You know you are a Philistine when...

chlamor
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Re: You know you are a Philistine when...

Post by chlamor » Fri Feb 01, 2019 12:50 am

And even more of the recent commentary is, fortunately, about human beings trying to be, in spite of ourselves,'real' with each other, as we can be in these forums. Politics come and go. Bottom line: we're humans.

chlamor
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Re: You know you are a Philistine when...

Post by chlamor » Fri Feb 01, 2019 5:21 pm

You know you are a Philistine when you accuse others of being Philistines.
As an extension of the anonymous maxim "We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are" -- "Each of us tends to think we see things as they are, that we are objective. But this is not the case. We see the world, not as it is, but as we are—or, as we are conditioned to see it. When we open our mouths to describe what we see, we in effect describe ourselves, our perceptions, our paradigms." ~ “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen R. Covey

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Re: You know you are a Philistine when...

Post by blindpig » Sat Feb 02, 2019 12:03 pm

chlamor wrote:
Fri Feb 01, 2019 5:21 pm
You know you are a Philistine when you accuse others of being Philistines.
As an extension of the anonymous maxim "We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are" -- "Each of us tends to think we see things as they are, that we are objective. But this is not the case. We see the world, not as it is, but as we are—or, as we are conditioned to see it. When we open our mouths to describe what we see, we in effect describe ourselves, our perceptions, our paradigms." ~ “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen R. Covey
Does he even know what he is saying? Wild.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: You know you are a Philistine when...

Post by chlamor » Tue Feb 05, 2019 2:23 pm

Politics and economics are macroscopic, conglomerates—indicators of human will.

Neither intrinsically possess the capacity to ‘solve’ anything.

What we suffer is a crisis of values—a consequence of profusion of delusion.

=============

What matters is that the difference in human nature between hunter-gatherers and modern humans is infinitesimal. And human nature is the driving force that shapes our realities and motivates our behavior. We are and always will be parasitoids.

==========

First of all, most things are not "solved," especially those problems that are created by humans. They are continuous, and mostly behavioral.

Humans have existed for 300,000 (at least) in our present form. And, no, they were not just like us. People who did not have money, people who were generally happy with their world being just like it was, which was most people for almost all of those 300,000 years, did not solve their problems "politically and economically."

Life is a biological construct, not a human intellectual construct. And universal truisms about all people everywhere in all times and all cultures are quite often nonsense. The only things that are true of all people everywhere at all times and in all eras are biological. We justify ourselves with made up nonsense.

==========

Yes, according to people wedded to ideology, doctrine, dogma. Fortunately, mathematicians and scientists and social workers and populations of other problem solvers -- who are neither self-help gurus nor defeatists -- know from experience that there's more to securing one's community's mode of living than modern day's theorizing about politics and economics.

Pro-tip: whether or not pockets of humanity -- i.e. communities -- survive this latest progress trap will have nothing to do with political-economic theory and everything to do with common sense & emotional intelligence, maturity, and competence. "Self-help" is a straw man.

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Re: You know you are a Philistine when...

Post by blindpig » Tue Feb 05, 2019 9:29 pm

chlamor wrote:
Tue Feb 05, 2019 2:23 pm
Politics and economics are macroscopic, conglomerates—indicators of human will.

Neither intrinsically possess the capacity to ‘solve’ anything.

What we suffer is a crisis of values—a consequence of profusion of delusion.

=============

What matters is that the difference in human nature between hunter-gatherers and modern humans is infinitesimal. And human nature is the driving force that shapes our realities and motivates our behavior. We are and always will be parasitoids.

==========

First of all, most things are not "solved," especially those problems that are created by humans. They are continuous, and mostly behavioral.

Humans have existed for 300,000 (at least) in our present form. And, no, they were not just like us. People who did not have money, people who were generally happy with their world being just like it was, which was most people for almost all of those 300,000 years, did not solve their problems "politically and economically."

