Greetings Economists, On Aug 25, 2006, at 11:33 AM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
But we are grownups, aren't we?
Doyle; Do you wear make up? The Cultural Revolution in China emphasized plain features, unisex clothes, women doing 'mannish' things etc. What do you think was behind that? As to Teenagers they are usually in a high school milieu that forces them to be aware of common external symbols of the group. So if one wants to be part of a group one accepts certain sorts of boundaries in something or other. Goths are a good example, but a gay student will adapt to gay conventions also to belong. These are fundamental emotion structure activities that are elaborated by adults but common to humans as language skills develop as well. Yoshie writes; Adopting other peoples' customs temporarily is what an anthropologist does professionally, and that doesn't necessarily make her really "one of them." Doyle; Isn't that what Marxist often mean by 'opportunists'? But I think your distinction is insightful. Anthropologists explore the cultural emotional attachments that are formed in researched groups. The most famous attachment structure being kinship systems in which sexual relationships are recorded in some sort of way. In this case it ought to resonate how Marxist adapted Christian sexual relationships in Russia. Not just the morality of family institutions, but how marginalization of emotional attachments were also founded in Christian culture what with punitive sanctions against homosexual emotional attachments. Yoshie; One can certainly take interest -- even profound interest -- in other peoples' beliefs, customs, etc. without adopting them as one's own. Doyle; But, then how does one explain why Mao during the civil war got involved in the ultra fine distinctions of deviancy in the Communist movement to the point of purges that executed deviants from the party line? Sartre often admired the 'unity' of communism as a goal of society. In part because equality demanded unity. This is a central conundrum of a general emotional attachment reflective of equality in society. Capitalist do not practice emotional equality, and that is what defends their class most effectively. In my view the issue reflects the central problem for socialists now. In many ways Socialist try to use 'doctrine' (verbal rules like Christian morality) to unite people rather than emotional attachments as directly produced. Mao was demanding extremely tight emotional attachments amongst the comrades during the civil war. War tends to bring out intense feelings as well as create battle fatigue or Traumatic Stress Disorders which chaotically disorder emotional attachments. Soldiers in battle feel the most intense attachments to each other of their whole lives. Emotion is a work process of knowledge production. It can be viewed as distinct from words and the types of knowledge production we use in a given culture implies kinds of emotional attachments. The terror in the French Revolution implied that they had no means to be intensely feeling about each other as groups without using death as a means of resolving conflicts. That is why the rationalists had so much sway afterwards because the nation state being born could directly address intense emotion structure boundaries without resort of the death penalty. The Christians had for a long time used 'morality' to comprehend that murderous rage could be regulated. But the word based morality could not deal with the over production of emotional intensity in French revolutionary social change. That over production is basically how equality emerges in human cognition when social frameworks no longer work. Patriarchy reserves murderous rage for Dad. Dropping male dominance reveals how oppression is stored in female emotions as their upsurge in feelings at being liberated from men beating or raping them is lifted off their every day reality. The over production of intensity scares people (creates a free flow of fear intensity) in the wider culture where the boundaries of acceptable feelings are bulwarked to protect against female liberation. Sects form around leadership centers of emotional attachments. If the leaders don't have a clarity about porous attachments between members and the society, then friction comes out about over production of emotional attachment at the boundary of the group. As you noted with ANSWER and UFPJ (Yoshie quoted wrote: Ha, ha, ha. I spent a good deal of time trying to get ANSWER and UFPJ to get along and work together. I've given up. It seems to me that US leftists are capable of episodic protests, even fairly big ones, but we seem incapable of building any mass socialist organization or even just a mass left-wing organization out of them.) Yoshie; Why does hijab become a symbol of Islam? I suppose that's the one thing that is visible to non-Muslims. Doyle; Because it regulates attachments in a way quite distinct from Western notions of female public personas. The face based attachment structure of public relations is a core structure to express political 'freedom'. Doug Henwood writes;
All too true. And the next thing they often do, when they despair of any domestic action, is project their fantasies onto movements and states abroad, as some sort of emotional substitute for their failures
Doyle; To me you don't have an adequate emotion theory to explain such things. I see emotion as much more complex than this statement which is an over generalization. thanks, Doyle Saylor
