Ishkah

Ishkah wrote (edited )

Meh, a better clarifying timeline would have included events like the fact that I lived with an ex-anarchist who promoted misanthropic terror attacks and who died really young: a text dump on Jay

Baudrillard asserts that the explosion of the terrorist’s bomb causes an implosion of meaning, a gaping hole in the social fabric that power frantically seeks to cover in order to restore the tyranny of meaning.

I've written about trying to live in doubt and stay open to the value of any meaning people happen to take away from various events in life.

I never claimed that being able to identify trends in the way some people travel down political rabbit holes to find simple answers to life's questions was a perfect defeater to those political philosophies. I just find those situations interesting because I wish I could have pulled friends out from that situation, and hope to be able to do it for others.

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Ishkah OP wrote

Thanks :)

It started off with playing around with re-structuring books I enjoyed reading. Like I turned a book of prison letters between two childhood friends, into a kind of unfinished autobiography of the person in prison, by reorganizing all the memories she would tell into the timeline of her life.

Then, enjoying helping make old pdf scans into low ink printable books again, for sites like the anarchist library.

Then, going to big libraries for research for a biography I was writing and helping other authors with scans of rare material for research for their books.

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Ishkah OP wrote (edited )

What is special about those groups that warrants bringing them up

Because the person I was discussing veganism with was again and again asking in different ways 'why don't we see apes choosing to eat vegan' and I was simply trying to get across that I like how the concept of an animal products boycott came about at a particular time and place in human history and the utility it has today, that it has a particular meaning to me that when hypothesised in the context of primates would be as silly as asking 'why don't we see apes choosing to do complex arithmetic?'

So I came up with my own hypotheticals to help elucidate that concept, e.g. a fictional psychopath without the ability to authentically desire to empathise with other animals may have no reason to adopt this lifestyle in the way that it's meaningful to me either.

Again it was not about distancing myself from the similarities I have with these groups, only clarifying for Alex why I both like the history and utility of veganism, but don't believe many of the ideas he was in my opinion mistakenly assuming most vegans believe.

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Ishkah OP wrote

Factually by the way I define those terms, none of them would ever be capable of conceptualizing and authentically adopting that ethical reasoning. Psychopath may be a fictional concept, I don't know how useful it is, but again, even defined as a fictional character the above still applies.

And none of that was a judgement on the above fictional and non-fictional people, it was just a way of clarifying the type of reasoning I was talking about factually isn't in the realm of concepts these other groups would be engaging with.

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Ishkah OP wrote (edited )

The argument for not basing your decision to eat animal products on the belief that the common animals people farm can have an opinion on ways they'd like their body to be treated after they're dead is that factually we know they can't.

The argument about there being ways of acting towards animal material with more or less dignity is simply cultural and about setting an example for other people of the positive intention for the way I would like to see us interacting with other animals and even the memories of animals. Like a way to treat the memory of fish in a stream from your childhood with dignity could be to not kill fish unnecessarily today.

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Ishkah OP wrote

Reply to comment by zoomzoom in by Ishkah

Did the EF! Journal ever publish anything of Ted's beyond a tiny novel note once he was a celebrity (where Ted argued EF! should splinter into two)?

They rejected his essay "Progress versus Wilderness". Then they rejected a note suggesting EF! should dox evil people for EF!ers to protest, likely in reality so he could bomb them, which would have helped turn away more newbies from EF!. Then there was a "Suggestions for EF!" essay that I don't know whether he sent, but if he did they didn't publish it. They did publish that note from after his arrest that I mentioned. Then they rejected his interview with Theresa.

But, yeah let me know if there's one I missed.

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Ishkah OP wrote

Reply to comment by black_badger in by Ishkah

This is a natural language argument, not an assertion:

2006 - Ted publicly breaks with anarchism

A vegan primitivist from Turkey wrote to Ted with a long list of questions. Ted responded with a detailed critique of how many primitivists idealize primitive life, arguing that the hierarchical relationships found between many tribal members is natural and therefore neutral or good.

This is the same two paragraphs with the premises and conclusions moved around into a formal logical argument format:

A vegan primitivist from Turkey wrote to Ted with a long list of questions.

P1) IF Ted responded with a detailed critique of how many primitivists idealize primitive life, arguing that the hierarchical relationships found between many tribal members is natural and therefore neutral or good THEN Ted publicly broke with anarchism

P2) Ted responded with a detailed critique of how many primitivists idealize primitive life, arguing that the hierarchical relationships found between many tribal members is natural and therefore neutral or good

C) Ted publicly broke with anarchism

Now your natural language argument:

your [argument] that the footnote you quote represents a break with anarchism is untenable since he doesn't mention it at all, unlike the second citation where it's explicit.

And in formal logic terms:

P1) IF he didn't mention it [breaking with anarchism] at all THEN [he didn't break with anarchism]

P2) [H]e didn't mention it [breaking with anarchism]

C) He didn't break with anarchism

My response is simply that, if Ted went from publicly saying 'I love Stalin' to 'I love Hitler' then I think it would be reasonable to argue that this would be a case of Ted publicly breaking with Stalinsim, even if he didn't explicitly say 'I renounce stalinism'. And that similarly, I think the quantity of statements Ted made in that essay distancing his philosophy and proposed political strategy from anarchism amounted to a public breaking with anarchism, regardless of how implicit.

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Ishkah OP wrote (edited )

Reply to comment by black_badger in by Ishkah

I haven't read an argument for why I should yet, just your assertion that my argument was an assertion and a stretch. The 2019 example is added now.

That is a truly silly argument of Ted's. Would love to see the quote or the full thing if you fancy typing it up, putting the image on imgur or sending it into the website admins at [email protected] for them to put up. You could obviously cross out your name and any identifying info. It'd be better than a copy being stuck unlabelled and so virtually impossible to search for in a university archive I think.

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Ishkah OP wrote (edited )

Reply to comment by black_badger in by Ishkah

The fact that Ted argued the hierarchical relationships found between many tribal members is natural and therefore neutral or good is the premise of my argument for why I think he's not an anarchist and was publicly breaking with anarchism.

Before that point it was possible to read into his writing potential anarchist ideals, such as: "after the techno-industrial system has been eliminated, people can and should fight injustice wherever they find it."

Anyways I learned this after I wrote this essay and totally forgot to add it recently, so thanks for reminding me; this is a footnote Ted added to his manifesto in 2016, that was published in the 2019 update of his book Technological Slavery:

In 1995 I described FC as "anarchist" because I thought it would be advantageous to have some recognized political identity. At that time I knew very little about anarchism. Since then I've learned that anarchists, at least those of the U.S. and the U.K., are nothing but a lot of hopelessly ineffectual bunglers and dreamers, useless for any purpose. Needless to say, I now disavow any identifcation as an anarchist.

--Ted Kaczynski's Updated Notes on His Manifesto

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