymes with the girl's name Kristen.
45: Great. You've reinvented the doctrine of original sin.
The main selling point of Catholicism is the ritual absolution and good works that allow you to roll that original sin boulder back up the hill for a bit. The functional secular equivalents of these practices include, e.g., recycling.
and no one cared.
Chopped liver, I know. I'll get my coat.
Well - I used to hate myself for being smart, white and privileged - so I did some really dumb stuff to try and be not so smart and not so privileged - and basically I got really sick, and unhealthy - and was worth shit to my friends, shit to my family and fuck all to society. It was a short stupid idea.
Honestly, to be ashamed of privilege is pretty awfully, well, shameful.
It's more complicated than that. Something about the conventional mythology of the oppressed supplanting actual human experience - something more about growing in response to nurture - accepting gifts gracefully - giving simple respect and acknowledgment - not being such a culture bigot.
Just remember there are children starving for cultural elitism in Africa - now eat your social standing like a good boy.
James's Princess Cassimassima is, though kind of a slog at times to read through, pretty good on this sort of thing. (Mostly presented in class terms, not so much nationality/ethnicity.)
Remind me why this makes it productive or funny to mock people for trying to do good?
It's funny when people engage in ritualistic, nearly cost-free gestures of social concern that make a tiny difference at the margins, while those same people allow truly horrible things to happen. They are rightful targets of mockery if they believe those gestures change their moral standing.
Nah, Heebie, you're wrong. It's just like sexism: the least you can do is fucking admit it, is sort of the point.
I see that Kotsko had a good post about this.
And now I'm going offline. You can all absolve each other now.
Sure. If they think doing good things makes them good people even though they don't do enough to be remotely useful, they're sanctimonious nitwits. But if they think they should do good things regardless of whether it makes them good people, what were we making fun of again? You've got this circular argument that comes out at don't bother trying to change anything, it just makes you pathetic on top of being evil.
If I book a plane to S.F. to beat you up, and don't sleep through departure, what does that do to my moral standing?
It's funny when people engage in ritualistic, nearly cost-free gestures of social concern that make a tiny difference at the margins, while those same people allow truly horrible things to happen.
I agree this is funny.
But the people perpetrating the horrible things are ultimately responsible for the horrible things. The cogs in the wheel are responsible for staying informed and making cog-like votes against such thing. Individual cogs who feel called for leadership roles should act on that.
What I mean is, we may go to hell in a hand-basket. But it's stupid to be eaten away by guilt on the way. Unless you feel called to leadership, just do your incremental best.
49, see 61l. C'mon; as humorless feminists, you guys should totally be able to get this.
It's just like sexism: the least you can do is fucking admit it, is sort of the point.
Sure, admit it, stay informed, and modify your behavior as things are brought into your worldview. But don't be tormented by guilt.
You've reinvented the doctrine of original sin. Remind me why this makes it productive or funny to mock people for trying to do good?
Maybe because the token gestures of goodness are more than outweighed by the destruction that keeps them in the affluent place they're in? Even just in terms of the environment: no matter how much I recycle, is the impact of that recycling ever going to outweigh the amount of carbon that I released while driving, that was released to produce and deliver those items to various places? How much fair trade coffee do I have to buy before I somehow manage to make up for all the slave labor that was done on my behalf?
Of course none of us asked to be part of the hugely destructive system of global capital -- but we fucking are! And when someone points that out, either in a funny way (and the website was funny) or in an earnest way, it's just whine whine whine until someone gives you a piece of candy and tells you that your own personal hands are clean -- because that's all that matters, right?
(This whole thing of mocking Ogged's notion of "original sin" just confirms my view that well-meaning liberals have a mental block when it comes to understanding the notion of social structure.)
There is no crime. The trees are alive. Universal love. Come on, people!
your own personal hands are clean -- because that's all that matters, right?
This is terribly confused.
the people perpetrating the horrible things are ultimately responsible for the horrible things.
"I didn't *personally* own slaves!"
"I've never sexually harassed anyone!"
