American Marxism

[Immanuel Can]

I've earned the right to express how I feel.

Of course you have the right. You don't even have to "earn" it. Everybody has it.

And if you were married, you'd have the "right" to insult your spouse, too...but you'd probably wise to choose your words when you speak to her, or you wouldn't be married very long.

You're choosing to insult God. Exactly how that should make him indebted to help you out isn't very clear to me. But maybe you think it will.

[Immanuel Can]

Stop fretting about it and get over it.

Such sage advice: "You're suffering with personal distress and mental illness...so just get over it."

With so much compassion and insight, it's a wonder you're not a psychologist.

I'm not his bloody mother.

Nobody's supposing that, for sure.

[Gary Childress]

You're choosing to insult God. Exactly how that should make him indebted to help you out isn't very clear to me.

I don't expect God to be indebted to me. I expect the usual from him, to watch us suffer and die. God's not our fairy godfather. Life is generally unfair, cruel and ends in perma-death as far as I can reckon. I'm agnostic as to whether the is some kind of sentient creator, but I'm an atheist when it comes to belief in a benevolent one.

I figure I've got maybe a decade left in me on the optimistic side. I'm going to spend it happily trashing whatever created the world. Holding my tongue playing the "think happy thoughts"/"positive" psychology trope is nauseating and just agrivates the shit out of me.

[Immanuel Can]

You're choosing to insult God. Exactly how that should make him indebted to help you out isn't very clear to me.

I don't expect God to be indebted to me.

I mean you're railing against God, but I see no practical purpose to it. Do you believe in God, but think that there's a point to insulting Him? Or do you disbelieve in His existence...but then railing is railing against nothing.

It doesn't add up, Gary...either there is or there isn't somebody for you to complain to, or complain about. But if He exists, how do you expect that complaining like you do is going to win you points? Wouldn't you be better to ask Him for help? But if He doesn't exist, then the railing is even more pointless...for there is nobody for you to speak against; and meanwhile, the indifferent universe never promised you anything but disaster and misery, and it doesn't care what any of us thinks.

Either way, how you're carrying on doesn't get you anywhere. I'm sure you can figure that out.

[Gary Childress]

You're choosing to insult God. Exactly how that should make him indebted to help you out isn't very clear to me.

I don't expect God to be indebted to me.

I mean you're railing against God, but I see no practical purpose to it. Do you believe in God, but think that there's a point to insulting Him? Or do you disbelieve in His existence...but then railing is railing against nothing.

It doesn't add up, Gary...either there is or there isn't somebody for you to complain to, or complain about. But if He exists, how do you expect that complaining like you do is going to win you points? Wouldn't you be better to ask Him for help? But if He doesn't exist, then the railing is even more pointless...for there is nobody for you to speak against; and meanwhile, the indifferent universe never promised you anything but disaster and misery, and it doesn't care what any of us thinks.

Either way, how you're carrying on doesn't get you anywhere. I'm sure you can figure that out.

God isn't our fairy godfather. I've already told you. If there is a creator then this universe clearly isn't designed for human happiness. Why should I care whether I insult God or not? Is it going to hurt God's feelings? Is it going to cause God to be any more callous and indifferent to our woes than s/he already is? Why are you so worried about it? You act like there's something at stake. There's nothing for God to forgive us for. Forgiveness is something we owe those who we harm. We can't harm God. If anyone should be seeking forgiveness it should be God seeking ours.

[Immanuel Can]

I don't expect God to be indebted to me.

I mean you're railing against God, but I see no practical purpose to it. Do you believe in God, but think that there's a point to insulting Him? Or do you disbelieve in His existence...but then railing is railing against nothing.

It doesn't add up, Gary...either there is or there isn't somebody for you to complain to, or complain about. But if He exists, how do you expect that complaining like you do is going to win you points? Wouldn't you be better to ask Him for help? But if He doesn't exist, then the railing is even more pointless...for there is nobody for you to speak against; and meanwhile, the indifferent universe never promised you anything but disaster and misery, and it doesn't care what any of us thinks.

Either way, how you're carrying on doesn't get you anywhere. I'm sure you can figure that out.

God isn't our fairy godfather.

That's not the question you need to ask yourself, Gary. The question you need to answer is, "Does He exist?"

If He does, then to rail against him is to treat the only person who can help you as an enemy. If he does not, it makes no sense to give him a second thought, let alone a mountain of gratuitious venom.

Just do what makes sense. If you don't believe in God, don't get mad. You've got nothing to be mad about, and nobody to be mad at. But if you decide He might exist, doesn't it make sense to elicit his aid rather than to pour abuse on Him and, at the same time, call for judgment against yourself? If He exists, that would surely be the dumbest thing a human being could possibly do...bar none.

