What MC Hammer Isn't Touching

You don't always need to take into account the measurer, and in fact, sometimes it obscures the measurement.

When rap legend MC Hammer re-tweeted a post from his followers ridiculing a philosophy and science journal who decided they should recommend him further reading on the subject he was studying, it was a beautiful moment of egoist positionality. MC Hammer is now through his personal agency, a master philosopher. In the societal symbolic order, a master philosopher is a master in that societally his opinions register as imminently valid and important, and critiques of him carry extra weight because you no longer just challenge his ideas, but his ability to generate new knowledge itself! His positionality is not simply rhetoric, he has actual strong working knowledge of critical theory; and as he showed with the philosophy and science journal, knowledge with a lot of power seems to have a bit more oomph that knowledge which gazes at it’s navel in academia! I have to say, I could not help to laugh and cringe for the nerds now forever being struck with their pursuit of integrating science with philosophy being derided by MC Hammer and a few of his followers.

So with this in mind, no Gods no Masters (which I can’t throw a pie at) let’s take MC Hammer’s recent statement on taking into account the measurer within measurement.

On a very basic level of quantity, let us say to build a house, one would need measurements which create an objective goal of stability and feasibility within the house. This measurement, taken in millimeters, relates to stability. The stability category would only be obfuscated by a master carpenter saying that he is correct because he is a master carpenter. This is the dimension of society and self-interest, but it is not in the dimension of material stability.

When one looks at a worker situation and the means of production further serving a capitalist, to take into account the personal intricacies of who the capitalist is may prove more useful. What is the role of black capitalism within society? It would be silly to think that it doesn’t have a positive effect (what is the alternative, white capitalism?) , but it would certainly not be a Marxist answer to say a capitalist isn’t exploiting his worker for being a certain race, nor for even being an exploited worker in the past (something which many capitalists are proud of, having been happy to have been driven hard and rough in the past). This is because identity does not trump Order, which is to say, your sense of self and properties of your self do not trump your material positionality in relation to contract capital.

So when creating things with a sort of objective process within a category, the taking into account of the measurer can serve to create an obfuscation, the sort of obfuscation that would greatly benefit interlocutors such as MC Hammer. The appeal to societal worth, the appeal to philosophical mastery, which MC Hammer has risen to the top of in the past week, can serve to obfuscate any material point.

This is not to say that MC Hammer isn’t an inspiration and I am a mere blogger, a mere white boy, but! None the less, I must insist! Yes I must insist! For if we are going to create a just society, keep in mind the ability of the taking into account of the measurer to obfuscate the measurement, a favorite of capitalists!