[ckaihatsu]

Four migrants stuck on Poland-Belarus border die of hypothermia and exhaustion

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/ ... rus-border

[boomerintown]

(Again.)





On this, I've found that there's a distinct difference between 'the country', and 'the people'. I have a handy diagram for it, as well:

Look, I obviously dont agree with your analysis or normative claims. And I probably wont convince you about mine. So we will simply have to agree to disagree.

Personally, I believe that nation states who cooperate (in trade, research, and so on) with others but first is the best way to organize a society and the world as a whole.

I assume you disagree and believe in something else. I dont think we will get any further than this.

[boomerintown]

Doesn't "Cultural Marxism" serve as the new Satan for conservatives to oppose, giving meaning to their lives?

In my interpretation, "god is dead" has a very expansive meaning. It could be anything that serves as people's "god." Socialism served as that when the theological God became not very believable for a lot of secular people. But woke-ism is now a civil religion operating in much the same way. There is always a god and a satan, religions tend to work in similar ways.

This is a very interesting discussion, and one of the most important one we have in west.

I think Nietzsches idea about the death of God have some truth to it, but he didnt fully reach the conclusion in this line of thought.

First of all, we have killed God, sure and I think we should continue this thought to Camus idea that we need to accept the absurdity of life instead of a philosophical suicide in the sense of pretending there is a God that gives life meaning and a moral doctrine.

I dont see the problem of this either. The Kantian notion of an inner moral law is more or less shown to be the case when we study babys, and even animals such as monkeys. Morality is not something we need to believe in anything for, it consista of inherent concepts of humanity as a part of our DNA, probably as an evolutionary trait in order to be able to live in groups. The task of morality isnt to make up abstract and imagined concepts such as God or an utilitarian doctrine based on rationality. The task is more one of phenomenology, focusing on the inner moral law trying to understand its limits and possibilities. This is why I consider the categorical imperative to be the most important moral concept in mankinds history.

In addition to this, I reject the idea that we need a God or a Satan in a religion. The Abrahamic religions are all dualistic, but this doesnt need to be the case. You have the obviously example of something else in Buddhism, an entireley monoistic religion. This is also the case of zoroastrianism, the religion of the persian empires.

Regarding woke-ism, Id just say it is an ideology shaped by the material interests of a small group in society, similar to neo-liberalism. There is really no reason to make it something else.

[Noumenon]

This is a very interesting discussion, and one of the most important one we have in west.

I think Nietzsches idea about the death of God have some truth to it, but he didnt fully reach the conclusion in this line of thought.

First of all, we have killed God, sure and I think we should continue this thought to Camus idea that we need to accept the absurdity of life instead of a philosophical suicide in the sense of pretending there is a God that gives life meaning and a moral doctrine.

I dont see the problem of this either. The Kantian notion of an inner moral law is more or less shown to be the case when we study babys, and even animals such as monkeys. Morality is not something we need to believe in anything for, it consista of inherent concepts of humanity as a part of our DNA, probably as an evolutionary trait in order to be able to live in groups. The task of morality isnt to make up abstract and imagined concepts such as God or an utilitarian doctrine based on rationality. The task is more one of phenomenology, focusing on the inner moral law trying to understand its limits and possibilities. This is why I consider the categorical imperative to be the most important moral concept in mankinds history.

In addition to this, I reject the idea that we need a God or a Satan in a religion. The Abrahamic religions are all dualistic, but this doesnt need to be the case. You have the obviously example of something else in Buddhism, an entireley monoistic religion. This is also the case of zoroastrianism, the religion of the persian empires.

Regarding woke-ism, Id just say it is an ideology shaped by the material interests of a small group in society, similar to neo-liberalism. There is really no reason to make it something else.

What if Camus' absurdity is itself a symbolic fiction that allows him to find meaning in the depths of meaninglessness? And same for Nietzsche's ubermensch, for that matter.

I don't think it is possible to continue living - or even to commit suicide - without constructing systems of meaning. We are meaning-creating creatures, more fundamentally so than morality based creatures (in the Kantian or any other sense).

The problem is that after god is dead, its a free-for-all, that we all have no choice but to construct meaning in whatever way makes sense to us as individuals. It is no longer possible to have a Master Signifier that grants meaning unquestioningly to the whole collective.

