The absolute worst is them saying socialism is pessimistic because it thinks people can't do anything for themself and coddles them with a nanny state. Then turns around and says "you have to structure capitalism assuming every single person is a greedy sociopath hellbent on fucking over everyone else to make money."
Not exactly, the argument (is incoherent and insane) is something like "you can't have too much democracy and centralized power because people in power are always corrupt." ✨Somehow✨ laissez-faire capitalism is supposed to naturally account for corruption and sociopathy because the free market forces(???) them to do good things because people are able to spend their money somewhere else. Always non-violent btw ❤️
Seen this clip from some american fundie podcast that was... a choice.
This person was asked something like, if you could have world peace, but all governments become socialist, would you do it? They said no and fucking justified their answer with a partial quote from something like Deuteronomy 15:7-11, claiming that well the bible says there'll always be the poor so socialism is actually bad because of that, and a quick search to see if I could find it there's a lot of stuff echoing the same stuff, that socialism is unbiblical etc.
What the actual fuck is wrong with these people? I'm irreligious but was raised Christian, this is so vehemently counter to my understanding of Christian teachings (the flavour of which I was raised has atheist ministers so there's that), which was more or less, raise everyone up, accept everyone for who they are, help people, don't turn a blind eye to injustice and like just be decent to each other. Was this podcast prosperity doctrine shit or something else because yeah wow, it's honestly sinister to me.
American evangelical fundamentalists firmly believe in heirarchy— children are under the authority of their mother, who is under the authority of her husband, who is under the authority of God.
They see any disruption of this heirarchy as an attack on their religion.
Taxes? You're usurping the man's authority to spend his money as he sees fit.
Women's liberation? You're usurping the man's authority over his wife.
Entitlements? You're usurping the man's authority to use his pocketbook as leverage over his family.
Immigration? You're usurping the man's authority by lowering his cultural relevance.
LGBTQ+ acceptance? You're usurping the man's authority by undermining the patriarchy.
You've probably noticed a pattern as to who is primarily driving these issues.
Yup. Funny all the people blaming the bible like the dude up there calling it a stupid book... obviously hasn't read it. The bible has great lessons, 90% of Christians just ignore them is all. Don't blame the book for the idiots who claim to follow it when they actually aren't. Even the stuff wanna be Christians quote thinking it supports their argument they are either misunderstanding or leaving out vital context. Real Christians are very rare and almost never associated with an organized church. They just quietly try to do their best they don't try to use their belief to justify the rest of their life and bad decisions.
This actually makes sense, once you understand what their problem is with communism.
You see, they have no problem with all the benefits that communism offers... What bothers them is the idea that those benefits would be given to people who haven't earned it.
Heaven, to them, is a reward. Only the pure, the righteous, the faithful get to enjoy its benefits. Heaven only works for them if they imagine that they will be able to look down and see hell.
A heaven for everyone, with no walls, no gates, no pitiful outcasts scrabbling to get in... That's no heaven at all.
You’re not wrong about the reward being earned. That’s definitely the unspoken part of it.
When I grew up religious, the conversion was that communism was a bastardization of god’s plan, so it’s inherently evil. Basically, it cannot be as pure and perfect with men in charge so it will fail every time.
You’d think they’d want to try and be more like their god and his plan for their heaven but they just reject it.
They believe that only God can be the one to create paradise on earth. A primary pillar of their faith requires earth to be in a constant state of suffering until then.
Heaven only works for them if they imagine that they will be able to look down and see hell.
See, this is the part I can't get behind. An eternity of that disparity with even the smallest scrap of empathy would eventually be unending torment. Every day is just more "oh yeah, hell is a thing and I can't do anything about it..."
Fr, I knew for fact that there was something deeply fucked up about "The Good Place" in the TV show bearing the same name when Janet played Eleanor a short clip of sound from the Bad Place.
No, the issue most people have with it is that it requires a king (god) to make it work. People don't mind a higher being (god) ruling them as an absolute monarch. They do mind handing such power to a human, since we have seen again and again how such power corrupts people.
When I was fairly young my mom described Christian heaven. I remember struggling with the idea of not struggling and being happy all the time. Then she hit me with if someone you love doesn't make it to heaven you forget them. That's when the fracture began for me.
But at the end of my lifetime, it's someone I loved, but that God doesn't love (not enough to bring them to heaven, anyway...), and so my feelings about them get updated with God's perspective?
So I learn why I was wrong to love them?
Edit: I'm just saying that Hell as a concept, alongside an all-loving God, doesn't compute, to me.
Whereas Hell as a concept, introduced by human church leaders, to keep tithes up, makes perfect sense, to me.
