Hi there,
I'm sure you've seen me around, as I've been here for quite while. I enjoyed and saw how this site grew, etc, but what I enjoyed was the genuine topics and conversation of discussions about this site. Perhaps it is the reintegration of life and routine, away from Covid, but I've noticed a decline in quality that makes me reminiscent and nostalgic for the past and even for members like LiberalSocialist.
You used to have something to say, regularly.
Chapochat/Hexbear wasn't just recycled memes and images from r/thedeprogram or r/trueanon.
There are still interesting things and conversations that are posted but they've been drowned out by pages of mediocre images that substitute picture and image for discussion and introspection; as another poster once typed, paraphrasing, we're all just trying to create site taglines and phrases and substituting quips for insight and catharsis.
Fair enough that catharsis, solidarity, and revelation can only be achieved through living your life and not through quiet meditation and discussion on reddit or psuedo-reddits. But there was at least more frequency of effort posts, venting, and exegesis of history, current and social events, and understanding of the world or at least an effort to do so.
To my observation, such that I lurk here, Such effort is only spared on video games. On media. On the dunk_tank. On getting upset about wrong opinion.
Despite the federation, this site seems to have only become isolated and divorced of what made it unique: effortposting.
Maybe it's not just Hexbear. Maybe that is why UlyssesT left; the catharsis is exhausted and online space is dominated by a a tendency for performative and justified outrage and yearning for solidarity and emotional validation. But rather than copium, as anyone afflicted with a disease would prefer, some small part of me wanted prognoses rather than diagnoses.
I don't know. I reflect on things like /moretankiechapo or /genzedong and see how things have declined in qualityposts. Perhaps it is for the better, as UlyssesT had discovered, to have the impetus to go outside and not only live life but to evangalize socialism and recapture purpose and community.
I'll see you tomorrow.
Have you tried reading the article appended to the post? I hope this helps.
Yes. I don't really know where to start criticizing it and I'm also not really interested in doing so. But for one, having read some works of most of the philosophers the author names, I don't see the big difference between the historical view he solely assigns to Lukács and that of other philosophers like Adorno or Derrida, who repeatedly argued for recognizing the continuity of fascism in human societies. Also, the connection between the so called post-structuralists tradition and Nietzsche or Heidegger is a critical one. When Derrida draws on Heidegger or Nietzsche, this is to be understood as an engagement with the negative at work in the tradition of Western philosophy. What seems kind of strange here is that the author dismisses any dialectic at work in the philosophy he's out to criticize, especially when he is drawing so heavily on Lukács and Hegel.
Well feel free to come back with better criticism