In the introduction there's a number of times Marx really "shows his ass" -- and this is where my heterodoxy comes into play -- where he truly believes there are higher and lower forms of civilizational development, in the same vein as the positivists like Comte, but instead with a proposed socialism which could develop out of capitalism as an even higher form of economic development.

Given the influence historiography, and even tangentially anthropology, has had on my thinking I cannot agree with Marx on stages of history, or even a material teleology. However, with historiography I've learned there's always a theory of history which makes the writing of history possible -- there is no "way things were" in a scientific sense. (which is another point of contention I have with the orthodox view, though not so strongly as the above).

But to give an end quote to show what I'm saying:

In the case of the arts, it is well known that certain periods of their flowering are out of all proportion to the general development of society, hence also to the material foundation, the skeletal structure as it were, of its organization. For example, the Greeks compared to the moderns or also Shakespeare. It is even recognized that certain forms of art, e.g. the epic, can no longer be produced in their world epoch-making, classical stature as soon as the production of art, as such, begins; that is, that certain significant forms within the realm of the arts are possible only at an undeveloped stage of artistic development. If this is the case with the relation between different kinds of art within the realm of the arts, it is already less puzzling that it is the case in the relation of the entire realm to the general development of society. The difficulty consists only in the general formulation of these contradictions. As soon as they have been specified, they are already clarified.

Let us take e.g. the relation of Greek art and then of Shakespeare to the present time. It is well known that Greek mythology is not only the arsenal of Greek art but also its foundation. Is the view of nature and of social relations on which the Greek imagination and hence Greek [mythology] is based possible with self-acting mule spindles and railways and locomotives and electrical telegraphs? What chance has Vulcan against Roberts and Co., Jupiter against the lightning-rod and Hermes against the Crédit Mobilier? All mythology overcomes and dominates and shapes the forces of nature in the imagination and by the imagination; it therefore vanishes with the advent of real mastery over them. What becomes of Fama alongside Printing House Square? Greek art presupposes Greek mythology, i.e. nature and the social forms already reworked in an unconsciously artistic way by the popular imagination. This is its material. Not any mythology whatever, i.e. not an arbitrarily chosen unconsciously artistic reworking of nature (here meaning everything objective, hence including society). Egyptian mythology could never have been the foundation or the womb of Greek art. But, in any case, a mythology. Hence, in no way a social development which excludes all mythological, all mythologizing relations to nature; which therefore demands of the artist an imagination not dependent on mythology.

From another side: is Achilles possible with powder and lead? Or the Iliad with the printing press, not to mention the printing machine? Do not the song and the saga and the muse necessarily come to an end with the printer’s bar, hence do not the necessary conditions of epic poetry vanish?

But the difficulty lies not in understanding that the Greek arts and epic are bound up with certain forms of social development. The difficulty is that they still afford us artistic pleasure and that in a certain respect they count as a norm and as an unattainable model.

A man cannot become a child again, or he becomes childish. But does he not find joy in the child’s naïvité, and must he himself not strive to reproduce its truth at a higher stage? Does not the true character of each epoch come alive in the nature of its children? Why should not the historic childhood of humanity, its most beautiful unfolding, as a stage never to return, exercise an eternal charm? There are unruly children and precocious children. Many of the old peoples belong in this category. The Greeks were normal children. The charm of their art for us is not in contradiction to the undeveloped stage of society on which it grew. [It] is its result, rather, and is inextricably bound up, rather, with the fact that the unripe social conditions under which it arose, and could alone arise, can never return.

There is an interpretation in there that minimizes the cultural chauvinism, but I'd say this is one of the things I find most unattractive in Marx -- he, too, was a product of his time, and chauvinism is a part of his writing.

I am mainly concerned with the question of whether someone's descendant can inherit guilt. It is a common theme in religion with the original sin and in the Notion of Karma.

I was bought up being told that I was inherently sinful and deserving of hell. And there is the doctrine of total depravity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_depravity

But it doesn't necessarily make sense.

