ANews Podcast 303 – 2.24.23

uwu

From ANews Podcast

Welcome to this week’s podcast. This podcast is on anarchist activity, ideas, and comments from the previous week on anarchistnews.org.

Notes:

What’s New
Written by chisel, read by chisel & gruffles

A reading from theanarchistlibrary:
Andrew Culp – Dark Deleuze (excerpt)
Read & sound edited by Max Res

TOTW: Don’t Say You Love the Anime…
w/ special guest ruin, & Max Res

sound editing by octox

Samples & Music:

My Chemical Romance – I’m Not Okay (I Promise) [Dialogue/MTV Version]
Narakeet Japanese Text-to-speech voice Kenichi 
UwU Voice (Meme)
Spider-Man (2002) – I’m Something of a Scientist Myself
Acid Horizons Podcast – Elements of Control: An Introduction to Cybernetics with Nick
TripleQ – good 4 u is a new and original song that doesn’t plagiarize at all
YAMEII – back2me *°:⋆ₓₒ 
PinkPantheress, Ice Spice – Boy’s a liar Pt. 2

There are 30 Comments

jokes on your ruin i dont think its possible to have an amoral position

Hi anon,

That’s a good one. I tend to think folks act on preferences and then back into a morality (moral position) that they feel justifies them. To each their own, I guess?

ruin

there's that relativistic cesspool we talked about rue rue!

sure, lots of lazy, shitty, intellectual cowards can obviously be spotted in the wild, doing their ethical reasoning in this way BUUUT just because they do doesn't mean they should, nor does grading on a curve seem like a good idea for this stuff

i believe this is the part where your pet 4chan goblin calls me a "glowie"

Hi lumpy,

The cesspool doesn’t need (or merit) anyone’s approval. It’ll always be around. Attempting to “should” it to death is one approach I suppose.

ruin

haha didn't should anyone. everyone literally asks themselves whether they should or not, if they even bother.

should I get out of bed? should I bother pointing out bad reasoning? should I draw my next breath?

Only anarcho-nihilists know that only real anarcho-nihilists can be genuinely amoral.

Hmm, yeah, I should reword my comment, also taking into consideration the complaint below this.
Only anarcho-nihilists ( nee existentialists) know that only real anarcho-nihilists (nee existentialists can be amoral.
There, all good now, welcome Ruin to the inner sanctum of anarcho-nibilism (nee existentialism) :)

Only anarcho-nihilists know that "genuine amoralism" is a moral imperative in itself, and also a myth.

max is talking about citing like jazz, vs citing like classical music.

ruin, what Yang Chu have you read?

There's only one text available and it's available because of another philosopher quoting it at length in a critique. Usually referred to as "Master Yang's Garden or something similar"

Hi Rabbit,

As anon mentioned, there’s not much available. The standalone text I have is called Yang Chu’s Garden of Pleasure and is pretty widely available online and in print. It’s basically the “Yang Chu” section of the Lieh-tzu by Liezi. I’m not much into Taoist history, but I know there’s questions of attribution and who wrote what, as with many similar texts from the period.

Hope that helps.

ruin

yeah, that's about what i've seen.

another bit i have found (from "Sources of Chinese Tradition" vol. 1) says this -

"The central objective of Taoism may be said to be a long and serene life. This, as taught by Lao Tzu, is to be attained through simplicity, tranquility, and enlightenment; as taught by Yang Chu, through escape from injury and the preservation of the essence of one's being; and as taught by Chuang Tzu, through companionship with nature, spiritual freedom, and indifference to life and death."

Translation: drink tea and injaculate as the world burns around you.

According to an obscure piece in the Tao Tsang, Yang Chu's prostate was the size of a small wintermelon due to all the injaculation.
The sage of now has learned from this mistake and understands that the chi must flow.

Hi rabbit,

Thanks for sharing. That’s as good a description of the relationship between the two as any I’ve come across.

ruin

ruin, you mean the three? yes, i thought this succinct in a good way.

on another note, will you be discussing re: Blessed: what Benjamin means by Messianic time? and how this differs from Bæden & Blessed? (and not merely stating that they get it wrong and that it sucks) and why it matters? why this particular bit taints the whole book? and was there anything you liked about BitF? thx.

