Planet of the Humans Controversial film among lefties - Page 22 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15094753
Julian658 wrote:How could it be racist to be offended by the term color (or colour) when describing black people?


You are ignoring the inherent racism of your argument that people of colour need to stop having kids. You also want me to ignore it.

The carbon footprint of people in the 3rd world is a blessing.


So it is not them that need to stop having kids. It is people in developed countries.
#15094767
Pants-of-dog wrote:You are ignoring the inherent racism of your argument that people of colour need to stop having kids. You also want me to ignore it.



Strawman, I said the whole planet.

So it is not them that need to stop having kids. It is people in developed countries.

YOu said: "So it is not them that need to stop having kids".

POD, most people in the world agree that is a good idea to limit the size of families that live in deep poverty. This affords a better life for the children and mother. The contraception is a blessing for these women. You are blinded by your ideology.
#15094772
Julian658 wrote:Strawman, I said the whole planet.


No.

You said “we must reduce the fertility rate in the 3rd world”.

YOu said: "So it is not them that need to stop having kids".


If you are arguing that people beed to have less kids in order to fight climate change, then the logical inference is that the ones who should stop having kids are the ones who are polluting the most.

You seem deeply offended when this logical conclusion is made, but you seem to support the illogical idea that those who pollute the least should be forced to not have kids.

In other words, you want white people to not be affected even though they pollute the most.

POD, most people in the world agree that is a good idea to limit the size of families that live in deep poverty. This affords a better life for the children and mother. The contraception is a blessing for these women. You are blinded by your ideology.


How do you intend to take away the reproductive rights of extremely poor people?
#15094865
Pants-of-dog wrote:No.

How do you intend to take away the reproductive rights of extremely poor people?


Education and modern medicine. No one is forced to do anything. Strawman again! An country like INdia or a continent like Africa would benefit greatly.
#15094881
Julian658 wrote:Education and modern medicine. No one is forced to do anything. Strawman again! An country like INdia or a continent like Africa would benefit greatly.


Who are you talking about? The imaginary family of fifteen Cubans?

We looked at the math and we saw that the average small family in developed countries creates far more GHG (that means “greenhouse gases”) than even the largest family in developing countries.
#15094894
Pants-of-dog wrote:
We looked at the math and we saw that the average small family in developed countries creates far more GHG (that means “greenhouse gases”) than even the largest family in developing countries.

What do you propose? Castration of the male in the Western family. Take away the car and do not allow them to heat their homes. What is your solution? Bring the Western family to the living standards in Cuba.

Are you for free borders with regards to immigration?
#15094895
Julian658 wrote:What do you propose? Castration of the male in the Western family. Take away the car and do not allow them to heat their homes. What is your solution? Bring the Western family to the living standards in Cuba.

Are you for free borders with regards to immigration?


I am going to ignore these strawmen.

Now, back to your claim. Who are you going to educate?
#15094973
ckaihatsu wrote:By being 'centrist' (okay with the status-quo) and indifferent you're actually *glossing over* the politics itself. You sound like you have *personal* commitments of some kind, which makes you personally *vested* in the status quo.

Stalin and the USSR wasn't 'tribalist' -- it was trying to *industrialize*, which it did rather well, and quickly, but at great *human* cost, which is why workers-of-the-world socialism should *not* be constrained to any given nation-state.


Stalin was obsessed with industrialization. In my mind that is not necessarily a bad thing, but I cannot understand why he was so harsh with the farmers and the Church. I suspect these guys are so committed that they feel compelled to eliminate the opposition.

I only mean to point out that your usual triumphalism is *misplaced*. You have to take the bad with the good, so to avoid *bias*. You might mention the poor foraging in garbage dumps along with the glittering skyscrapers, as both being instances of capitalism.


IN a capitalist system many are destined to the gutter. That hurts, but it is the true.

What's a 'social constructionist', and what do they say about biology?


As we talked before: They place more emphasis on social issues than biology. I would like to see that I see a balance. The extreme case is the assumption that gender is a social construct.

Empire is a *class* dynamic -- those in the ruling class, in whatever society / era, want to keep *enriching* themselves, endlessly, so as to justify their privileged existence to everyone else.


