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> I'm sorry, but that's just nuts unless you can point to a society - of any sort anywhere - that contains no anxious people. When we analyze the statements of

> I'm sorry, but that's just nuts unless you can point to a society - of any sort anywhere - that contains no anxious people. When we analyze the statements of others, we more or less always have to interpret their meanings before we begin the analysis. If we're careless about the interpretive step, as you have been, we can convince ourselves that we're responding to what they've said, when we're actually responding to what we think they've meant. The author has actually asked, "Why are we all so anxious...?" Not just "anxious," but "so anxious." While the author took the extra step to call out the extremity of the anxiety to which s/he was pointing, your analysis would be superficial even if that were omitted. That is to say, you have committed two errors: 1) You have omitted the author's intensifier, and 2) You have equivocated on the term "anxious." This is a very basic error, and one for which you should be personally ashamed to have made; Your entire analysis is predicated on ignoring the Principle of Charity, a rule of thumb which is in place to ensure that we all participate at least minimally well in conversations by ensuring that we at least have a shot at understanding those to whom we respond, and those statements about which we are alleging we have knowledge and something of import to say. In short, you have not done your homework. (Not to mention the compounding error of asserting a false dichotomy.) A final explanation and exhortation to caution: While words have definitions, it is their meanings upon which useful discussion operates. "Anxious," in isolation, might be defined as "nervous about possible adverse outcomes," but the word was not used in isolation. It was contextualized in an utterance about the particular anxiety about the loss of livelihood--predicated on the very real perception of profound expendability--of people in a capitalist system. If you would still care to play, still care to participate in the discussion in a meaningful way, you will take another crack at your analysis that actually addresses whether or not systems that are arranged for the benefit of capital, rather than for human beings, actually create more existential anxiety than systems that are arranged for the benefit of people. I hope this helps. Cheers.

