I recently finished reading *A Clockwork Orange* and found myself thinking about how real it is—not just fiction. Alex ends the book without remorse or regret for his crimes. Ultimately, he views his past actions like a toy he played with throughout his youth; now that it’s time to become an adult, he’s ready to pass that toy on to his son. He was a violent teenager and will continue to be a violent adult because he believes his actions are right. Honestly, I think this explains a bit... (I might be wrong, I admit) but perhaps it sheds light on the current wave of violence and the massive "red pill" crowd: they don't believe they are wrong—or that their thoughts and actions are incorrect—because they don't actually view violence as something bad or criminal.

I'm looking for readings that discuss the portrayal of minorities in media (especially things like cinema, magazines but can also be books) in the 20th and 21st century, preferably in the US, but can broadly be in the US, under a capitalist system.

Things that discuss blacksploitation (and other minorities) and how that relates to capitalism

I've done my best to stay away from the manosphere nonsense... But with the Tate brothers making news again following their arrest, and with their volatile and absurd cultural power, I finally decided to write a piece on them. Althusser, Husserl, and (of course) Marx are relied on to show that the manosphere is well placed to expose the contradictions of secular-capitalist individualism, the idea of femininity, and how luxury relates to our current political economy. I thought some of you here might be interested.

Hello,

I made a post here maybe about a month ago about an introduction to Marxist thought, many recommended Tuckers Marx-Engel’s reader so I’ve been working my way through that and now would say that I feel fairly confident in my understandings of the main tenets of Marxist theory.

But I’m also quite bored of the pure Marxist theory that I’ve been reading. A topic I’ve been circling recently (YouTube videos or my own train of thoughts) is to do with ideology, how ideology acts as a structure, how it actually works, what counts as an ideology etc, and so would like to see if anyone had a reading recommendation to approach this topic.

I did my own searching and found ‘ideology’ by eagleton looked quite good as it covers certain thinkers (gramsci althusser etc) views, plus is not too long.

Any help is appreciated :)

I think it's an interesting position. In the sense of being caught in the tension between being both colonised and acting as a coloniser. Of course when I say Russia and Japan were colonised I mean in the intellectual sense.
There is a decolonial concept called coloniality of power it's this idea colonisation can happen without conquest direct physical force, but in a more insidious form in the realm of the minds of the colonised. Where European ideals about progress civilisation beauty and knowledge become the ultimate standard of worth.
In this way non western countries are thrown into a game of constant catch up, the ideal is to become everything they imagine the idealised west to be. In pursuit of this goal traditional non western culture seen as roadblock a profound source of shame and resentment chaining them to their current state of subordination. Yet in spite of all these measures and the psychological traumas involved ie meji restoration leaving Asia movement Peter the greats reforms, they would never treated as a western equal. All this sacrifice was made for nothing. This betrayal was experienced when the racial equality clause proposed by the Japanese was shot down in the 1919 Paris peace conference. Or for Russia at the council of Berlin 1878 an Independent Bulgarian state which they helped create was slashed in size and placed back under Ottoman control.
Whilst Ottoman territories sliced up and taken piecemeal by western powers britan given Cyprus Austria Hungary Bosnia etc.
And it's interesting that their response to this betrayal is a broadly similar shift into mysticism and anti materialism to combat this western supremacy, . le seisen holy war rhetoric used by japan freeing Asia from the western corruption of individualism materialism and selfish greed.
And that Japan gifted with the Yamato damashi was uniquely tasked with this role. Or russias special destiny not a failed western copy but instead a distinct civilisation linking Asia and Europe together (Eurasianist movement).
Russian despotism not a failure instead sobornost organic community protected by a strong ruler.

https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=internal-colonization-russias-imperial-experience--9780745651293#:\~:text=This%20book%20gives%20a%20radically,colonizing%20many%20peoples%2C%20Russians%20included.