That has always been true, but hopefully it is changing and has gotten better over the centuries. This desire will eventually end and there will be a transition to a much more fair society.

I'll get to it -- meanwhile, tell blacks not to vote for Bloomberg:
Black Democrats endorse Bloomberg after release of racist boasts on “stop-and-frisk”


American blacks need to forget white people or others and go about their business. White people are not going to save anyone. The concept of electing a politician that is going to save them is not the answer. Just ask Asians and Jews and see what they do to get ahead. As a Latin American I tell my kids to copy whatever Asian and Jewish students do.

I know about the 1619 thing through the World Socialist Web Site:


The 1619 Project and the falsification of history: An analysis of the New York Times’ reply to five historians

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/1 ... r-d28.html


I don't know what it is, but Black people want affirmation and this is one way of getting affirmation. I could care less about affirmation because I had good parents. My affirmation is myself and family. I also celebrate the accomplishments of all groups with no ethnicity distinction.


It's ultimately a *two-party* system -- the Democrats and Republicans *support each other*, because they're two sides of the same *bourgeois ruling class*.


Agreed and we the little people can not do a whole lot about it. But, the Dems are worse because they manipulate the poor people.


This is a racist, eugenicist-type statement. This is exactly the kind of conclusion one winds up at if one is a biological determinist, and eschews the far more relevant *social* and *class* dynamics.


You are talking about the gutter statement. No it is not racism as people of all walks in life end up down there. It simply means that we exist in a hierarchy of talent. The son of a college professor can end down there so it is not eugenics. It is simply BAD LUCK.

If the American cops do not receive better training we are going to have massive violence. The racial PTSD is increasing.
#15094979
Julian658 wrote:
Stalin was obsessed with industrialization. In my mind that is not necessarily a bad thing, but I cannot understand why he was so harsh with the farmers and the Church. I suspect these guys are so committed that they feel compelled to eliminate the opposition.



Yeah, I'd say that that's basically it -- the initial Bolshevik Revolution *was* historically progressive, so the conventional power structures of church and farming (kulaks) were rivals and albatrosses on the revolution.



• All private property was nationalized by the government.

• All Russian banks were nationalized.

• Private bank accounts were expropriated.

• The properties of the Church (including bank accounts) were expropriated.

• All foreign debts were repudiated.

• Control of the factories was given to the soviets.

• Wages were fixed at higher rates than during the war, and a shorter, eight-hour working day was introduced.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_R ... al_reforms



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
I only mean to point out that your usual triumphalism is *misplaced*. You have to take the bad with the good, so to avoid *bias*. You might mention the poor foraging in garbage dumps along with the glittering skyscrapers, as both being instances of capitalism.



Julian658 wrote:
IN a capitalist system many are destined to the gutter. That hurts, but it is the true.



So then why the previous *triumphalism*, when here you're being more even-handed?

You *know* that the poor and dispossessed will never benefit from the markets / private sector, and that's why there has to be *government social services* to take up the slack while the rich busy themselves with getting richer. So no capitalist triumphalism, and no market-slavish-devotion, either, please.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
What's a 'social constructionist', and what do they say about biology?



Julian658 wrote:
As we talked before: They place more emphasis on social issues than biology. I would like to see that I see a balance. The extreme case is the assumption that gender is a social construct.



Well, *I'm* of that ilk, then, and, yes, gender *is* a social construct because biological *sex* (male / female) isn't sufficient to describe *gender* roles. (For example, there's no 'bisexual' sex, but there *is* a bisexual *gender*, roughly speaking.)


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Empire is a *class* dynamic -- those in the ruling class, in whatever society / era, want to keep *enriching* themselves, endlessly, so as to justify their privileged existence to everyone else.



Julian658 wrote:
That has always been true, but hopefully it is changing and has gotten better over the centuries. This desire will eventually end and there will be a transition to a much more fair society.



