Left-Wing Discussion Thread III

[Democratic Communist Federation]

Oh shit, you're right......that's creepy.

That's why I thought of the resource-based economy (Venus Project and Zeitgeist Movement). In that system, there is no government. Everything is regulated by a huge computer system.

[The New Sea Territory]

Just finished reading Heidegger's essay, "Plato's Doctrine of Truth". In it, he explains an unspoken shift in the essence of truth within the Republic, through the allegory of the cave. Truth before Plato was a fundamental characteristic of beings, but after the allegory, truth becomes a correct way of viewing beings.

As Heidegger sees it, this new doctrine of truth is humanistic in that it is a "process that is implicated in the beginning, in the unfolding, and in the end of metaphysics, whereby human beings, in different respects but always deliberately, move into a central place among beings", by which he means that truth becomes dependent on human intellect and not a part of the world itself. I think offers interesting connections to Nietzsche and Stirner previously unexplored and certainly useful to a leftist philosophy, albeit an individualist one.

Heidegger explains that humanism exalts the human being as the central being among beings, the being that can reach truth. He says that the human being can easy be "humanity or humankind, sometimes the individual or the community, sometimes the people [das Volk] or a group of peoples". Nevertheless, the project of Western metaphysics indebted to Plato's doctrine focuses on this particular "human being" as the protagonist in a tale about reaching the correct interpretation of beings. I think connecting Heidegger's genealogical account of the beginning of metaphysics fits in neatly with Stirner's observations about the metaphysical subject's transformations across history: the "good cause" becomes "God's cause", which becomes the "cause of Man", or "Spirit" for Hegel. In all cases, the subject is necessarily humanistic in the way Heidegger uses the word: it is the outcome of a process which made humans the primary being.

Although Heidegger criticizes Nietzsche's statements about truth in The Will to Power, I feel like this genealogy of Truth still resonates with the earlier Nietzsche's world-affirmation and the Dionysian and Apollonian archetypes. The Presocratic conception of truth, truth as ἀλήθεια, involved the beings' unhidden or revealed status. The being appears, and is then true. All beings in the world, in this sense, are true. This Truth affirms the reality of experience and the visible as opposed to the Platonic and later metaphysical fetishization of purely rational thought. Nietzsche's analysis that Greek culture became to Apollonian thus takes on a new meaning: the Platonic shift of focus from beings to humans, from visible to thought, becomes the fundamental shift from Dionysus to Apollo. It makes complete sense then that later neoplatonists like Julian saw Helios Apollo as indistinguishable from the Good, the highest of the forms (The Hymn to King Helios).

In conclusion, I think this use of the word "truth" is a powerful position for individualists and leftists to take in opposition to the ideological narratives we see today. It is, ironically, the most archaic use of truth that is the most relevant for the communist movement and a communist society. Heidegger points out that notions of "value" are really just aberrations of this Platonic doctrine across history. His deconstruction runs parallel to Marx. A friend of mine put it nicely: "What Heidegger does for Being, Marx does for Value."

[Shikihara]

Just me, but the human population is already 7-8 billion. Is any of this actually relevant?

You still need a replacement population. Unless you're advocating for going from 7 billion to zero in the next generation?

You're projecting. The only person who wants to force their sexual orientation on the whole world is you.

[The Xenopolis Confederation]

Hedonism in this context is simply a buzzword, doing something for the pleasure of it does not constitute hedonism. If it does, you've watered down hedonism to the point where it's not negative at all.

That is literally what it means. I never said it was negative. In and of itself, it's a mild positive even. It's just not the only or even the most important factor driving human social evolution in practice. Societies that prioritise hedonism over survival tend not to survive.

You're setting up a false dichotomy, assuming that hedonism and survival can't happen in the same society.

I don't measure the goodness of people by how many descendants they produce

Missing the point: your view of what constitutes goodness is determined by who you are descended from, which is determined by the relative survival and fertility rates of different people in the past.[/quote]
*insert Trump "wrong" gif*

Of course, some gay people think disease is a reasonable price to pay, some even actively seek it out, but unless all homosexuals actively seek out AIDS, the statement "homosexuality is a sin" doesn't hold up. ""Sin" is a vague term describing the sort of common morality that has resulted." So, it's wrong because society says so?

