Another reply via post to a ghostlightning post
←[89]
There’s two things that people made evident in ghost’s post: (1) the sphere is primarily discursive; (2) there is a philosophical double standard:
(1) As opposed to animekritik’s view of a classical view of knowledge, in a more modern, Foucauldian setting, people don’t produce knowledge, discourse produces knowledge.
And this is absolutely clear in the aniblogosphere: a person can write and be thoughtful on his blog, but if no one reads it, he doesn’t contribute to the discourse, and thus he cannot produce knowledge.
(2) Our discourse promotes the philosophy that reason is good, but that’s a double standard. It’s not that not reasoning is bad (it’s not), but it is not seen as favorable or respectable within the discourse of reason. Case in point – if you don’t back up your point in front of various commenters here, you’re going to be labeled as x, y and z. In actuality to favor not reasoning, you have to step outside the discourse of the ’sphere and into a new discourse that supports the philosophy that prefers “faith” (for lack of a better word) over “reason”. There’s nothing “wrong” with non-reasoning insofar as you realize that one philosophy isn’t better than another by the very extension of the doublestandard people identify in love/hate. Doesn’t seem that we’re quite there.
Understanding perhaps is egotistical not only in that you need to prove your manliness simply by exhibiting knowledge: it can also be egotistical in that someone outside the discourse challenging your entire philosophy presents an even greater threat – a threat to your knowledge and to your very ways of understanding. A “discursive challenge” threatens the very ways you comprehend your social reality.
There’s this good quote, in Planetes Yuri says “the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s apathy.”
ps; the picture is irrelevant.
At the risk of sounding inconsistent, I’ll say it here anyway: reasons are ultimately meaningless in the conversation of free choice.
Some explanation (that may be too easily dismissed as semantic quibbling):
Let’s say the judgment is the decision (dope show/shit show).
The reasons are the considerations:
1. Lead male character was manly/bishie
2. Lead female character was GAR/moe
3. Plot was good
4. BGM was good
5. Dialogue, Pacing, etc. good
I decide that I like the show, (dope show).
To decide, is from the Latin, suffix cise past tense cide (Anglicized) meaning “cut”, in other contexts “kill” (Homicide, Insecticide, Patricide, Infanticide). So to decide is like cutting off other possibilities. But what does the cutting?
We see above that the reasons do the deciding for me. The absence of one can and will determine my decision. In this case, I am not a Sartrean existence, condemned to free choice. I’m completely a Skinnerian set of behavioral responses of determining stimuli.
But I just said that reasons are meaningless in the context of free choice! Yes they are, provided that there is free choice in the first place. And free choice exists beyond the realm of reason.
Reasons appease the likes of lolikit and Kaioshin because they need (whether they know it or not) a rational order to things. They require/impose their reasonableness onto the sphere. Love something, hate something, but justify yourself to them. Otherwise there is no access to a relationship. It’s a power dynamic too isn’t it?
But as you said, there is no necessary privileging of reason over non-reason. If I love Macross the way I do and wildly trumpet its praises without imposing my valuation on yours, why would I ever need to justify myself?
Sharing, as a means of communicating values is powerful. It works through invitation and not through domination. Sharing as a methodology creates ’safe’ clearings for healthy and productive discourse IMO. Value is created mutually and in-process.
*Sigh. I commented something longer than the original post.
There’s also a double standard for double standards. Why are double standards a bad thing? Why is it good to treat everything and its counterpart symmetrically?
Baka-Raptor: I’d say that double standards sorta takes away from the ability to find common ground in something. By giving, for example, some benefits to one group in terms of what is expected of them compared to others, it becomes somewhat harder to get people to come together on the area that the benefits are related to. Or something like that.
Ghost:
this is interesting – you say that values aren’t necessarily imposing, so they shouldn’t produce conflict, but I think that many times we let non-imposing things impose is. It goes back to how, as we are in a social content-oriented sphere, such content constitutes our identities, and when such content is challenged, our identity is challenged. I see very little way around that, though you’re displaying a lot of vigor in saying “nooooo it isn’t like that”. So yeah, that’s awesome, we should all try and do that. Perhaps “overlap” is a better metaphor than “impose”, if we view identity as a sort of 2dimensional geography.
In any case, as BK implicates, I don’t know how productive these metadiscussions are. I know we are producing something, but I don’t know if they’re counterproductive to a generalized goal, whatever that may be.
BK: Yes you’re definitely right, I agree with you. But (you knew that but was coming) when we start to continuously move back and reflect on our actions, their implications become redundant. Saying double standards (DS) are DS’s merely reiterates the first attempt at stating that we need to be equal: [double standards are double standards] is a double standard. [double standards are double standards is a double standard] is a double standard ad infinitum. Just depends on the dominant ideology that classifies one thing as right and the other as wrong.
N & BK: there’s nothing “wrong” with DS’s, but you can go ahead and preach ‘em if you want…
@ghostlightning: “But as you said, there is no necessary privileging of reason over non-reason. If I love Macross the way I do and wildly trumpet its praises without imposing my valuation on yours, why would I ever need to justify myself?”
But doesn’t that really depend on the motivation behind publishing an opinion in the first place. I hate to question motives, but it’s almost unavoidable in this instance, since the prioritizing of reason depends so strongly on the original motivation of publishing an opinion. If you merely wish to “share” your opinion, then reason probably isn’t so important, but if you wish to engage an audience in discourse, especially if they don’t agree with you, then a reasoned justification is pretty much necessary. It gives people a grounding in an observable “reality” (”reality” being much more tenable in anime since everything is about “interpretation”) that is much easier to share with those whose opinions differ, which then facilitates discourse that may result in, for example in the ideal case, a genuine appreciation of a different view on a subject. It’s much harder to achieve that if one can’t expound a reasoned starting point for one’s opinion.
