False consciousness / alienation / Transparency 2.0 Forum

[Businesslady]

I am not sure how dissuaded people will be by being told that biglaw sucks time and again but I think the "special snowflake" meme is just the dumbest fucking crab-in-a-bucket projection of mediocrity and risk aversion. I would not presume to tell anyone that it cannot be a perfectly fulfilling thing to get competent at a trade and practice it. Calling people lemmings just reinforces their (justified) suspicion that people are superimposing their own regrets but doesn't get to the heart of explaining what's fucked about the whole situation. It's just a different form of risk aversion. I will grant that people should learn how to do interest math if they care about owning things.

"What else am I gonna do" is the logic of joining fucking Al-Qaeda which seems pretty shitty so I'd hope the answer "literally anything if you get over yourself" works. Conversely, if you dreeeeaaaaam of practicing law then you have bigger problems than whether or not you can read an LST report or alternatively maybe good luck follow your dreams. (Aside: everyone's all like "you can do anything with a law degree? Boomer logic!" and maybe it's like, yeah, dude, acting like you can do whatever you want on other people's money is boomer logic, and it looks like it worked out fine for them. If it doesn't work out then get 85%+ of the money after tax from waiting tables and fuck people and get Medicaid and sorry you don't get to move to the suburbs and raise kids I guess, let someone else fuck the world up for you instead, maybe get into smoking weed or model boats. Who cares? Their shitty kids are going to be paying for some boomer to overpay someone's nephew to design a brochure for your school while you smoke weed. Welcome to life for pretty much everyone - you're 15% poorer for knowing how you got here, but everyone else has to go to church 1 day out of the week, so who got the better deal, really? I actually have no idea if this is true or wildly irresponsible and tax bomb or something but I'm going to go with "all men labor under an illusion")

Or maybe biglaw rules and everyone should want it. I know fuck all about what makes anyone else happy. I don't actually care. I just think most things are a giant fucking lie and if people are going to go to law school they may as well save themselves the trouble of an identity crisis wondering if they actually believe the conclusory and dishonest arguments for capital they write for points on some "both sides of the issue" flame. Like, no, you're systemically fucked by a handful of very powerful people who don't actually deserve what they have, and you made a conscious choice to join the bureaucracy and treat praxis school like a cube drone conveyor belt. Don't worry about it. It's all still a giant lie. Like, don't commit malpractice or anything, but you're not wrong, capitalism is slavery.

I also think the idea of rankings is retarded obviously and LST is fine I guess but it doesn't really comprehensively address just how fucking stupid some of the general attitudes on this website about life are. Also, if you think your parents will be disappointed by you then fuck them anyway and you shouldn't let them rot your kids' brains with their striver nonsense if you breed.

Anyway my point is who cares?

@los blancos I am making all of this up as I go along. Read Arendt on why people interacting with each other constructively is a source of meaning; I'd just be a hollow and distant echo. Wondering whether making the world better for being in it should actually be a priority may feel borderline sociopathic, but the 2nd article in the OP is about the Marxist concept of alienation and it should resonate.

e: Scooped by Hollow and distant echo of J#. Sup dude

[los blancos]

Basically the reason why I read this thread and still check tls

well yeah I mean +1 I guess, though I think that comes with the caveat that some "standpoints" or "perspectives" are fundamentally flawed. I know I think about things differently than when i first started reading the lounge, and that's why I still come on here, because I think it has educational value once in a while.

[06102016]

..

[Businesslady]

ETA new title and some links to relevant lounge threads such as "You need to be productive" *destroys wealth* Libs explain

[chup]

I actually think the "snowflake" insult is pretty defensible, depending on the target. It's stupid/lazy when it's leveled against people who are going into things with a pretty clear idea for the odds and still think it's worth it/let their idealism carry them forward, despite the risk. I think more often (and more appropriately), though -- at least from what I've seen -- it's directed at people who are playing the risk aversion game but simply assume away all problems and say "oh I'll just go to this shitty school and do exceedingly well even though success in law school is kind of hard to predict and everyone around me will be striving equally hard, then I'll transfer and get the high-paying job I deserve." That attitude is less prevalent now than in the past, so maybe you think the insult has outlived its usefulness and has become a crutch for the lazy and over-inclusive?

[Businesslady]

I'm just making blanket statements and attacking it as a default is basically a straw man argument if what you're saying is true.

On that note I'm going to be talking a lot about reification in this thread.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reification_%28fallacy%29

[J3987]

well yeah I mean +1 I guess, though I think that comes with the caveat that some "standpoints" or "perspectives" are fundamentally flawed. I know I think about things differently than when i first started reading the lounge, and that's why I still come on here, because I think it has educational value once in a while.

Going into a discussion with this bias is antithetical to the point, re: full light of human comprehension though.

BL, you shamed me into skimming The Second Sex way back when, but I will still stand by any attempt to annoy TLS. Your clippings are rad so far btw.

