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estebanana -> RE: Black Hole eats sun (May 25 2012 19:26:04)
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quote:
The porblem with politcal pictures and art is... it doesnt educate you.
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There's long intricate rebuttal to this statement, but I'll spare you. [:D]
My point was calling each other names like Manequee's or Manitee's does not further a dialog. It's pointless labeling, and labeling serves to dehumanize the opposition. That is how people like Hitler come to power, they label to objectify who they want to subjugate, or kill off. Once labeled they can convince others to see the group given a label as less than human.
When I was in high school history one teacher said if you are going enter a discussion and argue against something, it's often a good idea to have another idea to give as a counter position. So when I bring up art, I'm giving a counter position to view the argument with. Lame to use art I know, but hey it's all I got.
The thing is you can go round in circles labeling and it's like two 8 year olds saying did so, did not, did so. did not.......pretty much what politicians do all day too in election years. So the connection to this part of the discussion ( from black hole simulation to fascism?? ) is that during the times when these despots come to power through objectification by making labels there are always hundreds of thousands of people to detest them. But these characters understand how fear can create confluent behavior and they exploit it.
The recipe is label and objectify, then create confluence through fear. Gradually they wear down the resistance of the population and whether they agree with the dictator moving towards power or not, the population finds itself being confluent with the dictators wishes because they want to save themselves. Sure there are those who profit for these activations of mass confluence, but those people are often not the cause of the dictators power grab, they are opportunists who seize upon the misfortune of others. So personally I get frustrated when people want to back and forth and debate the exact moment when Chairman Mao the Great Helmsman took a dump and it washed into the drinking water of a thousand people in some far off province.
Structurally and mechanically the same formulas work out, but people argue about specifics like it matters and miss the structure of the way power advances and controls a population and then describe this with specific examples. Anyway that is how I see most discussion about Hitler,boring because there is no overview guiding the conversation of how power operates and very little understanding of how power can be non discursive from top to bottom in its effects on a population. We tend to label all Nazis as black and white non human characters like the Nazi we see in Hollywood movies. The fact is there were many shades of grey to that Nazi uniform, just like there are many shades of olive drab to the uniforms worn by American solders. I draw this comparison not to associate US soldiers with Nazism, but to show that all military populations through out the ages, have been made up of human beings following orders from non discursive power. Meaning do your job, don't talk back or we'll kill you.
The confluence of fear can be broken or at least looked at through the making of art; often the only dissenting voices in these situations where fear is constructing a confluent dangerous, paranoid environment is through the single lens of an artists viewpoint. I would put forth the idea that art can often be the only critical voice allowed because art has the capability of playing the dual role of being accepted by the power structure and concurrently speaking subversively to the population yoked in the cycle of fearful confluence. The way to understand and not be confluent with the control by fear is to see it, art can bring that vision to people in many ways.
I can discourse further on this and give examples, names, dates, serial numbers, lists, ledgers, a fat dossier, but I shall shut up now.
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