humanrebar 13y ago
I disagree with your analysis. The burden of proof lies on those claiming theoretical benefits (less anxiety) from a plan (some untested flavor of Marxism). Perhaps he was making a argumentum ad absurdum, but it is fair to underscore skepticism by rhetorically asking for any evidence of reduced anxiety in any society. Besides that, I find shaming people for their reading comprehension to be a cure worse than the disease.
- theothermkn 13y ago
  I'm completely comfortable having a set of conversational values different from yours. I want people to engage critically with the meanings of people's utterances, whereas you are content to let them proceed rhetorically by exploiting on equivocations of the definitions of the words in the sentences. Also, it seems to me that you're only against explicit shaming, as your closing remarks, situating my behavior as worse than the disease, is obviously, if impotently, meant to shame me implicitly. I hear your criticism, and I want to make very clear to you that I reject it on its schoolmarmy face. That said, I hope your involvement in discussion on HN develops into something that interests me and other interesting people here, despite the lack of promise shown so far. Thank you for the downvote!
glenra 13y ago
> The author has actually asked, "Why are we all SO anxious...?" Not just "anxious," but "so anxious." In that case, my answer is: because we are each on our own hedonic treadmill, and that particular level of anxiety is what evolution handed us. Whatever level it is, it probably has some survival value. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill Though I think the real problem in our conversation here might be that I live in an allegedly "capitalist" society and I'm not particularly anxious, so when I read text like "why are we all so anxious" I have to come up with a meaning for that sentence that isn't immediately false on the face of it. Are you "extremely anxious", such that the term "so anxious" applies to you? Do you assume it applies to everybody else too? This isn't a rhetorical question; I'm honestly curious: do you think people in capitalist societies have an extreme form of anxiety and people in more socialist ones don't? If so, that strikes me as an extraordinary claim; I'd like to see some sort of evidence for it.
- theothermkn 13y ago
  We're having a rough time here because you're still not being charitable in your construction of the original author's meaning. This is a skill that takes time and practice, so I'm not surprised. It's also a skill that is subverted by a desire to "win" a conversation. This subversion generally takes the form of mistaking the goals of debate for the goals of conversation: Conversations are for "finding out," while debates are for "winning." Let's try situating "anxiety" within the context of how Marx would have viewed it. That is, how would the term "anxiety" arise in a discussion of class dynamics in a capitalist system? (This was one of the main concerns of Marx's work.) In that context, it shouldn't take too long to see that the term "anxiety" is going to arise from discussions about exploitation. Namely, the means by which concentrated capital exploits labor is by threatening labor with explicit physical violence and the implicit violence of removing from sectors of the labor market the ability to sustain their livelihoods (in punishment for things like striking for wages or for raising grievances, among others). This is different from the mood of "anxiety," I think you'll (eventually) agree. I mean, the flip side of the Hedonic treadmill is, of course, the "frog in the pot" syndrome. Setting aside the apocryphal origin of the idea, it is just the Hedonic treadmill in the other direction; We accommodate to unpleasant or undesirable circumstances when we have to. For example, there used to be an effective Bill of Rights in the United States. There isn't, now. Nobody seems especially down about this from moment to moment, not even people who were especially proud that those protections were in place to begin with. However, even if our collective heartbeats aren't elevated 100% of the time, I think there's still "anxiety" about this. Accommodating to this kind of anxiety doesn't make it go away. We just stop physiologically responding to the stimulus. We still know to not voice criticisms that might sound unpatriotic. We still know not to get too close to Muslims in our communities, for fear of state violence, no matter how sublimated or indirect that violence is. Those behaviors come from accommodating to and normalizing our lives in the face of anxiety. That's the kind of distinction to which Marx and Marxist analysts are pointing when they talk about "anxiety." That's typically their meaning when they use the term. This is a perfectly ordinary way to use words, and the attempt to subvert it by equivocating on the meaning/definition dichotomy is a feature of folk intellectual pseudo-rhetoric. For example, you have done precisely this with my use of the word "extremity." Let me point out that, again as an example, that my hands and feet are my "extremities," but we don't put pictures of them on sports drinks in order to get people to think that they can adopt the cache of the thrill-seeking activities called "extreme sports." Similarly, in my reply to you, I was using another sense of "extremity" as a near synonym of the phrase "the degree of." My point was not that the anxiety was debilitating to everyday tasks, nor that it had the psychological immediacy of having a gun pointed to your head, nor anything like that. The point, charitably constructed, is that capitalistic systems, insofar as they prioritize the interests of concentrated capital over the livelihoods of the laboring classes, structurally use existential anxiety as a tool for manipulation. Whether or not you are or are not "particularly anxious" in your moment-to-moment emotional experience is entirely beside the point. Are you at a job? What is your motivation for being at that job? If you're asked to do something immoral in that job, won't your thinking on whether or not to obey be influenced by the potential loss of income if you disobey? See? Anxiety. Maybe you can now see why it's frustrating to have you state that this is "an extraordinary claim." First, the Extraordinary Claim trope, as cemented in folk pseudo-intellectualism, frequently first has to do all this work to construe a perfectly ordinary claim, perfectly ordinary use of terms, as extraordinary, which you have done. Only then can it get to its real purpose, which is to create an imaginary "Burden of Proof," and then shift it to the other conversant, as if that conversant were an opponent. As such, it turns all subtle and involved conversation, all sophisticated power struggles that comprise real conversation, into cheap debates. It suspiciously does so in a way that always flatters the one who offers it. It's a classless debasement of the intellectual life. Second, this trope hides the distinction between definition and meaning so successfully that I'm not sure that, even after my responses to you so far, that you'll be able to usefully use the distinction. I hope that it's beginning to become clear, though. A richer and more meaningful participation in matters of life and mind await you if you can figure it out.
glenra 13y ago
Two more points: (1) Regarding the word "anxious", you wrote: "the word was not used in isolation. It was contextualized in an utterance about the particular anxiety about the loss of livelihood--predicated on the very real perception of profound expendability--of people in a capitalist system." No, in fact, it was NOT so contextualized. Read it again. Maybe YOU saw it that way because you already had some framework to hang it on, but the original claim was a standalone question, the start of a discussion point, and the first mention of anxiety in the whole piece. It said: "Why are we all so anxious all the time?" That is a question, in English, not written by Marx, so we shouldn't need to bend over backwards to interpret it in some explicitly Marxian context to decide whether it would be a sensible assertion to Marx. What matters is whether it's a sensible assertion to us. If not, then we don't need Marx to explain anything here. My conclusion: it's not true. So maybe the rest of the essay is fine, but that one point is unnecessary. (2) It takes real chutzpah to claim in the same sentence (a) somebody else has ignored the Principle of Charity, and (b) that this person "should be personally ashamed" to have made "a very basic error". You don't seem to be following your own advice. :-)
- theothermkn 13y ago
  In interpreting an article about Marxism, we shouldn't "interpret it in some explicitly Marxian [sic] context?" I have been giving you way too much credit.
  - glenra 13y ago
    Are you sure you read the article? It's not merely "about Marxism", it's about how Marxism allegedly applies to today's issues. It has this general format: (1) describe some issue/concern workers today have, like "work doesn't seem very meaningful" or "work is too specialized" or "we're all so anxious all the time". (2) demonstrate how Marxism addresses that issue/concern. (3) repeat #1 and #2 for a different issue/concern, until done. The format only WORKS - it only has a prayer of being convincing - if section #1 uses everyday language the way actual people use it. If you let part #1 include weird Marxian terms of art rather than normal English language, the logic fails - it becomes circular. If you can redefine terms like "anxious" at the start to mean exactly and only what Marx would have meant by the terms, you have failed to make the case this article author is trying to make; you have failed to make a logical connection between the problems real people have today and Marx's analysis that demonstrates "we are all Marxists now". Instead, all you're doing is proving that the problems Marx invented and described/asserted using his own weird language...are indeed described/asserted by Marx. Which demonstrates not that we are Marxists, but that Marxists are Marxist.