See, this is your *biological determinism* speaking again -- empire isn't a 'desire', it's a *byproduct* of the material world of class society. Recall its *origin*:



Gordon Childe described the transformation which occurred in Mesopotamia between 5,000 and 6,000 years ago as people settled in the river valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates. They found land which was extremely fertile, but which could only be cultivated by ‘drainage and irrigation works’, which depended upon ‘cooperative effort’.48 More recently Maisels has suggested people discovered that by making small breaches in the banks between river channels they could irrigate wide areas of land and increase output considerably. But they could not afford to consume all the extra harvest immediately, so some was put aside to protect against harvest failure.49

Grain was stored in sizeable buildings which, standing out from the surrounding land, came to symbolise the continuity and preservation of social life. Those who supervised the granaries became the most prestigious group in society, overseeing the life of the rest of the population as they gathered in, stored and distributed the surplus. The storehouses and their controllers came to seem like powers over and above society, the key to its success, which demanded obedience and praise from the mass of people. They took on an almost supernatural aspect. The storehouses were the first temples, their superintendents the first priests.50 Other social groups congregated around the temples, concerned with building work, specialised handicrafts, cooking for and clothing the temple specialists, transporting food to the temples and organising the long distance exchange of products. Over the centuries the agricultural villages grew into towns and the towns into the first cities, such as Uruk, Lagash, Nippur, Kish and Ur (from which the biblical patriarch Abraham supposedly came).



Harman, _People's History of the World_, p. 19



---


Julian658 wrote:
American blacks need to forget white people or others and go about their business. White people are not going to save anyone. The concept of electing a politician that is going to save them is not the answer. Just ask Asians and Jews and see what they do to get ahead. As a Latin American I tell my kids to copy whatever Asian and Jewish students do.



Spoken like a true parent.

But what are social minorities, like blacks and women, supposed to do when they've historically been *impeded* by white men?



Image

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

― Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings



https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/6398-i ... ress-those



---


Julian658 wrote:
I don't know what it is, but Black people want affirmation and this is one way of getting affirmation. I could care less about affirmation because I had good parents. My affirmation is myself and family. I also celebrate the accomplishments of all groups with no ethnicity distinction.



What have you said previously about 'self-worth'? Wouldn't that be *applicable* in this context?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
It's ultimately a *two-party* system -- the Democrats and Republicans *support each other*, because they're two sides of the same *bourgeois ruling class*.



Julian658 wrote:
Agreed and we the little people can not do a whole lot about it. But, the Dems are worse because they manipulate the poor people.



This is where we fundamentally *differ* -- there *is* a lot that people can do, and have *done*. It's happening in Minneapolis right now, and the rest of the country / world has to decide which is worse: A hegemonic power system that enables and exonerates killer cops, or a society that sees round after round of street-level upheavals, destruction, and organizing for justice.


Julian658 wrote:
You are talking about the gutter statement. No it is not racism as people of all walks in life end up down there. It simply means that we exist in a hierarchy of talent. The son of a college professor can end down there so it is not eugenics. It is simply BAD LUCK.

If the American cops do not receive better training we are going to have massive violence. The racial PTSD is increasing.



Oh, you're being 'empirical' -- it *sounds* bad, though.

You still think that, thanks to the market, we all exist in some kind of societal *meritocracy*, and that 'talent' is the main driver of 'success'.

Fortunately you've acknowledged *class*, and even the two-party political hegemony.

Here's some *illustration* of that, from history, which still exists today, and which cuts *against* your illusions of 'meritocracy':



Tammany Hall, also known as the Society of St. Tammany, the Sons of St. Tammany, or the Columbian Order, was a New York City political organization founded in 1786 and incorporated on May 12, 1789, as the Tammany Society. It was the Democratic Party political machine that played a major role in controlling New York City and New York State politics and helping immigrants, most notably the Irish, rise in American politics from the 1790s to the 1960s. It typically controlled Democratic Party nominations and political patronage in Manhattan after the mayoral victory of Fernando Wood in 1854, and used its patronage resources to build a loyal, well-rewarded core of district and precinct leaders; after 1850 the great majority were Irish Catholics.

