Lévi-Strauss

Humankind ceases at the border of the tribe, of the linguistic group, even sometimes of the village.

Claude Lévi-Strauss 

wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingroups_and_outgroups

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_of_silence

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_correlation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype_threat#Criticism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobbing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realistic_conflict_theory#Robbers_cave_study

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitehall_Study

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_narcissism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias#:~:text=Survivorship%20bias%20or%20survival%20bias,a%20form%20of%20selection%20bias.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associationalism#:~:text=Associationalism%20or%20associative%20democracy%20is,democratically%20self%2Dgoverning%20associations.%22

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnotology

Keller

'When you have a society organised in such a way that those at the top benefit from the labour of the majority, you have some strong incentives to develop the kind of selfhood that gets you there. The only kind of selfhood that gets you there is the kind of selfhood that allows you to numb your empathies. To maintain the system of dominance, it’s crucial that the elite learns this empathic numbness, akin to what Robert Jay Lifton calls ‘psychic numbing,’ so that its members can control and when necessary torture and kill without being undone. If its members are incapable of numbing, or if they have not been trained properly, the system of domination will collapse.'

Catherine Keller

Sandel

Consequently, neoliberalism equates social value with economic value. Everything of value is given an economic role. Education becomes a path to income security. Social organizations become an avenue to make business connections. Spirituality and religion build character for success in business. None of these outlets have value outside of their economic consequences. So the impoverished have no avenue for redemption outside economic performance. Incomes define not just economic, but also moral value. A wealthy family deserves not just economic, but social and political rewards as well.

The left advocates egalitarian policies to allow for meritocratic outcomes. Nowhere is this more clear than in education. The left believes a truly meritocratic educational system relies upon an egalitarian distribution of economic resources. And yet, the educational system perpetuates inequalities through meritocratic assessments. Universities claim to accept applicants solely on the basis of merit. Its decisions establish barriers of entry which individuals left behind struggle to overcome. But primary and secondary educational institutions also direct resources to districts with the most wealth in the United States. Even in France, different educational tracks eliminate opportunities for those left behind at an early age.

 

Michael Sandel

Achille Mbembe

The camp has not only become a structural feature of our globalized condition. It has also ceased to scandalize. Or, rather, the camp is not just our present. It is our future, namely our solution for ‘keeping away what disturbs, for containing or rejecting all excess, whether it is human, organic matter or industrial waste’. [32] In short, it is a form of government of the world.

Unable to face up to the basic fact that what once belonged to the exception is now the norm (the fact that liberal democracies, like any other regime, are capable of incorporating criminality into their system), we find ourselves plunged head-deep into an endless racket of words and gestures, symbols and language, delivered with increasing brutality like a long series of blows to the head. There are mimetological blows too: secularism and its mirror image, fundamentalism. All this, every blow, delivered with perfect cynicism. For, let’s face it, all the surnames have lost their first names, as it were, and there are no more names to name the outrage, no more languages to speak the unspeakable. Almost nothing stands up any longer, except in the form of a kind of viscous and rancid snot, draining from the nostrils without even a single sneeze. 

Can one truly come to presence in the world, dwell in the world, or traverse it, on the basis of this impossibility of sharing it with others, this impassable distance? Is it enough to shoot down enemies and expel foreigners to be truly rid of them, to doom them to eternity, to forget them for all time? This attitude demands that such acts of death and banishment succeed in erasing the face (its living substance) that gives the enemy his humanity. The task of disfigurement and erasure is almost a precondition for any execution under the contemporary logic of hatred. Within societies that continue to multiply structures of separation and discrimination, the relation of care towards the other has been replaced with a relation without desire. Explaining and understanding, knowledge and recognition, are no longer necessary requirements. Hospitality and hostility have never been so opposed, a factor that serves to explain the interest in returning to those intellectual figures for whom the misery of men and the suffering of enemies were never mere ‘silent remainders of politics’. [34] Instead, they were always combined with a demand for recognition, notably in contexts where the experience of being unrecognized, humiliated, alienated and mistreated was the norm. 