[Businesslady]

You have nothing to apologize for. "Hollow and distant echo" is a good meme and also a good evocation of the Spectacle.

I fixed the video where the father succumbs to the lie of the Protestant work ethic and ironically destroys wealth in the process. Libs explain

[youtube]EglOsfErtaE[/youtube]

[Nightrunner]

Don't you ever leave me again.

[Businesslady]

Keynes:

[los blancos]

so just to be clear, none of this applies to litigation, right?

yea definitely not u can basically consider like 1 reasonably well-briefed MTD on a toxic tort claim equivalent 2 like 3 open-heart surgeries
really the worst part about lit from what i gather is doing all the research/grinding of legal academia & getting none of the endless supply of ass
u basically have 2 b a saint

This post is still as funny as the first time i read it.

[chup]

You have nothing to apologize for. "Hollow and distant echo" is a good meme and also a good evocation of the Spectacle.

I fixed the video where the father succumbs to the lie of the Protestant work ethic and ironically destroys wealth in the process. Libs explain

[youtube]EglOsfErtaE[/youtube]

I think this video is actually more subversive then you're giving it credit for, since it's obviously fake/staged. Whoever made the thing is making a good chunk of money (13M views), possibly to buy more video games.

[Businesslady]

You have nothing to apologize for. "Hollow and distant echo" is a good meme and also a good evocation of the Spectacle.

I fixed the video where the father succumbs to the lie of the Protestant work ethic and ironically destroys wealth in the process. Libs explain

[youtube]EglOsfErtaE[/youtube]

I think this video is actually more subversive then you're giving it credit for, since it's obviously fake/staged. Whoever made the thing is making a good chunk of money (13M views), possibly to buy more video games.

False consciousness is everywhere. On law exams if you just write "false consciousness" over and over you get an A+ because that's what all the issues really are.

[Businesslady]

Vicarious enlightenment is unreliable if not an arrant fallacy. Speculating the outcome of tulips infused with luciferase does not make you the brightest bulb.

I Googled "arrant" which besides being the first time I have looked up an English word in like several years (I think) produced this gem:



Evidently law and economics arguments for coercive employment were not as well-received in 19th-century Australia as they are in contemporary America.

[los blancos]

I'm going to leave this here, mostly with the intent of trying to get BL to give me an opinion on it, but partially because I think she already opened the door:

i still think every1 should create wealth or GTFO (i'm def more u-didn't-build-that pinko than pg tho)
http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html

capitalism is slavery

basically thanks for inspiring me to get back to basics and go back and look seriously at my history of econ thought stuff from ug because i was either too dumb or not intellectually curious enough to appreciate it at the time and yet that's a language I can speak. But Schumpeter always appealed to me.

[Businesslady]

Not enough robots in Schumpeter but I need to spend more time with it. I don't really subscribe to a 19th century conception of labor but I like the way the Marxists evolved up through the Frankfurt School. I hate Lacanians and resent having to talk about "deterritorialization" and other continental minor refinements of Marxist abstractions instead of straight up Frankfurt School alienation and false consciousness. I know there's good stuff mixed in with the rambling garbage but just ugh. Anyway, the UBI thread in the OP is good.

I think I want to revisit late Hayek in more depth when I get a minute. It's really not that difficult to harmonize the substance of a lot of postmodern theory with financial economics; it's even easier to treat theory as a way more effective form of HBR-style management Newspeak. If you can deal with the idea, for example, that Judith Butler is kind of a conceptual stereoisomer of Hayek in terms of individual preference, then substituting "hegemony" for "leadership" or "social capital" or "purchasing power" becomes pretty trivial. It's fun to kind of translate some intuition in Deleuze to, like, markets; you get this Ray Dalio feeling, I don't know how else to explain it.

Anyway, I think Hannah Arendt on alienation and probably everything else should be required reading and provides a good axiomatic framework of disgust with, e.g., legal formalism / corporatism / shitlibs / neofeudalism / lazy Coaseans / various reifications / etc. - she's classicist and contemporary at the same time. I described it once as getting all of the conservative cultural elitism of a Bloom or Kimball with all of the radical moral superiority of the postmoderns they don't like. You can't lose, and it doesn't weigh you down with too much conceptual redundancy. Agonism is everything.

[fats provolone]

deconstructionism is exhausting but have you read violent cartographies by shapiro. it's pretty good and i like the use of borders as a metaphor for the human psyche

[Businesslady]

@FD Isn't that like Deleuze's Mille Plateaux/deterritorialization or Situationist psychogeography? Will get on it.

Re:applying to law school or whatever & why false consciousness and alienation are important concepts even in practical terms - "transparency" is fine but it only gets you so far. At some point you have to kind of come to terms with the fact that it's totally ridiculous, compromised, alienated, and uniquely American for "academic" institutions to dignify the crass corporatism of a ranking/sorting "biglaw + clerkships" mentality where people untrained in the subject in question run spreadsheets and evaluate "fitness" of candidates for a doctorate course of study in which they've never spent a day.

