We always embrace our own nostalgia and broadly critique the nostalgia of others. Because our nostalgia is our own experience. And our own experience is not objective. It is personal, painful, joyous, it can be completely mysterious to others and completely clarifying to ourselves. It is at time what can even separate us from connecting to others or be the binding force that compels us to reach out.
Having been here from the creation and I say this not to claim any uniqueness, or superiority. My writing is pretty sporadic. Writing is very difficult for me. But I know why I came here. I was attracted by the personalities and who I knew would be writing. I wanted to watch it all happen and make a smart ass comment or two.
No this is not a GBCW thing. When things don’t move me here I just take a break.
Over the short history here we have had some painful verbal blood baths over issues over which people had intensely held positions, beliefs and experiences. We fought one another pretty fiercely despite the whole “be excellent” agreement. People got pissed. We made half assed accusations. We got defensive.
We retreated.
Then we ever so tentatively reached out to one another. We reached out to people we thought we did not like, people we privately told ourselves five minutes earlier were total absolute morons.
Were things “better” then than they are now? I don’t know.
Can we be better? Yes. Can we be passionate without implying the other person is a tool of such and such.
We have to.
What did we fight about in my nostalgic “good old days”?
We argued race, class, gender, sex and sexuality. We hurt one another at times. We stood in corners and pointed. We sought alliances. Some odd ones at times. The men and the women squared off against one another. Claimed neither of us could understand the other. We had intense rumination about whether white people were just always confronting from a position of racism and just refusing to recognize it. We asked ourselves if the middle class could really truly ever understand class consciousness through anything but the prism of consumerism. We talked about working class racism and sexism and whether it was to be understood as inevitable, experiential, or was it a false designation more properly mediated through certain language usage. We talked about whether words matter and if they can really hurt.
We talked some shit. Some of it not very articulate some of it could stunning in breadth.
For me those are the big issues class/gender/race. And as much as some of those discussion were hurtful, I miss them. They felt real and direct and honest. I can’t even recall the last time we had those discussions here in any substantive way.
I am sorry I don’t do CT. I know it is real, I know the discussions are real, I know the analysis behind them is real. It just does not resonate with me.
Am I suggesting we have less 9/11 or flu CT? No. I know I won’t participate in those discussions. I just can’t see the line of revolution and class awareness being sparked by CT. I miss the connection. Maybe I am some stupid tool of the mass media.
No. I am hoping we can bring more balance and talk about our experiences with the class/gender/race. Katrina, for example, was the clearest expression of racial and class distain splashed across the mass media in recent memory.
You don’t need CT to know the system is rotted. You don’t always need CT to explain who class enemies are. You don’t always need CT to show that people are being screwed and lied to and used and de-valued.
Flame me. Tell me I am wrong. Tell me I am being arrogant. Tell me I am making false assumptions.
But.
Think about it.
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Talking about societal problems where we might be able to help affect little changes for the good.
I learned so much from this place in the early days.
I’ll give you one of those. 🙂
I say women and men will not, indeed, ever truly understand each other.
But that’s okay. In fact, I embrace it.
Women and men literally have different DNA. They are fundamentally different.
Is that enough to start one of those good conversations? 🙂
interests and can talk on most subjects. But it depends on where you want to focus. Relative to CT, that’s where it gets fuzzy to me. I don’t like the term CT because it’s become a catch all phrase to shoot down any discussion regarding serious incidents. JFK, RFK, MLK, the Tonkin Gulf incident, Pearl Harbor, 9/11, these all have official versions that come from the government and we are supposed to accept them. But I try to boil it down to the simpliest form, evidence. History is not stagnant, it isn’t ever complete. New evidence is always being found for just about anything. So I don’t have a thing about CT, it’s all about fact finding and analyzing evidence, then coming to one’s own conclusions as is my right.
miss discussions
where many people shared their own unique points of view….
sometimes resulting in AHA! moments…
you could nearly see the light come on in another’s … words/mind.
you could sense the change, the change of words, tones, verbiage in the posts/replies that followed.
