Married to the Demon Core

Got the link via @finalducc

@clarencechampagne people claim otherwise because it's nice to imagine there's an inviolable inner sanctum of what you truly believe and who you truly are, and the notion that the core of your self can be changed not even from inside but by a bump on the head shakes people who emotionally rely on the notion of mental states being essential and transcendant, even when they're nominally a materialist. we like to think mind is safe from matter.

also coming from the political perspective people get very uncomfortable (understandably so) around the notion of people whose politics and conduct are cruel and harmful being that way because of a brain injury, stroke, illness, etc. some harm to them that they did not will. it breaks the notion of worldview and politics being powered by will and agency, which a lot of people, again, rely on for their moral political frameworks, even when they say they're materialist marxists.

To this view, If someone has harmful politics it means that they're a bad person. And if someone is a bad person, then they will that under their own agency. They chose to be a bad person and they could choose otherwise. The moral causation, under this view, arises solely from within the mind, rather than anything material. The notion that someone could become a harmful presence due to material situations outside of their control is deeply threatening to this sense of self, which is often taken for granted as common sense. The notion that we have ultimate and final control over ourselves, and the notion that we can keep our inner selves safe from the world by enforcing a determination on our own worldview, like, committing ideologically to a stance as protection from the world, is something that a lot of people, especially leftists, rely on, and the notion that you could get very badly hurt and come out of that with a brain that engages in harmful politics, engages in a harmful worldview, due to an injury, due to a disability, is morally threatening to a lot of people.

And I think that's understandable, but I don't think it's correct. I think there's a lot of compassion that's called for, regarding people who push back against the notion that, essentially, an injury, a disability, could make you what they see as a bad person. It's understandable why that would deeply freak you out and it's understandable why you wouldn't want to hear it. But I think the issue here is a deeper one of how people conceptualize ontology and ethics and morality and politics in general.

There was a big push to eliminate "degrading jobs" but the strategy was to eliminate the position, then create a new position outside of the bargaining unit to do the work. So like, we wouldn't have dishwashers, but we'd have people who washed dishes that weren't eligible to be in the union.

I was like A) what the actual fuck? Dish washing isn't "degrading", it's fucking vital. B) What the actual fuck? You want to create a union just to exploit different people?

The first time someone told me that busing tables was "degrading", I was like "Oh, uhh, yeah, like it's very necessary work but under compensated for how vital it is?" and they responded "No, touching plates that other people have eaten off of is disgusting."

In bargaining, someone on the Union side suggested that we eliminate all the cashiers and exclusively use self-checkouts (they were a cashier and didn't like it). The organizer told them that the union wasn't in the habit of eliminating bargaining unit positions. (This is the same person I've talked about how said that "as a prison abolitionist" we just needed to execute most criminals.)

It got me thinking, along with Ann Russell talking about how to treat cleaners (being a cleaner herself), about how we conceptualise domestic service as particularly degrading in all its forms, when, really, why is that? Why is paying someone to do something intrinsically bad?

Like, even in a moneyless, gift economy society, there would still be people whose primary contribution to their communities would be cleaning. Some people like to clean, and are really rather good at it.

I've talked ad nauseam in the past about how British attitudes towards cleaners and other service based positions today are the descendants of Victorian attitudes. That is, both the attitudes of conservatives and many progressives of that time. The trade union movement was particularly exclusionary towards service workers.

This feels like it’s a parody. Blatantly denying the connections with the draft, gaslighting you, talking about duty, and the implicit threat.