Deep Politics Forum

Gary Severson Wrote:Ed, I'm not critical of your work as you seem to think. In fact I agree with the philosophies in most of your biblio. It seems though, your attitude toward Marxism is very negative and doesn't allow the possibility there could be other ways of interpreting the books in your list.

It seems to me Einstein the socialist has everythng to do with Spinoza and Dimassio. Dimassio has another book "Looking for Spinoza" which is an indication Spinoza is a very big part of Dimassio's attempt to deal with the mind/body problem. There doesn't have to be an obvious mention of socialism in any of these books for them to be related to the creation of socialist man. The attributes of a socialist man would be basically one who puts the welfare of others first. I don't know why you have such a negative view of that kind of person. Your emphasis on the individual as the locus of development suggests a connection to Objectivism as in Ayn Rand. That's just a thought but you seem to liberal to embrace her views.

Let's leave it with this, Gary; I don't think Einstein, Spinoza and Marx have anything to do with me or what I sensed, found or tried to do with this material. I've never read Ayn Rand (but there is an excerpt in STM about Frank Lloyd Wright about the creative process he used for Fallingwater which I recall came from a book she'd written about him). Do all Libertarians pray to Ayn Rand? Do all socialists celebrate Marx' birthday? I don't know (or care).

At my age, given what I've been through and what I am going through, given what is going on in this country and this world, given experiences in other online encounters, I am adverse to being labeled by anyone who doesn't know me or my experience when I have had a lifelong difficulty in labeling myself or in understanding labels and why people use them. The quote that stuck with me in 9th grade from a book of poetry I'd been given as a prize in a reading contest was this one:

"To be nobody-but-yourself -- in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else -- means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting."

If you define "socialist man" as someone who puts others welfare before their own, then I am a socialist man (or at least try to be, with the exceptional aside that one cannot be of benefit to others until and unless they take care of themselves).

I would call someone who puts others welfare first --- boy, do I hate labels -- (action counts more than words and labels) -- a Christian. Some of the books I have read in and around the survey of secret societies use the term "Christine" or -- capitalized or not -- a disciple of Christ.

I left organized Christianity at about age 16 -- gee, almost at the same time Kennedy was killed -- because the organized Christians seem to be busy doing other things, most of them deadly and injurious.

The last socialist Christian I met in person was when I got my copy of JFKU autographed by a simple but learned man who came in on crutches to deliver a talk on his book before returning to his Catholic Workers' service in Birmingham.

The Christ I think I understand is the one who taught something remarkably similar to the summoning of magic from within -- I refer you to Gaffney's "Gnostic Secrets" -- a something or other which enables seeing others immanently and which asks to be shared openly but which was forced into the closet by the political harnessing of religion by an empire (perhaps foreshadowing Evica's fifth essay, among other things).

If helping others capture and harness their personal power (leaving to them the decision about where and how to invest that personal power) makes me a socialist, then you can call me a socialist. But there's nothing in STM that suggests that true personal internal empowerment is to be harnessed in favor of the collective or the state.

I don't see that the collectivism or the state are busy helping accomplish the welfare of others other than a few oligarchs who have captured control of it. And I can't conceive why I or anyone else would want to assist in that enterprise when it is so destructive, immoral and evil.

You say let's leave it at that and then go on another rap about the issue exhibiting more of your lack of knowledge about socialism. I'm glad though you see the relationship between Xianity and socialism.

Gary Severson Wrote:You say let's leave it at that and then go on another rap about the issue exhibiting more of your lack of knowledge about socialism. I'm glad though you see the relationship between Xianity and socialism.

To call a parallel or some similarities (certainly non-existent in its practice by most Xtians, as you call them) a "relationship" is a gross mis-conflation.

Oh, wait, yes... The Gospel According to Marx was written two years after the Pentecost and sent by overland passage to a cave in a hillside overlooking the Moselle River where the reincarnation of Joseph of Arimathea discovered it and presented it to the son of a wealthy vintner who had a conversion epiphany...

No, wait. That's not it.

Jenny von Westphalen was really the reincarnated Mary Magdalene and used to whisper to Marx that that thing Jesus did with the five loaves and the two fish, as soon as he could figure out how to replicate it, could be "the lever of force" that would be needed to overcome any strong centralized state-focused traditions...

that while Jesus used to wander in the wilderness to hide from the authorities (he did, didn't he?), Marx could simply rent apartments using false names, and

that while Jesus was going to eventually get killed because he hid from the state, Marx would live twice as long and die from pleurisy and bronchitis.

