Thedes and Exosemantic Gang Signs

Man is a social animal: always and everywhere, he forms groups, cultures, tribes, thedes, affiliations to collections of others, collections with their own values, their own identifiers, their own sense of identity.

Enlightenment philosophers denied this, believing themselves and all to be atoms of reason, but they still functioned according to the social laws of man. National Socialism has its roots not only in the masses of the unenlightened, but also in the thought of Fichte, the Kantian; and Kant was the philosopher of the individualistic Enlightenment. Naturam expelles furca, tamen usque recurret. Nature’s law is never long defied. 

What is a thede? Definitions of the prerationally grasped can only be imperfect, but to begin, a thede is a superindividual grouping that its constituent individuals feel affiliation with and (therefore?) positive estimates of.

What I’m famous for is the experiment where we put some kids in red shirts others in blue shirts. It doesn’t take a lot, but after a few environmental messages, then the blue shirts think they’re better than red shirts, and red shirts think they are better than blue shirts—even though they’re exactly the same shirt otherwise. Human beings can have a bias: ‘Whatever group I’m in is better than yours…’

Thedes are defined by their thede identity, their thedishness, and in opposition to elthedishness. (“El-” is an Old English prefix meaning ‘foreign’, preserved today in the word “eldritch”.) These are not two separate phenomena, but one with multiple facets: Brahmins are intellectual—but intellectual unlike Vaisyas and Dalits. Vaisyas are hard-working—but hard-working unlike Brahmins and Dalits. Dalits are fun-loving—but fun-loving unlike Brahmins and Vaisyas.

Thedes are multiple: one does not simply affiliate with one thede, but with an overlapping mishmash of thedes of different and shifting priorities—and some thedes are concentric. A guy from western Tennessee once said to me that, when he’s in a bar at home, he’ll get along with the guy from western Tennessee and fight the guy from eastern Tennessee; when he’s in a bar in eastern Tennessee, he’ll get along with the guy from Tennessee and fight the guy from Georgia; and when he’s in a bar in Alabama, he’ll get along with the guy from Georgia and fight the guy from Vermont.

Thedes can form along multiple lines: one can simultaneously be thedishly from western Tennessee (and then Tennessee, the South, America…), thedishly an analytic philosopher (and then a philosopher, an academic, a Brahmin…), thedishly a fan of black metal (and then metal, non-mainstream music…), and so on.

Thede identity can be reinforced in many ways: important examples include participating in thedish activities, bashing elthedes and their members, throwing exosemantic gang signs, and attacking the use of elthedish exosemantic gang signs. As I said on Twitter long ago:

Feminists are often empirically wrong about the meaning and use of ‘slurs’, but meaning and use aren’t the point of their policing. It’s about exosemantic gang signs. You can’t be One Of Us and call people cunts. Perhaps linguistic taboos can be seen in terms of group dynamics in general.

Exosemantic gang signs? Exosemantic gang signs! Words used not—at least not only—for their strict semantic content, but for signaling thede membership. Take as an example the word “praxis”: its meaning is no different from that of “practice”, but where the latter is common, a word used on the street, the former implies familiarity with—association with—the academic tradition that uses the word “praxis”.

Academics are not gang members, of course; the difference is that they use words instead of hand signals.