That's the extent of the rampant bloat of the administrative sector in your field. Functionaries from "the education administration industry" read your applications through neoliberal blinders as if they could determine your "merit" to study the common law of your country, for licensing or for purely academic purposes, because of a fucked-up and distorted incentive structure that privileges corporate-style sociopathic CYA spreadsheet jockeying over knowing what the fuck is actually going on or even making an honest effort to find out. Oh, and also over the idea of the academic study of the fucking law. Then they make up costs with you in this bizarre protracted kayfabe that has nothing to do with quantifiable value to you, while you know nothing about who you're paying or not paying or only kind of paying to study with and haven't even read anyone's papers and don't really know what you want anyway. Which, cool, because IBR/PAYE and OCI rates or something.

People are all "there's a crisis in legal education!" and it's like, dude, it's the same type of "crisis" immediately identifiable in every other rentier-damaged alienated capitalist subsector - the collapse of false consciousness. Sure, the total inability of yuppie consultantspeak orthodoxy to explain away the obvious perversity of "T14" or historically top-tier institutions catering to striver trash cubeslave ideas of what's elite while purporting to sell someone a $200k education in critical thinking has a particularly desperate feeling, but like, just chill. Everything is ridiculous, and this is the same failure of capitalism that's happening everywhere else, so don't worry.

Also, people like the guy who sees failure instead of freedom in everyone who doesn't chase ridiculous and empty brass rings of prestige write opinions for judges that determine how you live your life, in case the absurdity of the theatre of the other two branches of government weren't bad enough.

Read more theory or don't go.

[fats provolone]

yea shapiro is a deleuze disciple.

also are you familiar with glass bead game. holy shit does that just eviscerate the entirety of TLS.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Glass_Bead_Game

[Businesslady]

Hesse is all about introspection after the fact and not listening to people and having to learn shit yourself I guess.

*Dr. Drew voice* "So Hermann..."

[fats provolone]

The inhabitants of Castalia spend their days and nights fully absorbed in the task of refining ever-more sophisticated strategies for succeeding in the Glass Bead Game, a strikingly esoteric and beautiful contest in which competitors strive to outdo each other by juxtaposing aesthetically evocative cultural fragments, such as couplets of poetry, philosophical axioms, or musical notes. Yet as the game becomes more specialized and cut off from wider conversations, Hesse tells the story about how things begin to change:

“If the cultural level of Castalia were compared with that of the country at large, it became apparent that the two were by no means approaching each other; rather, they were moving apart in a deeply troubling way. The more cultivated, specialized, overbred that Castalian intellectuality became, the more the world inclined to let the Province be and to regard it not as a necessity, as daily bread, but as a foreign body, something to be a little proud of, like a precious antique which for the time being the owners would not like to give up or give away, but which they would happily keep stored in the attic”

[Businesslady]

The inhabitants of Castalia spend their days and nights fully absorbed in the task of refining ever-more sophisticated strategies for succeeding in the Glass Bead Game, a strikingly esoteric and beautiful contest in which competitors strive to outdo each other by juxtaposing aesthetically evocative cultural fragments, such as couplets of poetry, philosophical axioms, or musical notes. Yet as the game becomes more specialized and cut off from wider conversations, Hesse tells the story about how things begin to change:

“If the cultural level of Castalia were compared with that of the country at large, it became apparent that the two were by no means approaching each other; rather, they were moving apart in a deeply troubling way. The more cultivated, specialized, overbred that Castalian intellectuality became, the more the world inclined to let the Province be and to regard it not as a necessity, as daily bread, but as a foreign body, something to be a little proud of, like a precious antique which for the time being the owners would not like to give up or give away, but which they would happily keep stored in the attic”

https://www.marxists.org/reference/arch ... osophy.htm

[banjo]

What's so bad about turning your life into a series of arbitrary goals? Competition and mastery are rewarding in and of themselves. Olympic swimmers devote years of their lives to swimming a fraction of a second faster. After a certain point, it's not love of swimming that pushes them--it's pure competitive spirit. It's the same spirit that drives professional Street Fighter players, world-class musicians, and spelling bee winners. Law is actually a perfect profession for people who strive purely for the sake of winning at something.

[fats provolone]

What's so bad about turning your life into a series of arbitrary goals? Competition and mastery are rewarding in and of themselves. Olympic swimmers devote years of their lives to swimming a fraction of a second faster. After a certain point, it's not love of swimming that pushes them--it's pure competitive spirit. It's the same spirit that drives professional Street Fighter players, world-class musicians, and spelling bee winners. Law is actually a perfect profession for people who strive purely for the sake of winning at something.

are you a law student

[suralin]

Dude holy shit at comparing "winning" in law to winning Olympic medals in swimming.

Thought-provoking thread as always BL.