really, really interesting post. what was the breakdown for college degrees? (bachelor, masters, doctorate)

i don’t mean to be a dick in a thread about controversial opinions, but tbh it just sounds like you haven’t read much theory on dialectical materialism. all of the examples i gave were extremely bare-bones in order to give you a wider variety of examples. delving into the specificity of each one becomes extremely complicated.

two is important because it’s the number that defines a relationship between things. a relationship between two things is, by nature of the definition, not a relationship with any other thing. this sounds like an oversimplification to you, and it is. let’s take the example of alice, bob and carol to explain dialectical systems:

• each individual relates to every other individual, i.e. A/B, A/C, B/C
• each individual relates to the rest of the group, i.e. A/BC, B/AC, C/AB
• the group itself relates to other people or groups, i.e. ABC/X

this explains how a system of three can be pared down to all its different and theoretically separate relations. of course, there are systems of four, or five, or five hundred, or billions, and the same thing is true in these cases as well. what groups or categories are relevant (i.e. ontology) is determined both by reality and the human interpretation of it. in the context of evolution: yes, one singular predator/prey relationship is one of thousands upon thousands of relationships within one ecosystem. there’s plenty of writing on marxist ecology you can read to better understand this

as far as unity of opposites, it just sounds like you don’t understand what the term means. a unity of opposites means that two things both define and exclude each other. in the case of matter and energy: we cannot truly understand matter outside of its relationship to energy, and yet matter is not energy and vice versa. i do not know enough about the math of general relativity to go into deeper specifics with you there, but i’m sure you could find reading on it if you were so inclined.

clearly the computational example is not sufficient for or useful to you, since your issue is that you don’t believe diamat applies to the natural sciences outside of human experience, so i will skip this.

as far as how we reach conclusions, again this is pretty basic theory in terms of the dialectical materialist theory of knowledge, which can really be understood as the understanding of the application of the scientific method to all human life and experience. correct ideas, i.e. correct theories, can only be understood as such via the testing of those theories (experiment and observation), i.e. practice. this is the primary reason why i can give you an unending number of examples, but none will really be meaningful unless you apply and understand one yourself. at the same time, just because a theory is a theory does not necessarily mean it’s wrong, it just means it hasn’t been tested or put to observational scrutiny yet. general relativity was only a theory (math is theory) until the bending of light was observed in real life. now that it has been sufficiently proven, no one would question our application of it in various contexts.

i know it might not seem like it, but i really, absolutely understand where you’re coming from, because it is exactly how i felt about diamat when i first started learning about it. “how can anything be applicable to ALL things? i don’t see any dialectical relationships in x example.” “how can everything be divided into two things? this makes no sense.” but, the more you learn about it and subsequently apply it to your life (both daily life and specific scholarly research), and consistently are returned with positive feedback thus indicating a correct idea, in will increasingly indicate to you its universality. this is again why i can give you examples until my fingers fall off and we would come up with the same result until you applied and tested the theory yourself, which is what i encourage you to do.

i mean you do you, but marx and engels were strongly influenced by research into the hard sciences, particularly darwin’s theory of evolution at the time. evolution is a pretty good case study for the dialectics of nature: for example, the relation between a predator and its prey. the development of the contradiction changes both entities over time in what we understand as evolution.

einstein’s theory of relativity also pretty well demonstrates the dialectics of nature. rather than space and time being separate entities, they are one thing that form a unity of opposites. the same is true for matter and energy in the famous E=mc^2: matter is energy, but at the same time they are not. there is a unity of opposites.

i always liked the fact that absolute zero can’t be reached as a good example of how the only permanent thing is change, given that heat is simply particle motion. qubits in quantum computing are also another fun example, where there’s a dialectic between 1 and 0 rather than there being a simple binary (which itself is a dialectic, but simplified and less gradient).

i get feeling like it’s bullshit and nonsense, and tbh if it even is an unpopular opinion it’s at least a very common one. i felt exactly the same way about dialectics: “this can be applied to EVERYTHING? that’s nuts, this is nuts.” but, the more examples you can apply it to yourself, the more sense it will make over time. just my two cents.

