As a guy who writes shit and posts it on Substack, I am seduced into the primordial soup of the Substack universe - a black hole that sucks words into a singularity so dense that time stands still.
Hi Phil, so far, I have been successful in resisting the black hole of Substack; it's only you I read. (Of course there are other Substackers who I read elsewhere.) Here's the bit of this one that I totally appreciate and understand: "The conceptual issue with Gaza is that the US, with Israel as a proxy, have mastered the art of disguising genocide as war. Why build gas chambers and go through the ugly and all too public act of roundups and rail shipments when bombers can simply exterminate unwanted people from the sky with no messy cremation systems, no whips, no guilt inducing need to pour Zyklon B upon the heads of women and toddlers. Just bomb the fuck out of these same women and infants and let them rot beneath the rubble invisibly. Is genocide by remote technology still genocide, or do we need new words to comprehend our predicament?" It's not a question of which one is the worst one; it's a question about what's being perpetrated, how horrific it is (to human life, culture & society), and who's responsible. Guilty, guilty, guilty.
Reading Lasch on the Family Under Seige and John Gray in two books citing the instances of true believers in the 1930s Russian project who received desth blows for their entire participation in making the new personality. Idea in both thinkers was that state apparatchiks have since the early 20th century advocated for the identitarian metaphysical approach to life. The Israeli 19 and 20 year old seems occupied with that government's rhetoric about how distinct from the conservatisms in the peoples surrounding them they are. The sobering question kind of is metaphysical too, why would knowing how special you are confer freedoms unheard of before ? Surely they are entranced by the premise of digital platform capital that if they own killer applications they become invisible to the less ambitious innumerable people. Freedom words which have disappearingly small personal utility, those seem to be a live term in what these nationalists must be telling themselves.
Here is just Gray stating the obvious in The Silence of Animals : " The insuperable problem of Amrcn cspitalism may very well turn out to be the declining profits of debt slavery" I thoug after that the ecstatic language of boosterism applied to Israelis, but I could be wrong. If instead the guiding idea was ti make Israel safe for kibbutzim, this brutality would be an abberant overreaction. I look at that festival and how it was centerred around music and drinks and think why not a celebration of those old mutual aid societies? They were subsidized of course, but the kibbutz seemed to point to both the value of sortician and consensus.
I admit that it is hard for me to fully understand the depth and nuances to Phil's essay and Nathan. I am not such a scholar and have not read authors and books mentioned. Still, I appreciate and grasp the concept that genocide is multi-faceted, and the traditional definition fails to address additional methods and ideologies that are overlooked. All of which allude to how wicked and perilous the world is.
I could go on but in doing so, I don't think it would add anything. Except, that perhaps the world is a sad place with immense suffering of the innocent, but we know that.
This John Gray uses normal language nontechnical to say that "there are not two kinds of people" which os an exaggerated way of sayingther there are ourselves achieving minor victories on our own behalf and feeling generous and there are ourselves behaving fearfully and reactively when ideaogies throw buildings and threats at us.
Hi Phil, so far, I have been successful in resisting the black hole of Substack; it's only you I read. (Of course there are other Substackers who I read elsewhere.) Here's the bit of this one that I totally appreciate and understand: "The conceptual issue with Gaza is that the US, with Israel as a proxy, have mastered the art of disguising genocide as war. Why build gas chambers and go through the ugly and all too public act of roundups and rail shipments when bombers can simply exterminate unwanted people from the sky with no messy cremation systems, no whips, no guilt inducing need to pour Zyklon B upon the heads of women and toddlers. Just bomb the fuck out of these same women and infants and let them rot beneath the rubble invisibly. Is genocide by remote technology still genocide, or do we need new words to comprehend our predicament?" It's not a question of which one is the worst one; it's a question about what's being perpetrated, how horrific it is (to human life, culture & society), and who's responsible. Guilty, guilty, guilty.
Reading Lasch on the Family Under Seige and John Gray in two books citing the instances of true believers in the 1930s Russian project who received desth blows for their entire participation in making the new personality. Idea in both thinkers was that state apparatchiks have since the early 20th century advocated for the identitarian metaphysical approach to life. The Israeli 19 and 20 year old seems occupied with that government's rhetoric about how distinct from the conservatisms in the peoples surrounding them they are. The sobering question kind of is metaphysical too, why would knowing how special you are confer freedoms unheard of before ? Surely they are entranced by the premise of digital platform capital that if they own killer applications they become invisible to the less ambitious innumerable people. Freedom words which have disappearingly small personal utility, those seem to be a live term in what these nationalists must be telling themselves.
Here is just Gray stating the obvious in The Silence of Animals : " The insuperable problem of Amrcn cspitalism may very well turn out to be the declining profits of debt slavery" I thoug after that the ecstatic language of boosterism applied to Israelis, but I could be wrong. If instead the guiding idea was ti make Israel safe for kibbutzim, this brutality would be an abberant overreaction. I look at that festival and how it was centerred around music and drinks and think why not a celebration of those old mutual aid societies? They were subsidized of course, but the kibbutz seemed to point to both the value of sortician and consensus.
I admit that it is hard for me to fully understand the depth and nuances to Phil's essay and Nathan. I am not such a scholar and have not read authors and books mentioned. Still, I appreciate and grasp the concept that genocide is multi-faceted, and the traditional definition fails to address additional methods and ideologies that are overlooked. All of which allude to how wicked and perilous the world is.
I could go on but in doing so, I don't think it would add anything. Except, that perhaps the world is a sad place with immense suffering of the innocent, but we know that.
This John Gray uses normal language nontechnical to say that "there are not two kinds of people" which os an exaggerated way of sayingther there are ourselves achieving minor victories on our own behalf and feeling generous and there are ourselves behaving fearfully and reactively when ideaogies throw buildings and threats at us.