pepitothinking

Well, mi gente, here is some more feedback as part of my “National Sovereignty is dead!” series. This time my exchange is with “Since 1898” a rather thoughtful person with whom I’ve had several conversations on the topic….

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JFM:
Tell me what you think of my arguments on my blog pepitothinking.com

“Since 1898”:
I think your arguments are true, but ultimately I think a segment of the Puerto Rican population want to feel emotional about this. They are longing for a kind of Fanonian catharsis from this humiliating almost 120 year relationship with the US. I think there’s an argument to take up with Spain, who was there 408 years and abandoned the place. The people didn’t have their chance for a cathartic historical moment. They don’t want to hear about globalization, because the Puerto Rican people can not engage and experience what it’s like to be in the globalized market without the help of a large colonial and imperial power. How do we go from the zone of non being to the zone of being? That determines true decolonization. Another Fanonian concept. I think the decolozation process can happen even if PR were to be ceded to another foreign power today. In other words, if the national language in PR were to change to Chinese, that would not hinder our decolonial process within the context of Spain, the US or what may or may not come…Including statehood. The people want a big “fuck you” moment. 🙂

JFM:
Well, while I get the emotional stuff, in the end, its only relevance is how much it prevents rational thought. Well, as far as I can see, we are in a zone of being defined as living breathing humans that go about our daily lives. So you must be using this phrase as some sort of political metaphor tying being to some abstract notion of self-determination. If that’s the case, almost all of humanity is in a zone of non-being.

Brotha my point is that the global 1% has taken the game to a new level….they don’t need or want nation states any more. The sad truth is that the big fuck you moment might never happen. We have to be ready to accept it. Usually, the rebels don’t blow up the death star in this movie. Reality, in my opinion, is not just a crowd pleasing narrative. The fucking Trump supporters want a big fuck you moment for all the shit they’ve eaten and where is that taking us?

We abandon reason to our peril. Catastrophe is the final resting ground of the emotion path.

“Since 1898”:
I agree. I see your point completely. You made a good point about the religious pov. Rationality and reason is kicked to the side in favor of religious thinking. Most people there and here are waiting for the messiah to come. Rational thinking is an sin for most religious people’s Scientific thinking is out the window.

JFM:
My experience says ….nice to have emotion in the car, but I ain’t giving him the wheel.

In his book, Nick Bostrom says….

“Though we have perhaps since gleaned some moral insight, we could hardly claim to be now basking in the high noon of perfect moral enlightenment. Very likely, we are still laboring under one or more grave moral misconceptions.”

Excerpt From: Bostrom, Nick. “Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies.” Oxford University Press, 2014

Yeah, but the point he’s indirectly making is that we (or a subset) are the people that have to teach an AI values or more certainly risk extinction. 
Given sociopath Trump, routine televised murder of black people, plentiful neo-fascists, a detached 1%, consuming ourselves to environmental destruction, treatment of transgender people, global religious zealotry, we… As a species, are walking on thin ice.

You know, there is on the left a phenomena that I’ll call “fetishizing the fuck you”. It seems to me to be a highly un-thinking posture of loving it when there are “two sides”.  One side  can be associated with some sort of power or prestige or something that “elevates” it in some way over another “side”.  Then, anyone in the non- elevated side saying “fuck you” to the other is honored, lauded,  praised, applauded, is righteous over the other side period.   

Basically, I’m talking about people who never found a “fuck you” they didn’t like. So somebody says a fuck you and they like it.  They like the fuck you more than they like they actual content they are saying fuck you about.  

So when you’re a lefty, you value culturally the courage, temerity, hutzpah, to say fuck you SO much, that anywhere they see it gets a thumbs up!

Problem is its automatic, reflexive… Basically non-thinking.  Their pattern recognition software latches onto the basic outlines of the fuck you and that’s enough.  They “side” with who ever is saying fuck you (ok, to an extent). If the fuck you-er has some well know characteristics, then the quicker they jump behind them.  Women to men, pocs to white folks , gay to straight ….you get the picture.  The thing is… Frequently, it’s revealing more of the “ally’s” psychology than the issue. 

My beef is that as time passes, and a person’s individual mental database gets bigger and bigger of diverse experiences in the real world(hopefully),  then the more and more you start seeing these pesky little details that mess up the pattern recognition.  This situation doesn’t quite match that situation.  

Here’s the rub, you may WANT it to, but it actually doesn’t.  

Why do you want it to? Because it’s easier.  That’s it, it’s easier.  You don’t have to work so hard.  Now, I don’t mean dig a ditch hard, that would be real work.  I mean you don’t have to think so much.  You don’t have to work at being disappointed that you don’t quite understand what’s going on.  You don’t have come up with a way to understand the nuances. You don’t have to compare and contrast, gather facts, do analysis, etc.  Basically you don’t have to think!   That’s my beef.  Not thinking.

What’s the matter with not thinking you ask?  Basically it fucks things up.  You back some one who you shouldn’t or not in the right way, for the right reasons or to the right extent.  Because you don’t want to do the work, you mess you and others usually up.

Now don’t get me wrong, I get it. Its a complicated world out there with a lot of things going on!  WE WANT SHORT CUTS! We want to have a cookie cutter mold that everything fits into….  “Damn those parts that don’t fit in, they’re not important anyway!”.. they say sweating profusely!

 But those short cuts, they ain’t there a lot.  Sorry.  You just have to think. No way around it.  That is if you care to see things as close to as they are as you can manage.  Now it ain’t like dieting lots of folks do, you break it one little bit and you throw the whole day out with binging.  If you try hard to see things and you slip in your little bias here, that’s not license to just go whole hog and start fantasizing completely.  That’s delusional.  Just leave that hanging chad alone and try a little harder to see what is before you and not in your head.  La vida NO es sueño!