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by 082349872349872 2094 days ago
Pedantically (despite my agreement with your thesis) please note that in "skills that make for great copy, sloganeering and samizdat" one of these words does not belong.

Have you seen the second half of chapter 64 of the Rule of Benedict, especially "[the Abbot] is to distrust his own frailty and remember not to crush the bruised reed"?

Creative ambiguity is, I presume, how the Abbot is supposed to "so arrange everything that the strong have something to yearn for and the weak nothing to run from."[1]

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/50040/50040-h/50040-h.html#c...

To what degree is "confession bear" a grassroots way to bring earnest human fragility back to sloganeering?

Bonus clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_CZTi8L29c

[1] Da Dzhimi 2:13. Nakodenashang du kondenashang im demang du kondenashang. Nakodenashang pash kondenashang.

Da got da bekpelash im ando showxa buk wel fo da we im :-)

1 comments

Now we're getting into the good stuff :)

You are not being pedantic at all, friend. I must concede to you your point that it is true that one of those words does not belong and it is of course the third. Samizdat of course includes so much material which displays writer-diplomat skills that I mentioned, and so often for higher stakes as it often is with intellectual or literal guerillas. I sometimes forget how much my Americanized way of looking at the world colors my perspective -- thank you for giving me another one.

So perhaps it is the thing that needs to be dissented against, which polarizes existence itself into assent-dissent, by which I am harangued. And so I find myself, like that singer, musing upon how some Godhead must have forsaken us, the alternative avenue to our present fate being at once far more plausible and yet horrific.

> which polarizes existence itself into assent-dissent

Yeah, almost Manichean, this blackwhite crimestop thought.

I dislike the "fabric of society" metaphor because artificially structured woven fabrics can easily be ripped. I prefer societies that are like felt, where irregular overlapping interests not only connect the whole but provide resilience.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24578341

Very interesting. I love your point about how the structured weaving aspect of fabrics is the very thing which makes them brittle and lacking resilience. Certainly an applicable metaphor!

Have you ever watched Kill La Kill[1]? It's a satirical anime that makes light of many tropes in shonen, but one of the main drivers of the plot line is tension between all-encompassing textile industry monarchs who seek to rule the world by "caging" humans with fabric and extracting their energy, and the intentionally redundantly phrased "naked nudist" anarchists who oppose them.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_la_Kill