The Tammany Society emerged as the center for Democratic-Republican Party politics in the city in the early 19th century. After 1854, the Society expanded its political control even further by earning the loyalty of the city's rapidly expanding immigrant community, which functioned as its base of political capital. The business community appreciated its readiness, at moderate cost, to cut through red tape and legislative mazes to facilitate rapid economic growth.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tammany_Hall
#15095014
ckaihatsu wrote:Yeah, I'd say that that's basically it -- the initial Bolshevik Revolution *was* historically progressive, so the conventional power structures of church and farming (kulaks) were rivals and albatrosses on the revolution.


It is somewhat astounding that the same mistake regarding the nationalization of farms leading to food shortages was replicated in China, Zimbawee, Cuba, Venezuela, etc.

Image

Sorry for being repetitive. By the way Adam Smith also understood the evil side of capitalism. But, farms are best run by people that have a vested interest in the farm.


So then why the previous *triumphalism*, when here you're being more even-handed?


If I appeared triumphant it was not my intention to do so.

You *know* that the poor and dispossessed will never benefit from the markets / private sector, and that's why there has to be *government social services* to take up the slack while the rich busy themselves with getting richer. So no capitalist triumphalism, and no market-slavish-devotion, either, please.


The left has a definitive legitimate role in acting on behalf of the poor. As i said before, if the problems are solved there is no role for the left. And hence they benefit from the turmoil. This latest brutal attack and killing on an innocent man in Minneapolis is like music for the activists, but they do have a legitimate role. My daughter is married to a detective in Baltimore and he is a but burned out. However, he has enormous compassion for the poor in Baltimore and does his best. He has never fired a shot in 10 years. However, there are a lot of bad cops out there. He tells me about it all the time. But, I encourage to watch the videos of cops executing white people. American cops are truly out of control.


Well, *I'm* of that ilk, then, and, yes, gender *is* a social construct because biological *sex* (male / female) isn't sufficient to describe *gender* roles. (For example, there's no 'bisexual' sex, but there *is* a bisexual *gender*, roughly speaking.)


Sure, there is super tiny minority where gender does not match biological sex. But, PLEASE well of over 99.7% of of babies with XY chromosomes grow up as males. The social constructionists say the bay grows up to be a boy because he was raised as a boy. That is total BS because the transgenders are raised as boys and all along they feel female. So it seems social constructionism is not the case of transgenderism.

See, this is your *biological determinism* speaking again -- empire isn't a 'desire', it's a *byproduct* of the material world of class society. Recall its *origin*:


Sure, the tendency to create empires is likely a social construction. However, it developed in all world cultures that never had contact with each other. So there must be an innate impulse as well. Like everything it is a combination of both. It is a bit like the hegemony of men over women over the centuries.


But what are social minorities, like blacks and women, supposed to do when they've historically been *impeded* by white men?


The white people are not going to save anyone. One simply has to change the stereotype and show ONE is better. There is no other choice or avenue.

This is where we fundamentally *differ* -- there *is* a lot that people can do, and have *done*. It's happening in Minneapolis right now, and the rest of the country / world has to decide which is worse: A hegemonic power system that enables and exonerates killer cops, or a society that sees round after round of street-level upheavals, destruction, and organizing for justice.


This has a solution. Black areas should be policed by cops that are mostly black. IN other words many blacks are not applying to the police academy. That is one way of solving the problem. Asking racists cops not to be racosts is not working. What was the cop thinking? Where has he been living during the last 10 years?




Oh, you're being 'empirical' -- it *sounds* bad, though.

You still think that, thanks to the market, we all exist in some kind of societal *meritocracy*, and that 'talent' is the main driver of 'success'.

Fortunately you've acknowledged *class*, and even the two-party political hegemony.

Here's some *illustration* of that, from history, which still exists today, and which cuts *against* your illusions of 'meritocracy':


It is not perfect, I can acknowledge that all day. But, the alternative is to change the system by another group of people that claim they will be perfect and not corrupt. I don't buy that! The human tendency for corruption is universal.
#15095139
Pants-of-dog wrote:@Julian658

Please explain who exactly you are going to educate about childbirth and contraception, and how that will affect climate change.