"*I'm* not a rapist!"
What's stupid is to have the "guilt" reaction--which includes "that's not funny/accurate"--to what's clearly intended as a wry little bit of black humor. For heaven's sake. I don't think Ogged, or the website, was laying a guilt trip on anyone; he/it was making a *joke*. It was the *reaction* to the joke that was all guilt-ridden, earnest, and (continues to be) just as tiresome and frustrating as the foreverongoing threads about how x, y, or z isn't sexist because you know, a man could (be in that picture/shop at Whole Foods) too!
The crime is that we do not love each other.
You know, call me humorless, because I am, but I really do get, and admit, that anyone at all likely to be reading Unfogged is culpable as a beneficiary of an incredibly destructive and unjust system. We're all going to hell, we've destroyed the planet, children are dying for lack of clean water while I complain about not being fulfilled by my job. This is all true and fair and reasonable. To pick on, out of the say, 200 million Americans in that position, the ones who have some stupid, inchoate sense that all that is true, and who are making some stupid, useless attempts to do something about it, rather than all of the others who really don't give a fuck, seems poorly thought out both as humor and as ethics. (The site's not a big deal, but it would be funnier if it were better morally grounded.)
On the upside, if anything is ever going to drive Ogged into my loving smothering arms, it'll have been this week.
I don't think Ogged, or the website, was laying a guilt trip on anyone;
meet
and why the only proper emotions for reflective affluent Americans are shame and self-loathing.
The whole tormented by guilt angle is the only part I have a problem with. Like the smart lady said, "When you know better, you do better."
71: The thing is, if we're talking about this seriously, as Ogged seems to be, I don't think having the guilt reaction is stupid generally. We all should be guilty about this shit, at least if there's any chance it's going to make anyone put in some work to change anything. Focusing the guilt and the mockery on people with the gall to think riding a bike is going to do anything is off, though.
73: LB. Don't you remember when Ogged said that (paraphrasing here, but pretty damn close) "to pick on, out of all the men in America, the ones who are probably about as feminist as you can get, rather than all of the others who don't really give a fuck, is just wrong, and you are banned?"
Because it's the zack same thing.
I mean, fine; don't find the site funny, and/or find it offensive, even. But analyzing it for three threads is *exactly* like what the guys do with that "why is this sexist?" on-and-on-and-onning thing. Ogged isn't picking on us any more than you and I are picking on the men when those comment threads go on forever; he's just losing his temper at the incredible cluelessness.
75, see 77.
Anyhoo, now I have to go read to my kid. We spent about $125 at B&N tonight! (And $50 on Amazon yesterday, and $90 at the independent bookstore earlier this weekend.) Because white people have lots of disposable income and like to buy books!
LB:
I wonder if you're oddly placed to make sense of ogged's position, which I take, in some fashion, to be a shot at the smug. You're not very smug, so it might be less applicable to you. But most of us, at least for some non-negligible period of our lives, are smug in our goodness, where I take it the appropriate position is something like to recognize that our only available goal is to not be total assholes.
For God's sake, people, it's (probably self-deprecating) satire of the urban liberal bourgeoisie and the actions they take to demonstrate what kind of person they want to be seen as. That's all. It doesn't have any more meaning than that, and it's not saying they're inherently bad things to do.
So is ogged trying to say that, really, we're all little Eichmanns?
They are rightful targets of mockery if they believe those gestures change their moral standing.
Granted anyone who believes that recycling changes their "moral standing" is a twit. But anyone who goes around tracking their "moral standing" period is a twit. Priding oneself on being moral or flagellating oneself for being immoral are both acts of vanity, because they assume we are in control, when in fact we are not. We are participants in a much larger system, we do not control the consequences of our actions. Being good is an end in itself, not a means to tracking your ranking in the morality standings.
Calvin must have understood this.
This is all part of the original error we are led into when our parents implant the superego and destroy the innocence of the moral.
Life is made intolerable; they make life intolerable, white people.
