TOTW: Book or Brick?

brick book!

Uncritical actions often betray the very ideas that inspired them. On the other hand, overly critical thought often leads to inaction. When is it time to put down the brick and pick up the book? When is it time to put down the book and pick up the brick?

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Throw brick first, ask questions later? Ask question all the time while doing everything including throwing bricks?

These questions are contingent, so there's no one answer across the board for all occasions. When considering consequences, one can think of how some people get arrested for possession of literature while others get away with graffiti and vandalism all the time, this depends on the country you're in and how you go about it and many other variables.

If risk analysis is not what's keeping people from acting, but thinking that the action will not amount to much or bring much joy, then maybe that is the time to research to come up with something that promises appealing results.

If one is not carrying out an action for its own sake, but to achieve a desired result, upon learning that one thing does not lead to a desired result, one might forgo carrying out that action with no regrets. But people get stuck in ruts and comfort and if they get in the habit of not doing activism, they may drag their feet to do so even if it would benefit them to carry out a plot. Conversely, if someone is in the habit of doing activism, they may keep on doing that even when its no longer beneficial.

What was the biggest brick that was ever thrown and was it worth it? Did they get their reward?

Another thing is one has to throw a lot of bricks to get really good at aiming. So maybe, keep throwing bricks so that you're good at throwing them for when the right time to do so comes around and nail it when it counts? Reading doesn't help the throwing arm but it can give you ideas of where to aim them, but you can also get ideas walking around town and those are ones that you can act on, not some hypothetical ones based on some other place different to your context.

If you read books on you computer then it becomes a brick you can throw that brick.

"Uncritical actions often betray the very ideas that inspired them. "

Assertion.

"On the other hand, overly critical thought often leads to inaction."

Assertion.

"When is it time to put down the brick and pick up the book? When is it time to put down the book and pick up the brick?"

Whenever. Time isn't real. Do what you want when you feel like it or don't. No need to ask for permission or confirmation.

Your critical detachment from reality is truly remarkable. Just wait until you stumble across semiotics and get to spoil language for people!

I was a lecturer of semiotics. Expand on your assertion that my critique is detached from "reality." Or your assertion that semiotics spoils language.

well ... you climbed waaay out on to a slender limb of the tree with "time isn't real". i mean, i like to eat shrooms and wander the back alleys of my brain as much as the next hobo but ... materialist analysis might be better for deciding when and how to effectively make total destroy, should someone hypothetically want to?

like, i've watched shroomy hippies decide to pick fights with cops while also insisting silly fun things like time isn't real. it's a bad mix. ends badly. bad times were had inside of linear time. the flat circle and the eternal recurrence of one sided ass kickings.

Headline: Old lumpy yells at cloud.

"... you climbed waaay out on to a slender limb of the tree with "time isn't real"...."

You may enjoy learning a little bit about signifier and signified—word and concept—before you go on dreaming up woo woo 'shroom stories or insist that materialist analysis is "better" for anything or anything at all but the obedient communist automatin in you regurgitating what some authoritarian shoved into your sponge brain. At least when discussing concepts such as semiotics, reality, and time. Lest ye end up like Willy Gilly dazzling his tween robot audience for the nth time that he "was there!" during the early 00s when he penned the St. Paul Principles of Human/Android Love Making Laws because he was the only second generation anarchist in the dojo.

*automaton

However, "automatin" is indeed interesting typo because of the "i" (in this case: you) in place of the "o" of -matos meaning "thinking, animated, willing" which no materialist actually does.

that's funny how you keep trying to equivocate materialism with leftist ideology, did jordan peterson tell you that's how cultural marxism works? or was it somebody slightly more skillful with their bullshit?

As a self-described anarchist-communist, and one who always defends and just referenced "cultural Marxism", you must be specifically referencing dialectical materialism in your previous "materialist analysis" assertion, correct?. If not then enlighten us. Are perhaps trapped in a different strand of the multiverse where it's completely unrelated? Additionally, I don't really know who Jordan Peterson is except for some pop culture personality that was thrashed by that old goof, Noam Chomsky. So, no, that was not where I learned about cultural Marxism.

