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SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK on the Desert of Post-Ideology | Master Class | Higher Learning
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- Опубліковано 12 гру 2012
- www.tiff.net/higherlearning/ev...
Slavoj Žižek, the internationally renowned philosopher and cultural critic featured in the Sophie Fiennes-directed The Pervert's Guide to Ideology and The Pervert's Guide to Cinema, delivers a lecture entitled "Welcome to the Desert of Post-Ideology" for post-secondary students and faculty. This Higher Learning event was co-presented with York University and held on October 2, 2012 at TIFF Bell Lightbox.
Visit the Higher Learning Digital Resource Hub to learn more about our upcoming events at TIFF Bell Lightbox and to access bibliographies, filmographies and additional resources associated with this event. www.tiff.net/higherlearning/ 
Фільми й анімація
I'm not talking shit but the man who did the sound deserves a fucking medal for taking the hiss out of all of Slavoj's S's. Normally I have to turn him down and use subtitles as a backup but you did it man. You fucking landed on the moon.
@Nick Scurvy I mean you’re right pretty much. A good mic may have a better frequency response and maybe the sibilance will not sound as bad, but you just get so much more control with a de-esser. Use an sm57 for everything I do pretty much and never had an issue, given the right EQ and compression etc.
@armchair satanic advocate when I went to audio school in like 2011 I wasn't introduced to any mics that had specific features for sibilance. It doesn't surprise me but I've never seen nor used them. From what I was taught, you used a nice mic(or the hammer that is an sm57, or an sm58 if live) and used a de esser or EQ to cut the sibilance.
I only attended a few quarters so it's possible I just didn't get far enough. But they did let me mess with(including after hours) with their more expensive ribbon mics so who knows?
@Nick Scurvy well this is true, remember that it is not 1990--a lot of mics are engineered to account for sibilance, which is pretty common
it has more to do with the quality of the mic (original sound capture) than an editor's work in post, but yeah top notch recording here
This man is constantly like 5 to 10 years ahead of himself, like why do his speeches make more and more sense as time passes
@giovanni if you actually listen to him you'd know that he doesn't advocate socialism or communism as it was because he, like any intelligent leftist, acknowledges the terrible failure of state communism. He simply believes that the best way forward in dealing with the issues we face now as a species, will be rooted in Marxist economic analysis but admits that he has no solid answer to how the state should be restructured.
@giovanni lol your view of capitalism is way more outdated
@B why
Supreme leader
I can remember the beginning of every Zizek sentence, but never the end
@Zero Two he'd definitely not a good orator. He starts to say something, but falls down another aspect of what he wants to convey halfway through his original sentence. However, i think he has interesting, and I think worthwhile, criticisms of how we interpret problems in our current age.
It's like listening to a freshman's report on ideology. They might have something interesting to say, but struggle to get a coherent message across because of a lack of structure. I feel like this late in his career, there is no excuse for messy, disjointed, runaway naratives.
@Will Setchell How about the 'scientific marxism' without any measure or error in the measure? How about you use some of that questioning of yours and enquire what are the flaws in his questioning?
Simply asserting someone's lecture is without flaws, is exchanging a priest for a philosopher.
You don't take me seriously because I don't talk what you want to hear. To Point out that your priest is talking nonsense that has no proof is too much for your emotion of rationality?
Other than that, is not what every marxist and post-marxist does? Point out that capitalism is without content, and never have a functional replacement? How it feels to look at a mirror?
@Zero Two maybe we would take you seriously if you were able to outline what in his thought you disagree with. Simply asserting someone's lecture lacks real content without addressing the deficiencies of the content just makes you look a bit dim.
@Spud Bencer Stop making the point about yourself, that's what I said about him. He is so full of hot air as this discussion. Wouldn't be a communist without being useless. Enough.
So warm, funny and able to develop keen insights based upon things like his young son making him repeatedly watch Kung Fu panda. Love Zizek. Philosophy shouldn't be completely esoteric, it can be found and applied in the most mundane of every day things.
