Aesthetic Materialism

It’s not clear what a classless society means, precisely.  As Wittgenstein might say, “I cannot picture it.”  And it stinks of utopia.  It’s difficult to avoid picturing a class society, where class is rigidly maintained, where the rule of the ruling class is undisputed and incontestable - and one aspect of this brutal rule is the absolute prohibition on acknowledging that class exists.  The prohibition of class analysis is a means by which the ruling class maintains its rule.   (And of course, in many ways, this is already how the United States, for instance, operates.)  It may be that class will always exist, but will take a very wide variety of forms - and we are bound vigilantly to oppose each and every form of class domination as it appears.  The price of liberation is eternal vigilance.  Part of that vigilance is always refusing to believe that we live in a classless society, and always working to detect class relationships, no matter how su...

[first posted to facebook... date unknown] One of my favorite-ever religions has to be Zurvanism. Zurvanism was a kind of non-standard Zoroastrianism that scholars believe arose in the 4th century BCE, and gradually grew in popularity... some of the Sassanid Emperors were Zurvanites, especially at its peak, in the 4th century CE. But then they lost power and the Zurvanites dwindled down to a tiny minority sect, which nonetheless persisted for many centuries before finally disappearing in the 13th century. Still, we have plenty of Zurvanite texts and archaeological remains to look through..... Zoroastrianism is often thought of, at least by Westerners, as a "dualistic" religion. The universe is split in half: light vs. dark, good vs. evil, the forces of the heroic god Ahura Mazda (or Ormazd; there are many spellings) and friends vs. his wicked twin, Angra Mainyu (or Ahriman) and his ilk battling eternally. But for Zurvanites, there is a third principle, which makes...