Greetings Economists, On Jul 30, 2006, at 9:15 AM, Jim Devine wrote:
But there's some sort of democratic surplus-repression that's needed to do better than that. Democracy is central.
Doyle; I think I will try to elaborate here. Democracy means talk. So we use language to form 'public' connection. If the group is really large like a nation state the talk is transformed to a vote on text based law or person who represents. The representative talks to the law makers but the people don't talk they vote, they obey the law. I believe what you mean by 'repression' is summed up by this example, a child is having fun exploring the coffee table and Mommy comes over and takes away the plastic letter opener to prevent an accident. The child goes wah I wanna do that Mommy. That repression is an emotion based knowledge production. So we assume that is how we would use emotions. Some person chugging along in the streets sees an old lady with a purse and steals the purse to get the old ladies kleenexes to wipe his nose. The police surveillance cameras record this and the felon is apprehended. They feel awful spending the next year in jail for stealing kleenexes. Necessary repression. I think that is an error is in understanding emotions. Emotions are a limited resource knowledge production. If we assume they are only about 'learning' rights and wrongs we miss that a limited resource means that traditional chains of social being are there. The horny gay guy is repressed because of his knowledge production, but is that really the right sort of 'necessary repression'? Emotion more than words or text based knowledge production is a process of connection into social structure. So because people are limited in how much they can do in a minute hour day or life time, the social connection they can do is limited as well. In other words, repression means that some parts of emotion knowledge is being stopped. Our idea of connection is crude and often inappropriate. Democratic surplus-repression means then 'talk' plus lots (a surplus) of emotions for connection but lots of boundaries around emotion structure to shape a certain kind of social connection. Just to repeat in another way to give emphasis, we see social connection in your formula as social connection is formed by talk (language connection) plus emotions bounded by repression. The repression is served up via talk rather than direct shaping of emotion structure itself. Certain sorts of problems with repression are well known. Injustice, stupid enforcement, local prejudices, and so on. Surplus emotion knowledge production implies that we could use emotions in a way that limits how much repression is there to shape social connection. Up to the present, many Marxists have rightly jaundiced views of moralism, the ubiquitous analysis of emotions done by using words to describe emotion structure for a given sized society. Words being very inefficient at describing emotion structure give very rough guidance about repression. I think were we to produce surplus emotion we could directly affect emotion structure. That is directly shape how people connect. The central problem in that is not repression, but how the class as a whole connects. So that going back to the child example, the way the child connects to the world is not dependent upon Mommy's eagle eye to watch for danger and prevent ignorance turning into tragedy, but that the whole connection process for every child is substantially different. In this case the child might not experience Mommy saying no at all. The child picks up the plastic knife turns around and falls with the point up and rams it into the eye socket. The child learns from this direct individual pain what happens when you do certain things. Except the physical harm did not happen, the knowledge production of real world pain was taught not the physical damage. Now you might call that 'necessary' repression in that we must obey the physical laws. I would say the indirect Mommy interpretation of reality is very crude and indirect. It gives people the idea they can control external reality that is not realistic. The surplus knowledge production of emotion more closely follows the reality of the child and provides a more realistic 'knowledge' of the physical world. I do not see that direct connection to the world as 'repression'. This example is more or less an extension of computing brought into daily life and knowledge production reshaped in such a way that damage is controlled but knowledge is made direct. All emotion structure is re-shaped for a direct knowledge of the physics of the world. All Mommy repression of the child stops. The child is not harmed but learns a different type of emotion structure than a 'talk' repression method of knowledge production now favored. This implies that talk is more closely aligned with social connection because emotion is more directly welded to talk. thanks, Doyle Saylor