have you read engels’ dialectics of nature?

i’m sorry that you experienced something so unfortunate and uncomfortable. i hope you’re okay. i have a few thoughts for you:

1. sakai is fine, but frankly it doesn’t seem like a fantastic work to me. yes, it says a lot of things that people need to hear, but it just doesn’t seem very intersectional to me. there’s no monopoly on exploitation; you can be white and also be exploited. of course, whiteness generally implies a higher level of exploitation

2. socialism is not only more correct but feels better when it comes from a place of love. you should be able to love yourself and your class(es). apart from being able to distinguish the progressive forces in society, this love should even extend to your enemies to some extent because we can see the amazing potential for a unified humanity of which everyone will be a part.

3. it can be easy to get bogged down by the infinite knowledge of current events, or of economic exploitation and its horrors, or from alienation/pain/disability ultimately caused by capitalism. i think it’s necessary to have a correct philosophical foundation first and foremost, in order to give yourself a good framework to digest that infinite information. that framework should also be applied to your own personal life, which is the only way it can be solidified but also the only way you can truly understand yourself and your woes, thus providing you with revolutionary optimism. to the extent that you can, study dialectical materialism!

frankly, there’s very little reason to read philosophy other than that which is rooted in dialectical materialism, unless you have a solid base and want to understand how and why other philosophies are wrong. general criticisms of entire philosophies are literally unavoidable due to the infinite complexity of reality, but you should understand the criticisms of postmodernism from the viewpoint of diamat before you truly believe them. imo these would be:

0. this should go without saying, but there is almost no reference to dialectics in most of these works. if there is, it expresses no understanding of dialectics.

1. claiming that there can be no ideology. there are many variants of this claim, what i tend to see today is skepticism towards ideology of the masses or of society at large. diamat understands ideology to be central to human experience

2. a laser-focus on the realm of the specific over the general. understanding the general or essence is actually more important to not just existence but also ideology development. the vast majority of western academia revolves around this. another way to think about this would be that it favors analysis over synthesis. this is also true in its analysis of society, which leads to an individualist understanding as you said.

3. fundamentally subjectivist. that is to say, that it often supposes that because we can never have 100% certainty regarding our understanding of the world, it brings every conclusion (even its own) into question. diamat understands that there is an objective world, and that while there is subjective human experience, there is an objective chasm between that subjective experience and the objective world. human struggle is to constantly make that chasm as small as possible, even if as it grows in response to human struggle.

4. like you said, an important criticism of postmodernism is that it’s idealist. more specifically, i would call it pretty consistently engaging in mysticism. because it’s fundamentally incorrect (due to the previous 4 points), it will usually pose many (usually inane) questions and come to the conclusion that reality is unknowable and no certainty can be had regarding reality. this is sometimes followed by a (non-declarative, as always) suggestion that supernatural or mystical elements are the reasons why things are the way they are. even when literal mysticism doesn’t occur, the vast majority of postmodern writings are also written horribly, in such a way as to mystify the topic at hand for the reader rather than to lead to any meaningful conclusions.

5. this is a bit of addendum, but postmodernists tend to either think that all of society is strictly cultural, or that the superstructure is always dominant over the base. this is why there’s a lot of obsession over things like language (“language is central to thought because we all think in language, therefore language and culture are central to human development”), as opposed to the diamat theory of knowledge.

of course, an important element is its history and why postmodernism exists as a superstructural ideology in the first place. postmodernism is a reaction to both the founding of socialist states (chiefly the USSR) as well as a response to both world wars that were ultimately caused by capitalism. it became quite difficult for capitalists to talk about how idyllic capitalism was when it embroiled the world in war, and nukes continued to threaten the world. consequently, it became much easier to allow everyone to criticize and be skeptical of capitalism, so long as they were also critical and skeptical of all existing socialist countries as well.