So it feels like an Occam's Razor situation, to me.
To be fair, the heaven of the Bible is neither stateless nor classless. "The nations" are still present in Revelation 21 and 22, and inequality in heaven is a common theme in Jesus's parables.
"The nations" is just fancy for "non Jews". Remember that the bible predates modern nation states by more than a millennium.
inequality in heaven is a common theme in Jesus's parables.
Is that so? I can think of the story with the lamps where it's about getting into the kingdom of god or the treasure in the field where it's about finding the kingdom of god. Or that the poor will inherit the kingdom of god while rich people cannot get into it. Nothing about inequality inside the kingdom of god.
You have to keep in mind that the kingdom of god isn't really heaven as we think of it even tho Matthew uses the wording kingdom of heaven (to avoid the word god as a good jew). We think of heaven as life after death but the kingdom of god is on earth when Jesus returns and the dead arise and he builds his kingdom here.
"Least"/"Greatest" in "the kingdom of heaven" is a construction that appears at least once off the top of my head, Matthew 5:19. I'm sure there are more. But also, Jesus is depicted as a literal monarch and heaven a kingdom like you said, so there's at least one extra class right there.
I had it drilled into my head as a kid. When I left home I forgot most of it. Then as an adult I brushed up on it to argue with the kind of people who drilled it into my head as a kid.
Saying "The only one I call king is the one who died at the cross" subverts the very concept of a king. Not only is this guy no longer here to directly command anyone but his death was the most humiliating to him and his followers possible. In this way, it's anti-authoritarian. Similar with the greatest in the kingdom of god. It's the last you would think of: the poor, the children, ... . Sure, this leaves place for interpretation. You can say it's just a new hierarchy. Or it's so radically putting everything into question that it's in effect a call against all hierarchies. Or that it's so radical, it can't be taken serious at all so barely means anything anymore.
Christianity as a whole shows all of this. The first communes shared everything in common, there was "neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus". (Gal 3, 28). Later a new hierarchy establish which, once established, wasn't new or subversive anymore but just a top down hierarchy. Once in a while someone came with a more subversive reading, more often than not founding a new organization that ended up with a strict hierarchy.
I think the biggest flaw is that there is no sustainable alternative given. You can criticize capitalism all day long and reinforce it as a system without an alternative if you don't give one. Some Christians found alternatives and supported them with the scripture, others supported very different things with scripture. That's the thing with all world religions: They start in opposition to society but fail to think outside the box and so they end up reinforcing it while keeping the seldom fulfilled potential for a better society ("world region" in the sense Graeber uses the term in Debt and Graham discusses in this podcast episode I guess but I'm not sure).
All that said, since the first Christians certainly had a very egalitarian, anti-authoritative reading, this is the most authoritative reading (pun intended).
This is good stuff; your argument is well reasoned. Brings me back to my Bible study days.
I still think "all hierarchies" might be overbroad. The Bible itself prescribes elders/bishops and deacons to administer the church, for instance, and it's radical enough regarding obedience to authority that, in my experience, modern day theologically conservative churches trend toward authoritarianism and mostly unchecked abuse of power more often than not. This would have been contemporaneous with the communes.
As for the more heavenly hierarchies, I looked back at some of the points of evidence that I was going to bring up here that I thought supported my case, but the "outer darkness" in Matthew 22 I once thought might not necessarily be hell sure seems like hell upon rereading, and as for the parable of the unforgiving servant who was sent to the "torturers" despite his debts being forgiven, it looks like that word "torturers" is connected to jailers, i.e. debtors' prison, so I can't argue confidently that the servant was "saved" from anything and given a different punishment instead. There are still a few passages I can't totally square though:
The parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32): He gets welcomed back into the family, and he sure seems saved in the sense that I think most Christians would read into it, but his inheritance is spent; he doesn't get more. All the father has belongs to the other son.
The purifying fire of 1 Corinthians 3:9-15: Both groups of people are explicitly "saved". One is rewarded, the other suffers loss.
The parable of the talents/minas: In the Matthew 25 version of the parable, the first two servants get the same reward (authority over "many things"). No issue there. But in the Luke 19 version, the rewards are proportional. And the one with 10 minas gets a bonus at the end.
That's as far as I got before my eyes glazed over.
I never had much use for non-religious secondary sources back when I was a believer, so I can't recommend any, but the New Testament isn't actually that long; you could probably finish it in a week if you read 20-30 chapters a day, and the chapters are short. The first three books, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and to a lesser extent the fourth, John, are all the same; you can probably just pick one (John is probably the most interesting) and read the rest of the NT as is. Whether or not it's worth your time is entirely up to you. I certainly have no intention of reading it again any time soon.