I refuse to feel guilty about my parents, or their ancestors. Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their fathers; each is to die for his own sins. As far as I'm concerned, complicity is only wrong to the extent that it entails inaction, and only to the extent that inaction is wrong.
80: That's kind of what bothers me about it. By the standards of what's being made fun of there, I'm not very smug -- I don't do all that much of the self-righteous things that are the butt of the blog's joke, so it's not particularly aimed at me. I also don't do a lot of practical good in the world, and I'm pretty sure that lots of the people who do actually do some good are irritatingly self-righteous about it.
The attitude I'm seeing in the blog is "I'm going to take the weight of guilt that's appropriate for all of us, given our social position in this unjust and destructive system, and slam it on anyone who looks self-righteous to me. Because fuck practical good or evil effects, what's really important is my esthetic judgment of how you feel about yourself." And I hate that shit. The blog's not a big deal, but I dislike the attitude of the blogger.
LB, You're still not getting it. It's not that you're wonderfully privileged and you're not doing enough for those starving children -- it's that the very system that makes you privileged is starving the children. Your privilege is a direct product of stunted lives.
the only proper emotions for reflective affluent Americans are shame and self-loathing.
To follow up on 83 and the mention of the superego: this is what you get when you assume morality can only be sustained by causing pain to the immoral, and then bring that split within the brain by enlisting the "moral" part of it to torment the "immoral" part.
The various Christian moves, from unearned grace to expiation of sins to predestination, are all designed to manuever around this cost of socialization. Nietzsche understood this as well.
This is a hyper-charged system we live in, which has given much, destroyed much, and may yet improve human life greatly or else destroy life on earth. We all participate in it whether we want to or not. If we were more saintly (that is, a little inhuman in our capacity to negate the "ordinarily human" parts of us) we could participate much less than we do. However, we could still not be completely confident in either the results or the correctness of our actions.
I guess you can see this as an excuse to hate yourself for not being a saint. Or you can resign yourself to being just another limited, messed up human being. It's good to be a good human being, but it still doesn't make you better than anybody else.
87, and other such, get it.
it's not about "being tormented by guilt"--(this topic is gonna make me unlurk, almost, so you can tell I must be a white person)--that turns it into a Woody Allen movie or some such shit. it's about an intellectual acknowledgment of how things are.
it's about.....ok, [programatically tasteless example follows] after The Terrorists strike and you're bleeding to death, if your last thoughts go like "but...but...I give to Doctors without Borders!", then you're not quite getting the point...
the very system that makes you privileged is starving the children. Your privilege is a direct product of stunted lives.
How can possibly know this, Kotsko? Have you traced the chain of causation, fully modeled all the alternative worlds, or are you perhaps pulling it directly out of your ass?
The other day, I was talking to a friend of mine about payday lenders. It turned out that the tech company he worked for had a payday lender as a client. As he put it, "those guys knew they were scum".
By the moral calculus advanced by B here
the least you can do is fucking admit it
I haven't read any of the first thread, half of the second thread, or any of this thread, but has anyone pointed out that this is basically the latte liberal slander? The ideological aim of the joke isn't at privilege -- it's at those who express solidarity with those who haven't privilege, regardless of how successful that act of rejection is. It's not radical, it's cynical. There are superficial similarities, but the underlying attitude isn't Black Panther, it's white libertarian. Y'all should be able to read closer.
87: No, I got that bit. I'm in my office ordering takeout sushi because uncounted people in the rest of the world are trying to survive on pennies a day. And anyone reading this is pretty much in morally the same position I am, whether or not they're making conspicuous or inconspicuous, effective or ineffective, efforts to do good. If someone reading this thinks they're a good person because they're trying to do good things, they're wrong, and ridiculously so.
But I don't have any right to laugh at them for it. Someone else may, but not me. I'm sitting here sucking the blood of starving people worldwide, and getting a little chuckle about how funny it is that someone else has the gall to think their petty little efforts to make that change are doing any good isn't something I have the right to do.
92: Yeah, that's been my reading.