But some times the continued presence of malicious human behaviour through history can make you support a notion of original sin. Are we born with innate antisocial traits? — Andrew4Handel

I think I'd like to split up these questions into three:

1) Can a person inherit family guilt, or be subject to some kind of original sin outside of their control?
2) Is that the same as original sin and being born to deserve damnation?
3) Are we born with innate antisocial traits?


To 1 I'd want to say yes. 2, no. 3, no, with a but.

1) Mostly thinking, what's stopping you from inheriting family guilt? It seems like a truism that if one lives within a culture where such a thing is enforced that that person has to deal with the consequences of that family guilt, whether they like it or not. (Now, should they? That's a different question)

2) For me a sort of boring no, because I simply don't believe in the premises that even give these words meaning.

3) No, we're not. And it's worth noting that "antisocial" is dependent upon which social environment we're in, so in a boring way we cannot be born with antisocial traits, even if we have inherent traits, because it's not dependent upon the traits it's dependent upon the evaluation of those traits in a given social environment.

The "but" -- we all have this potential, so I believe, to be persuaded to do evil. "Evil" is a funny word for materialism, but what I'd highlight is that we are all frail, prone to make mistakes, and so on, and the evils of the world were done by ordinary people like ourselves.

Finished up the introduction reading today, and I like this quote from Marx on methodology because it relates to a number of debates we have on the forum with respect to realism:

It seems to be correct to begin with the real and the concrete, with the real precondition, thus to begin, in economics, with e.g. the population, which is the foundation and the subject of the entire social act of production. However, on closer examination this proves false. The population is an abstraction if I leave out, for example, the classes of which it is composed. These classes in turn are an empty phrase if I am not familiar with the elements on which they rest. E.g. wage labour, capital, etc. These latter in turn presuppose exchange, division of labour, prices, etc. For example, capital is nothing without wage labour, without value, money, price etc. Thus, if I were to begin with the population, this would be a chaotic conception [Vorstellung] of the whole, and I would then, by means of further determination, move analytically towards ever more simple concepts [Begriff], from the imagined concrete towards ever thinner abstractions until I had arrived at the simplest determinations. From there the journey would have to be retraced until I had finally arrived at the population again, but this time not as the chaotic conception of a whole, but as a rich totality of many determinations and relations. The former is the path historically followed by economics at the time of its origins. The economists of the seventeenth century, e.g., always begin with the living whole, with population, nation, state, several states, etc.; but they always conclude by discovering through analysis a small number of determinant, abstract, general relations such as division of labour, money, value, etc. As soon as these individual moments had been more or less firmly established and abstracted, there began the economic systems, which ascended from the simple relations, such as labour, division of labour, need, exchange value, to the level of the state, exchange between nations and the world market. The latter is obviously the scientifically correct method. The concrete is concrete because it is the concentration of many determinations, hence unity of the diverse. It appears in the process of thinking, therefore, as a process of concentration, as a result, not as a point of departure, even though it is the point of departure in reality and hence also the point of departure for observation [Anschauung] and conception. Along the first path the full conception was evaporated to yield an abstract determination; along the second, the abstract determinations lead towards a reproduction of the concrete by way of thought. In this way Hegel fell into the illusion of conceiving the real as the product of thought concentrating itself, probing its own depths, and unfolding itself out of itself, by itself, whereas the method of rising from the abstract to the concrete is only the way in which thought appropriates the concrete, reproduces it as the concrete in the mind. But this is by no means the process by which the concrete itself comes into being. For example, the simplest economic category, say e.g. exchange value, presupposes population, moreover a population producing in specific relations; as well as a certain kind of family, or commune, or state, etc. It can never exist other than as an abstract, one-sided relation within an already given, concrete, living whole. As a category, by contrast, exchange value leads an antediluvian existence. Therefore, to the kind of consciousness – and this is characteristic of the philosophical consciousness – for which conceptual thinking is the real human being, and for which the conceptual world as such is thus the only reality, the movement of the categories appears as the real act of production – which only, unfortunately, receives a jolt from the outside – whose product is the world; and – but this is again a tautology – this is correct in so far as the concrete totality is a totality of thoughts, concrete in thought, in fact a product of thinking and comprehending; but not in any way a product of the concept which thinks and generates itself outside or above observation and conception; a product, rather, of the working-up of observation and conception into concepts. The totality as it appears in the head, as a totality of thoughts, is a product of a thinking head, which appropriates the world in the only way it can, a way different from the artistic, religious, practical and mental appropriation of this world. The real subject retains its autonomous existence outside the head just as before; namely as long as the head’s conduct is merely speculative, merely theoretical. Hence, in the theoretical method, too, the subject, society, must always be kept in mind as the presupposition.

