Responding to GMO/Vaccination Skepticism

People who can make authoritative claims to knowledge are called experts. Experts are consulted to govern every aspect of our lives, so many people who are anti-GMO or vaccination have some gripe with the establishment or authoritative knowledge. So that’s Foucault and governmentality for you right there. Here’s a reading on the topic.

So here comes the Zizek. Okay, so things aren’t going well in society, wages haven’t kept up with inflation, something just smells foul to the average person. What will replace the faith that people had in institutions? Other things. New statues will come in to replace the old statues. Instead of scrutinizing over the nutrition facts side of the box of cereal, people will move to organic or gluten free stuff in the belief that such things are any better. This idol Zizek calls the Big Other, the total sum of what you tell yourself that will maintain order in your life.

And then finally something of my own observations. It’s getting really bizarre seeing everything getting contested in the public media in all the wrong ways, like a politicalization of everything. Suddenly climate scientists have agendas and can’t be trusted, food scientists and GMO food can’t be trusted, drug companies can’t be trusted (that one is probably true though). People are kind of cherry picking their facts and then putting a reassuring story over everything else they don’t understand. (Like I don’t understand how global warming actually works or how bad it will be but I accept it because it makes sense that after thousands of years of trashing the planet something would go wrong. So perhaps that’s to be expected, no one can know everything, but if nothing’s unbiased anymore common discourse has failed.) And this is happening on both sides of the aisle in America; conservatives are obfuscating economic outrage with moral outrage, and liberals aren’t talking about that a key part of Obamacare was an increase in taxes if you don’t have health insurance and are just dismissing it as Republican nonsense. It’s like, pick your worldview and we’ll hook you up with an appropriate fact sheet to convince you your way of life is the only way to live. The matrix of common ground is shrinking and independent cultural-political ways of life are growing.

All of this makes me think that objectivity is getting harder and harder to sustain, if it was ever possible.

You may be living in the last days of the republic, friend.

Aight, what be Foucauldian? (/r/fuckingphilosophy)

<This was a piece I wrote a long time ago that I’m not too proud of. I’ve edited it.>

Aight, aight, aight. The question you’re asking is ‘What does Foucauldian mean’, and the answer is, something that resembles Foucault’s thought, dumbass. But I ain’t gonna be no playa hater, I’mma let you in on the crunk this guy is on. Shit’s another fuckin’ level, hold on to yo hats. (By the way, you pronounce it ‘foo-coh’)

Foucault’s in the tradition of critical fuckin’ theory, or philosophy to shake some shit up. Makin’ better societies, man! In particular, he analyses what makes society run, and in particular, he’s talkin’ about how ‘normal’ gets made. Society requires order, and order requires norms.

First insight of Foucault is an idea summed by the phrase governmentality: whatever keeps you governed, and in particular, whatever keeps you governed without ever having to resort to force. So the media perpetuates the order of society as much as the police do, as much as even schools, children’s books, hell the shit on the back of the Golden Grahams box. Governmentality can cover big obvious shit like the concept of success, or it can even be small shit, like how you love to pop your pimples.

Next, my man Foucault be on some next level shit about how normal is even made! No matter what, reality is political. Your conception of what normal is is the status quo! And the status quo is what keeps society moving. Everyone has a concept of normal, and this normal assumes that the entire arrangement of society should stay the same. That’s shit’s fucked, yo, especially in a democracy. This means that democracies already have an internal tendency to stay the same. But how is normal made in the first place? You gotta take inside the look of Michel Foucault’s mental asylum…

In Michel Foucault’s Birth of the Asylum, he takes us through history to see how the way we treat our mentally disabled has changed. It used to be back in the dark ages, we would just lock crazy people up and beat the shit out of them if they got out of hand. That was the old days. Now the Enlightenment comes along, and fancy ass White people gonna say “Now say here, ruffian guard, all men are graced with reason and good sense. If only we approach them with open ahhhhms and good sense, we can finally bring them back to Earth.” And that’s it. That establishes a whole new order based on reason, and care for the patient. This new order wants your mind, and wants to bring you back to ‘reality’, that is, the reality of the point of view of the owners of the asylum. And inverse-motherfucking-ly, being insane, knowing no gods nor masters, makes you a political and societal menace because you obey no rules. And yes, mother fucker, he really did just say that the only free people in a mental institution are the insane! Normal is made by people convincing you what normal is. Of course the mental institution always has security guards if you refuse their definition of reality. But reality is by itself political in nature.

Michel Foucault going off of this establishes another concept, biopower. Biopower refers to the new way of governing, which started in the enlightenment that somehow rulers had to take care of their citizens. It is now the job of government to provide a good life for its citizenship, as opposed to the old ways. The old ways ruled by might. The new ways work by uprooting your reality. And yes mother fucker, he’s comparing civilization to a mental asylum! And he’s still killin’ it!

Now I ain’t no Foucault scholar, if some true gangstas would elaborate on this heezy I would be much appreciated, homie.

*TL;DR: My homeboy openin’ errbody’s eyeballs. Reality is inherently political, son! And order will always call rebels insane. Shit dude. Why you ain’t chillin’ with a crazy muhfucka now?