What else do you like?

[Philoctetes]

Generally speaking, of the philosophical or theoretical variety.  That said, I'm also interested in how anarchism affects the thought processes and philosophies of famous writers/thinkers like the beats and Edward Abbey.  In a more indirect sense I'm also interested in how it can very basic anarchist theory can be applied to get people thinking in a moral, rather than legalistic sense.  For example, focusing on whether something is wrong rather than whether it is illegal, and figuring out why the two do or do not intersect. (E.g. why is something wrong legal, or why is something that's harmless illegal?)

I suppose what I mean is how do you understand the concept. There are some very different ways to define it, and being a political scientist, I am attached to that meaning.

Edit: Another thing I find fascinating is 1990s cyberpunk.

[Geo Dude]

I suppose what I mean is how do you understand the concept. There are some very different ways to define it, and being a political scientist, I am attached to that meaning.

Edit: Another thing I find fascinating is 1990s cyberpunk.

Ah!  I view the concept of anarchism through the lens of a political system aimed at eliminating the state, or more specifically, rulers and focusing on a collective society without rulers.  I do not yet know enough about the subject (as you may have noticed, I have a lot of interests to split my time between!) to say much more than that.

[knight66]

History: Especially ancient, Roman and Egyptian. I have concentrated on patches. I am especially interested in how the individual can affect the world around them. But then I got into how inflation affected the ancient world, how economics drove changes. I read vast numbers of the Greek and Roman historians. I was fascinated to learn through that how truth and fact become such moveable feasts and latterly how tenuously many archaeological findings cling to any kind of respectable thinking.

Travel: I have a lot of back problems and these are getting worse. My wife and I downsized the house to release income to travel as much as we could for as long as i am able. Not exactly adventurous travel though. Most of it is to the obvious places and I enjoy writing about it, photographing what I see and blogging the results.

Photography: This from a non academic standpoint. I don't have any fancy equipment. For me it is about composition and colour and about the unique view, the partiality, the latent lies that any collection of photographs of one place tell.

Counselling: I practiced for over 25 years, but not lately. That required study for qualifications, now lapsed, and I enjoyed gaining insight into how we tick.

Management: I used to teach management and management theory. It became a chimera where a respected set of tools would suddenly be dumped for the latest fad. But I still deploy a lot of different management techniques in the jobs I now do.

Nudge theory: I was instrumental in introducing this into a part of the public sector, I have written about it and taught it.

Then there is looking at art, eating loads of food and generally nourishing friends and colleagues.

Nothing much on the active side. Watching Roger Moore raise his eyebrows is my kind of exercise.

Mike

[Philoctetes]

Ah!  I view the concept of anarchism through the lens of a political system aimed at eliminating the state, or more specifically, rulers and focusing on a collective society without rulers.  I do not yet know enough about the subject (as you may have noticed, I have a lot of interests to split my time between!) to say much more than that.

I see. I don't know if I'd call that a political system, but that's not really the type of anarchy that I focus on.

History:But then I got into how inflation affected the ancient world, how economics drove changes.

Nudge theory: I was instrumental in introducing this into a part of the public sector, I have written about it and taught it.

I like that view of history. That's definitely a different way to look at things.

What's nudge theory?

[knight66]

Nudge theory is a method of influencing people to make what are likely to be good decisions for them and for society. It leaves them with all the same choices, but uses aspects of the theories to nudge them in a specific direction. It is used in the public and private sector, it can be an effective and cheap method of social engineering.

Example: we want school kids to eat more healthily, in the canteen we remove chocolate from the eyeline and replace it with fruit. The chocolate is available, but the nudge means more fruit sales and less consumption of sweets. That is a basic example and to an extent it involves the kind of techniques that are present in advertising, but instead of parting people from their money, it builds choice architecture.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-16943729

Mike

[Geo Dude]

I see. I don't know if I'd call that a political system, but that's not really the type of anarchy that I focus on.

What type of anarchy do you focus on?

