Thread by @eigenrobot

ackshually moving away from possessive language weakens the sacred bond between master and pupil and renders a ritual timeworn relationship archetype sterile and bureaucratic

im 100% unironic

you think Plato wouldve stood for this shit

God I'm still mad about this shit

"We need to move away from possessive language in the family.

My son/daughter --> a juvenile in a domestic unit I participate in

My wife --> a female member of the polycule I attend"

YA DID IT YOU DONT OWN ANYTHING HAPPY NOW

THE YEAR IS 2078

Perfect individual social liberty has been achieved

No one owns anyone else anymore

Everyone sleeps and dies alone

Relationship archetypes are Actually Good

Even when it's an asymmetric relationship

Especially then, probably

These seem to have been almost wholly dissolved. Only the parent/child bond struggles on

Barely

Here are some fun examples

1. Master/pupil.

Old varient: master taught the pupil daily; was involved and invested in his/her success; pupil worked in master's lab/atelier/whatever, shared meals with master, given parting gifts at graduation

Today: relationships are passing, regulated, superficial

When TAships were being handed out my first year as a PhD student, the grad director got us together and warned us that we should put exactly as much time into teaching as would let us get student ratings sufficient to get funding next quarter. Anything more was career suicide.

With their extra time Profs can publish more empty calorie study that wont advance anything other than their tenure review

Be real professors you know this to be true

How many bullshit filler papers have you written

While general trends in society probably have not helped this /thinning/ of student-teacher relationships was probably a natural response to the decline of informal moral codes in the face of Administration and lawsuits

I think about this essay a lot laurakipnis.com/wp-content/upl…

2. Child relationships with nonparental adults generally.

Older people may be able to confirm that these were once common.

Coaches, ministers, aunts and uncles, teachers, scoutmasters, neighbors; others?

Today: kids have thick relationships with their parents and that's about it.

Kids don't have freedom of movement until they get a car (and even that's rarer).

Multigenerational homes are gone

Every formal organization is paranoid about lawsuits

3. Guest/host.

This is super dead in formal terms (although having spent time hosting travelers this year I assure you it is powerful!)

In any case you can view the Greek model as a template for a form of social bonding that we might have had en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenia_(Gr…

Anyway

I am thinking now that relationships with /people/ have been quite generally replaced by relationships with /institutions/

Which frankly is a pretty rotten trade-off

Legal status aside institutions are not human they are entirely alien

And they don't give a fuck about you except inasmuch as you benefit them

And you don't mean anything to them

Think an institution is gonna come to your funeral?

Think an institution is capable of forgiveness?

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swa…

We barely live in a society

And less and less every day

fin.

@AlexGodofsky @sgodofsk @orthonormalist actually only steevens

@lobotobots Super quick read

@Disconcerta @willow_liana @nataliadashan

@nicestnisus @RemindMe_OfThis emailed it to myself ty 😊

@threadreaderapp unroll