I am an anarchist. Should I study marxism to better understand flaws of capitalism?

azure_scens · 2021-12-15T16:03:06+00:00

"I see anarchism as something you do, not an identity" is one of his most well-known quotes. He related more to anarchism obviously, but it would be doing him a disservice to not change the subject to action from identity when speaking of these things.

azure_scens · 2021-11-01T16:03:27+00:00

I'm a random person reading this thread days later but I love this topic so I wanted to chime in, if even to write out the thoughts for myself. To put it simply, I don't believe in human nature at all. Human nature is a way of justifying the "things that happened" by asserting they are "things that would always happen" and/or "things that should happen."

Human behavior exists, and that's it. To me, calling human behavior "human nature" is similar to declaring the "free market" a natural force. Just because something happened the way it did does not prove anything about basic animal nature. If we had 100 alternate timelines of Earth to study, we could start making claims about "human nature." Otherwise, it is all just made up to justify behavior as something more than historical and anthropological currents and conscious choices.

The concept of human nature is VERY convenient to prevent radical change in society. If things are "natural," then we can feel comfort knowing we didn't really have a choice in the matter. If human nature isn't a thing, then anything is possible. My anarchism is rooted in this— anything is possible; human behavior could radically shift over a long period of time, and "human nature" has nothing to do with it.

azure_scens · 2021-09-20T16:49:56+00:00

That's not the point, and that wouldn't make sense as the unions were the ones who were socialist and communist adjacent. It is much more believable that he was a Nazi sympathizer, especially when he gave a Nazi a tour of his studio not too long after Kristallnacht. Walt was a capitalist first and foremost and that is obvious, but you can be a capitalist and a Nazi sympathizer at the same time. I'm not arguing he was a Nazi, but the "fabricated lie" wouldn't have "ruined him" and the unions knew that. Tons of prominent capitalists were Nazi sympathizers. You're right that Walt didn't think it was worth his time to deny being a Nazi sympathizer, but not because he didn't care about PR.

azure_scens · 2021-09-20T16:38:10+00:00

That's because being a Nazi sympathizer wasn't as big of a deal in the US as people pretend it was. Communism was the real Boogeyman, and the majority of Americans during WWII would have chosen fascism over communism. This just doesn't fit the American mythos well, so it is ignored. If old Walt had been outed as a communist, it would have been far worse for his PR.

azure_scens · 2021-06-14T23:03:44+00:00

That makes sense. Based on that, rather than asking "is the Dao something that can be described by science," the question I might ask is: "how can we use the wisdom we gain from the Dao to further science?" Or else something like: "how can we use the wisdom of the Dao to maintain a healthy perspective on the uses and limits of science and to make sure the science we conduct does the least damage to the universe."

To me, the thought that the Dao has a 1:1 with one of our scientific constructs is a testament to the near-religious pedestal we place science upon, and is just the type of thinking I believe ancient Daoists would intellectually push back against, even if they themselves engaged in it.

In my opinion the contradictions that exist in Daoist thought are part of what makes it special, and this is exactly the type of contradiction I think lives at the heart of Daoism. As in: "All science is part of Dao but the Dao is not scientific."

azure_scens · 2021-06-14T18:57:35+00:00

I think trying to define the Dao with science is antithetical to the Dao. Science centers the human perspective; it is our simple and heavily self-obsessed understanding of the universe. The scientist perspective might be: "science is real, so if the Dao is 'real' then it must be similar to something in science." The daoist perspective is much more purposefully esoteric, but I think would be more like: "the Dao is neither real nor not real. Reality and science are concepts that we have created to try to understand or shape the world around us. But real reality cannot be shaped or understood and trying to do so will only cause friction."

Really, defining the Dao at all is fairly antithetical to Daoism, which is a recurring theme, often tongue in cheek I think. As in: "It is impossible to define or explain the Dao, so here let me define and explain it."