But just as it is not possible to continue life as an individual without constructing meaning, neither is it possible as a society. Collectives are always in the process of creating shared meanings, as incoherent as they may be with other collectives. Ideology always at least has a religious dimension. It is never just about material interests - as Althusser says, ideology is the fantastical relation to the real conditions of your existence. I believe that the symbolic and ideal very much has a life of its own beyond the mere material.

It is here, I believe, that something like the Kantian categorical imperative enters the picture. While building on certain moral intuitions programmed by evolution or culture, the categorical imperative extends far beyond the normal moral sphere of family and immediate neighbors, extending our moral duties across the globe to every single living person and being.

I think it is a very powerful moral fiction - and all good fiction is based on truth - which can serve as social glue when nothing else will.

However, such an abstract concept cannot be a perfect guide to our affairs any more than rationalistic utilitarianism. Neither of these take into account Nietzsche's master morality. I believe that the latter is forever in a dialectic with slave morality.

The greatest moral fiction - which I think would have the power to cut across the divide between right and left at some future point - would incorporate and transcend both slave and master morality. I think that's what Nietzsche was attempting with his ubermensch. But he was definitely more on the master side, and never pretended like his doctrine was for the masses. Meanwhile, Marxism is solidly mired in slave morality. We have yet to see what is possible when bringing Nietzsche and Marx together (except in the heads of certain thinkers, such as Foucault and Deleuze).

[QatzelOk]

It was Satan and the struggle against him that gave meaning to people's lives.

Without a *Satan* concept in people's minds, *burning witches* just doesn't feel as good as it used to.

But we're just as stupid as we were when we could actually see *the devil* leaving the witches' bodies in the flames of the pyre.

[ckaihatsu]

If policies are bad for the country, then why would it be in the countries interest to adopt them?

Ive only said that we should base our policies on what is best for us as a volksgemeinschaft and that I expect other countries to do the same.

On this, I've found that there's a distinct difference between 'the country', and 'the people'. I have a handy diagram for it, as well:


History, Macro-Micro -- simplified

Spoiler: show

Look, I obviously dont agree with your analysis or normative claims. And I probably wont convince you about mine. So we will simply have to agree to disagree.

Personally, I believe that nation states who cooperate (in trade, research, and so on) with others but first is the best way to organize a society and the world as a whole.

I assume you disagree and believe in something else. I dont think we will get any further than this.

If you're looking to the bourgeois nation-states for leadership, good luck with that....

[T]he divisions between the imperialist powers, including among the former Allied victors in World War II, have never been greater. The presidents of three of the five UN Security Council powers—Emmanuel Macron of France, Vladimir Putin of Russia and Xi Jinping of China—are absent, as the US war drive against China provokes one of the deepest diplomatic crises since the end of the Cold War.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/0 ... s-s21.html

Whether the fascistic border agents on horseback enjoy whipping Haitians like animals or not, in the end, they are “only following orders.” Their brutality, like the unspeakable squalor in which the migrants have been held under the bridge linking the US and Mexico, is designed to terrorize and intimidate anyone thinking of seeking asylum in the US, a right guaranteed by both US and international law.

Even as the scenes of brutality were playing out on America’s southern border, US President Joe Biden was at the United Nations intoning before the opening session of the General Assembly: “… the United States will champion the democratic values that go to the very heart of who we are as a nation and a people: freedom, equality, opportunity, and a belief in the universal rights of all people.”

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/0 ... s-s22.html

[ckaihatsu]

“the forces of production which capitalism has evolved have outgrown the limits of nation and state. The national state, the present political form, is too narrow for the exploitation of these productive forces. The natural tendency of our economic system, therefore, is to seek to break through the state boundaries. The whole globe, the land and the sea, the surface as well as the interior has become one economic workshop, the different parts of which are inseparably connected with each other. This work was accomplished by capitalism. But in accomplishing it the capitalist states were led to struggle for the subjection of the world-embracing economic system to the profit interests of the bourgeoisie of each country. What the politics of imperialism has demonstrated more than anything else is that the old national state that was created in the revolutions and the wars of 1789–1815, 1848–1859, 1864–1866, and 1870 has outlived itself, and is now an intolerable hindrance to economic development.
The present war is at bottom a revolt of the forces of production against the political form of nation and state. It means the collapse of the national state as an independent economic unit.”

http://disq.us/p/2jowyn6

[boomerintown]

What if Camus' absurdity is itself a symbolic fiction that allows him to find meaning in the depths of meaninglessness? And same for Nietzsche's ubermensch, for that matter.

