Posts by cognisonance

12

What a beautiful day for service!

by StephaneLaliberte in

jw
friends

i heard this expression very often and even said it often myself.

now that i am out, i realize this isn't always the case.

there were many times i was going out in service saturday morning and couldn't wait for 12:00 to come along so that we could go swimming, bicycling, play basket ball, go to the beach... .

cognisonance

Not me, I always thought... It's too nice a day to go out in service (and hated going as a result), or it's too bad out to go in service (and hated going as a result). I've always felt that way, never enjoyed field service despite being a pioneer for 5+ years. Life for me was only fun for those fleeting hours on late Saturday afternoons/evenings.

I did not enjoy service, conventions, assemblies, meetings, talks, accounting (was a MS too), and all the other crap we had to do. I was born into this religious cult and thought this was what we were supposed to do, that it was right. Glad I woke up in my late 20s! I wonder how many JWs actually enjoy going out in service? I imagine not many (even among pioneers) unless they have nothing else to live for.

94

Karl Marx Genius Of The Modern World

by Brokeback Watchtower in

he was all for getting rid of religions and their delusions for the betterment of mankind.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mydmc1wio8.

cognisonance

Stephen Pinker's "The Blank Slate" provides an insurmountable obstacle to Marxism. It isn't written for that purpose but he proves conclusively that we possess an innate human nature. Marxism has to assume that humans are blank slates that can be moulded to act against their own interests.

I've read a bit of Pinker, but not that book. I'll have to check it out sometime.

Even apart from Marxism so much harm has and is being done based on this absurd ideology.

What is the absurd ideology you refer to here? The idea of humans being born with a "blank slate"?

94

Karl Marx Genius Of The Modern World

by Brokeback Watchtower in

he was all for getting rid of religions and their delusions for the betterment of mankind.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mydmc1wio8.

cognisonance

So I've thought about this more... Marx did get it wrong when he thought that people could be forced (or would all be willing) into adopting socialism. Socialism requires people to change how they think about things and what they value. Forcing this to happen is a bad idea.

Perhaps the best we can hope for is for economies to be a good blend of capitalism and socialism (much like in the Scandinavian countries). Even in the US, we're not 100% capitalistic. I've heard a person from Denmark say that the higher taxes there are not viewed with the same disdain as they would be viewed in the US. To the Danes, it's not a "redistribution of wealth", but rather more like an obligation to support the kind of community one wants to live in, where people who are less fortunate can really have a more equal opportunity. Their economy is still market-based, but they have more social programs than we do here in the US.

81

Gerrit Losch Claims JW's Attending College Are Spiritually Weak

by pale.emperor in

https://www.facebook.com/jw.0027/videos/799049613609936/.

the video was posted directly to a pro-jw facebook page.

i cant believe what i'm hearing... actually, nothing surprises be about this cult anymore.. didn't they say to the judge in the arc that they dont discourage college?.

cognisonance

So... making it through college is akin to trying to commit suicide by putting the barrel of a riffle in your mouth and pulling the trigger. You might survive, but he doesn't recommend trying it.

Does anyone else see this is an absurd analogy? I see nothing where attempted suicide by riffle is in any way like pursing a college education. Where the fuck does this nincompoop come up with this shit?

94

Karl Marx Genius Of The Modern World

by Brokeback Watchtower in

he was all for getting rid of religions and their delusions for the betterment of mankind.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mydmc1wio8.

cognisonance

Thanks for the info Cofty. I'll look into this when have the time to digest it.

94

Karl Marx Genius Of The Modern World

by Brokeback Watchtower in

he was all for getting rid of religions and their delusions for the betterment of mankind.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mydmc1wio8.

cognisonance

I haven't looked into Mao or Pol Pot. If those situations resulted in a minority ruling over the majority I don't think this is what Marx meant by "dictatorship of the proletariats". If your point is that like Mikhail Bakunin (and later even George Orwell), that Marx's ideas of how to handle things immediately after the revolution is over could never work out the way he envisioned, and that totalitarianism would result during an attempted transition from capitalism to communism, than I could be included to agree with you. It may not be possible. For that matter I'm not comfortable with the idea of a bloody revolution in the first place. However I was trying to point out that I'm not aware of any country that was doing things the way he envisioned. By the way, Bakunin advocated skipping any government after a revolution. I can't see that working either.

However, to say that socialism (what Marx and others either aimed for genuinely or with lip service) is somehow a bad thing -- I don't agree with you. His critique of what's wrong with capitalism I agree with. I also agree that we need a better system, we need socialism. How to get there is the question.

94

Karl Marx Genius Of The Modern World

by Brokeback Watchtower in

he was all for getting rid of religions and their delusions for the betterment of mankind.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mydmc1wio8.

cognisonance

perhaps you can point me to examples of soft, fluffy Marxist countries which are thriving in the fields of human rights and economics ...

Perhaps you can point me to an example of a Marxist country? I haven't seen one.

Stalin's totalitarian regime was an extension of Leninism, which in turn was an adaptation from Marx (of course Stalin's Marxism-Leninism used Marxist's ideas as propaganda to justify his totalitarian rule as the means to achieve socialism). Specifically, Marx himself did not advocate for a dictatorship by totalitarian former working class people (while the real working-class had no say), Rather during the transition between capitalism to communism the whole working-class would participate in a government that resembles something like a direct democracy (far from what we think of as dictatorship, but it would result in the oppression of the capitalists). He called this idea the "dictatorship of the proletariats". Of course, this is not what happened in Russia when Stalin self-imposed a single party police state, so you can't say Russia is an example of a Marxist country. Same goes for North Korea and China.

