Fear and the Struggle [Archive]

consuming negativity

2nd October 2014, 16:34

Comrades of RevLeft of all ages, heights, weights, sexes, genders, races, ethnicities. I have discovered something and I need to share it with you. Not just for altruistic reasons, but out of basic decency. Because you, Revleft, are how I figured this out, and I owe it all to you to share this thought nugget of mine.

Marx and the rest of the scientists are correct when our theories must be based in the scientific method. We have to apply science not just to the world around us, but to ourselves. To our minds, to our civilization, and to our hearts. Our relationships. Everything. And I have done that, and this is what I have found.

RevLeft itself is very indicative of the state of the left today. Which is, to say, it is marginalized and not taken seriously. And you know what else I realized? All of us are marginalized and not taken seriously. Every single one of you have been treated like shit and have all sorts of traumas, including myself, in our background. And we find it hard to be part of mainstream society because we are damaged goods. Because someone, somewhere, hurt us to the point that it has interfered with the way we function. We are all mentally disturbed. Not not-neurotypical. We are normal. We are the natural result of circumstances beyond our control becoming too overwhelming for us to process all at once.

But what does any of that have to do with politics, communer? Well, I'll tell you. Because this means that there is no such thing as a bad person. We are all tabula rasas, created inequally from birth as blank slates. The entirety of our civilization is our attempt as a species to collect and preserve information to help make the lives of the people after us better; all of our politics, all of our social life, everything we do together is in one way or another aimed at advancing our species forward. And in the course of that struggle, we make mistakes. Huge mistakes. We all do it. I have seen the face of the devil, and it is mine. It is that of all of us. And the more pain we have gone through in our lives; the deeper the mistakes hurt us before we were able to understand, the more pain we cause everyone else around us. If you look into your heart and examine it yourself you will know that this is true.

Now look at our society and how everyone is motivated. We motivate through fear, and it shows. We are a scared society. We live every day on the brink of homelessness; and if we don't, we know that it's just a few paychecks away. We believe as a people that we must use motivation to get people to do the right thing, when in reality, the tool we need to motivate people is the same thing we continually deny exists - our own social consciousness. Not an innate consciousness. Not Christianity. But our own societal values implanted on us by everybody else before us who figured out that society works best when we follow the golden rule and treat everyone as we want to be treated.

This is observable in the world around us. Don't you think it's funny that billionaires like John Kerry advocate people run to Canada and avoid the draft, while your poor neighbors are deeply conservative and fearful and hateful of everyone different than them? It makes sense. Look at it and you can see it is there. They are scared and it causes them to be intolerant. We are intolerant of each other because the society we have created has gotten stuck in a negative feedback loop. The problem is not that the conservatives won't listen to us: no, the problem is that they listen to us too well. They see the same things we do. They assume the negative of the politicians, and the government, and everybody else until they don't even trust their own neighbors. Some of us here don't even trust ourselves or the friends who continually show us how much they care.

The answer all along has been exactly what Karl Marx fucking said: the new society we wish to build is the direct result of what we already have. It was only through a series of bad trips and turbulent interpersonal relationships that I was ever able to even discover this by noticing how the people around me interact. What we can do is to not act out of fear anymore. We can act out of love. Rather than trying to scare people about everything, we can show them that our socialist utopia really can happen. We can be the people we think everybody are. We can be altruistic and good. We can do things and make sacrifices as a group of people to make a better change within this society that will in turn cause a good change all over the world.

How is that possible? Look, and you will see how it is possible. It is possible because if we are the change we wish to see, then people don't have to be scared anymore. We will be the exception to the rule that becomes the rule itself. We will be the people who change the minds of the scared, of the sick, of the destitute, of the people who are so disenfranchised and lost without us that they have fallen into all kinds of terrible behavior that denies the happiness of everyone around them. We have to have hope. We have to believe in each other. And if we do, the change will come naturally. Over time, we will use what we know to change everything from the ground up. And when we see the difference between our society works and how people actually are; when people actually believe that everyone is good inside, but that our society does not function as such, we will have the political will to overthrow capitalism. That is the internal contradiction that drives change both in ourselves and in our entire society. It will happen in an instant. It will be a spark of revolution all over the world. There may be fighting. There may be horrible atrocities committed. But the will of the revolution is good, and these are not things we should want to accept. In the words of Che Guevara, "the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love." And he is right.

Comrades, be guided by pure, true love for yourselves and each other. Act not out of intolerance or hatred or fear, but out of understanding and compassion for each other. Assume the best in yourselves and everyone and we will meet our own expectations. Be the change we want to create. Be part of the society that we want to change. And we will change the world forever just by changing ourselves.

MEGAMANTROTSKY

2nd October 2014, 17:02

Thanks, preacher. What is this, an exercise in liberation theology?

consuming negativity

2nd October 2014, 18:06

Thanks, preacher. What is this, an exercise in liberation theology?

Not at all. I've combined everything I know into something that I think is worth reading, based on my own experiences. What, exactly, is wrong with it? If you see something ridiculous or contrived, point it out and tell me so I can adjust my thought processes accordingly.

Os Cangaceiros

2nd October 2014, 18:40

Did you come to this realization after a run of psychedelic hallucinogens and/or dissociative anesthetics?

No, but in all seriousness, fear is a driving force in the lives of people, as it is in all mammals really. It's one of the most base emotions there is, so that's hardly a revelation. In my opinion that fact doesn't say anything of significance in regards to practical tactics and how we're going to achieve any goals.

PhoenixAsh

2nd October 2014, 18:50

Fine it is a bit preachy and parts are a bit obvious but at least somebody is trying to come to some realization and create something out of it.

Lets give some constructive criticism rather than being a bit discouraging or dismissive.

Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages

2nd October 2014, 18:54

Universal love doesn't survive long after the drugs wear off, unfortunately. I can appreciate the traumas that my enemies have endured and the ways those events have shaped them, but that doesn't change the equation, they're still enemies. I can only love a person to the extent that they will allow me to love them.

consuming negativity

2nd October 2014, 18:57

I'll be completely honest and say yes. Anybody who reads the threads we have on this forum knows that I had a really bad incident not too long ago where I got really, really fucking high on dissociatives. And I haven't felt the same in my body since. But I don't think that that in and of itself should discredit what I'm typing.

The reason I post things like this is not because I am 100% sure that any or everything in them is correct. I'm just some guy on the internet. I can be wrong. I am probably wrong at least partially about a lot of the things in here. We all have our biases. But how will my thought processes ever get better if I don't subject myself to criticism?

I've been on these forums so many times and I've seen things that I thought were pretty good, but that people shit on or said were awful or terrible and I would shy away from defending those viewpoints. And I've thought about why that is. And you know why? It was because I was scared to put myself out there for fear of being wrong. Because we believe that being wrong makes someone a bad person, or it means that there is something wrong with them that justifies their failure. And if you build a society based on that ideology, what do you get? You get capitalism. You get a society wherein we assume everyone is bad until proven otherwise, and we assume that everybody who is wrong deserves the punishment they get by being wrong. We think we need to encourage success, but who here doesn't have all sorts of things they do just because they want to be better? It's called intrinsic motivation. And our society pretends it doesn't exist. We think we need to ruin people's entire lives if they fuck up once to make sure they will pay attention and make sure everything goes right. And look at how unhappy everyone is. We hate this society. Because it is built on false pretenses.

Look at the schools, where kids are rewarded with stars for doing what we want and punished for doing what we don't want. Look at our parents, who love us when we do what they want and criticize us when we don't. Look at our economy, wherein making just one mistake can leave you out on the street, but making one success can bring you more money than you know what you can do with. That might not be the reality of what we have, but that is the ideology behind it that has created this mess, and you cannot change the society we live in without changing the people who make up that society. Thatcher wasn't entirely wrong... society does exist, but we are the society. If you want to change everything, why would you start anywhere else other than the individual?

I just do not anymore think that being wrong is something to be ashamed of. I will never be perfect. I will never not make mistakes. I will never get everything exactly the way I want it. But if I don't try, then I will never be better than I was before. I want you guys to dig through this and tell me every single mistake in it so I can fix it and start over and re-think and try something different next time. I want criticism. It doesn't make me feel bad, it makes me feel better. Because I'm that much closer to achieving what I want, which is a theory that explains everything I see around me in the world. I want to know. And none of us will never know anything unless we get past this idea that we should be ashamed of having tried and not made it.

It is the negative feedback loop I was talking about. Capitalism did not spring out of nowhere, it came as a result of us and what we did before we had capitalism. We believe in capitalism as a society. Socialism is not the dominant ideology. And if it were, we would have a socialist society, regardless of the political system. Because people want what they want and they will work for change as long as they believe that something can be done to make that possible. We've been going about this all wrong - people are already scared and it has made them into hateful, ignorant capitalists. And rather than trying to assure people that everything is okay, we have people calling for bloodshed and violence and waving around AKs and talking about how we need to go nuts and shoot everyone and take control by force. But don't you think people are smart enough to see that everybody else who has used force on them has actually just been the bad guys trying to take their shit? It doesn't matter what we know if we aren't really doing things for the people we claim to be doing them for. We have to show people that what we want is the same thing they want - peace, quiet, and love. And the only way we can do that is by actually being the good guys. When what we want comes, if it ever happens, it will not come under a hammer and sickle with tanks rolling on either side. It can never happen that way. Emma Goldman was absolutely right when she said that the ends are created by the means and are thus inseparable from them. If you want socialism, this is the way to it. I see no other way. And if you do, then say so.

Futility Personified

2nd October 2014, 18:58

I've been wanting to write something like this for a while. But you've done it for me, so I guess I can twiddle my thumbs and play battlefield. It is about love, and it comes across as a psuedo-jesus trip, both in my own opinion of how things ought to be and in your post. But does that make it wrong? No.

The only thing I would contend against in your post would be about showing the fear of something to motivate. Ultimately when we're this vague it's all pissing in the wind and my point belongs more in the pub than in a post but there is some real serious imminent shit that will happen if class organisation doesn't begin anew. Top post, thank you for making it.

MagÃ³n

2nd October 2014, 19:04

consuming negativity

2nd October 2014, 19:14

Someone get this guy a soapbox to stand on, quick!

Also, loving someone is fine, and wanting to help people is fine, but the truth is you just can't show some types of people, love. Either they won't accept it, or they'll just throw mud in your face.

Lastly, who said I was "damaged goods", that couldn't be apart of mainstream society? I think I'd find it pretty hard to work a job, and do some of things I do, if I couldn't meld into mainstream society.

But don't you see that this is exactly what I just said? You are assuming the negative about them. That they can never see. That they are just too far gone, or too ignorant, and that they are a waste of time. But that's not true. Nobody is a waste of time. It doesn't matter how bad they appear. It doesn't matter how many bad things they do. What we do, and the mistakes we make, they do not define us. We are not the summation of our actions. And you are no better or no worse than anybody else based on your ability or lack thereof to do anything. You happened to work out well. And I'm happy for you that your life is going well. But there is a reason that the kind of people I'm talking about tend to be attracted to places like this, and it is because we provide an alternative social group wherein they are no longer on the margins, but right in the center and accepted for who they are.

And why is that necessary? Because people on the margins of society think there is something wrong with them for being different or not working right in this society. But there's not. Everything we see that makes people not work right can be explained by biological, social, or other physical factors. And we see abnormal as fundamentally bad - let me call you abnormal and see how you feel about it. It is a reflection of our values. Not working "right" is working "wrong". Everything we see around is a reflection of our values, and what I say makes sense if you look at it hard enough. Government is not at all a tool for change - our governance is a reflection of the society we have created. The economics? It is interactions between people. And what is society? It is a collection of individuals. Everything is based on us. Our individual beliefs, actions, and thoughts. We have to dig deeper and rebuild everything, including ourselves. You want a revolution? I don't see how much more revolutionary you could get.

Os Cangaceiros

2nd October 2014, 19:25

Rosa Partizan

2nd October 2014, 19:37

MagÃ³n

2nd October 2014, 19:39

But don't you see that this is exactly what I just said? You are assuming the negative about them. That they can never see. That they are just too far gone, or too ignorant, and that they are a waste of time. But that's not true. Nobody is a waste of time. It doesn't matter how bad they appear. It doesn't matter how many bad things they do. What we do, and the mistakes we make, they do not define us. We are not the summation of our actions.

Clearly you haven't been the target of racism, or if you have, you'd realize that their type are too far gone, ignorant, and a waste of anyone's time, trying to debate them. Anything you have to say, that doesn't support their racist views, gets shouted down or violently threatened.

And since we can't read each other's minds, and know what the other is thinking, the actions people take, whether for good or bad, does make up who we see them as as a person. So a person is made up in the minds of others, by the actions they commit.

And you are no better or no worse than anybody else based on your ability or lack thereof to do anything.

Oh, I'm quite great, don't doubt that for a second.

You happened to work out well. And I'm happy for you that your life is going well. But there is a reason that the kind of people I'm talking about tend to be attracted to places like this, and it is because we provide an alternative social group wherein they are no longer on the margins, but right in the center and accepted for who they are.

And why is that necessary? Because people on the margins of society think there is something wrong with them for being different or not working right in this society. But there's not. Everything we see that makes people not work right can be explained by biological, social, or other physical factors. And we see abnormal as fundamentally bad - let me call you abnormal and see how you feel about it. It is a reflection of our values. Not working "right" is working "wrong". Everything we see around is a reflection of our values, and what I say makes sense if you look at it hard enough. Government is not at all a tool for change - our governance is a reflection of the society we have created. The economics? It is interactions between people. And what is society? It is a collection of individuals. Everything is based on us. Our individual beliefs, actions, and thoughts. We have to dig deeper and rebuild everything, including ourselves. You want a revolution? I don't see how much more revolutionary you could get.

And this is all fine and dandy, but put a bit too flowery. As others said, preachy. The Left has, for the most part of its existence, been accepting of those on the margins, that's nothing new at all; same with government being a reflection of society. It's why we have the leaders we do in these countries. Again, nothing new.

And if I want a revolution, it's not going to started or won, or last for very long, with flowery speeches trying to get people to change their way of thinking. That's been done to death before too, it's what a lot of the Left has done for the most part, when it wasn't violently reacting to situations. There will be no peaceful change/revolution.

consuming negativity

2nd October 2014, 19:46

Well I accept the proposition that fear is a driving force in, well, everybody's life, if for no other reason than it's been evolutionarily engrained for our own survival. What I'm having problems with is how that fact is going to translate into real, tangible tactics that are going to get us from "here" (the world we live in today) to "there" (the world we ultimately want to see take shape). Political systems that are structured with heavy doses of fear & paranoia are obviously not environments that I'd ever want to live in (like civil war/Terror revolutionary France, or 1930's USSR, etc), but at the same time it's hard to imagine real social change happening without substantial dollops of fear, unfortunately.

The idea about "If you want to change everything, why would you start anywhere else other than the individual?" is definitely an old idea as well. Emma Goldman towards the end of her life, for example, began to subscribe to Landauer's idea that "the state is in all of us", so to speak, and that people have engrained the state's ideals to such an extent that it would be extremely difficult to simply do away with the state as a political institution. Many scientists would probably agree with the assessment that hierarchical power systems like the state is simply the natural outgrowth of the human brain divvying up social status.

Really the problem I have with "revelations" regarding the status of revolutionary politics is that countless people (including extremely intelligent people) have spent countless hours over 100's of years trying to find a way to get to a more-or-less egalitarian free association of producers, as we are today, and I have difficulty believing that any idea really extends beyond importance for the individual in question & has important implications for the wider movement.

I don't think it is a coincidence that people have gotten more conservative at the same time that the wealth gap has increased; nor do I think it is a coincidence that conservative hawkish politics have bred even more of themselves. It's that feedback loop I was talking about. When we look at revolutions throughout history, when did they happen? When the society that people wanted was so far away from the society that people had, and the political system so inadequate for resolving the conflict, that they were willing to override their fear of the police and military in order to stand up for their beliefs. Fear did the exact opposite. It made people scared and conservative and willing to just play along so they don't get their throat cut. Revolution then happens in totalitarian societies when they get so awful and so far gone that people have nothing left to lose by risking their lives. Does that remind you of anything? Because I'm seeing the French and Russian absolute monarchies wherein people didn't even have anything to eat which forced them into survival mode: either fight or die. That is not good, and historically, it has not been a reliable method of forward change.

