Theory Nerds!

[Dwazee]

this looks like a fun board. like the stuff i used to do in high school...

cant say i have much of an opinion on the urban sprawl issue. sure, the poor are getting shafted--the poor generally have a larger population (which in turn perpetuates poverty), and housing is a major issue....as mary said, there doesnt seem to be any real winners in the whole fiasco.

as for the previous topic...no, we;re not living in a post-feminist world because of the reaction of most people, even females, to the word 'feminist'. a feminist is onyl wanting some form of equality--no where in the definition does it state that feminists hate men, which a lot of lay people believe. feminism became a bad word in the 80s...lets put it this way. the u.s. wanted the iraqi constitution to reserve 25% of the seats in congress for women. here in america, we have about 17% that are women. about 30% are minorities here, which is about right overall. but looking at it population wise, women make up 50%. shouldnt the number be closer to that 50%?

what luke said about women discriminating against women is true. women, feeling that the only way they can individually succeed, will make their competing females look worse than themselves to get ahead. cattiness--but is it done because there is only a certain amount of 'seats' available to women, or is it becuase women refuse to help themselves? i would say that women feel more threatened in keeping their position--because until recently, women in higher positions was not the norm--they feel they have to make themselves attractive to males, who still maintain power, to keep their position. studies have shown recently that women are discriminating less against themselves--in academia, according to some research i read in a psych class.

since my specialty is the art world, i can point out that while it has gotten much better than it was, if you look at major museums and their exhibits, women rarely get shown. its also interesting that, if you just look at artwork, you can generally tell the gender of the artist working. are women discriminated against in teh art world because their work doesnt sell? do they not sell because the buying public doesnt want to see women's work? overtly feminine art gets pulled out on the usual women's month or whatever the hell the event is, but overtly masculine art (think women nude models posing in some lush landscape, being used as an object, etc) is deemed attractive and popular? clearly, as with other points made about other facets of society, there is still an unconcious bias towards males.

[strat-0]

Why do uncool people always want to steal cool peoples' vernacular?

Well, this is sort of tangential to the housing discussion. I've been looking for a house for a few months and so I've been doing a lot of searching on the internet, trying to figure out what I can get, and driving by the interesting houses. I saw one that looked great - had just about everything, and the price was unreal.

We went for a driveby and the photos didn't lie. The neighborhood was of well built and maintained homes on large lots with nice lawns and wooded areas, and the house looked sound as a dollar. Yet it was listed at a good 25K lower than similar properties in the area. As I drove through the quiet neighborhood, trying to figure out what might be wrong with the house, I began to see one person and then another... Then it dawned on me that this was an upper-middle class black neighborhood - completely.

Hmmm... I suppose I could ask for a showing and make an offer - it's a steal - but I'm not too sure I would want to be the only white person in the area, nor do I know what the reaction might be to me moving in there. Don't know that I need to find out. Most would probably be very kind. Nice house, though.

[Dr. Drum]

Mary, somehow, because of the quirks of the format around here, I suppose, I didn't see your post on urban sprawl till just now. Interesting topic, I'll have to think on that one.

[Mary]

Interesting thoughts everyone on the sprawl issue, and doc drum, I definitely look forward to reading yours as well! I posted that because I just couldn't see any viable solution and still can't. I am entirely sympathetic to homeowners who moved into what seemed to be an idyllic neighborhood- chosen specifically for the surroundings, probably - who don't want to see that neighborhood converted into a giant concrete monster. But if the most stringent slow-growth requirements always passed, there would be virtually nothing to do with more mobile populations - which includes the poor, of course, but also recent, young college grads and students. You can't simply keep filling in urban centers - there's a breaking point. If there's still a population in search of housing, what do you do?!