Life is a biological construct, not a human intellectual construct. And universal truisms about all people everywhere in all times and all cultures are quite often nonsense. The only things that are true of all people everywhere at all times and in all eras are biological. We justify ourselves with made up nonsense.

==========

Yes, according to people wedded to ideology, doctrine, dogma. Fortunately, mathematicians and scientists and social workers and populations of other problem solvers -- who are neither self-help gurus nor defeatists -- know from experience that there's more to securing one's community's mode of living than modern day's theorizing about politics and economics.

Pro-tip: whether or not pockets of humanity -- i.e. communities -- survive this latest progress trap will have nothing to do with political-economic theory and everything to do with common sense & emotional intelligence, maturity, and competence. "Self-help" is a straw man.
So just go ahead and die, motherfuckers.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: You know you are a Philistine when...

Post by kidoftheblackhole » Wed Feb 13, 2019 11:39 am

:D
blindpig wrote:
Tue Feb 05, 2019 9:29 pm
chlamor wrote:
Tue Feb 05, 2019 2:23 pm
Politics and economics are macroscopic, conglomerates—indicators of human will.

Neither intrinsically possess the capacity to ‘solve’ anything.

What we suffer is a crisis of values—a consequence of profusion of delusion.

=============

What matters is that the difference in human nature between hunter-gatherers and modern humans is infinitesimal. And human nature is the driving force that shapes our realities and motivates our behavior. We are and always will be parasitoids.

==========

First of all, most things are not "solved," especially those problems that are created by humans. They are continuous, and mostly behavioral.

Humans have existed for 300,000 (at least) in our present form. And, no, they were not just like us. People who did not have money, people who were generally happy with their world being just like it was, which was most people for almost all of those 300,000 years, did not solve their problems "politically and economically."

Life is a biological construct, not a human intellectual construct. And universal truisms about all people everywhere in all times and all cultures are quite often nonsense. The only things that are true of all people everywhere at all times and in all eras are biological. We justify ourselves with made up nonsense.

==========

Yes, according to people wedded to ideology, doctrine, dogma. Fortunately, mathematicians and scientists and social workers and populations of other problem solvers -- who are neither self-help gurus nor defeatists -- know from experience that there's more to securing one's community's mode of living than modern day's theorizing about politics and economics.

Pro-tip: whether or not pockets of humanity -- i.e. communities -- survive this latest progress trap will have nothing to do with political-economic theory and everything to do with common sense & emotional intelligence, maturity, and competence. "Self-help" is a straw man.
So just go ahead and die, motherfuckers.
:D

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Re: You know you are a Philistine when...

Post by blindpig » Wed Apr 17, 2019 1:09 pm

The Liberal Mindset
Mawr Gorshin
I: Introduction

As much as I recognize the conservative as my ideological foe, I can at least have a kind of grudging respect for him. We on the left know where we stand with those on the right: they support and rationalize the authoritarian class system we all suffer under, and while they spuriously claim that capitalism is good for society as a whole, they don’t go around pretending they care about social justice in a meaningful way.

With liberals, on the other hand, the situation gets foggy, and it’s in this way that the ruling class is particularly cunning. The liberal claims to care about all the social issues we communists are insistent on addressing (racism, etc.), but he or she backslides right when matters get urgent, or when his or her class privileges are threatened.

What must be understood is that the liberal, in relation to the conservative and fascist–and by these three I include every variety–is just another snake-head on the body of the same Hydra. Slice off Bernie Sanders‘s head, and the heads of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Tulsi Gabbard pop out of the same reptilian neck to replace his.

We communists, on the other hand, represent a different kind of serpent altogether: that of the dialectical ouroboros, as I’ve argued elsewhere. We recognize a fluid reality of material contradictions rubbing up against each other, especially in the form of class conflict.

For us, the resolution of class war will not come about in the form of making compromises with the capitalist class, as liberals would have it, by emulating the Nordic Model, or having a market economy with a strong welfare state, single-payer healthcare, shorter working hours, and free education all the way up to university; these social democrat benefits, of course, would be paid off through imperialist plunder.

