Critiques of nihilist communism?

The crow is the Christian, the stones are good deeds, the water is salvation.

The crow is the animal liberationist, the stones are the animals and the water is cages.

Wow, that one's mind-blowing. The animal liberationist will never get the cages that (s)he seeks...or do you mean will never get rid of the cages by liberating animals one by one? Less mind-blowing but maybe more coherent.

The crow is a corvid, the stones are rocks and the water is H2O.

Or the crow is Obama, the stones are every time he utters the phrase "yes we can," and the water is a genuine US birth certificate...

Or the crow is us, the stones are all our interpretations, and the water is the true meaning of the fable.

I like the last one.

I am the crow, the stones are my comments, all the other posters on libcom are the water.

It is likely this is true for all others who post here. Each is the crow and I become the water. Sometimes the stone.

I suppose the animal liberationist will never get the cages they need as long as they keep throwing animals at them. Or maybe the animal liberationist, if they keep freeing animals will never be able to have a world without cages? I guess even when trying to confuse, an interpretation can make the incoherent coherent.

This does explain a lot though. I think we've had discussions like this before where if someone wants to misinterpret another's position, they can be successful at it. And if someone wants to make another's position one they can agree to, they can do that too, even when the author meant to just write a mindfuck with no real value.

I've argued with Saint Schmidt and Alberto the Penguin about these points many times, that we don't truly understand each other and probably never will. But a value I would apply to communication would be the attempt to understand each other.

I think it might be natural for us to want to understand each other, even when we completely fuck up another person's position. Such as how Marxists fucked up Marx's position. This, I suppose, is also not a new thought, but I think it does apply to any attempt to make sense from a parable.

I remember learning parables as a child and how the teacher would avoid revealing the moral of the story and attempt to get the children to express its moral. Usually the moral of the story was lost on the children. The moral of the story of the crow, the rock and the water of Dupont could easily be: Don't be stupid, insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expect different results, think of another way, you will never be as smart as you think you are, if you think you are going to save yourself you might actually build a wall to stop it, etc.

The original parable would say the opposite, to some degree: Keep trying and you may succeed, little acts can bring great success, don't give up on the trials of life, etc.

The science of the parable, however, seems to suggest Aesop's story is founded on a science from folklore while Dupont's story is corrupting this story to make a different point, even when it flies in the face of what is understood.

I don't know if what I said brings any clarity.

Yeah, an attempt at mutual understanding is a value, yet the value of fables like this are that they allow multiple interpretations to flourish, which makes for a lot more freedom than is usual on this site (even if a lot of it is just silliness).

The animal liberationist doesn't understand that s/he is really a cage fetishist; the crow knows she wants water, but forgets...but what if the thing one gets is the thing one really wants, without knowing it? Another possible wrinkle. The crow adjusts his desires to reality so perhaps she is the hero of the story after all...

Aesop's original fable has probably endured countless mutations. A variant where the crow confronts an uncanny breakdown of the laws of physics, makes one think that the magical-realist crow could also endure forever, linking up with the wall of China.

Fertile yet daunting insight. Beware of Socrates's fate, Dupont! But with what emotional, cultural and intellectual baggage would mankind transcend the decline and fall of the west, the end of the dialectic of Enlightenment? Gregor Samsa's metamorphosis is a possible outcome, the giant bug representing a new cybernetic species, spawned by a terminated value. However, in this case the singular entity wouldn't be disposed of so easily as poor Gregor was. This real movement of history would spell the end for all parables and silliness.

Maciver's post seems to follow this one, which, it occurs to me, should not go uncommented:

Well, that depends on whether what is conscious and/or what is apparently dominant, is really the determining factor.

epitaph for a thread.

FWIW, my interpretation of the nicom version of the parable was something like this (or, alternatively, this).

Enjoying the existential angst line of flight, tho. Keep it up.

The crow does not fly but merely sits at the jar placing stone after stone.

Magpies, it has been shown, recognize themselves in mirrors and so are aware of themselves as separate from the world. Is the same true for the crow? I think magpies are the only birds that can (as far as we have discovered).

Questions that are maybe more fundamental:

What was once a river is now only a trickle.
Why is the river not where it is supposed to be?
Is there a river where it was once a desert?

Who has placed the jar beneath the tree?
Are they watching the crow drop stones?

[Must we always return to find the silence (or lack) of God?]

into last chance jar
pebbles dropped by thirsting crow
no water rises

This is a thing?

it's a niche market, but I think satirical nihcom haiku could sell well. You know, go for the 21st C McLaren angle - turning surrender into money.

Ocelot,

You are a trickster. First you go about writing poetry and seeming to have fun but then you slip in your critique of nihilist communism at the very end by referring to it as "surrender". Why hide it and not just say it boldly?

________

Let us try to get at a critique through the parable:

If the crow, in a simplistic reading of the parable, is a communist who drops pebbles in the jar to cause consciousness to rise, even when it doesn't work, then what would a nihilist communist crow look like? How would we recognize it?

What shall we call these crows:
-the crow that does not drop pebbles into the water but wants to drink
-the crow that does not want water
-the crow that tries different methods
-the crow that tells other crows it knows how to get the water and at the first meeting says 'it is pebbles we need but we must only use black (or round, or whatever) ones. this will make all the difference.' and then wonders why so few crows come to the next meeting
-the crow that complains about all the other crows?

There are more crows than this, to be sure, an infinite number, but the nihilist communist crow eludes me.

