m of care – nov 18
18 November, 2021 KARAOKE Reading Group #MuseumofCare
karaoke on debt (book)
#MuseumofCare Join our second Karaoke Reading Group tomorrow on Thursday 18th at 8pm London time.
please email the text choice of your choice from Debt 5000 years to vassily.pigounides@gmail.com. For more information about the event see our how-to guide.https://t.co/b43iibB4g0
Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/nikadubrovsky/status/1461027160957849610
notes/quotes from 67 min video:
1 min – nika: so true that the language of capitalism/debt so much embedded in our day to day vocab.. i grew up in soviet union.. not c but socialism.. but still very much in place.. housing was the major valuable thing.. so very much part of my daily life.. what would happen to us if we would be able to live in world where value system would be diff and language would change
nika reading ‘central question of book.. what precisely does it mean to say that our sense of morality and justice is reduced to language of a business deal.. money’s capacity to turn morality into a matter of impersonal arithmetic..t
of math and men – we need to let go of any form of m\a\p.. graeber violence/quantification law et al
nika: after 1st fight club i spoke w cory doctorow who wrote about first fight club.. he was talking about current tech.. now we have tech that so much controls us.. under our skin.. so cory is doubting wether this will work for now
yeah.. this is why we need tech as it could be.. rather than how it is
cory doctorow (notes here on mark’s tweet ref to doctorow thinking) – fight club et al
also – from fragments of an anarchist anthropology:
[50]
so.. to me.. hasn’t really intro’d new ones.. quality changing new ones.. otherwise the old ones would just disappear.. become irrelevant s
but.. we do have the potential for that.. if we just ‘really think deep enough to figure something legit diff out’.. ie: short findings restate et al and using tech as it could be to org around legit needs
fitting w m of care – nov 18 – and nika (and later via tweet mark) bringing up cory doctorow‘s take on tech.. mostly that: we have seen advances in every aspect of our lives except our humanity– Luma Mufleh
mark: doctorow also mentions things like collateral extracted from you.. ie: all major appliances could be terminated.. scary..
nika: yeah.. real dystopia could happen
10 min – simona: p 32-34 – on the line of nika’s.. about how making a promise.. destroys human relationships.. econ couldn’t exist w/o making this abstract of human relationships.. putting only kind of human relationship the enemy.. reminds me of hobbes political theory.. society of enemies.. fascinating in this book.. david shows how the normal human relationships are much diff from this.. grounded in gifts and w/o a proper expectation of getting something back.. another i was about to choose was indian saying.. i am human that is why i won’t ever ask anything in exchange for what i’m giving you.. another theme of book is about hospitality.. a relationship between foreigners.. if have food have to share.. can’t be in presence of anybody w/o sharing
marsh exchange law et al..
graeber exchange law: the very principle of exchange emerged largely as an effect of violence from debt
vassily: other quote simona could have read.. i’ll send google doc so can add anything
15 min – simona reading: ‘recall language of econ textbooks.. how limited imaginative powers.. econ concerns self w how to get most advantage.. obvious expedient.. theft.. such an embed.. we find it hard to imagine any other possible arrangement..’
19 min – simona: such a rich text.. so many things.. theme of imagination.. idea that econ is a matter of imagination and it’s also capturing our imagination.. we have difficulties in imagining other ways.. even when it comes to care.. we are not able to see how generous .. how much freedom is in our relationship.. giving/receiving for free w/o accounting.. t..
need: oikos (the economy our souls crave).. ‘i should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.’ – gaston bachelard, the poetics of space
sans any form of m\a\p
simona: i have seen what happens in a society when everything becomes about numbering.. counting exchanges.. when the human relationships are broken because everybody is your enemy.. so important to imagine the world is not just of consumption..but how it should be.. just generosity, play, and experiencing the joy of being together
21 min – nika: i also think it’s important that david wanted to write the next book about war.. because in what simona read.. it’s about communication.. so basically you can rip off people who you don’t care about because you cease communication w them.. t.. you don’t know them.. they’re not somebody who will be with you after that.. so .. and the war is exactly this moment you want this other person to destroy/disappear.. but in the market we don’t care about these other people.. they’re just numbers.. so it’s all about communication in a way.. if you set diff parameters.. it wouldn’t happen.. it looks like
23 min – carlos: p 95-96.. reading: ‘communist exists now.. though not everything.. and difficult to think of any of us acting like a communist at all times.. but c et al built on top of communism.. from each according to abilities to each according to needs.. ‘not simply talking about cooperation.. communism is the foundation of all human sociability.. it is what makes society possible..’
32 min – carlos: this is for me the most important part of the work.. i use it for my work a lot.. a book about fiat socialism.. i think what graeber says here is the right way to understand and reborn communism..
36 min – vassily: a funny thing to revive a concept w such an old defn.. ie: from each to each.. reviving it by taking old defn..
carlos: i think the most important part when he says ‘in reality.. communism is who has access to what sort of things and under what conditions’.. that is the main point of communism.. what can i do.. what are my rights.. and who doesn’t have these rights.. what and who gets what.. if we had focused on this defn communism would have been unstoppable
oi to rights ness..