[SonicMan46]

Well, coming in late to this thread - away in the mountains for a few days - my interests (many shared by my spouse) to mention some in no particular order include:

Travel - more local now (i.e. car trips) but more diverse & international in our earlier (and in my academic) years.

Wine - history & consumption - - dates to the late 1960s; now visiting a lot of NC wineries (was at one today).

Woodworking - intermediate skills w/ a LOT of tools/machines (maybe better described as Tool Collecting!).

Art Collecting - since the late '60s; house is FULL of art of all sorts (some of which I've posted in the GMG forum over the years).

Music - history & listening (all styles pre-1960/70s); Susan is the musician & singer!

Computers/Electronics - have always loved these gadgets; read a lot; subscribe to a handful of mags, etc.

History - mainly American (esp. wars, Revolution & Civil, living where we do) & European; just been reading this stuff for years!

Reading - now non-fiction typically related to the topics listed.

Paleoanthropology - Darwin in my teens; anthropology undergrad courses; reading human evolution books for decades.

Golf - use to play; now mainly watch - going to the BMV Championship w/ my son, early September @ Crooked Stick.

I'm sure a few more will come to mind; of course, my career as an academic radiologist/research/teaching/writing cannot be ignored, but that was my JOB, now recently retired - Dave 

[Philoctetes]

Nudge theory is a method of influencing people to make what are likely to be good decisions for them and for society. It leaves them with all the same choices, but uses aspects of the theories to nudge them in a specific direction. It is used in the public and private sector, it can be an effective and cheap method of social engineering.

Example: we want school kids to eat more healthily, in the canteen we remove chocolate from the eyeline and replace it with fruit. The chocolate is available, but the nudge means more fruit sales and less consumption of sweets. That is a basic example and to an extent it involves the kind of techniques that are present in advertising, but instead of parting people from their money, it builds choice architecture.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-16943729

Mike

That's fucking wicked, dude. Thanks for sharing. 

What type of anarchy do you focus on?

I focus on anarchy from a political theory perspective. Anarchy, in political science, is not a system in which there are no governments, in fact there are more governments in an anarchic system than any other. What anarchy means in political science is that there is no overarching authority, so that nations must utilize self-help because there is no one else to depend on. It's essentially a realist construction, so it has more play in the United States than anywhere else, but I feel it displays the world's working picture fairly well.

[Philoctetes]

Computers/Electronics - have always loved these gadgets; read a lot; subscribe to a handful of mags, etc.

Are you one of those people who has to have the latest gadget when it comes out?

[SonicMan46]

Are you one of those people who has to have the latest gadget when it comes out?

Hi Philo - no, I tend to be more cautious; never like to get an X.0 version of a software program, typically like to wait for the bug-improved update.  Also, rarely buy into the newest released hardware - in fact, just purchased my first Blu-ray player & HDTV late last year (would have done it earlier but just lazy, I guess) - BOTTOM LINE, I like to wait a little to see what the 'early' problems may be?  Dave

[Philoctetes]

Hi Philo - no, I tend to be more cautious; never like to get an X.0 version of a software program, typically like to wait for the bug-improved update.  Also, rarely buy into the newest released hardware - in fact, just purchased my first Blu-ray player & HDTV late last year (would have done it earlier but just lazy, I guess) - BOTTOM LINE, I like to wait a little to see what the 'early' problems may be?  Dave

Very sound.  I was hoping you weren't one of those Apple cultists. 

[offbeat]

Apart from the passion for classical music (All types but definite bias to the 20th century) im kinda crazy about all the arts
With art itself love the impressionists and the so called cult of beauty (Rossetti Waterhouse Berne Jones etc) also like to dabble into modern and contemporary art even though cant pretend to understand all of it 
Also love literature from Thomas Hardy and John Cowper Powys right up to the modern novelists Ian McEwan and plenty others
Cinema and Theatre are also a great passion and such directors such as Bergman O'Neill Haneke and Mike Leigh.
For guilty pleasures and in complete contrast like On the Buses and The Professionals
I think whatever interest it should be done with a passion 

[ibanezmonster]

I was drawn to Native American culture when finding out that my great grandmother was full-blooded Cherokee.