One thing I find very interesting in reading over the posts, though, is the way conservatism seems to splinter here. Conservatives who typically extol the free market as naturally self-correcting and inherently promoting freedom suddenly balk at a free market in development. If you were truly to abide by libertarian free market principles, there would be no grounds whatsoever for opposing developers who have raised the money and fulfilled a demand to build a giant apartment complex or office park or whatever in the middle of a suburb. Now, if you've always been critical of the free market, then this is neither surprising, nor interesting, but for those more inclined to free market absolutism, I wonder how you you can support anti-market regulation in this area without beginning to wonder if the free market doesn't regularly conflict with equally important rights. Doesn't this case illustrate quite exquisitely the ways in which rights and freedoms can often clash with one another, requiring a balancing act which will inevitably entail the curtailment of somebody's freedom??

Cheers,
M

[RocDoc]

Well, duh... ;D

[PC]

Urban sprawl is a HUGE issue in New Jersey. I live in a blue-collar, middle-class neighborhood, which is increasingly becoming more white-collar. They've already built a few McMansions on my street, and in 15 years, I bet my whole town (or at least most of it) will look exactly the same. It's really sad, so many charming houses are being replaced by soulless McMansions. And since McMansions are so expensive, suburban middle-class neighborhoods are getting wealthier and wealthier, forcing the working-class or lower-middle-class to relocate to cities or low-income neighborhoods.

So that's my two cents on the whole issue.

[chrisfan]

Allow me to play the conservative devil's advocate here for a minute ... As we look at this scenario, which is being painted simply as "rich people move into middle-income neighborhoods, displacing middle to low income people" ... where are those rich people coming from? Are their ghost towns of mansions somewhere? Or, are the number of people who can afford to buy homes growing? And if that number is growing, isn't that a good thing? I mean, is there a difinitive rule somewhere that says X percentage of the population must be poor, X must be middle class, and X must be wealthy? I'll fully admit that I'm just writing this off the top of my head, and not researching the numbers, and I'm sure that those statistics will bounce on to this board as a reponse. But there is something logically to me that says something about this issue doesn't make sense ... and I think that is based on my having never seen a mansion ghost town.

[Thorngrub]

[glow=pink,2,300]What do people think? Do we live in a post-feminist age?

[/glow]


Absolutely not -- yet.

Allow me to explain: If I understood your question correctly, Blaney, you're asking if the feminist movement has achieved all it set out to, hence placing this current date into a "post-feminist" era-? [There are some out there suggesting this-?!]

Well, personally, the way I see it, in order for the feminist movement to even catch up to -- or should I say, achieve equalization with -- the "masculine movement" (for lack of a better term), I feel the fairer gender would have to achieve drastically-near full emasculation of this Patriarchal society.

The way I see human evolution progressing, we males will become a thing of the past (or at least reduced to curiosities in a travelling sex freak show), as certain advancements in extra-uterine chromosome pairing and genetics come to fruition, making our male contribution via sperm cells entirely obsolete.

Only then would I feel the feminists have achieved full success. After which, they might keep us around as "pets" (strictly for the fetishistic fulfillment of recreational sex). Otherwise I see no organic, balanced use for us males in the far future.

[chrisfan]

I miss this thread. Mary, you're the academic - come up with something new for us to ponder!

[Mary]

chrisfan said:

I miss this thread. Mary, you're the academic - come up with something new for us to ponder!

OK, I'll try! Here's a big question open to any and all pontification:

The last century saw a number of countries founded on "communist" principles crumble into brutal authoritarian dictatorships, or worse. This has caused many to claim that marxism/communism/socialism/etc is a dead letter, a dead ideology - and that democratic capitalism is truly the "end of history".

My question(s): Is the radical critique of capitalism indeed a dead letter in today's world, lingering only in a few crusty academic departments? Have all possible alternatives to capitalism been exhausted (or even worse, demonstrated their inherent authoritrarianism?) Is capitalism to be celebrated as the most fair, just, and free economic system possible?

In short - the "old left" was rooted fundamentally in a critique of capitalism. Does and should anything remain of this old left?

