Monkey Queen
8th June 2014, 16:53
Hi everyone. Introducing myself of course.
Forewarning: I'm weird and depressed. (i.e. I have clinical depression and have lots of quirks.) Expect some dorkiness and don't expect a lot of enthusiasm from me.
My screen name has a political meaning, but is also part of an ongoing joke my friends get about how so many of the things I like tend to involve monkeys.
Politically and philosophically speaking, I count myself a Marxist of an original flavor these days. (I once counted myself a Maoist, but those days have been over for a while now.) I've taken to referring to my own branch of thinking as tech communism, the essence of which is the view that says communism is not yet on the historical agenda, but is in the process of arriving on it. Specifically, it is the view that the fully developed communism Marx spoke of corresponds to the information revolution rather than to the industrial revolution (as Marx believed) and that said future communism will be more essentially reproductive than redistributive in nature (in contrast to both primitive communism and 20th century communism (state socialism)). Another distinguishing feature of my view lies in class analysis: I consider the proletariat and bourgeoisie respectively to be more accurately and essentially defined by wealth levels than by their position relative to the workplace. (In other words, the world is more fundamentally divided between rich and poor than between capitalist and worker, I believe.) Methodologically speaking, I consider myself an adherent to a form of Marxian dialectical materialism amended to add in Mao's mass line concept as well as components of rational choice theory and game theory. In terms of social values (cultural issues), one might describe me as basically liberal, but I think that term can sometimes mask my real orientation, which revolves around the realization of both social and economic equality. The two things don't always mesh, I find. In terms of the real world, I consider Venezuela the most advanced and important ongoing experiment in movement toward socialism today, though I doubt what they're doing can really succeed in the end.
One of the most distinguishing things about my own outlook is that I believe in the concept of enlightenment: self-realization in the truest sense: the realization that the self is not individual, but the universe itself. How is this compatible with Marxism, you ask? I feel that the two things are shown compatible so long as we understand that enlightenment itself is a collective process, not essentially an individual process (as various religions contend): human beings, and other species, become more enlightened the more their brains develop. (For example, orcas, who have a more advanced capacity for empathy because they have a brain section that we don't, are more enlightened than human beings in that they regard the community as the self.) Brain development, in turn, is subject to the material conditions that are experienced. Thus matter rules mind rather than the other way around, the way I see it. So that's how I reconcile Marxist materialism on the one hand and a belief in the concept of enlightenment on the other.
So anyway, that's a little about me. I hope that perspective is okay here. It may not be quite 'radical enough' to qualify, not sure.
Anyway, in case it is 'radical enough' though, I've gone ahead and joined several of the social groups here that I feel compatible with. I REALLY wanted to join the Human Progress Group more than all others though (for reasons that I feel I've made obvious in this post), but had to cancel my join request for that group after discovering that you pretty much have to be a humanist to get in, so that was disappointing. Oh well. Here I am. Yay me.
Forewarning: I'm weird and depressed. (i.e. I have clinical depression and have lots of quirks.) Expect some dorkiness and don't expect a lot of enthusiasm from me.
My screen name has a political meaning, but is also part of an ongoing joke my friends get about how so many of the things I like tend to involve monkeys.
Politically and philosophically speaking, I count myself a Marxist of an original flavor these days. (I once counted myself a Maoist, but those days have been over for a while now.) I've taken to referring to my own branch of thinking as tech communism, the essence of which is the view that says communism is not yet on the historical agenda, but is in the process of arriving on it. Specifically, it is the view that the fully developed communism Marx spoke of corresponds to the information revolution rather than to the industrial revolution (as Marx believed) and that said future communism will be more essentially reproductive than redistributive in nature (in contrast to both primitive communism and 20th century communism (state socialism)). Another distinguishing feature of my view lies in class analysis: I consider the proletariat and bourgeoisie respectively to be more accurately and essentially defined by wealth levels than by their position relative to the workplace. (In other words, the world is more fundamentally divided between rich and poor than between capitalist and worker, I believe.) Methodologically speaking, I consider myself an adherent to a form of Marxian dialectical materialism amended to add in Mao's mass line concept as well as components of rational choice theory and game theory. In terms of social values (cultural issues), one might describe me as basically liberal, but I think that term can sometimes mask my real orientation, which revolves around the realization of both social and economic equality. The two things don't always mesh, I find. In terms of the real world, I consider Venezuela the most advanced and important ongoing experiment in movement toward socialism today, though I doubt what they're doing can really succeed in the end.
One of the most distinguishing things about my own outlook is that I believe in the concept of enlightenment: self-realization in the truest sense: the realization that the self is not individual, but the universe itself. How is this compatible with Marxism, you ask? I feel that the two things are shown compatible so long as we understand that enlightenment itself is a collective process, not essentially an individual process (as various religions contend): human beings, and other species, become more enlightened the more their brains develop. (For example, orcas, who have a more advanced capacity for empathy because they have a brain section that we don't, are more enlightened than human beings in that they regard the community as the self.) Brain development, in turn, is subject to the material conditions that are experienced. Thus matter rules mind rather than the other way around, the way I see it. So that's how I reconcile Marxist materialism on the one hand and a belief in the concept of enlightenment on the other.
So anyway, that's a little about me. I hope that perspective is okay here. It may not be quite 'radical enough' to qualify, not sure.
Anyway, in case it is 'radical enough' though, I've gone ahead and joined several of the social groups here that I feel compatible with. I REALLY wanted to join the Human Progress Group more than all others though (for reasons that I feel I've made obvious in this post), but had to cancel my join request for that group after discovering that you pretty much have to be a humanist to get in, so that was disappointing. Oh well. Here I am. Yay me.