Achille Mbembe

James C. Scott

“The utopian, immanent, and continually frustrated goal of the modern state is to reduce the chaotic, disorderly, constantly changing social reality beneath it to something more closely resembling the administrative grid of its observations.”

James C. Scott

The despot is not a man. It is the Plan. The correct, realistic, exact plan, the one that will provide your solution once the problem has been posited clearly, in its entirety, in its indispensable harmony. This plan has been drawn up well away from the frenzy in the mayor’s office or the town hall, from the cries of the electorate or the laments of society’s victims. It has been drawn up by serene and lucid minds. It has taken account of nothing but human truths. It has ignored all current regulations, all existing usages, and channels. It has not considered whether or not it could be carried out with the constitution now in force.

James C. Scott

The Sneetches II

 The Sneetches II

With Apologies to Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin & Dr. Seuss

Now, the Star-Belly Sneetches Had bellies with stars. 

The Plain-Belly Sneetches Had none upon thars. 

Those stars weren't so big. They were really so small 

You might think such a thing wouldn't matter at all. 

Because the Star-Belly Sneetches Had This Mark Upon Thars

They would brag, "We’re all equal, I don’t even see stars." 

With their snoots in the air, they would snort and they’d bob,

While the star-bellied bosses hired other star-bellies for jobs.

And if a plain-belly sneetch does get a higher vocation,

Their paycheck depends on defending the corporation,

They’re the plain-belly rep, tasked to stop discrimination

And if racism continues, the star-bellied bosses replace ‘em

The star belly sneetches by deed and not being
Star-picked and star-chose choose which things they were seeing

The horrors around make not a dent in their thoughts

As plain bellies are harassed and shot by star-bellied cops

Many Star-bellied sneetches call loudly “this unfairness must be ending!”

And then hold conferences on ‘tolerance’ with no Plain bellies Attending

No plain bellies voices to rise above the star-crossed chatter

All saying “In this house love is love, and Plain belly lives matter”

By giving more star crumbs to the star-bellied working sneetches

Star bosses sow division so that sneetch solidarity decreases

They push down the wages the plain bellies can reaches

And star-wash the history with star leadership’s bleaches

The Radical starbellies all promise real action

But dismiss painbelly issues as ‘just a distraction’

“True power lies with politicians, landlords, and bosses of all kind”

“The real stars are thars! There's none upon mine”

“We must fight these real enemies through total sneetch unity”

“I have plain belly friends and they all agree too with me,”

“Wait your turn!” said the starbellies “Once the real fight is done.” 

But history has shown that “later” never comes

Many left wing sneetches with stars still find themselves caught

And ultimately conditioned with the same star-supremacist thoughts

You find elsewhere in star-bellied supremacist civ

That exploits and extracts more than plain-bellies would give

So plain belly sneetches might not trust or work united

With Star bellied sneetches who don’t try to fight it

Who don’t amplify plainbelly sneetches struggles as real

And instead hide in delusions to protect star-bellied feels

And a star-bellied movement of commanding starbellied leaders 

Rather than plainbelly liberation and autonomy is weaker

It takes real work to renounce taking dubs so unjustly

Systems which harm you might harm neighbours doubly

The working class sneetches have bellies of all types

With different struggles and different dislikes

Listen to everyone, lived experience is personal

The fight for all bellies dissimilar can be made universal

Oppressed sneetches have a right to self-determination

To set their own rules and make their own organizations

They don’t need backseat star-bellied opticians

Remember: One sneetch mouth to talk; two sneetch ears to listen

This is basic, it’s justice, it should just be elementary

But star-bellied radicals want to debate it endlessly

It’s not fun to confront shortcomings, your own especially

But you can’t confront sneetch society without confronting star supremacy!

        SRSLY WRONG