I have a feeling a large percentage of us in the south have some sort of Cherokee ancestry...

They value the simple things in life and this always appealed to me and I've tried to uphold this in my own life in some way or another.

Too bad I didn't inherit that.

[Geo Dude]

I have a feeling a large percentage of us in the south have some sort of Cherokee ancestry...

My great, great grandmother is full-blooded Cherokee, for what it's worth.

[ibanezmonster]

My great, great grandmother is full-blooded Cherokee, for what it's worth.

Yep, that's what I mean. And the reason why all of these ancestors tend to be women:

Wikipedia:

Intermarriage with European Americans had occurred before the 19th century, generally between male traders and high-status Cherokee women whose families were seeking joint alliances. Some of the mixed-race sons of such high-status women became leading chiefs among the Cherokee; they gained hereditary leadership from their mothers' clans and used what they learned of American culture to benefit their people.
It was unusual for a Cherokee man to marry a European-American woman. The children of such a union were disadvantaged, as they would not belong to the nation. They would be born outside the clans and traditionally were not considered Cherokee citizens. This is because of the matrilineal aspect of Cherokee culture.

Interesting! I know very little about them, though, overall, besides Sequoyah and the writing system. Might make for an interesting study...

[Brian]

What do you meant by great 'entertainments?'

If you have a chance, seek out a little essay by Michael Chabon called "Trickster in a Suit of Lights." If you don't, the basic gist is that today "entertainment" is perceived by lit-crit and cultural elite as a contemptible pursuit for the masses - as in the essay's title metaphor. Basically we think that a work of art that's "entertaining" must in some way be junk food or empty calories - that for something to be really Important or Serious it can't also be sheerly enjoyable or else it's suspicious. And Chabon hates that - his essay's a sort of straw-mannish diatribe against that point of view. His career lives it out too - he's written a novel about comic books and a hard-boiled alt-history noir thriller, he published a Sherlock Holmes fanfiction novella, and he did some script doctoring on John Carter.

So then: what's entertainment and what's nourishment? Is the difference worth heeding and taking sides over? I'm starting to think I could write a good undergrad paper about Chabon's "entertainment" versus the Entertainment in Infinite Jest. Too bad I'm not an undergrad anymore.

    Does anyone remember an old PBS series called Connections?

With James Burke?? I was more fascinated by the wonderful weirdness of James Burke himself, to be honest. Still the all-time #1 Alfred Brendel lookalike.

[Philoctetes]

If you have a chance, seek out a little essay by Michael Chabon called "Trickster in a Suit of Lights." If you don't, the basic gist is that today "entertainment" is perceived by lit-crit and cultural elite as a contemptible pursuit for the masses - as in the essay's title metaphor. Basically we think that a work of art that's "entertaining" must in some way be junk food or empty calories - that for something to be really Important or Serious it can't also be sheerly enjoyable or else it's suspicious. And Chabon hates that - his essay's a sort of straw-mannish diatribe against that point of view. His career lives it out too - he's written a novel about comic books and a hard-boiled alt-history noir thriller, he published a Sherlock Holmes fanfiction novella, and he did some script doctoring on John Carter.

So then: what's entertainment and what's nourishment? Is the difference worth heeding and taking sides over? I'm starting to think I could write a good undergrad paper about Chabon's "entertainment" versus the Entertainment in Infinite Jest. Too bad I'm not an undergrad anymore.

Thanks for that, Brian. I'll definitely keep an eye out for that essay.

[Philoctetes]

Another thing I've been digging recently is a more personal connection with some of my professors through Facebook and Twitter. It's very interesting to see how they act in these 'wild west' forms, and I think it gives a view into some of their real interests, which are sometimes difficult to bring into the classroom. As an example, my one professor's love of the banjo.

[madaboutmahler]

- beautiful landscapes
- good food, and cooking
- spending time with friends
- comedy
- particular television series
- history, especially 20th century history
- languages
- a girl whose name begins with H

[Philoctetes]

- particular television series

Which?