SSDD: same shit, different day

[intertribal]

So I've never actually seen a Limp Bizkit video - yes, Limp Bizkit - but I was forced to turn to YouTube when I got a random craving to listen to "Break Stuff" - ah, brings back memories of homecoming. I'm not even kidding. And now I'm completely obsessed with this video. I love music videos that feature "regular people" saying the lines of the song - see System of a Down's Boom! and Placebo's Running Up That Hill - they can get a little myspacey at times but I think that's worth the effect: showing the universality of the song.

Anyway. Here's "Break Stuff".  If this song isn't universal, I don't know what universal is.

Comments

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

i'm guessing...not universal.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Well, fine then.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

i'm too anthro-y to not take claims about universality seriously, sorry

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Gosh.

How about a sentiment that can be interpreted in a way that it fits themselves by a large number of people?

I don't know if that even makes sense.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

sorry, it's a really serious issue and anthro and linguistics, with a lot of baggage. "innate" concepts and structures or "universal" human qualities have been posited many a time, often with odd political or religious undertones. actually, almost always (which isn't to say that they aren't sometimes well-intentioned political/religious undertones). to the point where steve will ask the class if it's possible to make an innatist/universal claim without making an authoritarian one.

but if you're talking about a statistical universality, sure, perhaps. especially if it can be taken in multiple senses, according to multiple 'cultural idioms'.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Ahhhhh! Does that mean anger is not an emotion that can be felt by a lot of people?? Because that's what I was trying to convey.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

well, some sort of what we would call anger, probably. the anthropologist would probably just like to clarify that anger, irritation, etc. are expressed in different ways according to cultural norms, social status, and so on and in fact may be felt qualitatively differently due to circumstance. since i'm a peircean, i guess i say that the closest thing to universals are qualities of pure feeling ("qualisigns"), the kind that as soon as you're conscious of them you're interpreting them in a way possibly influenced by your own culture. but they come from the sense-impressions we have by virtue of being human.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

okay... qualisigns then.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

sure, as long as qualisigns are not the feeling of anger, but merely embodied in the feeling of anger, the sensation of that irritation in your mind and body, separated from its cause and effect, unmediated by its expression or understanding in socioculturally bound terms like "anger", the pure feeling as can hardly even be present to the mind except in a half-awake state

not saying you have to care, but i do, so that's what i'd say.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Believe me, man, I don't. But that's cool that you do.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

just as long as you don't go claiming that we're all equal because we're universally 'the same', i think we're fine.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Well I definitely don't believe in universality... in everyday life/politics. I do biologically/spiritually, however.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

I don't know what that really means, so I can't agree or disagree...

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

All part of the same species?

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

well, that means different things to different people, because they assign different importance, functions, etc. to genes, species-membership (as opposed to the nearly statistically universal but non-biologically universal societal membership), etc. for me it certainly exists but means precious little.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Hmm... it probably means a bit more than "precious little" to me, but I understand your point. I'm not saying it's all that significant, but it is something that I think.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Well, we are allowed to disagree here...

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Yeah man.