/edu/ - Education

>>22837
my relative got addicted to calling into radio shows and arguing by spouting boomer Fox News talking points

>>22837
internet usage can be an addiction, a disease from our LIQUID TIMES

>>22842
It seems like it's what one is doing on the internet that is addictive rather than the internet itself. Like I never feel like I have to log on / stay on stuff like mastodon, neocities, or cohost before cohost went read only. Whereas I've had moments where I decided to postpone going for a walk / procrastinated on a chore because I had to see if someone I was arguing with responded yet on an imageboard or twitter back when I used to use twitter. There's a unique flavor of addreneline to it.

>>22843
>It seems like it's what one is doing on the internet that is addictive rather than the internet itself
well you make a good point here about form and content. same way many of us debate addicts also like to be contrarians, even against our own positions, just to keep the rush coming. we argue against ourselves as much as we argue against others.
but form and content arises in contradiction here again, since the substance of the argument is not in the strategy of deducing truth, but in something for-itself. thats why when a person knows theyre wrong, they will start changing the subject or wreck the discussion. this is why you concede arguments de facto by coming to the end of logic. Truth thus is where knowledge fails - the silence becomes deafening.
atheists know this well with christians who cannot follow hypotheticals to the end. when they are threatened, the logic leaves. this is also what happens to leftists when conservatives push them into a corner concerning race or gender.
however, this is not to venerate standard logic, but to see how it begins by contradiction itself (which is why hypotheticals must be made in the first place). this is also why purely logical systems applied to reality are at least absurd and at most monstrous. we can see that with utilitarians or anti-natalists.
the fabulous example of logic's originary contradiction is in the neckbeard guy (vidrel) who says "both" to an either/or. here we perceive the Truth at the end of logic (which thus is also its beginning). this in hegelian terms denotes a "real contradiction" in things. the law of identity is unstable, since essence has its part in appearance.
the real contradiction of leftism is also thus in this posited either/or of "gay rights or economic equality". it is an unanswerable question by design, and yet, i will say that it is becoming a real question.
this is why contradiction is the site of Truth (like the unconscious).

todd mcgowan here explains how arguments do not merely suffice based on evidence, but on the pre-believed ideology which conditions the subject (which occupies the place of the symptom in the unconscious; like how knowledge of the symptom does not "cure" the symptom. we can admit our bias, but this does not stop us from being biased. its the same way a depressive person looks for excuses for why he is depressed, but if he were honest he would simply understand that his depression is unconditional of any external object. the general idea of symptom is that it derives from a cause, when the lacanian symptom is an effect without a set cause. zizek speaks about this in regards to transsexuality; that even if a society fully accepted trans individuals, the trans person would still feel upset - because the symptom has no particular cause; it is rather, in a paranoid fashion, that the effect gives presence to an imagined cause retroactively, which zizek and todd would also see as the strategy of fascist populism. the fascist sees problems in society and tries to identify root causes. this then situates what is "diseased" as apart from the healthy. a communist typically follows this line of thought too; everything is related back to the root cause of class society - this misses the inherent object of contradiction, which zizek, like hegel, identifies with the social form itself. if 2 friends can fall out, then all societies can collapse. but in equal fashion, all friendships are built on the contradiction which can likewise cause strife. this is why family members fight each other but then forgive. peace is a form of mediated conflict).
this jouissance (enjoyment) of the argument is self-sufficient, which explains debate addiction as a symptomatic expression; an argument for arguments sake, not for the pursuit of Truth. this is also why all *debates* are spectacles, but *discussions* can be fruitful.

>>22843
this. People like to blame the Internet for personal problems, especially youth problems, but the same problems of Internet patronage could be found in other media formats.