Not only that, but it brings me to my next point, which is that it is manipulative and pretty much evil sounding. But what is tactics except manipulation dressed up? You're basically asking me how this can be applied to manipulate people and thus the society they frorm. My response is simply that they don't need to be manipulated. This is not manipulation, nor is it tactics. It is the honest truth. And if you treat people like equals who don't need to be manipulated; if you treat them like intelligent people who are more than their failures, I think you have a much better chance of getting them to cooperate with you. Why? Because you are, like I said before, showing them rather than telling them. You are proving to them that you are in fact the good guy rather than some greedy wanna-be dictator who just wants to manipulate them. And don't take that as some veiled insult - there's nothing bad about you for having asked that question. You probably just didn't make the connection that I made. Are you a bad person? There is nothing wrong with having been wrong, and you know what else? You might come back to this and totally kick my ass, verbally speaking, and leave me up shit's creek without a paddle. I'm not trying to say I know I'm right, I'm just trying to say that I think I'm right and explain to you why, and how that fits into everything else. Have I done a good job articulating it?

As for your last paragraph, that's a simple answer as well. I don't claim that any of this is really original work. I see it more as a collaborative effort between myself and those countless people who spent so much time thinking and trying to figure out things and interacting. It's not mine. I couldn't copyright it in good faith no matter how much I wrote out. It is an idea that I have created by drawing on tons of sources, many of which you would be in complete disbelief of. Remember how I talked about dissonance? That is cognitive dissonance. It is from psychology. And people also consider it dialectics. It's all the same shit over and over again but applied differently. These ideas aren't original at all. Not even my conclusion from them. So no, this is not some great work. I am not anybody except some dude who spends too much time thinking about shit. But it's not terrible is it?

Rafiq

2nd October 2014, 19:51

consuming negativity

2nd October 2014, 20:04

Not sure about that damaged goods-thing. I think that this vocab applies to me to a certain extent, but I don't find this extraordinary at all, rather pretty normal. Who has never suffered from rejection, disappointment, violence, abuse, from something that happened long ago, from some cut in their life. All of this stuff takes part in what you become. Still, I don't feel mentally disturbed and function pretty well in mainstream society. When people tell me what depression feels like, I don't identify with that. My biggest problem is, however, that I think too much, but I've learned to shake it off when it gets to me. It really depends on your kind of experiences and how you dealt with them, how you survived them. I don't consider myself a strong person, so I think that the reason that I function rather well, that I have no problems working and socializing is because my bad experiences were rather, let's say, "average", at least compared to the stuff that people here write about.

I know this is applicable to more than just me specifically because it isn't extraordinary. You're completely right; it's not abnormal. It's just normal thought. It applies to you, and it applies to me, and people with lives way more lucky and way less fortunate. It has to, because we are all individuals who all, together, make up society. If it didn't apply to all of us then it would be useless to explain all of us. Wouldn't it?

And if you'd like to get your credit for helping me with this, well, I owe you a lot. It was actually something I realized after our conversation this morning that put me on the path to sending a PM to another of my friends (who may reveal himself if he chooses) that snowballed into me sticking one last piece into this puzzle. I've realized so much through our conversations; I could easily do another one of these threads just with you to explain how you've helped me to figure some of this stuff out by pointing out to me how much I fuck up all the time.

Os Cangaceiros

2nd October 2014, 20:05

consuming negativity

2nd October 2014, 20:34

Clearly you haven't been the target of racism, or if you have, you'd realize that their type are too far gone, ignorant, and a waste of anyone's time, trying to debate them. Anything you have to say, that doesn't support their racist views, gets shouted down or violently threatened.

And since we can't read each other's minds, and know what the other is thinking, the actions people take, whether for good or bad, does make up who we see them as as a person. So a person is made up in the minds of others, by the actions they commit.

Oh, I'm quite great, don't doubt that for a second.

And this is all fine and dandy, but put a bit too flowery. As others said, preachy. The Left has, for the most part of its existence, been accepting of those on the margins, that's nothing new at all; same with government being a reflection of society. It's why we have the leaders we do in these countries. Again, nothing new.

And if I want a revolution, it's not going to started or won, or last for very long, with flowery speeches trying to get people to change their way of thinking. That's been done to death before too, it's what a lot of the Left has done for the most part, when it wasn't violently reacting to situations. There will be no peaceful change/revolution.

No, I have not been subject to serious racism. I've been the racist. I grew up in a household that waved around Confederate flags and wherein the "n-word" was not a curse. That's how I know all of this. When I was a kid, that's what I believed. I was the fucking bad guy and so I know that the bad guys are not inherently bad. I'm still that same person now, but look how far that I've come since then. I've done a lot of stupid shit in my life besides that, too. And I know that in my heart that all of it, all of the fuck ups, it was all fear and ignorance. It was fear going into a capitalist world that I couldn't control that would chew me up and spit me out. It was seeing black people on the news every day shooting people and being told that there was just something different about them by people who I thought knew what they were talking about. I was misled and lied to not out of malevolence but by adults who still hadn't yet figured out what I had to figure out: that they were people just like me, who deserved just as much compassion as I did, who I could have easily been under the circumstances that created them. It is all just the same "people who do bad things are bad people" logic that had led to everything else that we don't look at horrified when people say, but we instead think is common sense. The Germans during WWII were not evil; they were ignorant. Stalin, Hitler, all of the worst people you can think of. Slave owners, tyrants, capitalists, imperialists, rapists, the scum of the earth of all time. None of them were evil. Evil doesn't exist. They were wrong, and scared, and ignorant. All bad things are done by good people. It is all connected and it is all based on us. Does that mean we let people kill Jews and rape women and be racists? No. It means we get to the root of the damn problem and actually stop it from happening by changing the way we think and treat each other. And all of that disgust you're feeling towards all of those "bad" people, and all of the bad things it makes you wanna do? How you close off your mind and just want them the fuck away from you because they're so hurtful and ignorant? It's the same process. It is all the same logic.

consuming negativity

2nd October 2014, 20:41

The struggle is not a product of fear, rather it is the opposite - most revolutionary epochs were characterized by not so much the absence, but conquest of fear. Fear is taken - once you risk everything, once you show that you have nothing to lose (including your own life), you invoke fear. The terror is a reversal of the terror the oppressed had been living under for hundreds of years.

I don't disagree with any of this.

Tactics =/= manipulation. Manipulating people could potentially be a tactic, but when someone talks about "tactics" they're not automatically talking about trying to deceive other people in some way, that's ridiculous. Tactics are just modes of procedure towards an end goal. People organize themselves (ie take action that involves more than one individual) all the time, for their own collective benefit, in ways that don't involve manipulation as the word is commonly understood, so I'm not sure where you're getting that from.

One of the basic truths that pretty much all left-wing people accept is that economic action is more effective on a collective level than on an individual level. To take a common example, a single individual in the workplace has more of a chance of gaining concessions from their employer if their co-workers agree with them & stand behind them on the issue.

Nor do I disagree with this. I guess you found one of those biases I talked about.

Rosa Partizan

2nd October 2014, 20:45

I know this is applicable to more than just me specifically because it isn't extraordinary. You're completely right; it's not abnormal. It's just normal thought. It applies to you, and it applies to me, and people with lives way more lucky and way less fortunate. It has to, because we are all individuals who all, together, make up society. If it didn't apply to all of us then it would be useless to explain all of us. Wouldn't it?

And if you'd like to get your credit for helping me with this, well, I owe you a lot. It was actually something I realized after our conversation this morning that put me on the path to sending a PM to another of my friends (who may reveal himself if he chooses) that snowballed into me sticking one last piece into this puzzle. I've realized so much through our conversations; I could easily do another one of these threads just with you to explain how you've helped me to figure some of this stuff out by pointing out to me how much I fuck up all the time.

I'm really not about fishing compliments, not at all, but I can't get my head around how I am supposed to have managed this. You give me way too much credit :) and at some point I'm wondering if the people in your daily life are rather shallow when you consider me somehow "deep" or "very smart" or whatever. I just think that maybe people that have suffered more come to question more and that this wondering and searching leads to non-mainstream attitudes like leftism (yeah leftism is a very broad concept, of course). Or maybe they suffer more because of their attidude? It could work somehow in both directions.

MagÃ³n

2nd October 2014, 21:32

No, I have not been subject to serious racism. I've been the racist. I grew up in a household that waved around Confederate flags and wherein the "n-word" was not a curse. That's how I know all of this. When I was a kid, that's what I believed. I was the fucking bad guy and so I know that the bad guys are not inherently bad.

I didn't say they were inherently bad, but their actions, which are bad, make them bad. I can commend you and anyone else like you, who was racist, or had racist attitudes, for seeing what those who can't see, and changing that, but again the actions that one takes are how we determine them. Hitler wasn't born evil, but through variables and whatnot, his thoughts and actions became so. And in the end, he was evil, or whatever you want to call it. But he wasn't always, and same with anyone who was racist but has seen the error of what they thought and said. You weren't born a racist, you grew up in that environment, but saw where it lacked.

I'm willing to bet that if Hitler had woken up one day, with a new attitude, realizing he was wrong about the Jews and Gypsies, etc. none of those groups would have just forgiven him, or said, "Okay, you're not a racist or terrible person anymore."

The Germans during WWII were not evil; they were ignorant. Stalin, Hitler, all of the worst people you can think of. Slave owners, tyrants, capitalists, imperialists, rapists, the scum of the earth of all time. None of them were evil. Evil doesn't exist. They were wrong, and scared, and ignorant.

Wrong, yes; scared, in some cases maybe, but not ignorant. They knew well what they were doing, and just didn't care. If somewhere down the road in one's life, they choose to enslave, dictate over, rape or whatever, then in the end whatever you want to call it, evil or whatever, they are it. And if a person for most of their life, has just enslaved, raped or whatever, it's not easy to be forgiven for that. An understanding can be met, that they're not longer that person, or have those thoughts, but what they did so willingly in the past, cannot be just blown away and forgiven like it's all okay now. There is a reason why minorities like me, in America, and elsewhere, have such a distrust of some people, because of what they've done in the past or present, can't be easily forgiven.

All bad things are done by good people.

Things are done by just people then, not good or bad, because if evil doesn't exist, then neither does good. One is the counterbalance to the other, and if one doesn't exist, neither does the other.

It is all connected and it is all based on us. Does that mean we let people kill Jews and rape women and be racists? No. It means we get to the root of the damn problem and actually stop it from happening by changing the way we think and treat each other. And all of that disgust you're feeling towards all of those "bad" people, and all of the bad things it makes you wanna do? How you close off your mind and just want them the fuck away from you because they're so hurtful and ignorant? It's the same process. It is all the same logic.

You don't understand, you don't get it. All those people who have been standing up against racists, have been trying to get to the root of the problem, and already know what's what. That's what they try to argue about with racists, is the root of the actual problems, not some paranoid delusions that some guy with a swastika tattooed on his head, or whatever, thought up one day or night. They try to tell them, show them, whatever, that because I have brown skin, or you have white skin and someone has black, that we aren't different. But it is the racists who are holding it back, unwilling to change their minds for whatever reasons, and so on, that make things difficult. So it's not the same logic of hate one side feels for the other, because one sides illogical hate that stems from paranoia and delusions, is just that, illogical and delusional, while the other side, logically, is trying to make them think and see so, and their hate stems from those who don't want to change their views. Those who want to be racist for the rest of their lives, and not be educated or understanding, are the ones that are hated. Those who see reason, and use logic eventually, why would minorities hate them? Well, we don't.

consuming negativity

2nd October 2014, 21:52

I'm really not about fishing compliments, not at all, but I can't get my head around how I am supposed to have managed this. You give me way too much credit :) and at some point I'm wondering if the people in your daily life are rather shallow when you consider me somehow "deep" or "very smart" or whatever. I just think that maybe people that have suffered more come to question more and that this wondering and searching leads to non-mainstream attitudes like leftism (yeah leftism is a very broad concept, of course). Or maybe they suffer more because of their attidude? It could work somehow in both directions.

I don't see anything there I can disagree with (re: the bolded). It also seems to fit into the whole "negative feedback cycle" idea. Os Cangaceiros just managed to point out a lot more about me than they probably thought they did by pointing out my negative attitude about strategizing and manipulation in general. It is because I consider myself very good at both and I tend to devalue things that I like or that otherwise describe me. After a while, you keep seeing more and more of these horrible things you do, and in a society wherein bad people do bad things, you begin to think of yourself as bad and start to associate everything with yourself negatively, instead and ultimately becoming a champion of anybody except yourself. Now think of Tumblr and tell me if you don't think there's at least a little bit of this kind of stuff going on in the "SJW" crowd. Or think of the persons who consider self-interest to be somehow evil or wrong in and of itself. This is common among socialists.

But that is sort of the puzzle piece that broke me out of that downhill cycle of self-devaluation... that good people do bad things. I'm far from an idiot, but I don't consider myself particularly intelligent. I'm sort of good at certain things and I had a combination of factors that somehow led me here. Some of which I know, others of which I don't, and few of which I have the mental strength to sit and talk about after typing so much today. I'm pretty mentally exhausted right now. However, I am knowledgeable enough to know an intelligent person when I meet one. And also knowledgeable enough to know the difference between intelligence and knowledge.

consuming negativity

2nd October 2014, 22:01

I didn't say they were inherently bad, but their actions, which are bad, make them bad. I can commend you and anyone else like you, who was racist, or had racist attitudes, for seeing what those who can't see, and changing that, but again the actions that one takes are how we determine them. Hitler wasn't born evil, but through variables and whatnot, his thoughts and actions became so. And in the end, he was evil, or whatever you want to call it. But he wasn't always, and same with anyone who was racist but has seen the error of what they thought and said. You weren't born a racist, you grew up in that environment, but saw where it lacked.

I'm willing to bet that if Hitler had woken up one day, with a new attitude, realizing he was wrong about the Jews and Gypsies, etc. none of those groups would have just forgiven him, or said, "Okay, you're not a racist or terrible person anymore."

Wrong, yes; scared, in some cases maybe, but not ignorant. They knew well what they were doing, and just didn't care. If somewhere down the road in one's life, they choose to enslave, dictate over, rape or whatever, then in the end whatever you want to call it, evil or whatever, they are it. And if a person for most of their life, has just enslaved, raped or whatever, it's not easy to be forgiven for that. An understanding can be met, that they're not longer that person, or have those thoughts, but what they did so willingly in the past, cannot be just blown away and forgiven like it's all okay now. There is a reason why minorities like me, in America, and elsewhere, have such a distrust of some people, because of what they've done in the past or present, can't be easily forgiven.

Things are done by just people then, not good or bad, because if evil doesn't exist, then neither does good. One is the counterbalance to the other, and if one doesn't exist, neither does the other.

You don't understand, you don't get it. All those people who have been standing up against racists, have been trying to get to the root of the problem, and already know what's what. That's what they try to argue about with racists, is the root of the actual problems, not some paranoid delusions that some guy with a swastika tattooed on his head, or whatever, thought up one day or night. They try to tell them, show them, whatever, that because I have brown skin, or you have white skin and someone has black, that we aren't different. But it is the racists who are holding it back, unwilling to change their minds for whatever reasons, and so on, that make things difficult. So it's not the same logic of hate one side feels for the other, because one sides illogical hate that stems from paranoia and delusions, is just that, illogical and delusional, while the other side, logically, is trying to make them think and see so, and their hate stems from those who don't want to change their views. Those who want to be racist for the rest of their lives, and not be educated or understanding, are the ones that are hated. Those who see reason, and use logic eventually, why would minorities hate them? Well, we don't.

I really shouldn't even be making this post when I'm so tired but I feel like I owe it to you to give you one more response. So, here it is. Try not to run me over. :laugh:

Yes, Hitler. I knew by mentioning him that I would end up defending him. And considering all of the other shit I've said about myself I'm not even afraid to do so. You're right, absolutely: there is no way that Hitler would have ever been forgiven for what he did. He was in very, very, VERY deep. He was... well, extraordinarily "evil". Without question. But that's what's so scary about this stuff... he wasn't actually evil. He wasn't the devil. He wasn't any different than you or me, but factors led to him becoming the way he was. Christians talk all this shit about praying, but I'll always remember Mark Twain asking who prays for the devil? Who ever does pray for the sinner who needs it most? When we talk about who we need to feel for and who we need to help, it is not people like me who managed to pull themselves out of their self-inflicted misery. It is people like Hitler who are so unspeakably far gone that nobody can even stand to think of them in a neutral tone. They are the ones who need love and they will never get it, and that is incredibly sad to me.