I don't think it is possible to continue living - or even to commit suicide - without constructing systems of meaning. We are meaning-creating creatures, more fundamentally so than morality based creatures (in the Kantian or any other sense).

That is a good point about Camus account of the absurde, to some degree it is a similar escape into symbolism in the same way as God is. But I dont think there is any contradiction between symbolism and Nietzsches concept of an ubermensch, at least not if you just understand it as a goal striving towards certain virtues and becomming a better version of yourself, without expecting others to do so too.

And as far as meaning-creating creatures, I agree to that completly. But in the same sense as Chomsky talks about language, we are limited in the kind of meaning we can create, where the moral code is a universal code in the same sense as Chomskys universal grammar.

The problem is that after god is dead, its a free-for-all, that we all have no choice but to construct meaning in whatever way makes sense to us as individuals. It is no longer possible to have a Master Signifier that grants meaning unquestioningly to the whole collective.

But why would we need a Master Signifier? The Persian empire remained strong, and often tolerant, with Zoroastrianism as a religion without any Master Signifier in the sense of a God. And Buddhists doesnt have a Master Signifier either? So either we mean by Master Signifier something that can exist outside a system with a God, or we can obiously live without a Master Signifier. Either way there should be no problem with the death of God? But I might missunderstand your point.

But just as it is not possible to continue life as an individual without constructing meaning, neither is it possible as a society. Collectives are always in the process of creating shared meanings, as incoherent as they may be with other collectives. Ideology always at least has a religious dimension. It is never just about material interests - as Althusser says, ideology is the fantastical relation to the real conditions of your existence. I believe that the symbolic and ideal very much has a life of its own beyond the mere material.

Well I think there is a pretty dialectical relationship between ideas and material conditions here, they both help to shape eachother, but they dont determine eachother either.

It is here, I believe, that something like the Kantian categorical imperative enters the picture. While building on certain moral intuitions programmed by evolution or culture, the categorical imperative extends far beyond the normal moral sphere of family and immediate neighbors, extending our moral duties across the globe to every single living person and being.

I see the categorical imperative more as a starting point to understand morality. I think there are no problems in wanting a maxim where you put your own family first in several important issues become a universal law. But it does adress issues such as justice, why you should vote, responsibility in regards to climate change, respect of everyones individual freedom, issues that for instance utlitarianism completly misses.

The greatest moral fiction - which I think would have the power to cut across the divide between right and left at some future point - would incorporate and transcend both slave and master morality. I think that's what Nietzsche was attempting with his ubermensch. But he was definitely more on the master side, and never pretended like his doctrine was for the masses. Meanwhile, Marxism is solidly mired in slave morality. We have yet to see what is possible when bringing Nietzsche and Marx together (except in the heads of certain thinkers, such as Foucault and Deleuze).

I think Marx is often missunderstood as a champion of the poor or weak. He is a champion of the strong and heroic class, which he saw in early industrial capitalism as the working class. He specifically adressed the dangerous of trying to side with the lumpenproletariat, and his goal was never to ask for charity or in any way to make excuses for yourself. His case was that this class should fight for their personal goals, using the power they had as a result of their role in production. And this worked, as we saw in several countries. The wellfare state is essentially an expansion of early collabortions between workers who gathered money in order to pay for someone if he got injured, etc. The only problem is that his vision of a classless society is unrealitic, but not that there was any slave morality involved. Id say slave morality is Rousseau and to some degree even Locke, philosophers who portray humans as victims of their environment. Marx was critical of the world, but so was Nietzsche. They were however both admiring strenght, not weakness.

