/lit/ - Literature

>>20549691

>>20544929
>It feels like that's the case for a lot of people, certainly, in that if you have to stoop to help another, it proves that you are above them. It again applies on an individual level because there are certainly people that have experienced racism and had their lives effected negatively by such and want to be considered equal to others, but of course, like the striving of the hedonic treadmill, where does that end?
The more that I think about it, the more that it makes sense that the Schmittian analysis shines through here. "White" people are ceding power, partly out of an attempt to retain control, partly out of a lack of faith their own ability to lead, and the minority coalition is seizing the opportunity. There is certainly a shift in hierarchy happening, motivated by revanchist tendencies, a belief in the "right side" of history, and especially loyalty to a community that cannot be said to be grounded in libidinal forces alone (e.g. LGBT, feminism, etc.). Race, especially in America, is a proxy for nation, and in lieu of our failure to create "one" nation, white people have given up the mantle, which will be eventually taken over by the strongest.

My greatest critique of identity politics is that the dividing lines are so arbitrary and counterproductive, at the end of the day. In some ways, race has an underlying "essence", but we have freedom to draw the lines wherever we please, especially from the top-down perspective. We make our own social constructs, and then society will mold itself to fit into the new boundaries. Whatever we've been doing makes no sense. Previously, the goal was to make the whole world "white", starting with Benjamin Franklin's "white" Anglo-Saxons and upper Germans, before extending to broader Europe and even some Hispanic and Asian elements (eventually black people, probably). Then, in the 1960s, all that was reversed. Now whiteness is the worst possible thing, and we want to remove all vestiges of it from the United States, regardless of its innate virtue. But what to replace it with? I hope "the machine" can handle the additional bloat, especially if we insist on replacing the people with the blueprints.
>Would one be happy with pure equality or is it the human drive to impose hierarchies and order on an orderless world?
Lastly, I want to push back against this sentiment. Our world IS ordered by natural law. We impose additional order for our own benefit. That's what civilization and technological progress is. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm detecting a strand of "sovereign individual" anarchism here that insists that all hierarchies are bad and that we ought to be able to opt out of them. That yearning for freedom is a liberal sentiment in itself, don't you think?

And thanks for the conversation, too. I appreciate talking with somebody who can help me get to the root of the problem. I'll be around all day.

>>20540159
yes, if you claim that something does not exist anywhere, you have to prove that. which is why most people try to avoid negative claims that cannot be proven mathematically.

example, you claim my brain doesn't exist. yet the fact that I display enough cognitive functions to at least reply back to you is proof that that is false.