(...this question comes from the ongoing discussion in humanities departments about "melancholy marxism" - the position of many disillusioned radicals who find themselves still convinced by marx's critique of capitalism but entirely unconvinced by his optimistic narrative of history, in which capitalism would finally be transcended by a non-authoritarian (indeed, ultimately stateless) communism...)

Cheers,
M

[strat-0]

Is capitalism to be celebrated as the most fair, just, and free economic system possible?

I don't see it as the most fair and just of theoretical systems, just the one that seems to provide the most for the most. It should be regulated such that some countries doen't always get the short end of the stick and the environment isn't destroyed in the process. For me, it's like an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" thing. Human nature still has much ugliness to it and that is a problem, but the incentives provided by capitalism are hard to beat. I heard something on the radio the other day about how people at the "poverty level" in the US on average have a car, a place to stay, and a wide range of the items we all like to have (can't remember enough to provide a list). But if we turn our back on the struggling areas in the world and let them fail due to absolute free market capitalism, we lose in the long run.

[Nepenthe]

My question(s): Is the radical critique of capitalism indeed a dead letter in today's world, lingering only in a few crusty academic departments? Have all possible alternatives to capitalism been exhausted (or even worse, demonstrated their inherent authoritrarianism?) Is capitalism to be celebrated as the most fair, just, and free economic system possible?

I wouldn't say its a dead letter when you consider this group

www.workers.org/

And then you have this group which was founded by Ramsey Clark and who's New York office main employees are from the first group

www.iacenter.org/

And then of course both of the first two groups helped form this group

www.answercoalition.org/

And the second group works closely with this group

www.millionworkermarch.org/

Not that every one in the last 3 groups is against capitalism, but the ones in the first group are, and since they run the second group I am guessing at least some of them are as well.

[Nepenthe]

I have a question. What is the real difference between Communism and Fascism and did Nietzsche's philosophy have any influence on the formation of these ideas? Mussolini was a big Nietzsche fan, and he was indeed part of both movements at one time. Its well known that Hitler "used" the philosophy to form his ideology. Did Stalin use it as well?

The way I see it, the cognomen of "communism" comes from the Latin root communis, which means "group" living. Fascism is a derivation of the Italian word fascio, which is translated as "bundle" or "group." Both fascism and communism are forms of coercive group living, or more concisely, collectivism. The only difference between the two is fascism's limited observance of private property rights, which is illusive at best given its susceptibility to rigid government regulation. Nazism is derivative of Marxism. The historical conflicts between communism and fascism was merely a dispute between two socialist totalitarian camps, not two dichotomously related forces. Both substantially represent the Nietzschean concept of the "human herd," a societal paradigm that makes the idividual subordinate to the collective. Nietzschean philosophy comprises an idealogy binding Hitler, Marx, and other socialist totalitarians.

"The whole of National Socialism is based on Marx"

Adolph Hitler speaking to Hermann Rauschning in 1933

[JesusLooksLikeMe]

mary said:

In short - the "old left" was rooted fundamentally in a critique of capitalism. Does and should anything remain of this old left?

I don't want to get into the theoretical discussions (because JLLM is a synonym for 'bone idle'), but I couldn't resist revisiting this old chestnut once more with you, Mary.

Yeah, the old left should stick around like flat earthers should, to provide flavour to a largely anodyne scene. They're great in that respect - like a crusty uncle with flatulence and a hundred fireside stories about the Luftwaffe. But no amount of critiques or alternatives are going to undermine capitalism. Nothing short of a Stephen King-style superflu pandemic or massive asteroid impact (or perhaps a collapsing super-massive black hole causing a galaxy wide gamma ray burst... well whatever) is ever going to do that.

So the less interesting, but far more pertinent question is always about what the 'new left', what 'third way' politics, is looking to achieve. It's no use being left , but left without power.

Blair should be the leftist model worldwide. These critiques of capitalism are passé and best left to the appropriate academic niches.

[JesusLooksLikeMe]

Nice to speak to you once more, btw.