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  • Most people - including Marxist thinkers and people here on Hexbear - do not understand what idealism is and subscribe to a critique of it that says that Platonism and most versions of religious idealism - probably the most popular examples of idealist schools of thought - are not idealist schools of thought.

    People also seem to unfortunately like to come to a conclusion first, and then try to fit the facts to match that conclusion, like when people try to argue that the PRC's economy is currently socialist despite it featuring significant private property (and, thus, profit motive). (Going to note here that there is a room to argue that it isn't capitalist on the grounds of the capitalist class not being sufficiently dominant, which I am not equipped to discuss right now, and why I do not call it such.)

    • most versions of religious idealism - probably the most popular examples of idealist schools of thought - are not idealist schools of thought.

      This. I notice this is way more problem on reddit than here, a deprogram user once told me straight up that religion is materialist. I mean i know that human mind can hold conflicting ideas, but c'mon at least admit those are conflicting. More troubling result is support people give for let's say liberation theology which is just old class collaboration idea don't even pretending it will do any liberation whatsoever - if it was not religious, the same people would bash it heavily, but it's a new version of clerical socialism from a Communist Manifesto - a holy water which priest sprinkles on heart of bourgeois.

    • like when people try to argue that the PRC's economy is currently socialist

      The easiest counter to this is that the PRC itself does not consider its economy to be socialist.

      People also seem to unfortunately like to come to a conclusion first, and then try to fit the facts to match that conclusion

      Exhibit A: The whole "Western Marxist" debate. A whole lot of people will look for someone else to blame before they blame themselves or their group.

      • What leads you to say that the PRC doesn’t consider its current economy socialist? I’ve only seen it referred to in official sources as the “socialist market economy” which they specify is a specific stage of socialist development but still socialist due to predominance of public ownership

    • Do you have any resources or examples that might clearly demonstrate what idealism is and isn't?

      • Right now, I don't have any sources ready, and I know for certain that the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on idealism explicitly excludes non-recent branches of idealist schools of thought.

        There are at least two definitions of ontological idealism (and two corresponding ones for ontological materialism) that I have seen. One of which characterises idealist schools of thought as positing that (some) non-material things have some sort of primacy over material things (note that non-material things are not limited to thoughts). Another definition is broader and simply requires idealist schools of thought to posit that non-material things exist (while the corresponding definition for materialism requires those schools to posit that only material things exist).

        Contrary to popular perception, idealism does not require you to believe in magic, including that we can psychically change matter. Simply, for example, subscribing to the idea that math does not depend on matter is idealist.
        Also, while religious idealism (most prominently Christian idealism) does require you to believe in magic, it also doesn't require one to believe that it is thoughts that have any sort of primacy over matter.

        I am also pretty sure that I'm not alone in considering relevant disagreements to be at least mostly linguistic in nature. I have heard that Wittgenstein said something to the same effect, but have not checked.

  • Harbouring sentiments that do not unconditionally support NATO, NAFO or uKKKraine here in Estonia are well...

    "Controversial" is putting it VERY mildly, to say the least.

  • Bottomless Pit is Death Grips' worst album. It feels like it brings nothing new to the table, like if you hear that album first and The Money Store second, you'd think Money Store shows great progress.

    • respectable take even if i like gov plates and year of the snitch less. i like BP but it's an aggressively safe album.

      • Government Plates is definitely an odd one out but I think if they hadn't made GP they probably wouldn't have evolved that style into the first half of TPTB. I think YOTS is fantastic though.

  • Drew Carey is just as good of a host of The Price is Right as Bob Barker. They're very different in their approach, but they are both just as entertaining.

  • The SANDF should intervene in Gaza at least to airdrop food and medical aid from Egypt, as well as provide armed security for convoys. IDF aren't going to attack a South African MRAP and Gauteng is literally too far away to bomb.

    South Africa should also criminalise the SAZF, SAJBD and SAFI, in addition to the Herzlia and Theodore Herzl schools for providing material and financial support to the IDF directly. Aside from the obligations set by the ICJ ruling and more vocal demands for South Africa to take more punitive actions against the Nazi entity a continent apart, the listed organizations are also directly advocating for terrorist attacks against other South Africans, especially humanitarian workers and refugees, including those who already escaped to safety in South Africa.

    I personally recommend a lawsuit against the SAJBD in the area of R2 Trillion ZAR

  • I've essentially never seen anything from the sphere of "parapolitics" that actually appears to impart any useful practical knowledge for understanding the past or predicting the future, at best it appears to be a masturbatory hobby that lets you be smug about JFK for 50+ years straight, at worst it makes you some annoying asshole who goes around saying shit like "denying the existence of snuff films is leftist flat earth" for attention.

    Also Programmed To Kill is a very stupid book.