@Hussain Drees so true
Zizek's fan club is worse than his philosophies
@No username you sound like you're worth engaging with, I have no doubt a productive conversation would follow!
@funglegunk oh damn. You sound smart better not press it. I’m from a country where we have 22 million illegals 1/4 people from my state are born in another country, 1/4 adults over the age of 25 have some form of diabetes. Can you imagine what it’s gunna be like when 12 million people from one state need weekly dialysis? That’s billions of dollars a month just for dialysis.
But thank his for the international workers movement, who knows where we be without it? Probably better off 😂
Met him the other day. And rarely have I observed a man with a lovelier way around people he was exactly as nuts with everyone talking, posing and signing while
Telling jokes. He made me
So happy. And of course relating very offensive jokes. So refreshing ❤️❤️❤️
@DannyP that's not true
It's important in terms of context, so, if I may ask, in which city did this occur?
@Bob's In Franz's Horse Not really.
@OgiMetalHead Nietzsche was against nihilism.
@sonicman52 Now we have new problems that make life just as difficult. Nothing great or utopian about our modern world.
This dude is so smart that he's into his third language and is still more profound than I could attempt to be in my first
@jamie hovis You're confusing socialism with social safety net programs. I must admit that we have been pushed towards socialism by the democrats, but it's not in place yet. The free market economy is the safety net and the source of money of socialists. It's also the refuge for freedom and prosperity for entrepreneurs.
Socialism is a tried and failed system. And please don't say that democratic socialism works in Europe. That's a false narrative that atheist leftists invented to confuse left leaning emotional voters. Socialism sucks because people are generally lazy and greedy, and it's a much worse system than free market capitalism.
Slavoj historical knowledge is extraordinary. He is a living breathing library, amazing.
@Steven Hines if you watch the video he makes constant references to movies and philosophers, switching between the two and finding similarities. He’s intimately involved with every branch of knowledge.
Specifically at the beginning he ties Gangnam Style (a song) with totalitarianism, and then talks about Mein Kampf. It’s a good video if you watch it
Can you give an example?
@Jacob Loving Yeah. It is good training for the mind.
@thenowchurch but don’t we try
Focus on football!
In relation to his comments on the grey eminence, I am reminded of the account of Richelieu and how he came to match his various emissaries to the tasks he wanted to accomplish. The story is that he would lead his various potential new employees into room with a large table. On the one end of the table were pictures of horrible things. On the other end were pictures of beautiful things. If the person in question went to look at the horrible images, he would not send them on missions that required that the do horrible things. If they went to the end of the table with the beautiful things, he would send them on the missions that required they do horrible things.
Yes, he is right. You can be an ABSOLUTELY authentic Nazi, or an authentic rapist, or an authentic murderer. This is jarring because we only experience these people, for the most part, through media.
They’re hyper real to the point where if you met one in real life, you might be disappointed. “Why aren’t you acting like Darth Vader?” Or like Michael Meyers or whatever your particular favorite might be
Roland Barthes covers this topic as well. In his book about fashion he describes that the real-dress is not the same as the written-dress, and that the image-dress is not the real-dress. The real-dress is technological and consists of the factory, and the industrial workers, and the fabrics and materials. And the description and the image of the dress neither correspond to each other either.
@K X No, fascism (National Socialism, more specifically) has some good/interesting societal concepts in it. And no, I’m not talking about the racist elements
@Joshua Cohen He just meant that even Nazis can behave kindly to people other than the ones they hate. They are still very much the embodiment of evil. A serial killer being nice to their mom doesn't remove the fact of being a serial killer, nor does it speak well of them in the slightest. In fact, you could call it self-interest. In no way is Slavoj empathizing with Nazis. He is saying they do not always behave as Nazis, toward everyone, all the time.
Slavoj is a genius, always captivating
I was mesmerized for complete 1 hour and 53 seconds. Love Žižek ❤️
One of his best lectures online. Lucid and piercingly clear at once.
