Ah, ok. Yes.

I'm not really sure.

 

Well, essentially I suppose I'm a communist. I believe it's possible to get to a position where the state becomes redundant and that that is desirable. It's how to get there that's the problem. I say I'm a communist rather than an anarchist because I don't believe we can get there 'naturally'. We need an intermediary stage where we're all deconditioned and everything is very heavily controlled.

 

But yeah, I'm absolutely unsure as to how we get there and whether it's even possible in the face of the weight of ideology/naturalisation/historicisation/conditioning we exist under, while the system that needs that stuff is still ongoing.

 

So, I suppose I'm saying we need some sort of fucking big shakeup followed by some heavily directed rebuilding, but yeah, I do not know what that form the shakeup would take.

 

Aye though, I really don't like democracy. I dislike the ... bullshit of it. I mean... take those celebrations of the anniversary of the abolution of slavery - everyone quite universally sees that as a good thing. But the only difference between then and now is that our slaves are invisible to us, on another continent. That's just an example. I hate how democracy hides things and pretends things and relies on all these illusions (opne of those illusions being that 'the market' can repair the above situation, for example). I feel dirty living in a world like that.

 

So I'd honestly rather have monarchy or theocracy than democracy. At least they're transparent.

In that same abstracted sense, I'm an anarchist. But anarchism depends on a philosophical adherence to anarchist principles in all who exist within the anarchist state. As soon as anybody acts duplicitously, it's fucked. Same goes (at least for the state hierarchy) within communism.

As I kinda said last post, I can't really accept any pragmatism that accepts the way we live and the way we cause other people to live to live like we do.

I don't buy that that can be repaired by markets and that these middle class fucks buying free trade chocolate and feeling good about themselves because they believe they're <takes a deep breath, continues>

To me, that sort of pragmatism is indistinguishable from evil.

(I realise I'm 'no better'/not doing anything about this.Except thinking about it :(( )

Aye. Though I do believe that people, in their natural state (i.e. without conditioning) will act in an anarchist/communist way. That's what the period of heavily controlled de/reconditioning would be about.

Hmm. And who would we trust to run the reconditioning programme?

That's the problem innit. Not so much the who to get to do it but who is the 'we' who get to do the trusting.

 

So I'm sort of in favour of destroying what we have and hoping something better arises. And if not, starting again. Apocalyptic-communism. I do realise this is not very pragmatic.

 

Aside from that... I think Marx was right in that we're headed towards that state anyway. It's just so painfully slow. So... being a bit more pragmatic, it's down to producers of culture to, at least, question current conditioning and expose illusions and that, I suppose.

Having said that, I think it should be realised that the current system isn't sustainable. Looking ahead many years, as the standard of living in the second and third worlds catches up to our own then who are we <i>all</i> going to look to to do our manual labour?

 

I think it's a safe assertio that capitalism can only really function where there is imbalance. We're going to have to find another way.

Mind you, your assumption that social levelling is an inevitability can be questioned, I'm afraid.

I should coco. We in The Cabal didn't invent AIDS for nothing, you know. Got to keep those black men from crawling up the channel tunnel and dirtying the gene pool.

And the French.

Aye. Depends how you look at it really. The middle class is expanding such that there won't be anyone else soon. But the poverty gap is (I believe, in real terms) widening. If applying to less people.

 

I do think peoples' attitudes are, in general, slowly moving in the right-ish direction. Ish. Nearly. Kinda.

Crap. So much I want to say to this thread, but not sure where to start.

Let's try with this:



Exactly so. Everything you wish to achieve is (largely) irrelevant without at least a tentative path to the goal. It doesn't matter how well-intentioned your propositions, if you cannot say "and to attempt to achieve this goal Z, we must start by doing X, which should lead to Y and, finally, Z" then, it's just like saying 1. steal underpants, 2., 3. profit!

Pragmatism: One accepts the world is the way it is right now, one can recognise it is imperfect and that billions of people could benefit from major changes in the way things work, but that if one wishes to make any real difference, one must find a point of leverage - a fulcrum - get behind it and push. But also be careful what the other end of the lever is pushing, that the effects of one's efforts will not be counter-productive and that one is also pushing against the right object; one which stands a chance of moving with the potential wielded, that one is not swimming against the tide. One might be completely right and in possession of the "full facts" but it will do no good in certain situations. One recognises that until any possible future stage when pan-human education levels have reached a significantly higher average than the present (a second enlightenment perhaps, but vaguely utopian and distant) then thing will tend to get done only as a result of violence or populism - carrot or stick.

