this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2024
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The root problem is capitalism though, if it wasn't AI it would be some other idiotic scheme like cryptocurrency that would be wasting energy instead. The problem is with the system as opposed to technology.
The root problem is human ideology. I do not know if we can have humans without ideology.
Nah, human ideology is much broader than a single economic system. The fact that people who live under capitalism can't understand this just shows the power of indoctrination.
I'm not a fan of ideology.
What you're saying is that you're not self aware enough to realize that you have an ideology. Everyone has a world view that they develop to understand how the world works, and every world view necessarily represents a simplification of reality. Forming abstractions is how our minds deal with complexity.
I'm autistic.
Do you think people should be treated with respect? Do you think there should be consideration for your condition so you are not exempt from certain events, activities, opportunities?
These are matters of ideology. If you say yes to it, it is ideological in the same way when you say no to it. There is no inherent objective truth to these value questions.
Same for the economy. It doesn't matter if you think that growth should be the main objective, or that equal opportunity should be the focus or sustainability or other things. You will have to make a value judgement and the sum of these values represent your ideology.
I disagree. These values are based on objective observations.
Observations may be objective, but the values are always subjective. Two different people can look at the same set of facts and come to entirely different conclusions of what constitutes desirable actions based on their world view.
Two different people can disagree on whether a table is a table: this does not alter objective fact.
You entirely missed the point of what I said. Two different people can agree on an objective fact that a table is a table, but disagree on whether it's a good looking table.
It is an objective fact that a harmful act harms someone. That one observer likes that outcome does not alter the objective moral weight of the act. Harmful acts are objectively wrong, regardless of preference.
From a basic empirical observation of the effects of harm, one can arrive at a moral system based on objective reasoning. In this way, ideology can be avoided.
The reality is that real world is far too complex to be understood with perfect accuracy. Therefore, everyone necessarily makes assumptions and simplifications leading them to see different options as being more harmful. What you're describing is frankly an infantile understanding of how empirical observation works.
Will me being infantile stop humans from hurting each other? If not, why would I be motivated to change?
Will me growing up (to stop being infantile) get in the way of my refraining from hurting others? If yes, why would I be motivated to change?
In my infantile state, I can clearly see that - even in a complex world - harming other living beings is wrong. I don't like being harmed, so why would they like being harmed?
Maybe you need ideology to simplify the world. But that doesn't mean that I require it. That's part of the complex world you assert we live in, yes?
You've just explained your simplistic ideology in this thread, and you're not even capable of understanding why its simplistic when it's explained to you.
You have failed to show that it is an ideology. You have explained that you disagree with it, but that's not the same thing.
It's an empirical fact that living beings don't like being hurt. Therefore, it avoiding hurt is good. That's not an ideology, it's reasoning based on observable facts. An ideological position would be "we need to hurt living beings to further our interests". The ideological position involves those interests.
Seeing all living beings as equal (e.g. in terms of prioritising not harming them, just as I would prefer not to be harmed or to harm myself) is about not having an interest, and therefore is clearly not ideological. It's also objectively true, because in terms of cosmological time, the consequences of all living beings become equal.
I've explained to you what an ideology is repeatedly, you seem incapable of understanding what you're being told. The human brain is not capable of holding the entire complexity of the material reality, and therefore it must rely on abstractions and simplifications to do reasoning. You, just like everyone else, have biases and make simplifications leading you to understand things in the specific way that you do. This signifies your particular ideology.
There are plenty of cases where people try to use empirical evidence with best intentions resulting in great harm being done as a result. Having good intentions is not an ideology, it's an aspiration. The world view that guides your actions that you put into practice to try to achieve the goals that you believe to be desirable are what your actual ideology is.
I don't understand anything. Therefore I have no ideology.
that's an ideology of itself
There is no such thing as objective morality. One cannot observe that "harmful acts are objectively wrong". The "wrongness" and "rightness" of an action aren't observable, measurable or even well defined properties. It is possible to measure the duration of an action, the energy transformations of the action, the location of an action, ect, but not the morality of an action. What units would you even measure it in? Or is morality a dimensionless property?
The obsession with being "non-ideological" and reducing everything to base science, also known as "positivism" is also an ideology.
Objective observations made by what apparatus?
An absolute God?
The idea that objectivity requires a God figure would seem to me to be Berkeleyan idealism.
What is an ideology to you?
The dictionary definition.
This sounds like some Žižekian nonsense. Capitalism’s Court Jester: Slavoj Žižek
I'm open to trying a non-Capitalist system, but I'm pretty sure hierarchical bullshit will happen and the majority will end up being exploited.
Whether anyone else is open to it before humans extinguish themselves, I don't know.
If you think that sounds like "Žižekian nonsense", then you obviously don't understand what Žižek argues, because he clearly doesn't say anything silly like "human ideology" (or "Žižekianism", for that matter). The article you posted also does wonders completely breaking down Žižek as an abonimable human being - while not truly engaging with his ideas. It is pretty worthless, takes things deliberately out of context, and, after rigorously defining him as a persona non grata, invests no proper effort to do what actual communists like Marx and Lenin did - acknowledge that even enemies like that can give contributions to understanding, and things to learn from and work at doing so.
Does he sometimes spew bullshit? Absolutely. Does he believe in "human ideology" or spout anticommunism on a worse level than The Black Book of Communism, as the article wants to imply? Only if you deliberately misread and misinterpret him.
We apparently read different articles. I bet you didn’t even read it.
😂
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No one knows the compatible left better than Rockhill, because he did his graduate work under some of them, namely Derrida & Badiou.
Yeah, look, I did read the article, and the article, unlike the person who might very well have done that in their work, did not do that. All I see is the same flipping of materialist analysis into an ideological dogma, that becomes ahistoric, trying to repeat instead of following material developments towards communism. From a quick look at your links, there's even a lot I agree with, especially in criticising the French intellectuals. It still reads like a polemic removed from reality, that values its own farts more than understanding and working towards change, but it has value. And the article you linked in the beginning does nothing, but try to opportunistically recruit people away from one ideologue (which Zizek can definitiely be called) to another idealist "team" that tries to redirect proletarian material interests and analysis. You seem to think it's a contest of who can quote "great people" the best and who can be the most orthodox, which treats it all like a religion instead of a material movement to change the world and mode of production.
In the end, I fear, we will be on other sides of the river, each seeing "their idealist perversions" across from "our materialist analysis", but I at least won't cross the river for your side any time soon.
Okay, Holden Caulfield, best of luck with your own personal, non-phony, left-libertarian revolution.
Nice burn, even brought in the "libertarian", at least be consistent, if I am a Zizekian heretic, I'm not an individualist libertarian who's afraid of authority, I am of course a liberal anticommunist reactionary who won't acknowledge the achievements of "really existing socialism". You strike me as someone who would have written a hit piece on Marx for profiting from British imperialism and his capitalist buddy Engels, citing the letter and his drinking habits to make clear that he is an immature mind, then join some utopian socialist fringe group.
I don’t why you’d have that impression, but you guessed wrong.
Can someone be a landlord and a communist at the same time?
In my estimation Engels was consistent.
How are you deciding I would think anything like that from what little you know about me? Very strange assumptions.
The root problem is never ideology, always material conditions. Ideology arises from material conditions and not the other way around.