Orrin Hatch justifying his vote against the recent bill that included restrictions on interrogation methods:
Sometimes I feel as if I am on the corner of sanctimony and righteousness. Sanctimony has popular appeal--it gains the approving tut-tutting of the chattering masses. Often it is more bombast than substance, more Babbittry than bravery. Righteousness is not always a function of the approval of the masses. Those who go to war to defend do things that are lawful but sometimes unpleasant--sometimes very unpleasant. In the choice between sanctimony and righteousness, I will choose the latter.
90: Have you ever fucking heard of "global capitalism"?
Adam, we live in a shitty system, one that we all need to work make better, but that's just wrong. The world was a terrible place long before global capitalism came on the scene.
The various Christian moves, from unearned grace to expiation of sins to predestination, are all designed to manuever around this cost of socialization.
Why did you kill Our Lord?
98: Look, he was just getting on my nerves, okay?
That fucker was on my porch, and I had a sign up clearly stating that trespassers would be shot.
Pwned again by LB. Mothermotherfuckerfucker.
97: The world is a shitty place in a particular way and for particular reasons because we live under global capitalism in specific. I had always assumed that LB was incapable of time travel and was thus living contemporaneously with all of us -- if I was wrong about that and she lives in some future utopia, apologies all around.
My first thought on reading ogged's post wasn't Christian, it was Jewish grandmother.
102: ? I know you're responding to Walt, but my name's in there, and it doesn't have much to do with anything I've said.
If, thanks to LB's time travel technlogy, we moved to an alternate reality at the same level of development as our own 2007, there was just be a different hierarchy with LB at the bottom. Different children would starve, but there would still be starving children.
payday lenders.
Quest. What rule must wee observe in lending?
Ans. Thou must observe whether thy brother hath present or probable or possible means of repaying thee, if there be none of those, thou must give him according to his necessity, rather then lend him as he requires; if he hath present means of repaying thee, thou art to look at him not as an act of mercy, but by way of Commerce, wherein thou arte to walk by the rule of justice; but if his means of repaying thee be only probable or possible, then is hee an object of thy mercy, thou must lend him, though there be danger of losing it, Deut. 15. 7. If any of thy brethren be poore &c., thou shalt lend him sufficient. That men might not shift off this duty by the apparent hazzard, he tells them that though the yeare of Jubile were at hand (when he must remitt it, if hee were not able to [Page 38] repay it before) yet he must lend him and that chearefully. It may not greive thee to give him (saith hee) and because some might object, why soe I should soone impoverishe myself and my family, he adds with all thy worke &c; for our Saviour, Math. 5. 42. From him that would borrow of thee turne not away.
Quest. What rule must we observe in forgiuing?
Ans. Whether thou didst lend by way of commerce or in mercy, if he hath nothing to pay thee, must forgive, (except in cause where thou hast a surety or a lawfull pleadge) Deut. 15. 2. Every seaventh yeare the Creditor was to quitt that which he lent to his brother if he were poore as appears ver. 8. Save when there shall be no poore with thee. In all these and like cases, Christ was a generall rule, Math. 7. 22. Whatsoever ye would that men should doe to you, doe yee the same to them allsoe.
Why did you kill Our Lord?
Well, Christianity cranks the guilt to the max, that's why they have to come up with creative moves to relieve it. God's unearned grace binds you so tightly in gratitude because you were so low and damned in the first place.
Have you ever fucking heard of "global capitalism"?
If you're going to locate original sin here, doesn't it have to date back to at least the invention of agriculture? What are you comparing "global capitalism" to?
And since at least 80 percent of the world's population today wouldn't be alive to suffer in the first place without "global capitalism", what's your balance on their existence vs. their poverty?
It's an intellectually incoherent position; one wonders why you feel emotionally drawn to take it.
People trying to survive on pennies a day existed long before there was global capitalism.
96 is even funnier if you imagine it in the same voice as Troy McClure saying "You see your crazy friend never heard of 'The Food Chain'."