humanrebar 13y ago

I disagree with your analysis. The burden of proof lies on those claiming theoretical benefits (less anxiety) from a plan (some untested flavor of Marxism). Perhaps he was making a argumentum ad absurdum, but it is fair to underscore skepticism by rhetorically asking for any evidence of reduced anxiety in any society. Besides that, I find shaming people for their reading comprehension to be a cure worse than the disease.

theothermkn 13y ago
I'm completely comfortable having a set of conversational values different from yours. I want people to engage critically with the meanings of people's utterances, whereas you are content to let them proceed rhetorically by exploiting on equivocations of the definitions of the words in the sentences. Also, it seems to me that you're only against explicit shaming, as your closing remarks, situating my behavior as worse than the disease, is obviously, if impotently, meant to shame me implicitly. I hear your criticism, and I want to make very clear to you that I reject it on its schoolmarmy face. That said, I hope your involvement in discussion on HN develops into something that interests me and other interesting people here, despite the lack of promise shown so far. Thank you for the downvote!

glenra 13y ago

> The author has actually asked, "Why are we all SO anxious...?" Not just "anxious," but "so anxious." In that case, my answer is: because we are each on our own hedonic treadmill, and that particular level of anxiety is what evolution handed us. Whatever level it is, it probably has some survival value. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill Though I think the real problem in our conversation here might be that I live in an allegedly "capitalist" society and I'm not particularly anxious, so when I read text like "why are we all so anxious" I have to come up with a meaning for that sentence that isn't immediately false on the face of it. Are you "extremely anxious", such that the term "so anxious" applies to you? Do you assume it applies to everybody else too? This isn't a rhetorical question; I'm honestly curious: do you think people in capitalist societies have an extreme form of anxiety and people in more socialist ones don't? If so, that strikes me as an extraordinary claim; I'd like to see some sort of evidence for it.

