#reification

[letters-to-rosie]

there's something deeply ironic about Vi insisting Silco can't be negotiated with at the council meeting leading to the factory raid, and meanwhile Silco negotiates at first opportunity, as soon as Jayce offers; says a lot about her mindset

[philosophybits]

The more reified the world becomes, the thicker the veil cast upon nature, the more the thinking weaving that veil in its turn claims ideologically to be nature, primordial experience.

Theodor W. Adorno, "Why still philosophy?", Critical Models

[creature-wizard]

So is that really a "higher truth" you've discovered or are you just committing reification again?

[tonreihe]

Rowan Williams, Christ the Heart of Creation

[thraginsufferable]

The is the single clearest and most elegant definition of "reification" that I have ever read.

“reify” is the funniest word to me. a prefix and a suffix doesn’t need a base word to be in a loving and fulfilling relationship

[les-chemins-de-la-verite]

LA CIVILISATION DE LA TECHNOLOGIE : JUSQU’OÙ ALLER ?

Laurent Vivès – Ex Praticien Hospitalier – Interniste – Cancérologue 26 Mars 2021- Temps de lecture : environ 1 Heure D’après Raphaël Llorca, expert pour la Fondation Jean-Jaurès, il y a aujourd’hui une grave crise de confiance envers le progrès et les technologies. Seuls 5% des Français vivraient dans le futur s’ils en avaient le choix contre 65% qui décideraient de vivre dans le passé…

[johnfpederson]

suspended animation (94)

i can't see straight anymore

the ceiling has become one with the floor

the windows coalesce with the doors

they hold no reification or form

contorted images stir slower and slower

they mock me over and over and over

a shadow dancing in the dark

without a rhythm to which it conforms

has found it useless to follow

such an anarchic assemblage of bones

rue slithers closer and closer and closer

and hales me lower and lower and lower

is there no rest for an unadorned man?

is there no place for the simple and plain?

must he meander and drift 'til the end?

is his quietus his only repose?

has not the earth a sanctorum to spare

for one who stays neither here nor there?

or is he destined to hold mal de mer

without a berth to be moored?

can't sell my soul anymore

no bids were cast when they opened the floor

what left is there to fight for?

i have become my own prisoner of war

[articlesofnote]

SCoR - Section II, Ch. 1, Part E "Scope and Modes of Institutionalization"

I. So far we have only addressed essential/universal features of institutionalization, and while addressing all variations is impossible, certain important ones bear discussing.

II. For example: within a given society/collectivity, how is the scope of institutionalization defined? How much behavior is defined within institutions, how much outside of institutions?

III. Answer: Scope depends on generality of "relevance structures" i.e. how widely these are shared among social group members

IV. To understand better, think of an extreme case: total institutionalization means ALL problems are common, all solutions already socially objectivated, all social actions institutionalized. No role specificity, all situations equally relevant to any actor. "Institutional order embraces the totality of social life, which resembles the performance of a complex, highly stylized liturgy."

V. The opposite extreme is a social "order" where only one problem is shared; all other concerns are completely individual.

VI. Between these extremes, we can identify conditions that place actual societies along this spectrum. The main distinguishing condition is the degree of specialization of labor, with the associated specialization of institutions. A second distinguishing condition is the availability of economic surplus.

VII. Institutionalization is not irreversible though institutions do have a tendency to persist. Institutional scope may expand or diminish eg. modern "private life" is notionally less governed by institutions that historically; the concept itself may be a modern one.

VIII. Another question: what is the relationship of institutions to each other?

IX. Outside of extreme case (one institution for all, or no institutions at all), the objective issue of inter-institutional meaning integration arises, which is different from the self-integration of a given institutional order.

X. We can't assume that integration WILL happen, but it DOES happen. How?

XI. One way is that a mythos is imagined which encompasses the disparate institutions into a larger frame, then this mythos is spread.

XII. The mythos so derived would itself be reflective of the existing social order; it would need to be, in order to spread. That is, it has to reflect common problems and common understanding, or nobody would give a shit about it.

XIII. This integrative problem will appear whenever there are multiple institutions, but methods for resolving it vary historically.

XIV. Institutional segmentation can also lead to isolated "subuniverses of meaning"/subcultures disjoint from the wider collective, which hold esoteric knowledge (mathematicians? MCU fans?); this phenomenon becomes more common with increasing economic surplus/division of labor

XV. These subcultures must be "carried" by a particular group; these groups may compete, and when they do, it is likely to be about surplus allocation. Advanced industrial societies have huge surpluses, and a corresponding multiplicity of possibly-competing subcultures.

XVI. A multiplicity of subcultures also means a multiplicity of perspectives on the larger society. This makes it more difficult to establish common/unifying perspectives. Subcultural perspectives will be related to but NOT wholly defined by the material interests of the associated subculture.

XVII. Moreover, body of subcultural knowledge can turn around and act on the group that defined/carries it. "The relationship between knowledge and its social base is a dialectical one."

XVIII. Autonomous subcultures have a double problem: outsiders must be kept out AND insiders must be kept in. There are many techniques to solve each problem, which will be explored later.

XIX. Differential rates of institutional change lead to special problems of legitimation eg. astrology vs. church vs. science are changing at different rates, leading to tensions.

XX. A final question of "reification": to what extent is an institutional order treated as an objective, non-human fact?

XXI. "Reification implies that man is capable of forgetting his own authorship of the world."

XXII. Because a shared social world is already objectivated, reification is a likely next step - an extreme of objectivation where the "world" becomes the producer of meaning, rather than humans. "Man is capable … of producing a reality that denies himself …"

XXIII. Reification seems to be a default mode of experiencing social reality, such that recognizing it as a separate phenomenon happens relatively "late" in individual and social development.