As for the rest, I really do understand. I understand why you think I don't, but I will try to explain to you that I do. And this is how. Because simply knowing all of this doesn't make a person magically "cured" of their biases and ignorance. It is a constant struggle against onself to do the right thing and not fall back into it. That is why I make so many mistakes. It is why I feel so terribly about myself still on some days. Because I know better, and that I know better and fuck up anyway, makes me feel awful about myself. And when you fall in so deep, and you have a realization like that, sometimes all it does is just pushes you in deeper. You can't handle the truth. They are indeed doing bad things by denying their racism, but they don't have the strength to fix themselves always. Not without help. They need the people around them to help them out, but nobody will. That is the negative feedback cycle here. It kills people and causes so much unnecessary pain because we convince people that they are evil for doing bad things. They aren't. They're so incredibly hurt that they just don't have the will to fight against it anymore. They aren't just hated by the minorities. They hate themselves, too. I don't blame minorities, or anyone else, for feeling negatively about bad people. It is our society. It is how we are right now. And everybody has their ignorances and their struggles. I have never had to be a minority and I would not judge them even if I ever had been one. But what I can tell you is that the pain that they cause by continuing to be racists is completely reflective of pain inside themselves, and that hatred does nothing to help.

We have to love racists, but it is hard to do so. It hurts us. Change hurts. Accepting new things and realigning our egos hurts. And I don't hold it against anyone who can't handle that pain because it is too much at all once. That is normal. It's just part of being human. The same reason you cannot find it in your heart to accept the bad people is the same reason they cannot themselves find it in their hearts to accept and then change themselves. Because, deep down inside, you both are in agreement about who they really are.

MagÃ³n

2nd October 2014, 22:39

Yes, Hitler. I knew by mentioning him that I would end up defending him. And considering all of the other shit I've said about myself I'm not even afraid to do so. You're right, absolutely: there is no way that Hitler would have ever been forgiven for what he did. He was in very, very, VERY deep. He was... well, extraordinarily "evil". Without question. But that's what's so scary about this stuff... he wasn't actually evil. He wasn't the devil. He wasn't any different than you or me, but factors led to him becoming the way he was. Christians talk all this shit about praying, but I'll always remember Mark Twain asking who prays for the devil? Who ever does pray for the sinner who needs it most? When we talk about who we need to feel for and who we need to help, it is not people like me who managed to pull themselves out of their self-inflicted misery. It is people like Hitler who are so unspeakably far gone that nobody can even stand to think of them in a neutral tone. They are the ones who need love and they will never get it, and that is incredibly sad to me.

No, you can't show Hitler or others like him, love. It's just not possible. People like him, who were or are so far gone, are gone for good and there's no turning them around. It's that simple, and there's no reason to feel bad for them. If all you choose to do with your life, is hate and discriminate against a group of people different from yourself, for illogical reasons, there's no reason that those who are hated and discriminated towards, should feel any sort of sympathy or love. That's like being beat and asking for another. No one, wage slave or otherwise, should feel sadness when they take the power from whoever thinks to control them.

As for the rest, I really do understand. I understand why you think I don't, but I will try to explain to you that I do. And this is how. Because simply knowing all of this doesn't make a person magically "cured" of their biases and ignorance. It is a constant struggle against onself to do the right thing and not fall back into it. That is why I make so many mistakes. It is why I feel so terribly about myself still on some days. Because I know better, and that I know better and fuck up anyway, makes me feel awful about myself. And when you fall in so deep, and you have a realization like that, sometimes all it does is just pushes you in deeper. You can't handle the truth. They are indeed doing bad things by denying their racism, but they don't have the strength to fix themselves always. Not without help. They need the people around them to help them out, but nobody will. That is the negative feedback cycle here.

I think you still don't quite get it, because you probably haven't been approached personally by it in one way or another. Minorities who speak out on racism, are doing just that, trying to help them, but there are some so far gone that they can't be helped. There is no negative feedback cycle, just those who are trying to talk some sense into someone, who is trying to spread negativity, and who are too far gone. There is no point in it, and as I said before, just a waste of time.

It kills people and causes so much unnecessary pain because we convince people that they are evil for doing bad things. They aren't. They're so incredibly hurt that they just don't have the will to fight against it anymore. They aren't just hated by the minorities. They hate themselves, too. I don't blame minorities, or anyone else, for feeling negatively about bad people. It is our society. It is how we are right now. And everybody has their ignorances and their struggles. I have never had to be a minority and I would not judge them even if I ever had been one. But what I can tell you is that the pain that they cause by continuing to be racists is completely reflective of pain inside themselves, and that hatred does nothing to help.

That racists hate themselves, isn't a new concept to me, or anyone else of a minority. That's been quite clear to us for years, and has in fact, been one of the points in discussing why racism is shit, and what they're saying or doing, is shit. But again, some are too far gone that there's just no point. Waste of air and time.

We have to love racists, but it is hard to do so. It hurts us. Change hurts. Accepting new things and realigning our egos hurts. And I don't hold it against anyone who can't handle that pain because it is too much at all once. That is normal. It's just part of being human. The same reason you cannot find it in your heart to accept the bad people is the same reason they cannot themselves find it in their hearts to accept and then change themselves. Because, deep down inside, you both are in agreement about who they really are.

This, is just another flowery bit of randomness, that doesn't make sense really. You go on talking about pain and hearts, but however you want to put it, I'm actually quite accepting of who they really are, if all they want to be is racist or xenophobic, but I won't waste my time with them.

consuming negativity

2nd October 2014, 22:57

edit: this response was stupid, ignore it

fake second edit: i also edited my earlier reply to you rosa

Illegalitarian

3rd October 2014, 01:19

Love above all else is of course our greatest weapon, screaming in someone's face about how reactionary they are and belittling them for not seeing "the light" makes us come off just as fanatical as any other group blinded by pure ideology, entirely disconnected from the realities of the human condition.

I don't think it's a huge stretch to say that most of us are socialists (pick your flavor) because we do genuinely care about people, above all else. It breaks my heart to think of all of the people who will go to "bed" tonight without a bite of food in their stomachs, people who work their fingers to the bone to build a life for themselves and their families, only to make some rich person even richer as they already are. Even more so those who are going through that exact same thing who have to worry about a missile raining down on everything they've worked for and snatching it all away, or those who live in constant fear of being abducted by some state intelligence agency and tortured for speaking too loudly what is weighing on their mind.

Most people aren't as dumb as we would like to think they are. I was having a simple conversation with a custodian at a local mall the other day about how hard it is to make it in life and how the rich are only getting richer at the expense of everyone else and he said, sadly emoting through the wrinkles and lines on his face caused from years of strife and struggle, "the more you can get, the more they want".

Most people know that there is a fundamental problem with the way things are in the world. Everyone knows it, as a matter of fact, it's just that these problems are so multi-faceted and nuanced that even people who dedicate their entire lives to studying sociology, political science, etc cannot fully recognize the root of many issues our world faces. I think Lenin called this "false consciousness", recognizing the existence of a problem but not quite penning it down for this reason or that.

It's easy to call the bourgeois, nazis et all "evil" and dismiss them as monsters because that does to them what calling jews "subhuman" did for the nazis: it dehumanizes them. It makes it so much easier to mentally distance them from ourselves, to think of them as "them" and thus not "us", because the truth - the fact that they're all people just exactly as we are and we all have it in us to be just another guard at the concentration camp - is too much to swallow.

It's easy to say "well they killed millions of people" while ignoring that the kind of revolutionary changes most of us cheer for would lead to an even greater death toll, as radical changes to a society so often leads to. They believed they were right just as we believe we are right, just as conservatives believe that giving tax breaks to the wealthy will legitimately help everyone, just as both groups are people with ideas that they think will make the world a better place just as we are.

So I think when approaching class struggle it's important to keep this all in mind, that everyone on earth is ultimately in this together and by "othering" those we see as the enemy we're ultimately setting ourselves up for more bad than good, that approaching revolution from a place of fear and division rather than a place of love and that thing inside of all of us that wants to see everyone on earth happy and unoppressed is what unites every human on earth, and that's the place we should be approaching people from as socialists, that love Hereno (or communer as he is known here :v) is talking about.

Some here will inevitably try and blow this off as hippy dippy liberal nonsense, but make no mistake, I'm not speaking of kumbayaism, I understand 100% that violence is a necessity, but violence also needs to have a human face. It's important to keep all of the above in mind when initiating revolutionary violence lest we have no concessions about doing unspeakable things to anyone we deem as "wrong".

Edit: Well, it's not inherently necessary, but I think we all know that there will always be resistance to change within society, and this attempted change is always met with violence, which of course requires violence as a response.

consuming negativity

4th October 2014, 15:28

Tactics =/= manipulation. Manipulating people could potentially be a tactic, but when someone talks about "tactics" they're not automatically talking about trying to deceive other people in some way, that's ridiculous. Tactics are just modes of procedure towards an end goal. People organize themselves (ie take action that involves more than one individual) all the time, for their own collective benefit, in ways that don't involve manipulation as the word is commonly understood, so I'm not sure where you're getting that from.

One of the basic truths that pretty much all left-wing people accept is that economic action is more effective on a collective level than on an individual level. To take a common example, a single individual in the workplace has more of a chance of gaining concessions from their employer if their co-workers agree with them & stand behind them on the issue.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about this, and I think you're not only right about it, but that you are more living up to what I said in the OP here than I am. I don't think manipulation is distinguishable from actual, genuine feelings and actions. And I think that might be why I think it is so insidious to lie and manipulate; because in order to actually feel love, you have to trust the person and that they are being genuine. But I feel as though this will work tactically-speaking because I have seen it work: if you show someone real love, they will show you real love in return, if they think your love is genuine. So this works then, tactically-speaking, because by being truthful and honest in our love and with our intentions, we will in turn cause the people around us to act the same way. Because they will recognize that we are being genuine and that we really do have their best interests at heart.

consuming negativity

4th October 2014, 15:31

No, you can't show Hitler or others like him, love. It's just not possible. People like him, who were or are so far gone, are gone for good and there's no turning them around. It's that simple, and there's no reason to feel bad for them. If all you choose to do with your life, is hate and discriminate against a group of people different from yourself, for illogical reasons, there's no reason that those who are hated and discriminated towards, should feel any sort of sympathy or love. That's like being beat and asking for another. No one, wage slave or otherwise, should feel sadness when they take the power from whoever thinks to control them.

I think you still don't quite get it, because you probably haven't been approached personally by it in one way or another. Minorities who speak out on racism, are doing just that, trying to help them, but there are some so far gone that they can't be helped. There is no negative feedback cycle, just those who are trying to talk some sense into someone, who is trying to spread negativity, and who are too far gone. There is no point in it, and as I said before, just a waste of time.

That racists hate themselves, isn't a new concept to me, or anyone else of a minority. That's been quite clear to us for years, and has in fact, been one of the points in discussing why racism is shit, and what they're saying or doing, is shit. But again, some are too far gone that there's just no point. Waste of air and time.

This, is just another flowery bit of randomness, that doesn't make sense really. You go on talking about pain and hearts, but however you want to put it, I'm actually quite accepting of who they really are, if all they want to be is racist or xenophobic, but I won't waste my time with them.

I've been trying to think of how to respond to this and it's why I abandoned the thread temporarily. And I think that's why I can't think of what I want to say: will you take these conclusions here and elaborate on them in the context of what I've said in the OP?

consuming negativity

4th October 2014, 17:42

I don't think it's a huge stretch to say that most of us are socialists (pick your flavor) because we do genuinely care about people, above all else. It breaks my heart to think of all of the people who will go to "bed" tonight without a bite of food in their stomachs, people who work their fingers to the bone to build a life for themselves and their families, only to make some rich person even richer as they already are. Even more so those who are going through that exact same thing who have to worry about a missile raining down on everything they've worked for and snatching it all away, or those who live in constant fear of being abducted by some state intelligence agency and tortured for speaking too loudly what is weighing on their mind.

YES

I just realized it. This is what I've been trying to say all along.

When we put a gun to someone's head and tell them "you are either with us or against us", what we are doing is saying that we only value their lives as long as they do what we want them to do. That is not love, it is abuse. It is textbook abuse; in a relationship, in a friendship, anywhere. Not only that, but if we are willing to devalue them based on whether or not they have come to the same conclusion as us, we are NOT acting in their best interests and they SHOULD and HAVE recognized that we are not and they have rejected what we know is true based on this behavior.

We must align our actions with what we feel: we really do care about them, and if we want to change things, we have to start acting like it. We have to show people compassion and show them that no matter what they choose, we still care for them and we are still interested in working in their best interests. That is what real caring is. There is no compulsion or control where there is love. If we really care about these people, we must save violence as a tool of last resort to be used not out of hatred for the other, but out of love for the rest of the people who we need to protect and stand up for.

We have become so attached to the idea of creating a socialist world that we forgot why we wanted it in the first place: because we know it is right and because we want the best for people. As soon as we show them through our actions that we actually do care, they will listen to us, and we will achieve our goal if it is really the right path forward, because we will have showed these people that our interests and theirs are one and the same.

Vladimir Innit Lenin

4th October 2014, 17:59

please, please never ever address me as 'communer'.

motion denied

5th October 2014, 01:52

I'm yet to read all the thread, and maybe this post is misplaced.

To punish the oppressors of humanity is clemency; to pardon them is barbarity. The rigor of tyrants has only rigor for a principle; the rigor of the Republican government comes from charity

Hate all you want, and despite some obscure Lacanian jargon, Zizek is pretty interesting on this.

The Intransigent Faction

5th October 2014, 22:44

The revolutionary enters the world of the State, of the privileged classes, of the so-called civilization, and he lives in this world only for the purpose of bringing about its speedy and total destruction. He is not a revolutionary if he has any sympathy for this world. He should not hesitate to destroy any position, any place, or any man in this world. He must hate everyone and everything in it with an equal hatred.

Take that hippy crap somewhere else! :grin:

Seriously though, any thoughts on this (not so much on the man himself, whose problems are apparent)? It seems like love and hate both matter, though I realize that's vague.

consuming negativity

6th October 2014, 03:44

I feel guilty for saying this, but I don't really know what to say to either of you because I'm not really sure what it is that you're getting at. Maybe those posts weren't for me, but hey, better to ask and be wrong than to let it sit and miss out.

MagÃ³n

6th October 2014, 04:19

I've been trying to think of how to respond to this and it's why I abandoned the thread temporarily. And I think that's why I can't think of what I want to say: will you take these conclusions here and elaborate on them in the context of what I've said in the OP?

Yeah, sure, it's simple really.

You think that through love and compassion, we can change people's minds who might not otherwise, agree with or see our points of view. Which with some people, that could be true, they just need to be shown some love and compassion by someone, to start thinking about how they're positioned in society and how they could make a better one.

And as you said, we're all born blank slates, nobody is born with this or that ideology, societal view, etc. We gain these as we grow and experience the world, for good or bad.

But racists, if you really want to change society into a Socialist/Communist one, cannot be left to just run around, and be shown love or compassion towards. They are a group who will stifle and impede progress to a new and better society. Again, there are some racists or those with racist undertones, who can be spoken with or shown, the errors of how they view race, but racists are a group who will (as history has shown,) put a gun to your head if you don't put one to theirs first.

Basically, you can't save or convince everyone, there will be some, and racists I view being one of them, that will have to either be given an ultimatum to either join us and change, or go out with the old world and way of doing things.

consuming negativity

6th October 2014, 04:51

Yeah, sure, it's simple really.

You think that through love and compassion, we can change people's minds who might not otherwise, agree with or see our points of view. Which with some people, that could be true, they just need to be shown some love and compassion by someone, to start thinking about how they're positioned in society and how they could make a better one.

And as you said, we're all born blank slates, nobody is born with this or that ideology, societal view, etc. We gain these as we grow and experience the world, for good or bad.

But racists, if you really want to change society into a Socialist/Communist one, cannot be left to just run around, and be shown love or compassion towards. They are a group who will stifle and impede progress to a new and better society. Again, there are some racists or those with racist undertones, who can be spoken with or shown, the errors of how they view race, but racists are a group who will (as history has shown,) put a gun to your head if you don't put one to theirs first.

