Marxism still works… Marxism is a dogma. Despite everything pretended by marxists, marxism – as an ideology – is an article of faith. And as long as there are believers who continue to promote a faith, any faith, that faith continues to survive. To work… On the other hand, there is a non-ideological side of marxism. A pre-ideological component, if you will. The analysis made by Marx before reaching his conclusion. Before reaching the conclusion that communism is ‘the answer’… The analysis was correct. Furthermore, even some of his predictions had been right. Our current obsession, induced by Milton Friedman, with profit as the ultimate goal of human activity has led us into an impasse. But Marx’s solution – to a very accurately defined problem – was an abject failure. Communism was a failure. Each and every time! But marxism still works… We, some of us, continue to believe according to this ideology…
It ends almost like it had started. Make good use of the interval!
Life and death are two strange words. Very different yet they describe the very same thing. If you think of it, death and life are like the faces of a coin. After all, the exclusive qualification for being able to die is to have been born… And it’s only us, languaging rational beings, who make the difference between living and dying. At the conceptual level, of course. OK, many others are capable of making the functional distinction between a corpse and a living body. We are impressed by the mourning behavior displayed by the elephants, for example. And even more so by the chimpanzee mothers who continue to carry the bodies of their deceased babies… But since we are the only species – known to us, humans – who uses language to relate to each-other, to think about the world and to plan ahead, I’m going to discuss here only the languaging/reasoning aspects of us making the difference between life and death. By making this difference we actually separate the inseparable. With momentous consequences. For us – individual human beings, for the species as a whole, for the rest of the species and for the rest of the world. The world as we know it… The origin of this difference is our conscience. Which is sophisticated enough to be able to make it and to talk/think about it. The elephants are also conscient enough to act upon the difference between a living body and a corpse. To recognize the skeleton of a deceased relative. To remember it. But, at least apparently, they are not able to speak about the whole thing. Nor to transmit over generations that those particular bones belonged to a particular individual who had been related to … As soon as all individuals who had directly known the deceased individual, all information about the identity of the corpse/skeleton are lost. For a while, the survivors remember only the fact that their ‘mothers’ used to ‘mourn’ over this particular set of bones but nothing more. Again, this is what we know, now, about the manner in which the elephants treat their dead. Which is very different from how we treat ours. And from how we relate to matters pertaining to life and death. We cherish life and we dread death. We cherish our lives and we dread our death. Ours and that of our (cherished) relatives and friends. And we are somewhat indifferent to the lives of others… To the tune of being able to dispatch animals, and plants, for food. And to kill other human beings. In war but not exclusively.
Man has a natural tendency to prey on other people. This being the reason why humans must be educated and for which we need a lot of coercive measures.
I strongly disagree. The first sentence is utterly wrong and the second is brazenly manipulative.
Something which can be educated isn’t ‘natural’. Not in the sense implied above! People can be educated to eat in a certain manner. As in having ‘table manners’. People can be educated about what to eat. And what to avoid eating. To avoid eating things which are both delicious and nourishing. People can be educated even about how much to eat! But you cannot educate anybody to stop eating!
What is truly natural about ‘Man’ – about all people, actually – is that they need to interact with other people. In order to become full fledged human beings, people need to live among other people.
What can be educated is behavior. How to interact with other people.
People can be educated to cooperate. Or people can be educated to gang up. And prey on those outside the gang.
Please note that those who gang up in order to prey on others do cooperate among themselves! Even if that cooperative behavior has a strong hierarchical nature.
Mother Earth being the source of life – the, not “a” – is a truism. Regardless. On the other hand, being a mere resource isn’t bad either… For the simple reason that all reasonable people treat resources is a responsible manner.
Right? Specially when speaking about resources which are ireplaceable! And since there is only one Earth… Huge, indeed, but finite nevertheless…
Which brings us back to ‘to each their own’.
Basically, there are two kinds of people currently living on Earth. Some continue to treat it as a Mother – take from her only what they need and refrain from littering her bossom. And the ‘cherry-pickers’. Who go by “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.” Who believe they had been given a free hand by their God. A free hand regarding the ‘dirt’ they have been made from… The only problem with the ‘cherry pickers’ – exclusivelly with the ‘cherry pickers’ – being the fact that they don’t read enough. Enough of their (own) Book.
‘Don’t eat any animal which has not been bled out first and don’t spill human blood?’ I’m afraid you’re still not getting it.
According to the book we’re talking about, God has made the entire world. Sparated the stars from the Earth, the water from the dry land, made all the plants and the animals… and Man. Which man needs the Earth to live upon. An Earth as close to how it currently is as possible, in order for man to live comfortably! But since “in the image of God has God made mankind”, then God himself needs the Earth. For whatever reason.
Which means we’d better take good care of His Creation. Of His entire Creation!
‘OK, no more floods. But you’re still going to feel the consequences of your own follies. You, your children and all those wallowing in the wicked way’.
And this has happened many more times across the world/along human history.