Definitely a "Hegel on its head" move, where the categories are real both concretely and within one's own head. (EDIT: or as I've said before, Marx gets to cheat on the problem of consciousness, but the solution might be judged worse than the problem)


My aim is to have a writeup for the next reading to post before the class this time, so as to exercise the mind more.

An anecdote of the phenomena: I remember a contract negotiation where part of the bargaining unit cared more about the difference in pay between themselves and another group than what they would earn overall. I don't remember the numbers, but while the new pay schedule gave them a larger raise, they were more concerned with the pecking order than the raise they got.

"Which Rationality?" indeed.

Bingo!

In a regulative sense I think it makes sense to talk of the real meaning -- at least somewhat historically grounded, roughly responding to this or that idea -- but then as you try to find the real meaning, so as to say "yes, this is it, for these reasons", especially with the usual philosophical texts which attract us: it is fairly judged as a multiplicity.

Now, up the ante to something on the range of a years worth salary equaling 10 percent of what you can give, I bet you'd see different outcomes.

Hey, if a guy has the power to give me something fair, I have a buck in my pocket. I don't need to benefit him.

I think that's pretty much it. "Oh, I see what I'm worth to you. Guess what I can do..."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is_uAYFpsZU&ab_channel=ThePeople%27sForumNYC

Hopefully that one works.

Some notes while listening, very rough but willing to share:

I stand corrected in the first lecture, as Harvey tells us he is not a philosopher in the first few sentences :D. Oh well. I am inclined to call anyone a philosopher who can interpret Marx.

Super happy with Harvey's mention of "moments", and the circulatory analogy.

Interesting his inner/outer distinction -- because it highlights how the "outer" is itself something which comes under control, or is coming under control, as capital develops. And I like how Harvey highlights the totality in order to focus what Marx is talking about, the mode of production of capital, as well as because he uses "metabolism" as a distinction between the environment and the mode of production.

But as "moments"! Very cool. I like his highlight that it depends on where you're at in the text.

Neat that Harvey mentioned the M-C-M of capital, but he's breaking it down with his notion of "every conversion from commodity to money", but then highlighting "totality" where each part is interdependent upon the other parts to make a process work, not a thing. He even mentions "flow" which made me happy, thinking about the Deleuze-Marx crossover.

Hah! I love his story about 9/11, and how people got worried about the flow of capital. I basically attribute the whole "back to normal" thing with Covid-19 to be the same thing.

Then 2008 mentioned, which makes me happy too. First time I read Capital V1 was in the wake of 2008 and it made me start to take Marx seriously rather than just as an interest.

Also glad he mentioned climate change in relation to Marx, especially with his notion of the "spiral structure" of capital. There's an entity you can relate to problems!

I'm glad he's relating modern political problems to the theories of Marx, and in a way that's actually quite easy to digest. With a live Q&A from the audience no less! That's brave to put on a live stream. (also, they said they'll have the video recorded to share on youtube later)

Hrrmm! Good question about why the Grundrisse! And what a great answer! I've asked that question myself, and hot-damn, a great answer that motivates me to get on to Capital V 2

Interesting quote from Harvey is that Capital is written specifically for autodidacts, educated workers. Guess that's why I glommed onto it! As a young one I thought Engels was funny to say Capital v 1 was the bible of the working class, but apparently...

Ahhh.... I didn't realize that Harvey was a geographer first. Eggs and faces.

