Ray Peat name drop during American Communist Party convention speech
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@Rah1woot said in Ray Peat name drop during American Communist Party convention speech:
Only what is Real has a right to exist.
Marxism and Socialism are limited by scientific materialism, just as much as a republic or democracy is. Parmenides is of some help when he states we can only talk about "what is." My issue is this: is language the only thing of importance? Our speech is willed into "is" too. If we say "nothing," then we have willed nonsense into existence. The moral guidebooks of any major religion are of course examples of language and often said to be the word of God, or the words from a source higher than everything and immutable.
The problem of the USA is like the problem of Rome - endless plunder, corruption, and little genuine innovation or self-sufficiency. The laws also become like the moral guidebooks of a religion ("sacred democracy"). My belief is the sham religion America is supposed to believe is a gnostic individualism (Harold Bloom), and, at the same time, a "sacred democracy" formed by the active "will of the people" who demand, and are entitled to "representation," like @LetTheRedeemed mentioned with the French Revolution and American Revolution.
The problem with this, I think, is that it is basically grand-scale solipsism. Cicero said "the more laws, the less justice." The US is large and isolating; the people hardly have any representation, so their will is hardly accounted for in any meaningful way.
We can see lately the many lunacies which have been given "a right to exist" because of the absurdly liberal interpretations of the 1st amendment. So, again, "freedom of speech" can be the freedom for the proliferation of nonsense. I guess I'm guilty of favoring education reforms that might better instill ideas of decency in language, as language is the tool of thought.
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@Corngold said in Ray Peat name drop during American Communist Party convention speech:
@LetTheRedeemed said in Ray Peat name drop during American Communist Party convention speech:
and this produced the greatest art humanity has ever known, the baroque era.
Neat post. But, I think the Romantic or "Late Romantic" era produced better art ;). Bruckner, Wagner, Mahler. The sciences and astronomy were also unhinged in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Imagine where science would be if the Victorian era evolved instead of died in war. I don’t know a whole lot about it but, what I understand is that science got captured and institutionalized lol.
Yeah I don’t think the appeal to beauty really ended until ww1
️ I’ve been listening to Tannhauser (overture) lately hehshare your fave piece from the romantic era!
Right now this is probably what I’ve been listening to the most from the baroque era lately:
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@Rah1woot You speak of reality, but it’s literally just an idea different than mine. It sounds like you just have more faith in your idea.
I totally admit I don’t understand a lot of the language in your post; feel free to expound, I did lol.
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I think science is definitely institutionalized, more so in certain disciplines than others, but generally all of it.
Generally Tristan und Isolde is great, Tannhäuser also. All of Bruckner's symphonies but definitely #6, #5, #8, #9, #3
Mahler symphony 7 is gaudy but really good, #3 is a masterpiece.I appreciate classical guitar; Spanish guitar music is a huge world I've only recently gotten into.
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My issue is this: is language the only thing of importance? Our speech is willed into "is" too. If we say "nothing," then we have willed nonsense into existence.
This is an excellent orientation towards the problem. It reminds me directly of the first chapters of "The Communist Postscript" by Boris Groys, and so I will link a clearnet audiobook starting at the right time in full.
https://youtu.be/ObQC0KCJba4?t=536
My belief is the sham religion America is supposed to believe is a gnostic individualism (Harold Bloom), and, at the same time, a "sacred democracy" formed by the active "will of the people" who demand, and are entitled to "representation," like @LetTheRedeemed mentioned with the French Revolution and American Revolution.
Yeah, that's a fair assessment. Formal legal representation, of course, is a dead horse ever since the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. The beating of this dead horse characterizes the "hyper-liberal" position, with its "intersectionality". I think beginning to challenge questions of debt and property is a much more sane approach: it was the case in many territorial governing documents in the United States (such as in Kentucky) that property was limited to actual human families and less so sprawling enterprises. "Gnosticism" and "solipsism" are my favored words for dealing with both this legalistic way of thinking, and the ahistorical way of thinking of the rightoids.
