Staring into the future

[Che Jexster]

In the picture that has become so famous, Che is staring off into the future with a glint in his eye, showing his hope of what is to come. However in the picture taken of him before he is executed he seems forlorn and beaten, he knows that they have only beaten a man, but that man was beaten because the revolution has become so desperate.
After his war in Africa failed, he realized people's laziness but refused to accept that the revolution was dead. He went to Bolivia after several failed attempts at revolutions elsewhere had failed for he knew that revolutions fueled other revolutions and could not stand the thought that around the world people were oppressed by American buisness interests. So he struggled on. Yet we have let revolutions become things of fantasy, phantasmagorical events that could only happen in antiquity. The only modern struggle that holds true with Che's ideals is the struggle of the Zapatistas in Mexico. The Cuban youth seem to wish for American imperialism, rather than the communist regime that's currently in place. The past transgressions of Batista, quickly forgotten.
Revolutions need to happen on the heels of other revolutions, communism should be something we learn from, not stick to fanatically, or called "evil" as it often is. Leftism cannot stay communist, to do so is to pretend communism is so perfect that it doesnt need to evolve.
Marx wrote the manifesto a long time ago, in an age before computers even. We must keep the core of communism, but change aspects of it so as not to become outdated theoreticians. "When the revolution comes in the 21st century, it not be socialist or communist, and will have only distant relations to marxism, it will be in some sense for equality and agaisnt privilege".
Use communism as a northern star, but dont sail right for it, or you'll discover it changes position in a hundred years, even if it doesnt in 20.

[DaNatural]

jexster i agree, the ideas of communism need to evovle, we need a main goal, but this goal will be extremely difficult to reach because amongst us(leftists) we have hypocrites, contradictions can be seen all over. That is one of the main problems, this is also needs to be planned out with specific objectives that need to be reached. That is where Che slipped up, he somewhat brainwashed himself into thinking that an armed revolt will work no matter what, and as he saw in Bolivia, unfortunately it did not. We need to apply new strategies to different situations instead of working off one thing that worked in a specific situation. Peace.

[Guest]

I am just 15 years old and still have a lot to learn. I guess ya could say that i am searching for a explonation i dont know exaclty what for though. Many things i want answers to like u is it when i drive down to new york city i c people homless on the street, than i see a limo drive by with a man dressed in tuxedo or i c a huge house with lots of land. Or why in school do they not encourge us to ask questions about what we c. They give me reasons but i know their untrue. I have many different views from the people in my class but i always listen to theirs and try to put my self in their shoes. I read many books and look up words i dont understand try to figure out and learn about society. I am not a good student in school because i think school is set up in the wrong way, and i do go to a excellent school with the top education. My teacher tells me and the class if u wanna get into the good schools u have to work hard so that when u get in those schools u will come out making lots of money. I tell but DR. good schools should not be based on how much money u make but how much it makes society better. I do believe that from that school plots us against each other, each trin to get ahead of the class i guess its good in a sense it might make us try harder but what about the 1 person that is the best in the class and he feels to much pride and makes fun of the kids that fail. I have been i both positions in my school life but if i am ever ahead of the class again i will always feel for those people that did not do so good. I will use my education to make them better but never put my self ahead of them showing them that any1 is capable of doing anythign he puts his mind to. But now i look at sep 11th and just say what THE FUCK IS GOING ON. how could 1 man kill another and just thinking of how pointless this is. My teacher tells me that we stand for freedom but i could go get any poor little mexican boy from the ghetto and he would tell her to shut the fuck up, live my life form a change. I dont really what i am talking about just leaving u with my questions and issues. I came to this site to look for some kind of reason or follow a certin belief. I have lots about che and i think he was a good guy and that he dont give a shit what ur all he cared about was what ya stand for and if u stood up for it. He didnt care if ur a communist socialist anarchist and i dont he was any of those at all he just took some ideas and guidence from them, plain and simple he just wanted to help make the world a better place. Well 1 thing is for sure about me that before i die i will find my explanation i am seeking and will do my best to make this a better world. One thing good about che he lived with the people he was fighting with he could talk their language feel thier pain. So i will leave here tippin my hat to that man and nothing more.