Let's not get lost in your misdirection. We were discussing signs, reality, and time. Do continue.

it's not a "misdirection" to point out that you're just strawmanning what you might genuinely believe i'm saying.

no, I didn't mean dialectical materialism because i'm not a marxist and also because that's just a relatively recent offshoot of materialism anyway, mostly limited to a critique of capitalism which wouldn't have anything to do with what we were talking about.

all of this, you could learn in about 10 minutes on wikipedia, if you weren't just trying to win dopamine points for your brain on the internet. no discussion amounts to much until we can at least define terms. i don't have much faith in your goodwill at this point sweetheart, so how much energy should I spend here? hmmm? i have a life you know.

I'm not sure why my reply was removed but yours remains. Apparently it's good to be a known personality on this site because when others hurt your feelings your pals can just delete them.

It was a misdirection and you were the one doing the strawmanning by bring in factors that had nothing to do with the original discussion of time, signs, and reality. I am glad you were not referencing dialectical materialism in your assertion that materialist analysis would be better. As a Hegelian you should appreciate the excellent scholarship on semiotics that covers this topic. But not wanting to anger the gods of conversation here or challenge the cronyism, I'll stop replying and just say, good job, lumpy.

Touché

throw brick when they’re not looking, pick up book when they’re looking as alibi

More of a book guy, myself. Fully support the predominantly brick guys, though.

you can’t eat bricks nor books, pick up the gardening shovel instead and work towards food autonomy

Hey dude, after food autonomy there's poo autonomy, and a large book can wipe a thousand asses, mmmkay!

people will be shitting bricks when there’s food scarcity

someone'll try to clear your garden and build a condo if you don't have bricks to defend it

"Muh property"

When cops are storming your block or bombs are falling, the time for study is over and the time for immediate direct action is upon you.

When things slow down this changes. Maybe you have found safety where your enemies cannot find you or dare not pursue. Maybe you just won one and your foes have retreated to lick their wounds.like the Trumpers did in early 2021. That is not the time to demobilize entirely, to put the whole struggle aside. That is when you put down the brick, pick up the books, and pick up your tools to maintain hard-used equipment. Down time is rest, recuperation, base building, and maintainance time. Neglect any of these and you get trouble the next time things go hot.

book or brick? how about become a survivalist militia community gaming prepper or suicide? get informed on survival and practice it or suffer the consequences of not being prepared

Look, Tom Nomad concludes in I think Army of Ghosts that we should be doing theory not action. But my interpretation of what he was saying there is that we practice theory in order to act effectively. Theory is not an armchair pursuit. It is not "extra" or "optional." It is the real way to behave effectively in the world. Whatever desire or passion you are trying to achieve, whatever you are disrupting or creating, it is extremely helpful to be able to predict accurately the effects of your actions. So that you get what you want. The point of doing theory is to get good at it, to get skillful and faster at it, so that the time interval between identifying a desire and getting what you want can decrease. In fact, taken to the ultimate, theorizing in real time is a kind of omniscience about the effects one's actions will have. Again, you want to be very quick at theorizing whilst acting. Now, one real type of potential in this is that we can outwit systems (which always have limitations, particularly in their communication and intelligence operationalization/actionability functions). To stick with Tom Nomad's discussion of policing, if you can accurately predict (theorize) the effects of your actions in real time, you can act fast than and outwit organized groups of police. In theory.

knowing tom nomad's writing, i don't think it's a means to do anything faster, if at all. if anything it serves to make things as drawn out as possible

i always read tom as somebody trying to frantically bail out the anarchy boat where the water is weird assumptions that most of us are making for no apparent reason, other than we saw other weirdos in black also behaving this way.

like for example, insisting on combative politics but hardly ever building any infrastructure that could support it because that makes us leftists or whatever. you know, total non sequiturs like that.

i would say, otoh, that theory is everywhere, whether we pay attention to it or not. that those who most rail against theory (an/dor think least about it), are the most theory-heavy, as they are owned by it, rather than thinking things through for themselves.

i think reading the question in a way that perpetuates the false divide between ideas and action is unfortunate. maybe intention would've been a less distracting word. but we're all pretty distractable.

In the end the bricks and/or books were the friends we made along the way.

Bricks and books are ok, but it is the mortar of emotional reciprocity and comprehension which ultimately leaves a lasting loyalty to a relationship.

exactly! which is why i casually hate you forever but like, in a bored way. that's exactly right! reciprocity and comprehension

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