Basically, you can't save or convince everyone, there will be some, and racists I view being one of them, that will have to either be given an ultimatum to either join us and change, or go out with the old world and way of doing things.

All people who are incorrect or whom otherwise make mistakes impede progress. Yes, there are certain degrees of it, and yes, some people are a lot harder to help than others. And I would never deny that self-defense is necessary. Nor would I ever advocate that we just allow people to run around lynching, raping, or murdering people. But what I am saying is that the reason people do these things is from a lack of compassion, and that the people we will be "putting up against the wall", so to speak, are no better or worse than we are; they are products of their environment all the same, and we should not want to harm them or otherwise advocate harming them any more than is absolutely necessary.

Moreover, I think that a society based on the idea of everyone being generally good and working in our collective and individual self-interests at the same time can only come about when a majority of people actually believe that such a thing is possible. Yes, this seems obvious and simple, and it is. But how often do we ever talk about it outside of simply saying it? I am attempting to provide a real, tangible plan through which we can make a majority of people believe us. If you want to be believed and taken seriously, my view is that the best way to accomplish this is through complete and genuine compassion and understanding. Applied enough times over, we accomplish our goal. It is not fluffy or ridiculous; it is not naïve or idealist. I am ridiculous and overdone, yes, but do not attribute my flaws to the words I'm typing. To me, this represents the only real plan of action possible to achieve our goals, and it makes sense in the context of every serious and accurate thought pattern or analysis of human society that I have ever seen. And I have also attempted to apply it to my life, and in turn, I believe I have been able to change a lot of lives for the better; if even only a little. From theory to practice. It's what we say we want, and I truly believe I have provided it here.

MagÃ³n

6th October 2014, 05:04

All people who are incorrect or whom otherwise make mistakes impede progress. Yes, there are certain degrees of it, and yes, some people are a lot harder to help than others. And I would never deny that self-defense is necessary. Nor would I ever advocate that we just allow people to run around lynching, raping, or murdering people. But what I am saying is that the reason people do these things is from a lack of compassion, and that the people we will be "putting up against the wall", so to speak, are no better or worse than we are; they are products of their environment all the same, and we should not want to harm them or otherwise advocate harming them any more than is absolutely necessary.

But you see, to stop them from impeding actual progress or revolution, we have to do what they would do to us, if they had the power. Which, if someone is a minority, they can more likely get away with it, than if it was the other way around and they were taken out by a minority.

Moreover, I think that a society based on the idea of everyone being generally good and working in our collective and individual self-interests at the same time can only come about when a majority of people actually believe that such a thing is possible. Yes, this seems obvious and simple, and it is. But how often do we ever talk about it outside of simply saying it? I am attempting to provide a real, tangible plan through which we can make a majority of people believe us. If you want to be believed and taken seriously, my view is that the best way to accomplish this is through complete and genuine compassion and understanding. Applied enough times over, we accomplish our goal. It is not fluffy or ridiculous; it is not naïve or idealist. I am ridiculous and overdone, yes, but do not attribute my flaws to the words I'm typing. To me, this represents the only real plan of action possible to achieve our goals, and it makes sense in the context of every serious and accurate thought pattern or analysis of human society that I have ever seen. And I have also attempted to apply it to my life, and in turn, I believe I have been able to change a lot of lives for the better; if even only a little. From theory to practice. It's what we say we want, and I truly believe I have provided it here.

Showing love and compassion has already been tried. From the Hippies and onward, it's been tried. They thought the same way, that if you do it enough times, a goal of world peace would prosper and spread. I think a lot of people would say they were naive and idealist. Brightening someone's day, by saying something nice, won't get them on a revolutionary mindset or track, it'll just brighten their day, which again, I'm not opposed to, but you have to be pragmatic and realize that you can't go around like you say, and expect a revolution to come about from it. Again, people have tried what you're saying, to some degree.

consuming negativity

6th October 2014, 05:13

But you see, to stop them from impeding actual progress or revolution, we have to do what they would do to us, if they had the power. Which, if someone is a minority, they can more likely get away with it, than if it was the other way around and they were taken out by a minority.

Showing love and compassion has already been tried. From the Hippies and onward, it's been tried. They thought the same way, that if you do it enough times, a goal of world peace would prosper and spread. I think a lot of people would say they were naive and idealist. Brightening someone's day, by saying something nice, won't get them on a revolutionary mindset or track, it'll just brighten their day, which again, I'm not opposed to, but you have to be pragmatic and realize that you can't go around like you say, and expect a revolution to come about from it. Again, people have tried what you're saying, to some degree.

Why kill people when you can get them on your side and gain an entire new ally for every enemy you get rid of? Don't you see what I mean when I say that their best interests and ours are one and the same? I really mean it. They are. And if we just recognize that and then act like it, we will win. The last time what I'm saying was tried, it was the counter-culture of the 1960s and it was the last time there was ever real, serious change towards the left in American politics. Ever since we abandoned the ideology of love and compassion, we went farther and farther to the right and got such lovely persons as Reagan, Thatcher, Clinton, Harper, Cameron, Bush, Merkel... do I need to keep on listing? And now we're stuck here, and the left has never been weaker in the last 100 years. You're right that it has been tried before: and it worked. So then why are we still questioning it when we've seen how the experiment plays out?

MagÃ³n

6th October 2014, 05:21

Why kill people when you can get them on your side and gain an entire new ally for every enemy you get rid of? Don't you see what I mean when I say that their best interests and ours are one and the same? I really mean it. They are. And if we just recognize that and then act like it, we will win. The last time what I'm saying was tried, it was the counter-culture of the 1960s and it was the last time there was ever real, serious change towards the left in American politics. Ever since we abandoned the ideology of love and compassion, we went farther and farther to the right and got such lovely persons as Reagan, Thatcher, Clinton, Harper, Cameron, Bush, Merkel... do I need to keep on listing? And now we're stuck here, and the left has never been weaker in the last 100 years. You're right that it has been tried before: and it worked. So then why are we still questioning it when we've seen how the experiment plays out?

Because you can't save everyone, or expect them all to join you. It's just that simple, and it is naive and idealistic to think you can gain more from the other side, than the other side can. Clearly in a revolutionary situation, the lines have been drawn, the people have chosen who they're with, and most of them aren't likely going to change their views and positions.

And no, it didn't work, because that kind of thinking go beat down and squashed by the system, and couldn't stand up for itself. If it had worked, we wouldn't likely be in what we're in now, it would be something different. But it failed, the whole Hippie, 1960s counter-culture was ultimately a failure.

consuming negativity

6th October 2014, 05:31

Because you can't save everyone, or expect them all to join you. It's just that simple, and it is naive and idealistic to think you can gain more from the other side, than the other side can. Clearly in a revolutionary situation, the lines have been drawn, the people have chosen who they're with, and most of them aren't likely going to change their views and positions.

And no, it didn't work, because that kind of thinking go beat down and squashed by the system, and couldn't stand up for itself. If it had worked, we wouldn't likely be in what we're in now, it would be something different. But it failed, the whole Hippie, 1960s counter-culture was ultimately a failure.

We don't need everyone to be on board; we need enough people to be on board. How many is that? I don't know. A majority sounds nice. A majority of the world's people believing that socialism is possible does not at all sound to me idealistic. In fact, it sounds exactly like the sort of thing I would consider a prerequisite to socialism. But it isn't a hard and fast number, and my inability to provide one off the top of my head certainly doesn't disprove everything else I've demonstrated, does it?

As for the counter-culture, it did not at all fail, and to say such is in my opinion to be naïve. Ask any black American if they would rather live in 1950 or now. Ask a woman. Hell, ask me. And then ask again but keep the technology level the same and have it all based strictly on their treatment by others. Things did get better, and they got better, faster, than any other time in American history. This is undeniable. And accepting that liberal democracy is in some ways capable of reflecting the will of the populace is not to abandon socialism; hell, even Caesar himself was loved by the people. And yet he was a tyrant from whom we derive the terms "dictator" and "Kaiser". And that is because the system is always a reflection of the will of the people until it is not, regardless of what we call it or how things are working. If it were not, it would be changed, and we have witnessed changes in governance enough times in history to where I don't feel I need to give you examples to qualify this statement.

MagÃ³n

6th October 2014, 05:43

We don't need everyone to be on board; we need enough people to be on board. How many is that? I don't know. A majority sounds nice. A majority of the world's people believing that socialism is possible does not at all sound to me idealistic. In fact, it sounds exactly like the sort of thing I would consider a prerequisite to socialism. But it isn't a hard and fast number, and my inability to provide one off the top of my head certainly doesn't disprove everything else I've demonstrated, does it?

Simply put, most racists won't be on board, that's just the simple truth. So showing them anything loving or kind, is worthless and a waste of time.

As for the counter-culture, it did not at all fail, and to say such is in my opinion to be naïve. Ask any black American if they would rather live in 1950 or now. Ask a woman. Hell, ask me. And then ask again but keep the technology level the same and have it all based strictly on their treatment by others. Things did get better, and they got better, faster, than any other time in American history. This is undeniable. And accepting that liberal democracy is in some ways capable of reflecting the will of the populace is not to abandon socialism; hell, even Caesar himself was loved by the people. And yet he was a tyrant from whom we derive the terms "dictator" and "Kaiser". And that is because the system is always a reflection of the will of the people until it is not, regardless of what we call it or how things are working. If it were not, it would be changed, and we have witnessed changes in governance enough times in history to where I don't feel I need to give you examples to qualify this statement.

As a Latino, I can tell you that just because segregation and whatnot has been gotten rid of, doesn't mean that people's mentalities or thought processes, have changed all that much towards minority races. There are plenty of ignorant people out there, just as ignorant as those in 1950 or whenever. And more so than you might think, even if it isn't so blatant and clear, lots of people don't realize what they're saying is racist or hateful. The Civil Rights movement did a lot, but it didn't make everything right with how Americans of all colors, view color. But that part of the counter-culture never professed just love, take the Black Panthers or Malcolm X as examples of the minority willing to use violence, if violence was forced on them.

What you're advocating with all this love and understanding of the other side, is just the failed points of the 1960s counter-culture that did fail. That if we just show love, we'll get what we want, that if we just show love, it'll change people's minds about this or that. But that part of the counter-culture failed, and as I said, being a minority, not a lot has changed all that much. Go into any neighborhood of a mostly minority makeup, and ask the older folks who were around in the 60s, if things have changed all that much. Talk with the younger generations too, and you'll see that the two share a lot more in common than you might think they do, fifty years apart.

Illegalitarian

6th October 2014, 06:55

MagÃ³n

6th October 2014, 09:35

My problem with that, Magon, is the definition of racist. You seem to be defining racist as political racists, ie neo-nazis, white supremacists and all the others who actively seek out to oppress minorities. If that's your definition of racist, well fine, I agree that these people would likely violently oppose a socialist revolution and whatever happens to them, so be it.

But what of those who are passively racist? As someone who lives in the deep south I know first hand what racism is like, and this passive racism is far more prevalent and far less personal than the racism of white supremacists.

What I mean by "passive racists" are those people who hold racist beliefs but never really act on those thoughts, or heck, even act friendly towards minorities. My dad was one of those types, he "hated mexicans a blacks" but would always hit it off very well with minorities he came in contact with and every one he met happened to be "one of the good ones". I would always jump his shit about holding these backwards reactionary beliefs that he was raised with and his father before him, and now he's nothing even resembling a racist.

This is the nature of the vast majority of racists, vestigial passive racism from an old world that's slowly dying over time, people that are not "racist" in the same way neo-nazis are racist, or even knucklehead KKK types.

After the fall of the Berlin wall, there was a phenomenon among West Germans called Mauer im Kopf, or roughly, "the walls in the mind", referring to the drastically different mentality between the former easterners and those who grew up in the west. The Mauer im Kopf isn't so easy to coerce old Russian politicians into knocking down, but over time they do, in fact, come down, such is the way of cultural change over time, which is why revolution needs to be cultural just as much as it is economic. and social.

Anyone who is a "passive racist" as you call it, that can be shown their errors, I don't have a problem with. As I said before, there are some racists you just can't talk to, or make them listen. They don't necessarily have to be neo-nazis or KKK members, or admirers, I've met plenty of racists who were just hateful of anyone who wasn't white, but had no affiliation or anything, with neo-nazis or the KKK, etc. that just couldn't be talked to. Instead they would just shout over you, and wouldn't let in a word, making threats and "promises" for this and that. I think most racists I've met, are like that, and not some neo-nazi or KKK member, they're just plain racist.

People like your dad, again, are the type of racists I was talking about who you can show, and explain why their racist views are wrong. Otherwise, I wouldn't waste my breath on talking to them.

MEGAMANTROTSKY

6th October 2014, 14:55

I won’t go through your entire speech, I’ll just elaborate on the biggest problems I had with it.

We are the natural result of circumstances beyond our control becoming too overwhelming for us to process all at once.
This is a problematic statement. The process by which the individual personality is formed is by no means “natural”, in the sense that dew forms upon grass in the morning. Socialization has, and probably always will, require a degree of instinctual repression. Next, “beyond our control” sounds too one-sided. People have a degree of autonomy in their interaction with society, nature, and the state, although this interaction is not equal. Your formulation reifies Marxists like Plekhanov as helpless victims of history, instead of understanding how he himself contributed to his downfall.

…We are all tabula rasas, created inequally from birth as blank slates….And the more pain we have gone through in our lives; the deeper the mistakes hurt us before we were able to understand, the more pain we cause everyone else around us. If you look into your heart and examine it yourself you will know that this is true.
How is it possible that humans are blank slates? This is not a tenable position, given what we have learned about human biology since Darwin. But at the same time, our exploration of an essential human nature should not be restricted to biology, as reductionists like Steven Pinker do. Furthermore, it is dishonest to blame the marginalizing of revolutionary politics solely on the revolutionary left by highlighting psychological trauma as a reason. I don’t know about anyone else, but for all of my flaws I am no “Devil”, metaphorical or otherwise. Just as we are not simply passive victims of events, nor do we completely control our destinies. Your approach is atomization reified as pathos.

What we can do is to not act out of fear anymore. We can act out of love. Rather than trying to scare people about everything, we can show them that our socialist utopia really can happen. We can be the people we think everybody are. We can be altruistic and good. We can do things and make sacrifices as a group of people to make a better change within this society that will in turn cause a good change all over the world.
Not everybody will feel like they need intense psychotherapy to address this “fear”, but it would be very hard for people to stop acting out of fear when they may not fully understand the reason for doing so. And why do we have to be altruistic and good, and why do we have to think everybody else is? This ties directly back to your naïve outlook on human nature (or lack thereof). You seem to be devastated that socialists do not conform to this proto-Christian outlook, and instead of wondering why, you simply call for more self-examination in the only way a priest can.

In the words of Che Guevara, "the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love." And he is right.
Considering that Guevara was responsible for attacks on the idea of worker’s control of the factories during his political career, I have to view your use of this quote highly perverse.

Comrades, be guided by pure, true love for yourselves and each other. Act not out of intolerance or hatred or fear, but out of understanding and compassion for each other. Assume the best in yourselves and everyone and we will meet our own expectations. Be the change we want to create. Be part of the society that we want to change. And we will change the world forever just by changing ourselves.
I know I’ve read something like this before. Oh wait. I remembered.
http://www.biblestudytools.com/topical-verses/love-bible-verses/

Illegalitarian

6th October 2014, 23:10

consuming negativity

6th October 2014, 23:13

Simply put, most racists won't be on board, that's just the simple truth. So showing them anything loving or kind, is worthless and a waste of time.

As a Latino, I can tell you that just because segregation and whatnot has been gotten rid of, doesn't mean that people's mentalities or thought processes, have changed all that much towards minority races. There are plenty of ignorant people out there, just as ignorant as those in 1950 or whenever. And more so than you might think, even if it isn't so blatant and clear, lots of people don't realize what they're saying is racist or hateful. The Civil Rights movement did a lot, but it didn't make everything right with how Americans of all colors, view color. But that part of the counter-culture never professed just love, take the Black Panthers or Malcolm X as examples of the minority willing to use violence, if violence was forced on them.

