/lit/ - Literature

What an abysmal thread. I'm sick of talking about Hobbes and Rousseau so i'll make it brief. State of nature arguments are not anthropological accounts of the development of human societies or their foundation. Both Hobbes and Rousseau state this explicitly
Hobbes:
>It may peradventure be thought there was never such a time nor condition of war as this; and I believe it was never generally so, over all the world.
Rousseau:
>We must not take the investigations that one could enter into concerning this subject for historical truths, but only for hypothetical and conditional arguments, more suitable for illuminating the nature of things than for showing the true origin
They are hypotheticals used to demonstrate an argument. Hobbes' autism spurred him to try and demonstrate what he considered a kind of geometric proof from atomic propositions of the nature of man towards the necessity of the state. He is trying to show the interest in peace under authority is universal and overrides the specific normative ideals of political faction (religious or political ideals of his time). Rousseau's state of nature argument is targeted against this method—to set up a series of atoms which, through interaction, produce a certain outcome. What he is demonstrating with amour propre is that the qualities that Hobbes imposes on his atoms necessary cannot be presupposed because they are the product of interaction between atoms. That is, that pride and greed and envy and such, which spur the Hobbesean man into conflict, are themselves 'vices of comparison' and thus cannot predate the conflict that they are supposed to cause. All the features of the 'noble savage' are just a dramatised presentation of characteristics which do not exist in interaction or a set up for his later argument against Locke. To read the first half of the second discourse beyond this, as some specific statement of human nature or human history, is to miss the point entirely.

>>17753355
I thought you might post that, but unfortunately if you had read a few more pages you would read:
>It being impossible to study here all the successive degrees of organisation of crowds, we shall concern ourselves more especially with such crowds as have attained to the phase of complete organisation. In this way we shall see what crowds may become, but not what they invariably are. It is only in this advanced phase of organisation that certain new and special characteristics are superposed on the unvarying and dominant character of the race; then takes place that turning already alluded to of all the feelings and thoughts of the collectivity in an identical direction. It is only under such circumstances, too, that what I have called above the psychological law of the mental unity of crowds comes into play. Among the psychological characteristics of crowds there are some that they may present in common with isolated individuals, and others, on the contrary, which are absolutely peculiar to them and are only to be met with in collectivities.
Now that your first anxiety has been addressed, do you have anything more substantial to say?

>>16803639
I recommend '[C]: The Money of Soul and Possibility Control' and 'Gatchaman Crowds: Insight'. I won't say that they're non-cringe, but they are interesting.

>>16644472
Darkness there and nothing more.

>>16629104
>I really feel like we need a good war to wake the west up
No you don't. That isn't your thought, it is received opinion that you have picked up from /pol/. What is astounding—the apogee of propaganda—is that you don't even recognize this "feel" as something foreign to you, but think it your own. And who can doubt their own thoughts? perhaps the content, but never the underlying sincerity. You've let this surrogate opinion grow inside you don't even realise it. When you think about it, it's actually very similar to the reproductive cycle of the cuckoo. An egg has been snuck into your head, and you've mistaken it it for a regular feel. And now that it has hatched, here you are seeking to nourish it with tomes, night & morn as if your own, while it ejects all other thoughts in your head so to better monopolise your attention. And even as it grows to its grotesque. monstrous form, you smile at it and coo and baby it, continuing to care for it. After all, a mother cannot help but love her child. You are in the midst of a mental cuckolding, in its most classic meaning.
Now of course, we are all mental cuckolds of some degree: that is simply what we call culture and education. In a somewhat Durkheimian sense, these social memes and mores think through us, we do not think them. But a discerning mind will recognise these external thoughts as just that—external, not our own; though whether to still cherish and celebrate them, or try and isolate their influence on us, whose to say? sometimes it is beneficial to harbour noble lies. Perhaps it is precisely that action—in knowing them to be foreign, but accepting them anyway—we in a way truly make them our own.
But a curious phenomenon occurs on this website where anons seems to have a half-understanding of this. They see the prevailing winds, the cultural currents, the boats responding gaily to hands expert with sail and oar, and reject them with disgust; they castigate those who do not recognise they are merely kites tossed by the wind as NPC's and parrots. But then, in splendid hypocrisy—a feat of propaganda equal to that which dominates the mainstream—they do not realise this turn as equally conditioned. Many seem to hold the opinion that if one of their received opinions is taboo, it could not possibly be anything but my own! I made this choice! But in truth they are merely being swept up and carried by a current all the same, their hearts too responding gaily, when invited, beating obedient to controlling hands, as clueless to their pilot as those they so fervently disdain.
But enough pseud musings, i have my own views to sun with soft deceitful wiles.