User:RD/9k/ruining the word jihad (Q618)
Main entry
ruining the word jihad
/ vulgarizing the word jihad until it is no longer a slur and is only an Arabic loanword that happens to mean every possible thing it could mean in Arabic ->
the word jihad refers to a kind of personal or localized quest for what someone believes to be right. [1] historically, the nature of this quest was often religious: people understood morality or order through religion, therefore kingdoms went on crusades to conquer other kingdoms either in a political sense or to force them into their religion, and some kingdoms full of Muslims called these jihads. (jihad is actually uncountable but I think that's a little silly. I improperly pluralize uncountable nouns to make various points all the time, so why not this one? from what I can find right now... it might sound something like jihadāt, because a lot of collective nouns containing countable objects are treated as feminine nouns. or maybe I accidentally did that rule backwards, I don't really know. anyway, my point is, there's theoretically an answer to how to pluralize the Arabic word jihad, and I just want you to be stuck with that cursed knowledge.) [2] [3]
over the years, the notion of an epic "bible story" where a knight takes up the sword to fight for a king but actually fights against an entire other army (see: Joshua's story, the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe) has gotten widely secularized across European or North American literature to the point that the concept of somebody 'fighting for good equipped with the armor of God' has moved entirely away from actual medieval armies and at times is just literally merged into any individual going on any quest for what they think is Good. you can maybe already see where this is going. technically, every fantasy story where somebody leads a big army of Good against a big army of Evil is a crusade, and a jihad. Harry Potter is carrying out a jihad. when the series gets to book 7 you can't deny it. but in one way, every single story where an isolated knight fights a dragon and believes it's a righteous task contains a jihad. so you can take this concept some wonderful places. ...- ruining the word jihad -> I wanted to title this page "the jihad to end all jihads" because my mind was already a century in the future where this was a funny and harmless play on words, literally describing an effort to negate the entire concept of fantasy quests so there would be no more fantasy quests. it was very funny in my head. but unfortunately people take the word as hate speech against White Christians (???) so I had to just take the most unambiguous part of the title, "ToEndAllJihads".
How to ruin the jihad concept
ruining the word jihad
-> ... the final step, I think, is to totally remove Idealism and ask what happens in fantasy stories materially. this task isn't really culturally specific, it isn't specific to the United States or Germany or the Japanese empire or Spain as it was centuries ago much less to the Muslim world. so, broadly, fantasy stories are about historical periods and the shift from one historical era to another. they usually aren't about big transitions like monarchy into Liberal-republicanism (though nobody said they couldn't be), but more often you see things like the shift from one Chinese dynasty to a different Chinese dynasty, a competition between two countably plural monarchies. so they always kind of have to "lie" to you about sideways changes being big changes. and the way they do that is pick some individual, maybe a knight, prince, lady, or queen, and focus on the concept of that individual having a jihad; they play up the jihad as being a really big deal that will genuinely change everything, when actually, that's not necessarily true. almost every time an individual succeeds by defeating someone, that change won't persist unless they create an enduring structure. like, completing one of these jihads is getting as far as Stalin. Stalin was ultimately defeated because all the Stalin followers were only holding down the country as talented individuals, and they did not quite overcome the struggle between factions of individuals to create an enduring structure to take their place after they were gone. the group of Stalin-followers has to get "aufgehoben".god I have no idea if that was the correct tense.that's broadly how a monarchy transforms into Liberal-republicanism, the local-states and the kingdom are sublated. you really do not see that kind of big change in most fantasy stories. one of the only examples I can think of that almost contains a transition that big is how Undertale has a premise of the monsters being sealed away in a dark cavern, and their king has to fight to protect them, and then there is a true ending where they all just get to walk out and inasmuch as the kingdom or cavern were 'real' (Deltarune has cast a little doubt on that) the society shifts into a new historical period where the dynamic of the king fighting the outside doesn't exist. society doesn't change because Asgore or Undyne wins a jihad, is what I'm saying. setting aside the notion of Undertale being an "ethics adventure" and how fraught those are as models of reality... you could say society changes because the monsters stop attacking outside people but keep defending themselves, and because all the monsters come together instead