A few paradoxes or philosophical ironies I have observed on this Bird Street:
1. Idiots have devised effective strategy to get under the skin of intelligent people:
E.g: Class A says he will unseat Tinubu in Lagos for N100m. Class B, gets riled up. Ought we not to just waka pass?

Time once again to emphasize the differences between totalitarianism, authoritarianism, and fascism. They're often used as synonyms but they are different, although they do tend to lead to each other. Order one, and the other two are usually delivered soon enough.

Totalitarianism is best understood as the politicization of everything. Every facet of life is infused with political meaning... and subjected to political control. There is little room for privacy or individualism. Every word and deed is seen as a political action.

Totalitarianism does *not* require authoritarian government, although it usually leads to such. You can be totalitarian without having any real government power at all, enforcing your political will through mob actions and corporate power. Examples from recent history abound.

Totalitarianism is the easiest of the three deadly "isms" to slide into, because it can easily be disguised with claims of its good intentions. Totalitarians usually claim to be motivated by the Greater Good. They claim to represent the interests of sympathetic victims.

Totalitarians claim that society is unjust and must be corrected by force. Before they gain the power to become authoritarians, they often assert the right to use force outside of the law because the government is corrupt or serves the interests of their ideological enemies.

8 rules the top play by that those at the bottom should adopt.

— Thread
(requested by followers)

1. Leverage

Most poor people don't leverage. Trying to get everything done yourself will limit you to only how much you can do.

Get more hands working for you, and find a way to pay or show them what's in it for them.

2. Trust

When doing business, poor people would require collateral from strangers, but excuse those close to them because they *trust* them.

That's how you get scammed.

The unspoken rule is to know your safety net whenever you're not taking collateral.

Never need to trust.

3. Morality

Never seen a very successful businessman say "This is not a good thing, it's evil."

It's either good for business or bad for business. Its either effective or ineffective.

Morality will only limit you.

4. Reciprocity

Expecting someone to help you because you helped them in the past is ludicrous.

If you're no longer useful to them, people have no reason to help you.

"Whenever you see water flowing upstream it means someone it repaying a kindness."

— 48 Laws Of Power

@JohnCoy29071630 Some people have decided that Wings is against independence, because they don't like what he is now saying. I decided to find out for myself. The first thing that bothered me re SNP was what happened in AS trial.
I hadn't followed the trial at the time.

As time went on I saw more and more posts re the un-fairness of the trial. These were from people I had followed for years. I didn't read Wings much at that time.
Everything was going smoothly for the SNP until these posts started appearing. I began to question what was going on?

This seemed a big conspiratory at first, until I found out that some complainers were in a Watsapp group with someone who worked in the ScotGov, close to NS. This raised the hair on my neck, considering they were not supposed to know each other due to them being anonymous.

I began looking at the links and paperwork that were being tweeted by ppl I followed for years. I didn't like what I was seeing and reading. The ScotGov appeared to be blocking the publication of Alex Salmond's trial paperwork. I had always thought of SNP as open & transparent!

I was shocked by what I was seeing. I was seeing leaked documents, etc. When I started questioning this on twitter, people were posting more links to different documents. I was now getting all different links from different people. I started reading as much as I could.

1) Dreaded thread on why I think the response to postcritique is so vitriolic. Short version: Because literary studies is a discipline in search of an application.

2) Before I go on, I'll say from the outset that many in lit studies explicitly reject the idea that the field *should* have an application. My opinion is that's fine if you want to do book clubs, but if you want an institution you can't ignore that difficult issue. But anyway...

3) The evidence by this point is overwhelming that when lit scholars talk about 'method' we're actually just talking about ourselves: 'ways of reading,' 'how we argue,' 'phenomenology of reading,' etc. etc.

4) David Kurnick nicely illustrates this phenomenon:

5) But none of this is method discussion. Talking about ourselves, how we approach our objects of study, our motives and objectives, our commitments, etc. would be the *beginning* of a method convo in every other discipline. In lit studies it's the *end*, or the whole convo!