I'm adding this man to my list of professional enigmas. Ofc there's his voice but he has such a way of wording things I've never seen before
what an incredible gem of a human being
One of the few online lectures I've finished. Great and profoundly interesting guy
35:20 What I hear when he says this is " Don't sacrifice yourself for a higher cause, sacrifice yourself for no reason whatsoever." I'd rather not sacrifice myself at all nor sacrifice anyone to myself. Thank you very much.
We're so lucky to be here in the same universe as Slavoj; he makes times like these so much more tolerable.
@B how many deaths and suffering has capitalism caused? LEL
@shahsad saadu 12 bazillion dead vuvuzela joker mode lol
Human from the future here. Life gets worse, trust me .
What a Genius . What a wonderful human being.
There is no ethnic cleaning without poetry. What a sentence
@Vyacheslav Ponomarev obviously a citation from the video…
Se expresa con una claridad magnífica, alucinante y cristalina!
Slavoj is like a created ruler on CK3 who has all the intelligence traits but to balance it out has all the madness ones 😂
@Rex 2.0 was there ever a difference
🤣...true
scholar
lunatic
When describing Project X, saying "three nerds decide to organize a party", for some reason my first thought was a political party, lol. I know what the film is about, but I guess hearing it from him made it sound more serious in my head.
AND SO ON!!!never thought three simple words would make me smile so much
actually it's 6 words "and so on and so on"
Danial Brown it’s nice but I love you is better imho
Danial Brown
Drinking contest fodder
Well that's what life is all about. Living and learning and discovering knew things you do not know. Meeting people outside your normal circle, people with different habits and behaviors and beliefs. People who do and act differently than yourself. I know the middle school child in all of us wants to make fun of anyone who acts weird or does things a little out of the norm. That's life too. I've met a few people with tics and they are not weird in any way, it's just an impulsive behavior.
@GrapeSkoda you're so weird go away lol
@Trouble It wasn't implied.
It was direct.
@GrapeSkoda one of the most reddit replies I have received to be honest. not even mad at the implied racism lol.
@Trouble Suit yourself.
As long as you can maintain your delusion through evasive ad-hominems.
Go make some new friends in Chicago or Harlem.
@GrapeSkoda I'm sorry you were bullied in high school. I know how that kind of thing can affect people throughout life.
Please can you enable transcripts! A marvellous talk.
can't believed I missed him doing a lecture a couple years back because I got my thursdays mixed up!
Finnally someone who can stand up and admit the human condition as i see it. Evil and beauty in all extremes coinciding in one person. Pity most ppl are scared of this truth
This is the best introduction speech I've ever seen given for a speaker.
Slavoj Zizek is brilliant!
I love it that he talks about Medea. So few ppl even dare. wow. V good v v good lecture. TY for posting (and i'm not even done watching it all).
Thank you Dr Slavoj Zizek, on Reality and Authentiicity, meaning and Buddhism.
Very nice talk. Though if he just understood the point made by the Churchlands better then I'm sure he'd like it as it is a way to reconcile the passive observer with the active agent. In essence it boils down to a question of what can constitute free will in a metaphysical sense. Either the universe is predetermined, random or both in some combination. Regardless of which of the three you pick it does not allow for a free will in a traditional sense as you either follow along a causal line of events or a random one. We use our brains to think, reason, make decisions and take action and they follow the causal events of nature. The conclusion drawn by the Churchlands and more (like Dennett) is that while we are predetermined we did develop a brain in order to become an active agent within this causal world. Retreating into passivity is not what they advocate for since our brains developed to accomodate the achivements we as humans have accomplished (good or bad). Their stance is that one should accept that one is, in a way, a passive observer because our brain is bound by the physical realm while at the same time acknowledging that being passive is not what will develop us as a species forward. In a contradicting sense it's liberating to know and to truly be able to accept that some things are outside of our control (maybe having an illness or something) while also realizing that we have the potential to try and do what we can in other regards.