We can see lately the many lunacies which have been given "a right to exist" because of the absurdly liberal interpretations of the 1st amendment. So, again, "freedom of speech" can be the freedom for the proliferation of nonsense.
Mao Zedong basically said the same thing: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-6/mswv6_11.htm
I think "No Investigation, No Right To Speak" is a better concept for dealing with issues like scientific fraud (which was a much less relevant concept in the time of the founding fathers) than the 1st amendment.
The recognition of material reality as such is obviously a kind of idea. But it is very much a unique idea. Even the central idea one can have. Perhaps this is what the old monotheistic christians were aesopically referring to when they talk of "faith". In pure linguistic formalism it is not justifiable to speak of Reality as such. There is a ready reference to be made here with the concept of "knowing in the biblical sense". Sex as an experience is not formally communicable, and so it demonstrates the supremacy of real experience over language. Thus it acts as a kind of knowledge.
Paul Cockshott is one of my favorite Marxist-Materialist thinkers. I will leave a few links.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6ExkJhk7lA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BOxfq2gOm4
Keywords for understanding the "letter of the law' of what I say: "historical materialism", "dialectical materialism". Engels gives a good description in "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific".
The "spirit of the law" is something found probably elsewhere. I think part of it for me was my engineering background and just how wonderfully the practice of engineering maps onto dialectics.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/fundamentals-marxism-leninism.pdf
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Oh my... I must be a closet communist.
Seriously though, "Oppose Book Worship" is a good read. It is pertinent for those wading in the sea of information and disinformation today.I see Wittgenstein and Heidegger as having a similar view on language. LW's "private language" argument is primitive but relevant and somewhat sets the stage for post-structuralism. Proper communication depends on terms whose meanings are agreed upon. And to agree upon a standard of meaning which can be communicated to others, one has to pretty much accept a limit of self-projection into language. Which, I think, to me, often means that effective communication is isolating and counter-intuitive. It is tautological, and really becomes a mere tool. I suppose this view has a strong Marxist angle. I believe Wittgenstein was long interested in Russia, and visited Moscow and Leningrad.
But that's quite the rabbit-hole - language as a mere tool which can be used by the state or by an economy, or any other social unit. It really does help us see through the political theater, though, I think, given how a politicians words, mannerisms, accents, ideas, and humor changes depending on the setting.
Western democracy is basically a realization of game theory. As in, the idea of competitive markets or capitalism is always strong vs weak. Price-fixing is the closest thing to a "win-win" where select monopolies can all profit equally. When there is uncertainty, each company has the schizo quality of being paranoid about competitors. The most successful must also be the most paranoid with a persecution complex, but also willingness to survive against the odds, which can simply be a will that goes beyond morals and laws (which I think is the case).
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@VehmicJuryman said in Ray Peat name drop during American Communist Party convention speech:
"If the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war. One-on-one against Hitler's Germany, we would not have withstood its onslaught and would have lost the war. No one talks about this officially, and Stalin never, I think, left any written traces of his opinion, but I can say that he expressed this view several times in conversations with me." - Nikita Khrushchev
Well, Hitler also had been installing or attempting to install Nationalist parties in Hungary and Eastern Europe, France, Italy, etc.
My view is this war as with most others was clearly about money. My understanding is once again that Germany was not all that powerful, that these puppet colonies were not successful due to natural in-fighting and Socialist pressure from the East and native Jewry. The Allied powers saw their opportunity to divide and conquer the fascist / Axis territory. It wasn't about blood or ideology, totally a function of economics.
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What you said was nothing but facts
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Which, I think, to me, often means that effective communication is isolating and counter-intuitive.
Ray Peat in some quote I don't remember (where he described why it is that he stopped working on "flowery" art and prioritized biological work) worked with the definition of communication as being the transmission of information that makes a difference. I like that one. Nothing changes? Communication was not achieved. Even if an idea was transmitted.
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@Rah1woot
Interesting stuff. Yes and I suppose the paradox of anti-democratic "wrong" opinions and ideas is met with violence. Imperialism or Communism, both act on that impulse which is moral but also logical and rhetorical. -
Hey @Rah1woot thanks for the videos, checking them out before I comment