Happy that on lecture 1 he mentions how Marx is committed to freedom. (and even mentions a take about marxism/anarchy). "free time is what the mark of a what a socialist society should be about"

Oh, no. So many mentions of Robinson Crusoe. I'm so seen! Just cribbing on Marx... ;)

"there are certain categories that apply to economy no matter the mode of production"
"i want to know the categories that specifically apply to a capitalist mode of production"
-- love this mention of categories between the general theory and the theory of capital, because I remember capital v 1 starts with the most general categories which is very confusing when you are reading capital v 1 to learn about, say, capital. But he's always talking about the transition from feudalism to capitalism. So he has to make a third, general relation that relates the change

hah! I snuck in some reading and was happy to hear the same highlight I made on p87 of Penguin as they said. The one where he's annoyed with Mill, and relating that to modern politcal struggles! ala Bernie/Sanders etc. that are popular and somewhat on the side of Mill. Glad to see this distinction being made. With the labor theory of value being mentioned no less! vs. the "problem of scarcity".

Mmmm. I'm so happy to hear him hitting "moments" so often, because one of the reasons I have not written Hegel off is because I thought Hegel's logic is really central to Marxist thinking. And "moments", as I recall, were the monadic bits that formed the familiar the triadic structure from Hegel (then, having a name for that traidic structure, it can then form another moment from its negation...). Basically I'm glad that he's not doing the kind of reading which wants to minimize Hegel, because my honest reading of Marx is ... that they are too close to do that.

I love the page 100 close Harvey quoted, supporting my interpretation of Marx that the social is an organism: "This is the case with every organic whole" (for David harvey, "whole" is "totality")

"you learn Marx's method by watching him work" -- that's interesting because the only time I feel like I can kind of follow Hegel is in his Phenomonology of Spirit

"he is very nervous about chaotic conception" -- until you start to break it down into all the classes and all these things and as you start to break it down you stop needing population.

"...but this time not as a chaotic conception, but this time as a totality" -- starting to come back up from all the concepts you have established. it's a method of descent then a method of ascent...and the method of ascent is the real scientific method.

ahhhhh! "that is what the grundrisse is trying to do is to conceptually grasp..." very excited to hear "grasp", tho not related to this but more Levinas in relation to Marx

****

Hah! I love his honest comments about how he's not interested at all about Proudhon and Marx. Also I'm OK with having only read a few pages of the introduction, but now I'm seeing he's going to assume having read beforehand. Happy that he's up front about the kind of interpretation he's interested in, and I'm glad to hear that it's from the perspective of one of the main influences of Marx's theories! Never thought I'd get the opportunity to hear an interpretation of a text from a living Ricardian! One who is also critical of Marx. So, so good. I was nudged, and it's distracting me from reading Levinas, but... I think I'm hooked. (will post later when I figure out where they are putting the recordings)

Deleuze came to mind because of your mention of code, and his notion of code is the first thing I thought of.

Given that colors are "in themselves" without meaning, how is it that colors come to have this quality of meaning which is in-between a natural, necessary law and the subjective musings of an individual?

Or, so I was thinking: How do colors have meanings? Answer -- desire. But not desire as a lack, and so not a problem in need of a solution, or a disease in need of a cure, but rather unbounded desire that, again so I thought, schizo-analysis might give an answer to.

"Green", for instance, has the meaning of nature and the earth, I'd say. I wasn't sure how your orange was working so I was trying to break out a kind of logical syntax of code for clear communication (though I'd hasten to add that a given syntax is, itself, a kind of code -- so you get overcoding, codes upon coded desire) -- so where I saw where you were going with green I wasn't sure where you were going with orange, hence my positing the general "::" for which you could substitute really any linguistic relationship (and so not necessarily big-R, set-bound "Relations")

"it" as in color code?

So,

Blue:self:Good
Red:enemy:Bad
Green:world:indifferent

if you look at modernity/ capitalism as based on rational idealism, Descartes's rationalization of all thought and where that went, Calvinistic ethics producing a capitalistic culture contrasted with Marx's dialectical materialism that was not rational idealism, but that the spirit is from the corporeal like the green color code. — introbert

Cool. Thanks for the opportunity to think about Deleuze. It's a rare treat.