In this way, being aware that you are an "observer" to events that were determined before you were born arms you with the knowledge that your (brain's) potential never can be unlocked without being active. Free will is in this sense redundant rather than illusionary as we do in fact use our brain to make decisions and so on. If you accept this view which would allow you to take a step back (like how he suggests that Buddhism does) it invariably will force you to consider your next course of action as being passive is to not utilize your brain's potential.
Someone tell this man to watch the work of Ryan Murphy.
He always follows the pattern of starting a show with subversive, satirical overtones. Yet over time, his shows always become what they were satirizing, unironically. And the reality is that they were always just that.
The irony is a way of trojan horsing cynical viewers into becoming invested in something they think they don't like, but actually do.
A thousand great ideas or more? I’m really thankful for this talk.
The last thing we can still believe is love for someone even if is not certain is still better than every ideology
Slavoj Zizek is a great entertainer
Tomek Samcik AND master philosopher!
it's a pleasure to listen to Zizek.
Žižek is greatest Philosophers right now, hello from Sarajevo
Sometimes I feel like a genius for listening to Zizek sometimes I realize I'm a fooling myself
Thank You prof. Zizek for those perspectives.
"Moral absolutes can open up the space of freedom" what a refreshing take
@Elfling ахахахахахахахахаха
@Jacopo Fatini one month ago? No idea to be honest. But I still had a point!!!11
@Elfling jesus christ, who hurt you dawg.
"technically this isn't a haiku"
your sex life must be plentiful
Not sure if this maps in psychoanalitic terms but I always saw a link between 'sentimentality' and extreme distanced 'violence' at least on a socio-cultural level. The excuse for the violence is the inner sentimental nature that values the object of sentimentality over the consequences of a distanced violence, (desensitized or whatever), or maybe a resensitivization of the that inner idealization drives the denial of external responsibility.
"Another experience which brought me a lot of hatred in my own country..." on kaže. Zašto, nije mi jasno. A nije prvi put da sam čula da u Sloveniji ima dosta kontroverze oko Žižeka i da ima dosta ljudi koji ga ne odobravaju, ili ga ne vole. I ovaj primjer, da nema pokolja bez poezije je fenomenalan, istina živa. Potrebno je idealizovati i ublažiti strahote koje se čine, stvoriti svojevrsnu psihološku distancu da bi se neke grozne stvari uradile. Ne shvatam, šta je tu sporno, i kome?
i guess it's hard to translate... i'm french / bilingual UK english,,,
The point in the lecture where he says that throughout poetry it is posible to see a lead into a social movement remained me at this poem that say more or less “ Mexico I believe in you because you smell at tragedy , perhaps because you laughter too much , because you know that the laughter is the cover of a deepest sadness” So this relates also at the point that it was stablished here , that when a society had the capacity to laught at themselves in the self criticism of their politician and social believes is a healthy way to had a valve of pressure that relief that hostility perhaps that could easily fester without this efficient social mechanism .
Zizek is so pure
this is the second talk of Zizek i hear, the first was him vs. Peterson and as a Bavarian iam astounded how often (in a Philosophical Manner) he talks about the 3. Reich, i never thought about it as an Philosophy rattern then an Ideology. i will look into that. Thanks Slavoj
"You need religion to make good people do bad things".
Dude lost me on Gangnam Style then pulled me back with a Hitchslap.
When this guy talks my mind goes to eternal bliss. :)
не смеши
Slavoj Zizek is awesome.
Holy shit I love that talk, I've watched it multiple times and every time I get a little deeper. I don't see what point Zizek is getting at, but he does tell an awful lot of jokes.
@Mike o' Glen logic would dictate that's correct statement. I literally said I have no clue what he's taking about, if I did I would not have said so lol. He's harder to follow than Camille Paglia
@Timothy Otten If you had even a remote understanding of wtf he's talking about you wouldn't have made such an idiotic comment, perhaps?
@Danx Danx lol !
This comment is 8 years old, the guy might not be alive anymore to see our replies lol !