No, we want to extend those benefits globally, and to rid ourselves of the market as soon as the productive forces of society have been fully developed, for the benefit of all. The liberal will never help us with this project; he, nonetheless, routinely tricks many left-leaning people into thinking he’s our friend. For this reason, we leftists need to be educated not only in dialectical and historical materialism, but also in the psychology of the liberal worldview.

The liberal, as we know, is hypocritical in his claims to care about social justice, and opportunistic in his politics. He says all the right things (well, except for stating a commitment to socialism), but fails to do what needs to be done. At the heart of this hypocrisy and opportunism is a psychological conflict resulting from a confrontation of his material privileges.

The liberal’s superego is making all these moral demands to care about social justice, including resolving class conflict; but his id enjoys all the pleasures and privileges of being part of a higher social class (including his cushy place in the First World), and his id doesn’t want to lose them. So his conflict tends to resolve itself in the form of espousing such things as identity politics: he’ll keep the class structure of society intact, but allow blacks, women, gays, etc., into the upper echelons.

The best way to think is to have neither the id‘s pleasure principle, nor the superego‘s ego ideal, dominant, but to have the ego‘s reality principle at the forefront. That’s why we Marxists are neither id-like opportunists, nor are we superego-minded utopian socialists: we are ego-oriented, realistic materialists, scientific socialists, acknowledging the necessity of revolution and the ongoing, lengthy struggle of making the dictatorship of the proletariat run its course until the day finally comes for the withering away of the state, and the enjoyment of communist society.

II: Defence Mechanisms

Still, liberals must preserve their illusions of having the most sensible solutions to the world’s ills, which are really just resolutions of their psychic conflict. Indeed, they try to resolve their cognitive dissonance with a number of ego defence mechanisms, such as denial, rationalization, projection, splitting, reaction formation, displacement, and fantasy, among many others. We’ll examine these now.

Liberals are in denial about the extent to which they support, whether covertly or overtly, the capitalist system. They will, for example, play the same game of false moral equivalency as conservatives will when it comes to comparing communism and fascism. In their opposition to communism, one every bit as vehement as conservatives’, they’ll pretend that Stalin’s leadership was every bit as cruel and oppressive as Hitler’s, even though it was the former’s army that did most of the work in defeating the latter and his army. See here for a more thorough discussion of the huge differences between the far left and far right, a discussion beyond the scope of this article.

Liberals rationalize their defence of the establishment by pretending to have a ‘pragmatic’ approach to curing the ills of our world. Hillary Clinton has claimed to be a “progressive who gets things done,” when the only thing she and her husband ever got done was to move the Democratic Party further to the right.

The funny thing about the Clintons is that they aren’t even, nor were they ever, liberals–they’re conservatives in ‘centre-left’ garb. Consider all they did in the 1990s: helping to lay waste to Russia with ‘free market‘ reforms, and keeping unpopular Yeltsin in power; the 1994 Crime Bill, allowing the prison system to ruin thousands of lives; the gutting of welfare with the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996; the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which relaxed regulations and allowed mergers and acquisitions in the media, resulting in the great majority of it owned by only six corporations; the repealing of Glass-Steagall, which some believe was at least a factor that brought about the housing bubble and the 2008 financial crisis; and the carving up of Yugoslavia, culminating in the 1999 bombing of the former socialist state, using depleted uranium on the victims. A progressive pair, indeed.

Liberals’ ‘pragmatism’ is set against the ‘utopianism’ of Marxism, when as I mentioned above, it’s the latter of these that’s the pragmatic application of progressive ideas. Liberals, on the other hand, aren’t progressive at all. They like to imagine they occupy a ‘reasonable’ position in the political centre, avoiding the violent extremes on either side. We are not, however, living in a world where reality is static, unchanging.

On the contrary, we live in a world in which everything flows dialectically, like the waves of the ocean. Crests of theses alternate with troughs of negations, the rising and falling of the water being the sublations of all these material contradictions.

