[PEN-L:32507] re: how things change referencing note # 32499

[Doyle Saylor <djsaylor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Greetings Economists,
Jim Devine writes,
Doyle, think it's a mistake to confuse "loony positions" with a reference to
actual "loonies."

Doyle,
Max Sawicky said something like that to me a long time ago in a similar
conversation about disability issues arising in public discourse.  Primarily
Max's point was that policing language is not a winning political strategy.
And his obvious point is that just because you tell someone their idea
stinks doesn't mean they will sniff the air and smell shit, they just cling
to their deeply held belief in the face of Political correctness.

However, your position is overlooking the cliched nature of saying something
like for example the right wing is loonie.  I've been hearing that sort of
talk since the 60's when I could follow adult conversation.  If one looks at
the movies of that time like Dr. Strangelove, the right was portrayed as
'loonie' as a matter of course.  What have we to learn from those decades
old habit of political labeling?  Nothing of substance in my view.
Literally the habit produces nothing that alters the political landscape.

Jim,
There are lots of (societally-defined) sane people out there who have
"loony" positions (as I see them). John Ashcroft springs to mind, as does
the "crackpot realism" of the cold-war liberals. (A "loony" position is
illogical, goes against established empirical knowledge, and/or leaves out
many of the issues and questions that should be addressed. It also eschews
issues of morality. Of course, a lot of this is a matter of opinion
(something that can change), suggesting that we should be very careful in
labelling a position "loony.")

Similarly, perhaps the vast majority of societally-defined "loonies" have
quite "sane" positions on many issues. In fact, some research argues that
many with depression are more realistic about themselves than the "normal"
people are. Someone on the psychological edge of society often has a clearer
view of what's going on than someone who's in the middle of it all.

Doyle
The real problem with such labels is that they are empty politically of
describing opponents in way that distinguishes the left from the capitalist
analysis.    Saying someone is loonie really does have the inevitable point
that if you are disabled you are the problem.  Rather than harp on something
I've said before I will try to break some grounds here.

I'm thinking of two books that have had some influence upon my thoughts this
way.  The first one I can't locate in my bookshelf, and therefore I can't
name a title or author for the moment.  But the content is sufficient to use
as reference point since I can locate the discussion in the book if I need
to.  The book is a history of emotion in France from roughly one hundred
years before their Revolution, to the following 100 years.  Duke University
professor and their press I believe published last year.  History professor
I think or perhaps their English department.

If one is going to make a political point about the right, one has to
understand not so much that someone else who is a rightist thinks logically
about the content of their political position, but why people will hold
patently falsify-able positions.  This history of France I am referring to
proposes that the French had an unusual history leading up to their
revolution in which culturally they emphasized their emotions and encouraged
feeling and sentiment almost uniquely so.  This use of emotion and why they
did that was a major contributing factor to the revolution itself.  The
sense of Revolution was a like a sweeping emotional change in the population
as a whole.  Generally speaking we tend to think of social change as being
infused with feeling.  And every revolution is a major emotional upheaval is
extremely obvious.

This history basically says that strong feelings were the element that
underlay the massive social upheaval in France.  Marx would of course bring
up the rise of Capitalism, but the Capitalist reaction after the revolution
was to shut down the popular feelings.  Why was this an outcome to the
Revolution?

An even more interesting book that further delves into this arena is "The
Vehement Passions" by Philip Fisher, Princeton Univ. Press 2002.  In effect
Fisher looks at emotions that are Vehement which are primarily what I think
people are referencing when they think something is crazy.  Fisher simply
recounts the historical shifts in West European culture and North America
concerning Vehement feelings such anger from broad acceptance of Vehement
feelings to rejection of Vehement feelings now.  And how over time Vehement
feelings lost grounds to 'rational' thought.

The capacity to discuss Vehement feelings realistically instead of labeling
things loonie would I think constitute a political break through.  Fisher's
book opens up the political discussion on the left to understand social
structure in new ways.  I believe that we can make political progress if we
seriously question the underlying meaning of labels like loonie.  On the
surface of course the labels amount to a reference to disability, but deeper
there is a society wide attitude toward emotions that is challenge-able.
That is the key element in a new perspective the left can assume.

I will sketch some things Fisher says, for example, anger or Vehement anger
(meaning rage) is experienced by a person as a moment in which one is alone.
His label is that such Vehement emotions are experienced as being alone by
the person.  The intense feeling literally gives sense internally that one
is no longer connected socially.  Though a raging person may literally hit
someone in a real sense of physical connection, the person experiences rage
as being alone while feeling it.  And observers also feel at a distance from
the rage they see in someone else.  Fisher calls this a singularity state.

Rational thinking attempts to produce brain work (writing primarily) that
isn't contaminated by Vehement thinking.  Vehement thinking does affect how
we can think about many things at once, I mean that anger or intense
feelings focus our thoughts on something in particular rather than calmer
feelings have a wider less focused quality.  The usual charge in modernity
is that Vehement feelings are crazy in the sense that craziness is
profoundly experienced as being alone.  Deep sadness or depression feels
like total withdrawal from society is one example that many people might
have had and understand.  But in fact Rage does not last like real insanity
and we sometimes define insanity as the inability to leave moods as time
passes.  Rather there is systemic structure to the emotions that while not
useful in particular instances are necessary to political action.  Only when
people feel aroused do they participate is one such rule of thumb.

My thinking is that politically we might ask serious questions about how
people feel.  We can't do that if we say the right is loonie because we
aren't realistically discussing the material structure of Vehement Passions.
We have to develop a vocabulary of what emotional states are which stops
using empty labels like loonies.  We may have rage toward the right for
example for good reason since we experience the sense of loss of social
programs.  If we deny those Vehement feelings to keep rational we lose sight
of the value of all states of feelings that constitute building what social
groups mean.

The charge of sectarianism is in my view not so much about group craziness
as about understanding the general process of group management of feelings.
Groups do things because they feel those things much more than because they
had a rational discussion of what to do.  Rather rational discussion is a
key tool in trying to find some way to work emotionally toward some goal.
We can point at structures of socially Vehement Passions that build social
structure in a way that Socialism has indicated in the past.  For example,

page 226 of "The Vehement States"

The vehement states are, at the same time, no matter what the local content
might be, states of arousal.  We preserve in our clear ideas of sexual
arousal or the arousal experienced in competitive races a model for the
larger fact that fear, shame, wonder, grief, and anger are states of
arousal.  For competitive, high-energy states we prefer to speak chemically
and say "the adrenaline was glowing." Behind our use of "adrenaline" or the
quasi-physical but always psychic idea of sexual arousal, our modern
vocabulary does not supply a common term for spiritedness, or for the
underlying notion of a spirited self that is evoked and defined by vehemence
and the impassioned states.  Along with the advance preview of mortality
present in many experience as what I have called the injured will, a second
larger topic, that of spiritedness, enters experience through the passions
and the strong emotions, and it does so through the fact of arousal.
Spiritedness sets up a boundary condition for human experience equal in
importance to rationality and to desire or appetite.  We will be able to
give an account of this state of arousal and spiritedness by looking first
of all at its well-defined opposite, the lack of spirit."

Doyle,
Socialism in the past in part succeeded because of an astute awareness of
suffering and Vehement Passion in the working class that Capitalism creates
by their systemic impact upon workers in general.  Vehement feelings are not
crazy but the normal range of emotion in the average person upon which their
social life is based.  If the right has vehement feelings about their
positions we must understand how to build upon our own strong feelings.
thanks,
Doyle Saylor