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When you cross a swamp, try to do it fast (hexbear.net)

submitted 9 months ago by RNAi@hexbear.net to c/chapotraphouse@hexbear.net

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[-] AutomatedPossum@hexbear.net 73 points 9 months ago

The main reason econ and poli sci majors are so obsessed with Sun Tzu and especially Macchiavelli is that the actual good sources on realpolitik are Mao and Lenin and that's considered too dangerous for them, so they get the safe stuff, the utterly nihilistic and immoral Borghia bootlicker and the "archers are kinda good for killing at a distance" drivel instead of having State and Revolution on their reading list.

[-] Frank@hexbear.net 56 points 9 months ago

You cannot stand here slandering my boy Sun Tzu like this. The Art of War is good and explains core concepts around engaging in and managing conflict. It lays out the basics so you have a foundation to build off of. It might seem obvious to you, but most people have absolutely no idea when or why to fight and Sun Tzu explains it.

[-] DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml 38 points 9 months ago

For examples, just look at your average armchair general who got their experience from video games! This stuff does not come naturally to people.

[-] RyanGosling@hexbear.net 34 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Yeah people gotta remember Sun Tzu in the BCs when dudes were fighting with swords and spears and arrows lol. It’s one of the first texts on military strategy - or conflict management if you wanna be that guy.

It’s like criticizing someone for writing that lifting heavy objects strategically give you muscles during a period where Jesus was his neighbor.

[-] KobaCumTribute@hexbear.net 32 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

The funniest one I've seen has to be that one book, what is it "48 Laws of Power" or something? That's just packed with translated old Arabic poetry and ends by praising Mao and calling people who think they can learn leadership from a book dumbasses. IIRC the forward is something like "so yeah this book is mostly based on the bullshit that I've seen the worst people I've ever known do, plus some literature I think is cool," too.

[-] RyanGosling@hexbear.net 21 points 9 months ago

Mike Tyson read Mao in prison and it changed his life so much that he got a tattoo of him lol. Too bad he’s a piece of shit otherwise it’d be funny to point this out.

[-] RyanGosling@hexbear.net 19 points 9 months ago

The founder of BuzzFeed was a Maoist in college. Or at the very least, he read Mao and somehow influenced him to create BuzzFeed.

[-] Xx_Aru_xX@hexbear.net 13 points 9 months ago

What type of liberalism are you buzzfeed quiz

[-] marxisthayaca@hexbear.net 7 points 9 months ago

Jameson and Delueze

Capitalism and schizophrenia

Peretti's article is an interpretation of Jameson's "Postmodernism and Consumer Society" and Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, both of which use "schizophrenia" as a key part of their analysis.

"Schizophrenia" here doesn't have much of anything to do with the actual mental illness (as Jameson writes, "I'm not even sure that the view of schizophrenia I'm about to outline … is clinically accurate"), and in retrospect the use of an actual illness from which millions of people suffer as an abstract tool of cultural criticism is rather cringe-inducing. I use the term here since it's the preferred jargon within cultural theory, but, for the record, it's gross and they should have found another word.

In context of the theory, both Jameson and Deleuze/Guattari use "schizophrenic" to refer to a person without a defined identity or ego. Jameson, for one, thinks "late" capitalism (which he said was beginning to emerge in the mid-1980s, as he was writing) causes that kind of schizophrenia. People usually build identities, after all, at least in part from cultural items (songs, movies, TV shows, advertisements, etc) they encounter. But Jameson thinks that if those items are presented in a scrambled, confusing way to people, they have a hard time forming identities, and run the risk of schizophrenia.

https://www.vox.com/2014/5/20/5730762/buzzfeeds-founder-used-to-write-marxist-theory-and-it-explains

[-] ReadFanon@hexbear.net 18 points 9 months ago

All the better.

How does that saying go - never interrupt your enemy when they're making a mistake?

Plenty of these poli sci majors are going to be opposed to the revolution, if not most of them. I can't imagine many econ majors are going to make it through liberal ideology ✨but reified with statistics✨ and end up on the right side of history.

Let them study garbage and produce garbage takes and make a mess of everything. Paper tigers etc. etc.