What you're advocating with all this love and understanding of the other side, is just the failed points of the 1960s counter-culture that did fail. That if we just show love, we'll get what we want, that if we just show love, it'll change people's minds about this or that. But that part of the counter-culture failed, and as I said, being a minority, not a lot has changed all that much. Go into any neighborhood of a mostly minority makeup, and ask the older folks who were around in the 60s, if things have changed all that much. Talk with the younger generations too, and you'll see that the two share a lot more in common than you might think they do, fifty years apart.

The difference is not in what we do, but in our minds. We expect a lot more from our society now than we did 100, 200, etc. years ago. People are often incredibly bigoted and not chastised for it, but it is considered wrong and immoral to discriminate or prejudge someone based on their characteristics (ie. skin color, nationality, sex and gender, sexual preferences, etc.) alone. That's where the battle has been won... in people's heads. There is now a huge dissonance between the society we live in and the society we know we can expect from each other. There is indeed segregation of particularly black Americans, but all Americans, by race and housing; in the economy; in the social life. Everywhere. But you know what? The racists know this is slowly changing. And that's why they get so angry, and push harder and harder against the rising tide. But they're on the wrong side of reality, and they will either put their heads up or just be angry and drowning until they die. It doesn't matter if you convince them or not: we have reality on our side, and so we get to win by default.

I don't expect you to be optimistic about any of this... it is probably a lot easier for myself, as a white person, to see the 10% of the glass that is full; but the other 90% being empty does not mean we can say that the entire glass is empty. You can be pessimistic if you wish and I would not judge you for it, but regardless of what either of us think, the glass is where it is regardless of whether or not either of us can ever identify or even agree on "where we are" in regard to the struggle against discrimination. But I am not ignorant about this stuff; the reason I'm not going to bother trying to explain how much I know is because I'm sure you already know a lot of it, if not more than I do. Because, for you, knowing it is not optional: it is survival. It is your life. You never had a choice as to whether or not you would learn about how yourself and others have been treated by WASP America. But I am a part of this society too, and I believe I am capable of taking a stab at analyzing it that is worth consideration. The counter-culture is gone, and it isn't coming back, but it did help to push us along. And, eventually, this global rightward trend can do nothing except go back. It isn't blind faith like some dogmatic Christian: we can see it ourselves through our analyses, because we are intelligent and have the tools available to look and see. That so many people have seemingly abandoned the left due to our "authoritarian" (don't kill me) (haha, get it?) trend only, to me, signals just how farther along we are than we actually think at times. Just because people do not recognize socialism as the answer does not mean they don't all see that there is a problem. All that's left for us to do is to show them what we know is possible.

consuming negativity

6th October 2014, 23:37

I won’t go through your entire speech, I’ll just elaborate on the biggest problems I had with it.

This is a problematic statement. The process by which the individual personality is formed is by no means “natural”, in the sense that dew forms upon grass in the morning. Socialization has, and probably always will, require a degree of instinctual repression. Next, “beyond our control” sounds too one-sided. People have a degree of autonomy in their interaction with society, nature, and the state, although this interaction is not equal. Your formulation reifies Marxists like Plekhanov as helpless victims of history, instead of understanding how he himself contributed to his downfall.

We have control, yes, but it is the same kind of control that, say, a person playing a video game might have. You can go over there, you can shoot who you want, whatever. But you can't remove the character from the game. Similarly, you cannot remove a person from their society. They are a part of it by default; even if they try to run from it, that says something about that society and also about their reaction to it.

How is it possible that humans are blank slates? This is not a tenable position, given what we have learned about human biology since Darwin. But at the same time, our exploration of an essential human nature should not be restricted to biology, as reductionists like Steven Pinker do. Furthermore, it is dishonest to blame the marginalizing of revolutionary politics solely on the revolutionary left by highlighting psychological trauma as a reason. I don’t know about anyone else, but for all of my flaws I am no “Devil”, metaphorical or otherwise. Just as we are not simply passive victims of events, nor do we completely control our destinies. Your approach is atomization reified as pathos.

You are correct that it was stupid for me to characterize my own psychological issues as those that everyone has. It simply isn't true, and this particular generalization of mine (that people are like me) has backfired quite a bit on me lately. But you know what? We can only be blank slates at the beginning. It is, if anything, an argument that should be criticized for being tautological and thereby essentially meaningless. A stone tablet can never be anything other than a stone tablet, but it is still a tablet that can be written on. It is blank by its very nature. Do you see what I'm talking about? I don't think biological, genetic, whatever else limitations on the nature of the human tablet makes it no longer blank.

Not everybody will feel like they need intense psychotherapy to address this “fear”, but it would be very hard for people to stop acting out of fear when they may not fully understand the reason for doing so. And why do we have to be altruistic and good, and why do we have to think everybody else is? This ties directly back to your naïve outlook on human nature (or lack thereof). You seem to be devastated that socialists do not conform to this proto-Christian outlook, and instead of wondering why, you simply call for more self-examination in the only way a priest can.

Considering that Guevara was responsible for attacks on the idea of worker’s control of the factories during his political career, I have to view your use of this quote highly perverse.

I know I’ve read something like this before. Oh wait. I remembered.
http://www.biblestudytools.com/topical-verses/love-bible-verses/

You have not yet dismissed socialism because I am one whom you disagree with, have you? Good. Then you should do the same thing for every other person who can and will make major mistakes that do not in any way make them wrong when they weren't. A racist can know how to do plumbing, a preacher can know that love is a good thing, and Che Guevara can know what guided him. It is as simple as looking beyond the flaws to see what's worth taking. Then you discard the rest if you think it's garbage. Simple as that.

Rosa Partizan

6th October 2014, 23:47

I'm a bit envious of your capability to have such deep, exhausting discussions all the time. After 2 pages I was like "ok I really need gifs of clumsy panda babies now".

consuming negativity

7th October 2014, 00:13

I'm a bit envious of your capability to have such deep, exhausting discussions all the time. After 2 pages I was like "ok I really need gifs of clumsy panda babies now".

Well, I am more than a bit envious of your ability to know when it's time to shut the fuck up and look at cute animals for a while. So I guess that makes us even. :lol:

http://29.media.tumblr.com/eRzxOQo1Lpl8p8yq4mImJb7do1_500.jpg

MagÃ³n

7th October 2014, 05:26

The difference is not in what we do, but in our minds. We expect a lot more from our society now than we did 100, 200, etc. years ago. People are often incredibly bigoted and not chastised for it, but it is considered wrong and immoral to discriminate or prejudge someone based on their characteristics (ie. skin color, nationality, sex and gender, sexual preferences, etc.) alone. That's where the battle has been won... in people's heads. There is now a huge dissonance between the society we live in and the society we know we can expect from each other. There is indeed segregation of particularly black Americans, but all Americans, by race and housing; in the economy; in the social life. Everywhere. But you know what? The racists know this is slowly changing. And that's why they get so angry, and push harder and harder against the rising tide. But they're on the wrong side of reality, and they will either put their heads up or just be angry and drowning until they die. It doesn't matter if you convince them or not: we have reality on our side, and so we get to win by default.

In America, racism has just gone underground, to be said and spoken between people you can trust. It hasn't really gone away, in the way you're thinking. There are still plenty of racists out there, and still, those who are anti-racist, are just a loud minority. You don't have to live in the South, to see that. I've been from one side of the country, to the other, and in between several times, to see that racism has for all it's stupidity, just gone underground for the most part. Instead of openly saying something, people just pass it off as a "joke" or something like that, or if they're even more serious, just keep it between them and their friends/family.

You should go into a neighborhood or two, and ask the minorities in them, what they think. I'm sure you'll find plenty who agree. Just look at Ferguson, Missouri as an example of racism coming out from underground, into the light. But Ferguson is also a good example of Whites in a minority town, standing up against racism, because they know the truth.

I don't expect you to be optimistic about any of this... it is probably a lot easier for myself, as a white person, to see the 10% of the glass that is full; but the other 90% being empty does not mean we can say that the entire glass is empty. You can be pessimistic if you wish and I would not judge you for it, but regardless of what either of us think, the glass is where it is regardless of whether or not either of us can ever identify or even agree on "where we are" in regard to the struggle against discrimination. But I am not ignorant about this stuff; the reason I'm not going to bother trying to explain how much I know is because I'm sure you already know a lot of it, if not more than I do. Because, for you, knowing it is not optional: it is survival. It is your life. You never had a choice as to whether or not you would learn about how yourself and others have been treated by WASP America.

You know, and I know you probably didn't mean it this way, but this could be taken as a rather condescending attitude towards minorities. And when I first read it, I admit I did take it that way. Telling me I can be "pessimistic", or vaguely saying where either of us are in the fight against racism. I think it's rather obvious where most of us who are a minority, compared to you who aren't, are when it comes to that. And also, your possible need to explain how much you know, and calling it "survival" for me. It could come off as condescending. So in the future, try not to do that, especially if you're talking with a minority group, or anti-racists in person. You will get some looks and questions.

But I am a part of this society too, and I believe I am capable of taking a stab at analyzing it that is worth consideration. The counter-culture is gone, and it isn't coming back, but it did help to push us along. And, eventually, this global rightward trend can do nothing except go back. It isn't blind faith like some dogmatic Christian: we can see it ourselves through our analyses, because we are intelligent and have the tools available to look and see. That so many people have seemingly abandoned the left due to our "authoritarian" (don't kill me) (haha, get it?) trend only, to me, signals just how farther along we are than we actually think at times. Just because people do not recognize socialism as the answer does not mean they don't all see that there is a problem. All that's left for us to do is to show them what we know is possible.

I don't really see what this has to do with what I said. I mean, I already told you that anti-racists are looking to show people the truth, and that Socialists now, are meant to do the same thing. I think this is just you kind of rambling, you got a bit carried away.

consuming negativity

7th October 2014, 07:43

When you're right, you're right.

*shrugs*

MEGAMANTROTSKY

7th October 2014, 15:51

I don't think you fully grasp how socialization shapes almost everything we do, everything we thing and how we react to almost everything that comes our way. Humans are very much blank slates, an idea of some sort of "instinctual repression" and the questioning of why humanity needs to be altruistic is kind of naive and dancing awfully close to the human nature arguments so many fallaciously try and use against us.
Oh, I see. So our position on the question of an essential human nature should be determined by what would be most likely to attract liberals who are grappling with Kant's Categorical Imperative? Give me a break. Your approach does nothing to prove that humans are "blank slates"; your position on socialization makes the same one-sided mistake that George Novack made. He too compared human nature to glass, in that was clear (or blank) and malleable. So if socialization does shape "almost everything we do," and if humans really are blank slates, what's to stop the bourgeois state from molding the next generation into eternal subservience?

A Marxist conception of human nature would take both the "good" and "bad" as they are both historically conditioned in civilization, and also to what extent these natures strike back at this civilization to relieve their alienation. So if you're really serious on finding just what human nature is, we can't just stop at Marx's statement that it is the "ensemble of social relations". There is a reason why he and Engels took up such a keen interest in anthropology late in their lives, and it wasn't because our natures were "blank", "clear", or mere putty in the hands of civilization.

One final thing: Why is altruism so attractive? Altruism is disinterested assistance at the expense of the Self. There is no room for self-love in this conception, and if that's really what our nature supposed to be, then I proudly declare myself to be inhuman.

consuming negativity

7th October 2014, 18:18

edit: nevermind

MEGAMANTROTSKY

8th October 2014, 17:50

We have control, yes, but it is the same kind of control that, say, a person playing a video game might have. You can go over there, you can shoot who you want, whatever. But you can't remove the character from the game. Similarly, you cannot remove a person from their society. They are a part of it by default; even if they try to run from it, that says something about that society and also about their reaction to it.
I had said already that that this interaction between the individual and society wasn’t equal, so the fact that a person cannot control the circumstances they are born in, or other aspects of their lives, is beside the point. My problem with your formulation was that you constantly try to reduce people to the things that cannot control, and this is wrong. Your comparison of human life with a first-person shooter only compounds this error, rather than overcoming it.

You are correct that it was stupid for me to characterize my own psychological issues as those that everyone has. It simply isn't true, and this particular generalization of mine (that people are like me) has backfired quite a bit on me lately. But you know what? We can only be blank slates at the beginning. It is, if anything, an argument that should be criticized for being tautological and thereby essentially meaningless. A stone tablet can never be anything other than a stone tablet, but it is still a tablet that can be written on. It is blank by its very nature. Do you see what I'm talking about? I don't think biological, genetic, whatever else limitations on the nature of the human tablet makes it no longer blank.
While I can understand where you’re coming from, my point is that there is no “slate” at all; the presence of human instinct at birth, and their drive to satisfy those instincts (though obviously a newborn's drive can't amount to much), makes your conception meaningless. Having said that, utilizing a biological base to understand human nature does not mean that we reduce everything to biology. To put it simply, it is a matter of understanding the interaction between biological and social needs as they are shaped or changed by a particular form of society. Nor can you prove that this “slate” is blank by nature. It is an a priori statement, which means that it is simply wishful thinking on your part. Your continued (tautological) insistence does not make you more correct, just silly.

You have not yet dismissed socialism because I am one whom you disagree with, have you? Good. Then you should do the same thing for every other person who can and will make major mistakes that do not in any way make them wrong when they weren't. A racist can know how to do plumbing, a preacher can know that love is a good thing, and Che Guevara can know what guided him. It is as simple as looking beyond the flaws to see what's worth taking. Then you discard the rest if you think it's garbage. Simple as that.
I agree that the socialist movement should be free to take whatever contributions it can for the class struggle. But there must be a principled method for doing so. There is a huge world of difference between understanding the idealist vacillations of Freud, for instance, and applying them to our understanding of psychology. What help do they really give us, besides illustrating his encroaching pessimism? And what help does Guevara’s quote give us? A measly quote on “love” does not even begin to speak to his actual contributions to Marxism. When we look closer, we can see his objective role in helping to repress the Cuban revolution in favor of petty-bourgeois nationalism. Did he do this out of love, as well? “Love”, on its own, explains precisely nothing about his politics or his career.

consuming negativity

8th October 2014, 19:14

You're right - I genuinely believe that all of us are the sum of all of our parts. No less, no more.

At the very highest level of organization, we have our society. But our society is what? A summation of everything under it, plus and including experience. The people and what the people do to interact with each other and with the environment. Below that are other social groups which are also defined by their parts (people) and those experiences. I see the individual through the same lens: we are defined by our experiences and our biology, encoded in our DNA. And if you go down the rabbit hole far enough, all of us can be defined by simple mathematical equations which govern us through the laws of physics, which are no more and no less than simple observations made about the environment around us. It's all there: all you have to do is open your eyes and look at it. That we are currently incapable of following things all the way down and knowing everything does not change this reality.

As for being victims of things beyond their control, yes, I tend to think that because experience + biology = person, that we can change through our experiences and yet still be the victims of them. I mean, why would I make a post like the OP if I didn't think that people can influence their own actions? The difference between us is that I do not think we can ever be detached from our surroundings and our circumstances. You cannot take a video game character out of its world; nor can you ever entirely separate us as individuals from the collectives that we belong to, or the experiences we feel, or the biology that makes us tick. It just doesn't work that way. Why? Well, for starters, our very identities are built in relation to the people around us. We form our identities by looking in mirrors at others in social roles, and finally at a generalized other; we compare ourselves to everything around us and thus define ourselves based on our surroundings. That's what defining something is. If we could be removed from our environment we would not be what we are.

So then human nature, if there is one, is completely irrelevant except as another factor for us to consider in looking at the blueprints that make us. But there is no proof that we have a nature or any instincts at all; in fact, we've seen the opposite every time we've looked. Take, for example, studies on feral children; without the society they're brought up in, after the age of say 8 or 9, humans are no longer capable of learning to speak language the way we do. They sound like gorillas and have severely diminished mental capacity, acting much, MUCH more like animals than we would ever want to admit.

I have simply accepted that my circumstances shape who I am while simultaneously accepting the reality that I can to some degree override my biology with my brain, or, my experiences. That's what a brain is, a collection of knowledge and a processor to access and figure it with, and it is why I consider mental control over oneself to be a dead giveaway to a person's intelligence. Because a person who is able to override their own biology has a very strong will, which comes from the higher brain responsible for interpreting the experiences that allow us to trust our own intellect. Less intelligent beings are therefore at a much higher risk of losing control of themselves and being fueled by immediate emotional impulses; especially if those persons have a bad set of experiences or happen to have very strong emotions encoded in their biology. It works in reverse, too; a person who can't feel can very easily adopt and act based on the emotions of others and therefore is much more able to manipulate people and control both them and themselves.