Zizek with his message - to completely fall into reality - highly reminds me of Alan Watts
@tenno1981
Ironic, Chesterton was an ardent defender of Catholicism.
I see an overlap with zizeks words and osho aswell
It originates in the Taoist philosophy (The Secret of the Golden Flower, Tao Te Ching)
Ah, and both žižek and watts admired G. K. Chesterton. There must be something special with this guy.
Žižek and Alan Watts are both among my favourite thinkers /speakers. Form counts as much as content. I would add Terrence McKenna and James Hillman to my collection of great insprers. And Camile Paglia.
This guy is so fascinating to listen to
He makes a lot of good points.
Extraordinary lecture.
1:11:20 Was impressed that about 8 years ago when this was posted he knew about Darpa's 4th Industrial Revolution goals to alter thought processes and belief systems (basically the entire ego of a person) through altering DNA.
I’m surprised that I’m able to follow along,and I’m impressed that he’s made it so that semi literate apes like myself can follow along.
Quite bubbly Capt. Slavoj , if the master class is too be seen as the vessel Higher Learning the voyage name thence the greater the voyage the greater the navigator needed.
One has to be extra crazy to try to debate this man. Zizek is an absolute madman in terms of gathering information about history, philosophy and human mind. I wonder who would really be able to debate him on a even level? The amount of references he makes, the shier variety of perspectives he unites as a person is, to my standart, unmatches. Please name me any nowadays thinkers that can withstand this. I'm interessted in learning new stuff!
Chomsky maybe but i think he'd have a heart attack.
i like to hear him have a discussion with economist Michael Hudson.
This is like the difference between the Prisoner and Austin Powers. Austin Powers celebrates in a debunking fashion the spy narrative: leaving it stronger, more ideologically reinforced. The Prisoner begins by establishing the narrative of the imprisoned spy in the cold war, 60s individualist, suspicious of the social order, but by turning its criticism upon individualism in the final episode it worries the viewer in a much more profound way.
I tried putting this on to sleep to but i ended up laughing for a solid 15 minutes after he claimed that gangam style is horrifying
The poets name is Paul Celan. He was a german-speaking jew from Rumania. He is best known for his poem "Todesfuge" (in english "death fugue") where the sentence "der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland" (Death is a master from Germany) comes from.
nothing makes me miss speed more than watching Slavoj
1:37:32 he finally gets Buddhism right about falling into the world per Kojin Karatani. Buddhism deals with ideology by referring to it as “views”, embraces ideology by modeling it as stages and offers different remedies for each stage until you are able to fall into the world.
As always my brain hurts.... Love Zizek!
Two hours of brilliance.
To pay a lot of money to watch this old man talk about the movies he has seen - this is the true ideology.
41:32 - "Again, this is my link with Kung Fu Panda"
I fucking lost it there!
He has anxiety issues, side effect of his mind jumping all over the place. His talent is a gift and a curse.
It’s almost weird that everyone is so still and calm looking. I’ve become so accustomed to his movements. Even the first time I watched him, it could be high in openness and a curiosity about psychiatric patients. He seems benign in comparison. Or borderline of genius and insanity. He’s not incoherent though. I understand his ideas. But not the Lacan stuff.
I understand the situation; and also: maybe we are people with higher% of depression. Greetings from Slovenia.
He is certainly a follower of Tzeentch.
Honestly he just looks he needs sleep. That went pretty far in taking care of my anxiety
Hegels contradictions causes chronic anxiety. As Jeff Beck said, "Definitely maybe."
His comment about "how do we know that a religious experience in not something bad". My thought is ...we are all so singular in our life experience. To many factors play in the development of how we individually view life. We cannot even know or measure what "ONE" person would considered religious.
If a person is religious or spiritual, then perhaps that person can recognize the experience as religious. If a person has no religion, then that person may consider the experience special or enlightening. I also think a bad experience can be religious, but may not be recognized as that.
this is just so legit. i love him
I like how this is before he admitted that he likes Kung Fu Panda.