Just look out for your own interests, Gary, whatever you think they are. But what you're doing now will get you nothing you want.

[Gary Childress]

If He does, then to rail against him is to treat the only person who can help you as an enemy.

OK. So it still hasn't really sunk into your indoctrinated skull. God does not care what happens to humans. God does not grant favors. And there's nothing I can do to harm God, unless God is insecure and has delicate feelings (in which case, I'd suggest he take a more active role in preventing harm to his creations if he can't deal with bitterness). You're worried about something that is not real.

If he does not, it makes no sense to give him a second thought, let alone a mountain of gratuitious venom.

Again, I am agnostic with respect to the existence of a creator. It is my conclusion based on what I observe in the world IFF a God did exist.

You Christians seem to think that anything you do actually matters to God. ANYONE can get screwed in life and ANYONE can win the lottery. There are devout Christians who have lived and died worse than Hitler did. God isn't keeping tabs on every single event in the universe to make sure that only good things happen to his favorites and bad things happen to his enemies. He apparently doesn't care, except in the imaginations of people who fantasize that children with cancer get some special gift that rapists and drug fiends don't. Life is always going to be a fairy tale to you. It's not. The only order in this universe comes from mathematical physics and humans who use those mathematics to make the world a better place. Calling God a worthless kunt has no bearing on anything. You act like a frightened child who thinks Santa Claus isn't going to visit if I say I saw Santa drunk and groping the interns at the office Christmas party last year.

Find something more important to worry about.

[Immanuel Can]

If He does, then to rail against him is to treat the only person who can help you as an enemy.

OK. So it still hasn't really sunk into your indoctrinated skull. God does not care what happens to humans.

Let's suppose you're right about that. I don't, and I think your reasoning there is poor. But if you were, what good would it do to rail against God? You say he "does not care."

You're worried about something that is not real.

If He's not real, then you have even less reason to be railing. You may as well be angry with unicorns.

You Christians seem to think that anything you do actually matters to God.

We do. But only because He says so, and has proved it. But go ahead.

There are devout Christians who have lived and died worse than Hitler did.

Let's see if you know what you're talking about. Name one.

God isn't keeping tabs on every single event in the universe to make sure that only good things happen to his favorites and bad things happen to his enemies.

Now, one bit of that is true: as the Bible says, "rain falls on the just and the unjust." But there are reasons for that. Imagine the opposite: imagine if God rewarded good people instantly, and punished all sin instantly. What would your life look like, then?

Well, whenever you chose something that was wrong, a big hand would come down and smack you. And whenever you did good, ice cream would instantly appear. So you'd have no choice but to do, always, that which was right. There would be no other possible choice. And the consequence? There'd be no choices for Gary. Gary would be worse than a robot; he'd be a sentient robot with no free will.

So before you conclude that God doesn't care about Gary, maybe take a thought for the fact that Gary has a Gary. He is his own person. He has his own will about what he does. And God grants Gary so much freedom that Gary can even choose to say poisonous things about God, and not get hammered with a lightning bolt for doing it.

However, a just God will not always allow sin to continue. He cannot, and be just. So a reckoning will come. But this world, for now, can be no other way than it is, with regard to the ratio of good happenings to bad ones and their association with the choices we make, and still have a Gary worth having in it.

The only order in this universe comes from mathematical physics and humans who use those mathematics to make the world a better place.

Have you seen what we do, lately? Go see the movie "Sound of Freedom," and tell me of all the lovely things we do to make this world "a better place."

No, if physics is all there is, then there's no God, or it's as good as if there were none. But then, you've got nobody to complain to, and there's nobody capable of helping you. Is that your world? Then I guess you should stop complaining and take it. What else can you do?

Find something more important to worry about.

I've said enough. You've made your view clear. I'm accepting of your choice, Gary. So will God be, you will discover.

[vegetariantaxidermy]

I'm accepting of your choice, Gary. So will God be, you will discover.

You really are a disgusting little gollum creature. And god will be watching you too, IC. If mere humans can see you for the self-serving slime-ball that you are, then just think what an imaginary omnicient magical creature can see. I'm sure he will be dlighted to see your creepy threats made on his behalf.

[Immanuel Can]

And god will be watching you too, IC.

That's true, no doubt...and present company, as well.

[vegetariantaxidermy]

Pathetic

[promethean75]

So here's how it should go down in the future after the global collapse and the proletarian revolution restructures society.

There will be AIs that crunch a buncha numbers to determine the reasonable wage for job x. Factors involved in determining this will be such things as training/education costs, trainee's aptitude, performance, economic demand for that particular product/service, costs of production and the like.

