Some Introductions (Hi everybody!!!)

[BoratOfPhilosophy]

Hello comrades one and all!

I am a committed student, reader, stage actor, science junkie, activist, and radical. I started my journey towards the Left-wing after reading Marx and Engels The Communist Manifesto in combination with questioning a lot of my traditional Christian upbringing, I made a political u-turn in about two years, going from a typical conservative with some feudal leanings, to a queer liberation, technologically optimistic, bearded (literally and figuratively!) Marxist and religious Gnostic. Today I remain a fervent christian, but the Christianity that I seek to follow is very different from the one I grew up. I don't like to confine myself to political camps, but the political denotation that best reflects me is Accelerationism; a form of Marxism that mirrors Transhumanism in its scientific optimism and belief that technological dynamism will eventually revolutionize social relationships, for better of worse, but adds the understanding that the true collective benefit of technology is only recognized when subject to the common control of the means of production. Besides Marxism and Christianity, a major influence on my politics has been the struggles of the indigenous peoples of Turtle Island (The Americas).

Inspirations/Influences:
-Karl Marx
-Friedrich Engels
-Vladimir Lenin
-Alexander Brogandov
-Ernesto "Che" Guevara
-Friedrich Nietzsche
-Michel Foucalt
-Leon Trotsky
-Slavoj Zizek
-Mao Tse-Tung
-Malcolm X
-Louis Riel
-Hellen Keller
-Pytor Kropotkin
-Leo Tolstoy
-Vandana Shiva

Currently Involved/In-Dialogue with:
-Fightback (International Marxist Tendency)
-Idle No More (Canadian indigenous rights movement)
-Humanity + (Left-leaning Transhumanist organization)
-Anarchist Black Cross (Prisoner's aid)
-Boycott-Divest-Strike (anti-apartheid)
-Council of Canadians (Left-wing Canadian Nationalism [NOTE: a bit on the fence about these guys, definitely critical of nationalism])

Hobbies:
-Writing (Fiction: fantasy and existential literature, Non-Fiction: economics, political science, sociology, philosophy)
-Stage Acting (some rehearsed plays, mostly Improv)

Employment:
-Fast Food worker (McDonald's)
-Farmhand (local organic farm)

[MarxSchmarx]

Welcome! FYI your early posts have a separate approval process

[IWantToLearn]

Welcome.

I'm wondering how do you get time for all those things while having two jobs specially the mcdonalds one.

[Slavoj Zizek's Balls]

Hello comrades one and all!

I am a committed student, reader, stage actor, science junkie, activist, and radical. I started my journey towards the Left-wing after reading Marx and Engels The Communist Manifesto in combination with questioning a lot of my traditional Christian upbringing, I made a political u-turn in about two years, going from a typical conservative with some feudal leanings, to a queer liberation, technologically optimistic, bearded (literally and figuratively!) Marxist and religious Gnostic. Today I remain a fervent christian, but the Christianity that I seek to follow is very different from the one I grew up. I don't like to confine myself to political camps, but the political denotation that best reflects me is Accelerationism; a form of Marxism that mirrors Transhumanism in its scientific optimism and belief that technological dynamism will eventually revolutionize social relationships, for better of worse, but adds the understanding that the true collective benefit of technology is only recognized when subject to the common control of the means of production. Besides Marxism and Christianity, a major influence on my politics has been the struggles of the indigenous peoples of Turtle Island (The Americas).

Inspirations/Influences:
-Karl Marx
-Friedrich Engels
-Vladimir Lenin
-Alexander Brogandov
-Ernesto "Che" Guevara
-Friedrich Nietzsche
-Michel Foucalt
-Leon Trotsky
-Slavoj Zizek
-Mao Tse-Tung
-Malcolm X
-Louis Riel
-Hellen Keller
-Pytor Kropotkin
-Leo Tolstoy
-Vandana Shiva

Currently Involved/In-Dialogue with:
-Fightback (International Marxist Tendency)
-Idle No More (Canadian indigenous rights movement)
-Humanity + (Left-leaning Transhumanist organization)
-Anarchist Black Cross (Prisoner's aid)
-Boycott-Divest-Strike (anti-apartheid)
-Council of Canadians (Left-wing Canadian Nationalism [NOTE: a bit on the fence about these guys, definitely critical of nationalism])

Hobbies:
-Writing (Fiction: fantasy and existential literature, Non-Fiction: economics, political science, sociology, philosophy)
-Stage Acting (some rehearsed plays, mostly Improv)

Employment:
-Fast Food worker (McDonald's)
-Farmhand (local organic farm)


Hello, nice to meet you. That's quite a list... I think you're considerably fortunate to have those groups active around you. It's like a desert over here for me.