[pce]

cool, i hadn't even seen this post. thanks to the guest for bringing it up again...

as the guest put, it doesn't matter what we call ourselves. the point is to fight for justice and to fight for humanity. if we do that, then it doesn't matter in what name we go forth, communism, socialism, anarchism, capitalism, christianity, islam, buddhism, wicca, etc - whatever. there is no need for a new text, only a need for humanity. i used to want to go around and call myself a communist. "well communism says this" or "communism says that" "karl marx said this" or "karl marx says that." now i realize that this is a mistake. i have to spread the word of humanity, not the word of karl marx. in fact, this way people will be even more receptive. when asked about marxism, the Dalai Lama said the only problem he sees with marx is a lack of compassion. i think this is true, we must help each other through love. this will never happen with armed revolt. how can we have compassion when we are killing people? love and killing are opposites and will never co-exist. the only arms we need are the ones we were born with.

[Che Jexster]

Hey guest
I just wanted to add my voice to Guest's and say that school is a tool of conformity. I go everyday and I'm rarely encouraged to learn things that will really help me. We are taught that money is the measure of all things. We learn that all you need in life is a fancy car, 10,000$ worth of plastic surgery and we'll be happy, but we won't. I like that you ask questions, and I'm only a year older than you, but I've learned that you rarely find right answers, all you can hope is to ask the right questions.
To PCE, I agree that we shouldn't put tags on ourselves, but what is the language of humanity? I think it's important to use Marx's and other's sayings to help you understand the world around you. That's why i read to try and instill other's wisdom into myself and grow as a person. I think that as long as we speak the "language of humanity" we will be as flawed as humanity is. I think we need to use language to try to understand humanity. I dont think the mind is as flawed as language.

[Vanadanglus]

OK, i hear you talk about changing communism for the present, well, simply put, a "change" in communism is a "change" in a belief system. If you change what communism is, then you are changing communism to a new system. Secondly, I hear talk of equality & peace, and all that shit, well, if you plan to make a "Utopian" egalitarian society, you need EVERYbody, not just the majority, EVERYBODY. It takes one person to make a Utopia go bad. Moving on, setting up "cells" to convert ppl to socialist/communist views is hypocritical, it's persuading ppl to join your side. It's reminiscent of bin Laden to from groups in which to declare a war against capitalism. Third, communism is a FAILED institution, get that in your head, IT FAILED. Communism will never succeed--unless a RADICAL change occurs (later). Che knew this after Africa, and when the Bolivian leader put glory in front of equality. If the revolution HAD succeeded, it would've ended just like USSR, a tyrannical totalitarian, imperialistic dictatorship. Communism split into factions, think of Nam, China, Russia, Yugoslavia. Communism or Socialism will never EVER succeed on a large-scale basis, NATIONALISM will always prevail. Chinese culture is different from Russian culture, it is clear why the USSR & China didn't coincide in their beliefs. The beliefs that communism or socialism can succeed on a worldwide level is ludacris.

The only way this will ever occur, is if people willfully, or are unconscientiously forced to, change their minds. Clearly everyone knows this and it's pointless of me to state it, but i am, so deal with it. Everyone needs to do this. They won't willfully change their minds, this is obvious. So, how can they be forced to change their minds? The only way to do it is to play man's nature of survival. We must put the fate of the world in a live or die situation where unity & equality is the only way to survive. This is the only way, and it will be put before us too late, for the world will die soon, be it from war or pollution--that's a dif. issue though. So, how can this happen? We must look up, into space. Space is our destiny, and space is the environment best suited for this, a place free of nationalism, a place free of the aristocratic & selfish desires--it is virgin territory, as promising as America once was--only it's not inhabited by clearly superior forms of society. It is a harsh environment, in which ppl will have to work together, a place where nationalism must be put aside, a place where Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, American, Canadian, French, Russian, GREEK (yea, that's right, i'm talking to you drunk tank), Italian, German, Swedish, Swiss, Peruvian, Mexican, christian, islamic, wiccan, jewish, athiest, white, black, asiatic, arabic, etc. can be meshed into one, and free from the corruptions of the Earth. And yes, i do sound like a Puritan, and yes, I know i sound like John Winthrop making a "City Upon a Hill," but it could be a Utopia. HOWEVER, only if capitalism & socialism alike can be put aside in it's forming. The only way for this society to exist is if a wealthy group--BILLIONS, if not TRILLIONS--can establish a self-sustaining, well planned colony, and it'd have to be on the Moon, where water is.