I made a stronger statement than I intended to. Since I believe that we could do better, I believe that there is an attainable possible world in which we actually do better.
Global capitalism is a mixed bag. It has crapped on the environment, and may indeed kill us all, but it has done more to end poverty in China and India than all of the handwringing of American leftists. It has caused some children to starve, and other children to not starve.
Sorry, posted the last para in 107 before I saw 102; I think I see your logic better now. Though I still disagree with it for the reasons stated.
107: I'm not trying to locate "original sin"! I'm trying to name the destructive system that we live in and that makes some of us (me included) privileged.
And it's really awesome that I'm being driven by emotion here, rather than reason. I'm glad someone has finally grown a pair and decided to directly insult me, rather than use the passive-aggression that is so characteristic of "white people."
104: PGD was questioning my ability to know that LB was part of a system where the privilege of some was tied directly to suffering on the part of others. That's why LB's name appears in the comment.
Wait, we're supposed to directly insult you? You killed Christ, Adam.
what's your balance on their existence vs. their poverty?
Are you going to judge poor single mothers for getting abortions, PGD?
Troy McClure saying "You see your crazy friend never heard of 'The Food Chain'."
God I love that episode.
Troy: Gettin hungry Jimmy?
Jimmy: Uhh, Mr. McClure? I have a crazy friend who says its wrong
to eat meat. Is he crazy?
Troy: Nooo, just ignorant. You see your crazy friend never heard of "The Food Chain". Just ask this scientician.
Scientician: Uhhh...
Troy: He'll tell you that, in nature, one creature invariablyeats another creature to survive. Don't kid yourself Jimmy. If a cow ever got the chance,
he'd eat you and everyone you care about!
And I'm going to come out and say what I really think: LB is using her time travel technology to repeatedly pwn me.
There is a certain type of not very effective good intentionalism associated with things like recycling and riding bikes to save gas. Just levy some carbon taxes and stop bothering me.
Actual dirty hippies have a pretty good track record for things like opposing the Iraq war, supporting the constitution, and socialized medicine. To the extent that the article was aimed at the dirty hippies, I can't support it. I don't think it was though.
What makes that Simpsons bit for me is the accompanying diagram, with arrows from every animal pointing to the drawing of the person, labelled "You".
I'm sorry but all of this is just confusing me. What are we arguing? Whether the blog in question is radical? 'Cos it's not. End of fucking story. If you want radical blogs they're all over the place. If you want radical satire, that's all over the place too, just not at this white people blog. So if it's not radical, then what's the point? It's just more pabulum. Good/bad, helpful/unhelpful, accurate/inaccurate -- who cares? It's just more whining.
You know, I used to think I was alienated from stuff when I was 18. If I'd known then what I know now, I'm not sure I would have tried so hard to keep from ending it all. But I'm just as bought-in as any of you (except for the not-having-a-car part, of course), so I might as well just sit back and wait for the inevitable. Fuck. I should have done something when I had the chance. Now what can I do? Type fucking blog comments.
Why does everyone have to be so stupid?
It has crapped on the environment, and may indeed kill us all, but it has done more to end poverty in China and India than all of the handwringing of American leftists. It has caused some children to starve, and other children to not starve.
It hasn't reduced the number of poor people in those places. It has added new poor people, and also new rich people.
And since at least 80 percent of the world's population today wouldn't be alive to suffer in the first place without "global capitalism", what's your balance on their existence vs. their poverty?
It depends on your take on the non-identity problem.
Also, I think I'll comment as "Harold Bloom" from now on, unless someone tells me not to. It makes me feel smarter.
Adam, you're economically illiterate. There's a lot of shitty things about capitalism but "global capitalism causes poverty" is just a LITTLE lacking in nuance, so as to just not be accurate.
Ogged, you're just being a dick.
None of which is to say that recycling & fair trade coffee or what not makes you a good person.
I had a sort-of friend in law school who would give me little David Brooks inspired soliloquies about the white privileged guilt I supposedly felt. I said: "I'm not especially guilty, what I am is LUCKY, I don't fool myself it's more than luck, & I try to act accordingly." I stand by that.
