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Old 07-29-2008, 06:51 AM   #61 (permalink)
roachboy
 
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Location: essex ma
that's an interesting claim, made in passing, sir.

so you oppose the notion of "thinking for oneself" and thinking through ideological categories?
how do you manage that?
it is perfectly reasonable to see "thinking for oneself" and thinking through ideological categories as the same action.
if an ideological frame impeded action, it wouldn't be particularly functional.
they have to be inhabited/inhabitable to operate.
that they are inhabited/inhabitable doesn't mean that therefore they aren't ideological.

don't be fooled by the word ideology into thinking that once you say it you set yourself up as outside ideology.
there's a sense in which ideology is a resticted variant on ontology, and ontology simply the set of rules that you work through in the process of making elements (words, for example) function. the rules that shape usage aren't contained in that which is used--the world is not a collection of things.
ideology operates at the level of how you organize your sense of the world, of the political order, etc.
that everyone is caught in one or another set of images of the world does not mean that therefore all are equivalent.
unless you're playing a relativist game.
but if you're doing that, then you can't make the argument that a false consciousness argument is any better or worse than any other.

now i'm thinking about steve jobs. so far as i know, in my world, he is a guy who turns up on monitors from time to time extolling the virtues of his brand constellation, which includes the commodity "steve jobs," over other commodities. one of his skill sets clearly involves the successful branding of "steve jobs"---you or i may or may not also have the skill set required to brand "loquitor" or "roachboy"----but you're correct, neither of us has the requisite skill set for the successful branding of "steve jobs."
it isn't particularly clear what the skillset required to successfully brand "steve jobs" might be--chances are that there is no abstract skill set, no a priori skillset, but rather a skillset that was developed situationally.
so i expect that you or i or most anyone else could adapt to such a situation, and could develop the requisite skillset for the successful branding of our own "steve jobs"-like commodity.

and while those skills are perhaps specialized, fact is that no amount of exercise of those skills is as demanding as, say, working in a quarry.

nor is there any reason to think that folk who are in positions like this "steve jobs" commodity are ubermenschen.
they do have better marketing machinery around them, in the way that, say, bjork has better producers around her than, say, roachboy has.
the explantion for that is simple enough.


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