And where is my proof? Look in a prison. Prison is not filled with bad people; it is filled with people who come from bad experiences, whom feel too much or too little, and whom are generally not as intelligent (and thus whom are less able to control themselves and others). And you can apply this to any situation you want. It is indeed all about control and how much we can exert on ourselves and our environment. But it is also about what factors influence our ability to control, and they are reducibly twofold and completely beyond our control. To me, this isn't scary; rather, it is freeing to know that I, even at my worst, cannot be blamed for being the person that I am. Hence the quote in my signature... "what we understand, we cannot blame".

MEGAMANTROTSKY

10th October 2014, 14:20

Communer, your reply addressed virtually none of the specific points I've brought up in regards to your ideas or methodology. Instead, you have contented yourself with a meandering soap opera that, while very compelling to you, merely bores me; it is a deflection that is almost a page and a half (on Microsoft Word). I don't care about your personal journey, just your ideas. I would appreciate it if you would restrict your replies to those ideas.

consuming negativity

10th October 2014, 17:48

You said I reduce people to circumstances beyond their control, and I showed you how I am not doing that. First two paragraphs.

You said that people are not blank slates, and I explained how they in fact are. Second and third paragraph.

The only thing I didn't address is the bit about Che Guevara, and it is because I thought the explanation was obvious after reading the final two paragraphs (which are a leap off of the first three). What, exactly, more could you want than to understand the underlying psychology of a genuine revolutionary? To understand what guided him to socialism and then to guerrilla warfare? You want a methodology and I am showing you a complete blueprint.

---

I appreciate what you think is honesty, but me and my ideas are inseparable. If you are not willing to learn about me, then there is no point in having a discussion with you, because everything I tell you comes from me and thus tells you about me. It is impossible to have a discussion with someone without learning about them. In truth, what you really just told me is that all you're interested in here is being right. And, unlike Rafiq, I am not a big enough person to continue having discussions with people who continually take their frustrations out on my person. If you cannot at least even feign respect for me, don't bother replying, because I have no interest in being insulted. Even if your insults do tell me a lot about yourself, I know your type in and out and I get nothing from this conversation except a critique of my own ideas. Either you are incapable of providing that, or I haven't been clear enough in explaining my own ideas to where you can provide that. If the former, this conversation is a waste of time. If the latter, I have attempted to explain things above. If you still don't get it, there is nothing I can do that will help you, and I think I've gotten about all I'm going to get from this thread.

MEGAMANTROTSKY

10th October 2014, 18:34

You said I reduce people to circumstances beyond their control, and I showed you how I am not doing that. First two paragraphs.
You said that people are not blank slates, and I explained how they in fact are. Second and third paragraph.
You did not “explain” anything. You simply asserted what you needed to prove. While your sentiments are no doubt sincere, they are not very convincing. It is especially difficult to take you seriously when your first sentence about me being right about the “sum of all our parts”; it is something I never said. In what ideological paradigm are you drawing these conclusions, anyway? Personal experience? Because it is certainly not Marxism.

The only thing I didn't address is the bit about Che Guevara, and it is because I thought the explanation was obvious after reading the final two paragraphs (which are a leap off of the first three). What, exactly, more could you want than to understand the underlying psychology of a genuine revolutionary? To understand what guided him to socialism and then to guerrilla warfare? You want a methodology and I am showing you a complete blueprint.
The point in discussing Guevara was that while socialists should be open to whatever ideas that can be of use for mobilizing a worker’s vanguard, his ideas on “love” are vacuous and cannot contribute much. In the context of erecting a program to win workers over, his underlying psychology cannot get us very far. The methodology you are promoting here is empiricism mixed with confused intuition; take a look at a “revolutionary” who looks like he has a profound grasp on “something”, and voila! Instant silliness. I have already shown why this is inadequate for the aims that you claim to uphold.

---
A few dashes indicating a break? I suppose you’re getting real serious, now.

I appreciate what you think is honesty, but me and my ideas are inseparable. If you are not willing to learn about me, then there is no point in having a discussion with you, because everything I tell you comes from me and thus tells you about me. It is impossible to have a discussion with someone without learning about them. In truth, what you really just told me is that all you're interested in here is being right. And, unlike Rafiq, I am not a big enough person to continue having discussions with people who continually take their frustrations out on my person. If you cannot at least even feign respect for me, don't bother replying, because I have no interest in being insulted. Even if your insults do tell me a lot about yourself, I know your type in and out and I get nothing from this conversation except a critique of my own ideas. Either you are incapable of providing that, or I haven't been clear enough in explaining my own ideas to where you can provide that. If the former, this conversation is a waste of time. If the latter, I have attempted to explain things above. If you still don't get it, there is nothing I can do that will help you, and I think I've gotten about all I'm going to get from this thread.
This is quite rich. First, you issue a short manifesto/mass on how we are dominated by fear and need to learn about love. Next, I call you out on your preachy manner, which an “admin” had later acknowledged. Then, in the clear interest of holding a discussion, I criticize your ideas in order to get you to explain them fully, thus signifying that I am interested not in being “right”, but to understand where you’re coming from. When your responses expose that you have no scientific or philosophical base with which to make your ideas concrete, and I say as such, you throw up your hands and accuse me of bullying you, perceiving a lack of respect. Lastly, you top it off and cite my “bullying” of Rafiq without any evidence, and declare your abandonment of the thread.

What is wrong with this picture?

consuming negativity

10th October 2014, 19:02

You did not “explain” anything. You simply asserted what you needed to prove. While your sentiments are no doubt sincere, they are not very convincing. It is especially difficult to take you seriously when your first sentence about me being right about the “sum of all our parts”; it is something I never said. In what ideological paradigm are you drawing these conclusions, anyway? Personal experience? Because it is certainly not Marxism.

The point in discussing Guevara was that while socialists should be open to whatever ideas that can be of use for mobilizing a worker’s vanguard, his ideas on “love” are vacuous and cannot contribute much. In the context of erecting a program to win workers over, his underlying psychology cannot get us very far. The methodology you are promoting here is empiricism mixed with confused intuition; take a look at a “revolutionary” who looks like he has a profound grasp on “something”, and voila! Instant silliness. I have already shown why this is inadequate for the aims that you claim to uphold.

When you say I reduce people to things beyond their control, you are saying that I am being a determinist who thinks everything is reducible to its parts that are beyond our control. I was explaining to you why you're only partially correct; because while we do have control, our control is limited based on our experiences and our biology. We cannot do something we do not have the ability to do based on circumstances. Does that sound like Marxism yet? Because it's basically straight from it except in my own words and based on my own experiences.

My point about Guevara is that you are dismissing the core of the apple while keeping the fruit. Guevara's ideas on love are not vacuous - they explain everything about him. They are his motivation. They are what he thinks, what he believes, and what turned him into a revolutionary. In the context of a thread wherein the purpose is to talk about how we can achieve socialism, do you not think it is critically important to understand why we ourselves are already socialists?

This is quite rich. First, you issue a short manifesto/mass on how we are dominated by fear and need to learn about love. Next, I call you out on your preachy manner, which an “admin” had later acknowledged. Then, in the clear interest of holding a discussion, I criticize your ideas in order to get you to explain them fully, thus signifying that I am interested not in being “right”, but to understand where you’re coming from. When your responses expose that you have no scientific or philosophical base with which to make your ideas concrete, and I say as such, you throw up your hands and accuse me of bullying you, perceiving a lack of respect. Lastly, you top it off and cite my “bullying” of Rafiq without any evidence, and declare your abandonment of the thread.

What is wrong with this picture?

That you do not respect me is not only evident from your repeated characterizations of my posts as "mass" and preaching, but by your insistence that what I am writing must be somehow validated by Marx or an "admin" or some other authority on the matter. If you don't want me to think you're being disrespectful, don't be disrespectful. Yes, I am a preachy person, and I was using the OP as a bit of an emotional outlet. I have said this multiple times, and you can tell in my writing that I have gotten significantly less preachy as I've gotten control over myself again. But you can't seem to look past that in the same way you can't seem to look past what is directly in front of your face in regards to Che or in following my arguments. I never called you a bully; I simply stated that I'm aware you have a penchant for mistreating the people you discuss with. It doesn't need to be proven and I don't care if you don't believe it, because it is true regardless. Moreover, I never said I was abandoning the thread: I said that if you are incapable of following my train of thought, that discussing with you is pointless. Another statement I think doesn't need any evidence, because it is simply logical.

Illegalitarian

10th October 2014, 21:06

Oh, I see. So our position on the question of an essential human nature should be determined by what would be most likely to attract liberals who are grappling with Kant's Categorical Imperative? Give me a break. Your approach does nothing to prove that humans are "blank slates"; your position on socialization makes the same one-sided mistake that George Novack made. He too compared human nature to glass, in that was clear (or blank) and malleable. So if socialization does shape "almost everything we do," and if humans really are blank slates, what's to stop the bourgeois state from molding the next generation into eternal subservience?

Because most people are not, in fact, unwittingly subservient to capital, right? The capitalist mode of production absolutely touches everything and everyone in society, especially our culture, important social institutions (the family, school, work is a given, the media, religious institutions, the arts, etc etc), and thus shapes prevailing ideologies within society, prevailing morality, prevailing political currents, prevailing perceptions towards ourselves and the rest of the world, etc.

In that sense, it is inarguable that we are blank slates. As Marx pointed out, we are shaped by our society, not the other way around. The mode of production and our relationship to the means of production shapes the rest of the world and shapes who we are, that's the point I'm trying to stress here above all else. Ironically enough it's your ideas of agency and human nature that are very Kantian and liberal-esque, exuding metaphysical notions of a greater sense of being that exists outside the material world. Not even mentioning your silly appeals to some sort of non-existent "instinct" that does not extend beyond fulfilling base needs such as eating and avoiding danger, as if there is something innate in all humans that drives us all towards certain behaviors, a notion easily dispelled not only due to its absolute lack of basis in science but the mere fact that we can look at the world and see a myriad of individuals all pursing different goals and all with their own frame of mind that is not touched by any sort of biological drive outside of the aforementioned bare minimum. Humanity is a very sentient race, so sentient in fact that we are capable of not being driven by primal needs, which most of us are not.

A Marxist conception of human nature would take both the "good" and "bad" as they are both historically conditioned in civilization, and also to what extent these natures strike back at this civilization to relieve their alienation. So if you're really serious on finding just what human nature is, we can't just stop at Marx's statement that it is the "ensemble of social relations". There is a reason why he and Engels took up such a keen interest in anthropology late in their lives, and it wasn't because our natures were "blank", "clear", or mere putty in the hands of civilization.

Actually it was exactly because we are shaped and defined by our societies that Engels took such a deep interest in anthropology, have you never read his work on primitive communism and the origins of the modern nation state?

One final thing: Why is altruism so attractive? Altruism is disinterested assistance at the expense of the Self. There is no room for self-love in this conception, and if that's really what our nature supposed to be, then I proudly declare myself to be inhuman.

It's counter-intuitive to act in the interests of others at the expense of ones self because the self comes before all, how deliciously Randian.

MEGAMANTROTSKY

13th October 2014, 18:50

Because most people are not, in fact, unwittingly subservient to capital, right? The capitalist mode of production absolutely touches everything and everyone in society, especially our culture, important social institutions (the family, school, work is a given, the media, religious institutions, the arts, etc etc), and thus shapes prevailing ideologies within society, prevailing morality, prevailing political currents, prevailing perceptions towards ourselves and the rest of the world, etc.
I never denied that bourgeois society and its culture are pervasive. Furthermore, it is incorrect for you to portray capitalist society as a monolithic and independent agent that wholly determines our culture and upbringing. My basic point is, once again, that people have a degree of autonomy, or agency, relative to their class position. This does not mean that they are completely in control of their lives, but neither does it mean that they are sheep. You have yet to answer my concept with one of your own that makes the least bit of sense.

In that sense, it is inarguable that we are blank slates. As Marx pointed out, we are shaped by our society, not the other way around. The mode of production and our relationship to the means of production shapes the rest of the world and shapes who we are, that's the point I'm trying to stress here above all else.
How is it inarguable? Despite the fact that you have bolded a part of my previous post which highlighted a key flaw in concept of the blank slate, one would think to find something resembling a direct refutation. Instead you’re just unloading more worthless truisms in an attempt to misdirect the debate.

Ironically enough it's your ideas of agency and human nature that are very Kantian and liberal-esque, exuding metaphysical notions of a greater sense of being that exists outside the material world. Not even mentioning your silly appeals to some sort of non-existent "instinct" that does not extend beyond fulfilling base needs such as eating and avoiding danger, as if there is something innate in all humans that drives us all towards certain behaviors, a notion easily dispelled not only due to its absolute lack of basis in science but the mere fact that we can look at the world and see a myriad of individuals all pursing different goals and all with their own frame of mind that is not touched by any sort of biological drive outside of the aforementioned bare minimum. Humanity is a very sentient race, so sentient in fact that we are capable of not being driven by primal needs, which most of us are not.
First, you say that instinct does not exist and go so far as to say that it has no basis in science (are you serious?). Next, you acknowledge it only to belittle its significance to save your sinking ship of a blank slate theory. You then proceed to draw erroneous conclusions on my concepts and paint me as some sort of erratic behaviorist, all the while denying biology’s role in the development of human nature. Who’s the liberal here, again?

Humans are certainly able to resist certain biological drives at varying times and in specific contexts. I never said otherwise. Unfortunately, that does not answer the very pressing question that Marxists should be asking: “How far does biology go, and under what contexts does it take a primary role in distinction from the mind?” This is far from the evolutionary psychology label you’re pinning on me.

It's counter-intuitive to act in the interests of others at the expense of ones self because the self comes before all, how deliciously Randian.
Please point out where I made these arguments, because self-love is not the same thing as selfishness or narcissism.

MEGAMANTROTSKY

13th October 2014, 19:10

When you say I reduce people to things beyond their control, you are saying that I am being a determinist who thinks everything is reducible to its parts that are beyond our control. I was explaining to you why you're only partially correct; because while we do have control, our control is limited based on our experiences and our biology. We cannot do something we do not have the ability to do based on circumstances. Does that sound like Marxism yet?
No, it doesn’t sound like Marxism at all. And for the record, what you’re describing is reductionism, not determinism. Determinism is the notion that causality is the primary explanation of phenomena, with the denial of chance and accident.

My point about Guevara is that you are dismissing the core of the apple while keeping the fruit. Guevara's ideas on love are not vacuous - they explain everything about him. They are his motivation. They are what he thinks, what he believes, and what turned him into a revolutionary. In the context of a thread wherein the purpose is to talk about how we can achieve socialism, do you not think it is critically important to understand why we ourselves are already socialists?
I would like you to cite one biography of Guevara that seriously contends that “love” explains everything about him.

That you do not respect me is not only evident from your repeated characterizations of my posts as "mass" and preaching, but by your insistence that what I am writing must be somehow validated by Marx or an "admin" or some other authority on the matter.
I said you were preaching because that’s exactly what you were doing. My pointing out of PhoenixAsh’s (who is an anarchist, by the way) comment was that I wasn’t the only one who noticed it. And if you want to stay a Marxist, you had better be concerned with the question of your ideas finding common philosophical ground with his own.

I never called you a bully; I simply stated that I'm aware you have a penchant for mistreating the people you discuss with.
That's nice. Next time you pull something like that, back it up, so it won't look as obvious that you're trying to derail the thread.

Moreover, I never said I was abandoning the thread:

…and I think I've gotten about all I'm going to get from this thread.

consuming negativity

13th October 2014, 20:36

No, it doesn’t sound like Marxism at all. And for the record, what you’re describing is reductionism, not determinism. Determinism is the notion that causality is the primary explanation of phenomena, with the denial of chance and accident.

If it doesn't sound like Marx to you then you either do not understand Marx or you do not understand me.

A direct quote from Che himself about his own motivation as a revolutionary is not good enough to use as a basis to explain his motivation as a revolutionary. Show me a biography written by someone else instead.

You are trying to derail your own thread.

You need to prove your opinion about me.

Given (paraphrased) statements like these, I'm willing to wager that it might be a bit of both.

