[Xmca-l] Re: Burning...

Fri Aug 23 18:17:05 PDT 2019

I think that once we have grasped the simple fact hat we 
live in a capitalist world, and that there is a hellovalot 
that has to happen between now and a situation where we 
don't live in a capitalist world, we need to think about how 
to understand and change our situation ...

Rather than the truism that the object of all government and 
economic activity in the world is capitalist accumulation, I 
think we should recognise the truth put forward by the 
Regulation Theorists, which agrees with Activity Theory -- 
government and economic activity can be conceived of as a 
number of independent, interconnected *activities* 
(projects) like business management, trade, wage 
determination, distribution, price determination, a finance 
system, as well as environmental protection,  taxation, 
legislative, judicial, political and policing systems - 
every one of which is culturally variable and is within the 
grasp of governments and an organisation people to challenge 
and change.

The destruction of the amazon forests and their crucial role 
in maintenance of everyone's atmosphere and the world's 
biological and cultural resources is a real problem. I don't 
know the answer. But we can't solve by starting with the 
largest possible generalisation.

Units of analysis comrades.

Andy

------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
On 24/08/2019 8:46 am, Martin Packer wrote:
> Hi David,
>
> I don’t think what you’re saying negates the assertion 
> that capitalism, with its pernicious tendency to turn 
> every aspect of nature into “raw” materials and “natural" 
> resources, is the source of the problems in the Amazon and 
> many other parts of the world. You’re probably correct, 
> though, in suggesting that the solution might turn out to 
> be more capitalism. It is, after all, the game that we 
> play so well, and in fact the only game that we know how 
> to play.
>
> So transition rather than revolution? Okay, I’m game. Who 
> takes the first turn?
>
> Martin
>
>
>
>> On Aug 23, 2019, at 4:14 PM, David Kellogg 
>> <dkellogg60@gmail.com <mailto:dkellogg60@gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>> Wagner:
>>
>> You were, I remember, interested in gaming culture. But 
>> if I remember correctly, you weren't just interested in 
>> gaming culture "in the wild"--when you look at gaming 
>> culture on line  in the wild, you see that it's often 
>> associated with misogyny, violence, and Alt-right motifs 
>> (e.g. the "Lost Cause" of southern slavery in the USA--my 
>> brother, for example, has been doing a regular blog for 
>> Matrix games on the anniversaries of the civil war, and 
>> his work is very often commentated by pro-slavery 
>> gamers).  You were interested in gaming culture as a 
>> vehicle for teaching-and-learning in schools--both as a 
>> vehicle of conveying content, and as a way of mediating 
>> the role of the learner from passive recipient to active 
>> participant.
>>
>> Well, consider THIS video, which was made by a transexual 
>> woman who started out (male) in the on-line gaming 
>> culture making videos to try to talk to Alt-right people 
>> about their support for Donald Trump. I apologize for the 
>> coarse language, and some of the rather risque jokes, but 
>> you will see it is part of the message. (I also do not 
>> endorse the call to vote Democratic: Al Gore ended "An 
>> Inconvenient Truth" with a stirring call to elect 
>> democrats, and in 2008 Americans dutifully did, with no 
>> discernible effect whatsoever on any of the issues raised 
>> in this film.)
>>
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6GodWn4XMM
>>
>> Now, in some ways, it is srikingly similar to your 
>> video--the spokesperson is carefully chosen and made up, 
>> there is a direct appeal  to the (male) viewer which 
>> doesn't eschew sex appeal. But here's what I think is 
>> different.
>>
>> a) ContraPoints manages to use many of the Alt Right's 
>> own arguments--their aesthetic, their humor, and even, at 
>> one point, their own racism (when she argues that unless 
>> climate change is tackled, we will have to deal with 
>> hundreds of millions of dark-skinned refugees). She even 
>> ends with the idea that all successful political 
>> struggles are essentially aimed at mythical enemies.
>>
>> b) ContraPoints, nevertheless, does not have to disguise 
>> her own Marxist agenda or her own actual persona--she 
>> simply presents it as part of a panoply of gamer identities.
>>
>> c) ContraPoints is neither minimalist ("don't take an 
>> airplane to ISCAR") nor maximalist ("no es fuego, es 
>> capitalismo!")--she doesn't want to simply "meliorate" 
>> capitalism, nor is she happy to simply blame capitalism 
>> for everything (in fact, elsewhere she points out that 
>> capitalists themselves are not to blame--since they are 
>> helpless and largely harmless patsies for Capital itself, 
>> hence Martin's appeal to Bill Gates!)
>>
>> d) Instead, ContraPoints is a transitionalist (no pun 
>> intended). That is, she begins with simple demands which 
>> are in no way anti-capitalist--but which neveretheless 
>> compel attention even in children (that's the point of 
>> the eroticism, the watermelon, the knife, etc, but she 
>> could also do the same with the demand for a living 
>> minimum wage, or protection for indigenous peoples, or 
>> simply putting out the fires). Because these demands are 
>> not inherently anti-capitalist, the inability of 
>> capitalism to satisfy them needs to be explained. In real 
>> political struggles, this is often done by the 
>> capitalists themselves: we cannot make a profit if we 
>> increase wages, protect indigenous people, or--in the 
>> case of Bolsinaro--try to put out the fires (Bolsinaro 
>> says Brazil doesn't have the resources, which is probably 
>> true). A transitional programme then demands proof--open 
>> the account books to prove that there is no money for 
>> minimal wages, no land for indigenous peoples, no 
>> resources for fighting firest. It is then capitalism 
>> itself which has to demonstrate its own bankruptcy--and 
>> create its own, united, educated, and purposeful 
>> gravediggers.
>>
>> Of course, the most obvious objection to this kind of 
>> transitional programme is that her humor is misplaced and 
>> that this struggle is not a game. Sometimes the humor is 
>> beside the point--the suicide rate among transgender 
>> women is somewhere around forty percent, and some of 
>> ContraPoint's work has a strong flavor of the person in 
>> the bath self-medicating and self-treating. But I know 
>> that you, of all people, will never object that struggle 
>> is not a game!
>>
>> (By the way, I'm not going to ISCAR either--same reason!)
>>
>> David Kellogg
>> Sangmyung University
>>
>> New Article:
>> Han Hee Jeung & David Kellogg (2019): A story without 
>> SELF: Vygotsky’s
>> pedology, Bruner’s constructivism and Halliday’s 
>> construalism in understanding narratives by
>> Korean children, Language and Education, DOI: 
>> 10.1080/09500782.2019.1582663
>> To link to this article: 
>> https://doi.org/10.1080/09500782.2019.1582663
>>
>> Some e-prints available at:
>> https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/KHRxrQ4n45t9N2ZHZhQK/full?target=10.1080/09500782.2019.1582663
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Aug 23, 2019 at 7:35 PM Wagner Luiz Schmit 
>> <wagner.schmit@gmail.com 
>> <mailto:wagner.schmit@gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>>     A short video about this:
>>     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfiutlJ7uWc
>>
>>     So yes, it is capitalism
>>
>>     Wagner
>>
>>     On Thu, Aug 22, 2019 at 9:08 PM Martin Packer
>>     <mpacker@cantab.net <mailto:mpacker@cantab.net>> wrote:
>>
>>         This is a satellite image not of fire per se but
>>         of the carbon dioxide the fire is releasing
>>         (redder = more CO2) from the weather site Windy.
>>
>>         Perhaps worth sharing? Who has Bill Gates' email
>>         address?
>>
>>         Martin
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
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