XXIV. Any aspect of a social system may be reified. "Through reification, the world of institutions appears to merge with the world of nature. It becomes necessity and fate, and is lived through as such …"

XXV. Roles may be reified in the same manner as institutions: "I have no choice; as an X, I must do Y"

XXVI. Analysis of reification is an important corrective to default reifying tendencies, and also suggests that special attention be paid to social circumstances that favor DEreification: institutional collapse, first contact between previously segregated societies, social marginality, etc. ----

re: II - I think they're being too strict with definition of institution here: all behavior is structured by SOMETHING, why not call that something an institution?

re: IV - The Borg vs. Deadwood vs THX 1138/"The Machine Stops" - order into chaos, chaos into order

re: V - why "one shared problem" as an extreme, rather than NO shared problems? because with no shared problems, there is no need for any institutionalization at all. ex: Deadwood again, or Earth Abides: the first problem that forces collective action is one of defense i.e. maintaining individual integrity through collective action

re: VI - economic "surplus" is rarely left free for very long i.e. it is 'captured' by institutions quickly, right? "extra" wealth does not remain "extra" forever! but on the other hand, "surplus" is only recognized as such in particular social contexts i.e. petroleum in 1850 vs. 1950

re: VII - I disagree here. Modern action might be structured more by eg. consumption than the medieval Catholic church but it's still structured. Although, maybe "less" structured - I don't actually know. How would you define this?

re: XII - ref "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" - to be insane is to be outside of the prevailing mythos. Do you also need to be "outside the mythos" in a way that is seen to damage the mythos? i.e. in "Zen", Phaedrus lost his mind chasing Quality - but what got him put in the insane asylum was ceasing to take care of himself in even the most basic ways

re: XVI - suggests a perspective where corporations/consumerism are stabilizing forces. Corporations both generate AND absorb much "surplus", meaning less surplus available for subcultural multiplication, meaning less work has to go into reconciling perspectives relative to if these surpluses were "free"; consumerism is an excellent example of a unifying mythos ("you need things, you want things, you should have what you want"). any other mythos would have to be AS universal in order to 'outcompete' consumerism. Don't forget Mumford! "the magnificent bribe" is highly relevant. unrelated point: material "needs" are often socially defined, so perspectives of different subcultures often trace back to "how do we get our needs met by interacting with others"

re: XVIII - "The Age of Innocence" is all about "keeping the insiders in" - then the outside world changes and tramples down the boundaries of the subculture that the book reflects, completely obliterating it (off page) before the final section

re: XXVI - dereification example in paper "Moving off the Map: How Knowledge of Organizational Operations Empowers and Alienates" (Huising) - employees engaged in work to accurately map corporate operations discovered institutional reality dramatically differed from their taken-for-granted understanding of how their own companies worked, causing subsequent behavior for many of these folks to dramatically differ from what we might "expect" in a corporate setting. contrast with example of reification in action: "doomsday preppers" are avatars of consumerist consumption; as portrayed in media, they "prep" by hoarding supplies, rather than eg. planning out how to reproduce productive enterprises in what would necessarily be a different social context

[suprfsat]

[media-research-reified-abyss]

this is your brain on reification - 11042016 - slingshot collective

-Amelia Cat Annalee Brown

[torschlusspanikattack]

Have you never been driving a wholeass 5 miles over the speed limit and still have an asshole tailgating you? Have you no sympathy?

Oh, I hate driving so much, just basically always—the stimuli are overwhelmingly constant and I’m always completely exhausted by the time I get to my destination, so specific types of awful driving experiences kinda just blend into the collective misery of the experience

‘lesson-teaching’ inflexibility still drive me mental tho

[bilbobagginsomebabez]

a gentleman in moscow is so so so so so good when it stays focused on hotel found family and forging community & bonds of protection under an authoritarian state and my personal all time favorite trope of 'man sees unaccompanied minor, decides "i am now accompanying this minor."' and simultaneously laughably bad when it attempts to tackle the politics of the ussr. like. i could not be satisfied with an anti-collectivist narrative set in communist russia unless every piece was ruthlessly researched, but come on man. exceptionally bad work here.

aristocrat's selfish, cruel, regret-filled and image-driven life goes down with the arisocracy at which point he's house arrested in a hotel and finally finds both a family worth protecting and the man in himself willing and able to take on a piece of a collective responsibility. his fundamental mode of interaction changes from the expectation of servitude to an acute sense of exactly how much he needs and is needed by others. however i cannot describe enough that the narrative somehow still fundamentally believes there is no merit whatsoever to anything that even mildly resembles the imagined boogeyman of communism/socialism/collectivism. it's based on a book that makes me want to find the author's email just so I can make sure he knows the cold war is over and his public library is technically "socialist" public policy.

[philosophybits]

In objectification there are no primal realities, but only symbols. The objective spirit is merely a symbolism of spirit. Spirit is realistic while cultural and social life are symbolical. In the object there is never any reality, but only the symbol of reality. The subject alone always has reality.

Nikolai Berdyaev, The Spirit and Reality

[rei-is-hiding]

[claudiablogger]

ppl will call a blond man anything but what he is.

[labgrownmeat]

idk about you all but I wasn't "socialized male" i was """""socialized""""' (🤮) a repressed woman who watched her body and autonomy taken away from her for 2 decades