AHA! moments that lead to understanding… or at least a glimmer of ‘maybe i hadn’t considered that aspect’
having rousing discussion is far different than flame wars, imo.
one can discuss without slings & arrows IF one takes time to think… really think … about what another means instead of pounding out the first damn thing that pops into your head.
sometimes hastily written words get in the way of meanings & ideas
then ppl get outraged at a word or phrase….
not seeing the forest for the trees kinda thing.
blogging, i thought, would be such a Great Tool…
allowing ppl to share their similarities, explore their differences, without the pettiness of age, gender, class, race, religion, accent getting in the way.
i thought blogging would be an equalizing force.
a way to get over the petty BS & get down to brass tacks.
a way to put time & consideration into discussions,
allowing thoughtful, considerate responses….
a broadening of knowledge for all involved
whether involved/participating in the discussions or just peering in from the sidelines..
& with many minds working together….
gha! the possibilities for improving, not only MY knowledge,
but by finding ways of conversing, without humongeous rancor…
i really thought we could find a way to… expand that.
to ripple it out……
finding solutions to improve the human condition seemed within our grasp.
yes.
i miss lengthy 3-4 day discussions.
i miss the learning experiences i once had here.
superb essay calico. thoughtful. important.
i’ve missed your voice.
♥~
although I will venture in to some of the CT essay/comment pools from time to time. It depends.
My opinion… I think you gain more ground by showing someone, informing them, giving them some link leads to go read, and so on, and also allow room (time) for Someone to figure it out and reach the conclusions their own self. That applies whether its CT or whatever else.
If Someone is even here to begin with, it seems to me there should be some assumption that they are predisposed, left leaning (unlike the orange where you cannot assume that!!) so give them some credit for having a half a brain.
I enjoy discussions. Over flame wars any day.
I find your lines about CT interesting. First of all, like underdog, I don’t like the term. It is like calling a gay person a “faggot”. It’s meant to be insulting. Conspiracies are how politics gets done for the most part. You have to understand that whether it is real estate, finance, war or politics most people who are successful in those areas color outside the lines and do so in alliance to other people. This should be obvious to those that have lived outside a narrow middle-class (play by the rules) bubble.
When confronted with facts such as why the 9/11 airplanes were not intercepted or any number of other very strange claims the gov’t and media make why do you throw your hands up? Are you simply afraid to confront reality? How about the governments elaborate story of a vast conspiracy controlled out of Afghanistan — is that really very credible?
My point is this: if there is some truth in 9/11 truth movement claims then aren’t the implications go to the heart of the political system? If gov’t officials or various moles within the gov’t can do something as hideous as 9/11 that has contributed to the loss of the Republic here and a massive amount of death and misery in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as acted as a cover for Wall Street and the MIC to loot the Treasury and the future of our children then we should, logically speaking, drop everything to confront the facts of the case. Isn’t it obvious that the gov’t has deliberately covered up everything about 9/11 (I include the MSM in the term “government”)? Isn’t it true that there has not only never been a forensic based investigation of 9/11 but even a call for one? Plane crashes are always very carefully investigated as are building collapses so why were normal procedures ignored? Doesn’t this sound an alarm bell? Are you deaf?
I suggest that the reason you cannot deal with “CT” is pure cowardice. Don’t feel bad you’re in good company. If I can say anything about the United States as a society is that it has become a nation of cowards who are afraid of their own shadow half the time and don’t want to think about the real dark side — they want to be all snug as a bug in their coccoon. It is a national infection that, frankly, disgusts me. So it’s nothing personal.
Unless you confront 9/11 truth, as underdog and others have stated, you cannot successfully analyze our political situation. BTW 9/11 is not an isolated incident. Remember “intelligence” organizations are not really answerable to anyone except, theoretically, the President and I don’t believe even heads of the services know what is going on — why that is would take too long to write here. My view is that covert operatives are an international force that cooperate and work with each other for their own interests rather than the interests of any single nation but that too is too long a discussion.
Finally, I want to say that unless you’ve hung out with hustlers and criminals of all types which, alas, I have you’re not going to understand the “underground” of organized crime and the emerging neo-feudal world. I don’t want to press these ideas here to those that don’t want to hear it but am happy for a chance to express this somewhere.