theothermkn 13y ago
We're having a rough time here because you're still not being charitable in your construction of the original author's meaning. This is a skill that takes time and practice, so I'm not surprised. It's also a skill that is subverted by a desire to "win" a conversation. This subversion generally takes the form of mistaking the goals of debate for the goals of conversation: Conversations are for "finding out," while debates are for "winning." Let's try situating "anxiety" within the context of how Marx would have viewed it. That is, how would the term "anxiety" arise in a discussion of class dynamics in a capitalist system? (This was one of the main concerns of Marx's work.) In that context, it shouldn't take too long to see that the term "anxiety" is going to arise from discussions about exploitation. Namely, the means by which concentrated capital exploits labor is by threatening labor with explicit physical violence and the implicit violence of removing from sectors of the labor market the ability to sustain their livelihoods (in punishment for things like striking for wages or for raising grievances, among others). This is different from the mood of "anxiety," I think you'll (eventually) agree. I mean, the flip side of the Hedonic treadmill is, of course, the "frog in the pot" syndrome. Setting aside the apocryphal origin of the idea, it is just the Hedonic treadmill in the other direction; We accommodate to unpleasant or undesirable circumstances when we have to. For example, there used to be an effective Bill of Rights in the United States. There isn't, now. Nobody seems especially down about this from moment to moment, not even people who were especially proud that those protections were in place to begin with. However, even if our collective heartbeats aren't elevated 100% of the time, I think there's still "anxiety" about this. Accommodating to this kind of anxiety doesn't make it go away. We just stop physiologically responding to the stimulus. We still know to not voice criticisms that might sound unpatriotic. We still know not to get too close to Muslims in our communities, for fear of state violence, no matter how sublimated or indirect that violence is. Those behaviors come from accommodating to and normalizing our lives in the face of anxiety. That's the kind of distinction to which Marx and Marxist analysts are pointing when they talk about "anxiety." That's typically their meaning when they use the term. This is a perfectly ordinary way to use words, and the attempt to subvert it by equivocating on the meaning/definition dichotomy is a feature of folk intellectual pseudo-rhetoric. For example, you have done precisely this with my use of the word "extremity." Let me point out that, again as an example, that my hands and feet are my "extremities," but we don't put pictures of them on sports drinks in order to get people to think that they can adopt the cache of the thrill-seeking activities called "extreme sports." Similarly, in my reply to you, I was using another sense of "extremity" as a near synonym of the phrase "the degree of." My point was not that the anxiety was debilitating to everyday tasks, nor that it had the psychological immediacy of having a gun pointed to your head, nor anything like that. The point, charitably constructed, is that capitalistic systems, insofar as they prioritize the interests of concentrated capital over the livelihoods of the laboring classes, structurally use existential anxiety as a tool for manipulation. Whether or not you are or are not "particularly anxious" in your moment-to-moment emotional experience is entirely beside the point. Are you at a job? What is your motivation for being at that job? If you're asked to do something immoral in that job, won't your thinking on whether or not to obey be influenced by the potential loss of income if you disobey? See? Anxiety. Maybe you can now see why it's frustrating to have you state that this is "an extraordinary claim." First, the Extraordinary Claim trope, as cemented in folk pseudo-intellectualism, frequently first has to do all this work to construe a perfectly ordinary claim, perfectly ordinary use of terms, as extraordinary, which you have done. Only then can it get to its real purpose, which is to create an imaginary "Burden of Proof," and then shift it to the other conversant, as if that conversant were an opponent. As such, it turns all subtle and involved conversation, all sophisticated power struggles that comprise real conversation, into cheap debates. It suspiciously does so in a way that always flatters the one who offers it. It's a classless debasement of the intellectual life. Second, this trope hides the distinction between definition and meaning so successfully that I'm not sure that, even after my responses to you so far, that you'll be able to usefully use the distinction. I hope that it's beginning to become clear, though. A richer and more meaningful participation in matters of life and mind await you if you can figure it out.

glenra 13y ago

Two more points: (1) Regarding the word "anxious", you wrote: "the word was not used in isolation. It was contextualized in an utterance about the particular anxiety about the loss of livelihood--predicated on the very real perception of profound expendability--of people in a capitalist system." No, in fact, it was NOT so contextualized. Read it again. Maybe YOU saw it that way because you already had some framework to hang it on, but the original claim was a standalone question, the start of a discussion point, and the first mention of anxiety in the whole piece. It said: "Why are we all so anxious all the time?" That is a question, in English, not written by Marx, so we shouldn't need to bend over backwards to interpret it in some explicitly Marxian context to decide whether it would be a sensible assertion to Marx. What matters is whether it's a sensible assertion to us. If not, then we don't need Marx to explain anything here. My conclusion: it's not true. So maybe the rest of the essay is fine, but that one point is unnecessary. (2) It takes real chutzpah to claim in the same sentence (a) somebody else has ignored the Principle of Charity, and (b) that this person "should be personally ashamed" to have made "a very basic error". You don't seem to be following your own advice. :-)

theothermkn 13y ago
In interpreting an article about Marxism, we shouldn't "interpret it in some explicitly Marxian [sic] context?" I have been giving you way too much credit.
- glenra 13y ago
  Are you sure you read the article? It's not merely "about Marxism", it's about how Marxism allegedly applies to today's issues. It has this general format: (1) describe some issue/concern workers today have, like "work doesn't seem very meaningful" or "work is too specialized" or "we're all so anxious all the time". (2) demonstrate how Marxism addresses that issue/concern. (3) repeat #1 and #2 for a different issue/concern, until done. The format only WORKS - it only has a prayer of being convincing - if section #1 uses everyday language the way actual people use it. If you let part #1 include weird Marxian terms of art rather than normal English language, the logic fails - it becomes circular. If you can redefine terms like "anxious" at the start to mean exactly and only what Marx would have meant by the terms, you have failed to make the case this article author is trying to make; you have failed to make a logical connection between the problems real people have today and Marx's analysis that demonstrates "we are all Marxists now". Instead, all you're doing is proving that the problems Marx invented and described/asserted using his own weird language...are indeed described/asserted by Marx. Which demonstrates not that we are Marxists, but that Marxists are Marxist.