The claim that global capitalism is great because it is ending poverty in China is especially interesting in light of that Atlantic article posted here a while back, in which it was revealed that China's poor would be doing substantially better if China's rich hadn't decided to subsidize Americans' standards of living instead.
Oh, okay. I don't know what Harold Bloom's personality is like anyway.
Katherine gets it right as usual.
That's not what that Atlantic article said. Chinese in general would be able to consume more today if the Chinese government was not deliberately subsidizing American consumption. The Chinese are following the same development path as Japan, where consumption was deliberately restricted to fund development. If global capitalism was banned tomorrow, both China's rich and poor would be worse off.
If global capitalism was banned tomorrow
I don't think this is a meaningful phrase.
The article was unequivocal that capitalism has helped the Chinese poor, yes, but it was hardly confident that the government was correctly acting in the poor's best interest to limit consumption to the extent that they have—or that they are even trying to.
129.If global capitalism was banned tomorrow, both China's rich and poor would be worse off.
What does that even mean? "Banned tomorrow?" By who, the CCP? The alien space bats? A federation of directly-democratic anarchist-communist organizations with a commitment to ending oppression and domination and distributing resources in the amount that they're needed to the people who need them? If it's the latter, then I think by definition people in China and everywhere else would in fact be better off.
Ban Global Capitalism...By Dawn!
I'm done with this shit. I'll try not to let the door hit my ass on the way out.
Ham-Love, don't go. The Superfriends need you!
You may remember me from such nature films as 'Earwigs: Ewwww' and 'Man vs. Nature: The Road to Victory'.
130 would have been better if signed by Katherine.
I'm not sure what you're trying to argue, destroyer. Is there a possible policy regime in which China's poor are better off? Yes. Are China's poor better off because China switched from autarky to export-led growth? Yes.
If I drove HL off, I would feel like shit.
...and now I'll leave you with what we all came here to see: hardcore nudity!
The real problem here is Beck's rule that we're not allowed to argue about Obama on non-Obama threads. Our minds, consumed by our love/hatred of Obamamania but with no outlet, have no choice but to turn on themselves.
FWIW, I do believe that the privatization of political action into personal consumption decisions that are supposed to make you feel good individually is reactionary, co-optation, bullshit, etc. Carbon taxes over Priuses, enforceable labor standards in free trade agreements over fair trade coffee, etc.
But that's sort of obvious.
135: Hamilton, if you let Ogged drive you off with too much earnestness, the globe will reach a critical mass of irony and implode under the sheer strain. Want that on your conscience, whitey? I didn't think so.
I can't believe I missed out on all this quality race/class disharmony. Fuck.
138.2: If it is the case that global capitalism could benefit poor Chinese more than it does, and if the reason this it does not is because wealthy Chinese have chosen to subsidize American decadence, that seems to strongly underline the Ogged-Kotsko line: that these people are suffering for us.
It brings it out Kotsko's apparently "emotional" abstraction into something as tangible and unconventional as you can find in the Atlantic; we're no longer talking about slaves from centuries ago here, in which the chain of causality is quite long and muddled. No: you (you) are as comfortable as you are because power brokers in China have decided to make you that comfortable, and in making that decision they have specifically neglected real needs of their citizens we can point to and easily imagine resolved.
143: race/class disharmony is just so white, DS.
Incidentally, despite agreeing with ogged, I urge caution in who we say this sort of thing to. I don't want to start hanging out with people like this:
I looked over at Date. She was sobbing.
"All that money," she said. She looked around the theater. Kids were bopping to the hits. "All these children."
I didn't know where she was going with that, or what to say.
At which point Hannah Montana sang, "Life is what you make it!"
To which Date responded, "The Guinea worm. In Sudan. It exits you. Slowly. In 2006 alone, over 20,000 people infected."
145: The house, field and immigrant negroes all disagree, but do they get any credit? Nooooo. Shafted by whitey again.
