Al Parker asked obliquely what my opinion was on White Rabbit. Well, I wear the tee shirt Horus sent me.
Horus, BBG, Lord Nelson, Truck Roy, BGlass, all would have plenty to argue about but all are making their own places in the intellectual job BUGS is doing.
But the problem with FOLLOWERS as opposed to seminar members is that you have to compliment them or be their Grand Inquisitor. I spent a whole career dealing with constituents — followers — and that is a major burden it is a relief to put down.
A person who makes his living the way I did has to come up with an approach to every single issue. But no matter how obsessive compulsive a person may be, can he actually have opinions, or even a point of view, on everything?
If you don’t you are damned with that worst of all statements, “So you just don’t CARE about” abortion/ starving children/ the environment or what ever else was in the newspaper yesterday.
Not only do I care about very few questions, I no longer HAVE to. I spent a LOT workaholic years getting to be retired, and one of the privileges of that status is that I don’t HAVE to act interested in the musings of constituents or congressmen whose entire heads are crammed full of this week’s newspapers.
When I made my living this way I had to worry about giving each person his due. I don’t give White Rabbit his due. I don’t give Trucker Roy his due. I don’t’ give Lord Nelson the praise he deserves. Hell, I can’t even fit in all the people a good PR man or politician or even a good fanatic should note.
Clearly the people who stick with me are not greatly offended. Another thing one is supposed to be is Militantly Modest. But I have retired from the semi sainthood one had to maintain as a Public Figure which required a total abrogation of Self and all that other crap.
Some people give Dave a hard time for praising me so often. Dave remembers that I criticized him for getting off OUR subject and I said that I would be happy if he would just keep mentioning my name. It’s a good trick for forcing yourself back from wandering away intellectually,
But also now that I am no longer a professional politico I can admit that it is not just my constituents’ egos that need a little boosting. I can’t imagine that anyone is so naïve he doesn’t realize that while overdoing it turns people off, everybody needs some ego boost.
I do not want to create a Whitakerism. But in BUGS, I like the way people keep using my name where it fits. This is BOB’S Seminar. We have a VERY wide-ranging set of ages and education and all the rest, so the only point of unity is the Old Man.
And my ambition as I keep repeating, is to have Bob’s Seminar go on long after Ole Bob dies or is put in the funny farm. That will be when your understanding of exactly where I fit in the pattern will be absolutely critical. You are well aware of how groups split when the central character is no longer there.
This is the home of the Mantra. This is the central point of Mantra Thinking. Bob is connected to THAT.
I am not a subtle person and my statements are deliberately about as obscure as a hand grenade. My basic points are few but you can apply them to anything. Nobody has less trouble than BUGS readers in telling when a commenter has wandered off the point and is trying to his own personal world view on things, rather than BUGS logic.
What you can use is my approach, not my opinion. Long after I am dead one should not read my BUGS writings for my opinions, but for my way of thinking.
That, and ONLY that, is the reason Ole Bob’s name is important here.
#1 by BGLass on 06/06/2010 - 9:45 am
The main thing is mode of thought. That’s why literary criticism used to be so important, the way they used to teach it. You’d have a story, poem, whatever— then APPLY DIFFERENT, and often incompatible, analytical systems TO IT. Everything is a hypothetical: ‘if you believed this system, you would interpret this way…” So, you’d see the object (poem) from some angle: from reader-response theory, or Freudian, or Jungian, or Marxist, or new critical with the internal properties being the thing to look at, rhyme, meter, etc…so on, and you apply each system to the exact same work—and give it a whole other meaning.
Now humanities only teaches how Freudo-Marxism illuminates any given text. So, “In this story, we examine what it can show us (prove) about class oppression, gender oppression, race oppression, etc. In this way, all previous works, which had nothing to do with Freudo-Marxism are seen to actually support that one thought system (which is riddled with holes, anyway).
This is unthinkably unsophisticated.
And it can NEVER teach people to THINK. In order to think, you MUST be truly conversant in at least TWO different thought systems—otherwise, you can never GET the MAIN IDEA of thought systems. To learn about systems and interpretation, that mode of thought, you HAVE to be able to distinguish different ways of thinking, and be able to apply them at will.
Liberals –by virtue of education– cannot understand HOW Bugs readers are thinking, or trying to learn to think.
Either you have objects and apply systems to them, to the random reality OUT THERE. Or you know one system and see everything as proof of that system, way of seeing, perceiving, etc.
I wish I’d waited for retirement to speak my mind, but time feels short. Sometimes it pisses me off that wanker-academics read things I put around —and I know this happens— and they get paid for my thinking and I don’t. OTOH, sitting where they are, I could never have thought my own thoughts.
So it goes.
#2 by Truck Roy on 06/06/2010 - 3:19 pm
Bob has given us a tool. We may use it in different ways. Just because we all refrain from double-think does not meant that we all think the same.
I would rather have an enemy who I respect than a friend who has no critical thinking skills. It is a pleasure to converse with you guys/ladies.
#3 by Epiphany on 06/06/2010 - 5:23 pm
Karl Marx was a bigot.
He hated rich people,
just as much as Hitler
hated Jews.
Still, it is politically
correct to hate the rich,
but not the Jews– even
though the two categories tend
to overlap, especially in
The Jewish Empire–
sadly, misnamed the
Western World.