Aesthetic Materialism

Lenin the Liberal Before we can consider the question of whether Lenin was a liberal, we must address the question of what we mean by liberalism.     Some people, when asked for a definition of liberalism, will start talking about things like free speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion and expression and so on.  Others emphasize democracy.  Still others see free trade as the sine qua non of liberalism.  Still others will start babbling about "reformism," and claiming that liberals seek to change their society and their world peacefully, whereas radicals can be defined as those who "use violence" to achieve their ends - an obvious absurdity, since liberals have used violence anywhere and everywhere, from the French Revolution to the United States periodically bombing the Middle East.      In point of fact, none of these mushy "definitions" of liberalism are adequate to our task here, for  obvious reason: Karl Marx was a c...

    The second stupid est idea is that all thoughts are in language. The stupid est idea is that nothing exists except language.  See: The Linguistic Turn was a Wrong Turn And, next: Mystics and Hubristics But wait, there's more: The third stupidest idea

  I'm too much of a materialist to agree with people like Ricky Gervais, Bill Maher and Sam Harris. They see world problems such as war,  terrorism,  the oppression of women, repressive attitudes about sex, etc., as being caused by religion. As a materialist, I find the notion that an idea could cause these things to happen rather dubious. Dig a little deeper, and one always finds economic forces behind all of these problems.  Rather than scapegoating and blaming the existence of systemic problems on the interior beliefs and thoughts of individual human beings, I think it's a better use of our time to focus on how privilege and oppression can be embedded in structural institutions.  Religion isn't the enemy.  Indeed, by vilifying religion, we risk alienating ourselves from potential allies in the struggle against real material economic interests that run contrary to our own. My name is "Ian."  When I was growing up, this was an extremely unusu...

    If someone is whining and complaining about "political correctness," it's usually a good idea to stop listening to them.  They rarely have anything interesting to say. Saying that "political correctness" is bad is such a cliche, so boring, such a rerun of a million blowhards, passed from one brain to another without the slightest critical thought, that when you hear someone complain about "political correctness" you can usually be sure that that person is a total conformist who is utterly driven by popular opinion and incapable of having any independent ideas. In fact, what you never hear is someone being bold enough to defend political correctness.  That is so rare that it almost doesn't exist.  (Almost.*)  To hear someone give a full-throated cheer for political correctness, no matter how wacky and incongruous and seemingly impossible that argument would have to be, would be a breath of fresh air.  It would be such a treat just for the sheer...

I just said, "Materialism is the beautiful failure of a worldview to coincide with itself." But already, the worldview that I just outlined, is failing to coincide with itself. Perhaps it is better to say, "The material is the beautiful failure of a worldview to coincide with itself."  Or better yet, "Materiality is the beautiful failure of a worldview to coincide with itself" (because, who knows what the material is, in itself?  It seems more cautious to focus on that specific attribute of the material that makes it material... but does that necessarily imply an essentialism, which diverts us from the material?  Likely so, but perhaps this is a necessary diversion....) So: Materiality is the beautiful failure of a worldview to coincide with itself.  Materialism is the appreciation of that beauty. No, not quite.  Materiality is the beautiful failure of a worldview to coincide with itself.  The materialist appreciates that beauty.  This appreciation is ...

Materialism is the beautiful failure of a worldview to coincide with itself. This explains Marx's fascination with Hegel.  It seems odd, and counterintuitive, that Marx (I was about to say, "Marx, given his general outlook on things... his... worldview"... but let's not complicate things)..... It seems odd and counterintuitive that Marx would be interested in Hegel, and especially strange that Marx would remain interested in Hegel.  Plenty of people try to tidy this confusion up by asserting that the "Young Marx" was interested in Hegel, but that eventually he put away these childish things, grew up, and in his maturity developed something that had absolutely nothing to do with Hegel.  But scholarship does not support this nice, neat (worldview?) division.  Instead, it appears Marx kept turning back to Hegel, again and again throughout his career.  Why?  Marx was interested, not in any of Hegel's positive conclusions (indeed, he was quite critical of th...

 Materialism is the beautiful failure of a worldview to coincide with itself.