this later developed into what we have today, which is that you can say or do whatever you want, so long as you don’t actually threaten capitalist society at all. and of course the background of the cold war is also important to understand here too. postmodernism is, in essence, the superstructure of capitalism in decline, as a force that recognizes itself as no longer progressive. this is why many postmodernists were avid anticommunists, while also using marxist words/terminology, in an effort to confuse a new generation of leftists after the red scare. if you read any derrida regarding marx, it reads as incomprehensible and laughable gibberish and only serves to mysticize and mystify.

can you provide an example of postmodernist tendencies that are coherent with marxism? my understanding is that they are diametrically opposed. the claim that not all postmodernists are the same is often used by postmodernists to distance themselves from other postmodernists who are openly unsavory. and, there will always be differences between sects of a branch of philosophy, but this doesn’t mean they don’t come from the same branch. it’s just differentiating what the branch, or underlying similarity, is.

where can i read more?

tbh i feel like this answer is mostly wrong for a few reasons:

• in terms of material conditions, this analysis doesn’t really seem to take into account the present change in geopolitics from US hegemony to global bipolarity (west vs the rest) that is happening before our very eyes. NATO is losing (badly) in ukraine, so much so that the US wants to pull out if possible in order to focus on china, perhaps still blindly hoping they can separate the two. currently we are seeing a quantitative change towards bipolarity/multipolarity, but once it truly crosses the threshold there will be a large qualitative change during which years can happen in weeks, as lenin might say. being trillions in debt, once enough countries lose faith in the dollar and are able to dedollarize, the dollar will quickly collapse. this will be a very rude awakening in terms of material conditions for anyone in the core. the dollar might even collapse (or at least greatly depreciate in purchasing power) if the US were to start open war with china, which is clearly a possibility and would be a rude awakening in and of itself given the lack of a draft since vietnam. the eurozone being carved out by US industry is a small sneak peak into what might happen elsewhere in the core: hundreds of thousands of people protesting, more strikes in months than in the past several years, cost of living suddenly shooting through the roof, etc.

• i feel your analysis of the US bourgeoisie as a class is oversimplified. the two major sects are the primarily financialized bourgeoisie that wants to export work abroad for cheaper labor, wants to export capital to captive markets, buy back its own stocks etc etc. essentially the imperial bourgeoisie as we understand it. they are incredibly dominant, but the second sect, the industrial sect that wants to focus on imperialism and colonialism within the core are not nonexistent. more importantly, as imperial control over the periphery becomes weaker and weaker, the balance of class power will move more and more towards this “national,” more openly fascist bourgeoisie. they will make the systems of black, indigenous, and hispanic colonization even more brutal, forcing worse material conditions at home to make up for lower profits from abroad. your statistic of 11x the wealth doesn’t really account for the class makeup of the colonialized core: this class of essentially neoslaves are now but will especially become the most revolutionary class. if there’s suddenly a qualitative change in material conditions like mentioned above, this could happen quicker than it seems like it might right now.

• you completely overemphasize the might of the US military at home and abroad. yes, the colonial police essentially use looted value from abroad in order to fund weapons and surveillance so much so that there’s overwhelming force enough to kill any movement in its crib. but, what happens when there isn’t that gigantic surplus to loot from internationally? furthermore, the limits of the MIC regarding the national military are quite clear: like bullying its neoslaves at home, all of its military victories abroad (iraq, syria, libya, etc) have been won with overwhelming force, but also has a pathetic string of losses. the MIC desires constant war, not war with objectives that can be won. the MIC also wants to spend as much money on things like the f-35, rather than spending the least amount of money to make the most effective equipment. thus we see how the MIC actually incentivizes top brass to be complete idiots strategically and tactically, at least to an extent. i think a similar phenomenon is true for the imperial police: they are fat, green, and complete cowards. they kill with impunity for these reasons, and because they know they can.

this is not to say that i think collapse or something is inevitable, or it will definitely happen in x years, or whatever. but an important aspect of the core-periphery dialectic is that that is what the empire is. the empire is not the core, it’s the core and periphery, and there is a mutually dependent relationship between the two. as the hold on the periphery begins to slip and then suddenly fall, this will constitute a collapse of the imperial system, which will also mean collapse or at the very least huge instability in the core. and of course, not necessarily a socialist collapse.

thanks for responding! i’ll try to be as brief as possible.