What’s more, the current of these waves has been going further and further to the right, ever since the dawn of the Cold War, and especially since the disastrous dissolution of the Soviet Union. That rightward movement means that ‘neutral’ centrism is at best a passive acquiescence to that current, and at worst a collaborating with it. We must move against the current, and that can only mean an aggressive, revolutionary move to the left.

Still, liberals smugly insist that they’re ‘the good guys,’ projecting their support of the unjust status quo onto conservatives, as if only the right is to blame for our woes. Oh, the GOP and their awful wars! Vote in the Democrats, and the wars will end…or, at least, they’ll be tolerable [!]; the same for the Tories and Labour Party in the UK, and for the Conservative and Liberal Parties in Canada.

Liberals not only project all government corruption onto conservatives, but also project their tendency to interfere in the democratic process onto other countries, as in the case of Russia, a country with whose politics they themselves have interfered, as I mentioned above with regard to Yeltsin. Even after the Mueller report showed no proof of the claims of the Steele dossier (in which many, including myself, saw no real evidence right from the beginning), some liberals will surely still claim Russia colluded with Trump to get him elected in 2016. Now, he can use liberal folly and dishonesty to his advantage, and quite possibly get reelected in 2020. Thank you, liberals!

Both liberals and conservatives use splitting, or thinking in terms of absolute black vs. white, good vs. evil, when judging each other. That conservatives do this is painfully obvious: “Either you’re with us, or you are with the terrorists.” Liberals pretend to be above splitting, characterizing themselves as “open-minded,” but they’re just as hostile to differing ideologies as conservatives are.

I’ve known many supporters of the Democratic Party who imagine that all will be fine as long as their idolized party is elected, as opposed to the GOP. This blind devotion continues in spite of how similar their party’s agenda has come to that of the Republicans. In liberals’ universe, the DNC is all good, and only the GOP is all bad, no matter what either party does.

On Facebook, back when Trump had just been elected, and all the liberals were traumatized, I posted a meme that said, “So, you’re Obama‘s biggest fan? Name 5 countries he’s bombed.” A liberal FB friend of mine (then, not now) trolled me, saying, “Who cares? We have Trump.” Now, granted, Trump’s bombing of countries has grown even worse than Obama’s, but this needn’t (and shouldn’t) involve us trivializing Democrat sins. The problem isn’t this party vs. that party, or this charming man vs. that charmless man: it’s the metastasizing of imperialism that’s the real problem; whichever party is manifesting it at the moment is immaterial. Liberals can’t grasp this reality.

This splitting between ‘good DNC’ vs. ‘bad GOP’ is so extreme now that liberals are willing to go to war with Russia for her ‘collusion with Trump.’ These same people who were so passionately antiwar back in the 60s and 70s now bang the war drums, all because they’re such sore losers over the 2016 election results. Recall Rob Reiner’s short film with Morgan Freeman.

When I posted an article saying that Russia is not our enemy, that liberal FB friend of mine trolled me, saying it was a “crock of shit article…Russians are persecuting gays.” I responded sarcastically, saying, “You’re right, Peter. We should start World War III.” He liked my reply. Yes, risking nuclear annihilation is the only way to help gays. Hmm…

Liberals will engage in reaction formation, condemning everything bad they see conservative politicians doing, while resting perfectly content if a liberal politician commits the same egregious acts; in other words, liberals make an open show of hating the political evils of the world, yet secretly either don’t mind them, or even support them. Had Hillary been elected, liberals would be at brunch now instead of protesting Trump; even though she’d have had similar, if not virtually identical, policies as he has. The wars would have continued, the super-rich would have their interests protected, she’d have been tough on immigration (including a US/Mexico barrier), etc.

Liberals engage in fantasy, not only the totally uncorroborated fantasy of “Russian collusion,” but also fantasies that mere incremental reforms will fix what’s wrong with our world. Ocasio-Cortez‘s Green New Deal, apparently, will heal environmental degradation, when nothing less than an immediate, revolutionary takeover, by the people, of the government will do so. Sanders‘s giving away of free stuff will cure everything, it is supposed, instead of merely placating the public and staving off revolution.

