4 L. What we call idealism is first a form of transcendence

Its value lies in transcending the status quo, seeking after things that aren't front of our eyes. The “knowledge” in our heads is necessarily mainstream, which means it requires self-criticism.

Everything is produced little by little, so we need to pay attention to the material processes of production. Things that look really big, like global, long-distance commerce, are in fact made up many of small links. If you think about it in this way, it’s a fairly good way to work and a good attitude toward life.

Both research and life are always processes of open dialogue.

Research means participating in a dialogue, changing the form of the dialogue, raising new questions in the course of the dialogue—this process itself is the most important. It's getting into an issue concretely, finding a window, and seeing the contradictions. How you think has to do with specific questions and with your object of study. The way to work is to look at contradictions in the thing itself, the type of contradictions that affect the actors, but which the actors can’t explain to themselves sufficiently.

It is not only that the weak deserve protection. What is more important is why the weak are weak, which obviously is the same question as why the strong are strong, which has to be the result of a historical process. The central element of is not to explain things away. It's the opposite—when people think that this is not causing problems, the theory, by better explaining things, allows people to discover that there are problems here, and the idea is to explain more and more of them. Of course, you want to explain complex things in as simple of ways as possible, so that everyone can understand. There is no point in making things more and more complicated, but at the same time, you also want to explain the internal contradictions and latent problems in a situation that at first seemed to be unproblematic, but now illustrating that things that don’t make sense.

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Modern individualism believes that life starts with the individual, after which comes groups and society, but Durkheim and Mauss believe that this is a limited Western view and that many societies elsewhere in the world do not think this way at all. First, there are totems, and symbols of the group that define the group as a whole, and only after the group is defined, the individual is acknowledged. Individual consciousness comes from group consciousness, which means that group consciousness is the prerequisite for individual consciousness, and not its result. What it is that young people are thinking about these days. First, self-perceptions and public consciousness are linked. Sometimes the link is not clear, and you have to look for it.

Let’s take the example of the idea of a “loser,” which is a negative self-perception, and is completely based in the ideology of equality. The loser says, “I’m a failure, which makes me a loser, but it’s not that I’m incompetent, and instead it’s that society treats me unfairly”. So, I accept what I am, but I make fun of society. So, behind any definition an individual gives himself, there is always a public consciousness involved. You truly cannot force people to discuss social issues. If you suddenly try to discuss things with young people that they are not yet aware of, they have every reason to be annoyed. We need to dig out the voices of young people, in that we need to refine the wisdom displayed by young people in their everyday lives and allow it to become a voice.

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We often try to understand others across our different positions, but the results sometimes leave people frustrated, and some people finally, even declare that understanding is impossible. But one could say the opposite, that understanding is natural, and not difficult, although we often consciously or unconsciously refuse to understand. The key is how to avoid refusing to understand. Think about it—don’t we often feel that when we’re with friends it is easy to arrive at an understanding, but with those that are closest to us, such as our parents, understanding is harder?

In “empathetic scholarship,” you don’t necessarily have to draw out your research subject’s psychological mechanisms like a psychoanalyst would. Everything is a question of position—you have to describe the social position in which they find themselves and describe the set of relationships and the particular world in which they are, at which point everyone will naturally understand. In this sense, understanding is merely shared subjectivity.

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