I'm going to try to pick apart this sentence in the manner I started.


if you look at modernity/ capitalism as based on rational idealism, Descartes's rationalization of all thought and where that went, Calvinistic ethics producing a capitalistic culture

contrasted with

Marx's dialectical materialism that was not rational idealism, but that the spirit is from the corporeal like the green color code.

So a possible rendition of the above code:

.
.
.
Idealism::Materialism
Orange::Green
Descartes::Marx
Rationalism::Dialectic
Capitalist::Dialectical Materialism
Spirit::corporeal
.
.
.

But this is in categorical terms, and explicitly dyadic. I'd say that this dyadic description of the flow glosses over some of the relationships which you describe, such as the relationship between the steps of the flow of codes like Calvinism (the protestant work ethic) linking up to capitalism on the left hand side.


How does that sound so far?

I'd say that your proposal would count as a dyad within the series of code.

.
.
.
libido::will-to-power
conformist::schizo

Or, an alternate code

libido::will-to-power
schizo::conformist
.
.
.

Or, since Marx is in the mix, we could even say these are two step codes within another two-step Code such that a circle could be formed between the two -- so a four step loop, in the notion of a code where a dyad is executed.

In a flow of desire within the Body without Organs one can see, in the place of the general "::", one could set up a series of relationships (such as "Reacts to yield", if one wanted a molecular-level description of the flows of desire) which demonstrate how one named entity leads to another named entity in a flow of desire. There is no person there, there is only the flow which resists the socius, is the very anti-thesis of the socius. Where the Body without Organs is an RNA being produced along a DNA strand, or a protein being produced along some RNA, the flow has no super-order, no telos, no function. The socius would say here is a heart whose function, something which eventually builds a psyche that can then finally be analyzed, but the Body without Organs is just this flow without identity.

***
Stepping back...

My take, at least, is that Deleuze is trying to expound a more general theory of desire which could account for libido or value, two sides of rational analysis which in his world were Freud and Marx, but rather than having it based upon a theory of desire where desire is a lack, it was meant to be a productive theory of desire. On top of that it's meant to be very general, in a sort of theory of everything way, so the political events of 1968 are also at least a creative point of inspiration.

And it makes sense when you think of the psychologist as the one who normalizes people to get back to work. The Freudian analysis will reveal and heal the anxiety within us so we can be productive and society can remain stable.

In that vein, I'm sort of just trying the ideas out rather than claiming true textual fidelity. But I thought the ideas could make sense of your notion of a color code!

I think the Body without Organs is one pole in the description of productive desire, where the Socius is the other pole. I agree that the individual body is itself a series of flows of desire -- my copy has the same image you describe.

The part I could never figure out in there was the third part -- but I thought that might be on purpose because it is, after all, anti-oedipus, and so it'd make sense to try to break the triad he highlights of Daddy-Mommy-Me.

Well, that's not for me personally. But I'm OK with being the guy who measures how far the pup went. It is an exciting sport, after all, that brings people together.

Got my account up and running at Action Network, and spotted the reading schedule as I was getting prepped for tomorrow. I haven't read yet, I was going to wait until after class to see what sort of format to expect from the class before taking notes and such. (also, I didn't get the companion, I'm just going to follow along with the Grundrisse)

Looking forward to it!

Theodicy in the abstract, perhaps, but I've no doubt that a theodicy complete with ethical calculation could be devised if proximity is the only difference. Something akin to the conservation laws which are clearly not falsifiable as they are stated.

Heh, causation isn't central to doing physics, sure, but in a funny way in which nothing is central :D -- it's just a concept people say they like. I'm not sure to what extent the concept plays a role, though...

One of the differences might be that scientists are willing to entertain a physics without causation. I'm not sure that the theodicist is commonly willing to entertain an evil without a corresponding good. It is more an article of faith, as you say, than a bit that seems to hold but ultimately can be seen as a tool more than a truth.

True. To be insane in this culture is to be excommunicated not from a personal religion, but from the civic religion -- one is considered unfit for some public function or other.