A fantasy world of people indulging their desires via legalized prostitution, pornography, and drugs would fulfill people, as some liberals would have it, instead of fulfillment from ending pimps’ and madams’ exploitation of sex workers, and having government-funded rehab programs to get addicts off of junk.

Deeper than that issue, though, is how pleasure-seeking is a mere manic defence against the depressing reality of alienation, as I’ve argued elsewhere. Instead of understanding libido as satisfying drives through pleasure-seeking, we need to promote an object-directed libido (by objects, I mean people other than oneself, the subject; hence, object-directed libido is, as Fairbairn understood it, an urge to cultivate human relationships). And the promotion of loving human relationships is part of what socialism is about.

III: Hollywood and Pop Culture

Entertainment as escape to fantasy is especially apparent in the liberal media empire known as Hollywood. Anyone who has read enough of my blog posts knows that I like to write up analyses of films, many of which are mainstream ones. Sometimes I do psychoanalytic interpretations of them, sometimes I do Marxist ones, and sometimes a combination of the two.

This does not mean, however, that I have any illusions about these all-t00-reactionary films. My Marxist interpretations are deliberately subversive: I wish to turn these narratives into various threads of a leftist mythology, if you will, in order to counter the liberal/CIA–laced propaganda narratives Hollywood is brainwashing the public with.

Another reason I believe my Marxist slant is justified in interpreting these liberal narratives is because I see them as reflecting the conflicted liberal psyche I outlined above. The liberal’s superego demands films that promote equality, but his id wants the gratification of pleasure and the maintenance of the usual class privileges. Hollywood may be liberal, but it’s also a business. Hence, there’s a mask of the idealized liberal version of equality (identity politics, etc.) in these movies, but behind that mask are manifestations of class contradictions the liberal would rather you didn’t see.

‘Liberty and equality’ in these films, past and present, are defined in bourgeois contexts, as in Casablanca; peel away the mask, though, and note how subordinate blacks like Sam are. American Psycho is masked as a scathing critique of yuppies far more than of the capitalist world they embody…which you’d see if you removed the mask. The old Planet of the Apes movies idealized a peaceful coexistence between ape (symbolizing the proletariat, in my interpretation) and man (symbolizing the bourgeoisie), rather than promoting revolution (which was toned down in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes). Political corruption is seen as sensationalistic and titillating in Caligula, while the real oppression of slavery sits almost unnoticed in the background…behind the mask.

With the growing of neoliberalism, though, Hollywood movies have resolved the id/superego conflict, on the one hand, through identity politics (showing us strong women and blacks, as well as sympathetic portrayals of LGBT people, etc.), and on the other hand, through an upholding not only of the class structure of society (e.g., CEOs who are black and/or women, as opposed to promoting worker self-management), but also of imperialism and perpetual war (check out the spate of DC and Marvel superhero movies to see my point).

Whenever class issues are addressed, they’re rarely if ever dealt with in order to promote revolution; rather, it’s just as if to say, “Here, we acknowledged the problem–good enough.” Consider such films as Elysium, Snowpiercer, and Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi to see my point. Thus is the superego placated, while the id is indulged.

Liberal pop stars like Bono and Madonna put on a show of caring about human rights, yet they’re bourgeois through and through. Consider her shameful support of Israel through her planned Eurovision concert; on the other hand, she felt morally justified in opposing only the Trump facet of the ruling class, promising blow jobs to those who voted for Hillary, as if Trump’s non-election would have made much of a difference.

IV: Julian Assange

Trump’s election certainly made no difference as to Julian Assange‘s fate, despite all this nonsense of the last few years of him and Russia supposedly helping Trump win in 2016. Trump, who repeatedly spoke of how he loved Wikileaks, and of how fascinating Wikileaks is, now says he knows nothing about it, and that it is of no consequence to him, now that Assange has been carried out of the Ecuadorian embassy.

