February 10, 2004

On anarchy, irony and tits (in that order)



What solidarity is there in anarchy, except, at it's most basic level, an agreement to disagree?

"Do I contradict myself?
Very well I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes)"
-- "Song of Myself" 51 Walt Whitman

Like burping in front of your mother, this is becoming embarassing. We all have endeavours away from this blog and none of us can maintain a train of thought for longer than a couple of minutes, much less explaining that thought in a couple of well-chosen words. What the Fizzluck? Meeks made my point clearer, let me to embarrass myself further.

The most helpful thing is examples, so I'll go first:

Jerry the Anarchist puts on his black everything goes outside, he listens to someone regurgitating Howard Ehrlich's speech at speaker's corner. He is bowled over by the insane imagery and doesn't really get what he's saying, or he thinks Ehrlich is saying down with the old order and up with the new. What does Ehrlich's speech require a believer to do?

Solidarity in dissolution is a phantom (something sensed with no physical reality) Any sentence can be taken out and it would still be a useful piece of propaganda. At the heart of the speech (the way it's written, it's meant to be performed) is a contradiction.

Irony actually means, the effect you create when you say something and you mean something different. It is a powerful device to create emotional effect in literature and broadens a toolset of any writer beyond his limitations in vocabulary. Howard Bloom once said, "think of the things that you hold closest to you and they will most likely be ironic".

Lately, I've been preoccupied with overusing irony, because I tend to not know what I'm talking about. Also it confuses people.

So Vin gives Ehrlich the benefit of the doubt. I think Ehrlich contradicts himself and somehow lets you more freely interpret what he's saying. If you take irony to mean exactly what I have said above, Vin, then you acknowledge Ehrlich contradicts himself and means something other than "the literal".

Defining anarchy seems very easy; it seems hard to describe as a system of belief. It may share characteristics with chaos and lawlessness but neither brings the concept closer to anything ubiquitous. It seems even harder to describe as a serious process.

Maybe Jerry sees some good ideas but Ehrlich's speech doesn't give the boy any tools to get there.

Meeks I was quoting "true fallacy" from Vin's post.

On the subject of that disturbing picture, it's even more disturbing the artist made the color of Justin Timberlake's tits match his face. Janet Jackson looks like she's in pain, like she's passing solids.

good night.

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