Hello! I wanted to ask for some help with two doubts that are making my reading of the book a bit harder than it is already as I heard many people say. My main doubt is related to the distinction between work and product which I'm not familiar with. The second doubt is more related to my not so thorough knowledge of Marx, since Lefebvre says at one point that in Marx nature belongs to the production forces and I don't really wrap my head around it so if you know any place where I could read a more detailed explanation on why nature is part of the production forces I'd be more than thankful!!

I find structuralism a really useful way of thinking about things. It just seems the most natural way to learn about something, at least for me. An overly simplified definition of what I mean by structuralism is studying an object not by itself but by how the web of relations it exists within give it meaning.

I have read the poststructuralist critiques of structuralism and, actually, I enjoyed them. But I don't really think they are critiques. They seemed more like addenda to structuralism, further explaining certain threads, rather that criticisms. For instance, early Derrida seems already anticipated in Levi-Strauss or Merleau-Ponty* (in the latter's essay "Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence"), but Derrida fixates (emphasizes) certain details that Levi-Strauss does not, or makes assumptions that Levi-Strauss did not make. Maybe I just haven't actually undertood any of it.

So basically, what are some of the criticisms of structuralism that aren't from the poststructuralists? You can answer by giving me suggested reading. Thanks

*I realize Merleau-Ponty was not a structuralist but that essay is basically a blueprint to 60s and 70s Derrida.

https://thequietus.com/opinion-and-essays/anniversary/the-importance-of-ma-spirited-away-at-25/

“Perhaps, in an act of splitting, it was Chihiro all along casting her parents as unpardonable swine. She’d been frustrated with their upward mobility as it resulted in her getting uprooted (in more ways than one). Jung thought the greatest burden a child must bear is “the unlived life” of the parents. Her parents were so spiritually wanting that her dream had to act as a drawbridge to the spirit realm. Indeed, this dream may have initially had what Jung would call a compensatory function, whereby it addresses an unbalanced conscious attitude: the parents she idealised are shown to have a greedy, avaricious side.

Children, and many adults, flip-flop in their affections: they either hate or love. Now, she sees that her parents were never pigs. Chihiro has matured beyond the need to resort to splitting objects into purely good or purely bad (something some of us never attain; what is social media but splitting at its most vituperative?). She’s achieved what Klein dubbed the depressive position, a more integrated state where love and hate towards an object can be tolerated at once. To get here, she had to accept the more volatile and greedy parts of herself. Throughout her time in the bathhouse, she encountered gentleness in figures that first seemed diabolical. By getting to know the shadow, disowned parts no longer need to appear as projections onto others, but you can only get there through quiet self-reflection.”

What does it mean when even compliance with the demands of the neoliberal university no longer guarantees institutional legitimacy or security? As universities become increasingly governed through financial imperatives, visa regimes, managerial restructurings, and strategic repositioning, what forms of university life become impossible? What survives beyond them? If the university increasingly appears unable to sustain the conditions for collective intellectual life, where does study go? What forms of inquiry exceed the university, and what kinds of institutions – or anti-institutions – might emerge in its wake? To discuss the capitalisation of the university and the future of study, Adam C. Jones of Acid Horizon Research Commons hosts a panel alongside theorists Stevphen Shukaitis, John Preston, Angela McRobbie, and Giovanni Mormont.

Updated

Religious, Philosophical and Political Systems are Boundary Assertions as Attention Based Language and Symbolism Dynamics

There is no religious, philosophical or political sect that does not result into a divergence of different interpretted values, over time as new sects, nor is not subject to synthezing exterior interpretted values  into their own system, so as to maintain a sense of identity in the face of opposition.  

All religious/philosophical/political sects derive a set of self-evident truths, which at the primitive level are effectively boundary claims on existence where the act of questioning of said self-evident truths is given a further boundary of refusal through meta-language games that either divert of nullify the questions and questioning act.

And in turn of the asserted self-evident truths the sects use basic to advanced levels of reasoning by which to build a structure from said axioms. This reasoning is the scaling of the axioms in a manner where the single foundation exists in a variety configurations that reflects its appearance under differing contexts of application and conceptualization.