1. this is a little silly imo: i am not calling for the repudiation of all ideas after someone has died, this was the entire point of quoting mao in my response later. the point here is that ideas are always determined by experiences and material conditions, and the applicability of old ideas to the present should be determined by the extent to which the material conditions that influenced/produced the idea are still present or relevant. this is why mao’s ideas regarding the theory of knowledge are still very applicable, because people acquire knowledge in exactly the same way. lenin’s ideas on finance capital are still very applicable, but less so because finance capital has developed since his death. mao’s ideas on a theorized immortality are not, because he could not realistically conceive of how it would be applied, and his society was not even close to developed enough to administer, let alone develop, the theoretical medical technique.

2. this is where you need a better and more holistic sense of revolutionary optimism, because you’re repeating an undialectical idiom that we westerners are taught from a very young age: “people never change.” marxism and diamat understands everything as a process, and thus everything is constantly changing. if you can’t perceive the change, it’s because it’s either on a timescale or level of specificity/generality that is far enough from your personal experience to perceive it: we don’t notice dead wood rotting (time), we can’t see the motion of atoms in perceived solids (specificity), nor can we perceive the rotation of the earth around the sun (generality). if you can’t perceive people changing, then either you’re not looking hard enough or it happens on a timescale that is slow (again, a contradiction that would need resolving if immortality existed). and, you’re denying human change that is so obvious. after all, didn’t you change in order to become a marxist? in most cases people must change in accordance with their material conditions, or else they die! if youth is the best biological context through which people can quickly change, wouldn’t increasing our youthspan actually be good? and, finally, isn’t marxism the best means through which to not only induce change, but to accept and understand change?

3. yes, i accept that the increased lifespan of society is obviously more important than increasing individual lifespans. however, a marxist shouldn’t absolutely favor one over the other in totality, this is undialectical. after all, stalin is the one that said that socialism intends to free society in order to free individuals. it’s not possible to teach all people to be completely selfless, and it’s probably not desirable either because individual survival is important for society! but again, i accept that society is dominant over the individual.

4. there are many goals of socialism, but what is the primary one? in the broad sense, we can say that the primary goal is to take the reigns of society away from capital and move towards a classless society. in an even broader sense, the primary goal of a socialist society is to determine what the primary contradictions are within society, and to work towards resolving them. currently the primary contradiction is class, but at some point it will become lifespan, or health, or species, etc. in a more specific sense, the goal of a socialist society is to act in the interest of the working class to improve their lives, and consequently the lives of everyone in society. are cuban doctors not socialist for traveling the world to decrease suffering? and again, standards of suffering are also subject to change: if no one experienced aging, then we would have a different understanding of what the primary contradiction in terms of health would be, perhaps diseases given to us genetically. immortality, or wildly increased healthspans, would not necessitate the removal of pain, just excess pain in accordance with technological advancement.

5. let’s go ahead and be more specific about what i mean by immortality: an indefinitely increased healthy lifespan, with an indeterminate end. after all yes, nothing is immortal because ultimately the universe will end unless we resolve that contradiction billions of years from now. immortality is a shorthand for the potential to live hundreds, thousands, or millions of years: to us, the difference would be so huge that it would effectually be immortal, even though it technically would not. and, i’m sure there will always be more contradictions to resolve in the quest for increasingly healthy lifespan, but claiming that death is better than life, or is somehow necessary, is just ridiculous and ultimately conservative. yes it serves a function, but you didn’t respond to all the very clear and obvious social benefits from having a wildly increased healthy lifespan, which essentially amount to the accumulation of more and more experiences. and yes, we have all the reason to be skeptical of capitalist science, but at the same time we should be able to separate that skepticism of the application of that science from the actual science itself. like i said, only time will tell if this is real science. but, is it out of the realm of possibility to achieve great advances in healthy lifespan within 50, 100, 1000 years? not really, given that other life already experiences these possibilities.

