Ray Peat was a Stalinist
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It has been discussed for some time that Ray Peat was sympathetic to Stalin and the heroic struggle of the Russian people against the corruption of western modernity. An unorthodox biologist Trofim Lysenko, regarded as a sharlatan (surprise) in the West, made many contributions to develop the backwards Russian agriculture into a world superpower. His ideas have to be investigated thought the lense of Ray Peat bioenergetics school, as these two have a lot to gain from each other. Many Lysenko's advice on plant species cultivation have been continuously successfully used in Eastern Europe contrary to mainstream scientific disregard of them (Lysenko's great apple trees) Dialectical materialism seems to be a proper philosophical background to the bioenergetics approach as well. Ray Peat himself seemed sometimes suspicious to the purely abstract materialist understanding of his work as he understood for example the beneficial nature of painting etc instead of just focusing on material substances. Human spirit must be regarded as emerging from nature under the right conditions, having to be nourished and developed to it's full potential, not be suppressed by menial work of the capitalist industries. It is the duty of all learned men to promote the elevation of human spirit through both the right biological and spiritual nutrition, as these are one. We are responsible for others around us, as their well-being affects our collective Spirit and the bioenergetics of the whole. We must join the struggle against the monopoly big Farma, Pufa and fake Money industries and established bioenergetics based production to elevate the Spirit of all. We must be collectively resistant and educate people around us about the devilish goals of our ruling class. We must also investigate how our establishment has distorted our perception of the fruit of other people's, as for example the principles of Chinese medicine seem to be successfully used with more modern approaches in China. We need to form these coalition to fight the sorry state our body, soul and spirit are in the west, and try to rediscover the meaning of our own civilization beyond the continuous abstract negation of the western technological modernity.
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I really sympathize with the characters of Lysenko and Stalin. It's hard to say whether Ray Peat was a Stalinist or not, but some of his statements seem flattering. I don't think it's bad at all.
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@loih I'm in. Great post.
Do you happen to have any resources of folks using lysenkoist principles in Eastern Europe, as mentioned?
I've read some Lysenko, and his predecessor Michurin. It's funny, even when scientific papers write about affirming Lysenko's ideas, they always have to start it off by saying lots of bad things about him. Perhaps without that precondition, they wouldn't get any acceptance. You have to tread lightly not to overly disturb the genetic dogmatists.
Michurin was using electricity and magnetism to treat seeds back in 1893. He's a true legend of plant breeding. We owe much of modern plant breeding to the soviet horticulturalists, despite tons of propaganda against them.
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@loih Preach
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@loih as it is with most intelligent and curious people, Ray Peat also moved and explored in the grey fields, where mainstream prohibits us to research and explore. The curious and courageous people will be the ones bringing human kind the much needed progress
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Anybody got any links to Ray's comments on either Stalin or Lysenko? I don't have all of his newsletters.
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@Hando-Jin Generative Energy 32: Hormonal Imprinting - Fake History - Aristotelian Philosophy - Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and Lysenko with Ray Peat and Georgi Dinkov
That's what first comes to mind. Would love to have some other references handy. It's quite hard to find favorable things about lysenko in general. The soviet text 'Lysenko Was Right'. I have been meaning to read.
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@buckminster thanks for that
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@Hando-Jin Episode 35 too. In an email response to someone, he also recommended the works of Grover Furr. Blood Lies, Krushchev's Lies, Trotsky's Lies, etc. Grover Furr has some interviews and lectures on youtube.
"The ruins of Time build mansions in Eternity" - William Blake
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Thanks man
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I personally wouldn't call him a Stalinist even though he said positive things about Stalin and the Soviet Union, because it makes him seem like much more of a follower and disciple than he was. He said positive things about Jesus too, but I wouldn't say that makes him a Christian. He was also influenced by anarchists like Kropotkin, Tolstoy and Bookchin. He talked about how people could function without government in this interview:
https://web.archive.org/web/20190126100639/http://www.visionandacceptance.com/organizing-the-panic-an-interview-with-dr-ray-peat/I would rather not put a label on him, though, because he didn't label himself.
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I found Ray Peat’s ideas outside of health to be often too wacky and wrong to be seriously considered. He was a Stalinist, a communist, and anti-Libertarian.
I find it curious that he was, but I’ve seen how we see things though our own lenses and interpret everything accordingly.
My heroes in history are Mises and Rothbard. Rothbard in particular was an amazing historian and a great writer.
I recommend his lectures that are on YouTube also. Start with the one on the Progessive Era.
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@Hando-Jin said in Ray Peat was a Stalinist:
Anybody got any links to Ray's comments on either Stalin or Lysenko? I don't have all of his newsletters.
Lysenkoism was dreadful doctrinaire and stopped good research from happening.
But the idea of Lysenko is now taken up as mostly correct, in the form of epigenetics.