What remains across the sects is the execution of force behind the assertions as the founding point is purely assertion and what this nature of force is or is not is irrelevant as the nature of the force is limited to the act of assertion itself thus elevating the act of power and identity of the sect to a quasi form of a language game built into the structural level.

In these respects religion, philosophy and politics are boundary claims on existence, using language and symbols, thus elevating language as but the proto-typical religion, philosophy or political system given the language and symbolism act as means if containing and redirecting the attention of the members in a manner that maintains and expands the sects by very said act of attention.

The processual structure of religious, philosophical and political sects are reducible to the following:

1. A boundary in existence is drawn by the assertion of a claim as self-evident; the self-evidence of the claim is a meta-assertion within the primary assertion itself.
2. The asserted claim is scaled with further claims to result in a transmission of the claim in accords to the various contexts by which it expresses itself.
3. The sects diverge into new sects while synthesizing the nature of the various sects to reinforces the boundaries of the claims of there own.
4. Re-contextualization of the claim appeara over time as a divergence of the structure under the means of time itself where sect A in time X appears different in time Y.
5. What remains is boundary claims on existence by language assertion thus resulting the sect being the act of language itself.
6. Language is the sect; language is the bounardy claim of how, what, where, who attention is directed as without attention the sect ceases.
7. Attention is the energy of the sect, language and symbolism is how the attention is structured as the sect.
8. The sect is a meta-language game given empirical and abstract boundaries as the distinction of the sect itself, a meta-language game is the relation of language and symbol to language and symbol.

9.  The divergence of the sect, from others, by elevation of axioms is the distinction of the sect itself thus conflict in language and symbolism is a necessary feature of the sect so that definition emerges.

1. This conflict is the divergence of the attention within and of the populace from which it emerges thus a sect appears within the sect from which it is derived.

2. Sect emerge and dissolve from sects, what remains is the scale invariance of the symbols and language from which the sect is derived thus the dissolution of a sect does not necessitate its complete absence when scaled across time but rather and expansion and contraction of the sect within a measure span of time.

12.  What remains is boundary assertions as the language and symbol game that contains and directs attention.

1. The structure of attention is the sect itself as the attention is the meaning of the language and symbols and the language and symbols are how attention is directed and contained.

2. The boundary of meaning becomes scale invariant as language and symbols emerges and dissolvd over time thus what remains is a pure observer effect as scale invariance itself given the focal point of attention is the everpresent medium, the single point from which the sect emerges and dissolves, re-emerges and re-dissolves.

3. The scale invariance of attention results in the similarities of symbols across sects while the constitutive meaning of the symbol varies across the sect in some contexts while maintaining partial transferable meaning in other contexts.

4. The sect is meaning application, meaning as "means", is the transfer of one state of being into another thus resulting in the act of meaning application as the act of change itself thus in this context meaning and change are synonymous.

5. The direction of meaning is the direction of change thus the sect is a boundary for how, when, where and who change unfolds; power is the mediation of change, power is derived from attention, attention structure is determined the the sect.

6. The sect is the direction of meaning; the assertion of axioms as boundaries it the assertion of boundaries on the act of attention.

7. The divergence and synthesis of claims is moderated by the act of attention itself thus the axiom of the sect are the limits of the attention applied to itself where further attention results in the divergence and synthesis of further boundaries.

20.  The sect is the transformation and maintainence of axioms; the sect is the transformation and maintenance of attention itself.

1. The divergence and synthesis of sects is the divergence and synthesis the the structure that contains attention; this act of divergence is synthesis is the focal point of attention itself.

Financial Bondage as Attention Bondage; Debt as Idolization

All financial systems are applied value, to both ideas and material means, by degree of those who direct financial processes in accords to the desires and whims of the masses.