The poor people of the world need education and contraception regardless of climate change.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4206087/
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-11- ... ption.html
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2781837/
https://www.longdom.org/open-access/the ... 000289.pdf


Conclusion: FP determinants such as education, poverty, and accessibility to resources can be used to empower women and men in underdeveloped nations. It also helps to change their attitudes and practices towards family planning, thus, leading to better quality of life.
#15095148
Julian658 wrote:
It is somewhat astounding that the same mistake regarding the nationalization of farms leading to food shortages was replicated in China, Zimbawee, Cuba, Venezuela, etc.



I have to point out that these were *political* transitions, and that they had their (economic) costs.

I'm not a Stalinist, but I support any *nationalization* efforts to collectivize the economy within any given country.

I don't know these histories that well off the top of my head -- I'd have to do some research to get fully caught-up, but I think I can safely say that the problem in all of these cases was with the *bureaucratic elite* and its management of each nationalization process, etc., within the larger capitalist world political economy. In other words *corruption* is often the biggest problem because there's *no accountability* of those at the top. They're eschewing the globally dominant 'international community', and rightly so, but then there's no *oversight*, as a result.

At most it's *incrementalism*, and really it's the *workers* who need to be fully in charge, and also co-administrating, on collectivized *production goods* (factories), which is *beyond* nationalization / Stalinization.


Julian658 wrote:
[img]https://image.slidesharecdn.com/adamsmith-131222091116-phpapp01/95/a-summary-of-adam-smith-ideas-life-legacy-9-638.jpg?cb=1387715875[img]

Sorry for being repetitive. By the way Adam Smith also understood the evil side of capitalism. But, farms are best run by people that have a vested interest in the farm.



What about present-day technologies, and the capacity for *full automation*?

Could we get to the point where a water-fountain-type kiosk could be installed *anywhere and everywhere*, and would instantly 3D-print any metal or plastic part, or parts, for the consumer, at negligible cost to public funds?

It would be 'materials on tap', and people could even quickly build shelters and homes from the parts printed -- at that point would your capitalism-based 'personal ownership' argument really hold up? All that would be needed would be enough *volunteers* to simply install these public 3D printers, which would probably be solar-powered, and the filament material would be cheaply produced in bulk and mass-available, like plastic sheets are today.

Even if there was rampant vandalism, all that would mean is that more volunteers would be needed, and more machines installed and carted away, like those bike-rental thingees in major cities.

I think your 'private responsibility' argument becomes a *cliche* very quickly, especially in our times of mass industrial production where *any* material process could just be reiterated some more, to provide *abundance* to easily cover all the bases. It's not even like anyone has to 'hold their finger on a button' for an extended time period, because everything's *computerized* now, so it's just a matter of *programming* a schedule for any given industrial workflow.

Farms can now be *indoors* and hydroponic and fully automated / robotic.


Julian658 wrote:
If I appeared triumphant it was not my intention to do so.



Okay. I hope this point is well-taken.

Yes, capitalism has enabled *tremendous* productive forces, but it's also commodified *people*, and turned *us* into cogs in its 'machine', both economically and politically. Here's from Wilde again:



Up to the present, man has been, to a certain extent, the slave of machinery, and there is something tragic in the fact that as soon as man had invented a machine to do his work he began to starve. This, however, is, of course, the result of our property system and our system of competition. One man owns a machine which does the work of five hundred men. Five hundred men are, in consequence, thrown out of employment, and, having no work to do, become hungry and take to thieving. The one man secures the produce of the machine and keeps it, and has five hundred times as much as he should have, and probably, which is of much more importance, a great deal more than he really wants. Were that machine the property of all, every one would benefit by it. It would be an immense advantage to the community. All unintellectual labour, all monotonous, dull labour, all labour that deals with dreadful things, and involves unpleasant conditions, must be done by machinery. Machinery must work for us in coal mines, and do all sanitary services, and be the stoker of steamers, and clean the streets, and run messages on wet days, and do anything that is tedious or distressing. At present machinery competes against man. Under proper conditions machinery will serve man. There is no doubt at all that this is the future of machinery, and just as trees grow while the country gentleman is asleep, so while Humanity will be amusing itself, or enjoying cultivated leisure – which, and not labour, is the aim of man – or making beautiful things, or reading beautiful things, or simply contemplating the world with admiration and delight, machinery will be doing all the necessary and unpleasant work. The fact is, that civilisation requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralising. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends. And when scientific men are no longer called upon to go down to a depressing East End and distribute bad cocoa and worse blankets to starving people, they will have delightful leisure in which to devise wonderful and marvellous things for their own joy and the joy of everyone else. There will be great storages of force for every city, and for every house if required, and this force man will convert into heat, light, or motion, according to his needs. Is this Utopian? A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.