I think nothing outside of the gospels is of any merit. It is probably worth your time to read the red words in the bible. Jesus was on some real shit, minus all the son of god stuff
Before people get huffy yes I have read the entire bible; it is not "the most beautiful book ever written" nor anything close to that, but Jesus was an interesting dude
You also can not read the bible as if it's modern English and interpret it as such. Always consider 1. who was talking then, 2. who they were talking to, and 3. the context in which they were speaking at the time.
Like, you can do some really interesting conversations about Neo Platonism and philo-semitism around the time some of the New Testament was being written - Gnosticism undoubtedly comes from Greek philosophy - but many portions of the Hebrew Bible predate Hesiod entirely.
Can you provide any form of argument, or is this some shit you picked up from like Zeitgeist or something.
Didn’t Alan Watts usually talk about (his extremely westernized interpretation of) Zen Buddhism? When has Alan Watts made the strange argument that ancient Israelites were somehow aware of Greek mythology and a specific text that wasn’t even written until at least many of the minor prophets books were written?
When has Alan Watts ever really been focused on the development of the Hebrew Bible and New Testament and it’s relationship to Greek mythology? Do you have a link to his argument?
Edit: Checked out and skimmed Myth & Ritual in Christianity online to see if what you are saying is in there. I strongly suspect that you are seriously misinterpreting ideas related to Jung and the collective unconscious (as does Zeitgeist), but feel free to clarify.
I’ve come to the conclusion that Christians that vote republic just dissociate their “church” brain vs their non “church” brain. Their religious beliefs ONLY apply to religious things. Everything else just goes to whatever their true value system is.
I think this dude is incapable of dissociating, so he just forces his true value system onto his church beliefs. He will ignore the text that contradicts his own values. There’s definitely lots of people like that.
I mean that basically describes Christianity as a whole. The entirety of the religion throughout human history is basically people reforming it to suit their needs. True of most religions really.
I don't think most religious people have any beliefs, they just roll with whatever stances are currently popular amongst their peers. If a large enough number of their peers say their god says slavery is valid, then they will say slavery is valid, or a million other horrible things
Apparently feeding school kids for free was controversial (and still is controversial).
And I watched a fellow parent on Facebook post an event about bake sales to raise money, to immediately sharing talking points about why it's bad for kids to get free school lunches.
The Bible as a text has zero issues with slavery. The Old Testament thinks it’s fine to sell your daughter. The New Testament tells slaves to submit to their masters.
Your average Christian has very little knowledge of what the Bible actually contains. Non denominational Protestant Christianity’s focus on the personal relationship with God and their interpretation of ‘Biblical literalism’ means that you just squint at the text and read what you want from it.
I remember listening to some particularly painful exegesis on David killing the Amalekite messenger being some kind of message on not tattling to your boss about things. They don’t read things in context - they read snippets and verses and work in their pop culture understandings about hell, Satan, and salvation into the text.
Yes, my son. You may be as evil as you wish, so long as you say "sorry" on Sunday, Heaven's doors will be open to you. God help you if you die on a Saturday, though... :)
That's not how it works. You have to mean it when you repent. If you go killing someone with the intent to just repent later, you are basically screwed. As you probably won't truly regret what you have done.
It's not only that, but you must also turn from your sin and towards God. That is, make a conscious commitment not to sin.
"Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord," Acts 3:19
(2) "Jesus answered, "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? (3) I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish." Luke 13:2-3
There are plenty of Christians who specifically and deliberately oppose attempting to make life on earth more like heaven. They’re not being hypocrites for this, this is their belief system. To disagree with them is to wade into a theological debate, not just a political one.
same reason people say "unalive" and "fuggen" and "child 🌽".... the Internet has become a place for self censoring idiot babies afraid of being algorithmically demonitized/banned
corporate monopolies of all popular platforms has kneecapped actual free speech by training entire generations to be afraid of violating terms of service, I guess
What if heaven is just whatever you need heaven to be? Like, what if it's just a temporary state of affairs? You enter Heaven, and it is exactly what you need to be at peace with your death and your life before that. Then, when you're ready, after however much time you need, you can decide to move on and stop existing, or send your soul to be reincarnated.
This is similar to what Rick Riordan (author of Percy Jackson) suggests in one of his other works - that the afterlife is simply whatever you believe it to be. It's pretty comforting imo.
The gods of the Disc have never bothered much about judging the souls of the dead, and so people only go to hell if that’s where they believe, in their deepest heart, that they deserve to go. Which they won’t do if they don’t know about it. This explains why it is important to shoot missionaries on sight.