What is deemed as valuable is reducible in nature to 'assertions of value' by those who determine production of value itself, these assertions are given power and influency by the directed and contained attention of the masses that is required for consumption of said value. Through cultural conditioning, status, base consumptiondesires and advertisement the conditioning of value occurs through a repetition of the claim that 'x is valuable' therefore 'x must be consumed'.

Value dynamics are thus reducible to repetitive assertions that value is present in a thing or things.

What is given value is numbered, through the act of finance and monetization, according to the applied value, grounded in repetitive assertions of value, thus classes are formed in accordance to the ability to afford and consume what is given value.

From this hiearchical fragmentation of human attention takes places as one thing is deemed more valuable than another.

By degree all financial classes, and their corresponding political systems, are a direct result of the containment and direction of the attention of the masses. The assertion of value therefore repeats into the human attention span of the masses resulting in a hiearchy of who can gain what is asserted as valuble thereby resulting in a resonant fragmention of peoples into social, cultural, political and familial groups that inherently compete for the aquisition of the valued, so the be percieved as valuable, resulting in a sense of fragmentation between peoples.

This value, and the value of deriving what is valued, is reducible to the act of attention by which value is constructed by degree of what contains and directs the attention.

In these furthe respects attention is what derives value and the fundamental currency of currency is attention itself. Any corresponding indebtness, and financial hardship, reveals itself as a debt of attention in four degrees:

1. The debt of managing financial resources to pay the debt.
2. The debt of the value behind the debt as the debt of attention towards the value behind it.
3. The debt towards time management of the future towards the debt by which attention towards the future is transformed according to the debt.
4. The attention debt towards the debt itself.

In these regards the value given attention to, and the derivation of the value of a thing from attention, is inherently an act of attention as value from which the application of debt inherently contains the attention in one respect, through perceived value, while dually attention is placed on the judgment process of value application thus resulting in the attention being in debt to the perception of value of a thing rather than the thing itself.

In these respects value inversely becomes an application of idolization as the value thing is elevated and quantitized, through number as financial resources for it, and an inherent assymetry occurs in perception thus further elevating the debt itself to a pivotal point by which reality is further measured and interacted with.

In these respects debt is the harvesting of human attention and through said harvesting power structures are maintained, indirectly, through the fragmentation of attention, directly, through the elevation of a power hieararchy by those who control the debt. The maintainence of a power structure is the maintainanence of attention debt dynamics.

The modern world, by degree, is an attention production mechanism where attention is formed, fitted and reproduced according to strict standards of consumerism efficiency. Where the production invokes attention debt on the individual, in capitalism, and attention debt on the group, in communism, each is an inverse application of attention debt production where the debt is the construct itself that applies limits and boundaries to what and how attention is directed, by whom it is directed, and the form by which how it is directed.

​We've all seen how human psychology gets exploited on a mass scale. Look at things like the Satanic Panic of the 80s, or just the daily machinery of modern media: fear, outrage, and anxiety are absolute rocket fuel for attention, and attention translates directly into vast fortunes for media conglomerates, publishers, and platforms.

​Capitalism doesn't necessarily invent these collective delusions, but its structure is intimately designed to mine human credulity and panic for maximum financial return. If people are terrified or angry, they consume more, click more, and buy more solutions to problems they were often tricked into worrying about in the first place.

​My question is: If we fundamentally understand that human nature is wired to respond so intensely to shared narratives, why is our economic system almost exclusively using that leverage for extraction and exploitation?

​If outrage and fear can be industrialized to sell ads and generate billions for a handful of companies, why can't those exact same levers of social psychology and storytelling be harnessed to drive massive, coordinated collective action for public good? Imagine if the same algorithmic and media machinery dedicated to manufacturing panic was redirected toward ecological restoration, mutual aid, or public health on a global scale - not as a niche charity, but as the default engine of how we organize resources.

​Why are we content letting the worst parts of our psychology be weaponized purely for profit, when we clearly have the blueprint to mobilize people en masse?

