Zizek on self-discipline

dude how many layers of irony are you on

I'm on 5 tabs of acid and I still can process the amount of faggotry that I'm dealing with here.

You have no idea what a meme is.

Values are a spook.

wew laddie, that's a spicy meme to be sure

my man

That word is stupid. This is why your board sucks.

Anyone who doesn't accept this a pathetic dyel liberal faggot. The left should return to the older Ancient Greek ideals of a good life, as espoused by Plato and Epicurus (a balance between the two would be the best)

Life is struggle, and being a revolutionary means a lifetime of struggle and discipline.

All men can be molded, the problem is to what you can mold them to?

Our answer is much more complex and challenging than the typical lazy Holla Forumsfaggot that thinks he is part of the "master race" solely because he is white, while at the same time he is a fat slob that hasn't done anything worthwhile in his life.

Reactionary pls

These ideals like that of Plato are not reactionary at all. They were and still are emancipatory.

Of course Plato doesn't touch the elements Marx touches with regards to revolution, but he does question and try to find an answer what ideals and values an emancipated society should have.

Of course when I say "return", I don't mean to try and remake ancient greece or Platos republic, but draw more ideas from them since the modern new-left has totally fallen into the ideological trap, that "anything goes" and "my rights of expression and action should be limitless", that's not freedom or leftism, that's just immaturity.

So, is Zizek basically saying here that we need more people willing to give themselves up, as well as their lives, for the cause of the revolution?

Been reading Foucault how for the Greeks ethics was a practice of freedom. Self-care and self-discipline make a harmonious community. I guess it makes some sense. At least there was respect for philosophy and shit amongst the Greek ruling class.

Also, I am reading Badiou's translation of the Republic (never read the Republic either, doing some side-by-side reading) and it is FANTASTIC.

Yes, the pure sophistry that Plato himself argues against. And indeed we don't need a "revival" but something analogous. So to say, we will loot what we like of the Greeks from the ideological supermarket.

p. much

Sure but this is mostly a way for OP to act like a massive moralfag.

wew

So in other words, the "revolution" becomes the main ideology, and dying for the revolution would replace dying for one's religion.
That's still fucking stupid.
And "stateless" marxists will still try to advocate for a state. Fuck off.

Zizek is always right

"Discipline" is seen as being a Right Wing tendency today but that is particularly because the Neoliberal Democratic model has advocated "be yourself, do what you want, express yourself" rhetoric as being the end all be all of existence for the last ten years, and to make sure it took had to filter history and philosophy so that discipline was seen as something only Nazis or Newt Gingrich were interested in.

IMO it's actually quite the contrary. The worst elements of the Right today are the ones who are for "freedom" and "individual liberty". The hilarious contradiction of the Neoliberal project is that, in making people forget that discipline is a principal that transcends Left-Right perspectives it has made indulgence and excess the thing to be subverted through a self-disciplined masses, rather than the other way around.

What is important to remember here though isn't that this means the masses will autonomously subscribe to a self-disciplined socialist march. What I mean is two things; first, that because of the emphasis of discipline being a "Right wing" thing but also becoming the only obvious way to subvert the current order, the Far Right elements currently on the rise in both America and Europe have a far easier time converting people to their groups than whatever remains of the Left on either continent and secondly that this means a vanguard (not necessarily in the Leninist sense but nonetheless) is more important than ever.

tl;dr autonomism is dead pls read Zizek

Zizek's review of 300 was an example of him at his worst: nonsensical, pomo contrarianism. "Everyone, including the right-wing writer of the story, says that it ish one way, but really it ish quite the opposite and sho on."

There is a huge difference between actual discipline (responsible and directed self-ownership) and the "discipline" of soldiers or factory workers (complete self-surrender and loss of responsibility except to the extent that one performs their task to specification). The first one is inherently anarchist and egoist, the second one is the sort of bootlicking, spineless idiocy glorified in the 300 and by the capitalist ideology.

lol

Zizek's review directly contradicts the stated intentions of the writer (Frank Miller made no bones about Sparta being analogous to America in interviews, and is quite obsessed with idea of Eastern Hordes in need of slaughtering). It is analogous to claiming Triumph of the Will and Birth of a Nation are REALLY about the need for racial equality, and is not possible outside of the pomo malaise of Barthes, etc.
Hell, even by the standards of postmodernism, it is a bad reading that you might expect from a Freshman English student.