https://www.marxists.org/reference/arch ... /soul-man/



---


Julian658 wrote:
The left has a definitive legitimate role in acting on behalf of the poor. As i said before, if the problems are solved there is no role for the left. And hence they benefit from the turmoil. This latest brutal attack and killing on an innocent man in Minneapolis is like music for the activists, but they do have a legitimate role. My daughter is married to a detective in Baltimore and he is a but burned out. However, he has enormous compassion for the poor in Baltimore and does his best. He has never fired a shot in 10 years. However, there are a lot of bad cops out there. He tells me about it all the time. But, I encourage to watch the videos of cops executing white people. American cops are truly out of control.



Yes, we could call *any* political reformist efforts a 'cottage industry', because those soft-left efforts will never have any lasting effect against the behemoth of the capitalist status quo.

Wilde speaks to this dynamic as well:



The majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exaggerated altruism – are forced, indeed, so to spoil them. They find themselves surrounded by hideous poverty, by hideous ugliness, by hideous starvation. It is inevitable that they should be strongly moved by all this. The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man’s intelligence; and, as I pointed out some time ago in an article on the function of criticism, it is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought. Accordingly, with admirable, though misdirected intentions, they very seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see. But their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease.

They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor.

But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible. And the altruistic virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim. Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it, so, in the present state of things in England, the people who do most harm are the people who try to do most good; and at last we have had the spectacle of men who have really studied the problem and know the life – educated men who live in the East End – coming forward and imploring the community to restrain its altruistic impulses of charity, benevolence, and the like. They do so on the ground that such charity degrades and demoralises. They are perfectly right. Charity creates a multitude of sins.

There is also this to be said. It is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution of private property. It is both immoral and unfair.

Under Socialism all this will, of course, be altered. There will be no people living in fetid dens and fetid rags, and bringing up unhealthy, hunger-pinched children in the midst of impossible and absolutely repulsive surroundings. The security of society will not depend, as it does now, on the state of the weather. If a frost comes we shall not have a hundred thousand men out of work, tramping about the streets in a state of disgusting misery, or whining to their neighbours for alms, or crowding round the doors of loathsome shelters to try and secure a hunch of bread and a night’s unclean lodging. Each member of the society will share in the general prosperity and happiness of the society, and if a frost comes no one will practically be anything the worse.



---


Julian658 wrote:
Sure, there is super tiny minority where gender does not match biological sex. But, PLEASE well of over 99.7% of of babies with XY chromosomes grow up as males. The social constructionists say the bay grows up to be a boy because he was raised as a boy. That is total BS because the transgenders are raised as boys and all along they feel female. So it seems social constructionism is not the case of transgenderism.



Hmmmm! Good point. I'll have to ask for a *mix* here, of nature and nurture -- previously you've said 50/50 -- and I'm not that interested in gender-identity politics anyway, beyond basic civil rights.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
See, this is your *biological determinism* speaking again -- empire isn't a 'desire', it's a *byproduct* of the material world of class society. Recall its *origin*:



Julian658 wrote:
Sure, the tendency to create empires is likely a social construction. However, it developed in all world cultures that never had contact with each other. So there must be an innate impulse as well. Like everything it is a combination of both. It is a bit like the hegemony of men over women over the centuries.



No, allow me to clarify -- empire is *not* a 'social construction', in the sense of a 'subjective social reality', or 'groupthink', as with religion. It's a *material byproduct* of social *objective* reality -- empire *emerged* from empirical / objective factors, namely the societal production of a material *surplus*.