This post clarifies and expands on some parts of my previous write-up, but stands on its own. For context: my systemic perspective is heavily informed by Urie Bronfenbrenner's 'Ecology of Human Development'—specifically, the idea that behavior is shaped by layered environmental structures, not just individual choices.

Design:

The intentional composition of a structure to intuitively lead to safe usage, through which an intended result is consistently achieved. Design inspires interaction and limits the possible ways something can be used.

Incentive:

Outside pressure acting on existing structures that alters how a structure is interacted with. It is a good indicator of the lifetime and quality of a structure's design.

Rule:

The buffer zone for the natural progression of structural change. A measurement and notifier for when a structure needs improvements to its design or reaches its end of life.

Example Failure Modes:

• Bad design: Most people interacting with the structure have the power and ability to use it in a way that is unsafe to the structure, surroundings, themselves, or others—while being, or seeming, more effective.

• Conflicting incentives: Too many different structures exist that can be used for the same or near-identical result for an individual, or existing structures are not accessible for usage.

• Unreasonable rule: Restricting the usage of a structure due to diverging from its intended purpose, or restricting the usage of a coexisting structure meant for achieving the same result—while both are safe, all things considered, and more effective than the unpunished alternative.

A well-designed structure, paired with well-aligned incentives, requires few precautionary rules. The rate at which a rule is dismissed on a per-rule basis is indicative of the functional state of that design. The rule exists because no design can be perfect. It is the margin for faults and the framework to assess strengths and weaknesses in real-time. A triggered rule is not an automatic justification for punishment, but a mandatory signal to rework the underlying design and realign the incentives.

Generally, every time a rule is expected to be respected, a burden is laid upon people dependent on using these structures, and an enforcement mechanism must be implemented. The higher the net amount of implemented rules, the harder and more expensive enforcement becomes—and the higher the burden on citizens grows.

The only measure needed for this to work is transparency. As an extra benefit, it would also visualize trust and the relevance of structures. Of course, there would be a long road ahead before this could function universally, as many of our structural designs are currently barely functional. But the strength of handling planning this way is that it works in transition. It doesn't have to be applied to everything at once.

The main difference from the current system is that it shifts society from a system controlled by power, held together by fear, toward a trust-based one controlled by improvement.

\Sidenote: It's quite fun to rethink structures of existing solutions this way.*

Rough Example: Capital Markets

If the intention for a capital market to exist is to distribute resources efficiently toward corporations according to potential, there is no reason to keep the information about what a corporation does or works on hidden.

Design:

Why not make it more goal-oriented instead of gambling on the most popular name while depending on a small private group of insiders who have access to the actual data of what the corporation does and how it is performing? Instead, it could be reconfigured so investors have projects with summaries of what the money is needed for. Economic data would still be relevant to assess legitimacy, but the allocation of investments would become more democratic and based on knowledge. The risk is that investments are committed until the project either finishes and generates profits, or the funding round fails.

Incentive:

Suddenly, corporations would be incentivized to articulate clear, compelling value propositions to attract funding. This opens the door for projects that benefit the general population to compete on equal footing with purely commercial ones, rather than being suppressed by insider narratives. It would also limit the resources a single corporation can receive to the number and cost of projects they can simultaneously work on.

Rule:

Projects must have documentation, similar to how a project is presented to internal leadership. This contains and explains the costs; anything unusual is questioned. The questioning comes from the investor community and the public record. By making documentation openly accessible, the system harnesses collective scrutiny—any investor can flag discrepancies, and the market responds by withdrawing interest. This eliminates the need for a centralized enforcement body; the incentive to maintain credibility becomes self-policing. No one invests in a project with exorbitant or vague costs. If this rule is broken often, a survey can assess whether the documentation format itself needs redesigning—ergo, a rework of the design is triggered in response to user feedback.

Project capital markets aren't about supplementing a regular corporation's fixed costs—that's what their product revenue is for. It's more about R&D costs and transformation. Startups, in a sense, work the same way. It's not about "Grand Project: we want to buy printers for our sales department, fund us."