Now notice that these determinations are the same for private employment in a free market. The wage u make is determined by the same factoring but it's done by a single private party rather than an AI designed to analyze the same data.

The question is: why do u, wage workers of PN, care if one guy or a hundred decide what your labor is worth? if a controlled, planned economy is producing the same competitive wage availability as a spontaneously organized free market, what's it to u?

See ya'll don't even know why you're angry. U just read some bad shit about marxism somewhere and have been on the short bus of politics since.

[Immanuel Can]

So here's how it should go down in the future after the global collapse and the proletarian revolution restructures society.

Did you ever wonder how Marxists "know" this is going to happen?

Did you ever wonder how people who are "dialectical materialists," by definition of "Marxist," and thus must believe that materials cannot possibly manage the universe in some teleological way or put direction into history, can prophesy about things that haven't happened, and which have been prophesied and failed to happen already, and still say the "proletarian revolution" is coming?

No? Well, maybe it's time you did wonder if they actually know anything about the future, or whether they're making it up out of thin air -- or, more plausibly still, they're not at all talking about some inevitable future event, but a future event that they, themselves, are trying to bring about by manipulating the situation -- regardless of what anybody else might want?

In other words, has it ever occurred to you they're speaking as totalitarians, and not as prophets?

And when they do "restructure" society, guess what they're going to do to all the people who helped them create the revolution? You don't need to guess -- history has shown what they will do, already. They'll do what they do every time: they'll bludgeon, dispossess and kill every person who remains capable of inciting a revolution: for "the triumph of the proletariat" is a jealous god, and will not endure any rivals. People capable of producing an insurrection were useful in expelling freedom, individuality and free markets; but once their work is done, they must be eliminated. The Marxist elites cannot suffer them to rise up again, lest they should unsettle the revolution and undermine the rule of the proles.

So the Marxist elite will cripple and eliminate every person who helped them get to their revolution -- all those capable of rebellion, all the intellectuals, academics, ideologues, leaders, spokespeople and enthusiasts who staffed the revolution. And they will be the first into the new Communist gulags, "re-education camps" and roadside ditches.

Be careful what you advocate, therefore, lest you should be mistaken by your Marxist overlords for an effective spokesman for rebellion. For if they ever win, they'll kill you first.

[promethean75]

"Did you ever wonder how Marxists "know" this is going to happen?"

Becuz bro it's the dialectic of history duh. Capitalism is creating conflicts and eventually a rational synthesis of alternative options to capitalism will be realized becuz they are logical, and the structures of capitalism will give way to the revolutionary forzes of that realization and reshape our future. Or as Gustave Vonhamsonshmidt put it, our historicus progressus en masses.

[Immanuel Can]

"Did you ever wonder how Marxists "know" this is going to happen?"
Becuz bro it's the dialectic of history duh.

Well, before you "duh," consider carefully that you've swallowed two really "duh" beliefs whole:

1. That "history" is a teleological story that Marxists can "read" before it even happens, and which aims at particular "goals" like "the Communist State."

2. That "dialectics" describes how this magical "history" (or better, "History," since it's now being deified) works, and that this working is "progressive."

But who empowered Karl Marx or his followers to "read" History? And where does the teleology come from, in a world that is supposed to be ardently nothing but "materialist"?

And what confidence can we have that the mere collision of material forces is "progressive" rather than, say, "destructive" or simply uninterested in whether or not it progresses or destroys? (The truth is that "dialectics" are merely a product of Hegel's, and then Marx's, inability to reconcile the contradictions of history: they just went with a "both" answer, instead of a real one, and made the conflict itself out to be a savior-force. It's all complete rubbish.)

Capitalism...

A Marxist bogeyman. Does not exist.

Free markets exist. Managed markets exist. Exploiters exist (on both sides), but there is no ideology by which one worships "Capital," and aims teleologically at a future one predicts, as in Marxism. Marx was just a propagandist about this.

...the structures of capitalism will give way to the revolutionary forzes of that realization and reshape our future.

There it is! The blithe "prophecy" of the future. But there is no way of knowing in advance what the future will look like, at all. Marx was clearly wrong, himself -- Neo-Marxists themselves freely admit that, and nowadays try to disassociate themselves from his failures by claiming that he only got the mechanics and the particulars wrong. He thought it was about class; they now know it isn't. So they moved it to various "cultural" conflicts, and then claimed Marx was ultimately on the right track, but just screwed up the ending. They just think that where he failed so dismally to get the future right, they will magically do better, because we've jumped from class to culture.)

They're clowns. They're not economists or wise men, far less "prophets." They have a totally imaginary, totally arbitrary vision of the future they want, and they've fine with totalitarian measures to bring it about, if they can.