Hah! Good luck finding one

I read the whole bible as an adult.

But the discipline that took, probably shows that I was starting to think more deeply about things

They can’t. Its not a matter of personal greed, its just how capitalism works, it creates immense wealth for a few on one end and mass immiseration for the masses on the other. Billionaires exist because of the system that creates them.

4cm

Perfectly average

My son showed me this last night, its insane. Its like one video from his feed and then two videos of people getting mauled

Right, electronic devices talk to each other all the time

“Machines were the weapons deployed by the capitalists to quell the revolt of specialized labor”

I’ve said it before, all ceos could be replaced by mascots and it would have no negative effect on the productive capabilities of our society. On the contrary things might actually improve for once in my life

You say that, but what about St. Paul who is definitely in heaven and was a pathological gooner

Hah! Good one

Same, except i wasnt a lit major, just a guy who was going through the phase of “this is what intelligent people look like” while trying to educate myself. I was convinced DFW was the voice of our generation, heralding in a new era of consciousness.

The book is conceptually pretty cool, like it is really well written and he draws together so many disparate elements to make kind of a coherent narrative.

But the idea of making a book impossible to read on purpose is a funny joke, especially one that so many aspiring intelligentsia gush over. I can appreciate a good shaggy dog as much as the next guy, but IJ is just so far beyond the pale.

A book should be challenging because the concepts are unique and well considered, and it draws from lots of historic and philosophical research; not because the author decided to intentionally break the flow of the narrative to make you flip to the not-optional appendix to read 32 pages of made up synopsis about a character’s avant-garde filmography.

Quebec

Yeah if our reality could stop resembling Infinite Jest, that would be great. I can’t stand that stupid fucking book and how accurately it predicts our increasingly insane circumstances

If he dedicated the rest of his wealth to fighting antisemitism, if he lent his incredible fame to reversing the horrible legacy of racist, chauvinist violence, if he really gave a shit and fixed himself and worked his ass off for years, then maybe, some people might begin to forgive him.

But dong a bunch of Nazi shit and then saying you’re not a Nazi, is Nazi shit. This is meaningless and pathetic, cowardly behavior.

Ukrainian children yearn for the mines

Fascism shouldn’t be thought of as a static “thing” or an object of ideology. Peoples beliefs come from their environment. We are so individualized as a society that often we as progressives take “personal responsibility” too far, we buy the premise implicitly without realizing there are flaws with thinking in this way. Every logical system has flaws and contradictions, its proven mathematically though I think some systems are more rigorous and based on evidence.

GWF Hegel’s philosophy of Right was written in 1820, and influenced political thought ever since. Liberalism was still in it’s revolutionary phase and theories about it were still fairly new, the Wealth of Nations was written just 50 years before, and Karl Marx was like two when it was released, although it would serve as the basis for much of his work analyzing the hidden relationships of Capital, and ethical political philosophy on the whole.

The book is the closest I think someone can honestly get to an actual “horseshoe theory” because not only did it influence the left but it also influenced the far right. Hegel, using the works of other great liberal philosophers such as Locke and Kant, who Hegel was always working to surpass, applied his dialectical philosophical methods to the writings of liberalism.

What he discovered was a natural tendency toward what we would calll fascism. Like he prefigured fascism by 100 years. He wasn’t a fascist, there was no such thing. He was just exploring the ideas of this revolutionary philosophy, one that purported to liberate the mind, body and spirit, and discovered the oppressive seeds which might grow into something quite different.

This isn’t to call liberals fascists, I’m a communist and 20th century communism had a lot of problems, to put it mildly. I would say confidently that progressive liberals are not crypto fash, in fact the term “progressive” is a typically left-Hegelian ideal, in that it describes human progress and development as the subject of history. Instead it challenges the idea of the liberatory nature of private property, a key component of liberal thought. Of course this is all depending how you look at it, right-Hegelians see this same formulation as proof of the inevitability of their ideas and justification for their actions.

You’re getting a lot of different opinions about this stuff so I’m trying to make sort of a different point about philosophy, history and action. Other reading for a deep dive on fascism is the essay Ur Fascism by Umberto Eco (great empirical analysis, but the least scientific IMO), Trotsky’s pamphlet Fascism: What it is and How to Fight It, and HA Roy’s Fasism, Its Philosophy, Professions and Practice.

In a way, fascism has always been there below the surface, informally shifting the sands of history until it was formalized in the early 20th century. I don’t think you can have a society based on private property without some elements of fascism somewhere. Mostly “western democracies” will outsource their extreme cruelty to other countries where it doesn’t affect their citizens.

But in summary, Fascism is the realization of the contradictions inherent in liberal ideology, its liberalism turned inside-out, with all its appearances of justice and freedom cut away, leaving only the logic of expansion and domination that most liberal democracies do their best to hide. This is how fascists are able to hide in our society, their individual beliefs are not completely unpalatable to centrists and conservatives who have also started to dispense with justice and freedom in the interest of national greatness. Its what makes their beliefs so malleable, and its also why liberals have such a hard time defining it. But fascism isn’t an individual’s beliefs, if it was it would be just regular bog-standard chauvinism. Fascism is a mass movement which will use charismatic leaders amenable to their politics to rally the masses.

In our society, the middle classes are the “battery” for fascism. Middle classes are constantly under attack under capitalism and the individuals often feel this and become paranoid (doomsday prepping, etc.,) and this paranoia and real social pressure to produce or be wiped out, the fear from the constant threat of precarity and uncertainty fits hand in glove with the aims and means of fascists.

I see lots of references to John Denver, Country Roads, but I present:

“Bye, bye Miss Bologna Pie”

Is such a utopia possible?

Sure. Yeah its very hypothetical and silly. As if the Banks that manage national and international money supplies, since most of their managed assets are debt, haven’t thought of it? So no such button exists, whereas there might be a delete twitter button somewhere or one could be rigged up 👀

Attacking twitter would be more useful than deleting all debt? I mean go wild, take that shit ass site down but if you had a “delete twitter” button and a “delete all debt” button, mashing the second one would make you the greatest hero who ever lived.

Sorry I deleted that comment, I didn’t like my tone.

Personally I’m not a prison abolitionist. I’d like to see an end to it, ideally, but realistically that would be an amount of practical work beyond just simple reforms, the whole of society would have to be changed. I’m into that, which is why I don’t ideally dismiss it.

I treated it better elsewhere, here I just said “you can’t snap your fingers” but what I mean is prisons and police they actually are the answer to a lot of problems in society. I agree with you, I would like to see much more reform programs rather than the USA prison system that “needs” prisons, which isn’t to say every prison is a social necessity, more like there are political and economic incentive structures that make meaningful progressive change extremely difficult. But my father was a prison guard, and we don’t agree much on politics, especially when it comes to carcerial justice, but that man had seen some absolute monsterous behavior from people who are basically unreformable by any modern standard – and as much as I wish that wasn’t the case and I wish they had been given the opportunity for a better life where maybe they wouldn’t have lost every bit of their humanity, that doesn’t change reality.

However I do think that a society that proliferates carcerial justice the way that we do in the USA, which is all my experience is about, I dont know about Aussie prisons, is not one that is able to restore or even preserve the humanity of all its citizens. A society that makes monsters needs a place to put them; however a place to put monsters creates a demand for monstrousness that must be met. This is what I think it is possible and realistic to abolish.

Thanks for the response, I did take it personally but thanks for clarifying your position