Denial is a form of social obedience which is expressive of a suffered need to will nothingness; an aversion to not willing, or working-through our suffered social history, something which N explores through the notion of convalescence. /End

The "credit card" people employ is the equivalent of a bad conscience, and the belief in market solutions or technology functions like the revelatory event of forgiveness in Christianity, as a maniacal release from eternal guilt. /11

What emerges from the ideological reproduction of bad conscience is an encultured, defensive obedience (as cultural superego, or "thou shalt") which discourages singularity in favour of an “any nobody”. As Malm observes, life under capitalism is also sadomasochistic, incurring monstrous debts. /10

Trauma undermines the pragmatic ability to negotiate the sadomasochistic economy of credits and debts as we hurt others and are hurt by others. This bad conscience seeks relief for “an eternal indebtedness" in "a revelatory event of forgiveness” or maniacal release. /9

"endowed with a magical power,” projecting values that allows them to imagine themselves outside of suffered history. More specifically, what N calls "bad conscience" can be understood in the context of hypersociality, in which every action can be contested by others living in close proximity. /8

who all place “a primacy on suffered, social scenes of which subjectivity - conceived as the source of awareness and action - is a symptom....” For N the history of “being forced into a social straightjacket, the trauma of the loss of nomadic prehistory,” results in a form of subjectivity... /7

The ascetic ideal gave rise to nothing less than human subjectivity / psychology. What does this have to do with Malm's account of the tacit denial of climate change? In “Nietzsche & Suffered Social Histories”, Jeffrey M Jackson places N in a line of thinkers which inc Marx, Freud & Adorno... /6

of their condition into a form of self-denial and self-control, i.e. the invention of free-will. Powerlessness became evidence of moral superiority, since the curtailing of outward action was interpreted as the spiritual action of moral choice, a freedom denied to their masters. /5

spiritual purification which allowed them to invoke a realm beyond the warrior's control. This resulted in a moral and political revolution, in which the warrior’s strength and lust for life were turned against himself. Those enslaved by the warriors were taught to channel resentment... /4

In N's speculative prehistory, asceticism emerges from a priestly class's “incarnate wish for being-otherwise, being elsewhere”, the result of a sickly constitution which left them vulnerable to the warrior-kings under which they served. Self-denial and body-negating practices were a form of... /3

“That the ascetic ideal has meant so much to man reveals a basic fact of human will, its horror vacui; it needs an aim - and it prefers to will nothingness rather than not will.” The reference to the “ascetic ideal” here is historically broader and deeper than capitalism. /2

Malm’s claim here, that denial of the climate crisis - either as outright denialism or implied by one’s behaviour - is a condition of social membership under capitalism, reminds me of Nietzsche’s observation in Genealogy of Morals that man would rather will nothingness than not will. /1

Well if he thinks that economic degrowth is essential to addressing climate change, then this fundamentally contradicts the imperatives of capital even as you characterise it. In other words, capital is *not* perfectly capable of organising decarbonization.

A response to Pollin and Chomsky: We need a Green New Deal without growth — Jason Hickel Robert Pollin and Noam Chomsky have a new book out, Climate Crisis and the Green New Deal. It’s an important contribution to the emerging GND literature, from two thinkers I respect.  But in re...

Hickel doesn't believe a Green New Deal by itself would adequately address the climate crisis.
www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2020/10...

Sydney Sweeney would destroy the Predator thing any day of the week.

Owen Jones wrote about this for Drop Site News and was promptly sued (apparently the lawyer involved is former Director of UK Lawyers for Israel). Jones and Drop Site are fundraising to defend against the lawsuit, and they raised a lot in only a couple of days.

- keeping the populist right out of power doesn't lie in protecting an outdated political paradigm, but critically reflecting on whether one's own class-based perspective is really equal to the moment. /End

-if the NMC hasn't been negatively affected, indeed benefited from it, it is because they belong to cosmopolitan networks which are less bounded spatially or temporally than other classes;

- the reason people don't have access to these networks isn't racism, but lack of resources../3

I think time would be better spent acknowledging:

- while NMC are the winners out of deregulation inc mass immigration, there have been far too many losers

- radical transformation of local communities over the last few decades have affected people who have had almost no say in the matter../2

What the immigration debate in the UK reveals to me is how little confidence the reps of the New Middle Class have defending (as Reckwitz puts it) "the ideal of social progress via globalization, singularization and post-industrialisation." Hence the endless debates about electoral strategy. /1

I tried this model w/ the prompt: "I get out on the top floor (third floor) at street level. How many stories is the building above the ground?” It thought for 15 mins before timing out, generated 8k words, and considered multiple answers without ever canvassing the right one.

This kind of regulatory liberalism is something I see Mamdani attempting. It differs from the failing liberalism of the Democratic Party, but also from the state socialism the media has branded him with, and even the social-corporatist paradigm which dominated the post-war era. /End

It will not be a form of social planning, but instead resemble what Foucault called "governmentality"; nudging social processes through incentives and disincentives, while recognising the dynamism and complexity of society and its priority over the state. /8

So what comes next? Reckwitz thinks it will be a form of "regulatory liberalism", which will seek to employ government and civic regulations to address socio-economic inequality and prevent cultural disintegration. But it will not abandon a market economy, liberal democracy or multiculturalism./7

But Reckwitz thinks this populism will fail: as a paradigm, it is antagonistic rather than integrative, and its "solutions" seem ill suited to dealing w/ globalisation, post-industrialisation & cultural heterogeneity (as Trump is finding out). /6

Finally it results in a legitimation crisis of liberal democracy, in which international organizations and economic imperatives usurp the power of political representatives to act. Rightwing populism is a reaction to these crises: proposing economic & cultural nationalism & illiberal democracy. /5

This liberalism leads to polarisation from growing inequality & unwillingness to regulate the transition to post-industrial society: a new middle class (Calhoun's cosmopolitan elite, cf. Bluesky) succeeding while a squeezed old middle class loses its status & a precarious class gets left behind. /4

& cultural deregulation, by which he means an expansion of subjective legal rights and championing of ind identities at the expense of "the web of norms that define our reciprocal obligations,” which are now seen as “nothing more than limitations on… opportunities for individual growth.” /3

Instead, Mamdani probably is the future of liberalism, in the sense proposed by sociologist Andreas Reckwitz. In "End of Illusions", Reckwitz argues that liberalism in its current form ("apertistic" or open liberalism) is in crisis, as a combination of socio-economic deregulation (neoliberalism)../2

I guess I need a hot take on Mamdani… well, he probably isn't a socialist! Kathryn Wylde “billionaire whisperer” noted Mamdani called to arrange meetings w/ wealthy NYers, didn’t mention taxes in his victory speech & sounds more like Bloomberg when talking about making bureaucracy more efficient./1