If we are staying within the confines of the parable, the nihilist communist crow would be one that thinks a rain would come to raise the water in the jar, but does not know if the rain will ever come. The nihilist communist crow would probably find a comfortable spot in the shade and watch the other thirsty crow drop rocks. Both crows will probably die of thirst.

There are rumors that some crows spent their time in caves searching for the coldest of stones. The ones they found they put into the water not to make it rise but in the hopes that by cooling the water condensation would form that they could lick at.

You know,

While I enjoy Kafka, there's a point where speculation on crows and stones becomes more tedious than even leftist idiocy.

This actually does relate to Nihcom. As I've said before, my basic problem with Nihcom is that the tendency seems to imagine that leftism is the only ideology infesting our existence. That if a "communist" could just get away from that, they could perhaps lead an unalienated or at least better existence. Don't get involved in idiotic activism, instead, drink tea, watch birds, read 17th century Chinese poetry. But sorry to say, the alienate world will impinge on you even with tea or any other obscurity might desperately imagine is outside this order.

Indeed it shouldn't be surprising that the "Tea, parables and Chinese poetry" formula for escaping leftist alienation bares a strong resemblance to certain capitalist marketing campaigns. Tea houses are the rage in certain circles.

And all this shouldn't take away from the opposite point that the Nihcomists do speak eloquently and insightfully about the alienation of leftist relations - the passage matlib quote here is good, really. But no matter how insightfully one might analyze the left, if one's attention is focused on leftists, one misses that a leftist ideological clique is merely, is only an instance of ideological clique. You can find manias and fixations in groups of artists, in church groups, in music fans and so-forth. And with the dominance of ideology today, such groups are sadly most of what passes for society. The good advice that the link("Revolutionary Organizations and Individual Commitment") gives needs to be generalized to all relations to groups and cliques today though naturally this also entails some modification.

This is a distortion of what N-C-ers think. If this were an accurate description, nihilist communism would have no relation to communism, since everyone but a small percentage of people goes about their business without getting caught up in the left. N-C-ers do have the idea that the left will be the biggest obstacle to communism in the event of a revolution, which is why they critique the left.

Also, nobody I know of has suggested that by bird watching etc. one become un-alienated; what could be more alienated than a person who bird watches by day and talks about communism on message boards at night?

[moved]

There is a crow in the shade and there is a crow dropping pebbles. There is also a crow in the middle. It looks at both and turns to the one in the shade. It shouts 'you are not original, what is interesting about what you are doing has been done already by smarter crows. Besides, being in the shade isn't that big of a deal anyway. Stop thinking you're hot shit for not dropping pebbles in the jar.'

Another crow emerges though its role is unclear (does it drops pebbles or just watch The Big Lebowski?). It calls out to the crows in the shade 'hey, we are trying to discuss important things here and you just keep trolling passive aggressively and you are just really an obstacle to the people dropping pebbles. You are part of the reason the water won't rise.'

All the crows are still thirsty and their spittle has dried. It is difficult to swallow and though they want to cry they know it would just be a waste of water.

[moved]

A key component of the rhetorical and libidinal economy of allegory is that it allows people to dodge arguments they have no substantive reply to, while convincing themselves they are in fact deep. A faster and more fun way to get this same result would be to smoke weed and go "fuuuuuck man, they just don't get it." Preferably offline, please.

As for the political economy, I believe it has something to do with small businesses and niche markets for subpar literary fiction. It's a good deal like hardcore punk in the late 90s. Here too, however, the drive is in part libidinal: "we want to produce a commodity and one that resonates deeply with some spectators; we are not able to produce a commodity that appeals to many people people and so we fetishize the niche character of our market."

The crow is a salesman, the rocks are a carefully cultivated small group of spectators, the water is the cultural and financial return that the business owner gets on the value he advances. The return rises with agonizing slowness until the business owner fails, or finds a better place to invest his meager funds, all the while resenting that other firms sell better goods and more of them, a resentment dressed up as profundity.

Nate,

I was excited to see a new commenter had joined the discussion but then, upon reading your post, I grew frustrated with myself because I cannot figure out what you are saying.

Do you think allegory is used exclusively in 'subpar literary fiction' and 'niche markets'? This seems wrong because what is allegory besides extended metaphor? Must we confine all poetry and some of the most esteemed works, ranging from Shakespeare to the parables of Jesus, to 'niche' markets or 'subpar literary fiction'?

"Banish plump Jack and banish all the world."

Further: what are the allegories used in late 90s hardcore punk? I am unfamiliar with the scene.

I am trying to make sense of this one. Here's what I have so far: the salesman drops his 'carefully cultivated' 'spectators' into its 'cultural and financial return' and this return rises but very slowly until the crow decides to invest somewhere else.
What is difficult for me is how the rocks are the spectators.
It seems like you wanted to get in some line about spectators but did so to the detriment of your allegory.

_____________

Now that I have written out my difficulties I think I understand why your post was confusing and I think the last part above is key. I think the intentions you have in writing the post and the words themselves do not match. Often we understand what a person is saying based on a combination of intentions and their speech, like two keys of the piano pressed in unison to create a beautiful chord that allows one to nod with satisfaction (pardon my use of metaphor). Your post strikes me as dissonant, as if your finger slipped and pressed the wrong key playing a minor-seventh that was never resolved.

I would think that sometimes allegories are something different from arguments altogether.

'If I can't talk about crows for 67 posts, its not my revolution'

Stone them

Seems to me some of them are pretty stoned already.

You guys are so square...

nah daddy-o we're the heppest cats around, we're supermergitroid, dig?