Why exactly are you into Accelerationism? I can understand some of the benefits, but then it seems to indirectly assume that by accelerating growth we will be able to construct something markedly different, which I think is unlikely considering that we are firstly not in a position to increase or decrease growth and secondly because we will simply hasten an ecological catastrophe. This is very much something I've just cobbled together from my thoughts so do excuse any misunderstandings.

Look forward to your response.

[Q]

Welcome :)

If you have political questions, you can ask them in the Learning forum. That's why it's there after all!

If you have questions about your account, don't hesitate to send me a PM or ask here.

You seem to be quite involved in the movement. How long have you been active?

[BoratOfPhilosophy]

Welcome.

I'm wondering how do you get time for all those things while having two jobs specially the mcdonalds one.

It's definitely a struggle, but it has more to do with how much coffee I consume than how much time I have :laugh:. I live in Canada, so our McDonald's management is (generally) nicer than those in the USA, so my shift work is flexible and I'm only part-time anyways. The Farmhand work I do just in the summer, during harvest and planting. It's some extra cash for me to put towards my education. I'm mostly just a donor to ABC, since there's no chapter around where I live (there should be though!), BDS is the same way. Fightback is the organization I'm most involved in since I started being a local distributor for their literature and magazine. I've been to a couple of protests related to Idle No More and Council of Canadians, and H+ is mostly for intellectual discussion rather than direct action.

[BoratOfPhilosophy]

Welcome :)

If you have political questions, you can ask them in the Learning forum. That's why it's there after all!

If you have questions about your account, don't hesitate to send me a PM or ask here.

You seem to be quite involved in the movement. How long have you been active?

Serious activism? Only about a year. I was in grade 10 of High School when I read Manifesto, and at that point 'activism' was me desperately hunting for someone else who wouldn't look at me funny when I said "Marxism". Like I've said in another post, I'm only involved in BDS and ABC as a semi-regular donor. I distribute Fightback Literature, and I've done some organized protests and town hall assemblies with Council of Canadians and Idle No More. H+ is more for intellectual discussion than anything else.

[BoratOfPhilosophy]

Hello, nice to meet you. That's quite a list... I think you're considerably fortunate to have those groups active around you. It's like a desert over here for me.

Why exactly are you into Accelerationism? I can understand some of the benefits, but then it seems to indirectly assume that by accelerating growth we will be able to construct something markedly different, which I think is unlikely considering that we are firstly not in a position to increase or decrease growth and secondly because we will simply hasten an ecological catastrophe. This is very much something I've just cobbled together from my thoughts so do excuse any misunderstandings.

Look forward to your response.

I would say that the name "Accelerationism" is a little bit misleading, since it implies accumulation and consumption. I used to be an eco-socialist, so I'm very conscious of the ecological critiques of techno-centric Marxism. Most Accelerationists don't believe that we will one day wake up in a Communist Star Trek utopia simply because capitalism cannot handle the pure awesomeness of emergent technology. One of the most important quotes from the #ACCELERATE Manifesto is "Technology alone will not save us. If it could, it already would have". However, rather than shunning modern technology as a product of Capitalist relationships, Accelerationism aims to harness these emerging technologies towards revolutionary aims before they are "normalized" into Capitalism. A good example is the golden age of Space Travel. Many of the inventions and designs of a space-faring humanity implied the abolition of money and the restoration of an ecological commons. However, since the collapse of the USSR, Space sciences have been progressively privatized and turned towards benefiting capitalist goals (Space Tourism, etc.); Another is Nanotechnology (hence the emergence of "NanoSocialism"). Just a personal note, If you study the supply chains of most big tech industries they are extremely big, complex, and exploitative. Capitalist businesses are also extremely dependent on technologies such as the internet. By creating an information-industrial commons, while at the same time trying to democratize and occupy the supply chains of place like IBM or Google (which have slave plantations in Congo, factories in China and North Korea, and distributors all over the western world), it not only places pressure on these industries, but on the entire capitalist apparatus that is now extremely dependent on them. In short, Accelerationism implies the ability to accelerate technology's ability to address human problems and threaten the capitalist status quo.

[Art Vandelay]

Interesting intro and welcome to the forum. Where about (generally speaking) in Canada are you from? If you don't mind me asking.

[BoratOfPhilosophy]

Interesting intro and welcome to the forum. Where about (generally speaking) in Canada are you from? If you don't mind me asking.

New Brunswick. The Bible Belt of Canada