What a hypocrite smh
Zizek wears a suit when he goes to sleep and a pijama when he talks in front of a crowd.
I want to see Zizek apply this analysis of post-ideology to the meta, self-parody of the Matrix: Resurrections.
Žižek is alien! He has forgotten more knowledge than we ever have in my life.
I swear, Slavoj fucks with you with his accent. I hear him pronounce the age old 'Phylum' instead of 'Film' and think "Ah that accen-" and he hits me with 'Adequat' before I can even finish my derisive thought. I can't help but think it's deliberate.
One of the best Z--violence and void and so on...
well said, I thank you for that
Made some good points. I agree with his idea (can't remember his actual words) that you can believe in something but your brain does it's best to ignore the belief if it doesn't agree with the reality it wants.
Its a cognitive bias, confirmation bias
Slavoj talking about Gangnam Style is peak entertainment
"Falling fully into reality and suffering" zizeks buddhist ideology
It's actually insane his breadth of knowledge l
"Although they did not do the killing... they nonetheless did it"
That is Zizek at his most Zizeky lol
Genius of our time
I'm one hour into it, and he went so much off the rails that he only spouts diversions.
Yes, but there is a thread connecting it all together, it's just really quite hard to follow at times. The first hour: modern societal narratives, spiritual experiences, and ideologies require some amount of sanctioned dissent, rebellion, and self-deprecation to succeed, as it allows us to more readily accept them in their totality if we feel there is a means by which we may deprecate them, even if those means are tacitly accepted by said narrative, spiritual experience, or ideology, or, as he points out, generated by the narrative/experience/ideology in the first place. It also allows them to more easily withstand the supposed dissent in the first place. This goes with the alt-right semi-ironic BS, the self-deprecation of movies like Kung Fu Panda, the "sanctioned" rebellion from the father's authority, etc. etc.
A force of nature
This man is slowly looking like the crazy homelless guy who's talking crazy things every day. The thing is he is right almost every time
Weird right Lol.
His bit about Julie Butler was fucking hilarious
in the Heart = Spirit Being & in the Mind = being Identified .. truth vs Lie .. Ying & Yang .. timeless & in time .. two sides of the same One Being .. (::) "Thankful for the sharing of truth"
Life changing thoughts slavoj
From my little knowledge of Tibetan Buddhism, I see a couple of problems with his critiques: 1- Buddhism does not start just with suffering, it starts with the ignorance of that suffering too, when you’re trapped in the eternal cycle of birth and death…
2-Bodisatva is not a fully enlightenment state. The compassion to the suffering of beings is the last link to this world.
I loved the introduction.
Interesting to note that the same scene from Bhagavad Gita was quoted by J. Robert Oppenheimer (17:00 or so).
@Joe Corneli I have become death? I believe thats the point...
@MrDeicide1 "scene" in a broad sense
The same idea came to my mind when I heard that, this proves that Oppenheimer tried to bury the reality of the horror he made by using poetry; justifying horrors using the greater good stupidity.
MrDeicide1 okay that was epic that u could even know which scene it is or isnt. I have to read it
Joe Corneli it's not the same scene
13:13 some 20th century Italian poets are just beautiful - probably Montale is one of the few great stars of the poetic firmament of our history.
Tell em
He is pointing out that one can use the concept of the greater good to justify to ones conscience ones own evil actions.
1:06:35 Zizek’s musings on New Age spirituality
Nowadays, you could throw in Silicon Valley ayahuasca trips into the mix. Enlightenment for the purpose of increased productivity.
Zizek can make commonplaces sound edgy. Of course spiritual experiences can be disgusting. I am thinking immediately of the cannibal scene in Patrick White's "Fringe of Leave". It isn't hard to think of examples.
This was wonderful. The moderator was a jerk at the end, though, with his “this isn’t a democracy” comment. Plus, he looked impatient when Zizek was talking. Nobody should expect short answer from Zizek.