[ckaihatsu]

---

In narratology and comparative mythology, the hero's journey, or the monomyth, is the common template of stories that involve a hero who goes on an adventure, is victorious in a decisive crisis, and comes home changed or transformed.[1]

Earlier figures had proposed similar concepts, including psychologist Otto Rank and amateur anthropologist Lord Raglan, who discuss hero narrative patterns in terms of Freudian psychoanalysis and ritualism.[1] Eventually, hero myth pattern studies were popularized by Joseph Campbell, who was influenced by Carl Jung's analytical psychology. Campbell used the monomyth to deconstruct and compare religions. In his famous book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), he describes the narrative pattern as follows:

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey

[Rich]

Doesn't "Cultural Marxism" serve as the new Satan for conservatives to oppose, giving meaning to their lives?

Well most Conservatives, at least the ones that can be plausibly described as conservatives, seemed to be orientated towards the term woke. I stick with the term Cultural Marxism, because the so called woke movement is just a continuation of a phenomena that's over a century old. Cultural Marxism is merely the substitution of the so called working class or proletariat into Marxism. However many of our modern Cultural Marxists are not doing this consciously and may have never read any Orthodox Marxism.

James Connelly went well down the path of Cultural Marxism. And we see Cultural Marxism in Lenin's thought with his shift towards the emphasis on anti-imperialism. It was his Cultural Marxism that led Lenin into his conflict with Stalin over the treatment of the Georgian Bolsheviks. Stalin placating Lenin with the worthless window dressing of the USSR.

But @Noumenon I'm sure you are at least partly correct. Practical politics always involves a simplification, indeed a crudification of reality. Practical politics always demands the forcing of one's ideological opponents into a box, putting a lable on them. And of course we all hypocritically complain when the same thing is done to us by our opponents.

[boomerintown]

Well most Conservatives, at least the ones that can be plausibly described as conservatives, seemed to be orientated towards the term woke. I stick with the term Cultural Marxism, because the so called woke movement is just a continuation of a phenomena that's over a century old. Cultural Marxism is merely the substitution of the so called working class or proletariat into Marxism. However many of our modern Cultural Marxists are not doing this consciously and may have never read any Orthodox Marxism.

I still really cant understand why people use the term cultural marxism tbh.

It is about a group whos analysis is fundamentally non materialistic, without any dialectic ingredience in their thinking, and that celebrates the victim and not hero. What is marxist about it?

[Noumenon]

That is a good point about Camus account of the absurde, to some degree it is a similar escape into symbolism in the same way as God is. But I dont think there is any contradiction between symbolism and Nietzsches concept of an ubermensch, at least not if you just understand it as a goal striving towards certain virtues and becomming a better version of yourself, without expecting others to do so too.

And as far as meaning-creating creatures, I agree to that completly. But in the same sense as Chomsky talks about language, we are limited in the kind of meaning we can create, where the moral code is a universal code in the same sense as Chomskys universal grammar.

Hmm, I think that makes Nietzsche a little too much like self-help. I think he's definitely talking on a greater scale about the achievements of humankind in general - although it may be an elite few who are most essential to that.

I think that Chomsky being more on the analytical side, is more restricted in what counts as the symbolic, namely explicit language and grammar. When the symbolic reaches into art and religion, that's beyond the scope of his analysis, whatever the merits of it might be.

What is the meaning or significance of a human life - of humankind in general? I think there is a striving to answer that question in whatever people choose to devote themselves to. Even in just surviving day-to-day.

But why would we need a Master Signifier? The Persian empire remained strong, and often tolerant, with Zoroastrianism as a religion without any Master Signifier in the sense of a God. And Buddhists doesnt have a Master Signifier either? So either we mean by Master Signifier something that can exist outside a system with a God, or we can obiously live without a Master Signifier. Either way there should be no problem with the death of God? But I might missunderstand your point.

Fair point, but I think the master signifier of more mystical religious traditions is just more subtle and implicit. It could be more like an empty signifier, which could be filled in different ways, or remain a void around which other symbols are constructed, while still serving a master orientation function.

Or perhaps the death of god phenomenon is more of a religious crisis specific to western abrahamic traditions? It could signify the necessity of transitioning more to an empty signifier type symbology, or something more mystical, to achieve collective meaning when we find it difficult to literally believe in an old man in the sky. For example, there is something called GNON (God of Nature, or Nature) which is a way that neo-reactionaries include atheists and agnostics in their movement while maintaining its religious character. Or in the postmodern Marxism article I linked to earlier, the class struggle itself, which evades symbolization, could serve as an empty signifier. There could be multiple ones for different purposes.