  • “Enlightenment” is a real physical human possibility (but not necessarily how religious people describe it) that is compatible with dialectical materialism.

    • We talking ego death? Because that was a big inflection point in my journey leftwards. Parenti may have been bigger though.😅

      • You could call it “ego death.” I’m no arbiter of truth but generally I’d consider such by means of entheogens only a temporary glimpse, while it is possible to more constantly see reality past illusions. The “spiritual journey” is actually quite dialectical and in a way the internal or perceptual counterpart to Lenin’s idea of constantly getting closer to reality in the realm of ideas and science.

  • Trotskyists should be banned from leftist unity, their prevalence in the west is only due to them being the least threatening and effective form of marxism so therefore the least discriminated. Trotsky did not have many good takes and flip flopped on most of them just to side with any opposition because he was a grifter. Calling him a Bolshevik is an insult to Bolsheviks. Anyone could organize the Red Army, just because he was assigned to it doesn't mean he gets a pass on being the most annoying leftist until bordiga.

    dengism should be applied only to the nations that had adopted it already, but nowhere else. It was a costly concession to the capitalists in order to avoid capitalist overthrow and encirclement. Such concessions are no longer necessary as the west is receding in power and countries are more likely to trade with ones with planned economies in the name of multipolarity. China's now reaching the end of its usefulness with market socialism and will be entirely unprepared for the inevitable hot/cold war with the west over taiwan, south korea, or other regional conflict the west will generate unless they adopt a more anti capitalist or state capitalist system. They rely far too much on foreign trade that a war near their shores would be quite devastating. The belt and road will help this of course but is vulnerable to those countries apart of it being overthrown by western backed coups (pakistan). But i think china is definitely capable of making this transition, unlike others who stupidly regard china as just like any other capitalist country.

    Religion is an inherently reactionary institution, and if communism gains power in a nation with large religious institutions it needs to work hard to weaken them. Cooperate if you must for a time in order to not actively push them into agitation, but they will never be friends and have historically been easily used by capitalists for infiltration and overthrow. Religion tied to heritage, like judaism and hinduism is another matter and im unequipped to have a real position on it so i wont include those in this. Spiritualism as well.

    religious socialism should be a method of crushing religion and bringing about socialism, and is not actually possible. Not to say we should be vulgar in our hatred as thats stupid. Just recognize in the context of a socialist nation religion is an enemy force.

    freedom of debate, unity of action needs more debates after the unity of action because choosing the wrong way is devastating if you never correct it.

  • Light is a product of condensed space-time. Matter is condensed light. The speed of light is a constant, but a relative constant. You just need to change your realtive spacetime environment. We live in a fish bowl of a relatively constant temperature. #heatdeathoftheuniverse

    Spacetime has properties like solid, liquid, gas. It is elastic. It flows. It boils. It freezes. It's cellular in nature. It vibrates.

    The speed of light is relative to the density of spacetime. This bridges the 2D fields that make up our 3D reality. It's a grand unifying theory with string theory and general realativity works all the way down. We just haven't developed the tech. All the fish know is the tank they're in. To us we can try to think we're standing still and things only move at one pace, but it's realtive. We broke the sound barrier. We can break the light barrier, or even skim in between the cells, but we need to learn how to probe and manupulate the fabric. We really haven't done much probing of the fabric. We're still regulating ourselves to percision slingshots in moving around in this fabric. (That's just my lament on not seriously developing more than just pushing mass and not refueling craft which would be a lot easier and cheaper if we put batteries and ion engines or field thrusters on craft).

    We're getting there with like Higg-Boson concetrate on one side (micro) and JWST finding "older than is possible" and really stretched out extreme red shift unverses (macro). There is also noticable time-space "gravitational" waves.

    You don't have gravity, the bending of spacetime without mass. Why is that? One would think that there's a realtionship there. Light can add or subtract from mass, yet it us massless. More like we don't know why. There's a lot of that too. We witness it. We don't know WHY, but here's an odds chart from running experiments and witnessing. It certianly points to there is a realtionship between mass, light, spacetime.

    The great attractor is either a hole in the bubble of boiling space.

    Think it's nuts? NGT is seriously thinking we might all exist in a black hole. Or what I call boiling space. I think that's how mass is made. Black holes don't need to be huge. They could be quantum. I think these are found in Stars and gas giants but they are quickly overwhelmed snd collapse. Come to think of it....neutrinos might be related to this. Hopefully the new detectors can make some correlations besides light flashes. Can you imagine if China is the one that comes up with the Philosopher's Stone and manipulates light and spacetime to make matter?

    Going to have to get there if we want to be a Type 1+ civilization.

    There is some thing about the fractal nature of the universe and everything you need to know about the universe you can find in a cup of coffee with creamer.

215 comments