It was just a joke that he had to pick the questions because of time restraint
Zizek was so far ahead of the ironic alt-right movement that appeared four years after this lecture.
@John Roberts I don't think so. There's some populist/nationalist elements to it. The Dark Enlightenment folks subscribe to monarchy or neocameralism. But there's also a strong Libertarian or individualist streak to it, whereas modern Leftism is often collectivist -- through the influence of Marx, but also through the idea of the "social contract" via Voltaire and Rousseau. The Alt-Right wants to stress three main things: 1) the importance of traditional roles, structures, and ideas, like family, masculinity and femininity, racial and religious communities (as a counterpoint to the sort of Aristotelian disregard of any of these categories as being really ontically real -- Leftism sort of views them as just abstractions or social constructions, at best additive properties to your basic humanity -- this view the alt-right shares with Lacan, btw, Zizek talks extensively about how Lacan was trying to "re-ontologize" gender as a fundamental characteristic part of reality). 2) The tightening of feedback loops, and financial/status meritocracy. If you don't have clear outcomes, or if your payoff structure values societally destructive ways of being, like for example, welfare moms in urban communities, all that ideological talk is only so much noise. 3) Individual responsibility and freedom. This goes along with #2, and anticipates the fact that prediction is very difficult, and knowing through abstract knowledge isn't as good, in many ways, as experiential practice -- "In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice, they are not" - Yogi Berra. Therefore, free markets, intellectual diversity, and let the chips fall where they may, because the cream will usually rise.
If you think about it from a values perspective, then, trad fascism only really shares the first point with the alt right, and doesn't hold to it in exactly the same way. Fascism might lean towards #2 and #3 in certain ways, but is often opposed to them, as we know. Fascism has some meritocratic elements, but also selects for people who believe the ideology. Similarly, fascism cares about responsibility in #3, but not about freedom, and not about the individual almost at all -- those early 20th century movements were about large historical myths, not personal discretion. Figured I'd give it the full breakdown. Cheers.
@Ford Mulligan Thank you for saying some of these points are pervasive -- if that's true, society might be going into a more optimistic direction. I've never heard anyone point out that the modern proletariat are 'deplorables', except for some urban proletariat that swings Left as a matter of tradition, since the 1800s, or at least since the Labor movement.
There's a lot to attack about Marxism. To the Finland Station, which outlines the human element in the history of socialism, from Vico and Michelet on through Hegel and Marx, is a book filled with examples (written by a socialist). The Gulag Archipelago is another. The Fellow Travelers by David Canterbury, which is about the failure of Western intellectuals to denounce the Soviets, and the difficulties that those who did turn coat suffered (like Shaw or Andre Gide), are all full of examples, without a drop of theory. The Krondstat rebellion. The assassination of Trotsky.
But I'm not entirely against Marxism. Holding the decadent elite accountable is a great idea. Economic freedom can surely be paired with something that prevents individuals from forming self-perpetuating aristocracies and monopolies. My point was that where we're heading is not proletarian socialism, just like it isn't grassroots environmentalism. It's the destruction of traditional values, which means the destruction of traditional corridors of power for regular people. It's the massive centralization of power, via technology, by people who already have all the power. And the Left apologizes for it. The Left is basically equivalent to "the Mainstream" now.
That China thing is funny. Sounds like a No True Scotsman fallacy to me. I used to have a Marxist friend who argued China's occupation of Tibet was, by definition, a defensive war, because it was a 'progressive' war, freeing the people from their religious, nationalist overlords. This is where Marxism gets really dangerous: through the commitment to revolution and the concept of "false consciousness," Marxists feel justified in explaining things in terms of their opposites. In the name of denying ground to their opponent, they repeat almost obviously silly things, like "the sky is red." We're seeing the largest seizure and centralization of power by a small segment of the population in human history, and the Left is all for it. This, in itself, is amazing to me.
Lastly, don't call me names.
pure enjoyment on this side..thank you I am serious too
Love this guy always so balanced
I love listening to him but he really embodies saying a lot without saying anything at all