Now I'm not saying the Marx is right in all of his ideas (neither am I fully aware of all of them -- this subject gets really complex if you start digging into it and his writing style is not easy to read). Additionally, there are other adaptations of Marxism other than the Marxism-Lennism flavor (e.g. Libertarian Marxism). And since most people equate Marxism with Socialism, I should point out that socialism does not equate to marxism either (even though here in the US most people equate Marx, Socialism, Communism, and central planning, as all one and the same). Thus, I also recommend looking into Libertarian Socialism and Participatory Economics for other perspectives.

Lastly, according to Chomsky, it was not just the capitalist countries that were opposed to socialism but also the Soviet State as well. The result is that we are left with a situation where many people view socialism as a bad thing and this prevents us from eventually achieving "a more decent society and a liveable world in the West" and elsewhere.

In short, I don't think this is a simple black and white thing where we can say capitalism == good and socialism == bad.

94

Karl Marx Genius Of The Modern World

by Brokeback Watchtower in

he was all for getting rid of religions and their delusions for the betterment of mankind.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mydmc1wio8.

cognisonance

Why does Marxism in practice always result in totalitarianism?

Well... centrally-planned, hierarchical forms of socialism certainly has. Unfortunately, no country has attempted to implement a horizontal, decentralized one. For example I'm talking about concepts like libertarian socialism, participatory economics, and others.

However, I'm aware of one microcosm with it's roots in 1960s era Marxism that has survived to this day where there is no central planning, and no authoritarian ruler, The Rainbow Family:

"The Rainbow example threatens governments. It shows that people can live without rulers, without yielding their voices to representatives. It demonstrates that people can be responsible for themselves and maintain peace without coercion or force, without police. It is a model of a true participatory democracy, 'Government by the People.' The European Gatherings are bringing people of different ethnic and national backgrounds together to discuss their common future; to dream of a world without armies or wars. The Rainbow Family is the antithesis of a police state. It challenges all entities that govern by fear instead of cooperation. For them, the Rainbow Family provides the 'threat of a good example,' one others might follow (Chomsky 1987)."

This does not mean I'm advocating we all gather in the woods as utopian hippies. I'm just trying to point out that your stated cause and effect would take only one example to disprove (of course this is not the counter example as they aren't a country and the analogy begins to break down). What I'm trying to say is that Totalitarianism ≠ Socialism no matter how much you are trying to equate the two.

--

Works Cited:

Niman, Michael I. “People of the Rainbow: a Nomadic Utopia.” People of the Rainbow: a Nomadic Utopia, University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, 1997, p. 214.

94

Karl Marx Genius Of The Modern World

by Brokeback Watchtower in

he was all for getting rid of religions and their delusions for the betterment of mankind.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mydmc1wio8.

cognisonance

LoveUniHateExams
It has murdered tens of millions of its citizens and all its proponents can say in its defense is that we haven't seen "true" communism yet - a 'No True Scotsman' fallacy of epic proportions!

The proponents of many of Marx's ideas are NOT trying to defend totalitarian communism. There is no "No True Scotsman" fallacy here. It seems you and cofty are making a strawman argument here. I haven't read all of Marx's work, far from it, but from what I have read I see nowhere where he advocates for totalitarianism. If he does I'd like to know (please show me).

cofty
Supporting Marxism is the moral equivalent of promoting German National Socialism.

Woah Cofty, be careful not to make the false cause fallacy here. What you are doing is equivalent to a creationist asserting that supporting darwinism is the moral equivalent of promoting the nazi eugenics program.

From my perspective, the main work I've read of Marx directly is Wage Labour and Capital. I don't see much in that work to complain about (or anything at all to equate to nazism!). Some of the main arguments he makes that stand out to me include:

Laborers are like slaves. A slave though has it much worse of course. A slave's whole life is a commodity that can be sold and owned. A free laborer is like a slave in that he sells off himself in fractions (a day's shift) to the capitalist. Life for him starts when he gets off work. Like the slave, his life is not his own while he is working.
What a laborer gets paid in wages is the value of his labor-power (the cost of training and education of the workers for a specific task, as well as their replacement when they can no longer work). Labor-power is a commodity (like raw materials) that is purchased by the capitalist. The laborer doesn't receive a share in the product being produced. The profits from the production go to the capitalist. Since the production couldn't have happened without the laborer, and the product wasn't sold merely at cost, the value of the laborer's productivity is greater than the value of his labor-power. In essence, this surplus value is transferred form the laborer to the capitalist by nature of the relationship between the two. The laborer class has no choice but to sell themselves to the capitalist class in order to survive. As more of the surplus is transferred from workers to the capitalists, the more power the capitalists have, and the worse off are the workers. This is the crux of the unfairness of capitalism.
Capitalism is ultimately unstable in the long run. The only way to avoid collapse requires perpetual growth and ever increasing productivity. To Marx, eventually this is unsustainable.

36

Jupiter protects the earth... another example of intellectual dishonesty and an argument against design

by cognisonance in

i'm taking a university astronomy course, and i must say it's really fun to read about this field.

anyway, i remember the jws used to use jupiter (and probably still do) as an example for how unique and special our solar system is (and thus designed) -- namely, that jupiter protects the earth from astroids, comets, and meteors.

convincing if one doesn't know any better, especially circa 1994 when jupiter stepped in front of a comet for us... but this isn't the full story!

cognisonance

Waton, I don't understand why Bode's predictions somehow matter, whether they constituted coincidence or law. And citing the Watchtower about 10 being a symbol of earthly perfection... are you still a JW or into numerology?

it all is made possible by the original setup, supply of Energy, matter, laws.

To that I'll defer to Carl Sagan: https://youtu.be/SYlIYnKmGV4