There's definitely many more steps. I think of code like a bike-chain, or a string of DNA/RNA, but more abstract -- which is why you can have desiring-machines like the mouth-to-nipple desiring-machine. Abstractly there's the connection between any named entities which compose the flows of desire, be they coded, decoded, or over-coded.

The desiring-machines are composed of partial machines and flows. I imagine the concatenation of desiring-machines as the steps in a code.

Before coding you have the the formation of elements, the cooling of the elements into planets, a moon which swishes the water to ensure the beaker remains mixed -- be it by chance or God (and aren't they really the same?), the desire for self-reproduction, the simplest of desiring-machines, begins to flourish.

The ocean prior to bits of self-replicating RNA, as we guess now but who knows, is what I think of when I think of the Body without Organs -- the plenum of possibility, the complete deflation of all structures or struggles, the medium in which organs are formed out of desiring-machines.

I'm not against good sense, either, nor do I think you are. I just don't think that desire works in accord with good sense. "Good sense" is one of the names by which we can identify a flow of desire!

I've reached a dead end, what went wrong? Why did it not sustain? For both me and anyone else who knew them, it was ideal. — RBS

I'd say that this is the nature of human relationship. Commitment, what was, ideals -- the stuff of conversation, but not the stuff of a relationship.

Which isn't to say that a relationship will always dissipate. But only that all relationships are always vulnerable to dissipation. What makes a relationship work over time are the participants, and as they change or find things out about one another sometimes we make mistakes, we break our relationships, or we become fascinated by something aside from the relationship, or we take the relationship for granted (oh, that will always be there), or we simply drift apart for no dramatic reason whatsoever but simply because life is busy between work, children, friends, and commitments. (hence why you hear people talk of "finding that spark again")

Interesting tactic! I hadn't read, but having given that article a quick look-over--

To contrast the theodicy with "Every event has a cause"

For all evil there exists a good which explains the evil
For all events there exists a cause which explains the event

The latter is often proposed as a rational regulative principle. Some people even believe it's true!

Under that, it would seem the rational conditions of the former would be as you say -- an acknowledged regulative principle that one believes is true, but isn't exactly demonstrable. So maybe rational to believe, but not rational to argue for.

I can say I've read him, but that has more to do with my eclectic way of gathering anything I can find that's related to what I'm thinking through (in this case the starting thread was deontology and Kant, IIRC)

My memory was I didn't really like it -- you mentioning moral certitude rings true to memory, but what we are respectively certain about made it hard to like.

If there is such a point where it's more rational to reject the greater good theodicy than it is to accept it, can the theodicist be convinced by the heinous amounts of suffering in the world that the threshold is met? — Astro Cat

I don't think the theodicist can be convinced, no. I'm not sure under what circumstances I'd say it's even a rational argument -- I agree with you that it's special pleading.

If God's thoughts are beyond our thoughts, then "suffering" is already too human, too meaningful to count. So God would certainly not have a reason which is a greater good -- that's a very human way of looking at the world, and his thoughts are beyond ours, so these are not his thoughts. These are our thoughts: and a thoughtless no-thought at the end of a question is the most human position: most of our beliefs we don't bother justifying, after all. We just believe them while they work. And the theodicy, to my mind, is just a way to paper over where the belief won't work -- a time when the belief is really of low consequence (in a philosophical argument) so the paper argument works for some.

Hrrmm... isn't it also the case, though, that there's been a lot of crossover between these two disciplines?

I always find the two disciplines fascinating in blend -- in fact that's what I was thinking with respect to philosophy of science as to why it gets less attention: you need to know not just one discipline, but two -- and, in practice, a lot of philosophy of science relies upon a philosophy of history, so you get to have that thrown into the mix as well.

So it's just a larger barrier to entry than a lot of the other sub-fields of philosophy the standard topics one encounters that turns one onto philosophy. Not that there aren't people who really can pick up on all of these things at once, just that it's less likely to find a person who does simply by the number of things you need to feel confident about to do it.