Now we expect repressive, authoritarian measures from conservatives like Trump against journalists who make them look bad…but where are all the liberals, those who loved Assange when he exposed the imperialist brutality of the Bush administration, but changed their tune when it was the brutal imperialism of Obama’s administration, and of Hillary’s corruption, that was exposed?

On top of liberals’ splitting of the political establishment into ‘good DNC, bad GOP,’ we also see the displacement of blame from the rightly accused (Hillary and the rest of the Obama administration) to the whistleblower (Assange). The same, of course, goes for Chelsea Manning’s persecution, a displacement of blame from the murderous US army to she who accused them.

That same liberal former Facebook friend of mine (Peter) used to speak ill of Assange right up until Trump’s surprise election. Peter went on about how Assange had ‘lost all credibility’ (according to mainstream liberal propaganda, of course), even though not one Wikileaks publication has ever been proven false. He also described Assange with the most eloquent of language, calling him “a fucktard.” He claimed, back in 2016, that Ecuador was sick of putting up with Assange living in their embassy, when left-leaning Rafael Correa wanted to protect him there, and it’s only with Lenin Moreno’s election (and money from the IMF!) that Assange has been kicked out.

V: Conclusion

Liberals backslide and betray the people at the very moment when their class privilege is threatened. That’s what Mao observed in ‘Combat Liberalism’: “liberalism stands for unprincipled peace, thus giving rise to a decadent, Philistine attitude…To let things slide, for the sake of peace and friendship…To let things drift if they do not affect one personally…To indulge in personal attacks, pick quarrels, vent personal spite or seek revenge…It is negative and objectively has the effect of helping the enemy; that is why the enemy welcomes its preservation in our midst. Such being its nature, there should be no place for it in the ranks of the revolution.” (Mao, pages 177-179) This is why liberals are no friends of the left.

Stalin once called social democracy “the moderate wing of fascism.” On the face of it, his words may seem excessive; but when you consider how liberals like Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez, and Gabbard (in spite of, to her credit, Gabbard’s opposition to the war in Syria and defence of Assange) have no intention of overturning the capitalist system–instead, they would just soften it in order to stave off revolution–the logic of Stalin‘s words is revealed.

As I explained in my ouroboros posts, the clock ticks counter-clockwise from social democracy, then to mainstream centrist liberalism, then to neoliberalism, and finally to fascism. It’s not enough to be ‘left-leaning’ to turn the ticking back in the clockwise direction. Only a hard-left stance will have the necessary force to counteract the counterrevolution of the last fifty years: this means such things as ridding ourselves of anti–Stalin and anti-Mao propaganda, to arrive at the truth of the value of the communist alternative; for imperialism is a formidable foe that requires a resistance far more effective than the pathetically weak one offered by liberals.

https://mawrgorshin.com/2019/04/15/the- ... MSsU6bkHko

Send this to your liberal friends. While I disagree with the assessment of the so-called 'whistleblowers' this is overall useful.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: You know you are a Philistine when...

Post by chlamor » Thu Apr 18, 2019 1:01 pm

Send this to your liberal friends. While I disagree with the assessment of the so-called 'whistleblowers' this is overall useful.

Color me harsh on the liberalazzi but liberals don't have friends, they have "connections" and "networks" which run precisely as deep as their self-interest and career aspirations.

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Re: You know you are a Philistine when...

Post by blindpig » Thu Apr 18, 2019 1:47 pm

Right, glue it to their windshields.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: You know you are a Philistine when...

Post by blindpig » Thu Apr 25, 2019 11:35 am

Communist Party USA
@communistsusa

Get him out of there! Eliminating the extreme right gives us better leverage to lay the foundations for Socialism in this country! Fascism had to be defeated in Eastern Europe before socialist republics could be established! #DumpTrump #VoteOutTheGOP
And if that doesn't fill your mouth with vomit try this:

https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/tr ... peachment/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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