You seem to have misinterpreted my position: I am explaining why homosexuality is considered a sin. I am not myself stating that homosexuality is bad. The distinction is important because even if I think homosexuality is very good, there are still good reasons why society as a whole would be expected to oppose it.

I don't think your argument is correct though. That is like saying that misuse of antibiotics is fine provided that not all patients are actively seeking to breed antibiotic resistant diseases. On the social scale, it does not matter what peoples' intentions are. Active liberated homosexuals are a breeding pool for disease that we are willing to tolerate because we recently became really good at suppressing disease - but that does not necessarily make it a good idea in the long run. If you take a sceptical view on our ability to continue suppressing disease, or just weight highly the chances of a superbug emerging in 1,000 years rather than 10 years, it is probably a very bad idea.[/quote]
Sorry, I didn't realise you weren't stating yourself that homosexuality was bad. "That is like saying that misuse of antibiotics is fine provided that not all patients are actively seeking to breed antibiotic resistant diseases." I'm not a consequentialist.

Humans and domesticated animals make up a massive majority of tetrapod life, which I find a bit scary. Impressive, but also scary. At any rate, overpopulated or not, we're definitely not underpopulated, ya get me? We're not exactly an endangered species, so I don't think it makes much sense to determine moral good and bad based in part or in whole on how much it helps you breed. "I can assure you that the people whose children dominate the world in 2200 do not think the world is overpopulated, and their reproductive success will eventually make them officially right." u wot m8

Anti-natalist hedonists may well be "right", whatever that means, but right or not they will soon be gone. Natalists won't. The opinion of humanity on moral questions in 200 years will be dominated by the opinions of natalists. There is no escape from this logic.[/quote]
That assumes two things. 1, that hedonists almost never have kids, and 2, that natalist parents have natalist kids. It also fails to answer the question of, if anti-natalism is doomed to underbred into obscurity, how did it arise in the first place?

[Shikihara]

Sodomy of all forms was considered sinful because it spread disease to no social purpose.

Lesbian sex has some of the lowest risks of disease transmission though.

[Aillyria]

Oh shit, you're right......that's creepy.

That's why I thought of the resource-based economy (Venus Project and Zeitgeist Movement). In that system, there is no government. Everything is regulated by a huge computer system.

That's just as bad, imho. I don't trust computers any more than I do humans.....especially not AIs.

[Dejanic]

Sodomy of all forms was considered sinful because it spread disease to no social purpose.

Lesbian sex has some of the lowest risks of disease transmission though.

I'm not disagreeing with your point; but it's a improper response since HMS specifically said "sodomy" aka anal penetration so more common with gay guys.

[Shikihara]

Lesbian sex has some of the lowest risks of disease transmission though.

I'm not disagreeing with your point; but it's a improper response since HMS specifically said "sodomy" aka anal penetration so more common with gay guys.

Sodomy refers to oral sex as well though. And the general argument seemed to be against gay sex in general.

[Dejanic]

I'm not disagreeing with your point; but it's a improper response since HMS specifically said "sodomy" aka anal penetration so more common with gay guys.

Sodomy refers to oral sex as well though. And the general argument seemed to be against gay sex in general.

In the USA it may refer to such but by law in the UK Sodomy refers solely to anal sex (UK dictionaries also define it as such), so knowing HMS that was what he was referring to.

[Shikihara]

Thoughts? It's a pretty interesting, apocalyptic work, probably because of the fact that the author was on cocaine most of his life due to a childhood eye injury.

On the road to Heaven there is no peace without war.

[Democratic Communist Federation]

That's just as bad, imho. I don't trust computers any more than I do humans.....especially not AIs.

I had a couple of discussions with the president of the resource-based economy student organization. He actually seemed pretty confused over what he believed. It appears as though the Zeitgeist guy didn't fully indoctrinate him.