. The color code for orange is a little different, still complex but not about concept::material analogy that connects the color green to code. Orange is from a similar sounding location in France that has no material analogy to the concept. — introbert

This grabbed my attention -- as a means for understanding "code" one could say

x::y

However, I want to say that this is only a step in a code. So where you have

Concept::material

I might add

Materialist::green

As a prior step. In a way the concept::material is in the process of decoding the flow by abstraction.


The coding of flows of desire is one of the analogies that really stuck with me from Anti-Oedipus. I can't claim to say I understand Deleuze, but it's a concept I often find myself returning to (even if I don't understand it! :D)

Right! (And aren't these speeches, in fact, somewhat magical? Pronounced man and wife, and with a kiss, a social bond is started)

I think there's something to this -- there is this move that exists whereby a person is rendered no longer able. It's not that such cases of helplessness don't exist, it's more that they are attributed to delegitimatize and disable rather than identify in order to enable (and, frequently, there's nothing to identify -- the delegitimization is the point). Where once we had a person, now we have baptized them into a schizophrenic: trust the doctor's word over your own feelings.

Hell, my first talk therapist was like that. Annoying as all get out.

But my second one was good. And it was nothing like this. It was an actual relationship between us through which we'd talk through emotions. Much more my way of doing things: shared responsibility, patient-directed, that sort of thing.

But the sort of measurements that count in the second version are things like self-report: rather than silencing a person into a patient, it's an approach which retains autonomy of the person who needs some help (rather than a patient who needs a cure, no matter what they say)

Am I right to say that you believe "anomie" is a word which turns a person from a critical observer to a person who needs a cure?

Sure, but it's a socioeconomic theory that does not merely not require God, but one which cannot tolerate God, since "religion is the opiate of the masses", and the masses must be awakened from their slumber. — Janus

See, this is why I wanted to mention Liberation Theology.

I grant that orthodox Marxism, which I think Marxism-Leninism is the canonical case of (with an incredible amount of records to boot), is atheistic. But I want people to know there really are other variants.

While there's certainly a kind of architectonic to Marxism, the commitment to science has actually managed to make developments in its theories. Mostly as adapted to localities.

Yeah, fair.

I'm pretty sure we're all confused at the moment. :D

I'm guessing we're using general terms in close enough ways that there's a sense of sense, but different ways that there is confusion.

Heh. OK. I am using "Marxism" broadly. Same with "atheism" with respect to states.

Maybe it's the assertion that I'm OK with, but a causal link I'm not? But I'd probably assert that with both -- a/theism.

Communism, for example, is not an iteration of atheism in the way e.g. Judaism is an iteration of theism. — Baden

True...

But I think I'd say this has more to do with the way we use words. I think the implicit claim, at least, is that since there have never been atheist wars atheism seems a lot more respectable in that way, at least. However, given some iterations of the Marxist project (I'll parenthetically mention Liberation Theology, with special mention to the Latin American variety) -- while I understand that most atheists of the New Atheist variety (like me, and others, at least in a time-bound category sense, if not ideologically) are very much opposed to that and are motivated by calls for religious freedom, I think it's still worth noting if we're making claims about atheism and theism in the broad sense -- atheism won't shield someone from declaring war. Hitchens, in particular, with his statements on Muslims, came to mind for me as an example of New Atheists not being quite tolerant.

I'd say the atheist countries count as atheist countries. So, in a broad sense, I agree with @Hanover

The New Atheists had people in them who were just as eager to punish believers, too.

I have no doubts that atheists can be as faulty as theists. I think it's human.

With respect to neoliberalism -- I can see the connection between economic policy and gun sales, but in addition to Heller (though that certainly could have been a place where gun sales to citizens were lowered, certainly, so it's important to note) I'd cite Citizen's United as a turning point supreme court decision which really opened the political field to the forces of capital, turning what semblance of a democracy that was there into a government for sale.

After Heller, my grim but true estimation of removing various kinds of weapons from the general population would take overturning the second amendment, at this point, and that would take democratic action -- but given how flush the NRA is, it's not a small amount of activity. And I'm not sure you could even get enough people on board with the demand, which is the real reason no one brings it up. It doesn't seem like a feasible political goal.

