How Do You Like Your Bananas?

[Dr. Medulla]

Several of our newer members, I think it's reasonable to conclude, find the bulk of the community here wanting in terms of our desire to have "discussions." Perhaps. Maybe the age of the board and that the core membership have known each other for upwards of 20 years now and we've gone thru a number of debates—some productive and edifying, some needlessly angry—and don't see much more to be said. That is, we know our positions and restating things would be pantomime. Or maybe we're all a bunch of reactionary poseurs who support imperialism. Perhaps.

But one thing that strikes me about our newer critics is that what they offer as "discussion" amounts to video clips or banal statements of outrage that I don't think anyone here actually disagrees with. War is bad! Killing kids is bad! Imperialism is bad! Where's the "discussion" to be had there? Is the point to engage in support hugs to confirm our superior morality? A discussion suggests there are points of disagreement to be explored—maybe to persuade, maybe just for intellectual nourishment. That's all fine, and it's been the nature and result of some of the better conversations here in the past. But what's the fucking endgame in these calls for discussion? What am I or anyone else supposed to get out of it? If you want me to engage, I want to know what the aim of it all is, especially when my current habits are seemingly substandard.

Just posting videos of death and destruction or making bland and sweeping statements about how X is bad is a therapeutic act. It's not meaningful engagement. It's not appealing to intellect or higher purpose, it's about venting spleens (anger release) and feeling righteous (status). Therapeutic postings wants sympathy or confirmation or shared emotion. And, generally speaking, that's fine, too, at least if that's not all a person brings. We do a lot of that around here. Hell, it's the default of the vast majority of online discourse, even—especially—that which claims to be political. And sometimes it does spawn something more interesting. But make no mistake, just posting a video of something we all know and especially agree on is a therapeutic act. I'm not shitting on therapeutic posting—as I said, we do it all the time here—but the idea of showing a video of something appalling and expecting that to signal "discussion" isn't serious intellectual engagement.

Maybe we as a community are getting intellectually and morally complacent—I'm not being snarky here, it is a legit critical position to take—or maybe those who find us wanting aren't offering anything to spark the discussion they claim they want.

Thoughts, critiques, credit card numbers?

[Mimi]

As someone who has been burned, unnecessarily, I think, when trying to have discussions in the past (not here) by trolls or by people who just really like being difficult, I have given up on anything meaningful online. I might reach out privately, but I won't get involved in a public anything. A lot of the time, I don't feel qualified to discuss current events or my thoughts are all over the place and can't take a position confidently enough to articulate when I'm feeling.

But...what I've seen lately isn't what I would call discussion. All I've seen is shock posting without any nuance. You can't have a discussion if you're not willing to accept the nuance of any situation. I'm not even sure I would call in therapeutic posting, to be honest. After seeing a lot of twitter activism (something I used to do as well), I can't take much online "discussion" as anything more than rage posting. What are you doing offline? Calling your reps? Protesting peacefully? Donating to a cause? Making a difference? Put your money where your rage is.

Anyway...where was I?

On that note, I'm exhausted from writing that out so I'm done. lol

[Dr. Medulla]

But...what I've seen lately isn't what I would call discussion. All I've seen is shock posting without any nuance. You can't have a discussion if you're not willing to accept the nuance of any situation. I'm not even sure I would call in therapeutic posting, to be honest. After seeing a lot of twitter activism (something I used to do as well), I can't take much online "discussion" as anything more than rage posting. What are you doing offline? Calling your reps? Protesting peacefully? Donating to a cause? Making a difference? Put your money where your rage is.

One of the reasons I used therapeutic is that it's the term I've defaulted to using in my two music oriented classes, especially the punk seminar. I like to put out binary choices for discussion to force people to pick a side, even if reality is never that clean. So one of the recurring questions I ask is whether punk is political or is it therapeutic (and in this case, your use of rage fits pretty well a lot of the time). That is, is it about motivating and engaging people to change the world or is it about making yourself feel better in some way—blowing off steam, improving your status within a community, or even just intellectual or moral growth. Therapeutic doesn't have to be a negative connotation, but its ambitions are wholly personal.

But your final observations do speak to the limitations of internet discourse. We're all scattered and more or less anonymous, so what's the motivation beyond just discourse (i.e., therapeutic conversation)? Even more, we don't have a platform where more than a few dozen—at most!—are reading our conversations, so almost by default the degree of political expectation is curtailed. As you suggest, anything that happens online must lead to some kind of real world stuff or else it's extremely limited in effect.