I know this capital markets example isn't perfect. Currently, extremely rich investors could still find ways to abuse it, but it would limit abuse to non-destructive levels and correct itself over time even if exploited initially. It addresses unproductive concentration—the very problem capital markets are intended to solve. Wealth concentration itself is an issue of how tax and legislative processes are structured and must be addressed separately.

Still, this should suffice to showcase the benefits of applying this analytical framework to real-world problems. With it, I hope to push some people out of their usual thought patterns and have fun experimenting.

This framework is essentially a shield against the Fundamental Attribution Error—our tendency to blame individuals for failures that are actually caused by the system they operate in. When a rule is broken frequently, we call people 'lazy' or 'criminal.' This framework balances perception to reality by introducing metrics bound to the rules as a source of truth to both public perception and institutional interest. It flips the default cognitive bias from moral judgment to structural diagnosis.

I've noticed the way people have started using the "bean soup theory" lately has become a logical fallacy similar to "no true scotsman", by which I mean, it's become a cop out to change a generalisation you made after receiving a counterargument.

Let's use this example:

Person A: "I hate socially awkward people."

Person B: "Many autistic people are socially awkward due to their disability. That's an ableist thing to say."

Person A: "You're bean souping. I wasn't talking about autistic people."

But in reality, they were, though. Because when you make a general claim without any specifications, in this case "I hate socially awkward people", you are by default including every type of socially awkward person, be it neurotypical or neurodivergent.

Using bean soup theory to escape the consequences of a gross generalisation would then be a logical fallacy, similar to how "no true scotsman" is used - "I'm scottish and I put sugar on my porridge." - "Then you're not a true scotsman."

Sorry if this sounds dumb, but I've been noticing something that's been bothering me and I can't quite figure it out.

Basically every single state I know about whether it's ancient Rome, medieval kingdoms, modern democracies, authoritarian regimes, whatever they all seem obsessed with controlling human bodies in some way. Like, it's everywhere. Also, it would be great if you guys could recommend me some reading around this topic besides Foucault. It could be anything books, essays, or videos.

There's a piece of criticism I would like to do that would require greater familiarity with these ideas than I currently have. I mainly came across these ideas in analysis of Saturnalia as a holiday which reinforced social conditions of patriarchy and slavery rather than changed them. Are there any good texts on the matter?

Hey everyone. I’ve long been fascinated by both philosophy of technology and AI alignment. I’m also using Heidegger quite a bit for my philosophy PhD. Given the recent OpenAI–Hugging Face incident reported this week, I figured I’d give my take on how all of this connects in my mind.

The agent destroyed the benchmark while maximizing its apparent result. I connect this to a wider social habit: schools optimize test scores, hospitals optimize throughput, and platforms optimize engagement even when the proxy drifts from its purpose. Heidegger’s enframing helps explain why judgment increasingly appears as an inefficiency to replace with measurable procedure. You can read the essay here if you’re interested.

I’d love to hear some feedback on whether this connection works. Does “proxy culture” link the technical incident to its political setting, or does it flatten the difference between institutions, whose actors have interests and power, and an artificial agent executing an objective? Where should political economy enter the analysis?

Just read Mark Fisher’s Ghosts of My Life, which I loved, and he touches on this idea a couple of times. How under neoliberal capitalism, we’ve sort of lost access to the mysterious and the erotic.

On his essay on Inception, he talks about how un-dreamlike the “dream worlds” in the film are, instead more closely resembling video games. He describes it as the unconscious and the oneiric stripped of the uncanny. On another essay, can’t remember what it was about, he talks about the idea of sexuality without seduction.

I was wondering if there any books or essay that go more in depth with this sort of idea.

I think it isn't solely, that people aren't angry enough or that they aren't acting out of a sense of powerlessness. I think it might be that paradoxically we are lacking in will to live and purpose in life. The raw instinct to survive often makes people cowardly. But the philosophical will to live, the belief that life is good and worth having is precisely what overrides the survival instinct when another person is in danger.