i think there’s a deep, deep irony in simultaneously bringing up how immortality (the resolution of the contradiction of aging, or the survival aspect of living) would create more intense contradictions regarding the ability of societies to adapt to material conditions, while using quotes from people who are long dead and lived in wildly different material conditions to uphold a seemingly metaphysical “communist morality.” mao was not a prophet, he was a leader of a largely agrarian and peasant society who did the most for his society that could be done with the tools that he had. with new tools comes new standards for what can be done to improve the quality of life of society. do you really think confucius would be the exact same after 2000 years?

treatment of aging would be an incredibly efficient, cheap, and easy way to treat all the diseases that are symptoms of aging, and that cause pain and suffering around the world. if we also assume that a longer lifespan means the accumulation of more experiences, more education, and more wisdom, then an older but healthy populace would produce more value for less time and have the ability to lead richer, fuller lives. how is this individualistic?? as new tools and standards of health are developed, so too do the standards of morality; claiming that there is one unchanging “communist morality” (especially before communism exists, how can you even know this?) is not very marxist.

further, what better society or social system to deal with the resolution of the contradiction between old and new – which has historically better allowed societies to adapt to material conditions, as you rightfully point out – than the application of scientific socialism and marxism? it is literally all about determining the material conditions of people in a society and adapting the society around that data and feedback. even if all humans were magically immortal overnight, marxist societies would still be better able to function with this development than non-marxist societies, thus trending towards global communism. this goes for the application of the hypothesized medical treatment too: socialist societies would be better able to develop and apply the treatment, especially in an equitable manner.

as far as the viability of such medical application, i’m not a scientist and can’t have an informed opinion: “no investigation, no right to speak” i think is a more broadly applicable mao quote, until knowledge acquisition changes. i admit it sounds fantastical, but having all human records and knowledge at your fingertips would have sounded fantastical to someone like mao. the idea that it would be inherently immoral, however, is dogmatic and ridiculous. if anything, like most technological advancement, it would accelerate the decline of global and then national capitalism.

hollow knight, hades, and starcraft brood war are all timeless

monobattles was my life for a full year or two

yeah that’s not a big surprise: anytime you do something in front of people you’re always more liable to make mistakes, that’s just how it works. the trick to performing is truly accepting that and using the increased possibility for mistakes as opportunities for improv, both of which are hard to do for something rote like solfege.

i never had to do solfege + conducting exams, but i’ve done my fair share of solfege exams. when they were conducted in front of the class (which they weren’t always) people would always stumble or be extra nervous with one or two exceptions. confidence is obviously important too, but it’s important for most people to be super confident about solfege hahaha. in any case i wouldn’t sweat it, and solfege isn’t really a singing test as much as it is an intervallic and rhythm test.

great to hear!! if you have any questions about practice just let me know.

nice to get an update, i was confused yesterday. every time i consistently can’t connect to lemmygrad i assume the worst hahaha

just want to clarify that it wasn’t exactly mango press making that specific argument, but someone in telegram comments. and, the argument wasn’t that his english was fluent, but that he used specific idioms that only an american would use. mango press did make the argument that only a US citizen would be eligible for student loans.

there are multiple brands of chinese phones like xiaomi, huawei, etc that are all cheaper and/or better for the price than their western counterparts. as far as phone plans, i’d make sure to get an unlocked phone (which i think all global phones are anyways) so that you can get a cheap af phone plan like redmobile, cricket, or any of those kinds of providers. i pay like 10 a month or something for phone service

i mean to be fair, yeah i think the british empire probably qualifies as the instigator and supporter of the most global violence before 1950 or so, when the US took control over the british and other empires. this isn’t to say anything good about US colonial and imperial violence before that, just a statement of fact.

it’s all part of the process of navigating shitty school systems tbh. there are fuckin hundreds of thousands of 18-year-olds that go into college not knowing a lot, or what they’re getting into, or what they want to study or do with their lives. no need to regret, just take the important things as lessons learned and move forward the best you can.