Which is entirely the point of the review, Zizek shows that behind the ideological veneer, the artificiality of the movie and it's propagation of the values like discipline, sacrifice, comradeship, etc. is what makes it work.

There is nothing wrong with those values,in fact quite the opposite they are values that should be embraced, that's why Hollywood tries to make them material in the artificiality of movies and market them.

How many of you faggots lift anyway?

That's what I thought, don't try to pretend you pussies are ready for the Revolution and have discipline when you're not even in shape and don't do shit of your life.

Why am I not surprised that it's a Marxist that turns to reactionary lines of thought to try to find reasons to complain. The fact he decided to pick military history just happens to show how full of shit he is because of how glaring the errors are.

No, discipline is a resource and nothing more. It does not magically move things along. The only thing that matters is how many resources you have and how well you use them. If you have more resources and you use them to a sum total of more effect than your opponent, you are by definition winning. 300 iron will superhuman Spartans never took on huge armies of weak Persians. They did not win in some Battle of Wills. The Spartans' discipline made a difference, yes, because they knew how to use it. Had they been extremely disciplined but used it improperly, the battle of Thermopylae would have been an irrelevant footnote in history. They also conveniently always leave out the thousand Athenians, warriors second only to the Spartans themselves, both considered among the best military strategists and tacticians in the region. The advantage that the Spartans had in training and discipline is that they were able to form a line that did not break. If you don't recognize how important this is, ask literally any military historian what happened to medieval and ancient armies whose lines broke. The Greeks had the significant advantage that they took up a position where only a few men could pass by side by side at a time. This meant that the Persians, numerically strong though they were, were completely unable to utilize their resources effectively. This had nothing to do with some Iron Will Discipline versus Pathetic Hedonism and everything to do with the capacity of the military strategists.

Want to see what happens when you have something similar without the Legendary Supermen mythology surrounding one of the combatants? Take a look at Agincourt. 6-9000 English fought against a much better equipped army of up to 36,000 French, many of them wealthy and powerful knights, at a rather similar narrow pass and won. Why did they win? Because they used what they had far more effectively. They forced the French to advance through thick, deep mud and shot at the knights when they sank in up to their knees from the weight of their plate armor. Any French who got close died to light infantry because they were so exhausted from just walking over the field. The French squandered what they had, the English took every advantage they had. The English won with barely over a hundred losses, the French lost literally thousands of men. A loss ratio of potentially 100:1. And yet where are these stories of English Super Warriors?

Want to see what happens when idiots who believe their Übermensch mentality try going to war with people who can manage resources better? Then we have the Ostheer trying to push into Soviet Russia. Yeah, they pushed deep into the USSR, on a surprise attack when they knew the Soviets were not yet modernized in either their military capability nor their industrial capacity. They also might have won if they hadn't squandered their surprise and summer attack by waiting to suppress the Greek insurgency that the Italians couldn't handle, despite it being basically civilians whacking them with sticks. And even with all that, the Germans were stopped because the Russians had updated their concept of war. They were fighting on an entirely different scale from the Germans, and once they had blunted the tip of the Ostheer's spear, they fucking ruined them at every level. They did not do this through being super human, they did it by utilizing everything they had, by putting up more than the Germans would or possibly even could, and they used it far more effectively because they weren't blinkered by idiotic ideas like this one. They used what was useful ( T-34) and they used it a lot. They rapidly cut anything that was a liability. That doesn't take a great Force of Will, that requires people to look at what they have and how they can use it.

Just about any conflict is the same. Political struggles are no different. People who can put more forward and do it better, win. There's an element of truth to the idea that we need to get into shape, but saying that it's our biggest problem is outright bullshit and he should be ashamed for that. Tell me, what resources does the left have to coordinate? Right now, we can't even get coordinated because we're all perfectly aware that any attempt at coordinating is likely to be infiltrated and then busted by government forces, by one way or another. Most of us barely know even HOW to access the resources we have. Want to know why Bernie is doing so well, and has managed to but a breath of air into the dying Left? Here's two choices:

Bernie is an Übermench of Iron Will
Bernie is capable of coordinating resources in a way most of us haven't had access to for one reason or another

For a bunch of people who can show how the bourgeoisie manage to utilize their resources to grow their resources and keep winning a class war, you're startlingly retarded when it comes to realizing that this very same process applies to literally every fucking conflict. I sometimes wonder if you only realize that because it was written down by Infallible Saint Marx.