No, wait... It's not that, either.

Mary Burns was the reincarnated wife of Joseph and swaddled Marx' vision that he himself saw the crowds and went up to a high spot and sat down and Engels, Georg Friedrich Herwegh, Heinrich Heine, August Herman Ewerbeck, Karl Wallau, Simon Buttermilch, Wilhelm Wolff, and Joachim Lewelel came and sat down with him, and Marx said:

"You get to God through social justice.

Direct knowledge of the Godhead comes through analysis and change of economics and politics. You must preach revolt against the state, the church, the family, legality, religion and property.

Your political emancipation requires a secular state, so you must give up your identity as my disciples.

Now go and wash your own feet."

Men who think they are better than God or who try to control environments or who try to manipulate or oppress…don't they know that their efforts are futile? Without faith hope and love you simply replace one oppression with another.

I think a person can do much social good with out ever reading Marx or the bible or believing in god. And I've met a few like that. The bible, for me, is just a mishmash of allegorical stories and myths, some more inspirational than others, but an understanding of basic marxism is a good way understand the dynamics of a capitalist economic world view and how it can be changed. Which is why it is not taught in school unlike scripture.

Magda Hassan Wrote:I think a person can do much social good with out ever reading Marx or the bible or believing in god. And I've met a few like that. The bible, for me, is just a mishmash of allegorical stories and myths, some more inspirational than others, but an understanding of basic marxism is a good way understand the dynamics of a capitalist economic world view and how it can be changed. Which is why it is not taught in school unlike scripture.

I agree. No one has to believe in god, or Christ, or Marx, or have either of them crammed down their throats. A good solid course in comparative politco-economics ought to be somewhere in the curriculum. Unfortunately, financial and economic illiteracy exists in volume here in the USofA. The Bible needs to be treated with the same eye for historical accuracy and examination as anything else but, for me, it's a matter of what resonates within, what has a ring of truth-value, what works in daily life at an inter-personal level. There are a dozen other belief structures as well, from Islam to Taoism to Buddhism and the one that will be invented tomorrow by some thundering glazed-eye Shaker, Quaker, Mormon, Scientologist, or Alpha Centaurian break-away. One can be a disciple, but the most effective belief may be related to self-discipline.

I just bought Sweet Heaven When I Die: Faith, Faithlessness, and the Country In Between, the new book by Jeff Sharlet. (I still haven't read the first two yet.) And Amazon does have a book called "Marx for Beginners".

Ed Jewett Wrote:I just bought Sweet Heaven When I Die: Faith, Faithlessness, and the Country In Between, the new book by Jeff Sharlet. (I still haven't read the first two yet.) And Amazon does have a book called "Marx for Beginners".

Love Jeff Sharlet. If the Marx book is by Ruis/Ruiz get it because it is a great little book.

Magda Hassan Wrote:

Ed Jewett Wrote:I just bought Sweet Heaven When I Die: Faith, Faithlessness, and the Country In Between, the new book by Jeff Sharlet. (I still haven't read the first two yet.) And Amazon does have a book called "Marx for Beginners".

Love Jeff Sharlet. If the Marx book is by Ruis/Ruiz get it because it is a great little book.

That's the one. Next batch, just for you. :wavey:

Magda Hassan Wrote:I think a person can do much social good with out ever reading Marx or the bible or believing in god. And I've met a few like that. The bible, for me, is just a mishmash of allegorical stories and myths, some more inspirational than others, but an understanding of basic marxism is a good way understand the dynamics of a capitalist economic world view and how it can be changed. Which is why it is not taught in school unlike scripture.

Amen to that. :pope: :unclesam:

Religion is politics by other means.

Religion is a fear/reward-based control system.

Organized religions are conspiratorial in nature; their similar structures may be best understood via the application of the Sponsor/Facilitator/Mechanic model.

Religion targets the spiritual impulse, manipulating and ultimately endeavoring to corrupt and destroy it.

My knowledge and acceptance of the reality that we are not human beings having spiritual experiences, but rather spiritual beings having human experiences, exist in spite of religion.

"I am therefore I think" Spinoza & Drago