Well I think there is a pretty dialectical relationship between ideas and material conditions here, they both help to shape eachother, but they dont determine eachother either.

Agreed. Not sure why such a dialectical stance is so hard for Marxists lol. Well actually its just master signifier logic, in that they believe that materialism is the master key that can be used to understand everything.

I see the categorical imperative more as a starting point to understand morality. I think there are no problems in wanting a maxim where you put your own family first in several important issues become a universal law. But it does adress issues such as justice, why you should vote, responsibility in regards to climate change, respect of everyones individual freedom, issues that for instance utlitarianism completly misses.

I believe there are multiple moralities which at different times and places, may claim our allegiance. It is indeterminate what is objectively the correct action, because it depends on which morality you choose to listen to at that particular time. If utilitarianism is correct, then we should probably be spending every waking moment thinking of how we can prevent the deaths of malnourished people. Other moralities may have us do something similar with regard to climate change. But that is exhausting, there are simply too many moral demands coming from every direction. In reality, none of us live according to any of these doctrines.

This is because they are all not self-aware they are slave moralities, and by necessity they have to compete with a master morality that says "this is good because I like it, it makes me feel good, it increases my power and autonomy."

Like Nietzsche says, we are like a dual star system, in orbit around dual moralities.

Any slave morality that has ambitions to be anything more than a scolding lecture to make people feel bad about their natural inclinations, has to take this into account. You can't make it to Mars without calculating orbital trajectories, and likewise we cannot catapult our way into solving something like climate change without calculating the gravitational effects of moral dark matter (master morality).

I think Marx is often missunderstood as a champion of the poor or weak. He is a champion of the strong and heroic class, which he saw in early industrial capitalism as the working class. He specifically adressed the dangerous of trying to side with the lumpenproletariat, and his goal was never to ask for charity or in any way to make excuses for yourself. His case was that this class should fight for their personal goals, using the power they had as a result of their role in production. And this worked, as we saw in several countries. The wellfare state is essentially an expansion of early collabortions between workers who gathered money in order to pay for someone if he got injured, etc. The only problem is that his vision of a classless society is unrealitic, but not that there was any slave morality involved. Id say slave morality is Rousseau and to some degree even Locke, philosophers who portray humans as victims of their environment. Marx was critical of the world, but so was Nietzsche. They were however both admiring strenght, not weakness.

Fair point, I agree that there is at least a significant dimension of master morality in Marx. Although he was writing in the context of the socialist tradition of the time, in which I believe slave morality is more dominant. This is evident in the way socialists tend to emphasize basic needs being met for all, and how their passion for equality tends to take a "leveling" form, where anything that grows too powerful is treated with suspicion at best.

Of course worker liberation is a big part of it too. Both morality types are in operation whether people are aware of it or not. And I'm basically arguing that we should become conscious of this and organize a symbology in which there is a place for both. The language of morality is typically implicitly slave, in terms of your duty to others. Too much of this is a drag, and there is a tendency towards moral puritanism, as evidenced by modern wokescolds.

[Noumenon]

---

Well that is definitely one attempt at a universal symbology. I'm not mad at it. But I don't think it is postmodern enough for our sensibilities now.

[Noumenon]

Well most Conservatives, at least the ones that can be plausibly described as conservatives, seemed to be orientated towards the term woke. I stick with the term Cultural Marxism, because the so called woke movement is just a continuation of a phenomena that's over a century old. Cultural Marxism is merely the substitution of the so called working class or proletariat into Marxism. However many of our modern Cultural Marxists are not doing this consciously and may have never read any Orthodox Marxism.

James Connelly went well down the path of Cultural Marxism. And we see Cultural Marxism in Lenin's thought with his shift towards the emphasis on anti-imperialism. It was his Cultural Marxism that led Lenin into his conflict with Stalin over the treatment of the Georgian Bolsheviks. Stalin placating Lenin with the worthless window dressing of the USSR.

But @Noumenon I'm sure you are at least partly correct. Practical politics always involves a simplification, indeed a crudification of reality. Practical politics always demands the forcing of one's ideological opponents into a box, putting a lable on them. And of course we all hypocritically complain when the same thing is done to us by our opponents.