Hi rabbit,

Yeah, the “two” was an eye, brain, thumb communication breakdown.

I’ll try to cover BitF some more, and Benjamin as well. Hasn’t been a great couple weeks for recording with sick kids and other family stuff.

In brief, I don’t think anything sucks, but I don’t understand why bring Benjamin into it at all? I’d honestly likely be more favorable about BitF in general if there were less citations and the tone was more of an opinion piece (as that’s what all texts are, more or less).

ruin

okay, first, hope the kids feel better soon.

but this is why i am inclined to not take you all that seriously. you bring up a thing that you say detracts from a text but then you seem to back out of discussion of that thing. if you are in your living room chatting w/friends that's fine, but you are making a podcast. it isn't very interesting to hear a take that then doesn't get elaborated.

and as to citation: maybe all writing is opinion, that is not a question that i care too much about. but the way i see it, a book or an essay is like a meal offered to one by an author, and citations, footnotes, endnotes & bibliography are letting one know the ingredients of that meal. or, to put it differently, citation is letting the reader know who the author is in conversation with, who they think with and through and beyond. all that seems like stuff a good reader would want to know.

"an author, and citations, footnotes, endnotes & bibliography are letting one know the ingredients of that meal"

or you could...i dunno...taste it...

yes, obviously, one tastes the meal. and there one is, chewing away and &*^%#@! oohh, what *is* that? oh, i never would have thought one could use that in this way, tasty!
or, yuck! what is *that*?? eww, that doesn't belong in this dish!

odd how this aspect didn't occur to you.

the reason to bring benjamin into it is to break with him and the marxist imaginary that underlies this aspect of his work and which you claim the writer in question is unaware of. the first line of the second paragraph of the relevant section of blessed is the flame is "Here I do not mean to argue that those who fought back in the Lagers experienced some mystical chronological transcendence that granted them supernatural bravery." overly or simplistically polemical perhaps but certainly not a mere citation.

benjamin was tormented by his growing sense that this constellation of historical ruptures needed to form to make possible or make present the next one, but that his own thought at least had not arrived at the point of being able to phrase it (and indeed pointed towards the troubling notion that it was not possible to do so), requiring him given the severity of his own historical situation to simply state it--to assert, against good theoretical discipline (marxist or otherwise), the truth of the thing as an evocation of a thing. i read serafinski here as trying to throw down the despair latent in that position by rejecting the notion that it is a historical moment we are talking about at all, but instead an immediately and continuously available perspective or positionality. messianic time is not then the coming time when the constellation of ruptures will be brought to bear, nor is it simply living within the present time, but instead the assertion, against any good theoretical discipline, that we can live outside of time, or move our sense of the scope of available being and action outside of that mode of thinking. the people who do so are then the constellation of ruptures. history is not available to us to be summoned up or evoked, but we are.

this is my reading in any case. and i offer it in part to illustrate why it is more than fine for bits and pieces of thought like this to be seized and repurposed regardless of any fidelity to any supposed original intent or character. it can be done well or poorly of course, and i dont particularly like this text, but this is classic detournement--to drag in another marxist attempt at salvage that has regularly been turned to other purposes!

Oh goodie, Ruin on the Anews Podcast.
Nobody saw that cringe crossover coming. Nope, not at all. ToooOootally unexpected.
Dope edits and sampling.

Hi anon,

I honestly didn’t. I’ve never been part of the milieu, or that into anews, so my recent podcast invites came completely as a surprise to me. My apologies for subjecting you to my cringiness, but I do genuinely enjoy talking with Max.

ruin

Hi ruin, I really liked the discussion that you had, and would be curious as to what other projects you've worked on, if any.

Hi spetr,

My project for the last 16 years has been trying to be a decent parent to my kids. I’ve never written anything besides throwaway online posts (@ruin@ni.hil.ist), but may change that in the near future. I’m currently involved in Ego Death podcast, but it’s a very new project and we’re just getting our feet wet. You can find it on anarchy radio if you’re interested https://anarchy.radio/@EgoDeathPodcast

Thanks for asking!

ruin

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