Now look at this:

What is society, irrespective of its form? The product of man's interaction upon man. Is man free to choose this or that form of society? By no means. If you assume a given state of development of man's productive faculties, you will have a corresponding form of commerce and consumption. If you assume given stages of development in production, commerce or consumption, you will have a corresponding form of social constitution, a corresponding organisation, whether of the family, of the estates or of the classes—in a word, a corresponding civil society. If you assume this or that civil society, you will have this or that political system, which is but the official expression of civil society. This is something Mr Proudhon will never understand, for he imagines he's doing something great when he appeals from the state to civil society, i. e. to official society from the official epitome of society.

Needless to say, man is not free to choose his productive forces—upon which his whole history is based—for every productive force is an acquired force, the product of previous activity. Thus the productive forces are the result of man's practical energy, but that energy is in turn circumscribed by the conditions in which man is placed by the productive forces already acquired, by the form of society which exists before him, which he does not create, which is the product of the preceding generation. The simple fact that every succeeding generation finds productive forces acquired by the preceding generation and which serve it as the raw material of further production, engenders a relatedness in the history of man, engenders a history of mankind, which is all the more a history of mankind as man's productive forces, and hence his social relations, have expanded. From this it can only be concluded that the social history of man is never anything else than the history of his individual development, whether he is conscious of this or not. His material relations form the basis of all his relations. These material relations are but the necessary forms in which his material and individual activity is realised.

https://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/marx/works/1846/letters/46_12_28.htm

MEGAMANTROTSKY

13th October 2014, 21:17

If it doesn't sound like Marx to you then you either do not understand Marx or you do not understand me.

Given (paraphrased) statements like these, I'm willing to wager that it might be a bit of both.

Now look at this:

https://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/marx/works/1846/letters/46_12_28.htm
Could you please show how this contradicts my ideas that I have given here? Giving me a Marx block-quote without explaining the context or your point is just lazy.

consuming negativity

13th October 2014, 21:33

Could you please show how this contradicts my ideas that I have given here? Giving me a Marx block-quote without explaining the context or your point is just lazy.

The context/my point is that you said you don't see how what I'm saying and what Marx was saying are basically the same thing. I quoted a Marx passage from a letter I had never even read before I went to find it that said the exact same thing I've been saying in this thread the entire time. How did I know he said it? Because when you're right, you're right. The sky looks blue, RevLeft kinda sucks, and individual development directly translates into societal development because society is of the individual.

But thanks for the sig quote. :wub: I feel so popular! :o

Illegalitarian

13th October 2014, 22:33

I never denied that bourgeois society and its culture are pervasive. Furthermore, it is incorrect for you to portray capitalist society as a monolithic and independent agent that wholly determines our culture and upbringing. My basic point is, once again, that people have a degree of autonomy, or agency, relative to their class position. This does not mean that they are completely in control of their lives, but neither does it mean that they are sheep. You have yet to answer my concept with one of your own that makes the least bit of sense.

It doesn't wholly determine our culture and upbringing, but its prevalence and influence are huge factors among with many others that make "agency relative to class position" a very weak determining factor evidenced by the fact that you have yet to demonstrate this, have now created a straw man (I never said they were sheep) and are backpeddling immensely (before we were not blank slates and autonomy was quite the factor, now there's just a degree of autonomy relative to class position).

I addressed what you said in its entirety, your failed attempt to refute this address shows this no matter how much you would like to feign not seeing a rebuttal.

How is it inarguable? Despite the fact that you have bolded a part of my previous post which highlighted a key flaw in concept of the blank slate, one would think to find something resembling a direct refutation. Instead you’re just unloading more worthless truisms in an attempt to misdirect the debate.

Unfortunately, just because you would like to see them as truisms and deny the fact that my very first paragraph directly addressed the bolded text does not make it true. More attempts at deflection to avoid putting forth a serious response, sadly.

First, you say that instinct does not exist and go so far as to say that it has no basis in science (are you serious?). Next, you acknowledge it only to belittle its significance to save your sinking ship of a blank slate theory. You then proceed to draw erroneous conclusions on my concepts and paint me as some sort of erratic behaviorist, all the while denying biology’s role in the development of human nature. Who’s the liberal here, again?

First, I said absolutely no such thing. I said that you're creating a false image and prevalence of instinct as a deciding factor in your warped notion of "human nature", when in fact, instinct plays a very negligible role in the human condition, how we act and what we do within society. Humanity being driven by your false notion of instinct, that is, humans not being born simply blank slates, is not a view supported by anyone in any related field. There is no body of biological or sociological evidence supporting the notion that each person is born with such an innate drive towards some arbitrary goal that socialization has little to do with who they are as people, how they act and how they think.

Next, I never said instinct didn't exist, again, so you haven't a leg to stand on. You're the one saying "biology has a role in human nature", both appealing to your own ill-perceived notion of humanity being driven by some sort of pre-determined instinct (despite just earlier claiming that people only have "relative degrees of autonomy to their class) as well as appealing to a sense of innate human nature that we're all born with.

Your comments earlier about humanity only having a relative amount of agency and autonomy along side your rejection of the notion of people mostly being shaped by socialization and your bolstering of pseudo-biological concepts strongly indicate that you're either making statements of bland truism due to the absence of a real argument (yeah no shit biology plays a role in how we behave as humans. Biology encompasses all of life, it plays a role in everything, how astute of you), or you honestly believe that most people are pre-destined to follow a certain path of behavior and action due to pure biological make up and base "instincts". Either way, everyone sees who is approaching this from a place of liberalism.

Humans are certainly able to resist certain biological drives at varying times and in specific contexts. I never said otherwise. Unfortunately, that does not answer the very pressing question that Marxists should be asking: “How far does biology go, and under what contexts does it take a primary role in distinction from the mind?” This is far from the evolutionary psychology label you’re pinning on me.

Humans are able to resist every biological drive at any time in any context, that's where your "point" falls into pieces. I can choose not to have sex if I want. I can choose not to eat if I want. If I want, I can even kill myself, avoiding the biggest biological drive of all: the strive to survive. You never said otherwise but you have absolutely been implying such, and it very much answers the question with a resounding: "not very far, and none".

Please point out where I made these arguments, because self-love is not the same thing as selfishness or narcissism.

Your weird notion of altruism getting in the way of self-love, if not Randian, is a pretty damn good simulation.

MEGAMANTROTSKY

14th October 2014, 15:31

It doesn't wholly determine our culture and upbringing, but its prevalence and influence are huge factors among with many others that make "agency relative to class position" a very weak determining factor evidenced by the fact that you have yet to demonstrate this, have now created a straw man (I never said they were sheep) and are backpeddling immensely (before we were not blank slates and autonomy was quite the factor, now there's just a degree of autonomy relative to class position).
Backpedalling? I don’t think you’ve actually read my responses. This is what I actually said to communer earlier in the thread:

People have a degree of autonomy in their interaction with society, nature, and the state, although this interaction is not equal.
Saying “relative to class position” is merely a variation on this same theme. I suggest you familiarize yourself with what I’ve actually said, rather than making it up.

Unfortunately, just because you would like to see them as truisms and deny the fact that my very first paragraph directly addressed the bolded text does not make it true. More attempts at deflection to avoid putting forth a serious response, sadly.
Deflecting by claiming that I’m deflecting. Clever!

But you didn’t really address what I said. The essence of your claim was that capitalist society has a massive influence on people’s lives, which, while true, tells me very little as to how people are blank slates.

Humans are able to resist every biological drive at any time in any context, that's where your "point" falls into pieces. I can choose not to have sex if I want. I can choose not to eat if I want. If I want, I can even kill myself, avoiding the biggest biological drive of all: the strive to survive. You never said otherwise but you have absolutely been implying such, and it very much answers the question with a resounding: "not very far, and none".
People’s destinies are not written into their genes or their biology, and I never said otherwise. Please point out where I ever implied this. Again, my question is the extent of biology’s role in the development of human nature, not that it rules us. If we accept that biological drives are a part of who we are and affects our development in some way, our objective should be to understand this interaction between the biological and the social so that we can have a fully worked out Marxist concept of human nature to counter the ones being put out by biologists like Dawkins or linguists like Steven Pinker. You keep saying that instincts have little to do with it, but taken to its final conclusion this is an effective denial of them. Posing biology and society on two completely separate planes and act as though their association is only accidental explains nothing about us at all, and only allows an intellectual vacuum that the extreme Darwinists will attempt to fill.

Your weird notion of altruism getting in the way of self-love, if not Randian, is a pretty damn good simulation.
I never said that altruism “got in the way”, I merely said that it is an inadequate concept, because it does not account for the happiness of the person himself; altruism is the disinterested (or selfless) concern for others. Self-love by itself is not contradictory to helping others in the slightest. Communer’s argument was that it was the natural human behavior, which amounts to a behavioral prescription. Do you agree with his conception, or can you finally move on from this?

MEGAMANTROTSKY

14th October 2014, 15:53

The context/my point is that you said you don't see how what I'm saying and what Marx was saying are basically the same thing. I quoted a Marx passage from a letter I had never even read before I went to find it that said the exact same thing I've been saying in this thread the entire time. How did I know he said it? Because when you're right, you're right. The sky looks blue, RevLeft kinda sucks, and individual development directly translates into societal development because society is of the individual.

But thanks for the sig quote. :wub: I feel so popular! :o
You said that you never read the letter before? It shows.

Marx's point against Proudhon is an elaboration of a paragraph that came earlier, since the latter denied people their agency in their own historical development, specifically in his "Philosophy of Poverty".

He himself provides the key to this enigma. Mr Proudhon sees in history a definite series of social developments; he finds progress realised in history; finally, he finds that men, taken as individuals, did not know what they were about, were mistaken as to their own course, i. e. that their social development appears at first sight to be something distinct, separate and independent of their individual development. He is unable to explain these facts, and the hypothesis of universal reason made manifest is ready to hand. Nothing is easier than to invent mystical causes, i.e. phrases in which common sense is lacking.
Neither does the paragraph you cite contradict Marx's contention in "The Holy Family a year earlier:

Once man is recognised as the essence, the basis of all human activity and situations, only “Criticism” can invent new categories and transform man himself into a category and into the principle of a whole series of categories, as it is doing now. It is true that in so doing it takes the only road to salvation that has remained for frightened and persecuted theological inhumanity. History does nothing, it “possesses no immense wealth”, it “wages no battles”. It is man, real, living man who does all that, who possesses and fights; “history” is not, as it were, a person apart, using man as a means to achieve its own aims; history is nothing but the activity of man pursuing his aims.
Or, if we were to really be blunt, let's drag out a certain thesis on Feuerbach:

The materialist doctrine concerning the changing of circumstances and upbringing forgets that circumstances are changed by men and that it is essential to educate the educator himself. This doctrine must, therefore, divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society.

The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-changing can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice.
When you have an actual argument, let me know.

consuming negativity

14th October 2014, 16:04

You said that you never read the letter before? It shows.

Marx's point against Proudhon is an elaboration of a paragraph that came earlier, since the latter denied people their agency in their own historical development, specifically in his "Philosophy of Poverty".

Neither does the paragraph you cite contradict Marx's contention in "The Holy Family a year earlier:

Or, if we were to really be blunt, let's drag out a certain thesis on Feuerbach:

When you have an actual argument, let me know.

It isn't that I don't have an argument; it's that we're in agreement but are wording things differently. Or, at least, I can say that I don't disagree with anything you just posted.

Collective Reasons

14th October 2014, 20:01

Marx's point against Proudhon is an elaboration of a paragraph that came earlier, since the latter denied people their agency in their own historical development, specifically in his "Philosophy of Poverty".
The point of Proudhon's theories of collective force and collective reason wasn't to deny the agency of individuals, but precisely to show that that agency has more-than-individual consequences.

Illegalitarian

15th October 2014, 00:47

Backpedalling? I don’t think you’ve actually read my responses. This is what I actually said to communer earlier in the thread:

Saying “relative to class position” is merely a variation on this same theme. I suggest you familiarize yourself with what I’ve actually said, rather than making it up.

Yet you take the contradictory position of people not being relatively blank slates at birth. Which is it, people have a degree of autonomy relative to their relations to the means of production, or are they not born "blank slates"? Maybe you should tell me what you mean by saying people are not blank slates, that might clear up what I think is a case of both of us agreeing and talking past each other.

But you didn’t really address what I said. The essence of your claim was that capitalist society has a massive influence on people’s lives, which, while true, tells me very little as to how people are blank slates.

I directly addressed what you said. If you do not see how the vast majority of our personality and perception of the world is based entirely on socialization is an argument against the idea of people not being "blank slates", that only makes me think your definition of blank slate isn't what I thought it was even more.

People’s destinies are not written into their genes or their biology, and I never said otherwise. Please point out where I ever implied this. Again, my question is the extent of biology’s role in the development of human nature, not that it rules us. If we accept that biological drives are a part of who we are and affects our development in some way, our objective should be to understand this interaction between the biological and the social so that we can have a fully worked out Marxist concept of human nature to counter the ones being put out by biologists like Dawkins or linguists like Steven Pinker.

It undeniably affects us in some way. The will to survive and sexual desires fuel a lot of our activity and who we are, but the fact that we are able to fight these very base instincts whenever we so choose prove that they do, in fact, have a negligible effect on who we are as people since we are absolutely capable of ignoring them.

The Marxist conception of human nature should be based off of, again, concepts found within historical materialism: That is, it's the society that makes the individual, not vice-versa, which negates any bourgeois-laden notion of no other economic system being viable due to some innate thing inside people that makes them competitive and violent and greedy.

You keep saying that instincts have little to do with it, but taken to its final conclusion this is an effective denial of them. Posing biology and society on two completely separate planes and act as though their association is only accidental explains nothing about us at all, and only allows an intellectual vacuum that the extreme Darwinists will attempt to fill.

Perhaps it is, but if that's the case then very well. You're not wrong, but trying to look into some sort of big connection between the two that simply isn't there explains nothing about us at all, and it doesn't need to because with regards to "human nature", the jury is in and the answer is "it's a non-existent socially darwinist bullshit concept", no matter how much anyone wants to try and fallaciously point out something to the contrary

I never said that altruism “got in the way”, I merely said that it is an inadequate concept, because it does not account for the happiness of the person himself; altruism is the disinterested (or selfless) concern for others. Self-love by itself is not contradictory to helping others in the slightest. Communer’s argument was that it was the natural human behavior, which amounts to a behavioral prescription. Do you agree with his conception, or can you finally move on from this?[/QUOTE]

Fair enough! Again, my mistake for not reading properly, apologies.

MEGAMANTROTSKY

15th October 2014, 17:05

The point of Proudhon's theories of collective force and collective reason wasn't to deny the agency of individuals, but precisely to show that that agency has more-than-individual consequences.
That's nice, but it has little to do with what I was trying to bring out in the letter.

Thirsty Crow

15th October 2014, 17:51

Quite an interesting OP.

Though, I can't help it finding some views problematic.

The answer all along has been exactly what Karl Marx fucking said: the new society we wish to build is the direct result of what we already have. It was only through a series of bad trips and turbulent interpersonal relationships that I was ever able to even discover this by noticing how the people around me interact. What we can do is to not act out of fear anymore. We can act out of love.

Thing is, collective working class activity, if it materializes in a gradually more and more revolutionary form, won't at all seem as an act out of love; more than this you could liken it to an aggressive self-assertion, not altruism but greed - our own greed, not a consequence of an atomized society of all-against-all (one thing it's interesting, and a bit depressive to observe is how job applicants think about their competitors - other working class people).

Another problem is that I think it is illusory to expect change will occur "naturally" (doubly suspect in conjunction with the idea of acting out of love). This paints a completely unrealistic picture since the use of the word "naturally" here hints at an unproblematic, sort of automatic process; it can't happen this way not least because the fear you mention is most likely to persist in periods of intense ruling class backlash. There are also other reasons.

And finally, this "be the change yourself" picture can't account for the social and political dynamics of workers' revolution; I don't think the idea of leading by example where the example is moral fortitude can be generalized like that, much less that this kind of prefiguration creates the society communists aim at. I think that the ultimate expression of this view in the field of activity and organizing is charity and philantropic campaigns; and while there is merit to folks organizing to help out, this doesn't and can't further class struggle and forment a fighting spirit within the working class.