[Stefano1972]

I do not agree. I have been dealing with Palestine for at least 40 years, I have participated and helped organize demonstrations in support of the tormented Palestinian people.
"My photos are to make people understand that we must protect those who cannot express themselves." a great photographer like Michael “Nick” Nichols once said.
One of the reasons the United States lost the war in Vietnam was because of the horrific images of that conflict that reached the American public.
Without those images, would a significant portion of the American people have been clamoring for an end to the war?
Those who plan wars have treasured that experience and, today, the images of death caused by "our" bombs in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, Ukraine... we would never be able to see them if it weren't for the courage of some independent journalists .
We already live in a world where information is completely anesthetized and our leaders do everything they can to make us live in the best of all possible television worlds. Unfortunately, this "paradise" is the hell of democracy.
Those images disturb and shake the conscience, they raise questions. To say that they are useless for the purposes of a debate, I think is really a mistake.

[Mimi]

But...what I've seen lately isn't what I would call discussion. All I've seen is shock posting without any nuance. You can't have a discussion if you're not willing to accept the nuance of any situation. I'm not even sure I would call in therapeutic posting, to be honest. After seeing a lot of twitter activism (something I used to do as well), I can't take much online "discussion" as anything more than rage posting. What are you doing offline? Calling your reps? Protesting peacefully? Donating to a cause? Making a difference? Put your money where your rage is.

One of the reasons I used therapeutic is that it's the term I've defaulted to using in my two music oriented classes, especially the punk seminar. I like to put out binary choices for discussion to force people to pick a side, even if reality is never that clean. So one of the recurring questions I ask is whether punk is political or is it therapeutic (and in this case, your use of rage fits pretty well a lot of the time). That is, is it about motivating and engaging people to change the world or is it about making yourself feel better in some way—blowing off steam, improving your status within a community, or even just intellectual or moral growth. Therapeutic doesn't have to be a negative connotation, but its ambitions are wholly personal.

But your final observations do speak to the limitations of internet discourse. We're all scattered and more or less anonymous, so what's the motivation beyond just discourse (i.e., therapeutic conversation)? Even more, we don't have a platform where more than a few dozen—at most!—are reading our conversations, so almost by default the degree of political expectation is curtailed. As you suggest, anything that happens online must lead to some kind of real world stuff or else it's extremely limited in effect.

I should have clarified better, therapeutic is a great word choice, but I was only wondering how therapeutic it really is for the person doing the raging. I can only speak for myself, but when I would post something that I was passionate about, I actually felt angrier after, especially if I couldn't convince others to be as passionate about it as I was. Maybe it does feel like a release for other. Maybe I'm the odd duck.

[Dr. Medulla]

But...what I've seen lately isn't what I would call discussion. All I've seen is shock posting without any nuance. You can't have a discussion if you're not willing to accept the nuance of any situation. I'm not even sure I would call in therapeutic posting, to be honest. After seeing a lot of twitter activism (something I used to do as well), I can't take much online "discussion" as anything more than rage posting. What are you doing offline? Calling your reps? Protesting peacefully? Donating to a cause? Making a difference? Put your money where your rage is.

One of the reasons I used therapeutic is that it's the term I've defaulted to using in my two music oriented classes, especially the punk seminar. I like to put out binary choices for discussion to force people to pick a side, even if reality is never that clean. So one of the recurring questions I ask is whether punk is political or is it therapeutic (and in this case, your use of rage fits pretty well a lot of the time). That is, is it about motivating and engaging people to change the world or is it about making yourself feel better in some way—blowing off steam, improving your status within a community, or even just intellectual or moral growth. Therapeutic doesn't have to be a negative connotation, but its ambitions are wholly personal.

But your final observations do speak to the limitations of internet discourse. We're all scattered and more or less anonymous, so what's the motivation beyond just discourse (i.e., therapeutic conversation)? Even more, we don't have a platform where more than a few dozen—at most!—are reading our conversations, so almost by default the degree of political expectation is curtailed. As you suggest, anything that happens online must lead to some kind of real world stuff or else it's extremely limited in effect.

I should have clarified better, therapeutic is a great word choice, but I was only wondering how therapeutic it really is for the person doing the raging. I can only speak for myself, but when I would post something that I was passionate about, I actually felt angrier after, especially if I couldn't convince others to be as passionate about it as I was. Maybe it does feel like a release for other. Maybe I'm the odd duck.