Personally I wouldn't like it to be what you believe it to be, rather what you need it to be. Some people don't know what they need until they have it. You can believe that Heaven is endless sitting in a circle and piling devotion upon God, but if that isn't actually going to help you be at peace, then what good is it gonna do you? How is a baby going to form a belief of what their afterlife is?
No, I reckon Heaven ought to be what you need, not what you want. I want my afterlife to be me being a series of Isekai protagonists in my favourite fictional universes because I secretly want to feel clever and powerful and knowledgeable about things to come, but indulging me probably isn't the best way to put me at peace.
Funny you should mention temporary - in a way, that's true of Christian view. 'Heaven' in a broad sense is much broader, but the sense of where are 'you' after you die, is temporary until the resurrection, where people are once again in a very physical body (but now immortal and undamaged) on a very physical (re)new(ed) earth.
It's only "communism" if the equality goes to individuals outside of your group. If your group gets the benefits, well, that's because you're awesome and you deserve it; but fuck those other guys.
Heaven is described as being populated by perfected people, not by their own doing.. The world we live in is populated by selfish people primarily. Hell even toddlers are selfish. It's a redefinition of human nature. Whether or not it's a fantasy, it would actually make it work flawlessly.
I know that's not your point, I just want to point out that toddlers aren't selfish as much as they just haven't developed empathy yet, as a sense of empathy usually only develops after the 4th birthday. The golden rule just doesn't work for toddlers, they can't put themselves in someone else's shoes and imagine how they feel. There's a riddle/test with a doll and a closet that illustrates this well.
Cooperation and sharing are just as much "human nature" as selfishness. We contain lots of "natural" impulses, but people will prioritize and grow into those impulses which society most rewards.
Communism in theory: A stateless, classless, moneyless utopia where everyone shares resources based on need.
Communism in practice: Authoritarian regimes, economic inefficiency, suppression of dissent, and a state that never ‘withers away’ like Marx imagined.
Every major attempt, USSR, Maoist China, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, has resulted in centralized power, mass repression, and economic collapse. The problem isn’t just ‘bad leaders’; it’s that a system requiring absolute cooperation and selflessness on a societal scale is fundamentally unworkable. Human nature, resource scarcity, and the need for incentives all get in the way.
So yeah, communism sounds nice on paper, but history proves it turns into a dystopia instead of a utopia every time.
We need to stop idealizing communism because it doesn't work.
It would be important that the regulation is constantly protected. The forces of greed will constantly be trying to dismantle it, and people are kind of stupid.
Maybe the woodchippers do some of the heavy lifting there, but you then need to make sure they don't get used for evil
Couldn't you use that argument to disqualify most government types? I mean show me a type of government that hasn't been perverted. Does North Korea disprove all democratic republics? I mean they call themselves a democratic republic therefore they are a republic right? That's what you're using as a definition to deny communism right? Hell I don't even have to look at the worst example is there a good example of a government that hasn't been perverted?
No, but objectively, some governments are far better than others. For example, I wouldn’t want to live in the Republic of the Congo or North Korea. Despite the issues we face in America, I still live a comfortable and peaceful life here, and I have no desire to leave. If I were in North Korea or China, however, I would likely be looking for a way out.
Your comment does however provide great examples of the no true Scotsman and appeal to purity fallacies. Though I’d argue that acknowledging the flaws in all governments doesn’t mean they are all equally bad. Some are demonstrably worse than others.
The ubermensch concept was very popular in the early to mid 1900s, and has even been attempted before! Refer to world War 2 and Nazi ideology for more reading on that topic.
If you mean Nietzsche type ubermensch then the broad genetic cultivation needed among most humans that I’m talking about for communism to work is very close to the opposite of that. Nietzsche strongly suggested that humanity needs to go back to a predatory morality that predates Christianity. He advocated that cooperation and communal good was a slave morality and a bad thing.
If You are cleverly hinting that purposeful breeding among humans is a bad thing because Nazis advocated it, then you should go hound people that grow rose bushes and condemn governments that have health departments because Nazis also did that.
If you are surmising that I am personally advocating these things then you have glanced over what I wrote too hastily. I will leave the details as an exercise for you reread and figure out in your own.
I've always wondered about this. One of the Great Filter issues is that a species must cooperate together instead of destroy itself. Maybe in our evolutionary history we needed some of those narcissistic traits to survive as individuals, but now we need to evolve.
It's not psychopath sociopathic narcissists that don't allow communism not to work it's general human Nature on a large societal scale.
The Spartans practiced a form of eugenics and they were one of the greatest societies in human history and that still doesn't make them right about what they did.
I highly recommend that you go back and read through some human history before making idiotic comments like this.