THIS is our last hope.

[pce]

vanadanglus, i'm going to hold my breath until you tell me you're kidding....please don't let me die.

kidding aside, don't you think we should solve our problems on earth before we move on to the "next frontier?" trying to forget our problems will do nothing, they will only creep back up after we have settled on the moon.

"If you change what communism is, then you are changing communism to a new system."

what's wrong with changing communism? who's to say communism is perfect?

"Secondly, I hear talk of equality & peace, and all that shit, well, if you plan to make a "Utopian" egalitarian society, you need EVERYbody, not just the majority, EVERYBODY. It takes one person to make a Utopia go bad. "

no one is talking about utopia (at least no one in their right mind). that's like the wright brothers talking about 747 jumbo jets after their first flight. we are just talking about a step in the right direction. we are trying to make it as utopian as possible. the higher you aime, the higher you miss.

"communism is a FAILED institution, get that in your head, IT FAILED. "

even if that is true (which is a separate arguement) then let us change communism to make it better and more suitable.

-p.s.- i think it's scary that you call equality and peace "all that shit."

[Vanadanglus]

Yes, pce, "all that shit" is not the correct way to say it, but i did not feel the need to elaborate on something that is said again and again in here. And, if you believe communism didn't fail, you are the crazy one, it failed miserably, much like captialism will eventually.

Now, the problems on Earth are unsolvable, if i didn't make myself clear on that. Yes, we should continue to try to solve the problems on Earth, but to think that a fully equal society can ever exist on Earth without proving it can work, or the destruction or the breeding out of all the ppl that oppose it is also idealistic. If you truly believe that human nature will change for the better on Earth you're dreaming. Like I said, the only way to go about it is to form a society that forces human nature to change. The nature of ppl would either change, or the colony would die, one or the other, it's the only hope. That's the whole point, the problems of Earth can't creep up in space, for if they do, the ppl would die, and we all know humans are survivors, it's part of our nature, just like greed, and the other bad ones. The chance we have is to put us in a place where the ppl choose one or the other.

[pce]

"Like I said, the only way to go about it is to form a society that forces human nature to change. "

first of all human nature is not bad. human nature is inherently good. it is only society which makes us greedy and cruel (thanks nickademus and vox for letting me realize that).

secondly, when we SETTLE in space, just as we settled in the americas we will go back to our backstabbing ways. creating a challenge will not help. once we overcome the challenge (as we did in the americas) we will go right back to greed and cruelty. it is only a matter of time.

the solution is not postponing the cruelty, it is illiminating it (or reducing it for now).

[Vanadanglus]

Ummmm.....space is slightly different than the Americas, in that you don't get a chance to take a break, everyday you'd have to do the same things to survive, Russians & Americans get along in space, and work together, b/c they have to. Russians(Socialists) & Americans/Bristish(capitalist--basically) fought & worked together against the common enemy in the Nazis during WWII, the only reason they became enemies is b/c the threat went away. In space, the threat never goes away, it is cold & unforgiving.

[pce]

what are you talking about!? why are we trying so hard to advance in space? the reason is to eventualy make it so we can LIVE there. live there COMFORTABLY. we are trying to make civilizations on mars. why would we do something that will always be cold and unforgiving? as soon as we SETTLE in space (just like we SETTLED in the americas) the problems will creep back up. space will not always be cold and unforgiving.

i'm turning blue man, help me out :biggrin:

[Vanadanglus]

By "cold & unforgiving" i don't mean to the same extent as the earlier settlements, what i mean is that violence inside and interstellar-colonial would be a survival impossiblity. You can't damage the infrastructure or the circuitry that would make the colonies run. Thus violence would be an impossibility if one intends to survive. And when what i mean by start over, i mean lead by example, show the ppl it Can be done. The socialist societies on Earth couldn't be pulled off b/c of the fact that they didn't need to, it was just an experiment. The reason the Native American & African eqalitarian societies thrived was b/c of this need to work together to survive. This could be done in space, nowhere else could it be done by Technologized people. It's a way of expanding the human race & a way of putting ideas into practice in an environment where failure = death.