The fact that Stonehenge exists is ample proof that those people had been able to generate enough ‘wealth’ to build it. We’ve been able to find out that the boulders had been sourced from two places. The 20 tons hard-sandstone sarsenes ‘traveled’ about 20 miles while the 2 tons blue-stones had been schlepped for about 220 miles. According to Mark Pitts, writing for the British Museum. And we think we have a fair idea about how the whole thing had been put together. Read the paper. But we know close to nothing about the people who did it.
The stone ring is all that’s left of them. Isn’t it strange? For such a technologically sophisticated people – and rich enough to afford such a herculean endeavor – to disappear in the mist of history?
And here’s a selection of other abrupt endings/’hibernations’:
Mohenjo-Daro and Harrapa in Pakistan. Angkor Wat. The Great Chinese Wall The Egyptian pyramids The Athenian Parthenon The Roman Coliseum and the roads cris-crossing more than half of Europe Kuldhara, the ghost-city Machu Picchu And, last but not least, the cathedrals mentioned by Reuter’s Mark John. Europe did take a break after finishing building those cathedrals….
What am I trying to ‘suggest’?
That we, as a cultured species, have a tendency to evolve in fits and starts. We tend to reach pinnacles only to descend – sometimes temporarily – in abject ‘marasmus’.
Could ‘self-sufficiency’ explain at least some of this?
Don’t tell me capitalism is at fault for any of this. Capitalism is but a way of doing things. A road. Which we followed to where we are now. How we behaved en-route and what we decide right now was/is our own contribution!
Learning from who’s experience? A wise man is supposed to learn from other people’s experiences, right? No need to make your own mistakes, as long as they have already been committed… and the consequences made public!
‘Admitting that I may be wrong’ … easier said than done, for obvious reasons! Very few people enjoy being proven wrong. Specially when ‘others’ get the upper hand. And even more so when those ‘others’ have nothing special. When those ‘others’ are nothing more but our “potential equals.”
We’re doing it for a noble cause. In pursuit of the truth!
How about us being led into a wild goose chase? Not by Karl Popper, mind you!
Modern propaganda, and particularly the kind currently permeating the social-media, is shaped and propagated by very skilled operators. Who are familiar with all the tricks in the psychology book and conversant in most ideological tenets currently whirling in the public space. And each of these propagandists has their agenda… Each of them tries to pull as many of us into their orbit… One of their favorite tools being Popper’s “I may be wrong and you may be right and, by an effort, we may get nearer the truth”. In fact, these operators use Popper as a lever to break open our skepticism. To soften our disposition and to prepare the soil for the seed they want us to accept. And nurture… How to resist? Given the fact that we are mere novices while they are masters of their chosen profession? Masters at ‘brain fogging’…
They try to mis-use Popper, we’ll use Popper as an antidote. Do you feel treated as an equal? Being invited as an equal member into a truth searching party? Are you involved in a real debate? Do you get to say anything?
Or you, along with the rest, are simply told what to believe?
As an European, I’m fascinated with how intense the Americans are. ‘knows nothing (nor cares) about Kommunism’… As if Joe McCarthy had never existed – btw, he was a fascist – and Kommunism had been a German thing. All other languages use “c” when spelling the word, you know…
As a Romanian – who had spent the first 30 years of his life under the yoke – I can pretend to know a thing or two about the subject. Given the fact that Romania had been subjected to both fascist and communist rule. 1938-1945 and 1945-1989, respectively.
Apparently, and declaratively, those two are at the opposing ends of the political spectrum. In the day to day practice, both belong to the totalitarian mode of controlling a society/country.
Before going any further, I’m going to mention a few traits shared by both modi operandi.
Communism had been first formulated – by Marx – and only then put in practice. Fascism, like most other political ideologies, had been first practiced and only later put into words. As far as I know, for communism to be successfully instated in a country, that country had to have had experienced a bout of fascism. Even if it had not been declared as such. This is a necessary condition but it isn’t sufficient. Fascism had been invented – declaratively – in Italy, but Italy hasn’t – not yet, anyway – become communist. All communist and fascist regimes had ended in abject failure. While all communist regimes had been instated in former fascist(oid) countries – to the best of my knowledge – fascistoid regimes may be, and already have been, reinstated in former communist countries.
There are also a few notable differences. Communism pretends all property belongs to the entire people while fascism allows individuals to retain the ownership of their ‘belongings’. But only theoretically and subject to various limitations. Under communist rule, the ‘democratic process’ is used exclusively to rubber-stamp whatever decisions had already been made by the current dictator while some fascist regimes use the electoral process to gouge the ‘social temperature’ of the ‘political organism’. While the communist regimes tend to crumble under their own weight, the fascists usually grow too big (cocky) for their own good.
Before ending, I must mention the fact that both China and Russia have become fascist countries, despite China’s leaders pretending their country, literally their country, continues to be communist and despite Putin pretending Russia is a democracy. A democracy which attempts to denazify Ukraine…
nicichiarasa 