At the end of the day, that’s all I want. I publish opinions not just to share but in the hope that they can be appreciated, even by people who don’t necessarily agree with me. I certainly don’t try to impose my opinions on others (I’ve been accused of that in the past, which does admittedly burn my bacon). When I post an opinion, I’m kinda saying: “here’s my opinion, I hope you can appreciate the reasoning behind it, even if you don’t necessarily agree with it. If you don’t agree with it, I’d like to hear your reasoned opinion so we can have a debate with at least a few common starting points.” Obviously, it’s not always easy to have a completely reasoned discussion/debate since some people aren’t reasonable by nature. I think what I’m trying to say is that, if your original motivation is an appreciation of opinions, the more productive discourse takes place between reasonable people.
I guess it almost goes back to your point about the four levels of understanding. I’d almost suspect that the same four levels are applicable to understanding other people’s opinions, and that reason is what facilitates this understanding.
@lelangir,
I think is what you were intended, but more importantly, this is totally true. Unless we are all perfect transcendentalists or Buddhists and so on, someone is going to become flustered. Usually I would say, well that’s their problem, and I believe it, although there is a case when it isn’t another’s problem… that would be purpose exploitation of this knowledge.
The most relativity example I can find to our sphere is that of mentioning negative things about Shiori to Guncannon. Everyone knows its a touchy subject, and its all Guncannon.
Well, these recent ones hardly relate specifically to the otakusphere; they could be applied in many areas. Generally this is good for the entire Internet, but it isn’t necessarily raising our specific sphere upwards, because it’s not accentuating our core; in a way it is, since it is about our social behaviors.
As for goals, if we (as in our community as one unit) haven’t defined one, we don’t need one… ultimate plans take too much effort ^^
Just some babbling hehe
lelangir, you lost me after the image lol, no but seriously you all make quite interesting points.
There is however one point that particularly caught my attention. Baka-Raptor mentions that a double standard is in fact a double standard itself. I’m not too sure how to approach that. I guess he raises the question as to what governs the right to decide what is right and what is wrong (good or bad). I’d like to argue that its highly based on perspective. But I’m sure everyone has their own opinion (perspective ^^) on these matters.
My teacher also said that. The enemy of thinking and learning is apathy or indifference. If you don’t care at all on what’s going on around you, then how will you learn?
With the last paragraph, my ex-classmate once hated bloggers because of that stereotyping. She always see bloggers as someone wanting attention err, something like that XD and I guess you can call that egotistical but just like what you said, reasoning and philosophy is still preferable than to not care at all with what’s happening around you.
In that sense, I don’t see anime blogging as something bad or a scheme to distort reality among other viewers but we just state what we seem right 
In the end, we are not the one to choose but the readers so we must let their brains do the critical thinking for themselves. 
@ lelangir
Difference in values doesn’t necessarily produce conflict. It is when someone says, “these values are the most important and if you don’t agree we have a problem” that it does. Take digitalboy’s ‘Essential Anime’ post (too obvious?), here he says, perhaps without intending to, that not watching these shows makes you less of an anime fan/does not give you credibility to discuss anime, etc.
@ sorrow-kun
>>At the end of the day, that’s all I want. I publish opinions not just to share but in the hope that they can be appreciated, even by people who don’t necessarily agree with me. I certainly don’t try to impose my opinions on others (I’ve been accused of that in the past, which does admittedly burn my bacon). When I post an opinion, I’m kinda saying: “here’s my opinion, I hope you can appreciate the reasoning behind it, even if you don’t necessarily agree with it. If you don’t agree with it, I’d like to hear your reasoned opinion so we can have a debate with at least a few common starting points.” Obviously, it’s not always easy to have a completely reasoned discussion/debate since some people aren’t reasonable by nature. I think what I’m trying to say is that, if your original motivation is an appreciation of opinions, the more productive discourse takes place between reasonable people.
I guess it almost goes back to your point about the four levels of understanding. I’d almost suspect that the same four levels are applicable to understanding other people’s opinions, and that reason is what facilitates this understanding.<<
I ‘feel’ you.
In terms of motives, I think there could be hierarchies. While I really believe that I’m not out here to “push macross onto mecha fans/anime fans in general”, there is selling involved.
But is it possible to sell someone on something without imposing one’s values on the prospect? Yes. It only takes commonalities (you like anime? you like music? you like transformable mecha? you like bridge bunnies?) for me to pitch macross to you. It begins to get real shady if I should comment on our differences this way: “You’re wrong to not like bridge bunnies” That’s where some violent values imposition begins.
[...] ←[90] Probably my largest concern over the “burnout” epidemic is what really constitutes the status of “burnout”. I usually take it as “I can’t think of anything to write.”[1] It seems though that this sputtering creativity can be caused by harsh constrictions.[2] I can’t speak for the limitations each blogger imposes upon him or herself, though I can say that there’s always going to be hype and horror for the godly and golden panoptic signal-to-noise ratio. [...]
Leave your response!
Navigation
Comments
Categories
Poll
Authors
Links
Meta
Affiliates
Recent Posts
Most Commented
Most Viewed