Or does it only become an issue, if the ritual impacts upon other's lives in some way? — Tom Storm

After attempting to express a place for the atheist, I'm now tempted to preach for Epicurus.

Those who think god's favour is dependent on our actions will have quite different attitudes towards what we ought do, to those who suppose god uninvolved. — Banno

I think that's the extent to which I care. As the tetrapharmakos says:

‘God holds no fears, death no worries. Good is easily attainable, evil easily endurable.’

As you might imagine of a script that's been copied from the ancient world, there's more than one way to think about this. ;)

One way to interpret the first part (God holds no fears) is that there are no magical forces which will make your physical life better upon acting in a certain moral way. The Gods, which I'd say Epicurus seemed to believe existed, are Gods precisely because they are already perfectly happy and self-contained.

Eek. Still a relevant political phrase, that one, and by thems who really love God's Great Country.

Hrmm.. I'm not so sure about this. Unless I get a raise I guess. That seems like the sort of thing the profeist pope would say: "I did it for the money!"

Being team disappointment, I suppose I could take on the profeist role.

Good stuff. I'm particularly intrigued with where you end -- but I'm having a hard time digging in.

I think I'm attracted to apatheism because it has this "third way" quality -- and around here, where having a blessed day is just a way to say goodbye to an absolute stranger, it strikes people as not quite as aggressive (but, when you think about it, it's almost more aggressive -- because the relevancy of the belief decreases)


I generally think that family life is the economic component of religious life. It's the economy of the home, or perhaps, a community which puts the economy of the home and its continuation as central to its purposes. (But note this is very much a reflection of my background, too -- family life is usually what's emphasized in Morman culture, but there's enough similarity between faith communities I tend to see this same pattern, even though I'm sure there are actual differences)

Family structures and how they work together as a communal unit is where my first guess would take me. (which would also explain why sexuality is so often central to religious communities -- since the family is produced sexually, sexual mores would have to be dealt with in any way of life constructed around the perpetuation of a community of families)

But, even more so, I think this is why I like philosophy so much, at least in part. It allows our minds to breathe more than the cultural categories tend to. Maybe a/theism without historical baggage just is philosophy of a certain (non-academic) kind.

One of the oversights of common-sense atheists is that they reject the existence of the transcendental on the basis of a lack of evidence, and yet they tend not to consider the semantic possibility that the very meaning of transcendental concepts refers to the world. For isn't the psychology and behaviour of a Christian preacher fully accounted for by the physical causes of his behaviour? In which case, what so-called 'claims' asserted by the preacher should the atheist be sceptical about? — sime

This line of interpretation is always super interesting to me. It reminds me of Hegel.

I think I'd say that the atheist is skeptical about all of the claims of the preacher, or at least the important ones. Atheism is a more universal doubt than a particular doubt -- not the single claim by the preacher, but everything the preacher preaches is false. That's because the doubt is with respect to the justification of the whole way of life -- even in material terms, if God is the community's way of making it all hang together, atheism is the expression that none of it hangs together. The community is wrong.

Which means that it's partially defined by the rejection -- atheism is the I-am-not-that. For some that's a very boring proposition, because they've never been that. Their parents were atheists, and they are atheists, and all these debates seem like an inconsequential circus of thought. It's not their own community which is wrong, it's the other people's community which is wrong and they are arguing over nothing at all, like astrologists arguing over what it truly means to be a Cancer.

But for others it's different.

So Socrates, one might say, is the basis for philosophical reflection as an actualization of the process by which we can attain divine knowledge -- if I'm reading you right.

The first thing that comes to mind for me is that while no two sticks are equal to one another, they are equal to themselves. So Socrates is equal to Socrates -- the actualization of the relationship of equality is that relationship which any individual has with itself.

However, it's true that self-relationship is a kind of funny thought -- and you can see how this is an added layer of interpretation on top of an individual, so you can see why there's confusion here: how to account for relationship in an ontological manner seems like the question buried in the argument.