[In] other conditions survival came to depend on adopting new techniques. Ruling classes arose out of the organisation of such activities and, with them, towns, states and what we usually call civilisation. From this point onwards the history of society certainly was the history of class struggle. Humanity increased its degree of control over nature, but at the price of most people becoming subject to control and exploitation by privileged minority groups.

Such groups could only keep the surplus in their own hands at times when the whole of society was suffering great hardship if they found ways of imposing their will on the rest of society by establishing coercive structures—states. Control over the surplus provided them with the means to do so, by hiring armed men and investing in expensive techniques such as metal working which could give them a monopoly of the most efficient means of killing. Armed force is most effective when backed by legal codes and ideologies which sanctify ruling class power by making it seem like the source of people’s livelihoods. In Mesopotamia, for example, ‘Early kings boast of their economic activities, of cutting canals, of building temples, of importing timber from Syria, and copper and granite from Oman. They are sometimes depicted on monuments in the garb of bricklayers or masons and of architects receiving the plan of the temple from the gods’.68

Not only could rulers think of themselves as the embodiment of society’s highest values—so too, in certain circumstances, could those they exploited. By the very fact of absorbing society’s surplus, of having control of its means of reproducing itself, the rulers could come to symbolise society’s power for those below them—to be seen as gods, or at least as the necessary intermediaries between the mass of society and its gods. Hence the god-like attributes of the pharaohs of Egypt or the priestly attributes of the first ruling classes of Mesopotamia and Meso-America.


Harman, _People's History of the World_, p. 26



And:



Chapter 4

Women’s oppression

Women everywhere lost out with the polarisation of society into classes and the rise of the state. There was a shift in their status, described by Frederick Engels more than a century ago as ‘the world historic defeat of the female sex’. From being co-decision-makers with men, they were thrust into a position of dependence and subordination. The exact nature of the subordination varied enormously from one class society to another, and from class to class in each society. But it existed everywhere that class existed. So universal did it become that even today it is usually treated as an invariant product of human nature.

The change was rooted in the new relations that grew up between people with the production of a surplus. The new intensive production techniques tended to prioritise men’s labour over women’s for the first time. Gathering, the main source of nutrition for hunter-gatherer societies, had been fully compatible with childbearing and breast-feeding. So had early forms of agriculture based on the hoe. But heavy ploughing and herding of cattle and horses were not. Societies in which women did these things would have low birthrates and stagnating populations, and lose out to societies which excluded most women from these roles. Gordon Childe pointed out long ago that among ‘barbarians’, purely agricultural peoples, ‘whereas women normally hoe plots it is men who plough. And even in the oldest Sumerian and Egyptian documents the ploughmen really are males’.73 He suggested, ‘The plough…relieved women of the most exacting drudgery, but deprived them of the monopoly over the cereal crops and the social status which it conferred’.70 Key decisions about the future of the household or lineage became male decisions, since it was males who would implement them.



Harman, _People's History of the World_, p. 29



Worldview Diagram

Spoiler: show
Image



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Julian658 wrote:
The white people are not going to save anyone. One simply has to change the stereotype and show ONE is better. There is no other choice or avenue.



But you're still using *demographic* categories, and you *do* recognize racism.

These are *mass* dynamics that have nothing to do with the *individual*, and so must be addressed at *mass* scales, as with police brutality, or any other kind of social oppression.


Julian658 wrote:
This has a solution. Black areas should be policed by cops that are mostly black. IN other words many blacks are not applying to the police academy. That is one way of solving the problem. Asking racists cops not to be racosts is not working. What was the cop thinking? Where has he been living during the last 10 years?



The WSWS just addressed this argument:



No doubt racism plays a role in incidents of police violence. While the greatest number of police killings is of whites, African Americans and Hispanics are disproportionately targeted for harassment, abuse, arrest and incarceration. The Trump administration has deliberately cultivated the most backward and reactionary layers, including among police officers. Trump has proclaimed that he likes watching footage of “rough” treatment of “thugs,” and has urged police not to be “too nice.”