I more or less agree with boomerintown's assessment of the "Cultural Marxist" term. If there is anything Marxist about woke-ism, it is Marxist in the most vulgar and populist sense possible. These people have no materialist or dialectical understanding.

But if we think that there is a significant mythology associated with Marxism - quite apart from the materialist analysis that Marx himself advocated - and I think there is, then I don't think its totally wrong to say that wokeism utilizes a similar mythology, but where the working class as hero is substituted for various marginal identities.

What conservatives don't get in their criticism of the phenomenon, because they lack a materialist and dialectical understanding, is that it is not myth in the sense of being pure fiction without any bearing on reality.

Whether vulgar Marxist mythology or woke mythology, the idealized struggle is conceived on top of a really existing struggle or antagonism.

The rich really do have vastly more power than the poor. White people in the US really do have more power collectively than black people.

Whatever myth you strip away, if you are materialist and dialectical at all you hit upon this critical fact of the matter. And that becomes the starting point. Mere criticism of woke-ness is not a complete political orientation, and yet increasingly that is all that defines modern conservatism. Read some Hegel and negate the negation, y'all.

And this does lead us back to the necessity of symbology and myth. Because how do you get mass numbers of people organized and thinking along the same lines? Well, its not by reading Hegel. Rather, their apparently non-dialectical ideology should be informed by a deeper dialectical one.

And in some ways it is. Black Lives Matter, as simplistic as some of the rhetoric may be, is informed by a critical analysis of the US's history of racism and racist power structures which holds up philosophically.

If conservatism is informed by anything actually resembling real justice or any virtues worth preserving, it has long since left all that by the wayside in order to jump headfirst into subversion of the moral order for the sake of subversion, a kind of bastardized postmodern ethos whose sole function is to preserve one's unjust gains at any cost.

[ckaihatsu]

Well that is definitely one attempt at a universal symbology. I'm not mad at it. But I don't think it is postmodern enough for our sensibilities now.

Still searching for a postmodernist 'universal symbology' to validate your political outlook, huh -- ? Carry on. (grin)

It seemed to me that what you and the other guy were circling around was the 'hero myth'.

[Noumenon]

Still searching for a postmodernist 'universal symbology' to validate your political outlook, huh -- ? Carry on. (grin)

It seemed to me that what you and the other guy were circling around was the 'hero myth'.

I guess the best I can do for now is a symbolic placeholder for a universal symbology, lol. Perhaps a hero needs to arise to show us all the light.

[ckaihatsu]

I guess the best I can do for now is a symbolic placeholder for a universal symbology, lol. Perhaps a hero needs to arise to show us all the light.

Have you been around any real-world labor campaigns / struggles -- ?

Do your politics orient to the working class at all?

Your response to Rich is actually pretty good.

[Noumenon]

Have you been around any real-world labor campaigns / struggles -- ?

Do your politics orient to the working class at all?

Your response to Rich is actually pretty good.

Thanks. Occasionally I'm inspired to attend a protest (like BLM, anti-Nazi), but I'm not involved in organizing at all. Some of the people in my philosophy group were. I'm pretty introverted and my people skills suck, and also I always want to challenge the prevailing views of the group. So not the most natural fit for me. And unionization is a completely foreign concept to tech workers.

[ckaihatsu]

Thanks. Occasionally I'm inspired to attend a protest (like BLM, anti-Nazi), but I'm not involved in organizing at all. Some of the people in my philosophy group were. I'm pretty introverted and my people skills suck, and also I always want to challenge the prevailing views of the group. So not the most natural fit for me. And unionization is a completely foreign concept to tech workers.

Okay, cool, thanks for the response.

F.y.i., here's something I just came across in the news....


CEO who gave all his employees minimum $70,000 paycheck thriving six years later

[Noumenon]

Okay, cool, thanks for the response.

F.y.i., here's something I just came across in the news....

CEO who gave all his employees minimum $70,000 paycheck thriving six years later

That's pretty awesome. I think everyone should be making $70k minimum. That's fair compensation just for dragging your ass to work every day.

Once everyone is making that, then we can talk about how the capitalist work arrangement inherently sucks, no matter how well compensated you are.