And that's where, in the real world, there aren't those neat divisions. When I use the binaries in class, it's like debate club or something like that. I don't want students going all wishy washy (as they tend to do when given the option). So, yeah, rage-posting is on some level hoping for persuasion, but the deeper question is why. Most people, I think, seek to persuade as a means of validating their own perspective, a status thing. I carped elsewhere about my annoyance with people on places like Reddit who say, "Does anyone else thing [song] is underrated?" Rated by who? What does it mean to "rate" something? They're fishing for agreement on a song they like, but set it up as some kind of resistance against elites who don't appreciate real music or something.

[Dr. Medulla]

An additional thought, something shared with me by an old professor friend. If you're trying to persuade a person or group and failing, the problem might be them (they're too dumb, they're not open-minded, etc) or the problem might be you (your argument is poor, your argument is poorly delivered). If you reflect on your failure and can't imagine how the problem might be you, yeah, it probably is you. It was valuable advice when I was much younger about the need to engage in self-criticism, that blaming others for being too dumb or too immoral is complacency. I can't remember the context of how he explained this to me, but I imagine it was over something I'd written that was long on boldness and short on actual argumentation.

[Stefano1972]

Among other things, it surprises me quite a bit how we are discussing photographs that show the true horror of war when, in the past, I myself received one of the most infamous accusations of being an anti-Semite.
Can defamatory accusations of that type be written without anyone being scandalized?

[Dr. Medulla]

Among other things, it surprises me quite a bit how we are discussing photographs that show the true horror of war when, in the past, I myself received one of the most infamous accusations of being an anti-Semite.
Can defamatory accusations of that type be written without anyone being scandalized?

What discussion? Seriously—what discussion? Posting photos and videos is not a discussion. If I post pictures of Bjork and Sigur Ros, is that a discussion about Iceland? Further to that, who are you having the alleged discussion with? Who here supports what is happening in Gaza? Name some names here and pick apart their position if there's anyone here arguing for the slaughter of civilians in Gaza. You know, do some fucking work and engage in critical discourse. You haven't brought anything meaningful to the table, nothing that moves a possible conversation in a meaningful way. You're enlightening literally no one by posting photos and videos because we're all well aware and appalled by it. You get more than 140 characters here, so Twitter activism is especially lazy.

As for being called an antisemite, measure your reaction to the civilians killed on 7 October versus that which has happened to civilians in Gaza since. Not a whole lot of photos and videos posted about that, huh? No "true horror of war" on 7 October, I suppose? But there were rationalizations of what Hamas did. People draw their conclusions from what is offered. Own your words and actions. Those of us who are horrified by civilian deaths on both sides, regardless of nationality or ethnicity, tend not to be called antisemites. Those who rationalize the deaths of or deny atrocities done to Jews do. In the past, I've pushed back when my Jewish friends have talked about antisemitism on the left, but one thing that has changed for me since 7 October is that I've stopped doing that. The response from leftists to rationalize, even celebrate, what happened has been too goddamned glaring to deny that way too many on the left are willing to embrace antisemitism, that it must have been there all along. If you're even remotely sympathetic to Hamas, yeah, don't fucking cry about being called an antisemite.

[Stefano1972]

Among other things, it surprises me quite a bit how we are discussing photographs that show the true horror of war when, in the past, I myself received one of the most infamous accusations of being an anti-Semite.
Can defamatory accusations of that type be written without anyone being scandalized?

What discussion? Seriously—what discussion? Posting photos and videos is not a discussion. If I post pictures of Bjork and Sigur Ros, is that a discussion about Iceland? Further to that, who are you having the alleged discussion with? Who here supports what is happening in Gaza? Name some names here and pick apart their position if there's anyone here arguing for the slaughter of civilians in Gaza. You know, do some fucking work and engage in critical discourse. You haven't brought anything meaningful to the table, nothing that moves a possible conversation in a meaningful way. You're enlightening literally no one by posting photos and videos because we're all well aware and appalled by it. You get more than 140 characters here, so Twitter activism is especially lazy.

As for being called an antisemite, measure your reaction to the civilians killed on 7 October versus that which has happened to civilians in Gaza since. Not a whole lot of photos and videos posted about that, huh? No "true horror of war" on 7 October, I suppose? But there were rationalizations of what Hamas did. People draw their conclusions from what is offered. Own your words and actions. Those of us who are horrified by civilian deaths on both sides, regardless of nationality or ethnicity, tend not to be called antisemites. Those who rationalize the deaths of or deny atrocities done to Jews do. In the past, I've pushed back when my Jewish friends have talked about antisemitism on the left, but one thing that has changed for me since 7 October is that I've stopped doing that. The response from leftists to rationalize, even celebrate, what happened has been too goddamned glaring to deny that way too many on the left are willing to embrace antisemitism, that it must have been there all along. If you're even remotely sympathetic to Hamas, yeah, don't fucking cry about being called an antisemite.