The source of police violence, however, is not racial antagonism, but class oppression. The unifying characteristic among victims of police violence—black, white, Hispanic or Native American—is that they are poor and among the most vulnerable segments of the population.

The role of Black Lives Matter and other proponents of racial politics, in claiming that racism is the cause of police violence, is to promote the idea that hiring more black police officers or electing more black politicians will resolve the problem. Inevitably, this means channeling opposition behind the Democratic Party, one of the twin parties of Wall Street and the military. And the epidemic of police violence continues unabated.

This reign of terror raged under the watch of Democratic President Barack Obama and continues under the fascistic Republican Donald Trump. Regardless of whether a state has a Democratic or Republican governor, if the mayor or police chief is black, white, male, female, straight or gay, police killings continue unabated.



https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/0 ... s-m28.html



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Julian658 wrote:
It is not perfect, I can acknowledge that all day. But, the alternative is to change the system by another group of people that claim they will be perfect and not corrupt. I don't buy that! The human tendency for corruption is universal.



Yeah, and my politics don't call for a mere change of 'management'.

There *has* to be a revolution by the working class, so as to eliminate the class system once and for all. 'Corruption' is endemic to the class division and will never go away as long as some people are more socially *elite* than others.
#15095170
Julian658 wrote:

The poor people of the world need education and contraception regardless of climate change.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4206087/
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-11- ... ption.html
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2781837/
https://www.longdom.org/open-access/the ... 000289.pdf


Conclusion: FP determinants such as education, poverty, and accessibility to resources can be used to empower women and men in underdeveloped nations. It also helps to change their attitudes and practices towards family planning, thus, leading to better quality of life.


This thread is about climate change.

You proposed smaller families in the developing world to deal with climate change.

We then did some simple math showing that the average Cuban family would have to have 15 people in it to create as many GHG as the smallest Canadian family.

This means that climate change will not be significantly affected if Cubans reduce their families since they are already producing very little GHG in comparison to families in developed countries.

You now seem to be abandoning the climate change part of your argument. I think we can safely say that you climate change argument was wrong.
#15095174
Pants-of-dog wrote:This thread is about climate change.

You proposed smaller families in the developing world to deal with climate change.

We then did some simple math showing that the average Cuban family would have to have 15 people in it to create as many GHG as the smallest Canadian family.

This means that climate change will not be significantly affected if Cubans reduce their families since they are already producing very little GHG in comparison to families in developed countries.

You now seem to be abandoning the climate change part of your argument. I think we can safely say that you climate change argument was wrong.


POD: Y0u area contrarian. Why would you argue against birth control for poor people in the 3rd world? They may not be poor forever and once they move up in the socioeconomic scale they will have a massive carbon footprint. It seems you shoot yourself in the foot just to have an argument.

Try again! 8)
#15095175
Julian658 wrote:POD: Y0u area contrarian. Why would you argue against birth control for poor people in the 3rd world? They may not be poor forever and once they move up in the socioeconomic scale they will have a massive carbon footprint. It seems you shoot yourself in the foot just to have an argument.

Try again! 8)


No one argued against birth control.

I pointed out that your argument for dealing with climate change is stupid and would not work.

One reason it is stupid is because it assumes that your average poor person in the developing world is just as responsible for GHG as the average middle class person in the developed world.

of course, we have seen that this assumption is stupid and wrong.

Now, do you have any other ideas as to how to deal with climate change? Try again! :excited:
#15095178
Pants-of-dog wrote:No one argued against birth control.

I pointed out that your argument for dealing with climate change is stupid and would not work.

One reason it is stupid is because it assumes that your average poor person in the developing world is just as responsible for GHG as the average middle class person in the developed world.

of course, we have seen that this assumption is stupid and wrong.

Now, do you have any other ideas as to how to deal with climate change? Try again! :excited:


As I said the fertility rate in Western nations is well below 2.0. IN some countries is 1.6 which leads to population reduction in matter of a few decades. Because of low reproduction rates Western nations are allowing migration from the 3rd world where families of 15 immediately acquire a gigantic carbon foot print.

The entire world needs to reduce the fertility rate. However, as a contrarian I assume you will argue against this.
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