Unity is a religious construct and a liberal shibboleth. It is a prayer for the total subordination of all mankind to an imagined or more likely projected subjectivity that, like all such things, is puppeteered by a relatively small number of humans. (What would Jesus do? As lawyers say, it depends.) Unity as a norm serves these subjectivities and their particular interests more than it serves humans as a species or as living specimens. Only under Unity in subordination can such hostile, fragile subjectivities as joint stock corporations persist and govern action, i.e. exercise "power". In calling for unity, you're not trying to eliminate the conditions that cause the problem, but merely attempting to capture and discipline the problem under color of reform or redemption to an arbitrary standard, as if they were moral agent-subjects. If that tack had real effects that served the subjective interests of participants, it would exhibit them far more reliably than it does.
This is in contrast to other, intersubjective phenomena such as alignment, consensus, and concurrence, which require no grand drama or self-alienation and yet produce powerful effects. Who's trying to impose grand purity dramas on the Rage Against the War? I'm not currently standing in Washington listening to speeches, but so far it doesn't appear to be the Mises Caucus or the People's Party, rather, it is the legacy owners and inheritors of the monopoly on moral property who collect moral rents from their expropriation of moral capital and stand to lose their moral income streams in case they are deposed. Despite the possibility that they too are seeking to capture the machine to prove they can drive it in better style, I've come to a position of critical support for the event.
Since this myth of unified action is unachievable, since mythical ideals tend to unify people in acceptance of permanently unfavorable conditions, since network effects are exponential, and since general strikes are far more illegal than demonstrations, I agreewith Caitlin that it is more important and effective to undermine the conditions under which people could be unified against their own autonomous (but common) interests, than to try to run exhausted competitive challenges on inherently disadvantageous terrain.
Nice to run into someone who believes as strongly as I do that ‘unity’ is never what we aspire to: unity of purpose perhaps, but an acceptance that there will always be disagreement and differences and dislikes within any healthy movement or community or association. I first noticed that the call for ‘unity’ did not make sense back in my days as a young Muslim more than 20 years ago. Wow! Feeling my years, writing that!
I think there’s dogma we can stomach and dogma we oppose. If we teach children from early on that their professed religion is a dogma, that anti-communism is a dogma, that xenophobia can be a dogma, maybe we pay more attention to what we say we actually believe, and opt for reticence over emotional acceptance. Peer pressure may be the most insidious, effective means of getting people to believe emotionally, without reflection or thought.
Unity is a religious construct and a liberal shibboleth. It is a prayer for the total subordination of all mankind to an imagined or more likely projected subjectivity that, like all such things, is puppeteered by a relatively small number of humans. (What would Jesus do? As lawyers say, it depends.) Unity as a norm serves these subjectivities and their particular interests more than it serves humans as a species or as living specimens. Only under Unity in subordination can such hostile, fragile subjectivities as joint stock corporations persist and govern action, i.e. exercise "power". In calling for unity, you're not trying to eliminate the conditions that cause the problem, but merely attempting to capture and discipline the problem under color of reform or redemption to an arbitrary standard, as if they were moral agent-subjects. If that tack had real effects that served the subjective interests of participants, it would exhibit them far more reliably than it does.
This is in contrast to other, intersubjective phenomena such as alignment, consensus, and concurrence, which require no grand drama or self-alienation and yet produce powerful effects. Who's trying to impose grand purity dramas on the Rage Against the War? I'm not currently standing in Washington listening to speeches, but so far it doesn't appear to be the Mises Caucus or the People's Party, rather, it is the legacy owners and inheritors of the monopoly on moral property who collect moral rents from their expropriation of moral capital and stand to lose their moral income streams in case they are deposed. Despite the possibility that they too are seeking to capture the machine to prove they can drive it in better style, I've come to a position of critical support for the event.
Since this myth of unified action is unachievable, since mythical ideals tend to unify people in acceptance of permanently unfavorable conditions, since network effects are exponential, and since general strikes are far more illegal than demonstrations, I agreewith Caitlin that it is more important and effective to undermine the conditions under which people could be unified against their own autonomous (but common) interests, than to try to run exhausted competitive challenges on inherently disadvantageous terrain.
Nice to run into someone who believes as strongly as I do that ‘unity’ is never what we aspire to: unity of purpose perhaps, but an acceptance that there will always be disagreement and differences and dislikes within any healthy movement or community or association. I first noticed that the call for ‘unity’ did not make sense back in my days as a young Muslim more than 20 years ago. Wow! Feeling my years, writing that!
I think there’s dogma we can stomach and dogma we oppose. If we teach children from early on that their professed religion is a dogma, that anti-communism is a dogma, that xenophobia can be a dogma, maybe we pay more attention to what we say we actually believe, and opt for reticence over emotional acceptance. Peer pressure may be the most insidious, effective means of getting people to believe emotionally, without reflection or thought.