38 min – mary tracy: this defn very similar to feminist theory.. on matriarchy.. have to have it or won’t survive.. in doe.. ‘communism doesn’t work’.. letter from 1750.. so something in our mind.. that just projects it
40 min – vassily: yeah.. this is really the poor imagination that simona was reading before..
simona: there is another reason for inefficiency of c.. the workers who coop at bottom of industry.. they know and do the job.. and take in the innovation/ideas.. on how to work less.. the inefficiency of hierarchy is exactly in having somebody either just spoils/blocks the coop with silly ideas of not knowing what happens at bottom of hierarchy.. same as what went wrong w state capitalism.. the idea you should org work top/down.. dispels creativity/ability of workers.. by the way.. from each to each is attributed to louis blank.. who was a promoter of workers coops..
43 min – sevda 114-155: ‘markets aren’t real.. they’re math models.. where everyone has same motivation/knowledge and are engaged in self adv.. ‘
44 min – vassily: if i remember this is from section about reciprocity
sevda: just want to give you my experience since moved here (turkey).. had a panic attack so went to private hospital.. was basic treatment.. just wanted to know how i was doing.. they said you need 500 euros.. which is too much.. so i decided to leave private to public one.. still too much for me.. 250.. so.. if i feel worse.. are you going to let me die or what.. capitalism is breaking my bones/back.. worst experience i could ever have.. actually attack happened in mall and dr came.. he had camera and was trying to record me.. not trying to make things better for me.. not trying to say healthcare is really bad.. but i wanted what i had in iran.. the capitalist system is too obvious here.. i was raised in a socialist time.. so even when moved to larger capitalist town tehran.. i was overwhelmed.. one thing so diff.. is ads.. in iran not that much.. barely see ads.. but here.. from first steps in airport.. can see clearly.. comes like a wind to your face
mark: that’s a very good metaphor
sevda: i don’t know how i’m going to act upon it.. am i going to ‘it’s ok.. let’s move on’.. or shall i prepare/create something against it.. i’m in a phase of.. feelings.. ie: our mtg here tonight is one of those acts.. when i talk .. now i can express my feelings.. i want to start a school here and it’s hard to get on scholarship because of my age (30).. i want to start over again.. and they’re like no .. you have to be under 21/25.. you just want to move on and they stop you..
52 min – carlos: that sounds quite about right w the text of graeber.. market comes after state.. not before.. to me that’s the main point of quote you read.. no market w/o the state.. and state tells you what hospital you can go to .. what ed.. what you have to pay..
53 min – sevda: right next to high cost private hospital there are poor fams.. imagine if someone from those fams got sick .. couldn’t go to that hospital right next to them..
54 min – mark: 167 – slavery: ‘readers of equiano’s .. troubled.. he was not disturbed by slavery.. many asked.. why did it take him so long.. (he’d been a slave).. one thing lies in man’s integrity.. not only a man of endless resourcefulness but a man of honor.. to be made a slave is to be stripped of any possible honor.. problem is that honor is something that exists in eyes of others.. to be able to recover it then a slave must necessarily adopt rules/standards of society that surrounds him .. t.. he can not absolutely reject the institutions that deprived him of his honor in first place.. it strikes me that this experience.. of only being able to restore one’s lost honor, to regain the ability to act w integrity by acting in accord w the terms of a system that one knows, thru deeply traumatic personal experience, to be utterly unjust.. is itself one of the most profoundly violent aspects of slavery.. another ie of the need to argue in the master’s language.. t.. but here taken to insidious extremes .. all societies based on slavery tend to be marked by this agonizing double consciousness: the awareness that the highest things one has to strive for are also ultimately wrong; but at the same time.. the feeling that this is simply the nature of reality.. this might help explain when thru out history when slaves did rebel against their masters.. they rarely rebelled against slavery itself.. but the flip side of this is that even slave owners seemed to feel that the whole arrangement was somehow fundamentally perverse or unnatural.. ‘
59 min – mark: part of the power of david’s works.. even the footnotes are amazing.. ie: in footnote to last quote: ‘when attempts are made to justify slavery starting w aristotle.. they focus not on the institution but on some inferior quality of some ethnic group being enslaved’.. reason i chose this.. we had a reading group in 2011 when debt came out.. and i had a visceral reaction to the way david presented slavery.. these layers.. like reading fiction so you understand what it means.. have such an appreciation for what that means.. socially dead.. that was so powerful to me.. tying back into ch 5 of doe where they are mentioning slavery seems to be an end product of a distortion of care.. t.. to me that’s another thing they’re giving us to investigate.. why would care be distorted to that extent.. this ties in so much to the us prison system.. it is the current slavery.. accuse people in system instead of the system itself..
steiner care to oppression law
1:03 – vassily: yeah.. when you read graeber.. you read the notes as well
indeed..
1:04 – mark: the overall effect of understanding in this way.. that’s where he gives us hope.. a true understanding is actually giving us hope..
1:05 – sevda: nika.. do you know when it was when david thought.. there is something wrong w this world.. something must have happened that made him rise up
nika: i don’t think it was one point.. his father fought in civil war.. he has an oppositional part in his household.. but i think david was always very positive.. always trying to make bridges.. he was never pointing out on a group of people or country.. he was always thinking how we could dig in and rearrange from inside..
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and here is the list of quotes for the participants zoom
https://t.co/HryfTGW0B4https://t.co/iMxXfV8BMD
Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/nikadubrovsky/status/1461416140584984587
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thanks mark – my karaoke ness:
@marekfuller Hey, thanks for sharing this thread from @monk51295. Read the whole version here: https://t.co/tHMy9ysxsM
Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/threader/status/1461355522699841547
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be you. 