Global capitalism could benefit the Chinese poor more than it does. It could benefit me more than it does, but that doesn't mean that I'm suffering for anyone else. I'm not clear on what rule you're advancing here.
The Chinese are following the development path followed by Japan, which requires suppressing consumption today for the sake of development, and more wealth tomorrow. Undoubtedly, they are not taking the optimal path, but export-led growth is the only well-marked path for a country out of poverty, and the formula that has worked has involved suppressing consumption to promote exports.
if it's not radical, then what's the point?
Shorter Minneapolitan: let's just all kill ourselves now, shall we?
It is so totally awesome that we've moved from defending our collective whiteness to defending global capitalism.
I have a project that I have to finish by morning. I expect to be defending the Nazis by 6am.
Walt, do you understand the concept of someone suffering for you? It seems like this is coming down to a strange cognitive gap, in which some commenters find themselves unable to understand the world in a certain way. (If this sounds condescending, I don't mean it to be. This wouldn't be to say that I'm right, but that there is no right here.)
Someone in China right now could be better off—not just in the sense of have nicer things, but in the sense of not getting sick and dying. The reason they are suffering is that someone else in China has chosen to enrich you instead. They suffer because you are rich. If you cannot translate that statement into "they suffer for you," it's hard to continue the conversation.
Dammit people, it's class, not whiteness. Ogged is right that we in America and Europe who are nicely middle class are holed up in a nice cocoon built on the suffering of others. No matter how much we recycle personally or buy slave free chocolate or fair trade coffee, our individual actions won't change the cycle of exploitation. It just makes us feel better to buy fair trade cofee, but its very existence legitamises the system that keeps small peasant farmers poor and illiterate, as "fair trade" becomes just one more item to be ticked off when buying stuff.
What Ogged missed of course is that us nice middle class people might think we're pretty priviledged, but in the end we're just as much tools as the eight year old boys making Nikes in a sweatshop in Indonesia, just tools who've sold out their birthright for a nice car and the chance to afford a bigger mortgage. Reading The Battle of Venezuela, which details how all the Venezuelan equivalents of us were happy to go along with the 2002 coup and happy to see cops shoot unarmed protestors as long as their own priviledges were kept unthreatened brought this home to me.
So what can you do about this? Don't feel guilty, organise! Use your priviledge to achieve something!
Anticipating a response based on 148.2, which I neglected: If you're going to reiterate that, well, subsidizing American decadence is the only way for a country like China to itself become rich, I wouldn't object. And I'm not basing my argument on the narrow counterpoint that China could pursue a more optimal path, in which they sacrifice less now and end up just as comfortable in the future.
Rather, I'm arguing that the China example is perfect, in that it demonstrates that global capitalism (as it is practiced in this world, with this world's history) is structured such that the only path towards stable wealth for a country like China is to subsidize the outsized living habits of other people while letting their people languish in suffering. Some day, yes, this might all result in a utopia in which Chinese citizens are just as rich as us. In the meantime, someone is getting sick and dying so that you can have a $200 iPod instead of a $600 one.
If you want to justify all of this by pointing to three generations from now, in which the whole world lives in decadent equality, you're missing the point: all those people still suffered to create that decadence. Maybe it's justified on utilitarian grounds. But there is something creepy and fucked up about basking in comfort and, when challenged on it, replying, "Well, this is all justified on utilitarian grounds."
(Sorry if these comments seem personally aggressive. I just face alot of resistance to this argument in my personal life, most of it in bad faith, so I'm easily riled.)
When you start invoking the principle that your interlocuter is "unable to understand the world in a certain way", I would suggest a more parsimonious explanation is that you're not explaining clearly. I don't see any way in which your statement is not vacuously true. There is a course of action someone could take to make any single person better off, and me worse off, and by that definition they are suffering for me? There are people who are getting sick and dying because the government of the US won't raise my taxes and buy them mosquito nets. Does that mean those people are dying to make me richer?