Dr. Peat was right about that. People are so indoctrinated into the idea of genetic determinism that science has already disproven 30 years ago.
I hear it all the time. “My father had a bad heart. It runs in my family.” This is what virtually EVERYONE thinks.
Dr. Peat opened my eyes to the epigenetic role that means we can be free from much of our genetics. And that is essentially what i think of when I think of Lysenko.
People make fun of Lysenko today, but look at what happens to dogs in captivity versus dogs in the wild. Epigenetic changes are dramatic and fast, and genetics doesn’t account for it.
I also think the idea of randomness in genetic mutations is probably completely false. I read a fantastic book called Quantum Evolution that argues for an intelligence to mutations using quantum mechanics — essentially all possible mutation worlds manifest like a quantum computer, and the “best” one is the one tha manifests in our reality. So evolution is very intelligent.
I wish I could find the website Dr. Peat mentioned on intelligent cells. It is an old website but still up. It shows how single cells are very intelligent, have something like eye sight, etc.
Dr. Peat believed that animals are intelligent, and cells, and that taught me a. Lot. I just ignore his Stalinist views and his views on economics and politics.
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@Hando-Jin I'm super stoked to hear Peat was a fan of Bookchin. He's one of my primary political influences. I just searched the transcripts and in GE 34 found... "Have you read any of Murray Bookchin's books or articles? He was a good libertarian." RP
Do you know of anywhere else he discussed Bookchin? I remember him coming up briefly in one of Ray's last interviews. As I recall he just acknowledged that he was familiar with his work.
Bookchin was raised by stalinists. He ended up being a critic of both marxism and anarchism and created a secret 3rd thing...libertarian municipalism and social ecology. (libertarian in the leftist sense). Post-Scarcity Anarchism is an amazing book. After bookchin's death, his ideas gained physical territory and were put to the test as he's one of the primary ideological influences of Rojava.
I wouldn't necessarily call Ray a Stalinist either - the definition of which is not even clear. But like any good student of proletarian liberation, we find respect, fascination, and lessons in Stalin and the Soviets.
"People need to start understanding that the system is systematically murdering them, and understanding that the situation is desperate, they need to see that solidarity with life, against capital, is their hope." RP
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@Ecstatic_Hamster Here's the website 'Cell Intelligence' http://www.basic.northwestern.edu/g-buehler/htmltxt.htm
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@buckminster said in Ray Peat was a Stalinist:
@Ecstatic_Hamster Here's the website 'Cell Intelligence' http://www.basic.northwestern.edu/g-buehler/htmltxt.htm
oh man, thank you thank you!
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good thread
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@Ecstatic_Hamster said in Ray Peat was a Stalinist:
@Hando-Jin said in Ray Peat was a Stalinist:
Anybody got any links to Ray's comments on either Stalin or Lysenko? I don't have all of his newsletters.
Lysenkoism was dreadful doctrinaire and stopped good research from happening.
But the idea of Lysenko is now taken up as mostly correct, in the form of epigenetics.
Dr. Peat was right about that. People are so indoctrinated into the idea of genetic determinism that science has already disproven 30 years ago.
I hear it all the time. “My father had a bad heart. It runs in my family.” This is what virtually EVERYONE thinks.
Dr. Peat opened my eyes to the epigenetic role that means we can be free from much of our genetics. And that is essentially what i think of when I think of Lysenko.
People make fun of Lysenko today, but look at what happens to dogs in captivity versus dogs in the wild. Epigenetic changes are dramatic and fast, and genetics doesn’t account for it.
I also think the idea of randomness in genetic mutations is probably completely false. I read a fantastic book called Quantum Evolution that argues for an intelligence to mutations using quantum mechanics — essentially all possible mutation worlds manifest like a quantum computer, and the “best” one is the one tha manifests in our reality. So evolution is very intelligent.
I wish I could find the website Dr. Peat mentioned on intelligent cells. It is an old website but still up. It shows how single cells are very intelligent, have something like eye sight, etc.
Dr. Peat believed that animals are intelligent, and cells, and that taught me a. Lot. I just ignore his Stalinist views and his views on economics and politics.
I'm not much of a Bookchin. I think Bob Black's criticisms of him were pretty decent.
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it may be worthwhile to note that what's going on now with various nefarious elements attempting to attack Ray's legacy as soon as he died is quite similar to what Khrushchev did to Stalin
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@Hando-Jin I think Bookchin's attack on 'lifestyle anarchism' (and inventing the phase I believe) was stupid, with lasting repercussions. I'm a bit familiar with the bob black criticism but have not read it directly. Searching it now I see...
Chapter 1: Murray Bookchin, Grumpy Old Man
lol so true. Such a curmudgeon. None the less I love his work. It was good enough to inspire Abdullah Ocalan and create a multi-ethnic direct democracy in northeast syria. Much to glean and learn. Not many theorists can say they have had their work attempted at scale. Despite its problems, mostly caused by external aggression.