of being divided like Asgore and Toriel are divided, or like is a much greater theme in Deltarune; Frisk can't truly make them change if they didn't want to change, but if they already want to come together, Frisk is welcome to come along for the ride. (the moment of all the Souls in the underground coming together provides a little bit of textual evidence.) in fantasy books, jihad vaguely amounts to the concept of making individuals or Filaments of people more important than populations; disguising chunk competition and empire as friendship; disguising expansion as defense; disguising contingency for Materialist prediction, historical materialism, and sublation. that's it. Stalin's error, if he made one, was not leaving behind a set of instructions to make himself and the central party obsolete, and to put his effort into correctly solving all the actual steps of those instructions to the extent it was possible. progress negates itself, and sublates itself. the point of inventors is to become less and less necessary in order to produce their inventions because the invention became integrated rather than specially walled off and defended. creative destruction was such alie. it really did invalidate the entire point of inventions. Liberal "democracy" is a lie too in that it has lied every time a policy has to be taken back for any reason, or is maliciously torn up by the other party. the reason people believe there is no such thing as progress is because capitalism bans progress. while progress looks like Stalin fading away because he realizes that's what his task is. that actual produced goal is far more important than almost any concept of "democracy". it really should be used to judge how effective they all are- I can never be a great man of the realm because I can never live up to who greatness is supposed to belong to (blue anarchism) [4] / the purpose of "great men" (generic) / -> there is a lot to say about this. when you read enough enough Communist texts you realize that the point of "great men", in terms of experts without equal, is to accomplish something and fade away. their purpose is to do something that will not need to be done again. if history were operating efficiently, their purpose is to abolish themselves and cease to have their position. even Stalin and Mao wanted a world where they would not be needed, while Trotsky struggling to stay relevant was a mistake. history operates in a number of steps which complete and then are done and give way to different steps unless the previous steps unravel, completed in no consistent order but always completed according to the same unordered checklist. the great lie of capitalism is to claim that great men are needed perpetually. every single one of them is operating as inefficiently as possible and accomplishing absolutely nothing. creative destruction was precisely an admission that none of the things created are actually creating anything and all of it is one big waste. so, no, you don't have to feel bad about not being the next "great man". but I am not sure you have the right reasons.
Cases
- If Princess Celestia attacked another kingdom based on the connection of righteousness to monarchy, it would be a jihad / ruining the word jihad (generic)
- Harry Potter is carrying out a jihad / ruining the word jihad (generic)
Knights and cops
- Why are knights different from cops? / If you can't trust the police because they are the ones with ultimate power to decide whether a particular local or national body of laws is to be applied and when it is okay to do something forceful or violent that is not in the existing laws for the greater good, then why should you assume there are knights that will be on your side?
Why are knights different from cops? + All individual actions shape the health of society = Cops are the revolutionary subject. - Cops are the revolutionary subject (United States) -> the absurd conclusion that results when you take Gramscianism to its furthest limit. if people doing 'progressive' things in their daily careers and making sure reactionaries don't get the slot is the best way to preconfigure society for improvement, and cops can do almost anything thanks to qualified immunity and general public sentiment, then a bunch of coordinated cops would be the most capable of changing society out of anyone by blatantly violating the law so badly that the overall system would be forced to change and abolish them. think about it, if there was a band of rebel cops who went around killing as many government officials as possible, how many would they actually be able to take down before they were finally stopped? cops have a mildly terrifying stash of weapons at this point; I'm not so sure the guards around various parts of government would actually win.
I think any proposition with combinations that lead you here needs to be questioned.
Related
- Why are some SWANA countries still so medieval? [5] / Why is Qatar so medieval? (sense) -> this is actually a really fascinating question. it's not a question you ask specifically because you hate other countries. this question may have gotten super popular after September 11th 2001, and received a bunch of really bad answers, but that isn't to say the question is bad. there's a lot to be learned from asking why every country that is approximately countable hasn't moved away from monarchy.
Ideologies or fields
- (none)