It's not like the government of China is doing it because they like me. They're doing it because it's the only way they know how to make China a rich country, and not a poor one. If they followed your advice, it is certainly plausible that it would keep China poor forever. But hey, at least I wouldn't be benefiting, right? So that's something.
"Don't feel guilty, organise! Use your priviledge to achieve something!"
no, no, no, labor organizers are still whitey.
Ogged is not restricting his comments to people who recycle. LB is dead right: this is the Mitt-Romney-is-better-than-John-Edwards-because-at-least-he-doesn't-pretend-to-care-about-poor-people argument. I agree that buying organic & what not isn't going to cut it--though, it's harmless to mildly beneficial. But it's not like anyone is arguing otherwise; instead, we have an aesthetic critique of those embarrassing, earnest white liberals.
we have an aesthetic critique of those embarrassing, earnest white liberals.
So fucking what? It's FUNNY. You guys are getting all worked up because it's only an aesthetic critique, how dull and provincial and unoriginal of it, which is a perfect example of what it is the site is making fun of. Light. En. Up.
(Although I personally am finding this ongoing discussion hilarious. But I'm afraid it might kill poor Ogged.)
So Ogged really is the whitest of them all?
Are those who provide services to third worlders exempt from the guilt of their fellow capitalists exploiting them?
154 to 155.
A shorter 154: You must be enriched for some future people to be enriched. Some people must suffer for you to be enriched. It may be the case that, starting from the world we have right now, the best path to the best future is someone suffering to enrich you.
That that can be the case is why global capitalism is depressing and shitty; that you are the middle party, getting a free ride, ought to make you feel guilty.
I don't care about the site. Of the few posts I saw, some were funny, some not so much, none especially annoyed me. This post by ogged is extremely annoying.
It's FUNNY.
Meh. The "10 rap songs white people like" page was better. Probably because each entry was 1/10th as long.
Guilt at the part that you play in modern capitalism is incoherent; capitalism exists as it does owing to the historical and materialist imperatives.
Steve Jobs, if you accept the left materialistic socialist critique of capitalism, is as subject to the laws of historical need as the Chinese who wishes he could work longer hours making iPods in order to get a few more dollars a week.
Guilt, in that framework, is nonsense.
If you're a nice American liberal type, on the other hand, then I do think that a healthy guilty feeling floating around is a good thing -- after all, there's a damn lot to feel guilty for, and somebody's got to do it.
Are those who provide services to third worlders exempt from the guilt of their fellow capitalists exploiting them?
Clearly you're unfamiliar with the Nestle boycott.
No, it's not just "an aesthetic critique." It's a criticism of the social practices of a group of people who are better positioned than any group in the world to effect change in a system of injustice, but who instead have an elaborate system of moral expiation that consists almost exclusively of convenient and largely ineffective or irrelevant gestures. To argue that this or that gesture actually does some (marginal) good, isn't precisely wrong, but it shifts the focus away from the role of the gesture in an unjust system.
I wrote 155 before I saw 154. It's okay if you get riled.
Poor Chinese people are not, on average, being made worse off in absolute terms to subsidize American consumption. They are being made worse off in comparison to imagined alternative policies. If China never opted for privileging exports over consumption, those same people would be sick and dying, and many more besides.
The Chinese government is not directly trying to subsidize American consumption. They are directly trying to hold the value of the yuan down so that they can export more than they import. Export-led growth allows them to create large-scale Chinese companies that create jobs and can effectively compete on world markets. This is the formula that gave Japan Toyota and Sony. The only way to control the yuan-dollar exchange rate to hold large amounts of US assets, which means they have to use Chinese savings to fund American consumption. (They do get ownership of American assets out of it -- the Treasury bills that the Chinese government holds are worth hundreds of billions -- but they probably end up paying more than they would in an ideal world.)
The strategy China is following flies in the face of the advice dispensed by institutions that are usually regarded as agents of global capitalism, such as the IMF, and the World Bank (or the US government, for that matter). Their advice would be to float your exchange rate, and allow in all the foreign imports that your consumers can buy; don't bother trying to form your own large corporations to compete with American ones.