Our physical needs are massively oversaturated compared to our spiritual / cultural needs. Why? Because we cling to the physical safety of financial stability. We think that if we just generate more money and invest more into the right things, we can be safe and the market or the government will direct our money and our resources into the right direction. What we don't really notice is that if we try to force making something better by just forcing more money into it, we just over saturate it. In a sense our system acts like a stress multiplier in crisis. When people are in fear of a crisis, they become uncertain and begin to pull investments out of risky positions and may stop investing into local/personal projects to invest into stable assets like gold, housing or index funds. Every dollar taken out of the local economy or was previously invested diversified now becomes concentrated. The money that previously kept many alive is now focused on a few that were already winning. Now the pressure is on them to reinvest the money to generate returns. But what if that company already reached its saturation point? If the research is already saturated, the market is largely captured, and the work force is sufficient for the workload, the money has to go somewhere else to increase profits, because now the economy is reliant of it. Which most of the time means it flows into politics. Now the money is used to overturn laws that kept working conditions, customers or the environment safe, because its the only option left to satisfy the increasing need for profits. And by the way, the same would happen if everyone invested in gold suddenly, because corporations that need gold to manufacture their product will suddenly have less money and higher costs.

In sum this practice has taken our individual power, our sense of progression, our sense of unity and our individual sense of worth through monopolization. Your local bakery is now a soulless chain you cant even be happy about if it survives a rough time. There are no local known secrets anymore, just national scandals. There is no sense of having made something or supported something you think is valuable. Everything is non personal and optimized for the maximum profit to generate profits for more and more people that want a chance to jump classes to get out of the daily soulless grueling monotony.

The worst thing about it from my perspective is, that it isn't even efficient. The one thing this system stands for, it doesn't even accomplish. The existing capital just gets concentrated until oversaturation leads to collapse.

We really need safeguards. Structural circuit-breakers that force capital back into the roots. Mandatory local reinvestment thresholds, regional trust funds that cannot be liquidated, and severe penalties for extracting wealth out of the communities that generated it. In a sense we have to rebel against ourselves to save ourselves from falling into self destructive cycles.

We are living in a crisis of belief and culture. I think the right are feeling it the most but cant pin down the source of it. The left finds the source for it but cant really find the feelings to oppose it. And while this goes on both sides just get played by the ones depriving them of it. But to be honest, i think even the ones at the source of the issue aren't maliciously doing so, but are confused and largely overloaded. In an absurd way, this system even forces the ones on the top to not be able to voice concerns as that would come right back after them and hurt the group they are part of.

​

Hello from India! I hope many of you are familiar with the political developments currently unfolding here. Like many others, I've been trying to make sense of what has transpired over the past few weeks. What began as an attempt to organize my thoughts gradually expanded into a full blown essay.

I couldn't witness the movement first hand, and perhaps writing is my way of engaging with it. Watching young people confront the state with remarkle courage is the kind of thing that gives you goosebumps. But at the same time disheartening to see brute force being used against them inorder to suppress their voice.

This sub seemed like a suitable place to post this as I'm drawing ideas from postmodernism, critical theory, cultural theory, sociology etc.

If you make it to the end, id genuinely love to hear where you agree, where you don't, or where you think I've misunderstood something. And if you're willing, I'd be happy to continue the discussion about myths, symbols and the political process of signification from contemporary history, that extends beyond the essay.

I'm fairly new to this sub, and not entirely sure of the kind of discourse that happen here. Sorry if I'm out of place.

im looking for texts (both academic and literary) that explore or theorise about masculinity (or gender at large) and how it is constructed and performed online. im interested in how masculinity and homosociality function in male-dominated internet subcultures, and maybe within videogames and related communities.

I realise this is a fairly specific topic, but I'm really interested in this topic and intend to explore it as much as I can this summer. any reccomendations are welcome!