In my opinion you have serious problems understanding a text. What the fuck are you teaching your students, how to straighten bananas?
My comments are all here, do a search and you will find the answers you want.
Almost two months have passed since that unfortunate day, my comments are still available. If you have brains and can read, point out to me where my support for Hamas violence and my alleged anti-Semitism come from.
And if you don't find confirmation, you would do better by apologizing to me publicly rather than playing the part of the miserable person.

[Dr. Medulla]

In my opinion you have serious problems understanding a text. What the fuck are you teaching your students, how to straighten bananas?

What the fuck does that even mean? Are straight bananas … bad? Pro tip: A zinger should be clear.

My comments are all here, do a search and you will find the answers you want.
Almost two months have passed since that unfortunate day, my comments are still available. If you have brains and can read, point out to me where my support for Hamas violence and my alleged anti-Semitism come from.
And if you don't find confirmation, you would do better by apologizing to me publicly rather than playing the part of the miserable person.

There's that high quality critical engagement—expect someone else do your work. If so many people here have suggested that you're coming off as an antisemite—or an actual antisemite—maybe do some self-reflection. Or don't. Or maybe keep bending that banana by posting pictures and calling them "a discussion." Your choice. But you haven't done a very good job on any front to this point. Again, that you've managed to alienate yourself from people who oppose what is happening in Gaza—people who are anti-war, anti-racism, anti-sexism—that should encourage some self-reflection that, you know, maybe it's you.


***

To everyone else, I apologize for letting an asshole piss me off again. He's back on Ignore and for good (promise!). As I chatted privately with someone else a few days ago, walking away from assholes as my resolution this year.

[Stefano1972]

In my opinion you have serious problems understanding a text. What the fuck are you teaching your students, how to straighten bananas?

What the fuck does that even mean? Are straight bananas … bad? Pro tip: A zinger should be clear.

My comments are all here, do a search and you will find the answers you want.
Almost two months have passed since that unfortunate day, my comments are still available. If you have brains and can read, point out to me where my support for Hamas violence and my alleged anti-Semitism come from.
And if you don't find confirmation, you would do better by apologizing to me publicly rather than playing the part of the miserable person.

There's that high quality critical engagement—expect someone else do your work. If so many people here have suggested that you're coming off as an antisemite—or an actual antisemite—maybe do some self-reflection. Or don't. Or maybe keep bending that banana by posting pictures and calling them "a discussion." Your choice. But you haven't done a very good job on any front to this point. Again, that you've managed to alienate yourself from people who oppose what is happening in Gaza—people who are anti-war, anti-racism, anti-sexism—that should encourage some self-reflection that, you know, maybe it's you.


***

To everyone else, I apologize for letting an asshole piss me off again. He's back on Ignore and for good (promise!). As I chatted privately with someone else a few days ago, walking away from assholes as my resolution this year.

So, you haven't found my words from which one would understand the my alleged anti-Semitism?
You haven't found them (because I've never written or thought of such rubbish) and you continue to make very heavy insinuations against me.
What bothers you about the video? From the way you talk about it, it seems like you know very well what the current situation is in Gaza... perhaps CNN or the BBC also broadcast these images for breakfast... but, unfortunately, that's not really the case. If those images had been broadcast on television around the world, I believe Israel should have long ago felt forced to stop the continuation of its crimes in Gaza.
And what comment would you have liked me to write to accompany those images that truly leave you speechless.
You're running away like a rabbit, I say this with all respect for those cute little animals who don't deserve to be compared to a miserable person like you.

[Olaf]

Well Doc, you did try.

[revbob]

I read some of the stuff in this section but Im rarely going to comment, I dont have the time nor energy, I dont come here for that. Just like I dont go to the bar to work out or have a salad. Nothing that is posted here is likely to change my viewpoint/outlook on much of anything in the world. And Im doubtful that I can say much that would change someone else's.

[Dr. Medulla]

Well Doc, you did try.

*shrug* I'll be honest and concede that it was probably mostly a therapeutic exercise on my part. Probably more useful as a reminder for me to follow my own advice. As revbob says, it's not like people have their opinions changed that often (or at least not on the spot).

Turning shit into shitade, tho, we should groupthink an urban dictionary definition for "straighten the banana" or "bend the banana" (better yet, conjoin the definition). Without the obvious masturbation joke option.

edit: Also: https://steemit.com/bananaprogram/@stee ... anaprogram