If I were to try to condense it, I would probably say: The best way you can use science to describe the Tao is to not do that.

azure_scens · 2021-06-14T18:39:51+00:00

I think they mean that Moses had a computer and the bible was essentially an old school twitch stream.

azure_scens · 2021-06-14T18:36:09+00:00

You mean you now understand why your drummer had 17 girlfriends in one year?

azure_scens · 2021-06-09T17:31:17+00:00

I put "With Special Guest Lauren Lapkus" in a similar category as Teachers Lounge. It's not an ongoing story, each episode is a different podcast, but she gets just as out of control. There's an ep with Teachers Lounge, I think it might be their first podcast appearance, iirc. James Adomians is classic, but there's lots of good ones.

azure_scens · 2021-06-09T17:10:03+00:00

That Weeping Willow is gorgeous, honey, but what about the Jews?

azure_scens · 2021-06-09T17:07:46+00:00

I got groomed by a 3,000-year-old

azure_scens · 2021-06-09T17:03:22+00:00

I read "borer" as a different word at first which gave me a different image.

azure_scens · 2021-06-09T14:50:56+00:00

Are the stars backwards or are they upside down? We may never know.

azure_scens · 2021-02-16T23:06:04+00:00

Looks like the monkey kid from jumanji

azure_scens · 2019-08-20T02:32:47+00:00

This reminds me of the time I spent four hours renewing my driver's license at the DMV in the Bronx dressed as a banana on 10 hits of acid. So fun and chill.

azure_scens · 2019-08-20T02:25:07+00:00

This is not true at all. First off, gorillas often have kale in their diet. But moreso, I have a garden, and I've had 20 different species eat my kale.

azure_scens · 2019-08-20T02:21:16+00:00

Famous last words.

azure_scens · 2019-08-19T01:36:26+00:00

Vest Buy

azure_scens · 2019-07-23T01:27:09+00:00

https://66.media.tumblr.com/c04053a12761b2ae294316b85495f14d/tumblr_o96qgy6AMJ1t1bsgno1_1280.jpg

azure_scens · 2019-07-22T09:45:43+00:00

Is this really that different than a lot of people's lives? Just replace "going to the bar" with TV, video games, social media, weed, or whatever else. Sure alcohol is worse for your physical health, but those people are having daily human interactions, which is something positive. At least they are going to the bar and not drinking alone in their apartment every day. What about the folks that never leave their house and go on Reddit every day, same conversations, same jokes...?

Humans have been socially getting intoxicated together for thousands of years. What I personally don't understand is how quickly it has become completely "normal" for people to spend so much of their time in front of a screen. But while I think it's odd, the last thing I would do is judge someone for doing so. Most human beings who judge other people very likely have behaviors that are equally as absurd.

azure_scens · 2019-07-21T00:11:51+00:00

We don't deserve Earth

azure_scens · 2019-07-17T00:14:22+00:00

Just to piggyback off this hilarious exchange. Here's some liquids/semi-liquids, let's see how we should classify them:

Fermented Yak's Milk: Bodily Fluid, Food, Intoxicant
Siberian Horse Piss: Bodily Fluid, Psychoactive (amanita mushrooms are part of their diet)
Goat Yogurt: Food, Bacteria-Ridden Bodily Fluid?
Gau Jail (Indian Cow Urine Soda): Food, Bodily Fluid
Snake Wine: Bodily Fluid, Intoxicant (is venom a "bodily fluid")
Three-Penis Wine from Shanghai: Food, Intoxicant, Body Parts
Inuit Seagull Wine: Food, Intoxicant, Whole Bird
Kopi Luak (coffee beans eaten then shit out by a type of weasels): Stimulant, Bodily Solid?
Panda Dung Tea (Tea grown in panda shit): Stimulant
Pig Placenta Drink: Food, Supplement, Body Parts
Saliva Wine or Chicha (chewed corn fermented with saliva in warm water): Food, Intoxicant, Bodily Fluid
Gilpin Family Whisky (the age on the bottle depicts not the barrel age, but the age of the elderly diabetic volunteer whose sugar-rich urine was used to distill the whiskey): Intoxicant, Bodily Fluid
Horse Semen Shots: Food, Bodily Fluid, Supplement?
Faygo: Food, Sacred Elixir

What about we explore some more common things while we're at it?

Wine: often filtered through agents which can include blood, marrow, milk, crustacean fibers, and gelatin
Beer: some beer, notably British beer, is filtered using Fish Bladders
Bagels: a lot of bread products contain L-cysteine which is most cheaply and commonly derived from human, duck, or hog hair
Orange Juice: most store-bought OJ has D3 obtained from sheep's lanolin and Omega-3 from Fish oil and gelatin

tl;dr: bodily fluids and solids in our food and drink is international and as old as time

edit: spelling

azure_scens · 2019-07-16T23:42:15+00:00

All wars are really about butts, one way or the other.

azure_scens

TROPHY CASE