Since there is, for all intents and purposes, no real Left here in Kansas, I thought that I would try attending one of his meetings and see if I could move him away from Zeitgeist and more toward left communism. However, no one, including the president, showed up. I waited outside the door for 15 minutes and left.

[Improved werpland]

Thoughts on The Theory of The Toiling Class?

[Beeshta]

Hey, I'm a new nation state. Glad to be here.

[Democratic Communist Federation]

Hey, I'm a new nation state. Glad to be here.

Welcome.

[Democratic Communist Federation]

Thoughts on The Theory of The Toiling Class?

On face value, my impression is not so good. What is varily? If the writer meant to say verily, it is a poor choice of words. Putting that aside, assuming that verily was intended, what does, Communism is varily [verily?] state capitalism mean. If the writer is using Tony Cliff's theory of state capitalism (for instance), it is done rather poorly. Cliff never said that communism was state capitalism. He argued that the (former) Soviet Union had fallen into a kind of state capitalism.

The writer then moves into a rather flaccid adoption of something which resembles Eduard Bernstein's evolutionary socialism.

Overall, I can't say that I would recommend the work.

[Victoriala II]

Thoughts? It's a pretty interesting, apocalyptic work, probably because of the fact that the author was on cocaine most of his life due to a childhood eye injury.

On the road to Heaven there is no peace without war.

Didn't he kill himself after he failed to do a coup

[Shikihara]

Thoughts? It's a pretty interesting, apocalyptic work, probably because of the fact that the author was on cocaine most of his life due to a childhood eye injury.

Didn't he kill himself after he failed to do a coup

No, that was an entirely different person (Yukio Mishima) who was around 11 when this incident occurred.

Kita was involved in a coup, to the extent that the February 26th conspirators had read and approved of his works, and contacted him over the phone after launching their rebellion. He was understandably pretty caught off guard.

[Pan-Asiatic States]

Hey, I'm a new nation state. Glad to be here.

Cheers to you, comrade!

[Northern Davincia]

Hey, I'm a new nation state. Glad to be here.

Run while you still can.

[The Grene Knyght]

Hey, I'm a new nation state. Glad to be here.

Whats up? So how would you identify yourself politically?

[Balkanized China]

Thoughts on Distributism? A Bipartisan compromise between Anti-corporation Socialists and Localist Right Wing Populists, bringing back a traditional economy in a moderate way or Hierarchical Capitalism in disguise?

[The Multiversal Communist Collective]

Thoughts on Distributism? A Bipartisan compromise between Anti-corporation Socialists and Localist Right Wing Populists, bringing back a traditional economy in a moderate way or Hierarchical Capitalism in disguise?

It is a traditionally Roman Catholic compromise between socialism and capitalism. Distributism has sometimes been called a third way before that term was introduced by Anthony Giddens and Amitai Etzioni.

[The Snazzylands]

Thoughts on Distributism? A Bipartisan compromise between Anti-corporation Socialists and Localist Right Wing Populists, bringing back a traditional economy in a moderate way or Hierarchical Capitalism in disguise?

It seems nice on the surface, I like the way it refocuses onto the family as the primary "economic unit" in a sense. But I don't know how you would make sure that no company grows beyond the scope of the small family business.

[Kubra]

Thoughts on Distributism? A Bipartisan compromise between Anti-corporation Socialists and Localist Right Wing Populists, bringing back a traditional economy in a moderate way or Hierarchical Capitalism in disguise?

too much popery involved

[Pan-Asiatic States]

Thoughts on Distributism? A Bipartisan compromise between Anti-corporation Socialists and Localist Right Wing Populists, bringing back a traditional economy in a moderate way or Hierarchical Capitalism in disguise?

A bipartisan compromise between the Right and the Left sounds nice in theory, probably bringing down central government control. But there would be disputes post-revolution, which may not end well. Personally, I think it would just end up with the Right bringing everyone back to square one as a NEW central government would capitalize on everything.