Now if you want to take a serious assessment of the left, then it's time we start looking at what the Left has to use for itself. If you're more interested in masturbating to how anime has made you realize you need the Inner Light of Iron Will to advance, then there's a different board for you. >>>Holla Forums

I disagree with you. Discipline is something we all should strive to perfect. How else would you expect the left to carry out actions? Just sitting their watching anime all day is not going to make you useful to the left; however, learning something new will make you useful. Even learning something like mathematics or physics will make one more useful due to it training your mind to think at a higher capacity. Stagnating all day watching passive entertainment is not going to make you better or stronger. If you want to change something then make sure you build enough self discipline to improve yourself whilst building up your executive prowess.

I do bodyweight exercises from the getting fit with /rojava/ thread

See, I made a few points that I think you missed.

I argue full well that discipline is a useful tool and that in some respects necessary for the use of many others .

However, saying that discipline is the sole reason for the failure of the left is pure reactionary drivel. If you want to see what happens when discipline meets a lack of resources against other tools, look at the Boxer Rebellion.

I realize that there is a problem with people sitting passively, but here is the sticking point: To what are we getting disciplined, trained, and ready to sacrifice for? Most of us can barely imagine the idea of a leftist protest getting into a scuffle, let alone a revolt. I doubt most of us know more than a handful of other leftists. Things might finally change because our material circumstances may have finally changed. There are people who are angry and looking for something to help them escape from what seems like a cycle of lies from the neoliberal establishment in a way they haven't for decades. It IS the time to strike, to get off our couches and go out there, but we need to understand what it means to do that and why we are doing it.

I disagree that discipline is an inherently "fascist" concept and as such should be disregarded. We leftists should strive to improve ourselves just as we seek to improve the world.

Also as the movie 300 is hardly military history I would not really think that Zizek is taking the ideas of discipline to the fascist/"Übermench" kind of levels. I find it very disingenuous to try and claim this.

I thought self-sacrificing values were what led to the socjus movement.

read zizek

it's in my personal interest to ensure the success of the revolution

then it's not a self-sacrifice, is it?

We /stoicleftypol/ now?

As I'm not a liberal I don't think I'm really sacrificing anything by practicing self-discipline, tbh.

It has been the fashion since it was discovered here that bakunin praised, Xeno I think it was

Try reading the OPs before replying to threads

Every social order or system requires sacrifice at some point, mate. Dying for religion is not different than dying for your country, which is also not different than serving the military and risking death in a liberal, secular, supposedly post-ideological system. As long as there's a need for a system to be protected by strength - and there will be as long as class societies exist - there will be people dying in order to maintain it.

The difference between this sacrifice and that involved in egalitarian movements is one between structure and emancipation. People should be ready to die for the "revolution" not because the social order we push per se demands it, but because this new social order would be fought against with violence by the old order, as history proves. The point of being ready to make any sacrifice for a revolution is a reflection of the fact that they'd be ready to take any measure to stop it. If we didn't follow this logic, then our "emancipation" would stop as soon as violence is used against it.

People died to stop slavery, people died to get labour rights, and people died to get civil rights. If you can't see a difference between that and religious sacrifice then you're a fucking moron

That doesn't mean anything. The laws of resistance are universal, regardless of what conflicts they're seen on. Someone can easily make a movie about early christians or religious peasant movements and there would be similarities with revolutionary movements today.

Discipline as a means to an end, as a culture of resistance, that's the point. He's not telling you to join the army.

I don't think anyone here is suggesting we're ready for the fucking eastern front

You should strive to improve your reading comprehension.

Nazis appropriated collectivism from socialism - hence "national socialism" - the pain thing being that they replaced class with race. He is 100% right that associating this shit with fascism is something people need to shake free of.