MEGAMANTROTSKY

15th October 2014, 17:52

Which is it, people have a degree of autonomy relative to their relations to the means of production, or are they not born "blank slates"? Maybe you should tell me what you mean by saying people are not blank slates, that might clear up what I think is a case of both of us agreeing and talking past each other.
When I deny that humans are blank slates, I am attacking the theory that places primacy upon the variations in life experience. This logic tends to emphasize the differences between people at the expense of their similarities. I regard this as inadequate. Human history is, after all, the history of a single species; Marxists have to be able to account for its continuity throughout history as well as its discontinuity. So while human needs and experiences have indeed been in endless variation, the fact that there exist needs that are specific to humans (such as culture, etc.) means that there must be elements of these needs that are relatively unchanging. These “relatively unchanging” elements were best elaborated on by the Freudo-Marxist Otto Fenichel:

“It is true that changed social conditions also change the individual's needs. But it can be shown psychoanalytically that in the new needs old biologically based needs have found a new and changed expression, and this cannot only be proved but is also of an immense heuristic value: it explains many details of real facts which otherwise would remain unexplained.”
When human needs are viewed in this way, as a “vast set of variations on fundamental themes,” human nature retains its active changeability while rooting that changeability in the actual history of human development. And it is precisely this that alerts us to the idea that there may actually be an essential human nature that only a Marxist standpoint can explain, that mercilessly rejects the schools of both the blank slatists, and the extreme Darwinists (and let it be said that Darwin mostly rejected the extremes in his own day, the notion that all life can be explained by natural selection alone).

Fair enough! Again, my mistake for not reading properly, apologies.
Yes, you tend to do that a lot.

consuming negativity

15th October 2014, 18:49

Quite an interesting OP.

Though, I can't help it finding some views problematic.

Thing is, collective working class activity, if it materializes in a gradually more and more revolutionary form, won't at all seem as an act out of love; more than this you could liken it to an aggressive self-assertion, not altruism but greed - our own greed, not a consequence of an atomized society of all-against-all (one thing it's interesting, and a bit depressive to observe is how job applicants think about their competitors - other working class people).

Another problem is that I think it is illusory to expect change will occur "naturally" (doubly suspect in conjunction with the idea of acting out of love). This paints a completely unrealistic picture since the use of the word "naturally" here hints at an unproblematic, sort of automatic process; it can't happen this way not least because the fear you mention is most likely to persist in periods of intense ruling class backlash. There are also other reasons.

And finally, this "be the change yourself" picture can't account for the social and political dynamics of workers' revolution; I don't think the idea of leading by example where the example is moral fortitude can be generalized like that, much less that this kind of prefiguration creates the society communists aim at. I think that the ultimate expression of this view in the field of activity and organizing is charity and philantropic campaigns; and while there is merit to folks organizing to help out, this doesn't and can't further class struggle and forment a fighting spirit within the working class.

Thanks. I thought your reply was thoughtful, so I'm glad you found it interesting.

---

Self-assertion is done out of love for the self, even among people who don't normally love themselves. Much like how altruistic love is done out of love for another person. But it is important to remember that altruistic love is really only possible when a person loves themselves first, because altruistic love is an extension of self-love to other people. Altruism is not the same thing as altruistic love, either; it is possible to be altruistic out of self-love or even out of a lack of self-love, which is something I am "guilty" of. But altruistic love is very, very difficult to achieve and maintain, and so I believe that when revolution happens, self-love will be the primary motivating factor. As you just said. Altruistic love is not necessary to achieve socialism when all that is needed is to act in our own self-interest. Because our own "rational self-interest" is, in truth, the exact same interest as the collective. To me, then, there is no difference between individualism and collectivism; it is a false dichotomy brought about by misunderstanding about oneself and/or about other people.

But it even goes deeper than that. To me, sometimes, asserting yourself can actually be an act of altruism in and of itself. There are many examples for this, but I will give you an example that applies directly to yourself. When you replied to this thread, you did so not because you love me and want the best for me, but because you were also interested in discussing this topic and wanted to give your critique of it. You acted in your own self-interest, and yet what you did was also do something for me, because I enjoy talking about these subjects. It was altruistic without even trying to be; it was mutually beneficial, in other words. Seems simple, no? But it's taken me a long time to really understand such basic concepts. And, with this in mind, I think it is possible for you to discern what I'm going to say about "being the change you wish to see" as a method of social change; to me, changing the individuals within society is the only method of social change, because society only exists as a term to describe the complex social connections between humans and the resources, technologies, etc. that we use in social acts.

As for your second paragraph, about acting "naturally", I'm not entirely sure what context I wrote that in. However, I'm in agreement that to think of this as a sort of God-driven predestination is ridiculous. But... my position is not entirely different. As Marx said, you do not need to understand the machine in order to push the button and watch it work. What Marx, you, myself, and the others here do are attempting to analyze the machine that is society in order to manipulate it to our own ends. But what I've found is that, simply put, it is not necessary for us to understand that capitalism is unsustainable in order for a revolution to overthrow it to come about. Theory is an intellectual exercise; it is not necessary, just interesting. We don't have to do anything to break capitalism or to get rid of it any faster, because we are right that the model was set to fail from the very beginning. That doesn't make it wrong for us to want to theorize and do things to move it along faster; that feeling among the periphery of society like us who are so far to the left and so forward-thinking is just as much a part of the process of societal change as the mainstream of it. We are free to do whatever we want, but we cannot escape our own society. Deviancy from society helps to define it.

consuming negativity

15th October 2014, 18:50

Yes, you tend to do that a lot.

That proof you wanted? I think this qualifies. There's really no need to say something like that to someone who is already apologizing to you for his own mistake.

MEGAMANTROTSKY

15th October 2014, 19:04

That proof you wanted? I think this qualifies. There's really no need to say something like that to someone who is already apologizing to you for his own mistake.
Considering I have been falsely accused of ascribing to several reactionary positions in this thread, I think I am entitled to express my frustration on this score. Otherwise, please go play Internet Knight somewhere else.

Illegalitarian

16th October 2014, 00:58

When human needs are viewed in this way, as a “vast set of variations on fundamental themes,” human nature retains its active changeability while rooting that changeability in the actual history of human development. And it is precisely this that alerts us to the idea that there may actually be an essential human nature that only a Marxist standpoint can explain, that mercilessly rejects the schools of both the blank slatists, and the extreme Darwinists (and let it be said that Darwin mostly rejected the extremes in his own day, the notion that all life can be explained by natural selection alone).

The issue with this is a fallacious need to root all human activity in a base that doesn't exist, some notion that all of our behaviors, needs, worldviews, perceptions about ourselves and the world and how the two fit together, etc, can bet rooted back to the early days of human history when only a very very few base needs had to be filled. There is already a Marxist standpoint about human nature that was given to us by Marx himself through his material conception of history, which practically invented the "blank slate theory".

Any other conception is just fixing something that was never broken for little to no reason.

MEGAMANTROTSKY

16th October 2014, 14:52

The issue with this is a fallacious need to root all human activity in a base that doesn't exist, some notion that all of our behaviors, needs, worldviews, perceptions about ourselves and the world and how the two fit together, etc, can bet rooted back to the early days of human history when only a very very few base needs had to be filled. There is already a Marxist standpoint about human nature that was given to us by Marx himself through his material conception of history, which practically invented the "blank slate theory".

Any other conception is just fixing something that was never broken for little to no reason.
What is your proof that no "base" exists? That is a pretty tall claim to make. And furthermore, why is the need for a historical appraisal of human nature "fallacious"? Once again you are misrepresent me; I am not saying that every generation born since the ice age is exactly the same as the first. I am saying that even as we are products of contemporary times, we do not fully slough off our anthropological and biological heritage, either. You keep missing this distinction and instead resurrect your previous argument that I'm trying to reduce people to their cave-dwelling ancestors.

Second, your notion of Marx inventing the blank slate theory, practically or otherwise, is simply wrong. It was the British philosopher John Locke that gave voice to the tabula rasa (which itself was based in the previous "nature vs nurture" argument) and the viewpoint that goes with it. Marx's own theory of human nature can be best read in the 1844 Manuscripts, when he speaks of the alienation of labor:

Estranged labor turns thus:

(3) Man’s species-being, both nature and his spiritual species-property, into a being alien to him, into a means of his individual existence. It estranges from man his own body, as well as external nature and his spiritual aspect, his human aspect.
By embracing the notion that there is a specifically "spiritual" and "human" aspect to man's alienation from his nature, Marx is clearly not endorsing a tabula rasa of any sort. I would suggest reading the Manuscripts in its entirety if you'd like to get a better handle on what a Marxist theory of human nature would actually look like.

Illegalitarian

16th October 2014, 21:49

What is your proof that no "base" exists? That is a pretty tall claim to make. And furthermore, why is the need for a historical appraisal of human nature "fallacious"? Once again you are misrepresent me; I am not saying that every generation born since the ice age is exactly the same as the first. I am saying that even as we are products of contemporary times, we do not fully slough off our anthropological and biological heritage, either. You keep missing this distinction and instead resurrect your previous argument that I'm trying to reduce people to their cave-dwelling ancestors.

The tall claim being made is that there is some biological or anthropological base which somehow carries itself forward in a way that influences everyone inherently, the approach by Marx and most other sociologists completely denies such a base for the most part.

What do you mean when you say "biological heritage" and what parts of it are not forgotten as time goes by? More importantly, what makes you believe that these things are vestigial in some what as opposed to also being a product of material conditions?

Second, your notion of Marx inventing the blank slate theory, practically or otherwise, is simply wrong. It was the British philosopher John Locke that gave voice to the tabula rasa (which itself was based in the previous "nature vs nurture" argument) and the viewpoint that goes with it. Marx's own theory of human nature can be best read in the 1844 Manuscripts, when he speaks of the alienation of labor:

By embracing the notion that there is a specifically "spiritual" and "human" aspect to man's alienation from his nature, Marx is clearly not endorsing a tabula rasa of any sort. I would suggest reading the Manuscripts in its entirety if you'd like to get a better handle on what a Marxist theory of human nature would actually look like.

But Marx never used the phrase "human nature", now did he? The word is gattungswesen, which means species-essence, or species-being, a phrase he used to describe the amount of control a person has over their own destiny so to speak.

Alienation separates a person from the products of their labor and the ability to control and direct that labor, from the control of the means of production, which means their lives are mostly in the hands of the bourgeois and bourgeois society.

Replacing the capitalist mode of production with a communist one does not reconnect a person to some sort of "human nature", it gives them control of their gattungswesen, their ability do live their lives freely and on their own terms without being coerced by capital.

MEGAMANTROTSKY

17th October 2014, 15:43

The tall claim being made is that there is some biological or anthropological base which somehow carries itself forward in a way that influences everyone inherently, the approach by Marx and most other sociologists completely denies such a base for the most part.
You are wrong about Marx’s approach. I would urge you to read the section of the 1844 Manuscripts that engages in a critique of Hegel. This was written in the context of Hegel’s ideas on consciousness:

Man is directly a natural being. As a natural being and as a living natural being he is on the one hand endowed with natural powers, vital powers – he is an active natural being. These forces exist in him as tendencies and abilities – as instincts. On the other hand, as a natural, corporeal, sensuous objective being he is a suffering, conditioned and limited creature, like animals and plants. That is to say, the objects of his instincts exist outside him, as objects independent of him; yet these objects are objects that he needs – essential objects, indispensable to the manifestation and confirmation of his essential powers.
Marx’s observation here is the philosophical kernel of his use of “species-being” (and partially alienation, to boot), a term that was originally introduced by Ludwig Feuerbach in his critique of religion. Needless to say it is entirely consistent with the ideas and concepts I have been posting here. Once again, I urge you to actually read what Marx had to say on the subject instead of making baseless (pun intended) assertions about his method without any substantiation.

What do you mean when you say "biological heritage" and what parts of it are not forgotten as time goes by? More importantly, what makes you believe that these things are vestigial in some what as opposed to also being a product of material conditions?
It is not a question of whether it is biology or a "product of material conditions"; they are not opposed to each other. Such a dichotomy will just bring us back to the same rut as Locke and Pinker. Furthermore, I’m no biologist, but I think there’s an excellent summary of the process of sublation in biological evolution here: http://onthehuman.org/2009/12/does-culture-prevent-or-drive-human-evolution/ ]

See the fifth paragraph. The author details how despite the fact that people usually reject lactose after infancy, cultural practice changes what used to be a temporary need into a permanent one. Thus the original, specific need for lactose in infancy was reaffirmed while intolerance is simultaneously terminated and preserved, since the amount of tolerance can vary between individuals. Of course, it is only one such example. Google is your friend if you want to search for more.

gattungswesen
Oh, good for you. You know some German. Unfortunately the lack of historical context on the use of certain words can lead you to completely miss its correct definition.

Illegalitarian

17th October 2014, 21:56

Marx’s observation here is the philosophical kernel of his use of “species-being” (and partially alienation, to boot), a term that was originally introduced by Ludwig Feuerbach in his critique of religion. Needless to say it is entirely consistent with the ideas and concepts I have been posting here. Once again, I urge you to actually read what Marx had to say on the subject instead of making baseless (pun intended) assertions about his method without any substantiation.

You're misreading what is a pretty obvious use of "instinct" here, that is, detailing the basis of need and why man needs the most basic things needed to survive. We are conditioned and limited like plants and animals, that says nothing about a fundamental human nature that has some relevant hand in how we perceive the world and socialize with one another, it also says nothing about socialization being an outgrowth of this natural set of needs, It only reaffirms what I said earlier about instinct or any other "base" being on existent outside of the most elementary tools of basic survival that exist in anything, instincts we're able to completely avoid due to our sentience which arguably means that they're not "instincts" at all.

See the fifth paragraph. The author details how despite the fact that people usually reject lactose after infancy, cultural practice changes what used to be a temporary need into a permanent one. Thus the original, specific need for lactose in infancy was reaffirmed while intolerance is simultaneously terminated and preserved, since the amount of tolerance can vary between individuals. Of course, it is only one such example. Google is your friend if you want to search for more.

So people drink milk whenever they want to, fantastic. This tells us literally nothing about some sort of biological base that all of our priors and interactions grow out of, surely you can give a better example than this instead of just pointing me to google.

Oh, good for you. You know some German. Unfortunately the lack of historical context on the use of certain words can lead you to completely miss its correct definition.

Indeed it can

MEGAMANTROTSKY

20th October 2014, 20:28

You're misreading what is a pretty obvious use of "instinct" here, that is, detailing the basis of need and why man needs the most basic things needed to survive.
It is true that Marx does not enter into a detailed examination of instincts, but then again, he doesn’t need to. My point was that for Marx, instincts were not as insignificant as you are claiming. At no point does he say that instincts are insignificant or that they are the end of human nature. In that passage he was outlining the contradiction between instincts and their satisfaction by pointing out that desired objects existed independently outside the human. And it is these instincts that prompt humans into their interaction with nature. Attention must also be paid to the increasing complexity (in a historical sense) with which humans satisfy their instincts, however basic they may seem to you.

We are conditioned and limited like plants and animals, that says nothing about a fundamental human nature that has some relevant hand in how we perceive the world and socialize with one another, it also says nothing about socialization being an outgrowth of this natural set of needs…
First, let me note how laughable this assertion is: “…says nothing about socialization being an outgrowth of natural set of needs”. Well, duh. I wouldn’t expect the sentiments of Freudian psychoanalytical theory to be present in a work that was written when it didn’t exist yet, though Marx has plenty to say about the structures that people create in interacting with nature and with one another; it is completely consistent with Marx’s philosophical method, if not his every word. Next, the fact that we are able to conduct hunger strikes and other such resistances against our needs does not mean they completely go away. You are awarding the mind complete autonomy without any scientific basis for doing so.

Finally, allow me to momentarily turn the tables and pose a question to you. What kind of evidence would you accept that there is a human nature, or a biological base that has relevance to our changing needs? Switches in the human brain with specific labels, perhaps?

Throughout my posts and responses I have argued my position on the existence of instincts, how they are relevant to Marxist theory (and Marx himself), and how human needs are inseparable from them, in all of their complexity. Yet no matter what I say, you only cling to your original argument, that instincts have no relevance to people. In fact, your mere claims are all we have to go by. You keep saying that no scientist or sociologist pays any attention to the notion of a biological base, but where is the proof of that? You have demanded a criterion that is impossible for a non-specialist for me to fill, all the while providing no real elaboration for your ideas other than their repetition. It’s time to put up or shut up.