Occupy WallStreetBets: Digital Revolutions and Technological Constructivism

12/31/21 • 35 min

Since it's probably going to take another year for me to finish the second episode of the "Fear Inoculant" series, I'm going to repurpose some papers I wrote in grad school into a few bonus episodes of the next month or so. This episode focuses on the Wall Street Bets / GameStop "revolution" of January 2021 and its implications on the politics of technology and the failings of society at large.

For citations, please visit the blog post on my website.

For citations, please visit the blog post on my website.

Previous Episode

Fear Inoculant 1 - Events, Reality, Freedom, and Revolution

Many things in modern life make us fearful. The Fear Inoculant series will explore ways to be less fearful and live a more authentic life. In this, the first of three episodes, we cover a host of philosophical concepts aimed at demystifying reality in order to lay the groundwork for examining social movements in the next episode. We start with exploring how certain Events can seem to change the past and present, Reality itself and a couple ways to quantify it, how Noam Chomsky and Slavoj Zizek can never seem to agree, Dialectics and the limits of reason, Metaphysics and how to separate yourself from the universe, Freedom and how to measure it, Existentialism and other curses from the gods, Sociology and how to build a society, how school brainwashes you, plus Economics, The State, Violence, Alienation, Structural Ideology, Neurotypicality, Revolution, and somehow even more!

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Table of contents:

Intro: 4:06.729, Corrections: 4:46.498, The Setup: 10:09.070, Events: 12:13.001, Critical Theory Summary: 19:35.657, Materialism: 21:00.876, Idealism: 24:06.432, Chomsky vs Zizek: 28:00.512, Dialectics: 31:06.255, Dialectical Materialism: 36:49.128, Ontological Case Study: 42:55.002, Events Continued: 46:25.000, The Particular and the Universal: 48:36.065, Freedom: 54:04.679, Morality: 1:00:34.962, Existentialism: 1:03:40.028, Sociology: 1:16:07.278, Socialism: 1:20:41.226, The "C" Word: 1:24:02.290, Commodification: 1:27:41.976, Some Folks You Might Meet: 1:31:41.562, The State: 1:39:32.853, Violence: 1:48:32.395, Ideology: 1:52:19.431, The State Continued: 1:56:12.565, Alienation: 1:59:09.955, Structural Ideology: 2:01:53.580, Anti-Oedipus: 2:04:16.992, Neurotypicality: 2:06:19.322, Revolution: 2:09:35.000, Class: 2:13:33.919, Proto-Synthesis: 2:16:40.012, The Counter-Revolution of 1776: 2:19:46.433, The Wrap Up: 2:24:56.266, Surprise: 2:26:08.991

Works Cited:

Egalitarian Societies: https://www.solidarity.net.au/marxist-theory/the-original-egalitarian-societies-what-human-history-tells-us-about-human-nature/

Reexamining Zizek and Chomsky: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne3uZSQmXzc

Yale's Social Theory Course: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/foundations-of-modern-social-theory-audio/id430657557

Spinoza and Knowledge: http://www.geocities.ws/bignum/spinoza.html

Critical Theory: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/critical-theory/

Historical Materialism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_materialism

Sartre on Freedom: https://www.e-ir.info/2013/01/23/jean-paul-sartre-existential-freedom-and-the-political/

Radical Freedom: https://www.litcharts.com/lit/existentialism-is-a-humanism/themes/radical-freedom-choice-and-responsibility

Chomsky on Human Nature: https://chomsky.info/199808__-2/

Comparing Rousseau and Mill on Liberty: https://www.ukessays.com/essays/philosophy/comparing-rousseau-and-mill-on-liberty-philosophy-essay.php

Positive and Negative Liberty: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberty-positive-negative/

Forms of Feudalism: https://turbulentpriests.group.shef.ac.uk/the-forms-of-feudalism/#_ftnref2

Power and Authority: https://open.lib.umn.edu/sociology/chapter/14-1-power-and-authority/

Hegel's Excess: http://stasisjournal.net/index.php/journal/article/download/30/38/

Negation: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/negation/

Zizek on 'Absolute Knowing': https://socialecologies.wordpress.com/2018/06/18/zizek-on-hegels-absolute-knowing-2/

Hegel's Dialectics: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hegel-dialectics/

Next Episode

The METAfesto: A Plea for Digital Dialecticism

During my foray into grad school, one of my favorite professors asked me to write my own manifesto as an assignment. His only instructions were to include a call to action and to "be bombastic." This is a reading of said assignment. My goal here was to put forward the idea that virtual worlds like the Metaverse are not only unnecessary but actively distract us from actual revolutionary activity. In attempting to explain this idea, the reasoning led me to conclude this idea can be expanded to larger illusions in society that keep us from fully understanding where we stand.