And I never said Mars, I said the Moon, but in the beginning Mars would have to be the same, the terraforming project is a 2k year, at least, project.

[Che Jexster]

You seem to contradict yourself alot. You say humans are by nature survivors but you seem to think that everyone will volunteer to go to some barren planet, where you have to work alot or die. You say native American egalitarian societies thrived because they had to work together to live. If North America was so diffuvult to live in why did it become the place where the most powerful country in the world grew up? If people lived in space then our technology would have to have advanced far far beyond anything we know. What are the first technologies to be developed, things that are useful and help humanity or make life easier? Obviously things that make life easier, living in a world where we've found a cure for impotancy and baldness before cancer and AIDS.
My whole point was that communism needs to change to go on and you list all the reasons communism doesn't work. You say that if Ideology changes then it's something new entirely. During the spanish inquisition you could be killed and tortured for being of the wrong religion, which a a far step removed from the catholicism of today, but it was catholicism none the less.
When settlers first colonized America it was extremmely harsh and many people died in the cold starving. Yet racism was strong, and the slave trade grew quickly with indentured servants. In ancient times when life was much more difficult than now, there was a huge uncompromising class system, and rampant discrimination (primarily of religion) partly because life was so difficult. When life gets difficult we tend to oppress others to make it easier for ourselves. Someone who has everything easy has no need to oppress someone because they have nothing to gain from it so we choose to force a doubly difficult life on someone else rather than share the burden.

[Vanadanglus]

you make a good point Jexster, but America was home to the strongest power, because of the way technology works--on Earth. Space, at least in a colony not on a planet/body w/the ability to become terraformed, will never be fully safe, at least to the extent it can be on Earth.

Another thing, Indian Societies,,,don't forget African,,,didn't advance technologically as rapidly as the Euro-Americans, so they were in a perpetual fight for survival--easier, but still needed. Now, you talk about the people coming to America and starving in the cold, well they did that b/c the primary reason those people came to America was to get wealthy, Virginians, but even they managed to survive in the end. The people of Roanoke gave up their life to survive, survival is life's, not just man's, strongest characteristic.

The Puritans--and the Mass. settlers--came for different reasons than the Americans, and they managed to survive. They came TO survive, to start over. Now, their ideals were different--read my earlier description of the people who would be going to explain the racism part--and their life easier than the early space pioneers. Now, your thought that the people would react with oppression of the others is valid in many instances, but there are instances where they haven't been--like the Indian & African tribes who went on for centuries in equality.

However, your analogy of Catholocism's changes is a very good point and you've managed to change my mind on your thoughts about the need for communism to change...although communism didn't work in time it was geared for, in fact having the opposite effect Marx predicted.

[reagan lives]

Should Vanadanglus change his name to "Cosmonaut?"

[gogo gomez]

Quote: from DaNatural on 11:17 pm on Oct. 8, 2001
jexster i agree, the ideas of communism need to evovle, we need a main goal, but this goal will be extremely difficult to reach because amongst us(leftists) we have hypocrites, contradictions can be seen all over. That is one of the main problems, this is also needs to be planned out with specific objectives that need to be reached. That is where Che slipped up, he somewhat brainwashed himself into thinking that an armed revolt will work no matter what, and as he saw in Bolivia, unfortunately it did not. We need to apply new strategies to different situations instead of working off one thing that worked in a specific situation. Peace.

im sorry but i dont agree: i believe Che knew exactly where his vision was headed. the man made great accomplishments and as far as the Zapatista's go well i wish i could express my opinion but i value it too much to have it exploited, yet they (Zapatistas) has come great lengths. i may be dellusional in my thinking but only time will tell. my friends ideas...are certainly weapons.

dont get me wrong...i understood where you were going with Che but i cant believe it ended with his death. VIVE LA ESPERANZA!

[Che Jexster]

I agree, ideas are the best weapon a revolution has. Without ideas it is no better than a facist dictatorship. The zapatistas embody a 21st century revolution, mainly because their ideas are so strong. Has anyone here read "our word is our weapon" i reccommend it to anyone who hasnt.