Artificial Negativity & Repressive Tolerance

https://www.letusthinkaboutit.com/step-64-artificial-negativity--repressive-tolerance

Part 1: Hegel, antithesis and sublation, the spiral, and the ground. 

Part 2: Paul Piccone & Telos

Piccone was the editor of Telos, a journal. After being disenchanted by the "exhaustion of the left" he drifted from a Marxist/Hegel leaning ideology to embrace the ideas of the right, through the more totalizing illiberal  Carl Schmitt. 

Artificial Negativity (Piccone and Lake) asserts the Herbert Marcuse's idea of the one-dimensional man was the final control necessary for totalizing control through consumerism. The elites allow for negativity because any system has excesses it must recalibrate towards (cybernetic theory), thus negativity is managed simulations, not organic but artificial. 

Repressive Tolerance (Marcuse) asserts that Tolerance can be used to repress people into conformity, thus denying actual tolerance in the name of tolerance. Used primarily by the Left, Piccone made use of this type of logic to squash critiques of artificial negativity. 

The Particular must be saved to save individuality and diversity. Yet, since we have all become the one-dimensional man, any organic negativity that can break the capitalist/consumer system must be grown from the outside. The particular rejects totalization. Piccone thought powerful authority was the only way to save the particular (diverse groups) from becoming flattened, but that smacks of totalitarianism, which negates all difference. 

Part 3: Outcome

Piccone's movement from left to right hints that his rebellion did not find the true ground to sublate the antithesis. However, the ideas are interesting and useful. Unfortunately, we must keep in mind that negativity and staged displays, even the managerial new class, serve a function for the poor and disenfranchised and allow dissent against war.