My grandmother-in-law died two weeks ago, and I coped in a completely normal way: I bought a fitness watch. I didn’t expect it to track my PTSD.
On The Joker
I’ve resisted doing A Take on this one because for all people wanna pretend this is a deep movie, it’s a comic book movie by the guy who doesn’t do Hangover movies anymore because the kids are too sensitive or whatever. It rehashes a trope I have seen a bazillion times before: dude is failed by the system and so driven to violence.
Real quickly, why I don’t love it: mentally ill people are far more often the recipients of violence, not aggressors. You wouldn’t have much of a movie if it just stops with Mr. The Joker getting beaten up and just, I don’t know, doing that until he dies, but that’s the actual story.
It ends up serving a few functions:
Historical Marxism’s complicated relationship with writing
Communism is ultimately a Utopian project rooted in the idea that shit as it’s going now ain’t acceptable, and we ought to fix it, and as part of the conversation on what we ought to fix and how, some pretty fundamental things end up questioned. Like, should our work weeks be the same? Why not a planned economy? Why not get rid of pests? We are hoping for a renegotiation, for a reassessment in who is the recipient of violence, who may speak, how we live, and that means living in ways nobody has tried before. There will be failures.
One of the things on the table: what the fuck should art be, anyway? There was a recent Twitter… thing where I believe someone identifying as Marxist-Leninist declared all genre fiction fascist, sort of defaulted to “because it is” when pressed, and couldn’t articulate much more than that. The devil deserves a better advocate, even if he must lose in the end.
Let’s take a crack at it.
Towards an Interpersonal Marxist Ethics
Marx is first a historian and economist, and the scale on which both those social sciences operate are systemic and on greater time scales than human beings live. There’s nothing wrong with that level of analysis. However, ethics is on a personal time scale. As Fuck Theory points out in a recent Patreon post, mass murder across time isn’t an atrocity to you if you don’t believe one murder is unethical. Without a personal ethics, Marxism’s theory of class struggle, even as it theorizes the eventual “win” of the proletariat, can be used by the ruling class to extend their rule. All things die. Humanity itself will someday die. Given enough time, sure, the proletariat will win. Do we have that time? And you may scoff at the idea capitalists may believe in Marxism, but friends, they sure as hell act as if they share class interests. Capitalists are flawless in their class solidarity.
It takes a system of ethics to say we ought to apply Marxism for the benefit of the proletariat over the ruling class, and ethics are personal. Ethics are acted out in the smallest of interactions. And unlike the Republican or Democratic party, where their machine keeps chugging along if there’s a rapist or a fraudster what have you in charge, we actually do have to be better. This is a Utopian project. What’s the goddamn point if we have a (potentially bloody!) revolution only to replicate class hierarchies? Marxism can help us describe history, determine how to forge a new society. But ethics will be what describes what a just society even is, and I think that’s where a lot of schisms in the modern left lie, not just on big scales, but on the local organizing and interpersonal scales as well. Continue reading
The writing process, as it unfolds
Last year I wrote a post about my process as a speedy writer here. The process seems to be evolving. Continue reading
Only Myself to Play With
Read an interview with Leigh Bardugo. I don’t read her work, but I was struck by this quote:
Life of the Author
I am super not a fan of death of the author. I suppose it’s fine as it is– sure, a work can be assessed on its merits without looking into the author’s intent– but rarely do its enthusiasts treat it as one tool of many they’re taking out of a box, and rarely do they put it back.
The Writing Essentialism Crank
A co-worker recently asked me if I was left-handed. I told the truth (right handed, but left eye dominant so I use my left hand a lot– I have some congenitally weak muscles in my right eye). She said that explained it.
“Explains what?”
“You write. You’re right-brained.” Continue reading
Pathologic 2
One of the downsides of choosing not to shout into the black hole full of malice that is the internet anymore is that I don’t get to talk to people about things I really like.
A thing I’ve really liked the past few months: Pathologic 2.
The Worst Thing I Have Seen On The Internet (This Week) – smell like I sound
I have no idea why I enjoy hating things on the Internet, but I do. I thought I’d share my pain in a whenever-I-feel-like-it (but not more than weekly) series I will call The Worst Thing I Have Seen On The Internet (This Week). It’ll have an easy to remember acronym TWTIHSOTI(TW). It’ll be good.
Tough call on what the worst thing ever on the Internet is this week, but I’m gonna go with the aggressively horny Lyrics Genius annotation of Hungry Like The Wolf.
DOOT DOO DOO DOOT DOO DOO DOOT DOO DOO DOOT DOO DOO DOO DOOT DOOOOOOOOO
M. K. Anderson 