This is by no means a definition of pragmatism, but it roughly but I would say one who fulfils those qualities (or at least a good number of them) would be pragmatic and, frustrating as it is (since I'm a born idealist), pragmatism is absolutely and utterly essential in making change happen.

I disagree. We just phrase things differently.

I'm not so big on rationality. There's only so far it can go.

Nontheless, my aim is the removal of conditioning and my tentative path is to do so via culture. Culture does the conditioning so culture can do the unconditioning. We just need a shitlot of the right sort of culture making, that's all.

Case in point: you see the Enlightenment as a good thing. I see it as.. progressive in some ways but hugely retrograde in other, quite damaging ways.



It's my view that that will never happen under the present system, no matter how much lever pushing any number of people do. The current system is set up so as not to allow that to happen so if it's going to happen it will be via routes outside of any system of levers and pullies currently in existence.

Regardless, I think the start of anything has to be understanding, not facts and ideas - they just lead to purposeful uselessness (such as party politics). I'll use the Paris Commune of 1871 as the sort of thing I mean. There was no plan/direction to it, to begin with, it just arose because (there was an opportunity and) people understood their situations. It ended in a strategic mistake but from everything I've read it seems it would've been sustainable.

I don't believe that the major problems that plague our species and planet today can be solved by markets or anything we really see floating to the surface in the current system, but again, pragmatism says "to change the current system, we must show people a better alternative, because most people are sheep and either need to be shown the greener grass to graze on or forced into the pen by the yap of the dog."

In a personal case, I'm (generally) an egalitarian, a pacifist and liberal, so I'm not expecting to be in the mood to carpet bomb whole populations for the next couple of hundred years at least. Using violence to try and "improve" people's lives almost seems like a paradox to me anyway and would undermine any progress that might be made, so that leaves the carrot. This genuinely is the most difficult part of getting any chance rolling - the pitch. You have to sell your idea to the masses and it's really then a question of how much you will bend, distort and break the truth to make the sell. Bugger people about too much and you walk away with nothing or, worse, a violent uprising, where peaceful progress could have flourished.

What is required are bright "young" leaders to begin organising real, new, grass-roots political parties. Parties that are unassuming. Parties that do not say "we are on the left" or "we are on the right", especially when they're not. Parties which instead as "what is the problem" and "what can we do to fix it". Parties who aren't afraid to do a bit of house-cleaning or tell the public, as gracefully as possible of course, that they are wrong, when they need to hear it. People who come from the kind of perspective you seem to hold and to which I would broadly assign myself too - people wanting improvement, but not seeing an opportunity for it, losing any faith they may have had in democracy (faith ought not to be required, for it should be possible to see it in action), surely people full of ideas, but who more often than not, believe their ideas will never be listened to.

There are so many of them/us/whatever out there that they hold the real power in western democracies right now and their power will only increase as successive generations feel more alienated from the people who lead them.

The important thing is to try and establish this kind of movement before it is forced upon us. Revolution and all that might be a bit of a lark, in theory, but in practice it's generally best avoided and again, pragmatically, I think the present situation doesn't call for revolution, but swift and directed evolution. The power is there for the grabbing, the issue is how to show people that they can Take The Power Back in a way they understand.

As long as there is humanity, there will be conditioning, to a lesser or greater extent, when it's a big problem it's when it's done systematically on a state- or planet-wide basis. Being condition to certain aspects of existence may not be a bad thing, but it's important, if possible, to realise that we are so conditioned, so as to be able to avoid automatically making certain decisions when it would be foolish.

Certain parts of it are, but overall, the policy of the rich exploit the poor is not necessarily unsustainable, it depends on how well the rich are able to continue to covertly or overtly manipulate the other "players". To be fair, I'm sure with the meteoric rise of China and India, not to mention other other areas that, not many decades ago were seen as "3rd World" (hell, still are by some, but that's another story) the rich will find (are finding) it increasingly difficult to maintain their stranglehold. Again, this mostly concerns me because no faction will be (is) keen to co-operate if it means potentially accepting compromises that their citizens might view as concessions or acceptance of equality (let alone inferiority!). If that is the case, then the only eventual outcome, due at some point during this century and, more likely than not the nearer end, is terrible wars, on a scale to make Iraq look like a walk in the park.

Certainly a possibility, definitely not an inevitability.

I'm pretty sure I can almost agree, but I think that's exaggeration, really.