All of human history is selective breeding. The lunatic desert people in the Middle East where 1 rich guy has 10 wives and 40 kids is one way of doing it. And, thankfully, post-Magna Carta cultures and ones with greater-female-human-autonomy cultures have another method of selective breeding. And what you just said about broad human nature supports my original statement because fundamentals of human nature change and not just from environmental conditions but inherited tendencies.
Side note: what was so great about Spartans? They seemed like slave-dependent authoritarian assholes that disappeared in a flash.
700 years for a society as strict as Sparta is a pretty big blip whatever a blip might mean to you. Especially since elements of their society is still incorporated in our own.
It sounds like you're using lots of 100 dollar words in 10 dollar sentences without knowing what they mean. Did you read up on any of that human history we talked about before?
I'm kind of the opposite. I have no problem with (well intentioned and rational) communists. But if we had full blown communism with Trump in charge, it would be game over for everyone.
Does that make Trump a communist if he would actually love if the US was a communist state? Maybe I actually agree with you.
I know what's good for you, you suffer from propaganda. You don't have to vote, otherwise the people who don't have your best interests in mind will get into power.
This has nothing to do with an ideology. It's just the people who claim to follow this ideology are being authoritarians.
They aren't called tankies for nothing.
Any ideology can be forced upon a society through authoritarianism. Communists aren't popular in democracy. So they long went with the authoritarian way.
There's a very easy answer that most Christian conservatives will quickly provide - God makes all things possible. Whether in its most primitive, logic-defying form, or in the more thought-out "Humans are imperfect and thus cannot run a perfect system, unlike God", few Christians will actually be caught on the surface-level contradiction.
it's almost like American imperialism has made sure that any attempt has failed by economic and military disruption and injecting dictators with the goal of dissuading others from trying.
the second there's a success story western capitalism becomes unnecessary and a better system comes into view.
Also communist economy is impossible to implement since there is no all knowing god to fuck all the people siphoning the money out via corruption.
Communism is great if you can remove humans from the equation. Mofo humans fuck every system up, we are the problem.
Also, heaven is an absolute monarchy. The fact so many commies don't even see the difference between communism and a monarchy should tell you all you need to know.
Also, heaven is an absolute autocracy. The fact so many fundies don't even see the difference between US and facism should tell you all you need to know.
That's a pretty boilerplate criticism. While true to a great degree, it's also true of a lot of western capitalist nations.
It's pretty hard to find information about real communist societies because media companies have it in their best interest to bury any good that has possibly been done by a communist society, meanwhile demonizing them and making them the enemy. You really have to dig to find honest information about communist societies.
Moreover, a lot of otherwise successful communist regimes have been sabotaged and poisoned by capitalist interests. Either by literally arming fascists, or just by demonizing them with foreign policy and media coverage.
The pope literally wrote a fucking document called "Rerum Novarum". What the hell are these people even discussing? Christians are a joke politically because they can't have their own political stance and keep inheriting liberal beliefs.
Religion is like a shoe. Yours won't fit me and mine won't fit you. So let's just let each other walk.our own ways without trying to push us along our paths
Religion is a tool to manipulate people according own will based on stories that happened similar in real world. Similar, meaning, the religion master picked stories that helped them explain why people have to behave like he says and maybe added som flavour here and there.
And you think the BBS accurately represents the teachings of the Buddha, and the whole of Buddhism? I asked about the Buddha's master plan, you're trying to answer my question with this BBS article?
Well, one can use religion manipulation for things that are not evil as well.
Doesn’t makes it any better in my eyes, as think it is disrespectful, telling people fictional enhanced stories to manipulate. I prefer the scientific way of thinking and explaining. People understand way more than you think, if you just try to explain it in logical steps that they can follow.
With our concept making apparatus called "mind" we look at reality through the ideas-about-reality which our cultures give us. The ideas-about-reality are mistakenly labeled "reality" and unenlightened people are forever perplexed by the fact that other people, especially other cultures, see "reality" differently. It is only the ideas-about-reality which differ. Real (capital-T True) reality is a level deeper that is the
level of concept.
We look at the world through windows on which have been drawn grids (concepts). Different philosophies use different grids. A culture is a group of people with rather similar grids. Through a window we view chaos, and relate it to the points on our grid, and thereby understand it. The ORDER is in the GRID. That is the Aneristic Principle. Western philosophy is traditionally concerned with contrasting one grid with another grid, and amending grids in hopes of finding a perfect one that will account for all reality and will, hence, (say unenlightened westerners) be True. This is illusory; it is what we Erisians call the ANERISTIC ILLUSION. Some grids can be more useful than others, some more beautiful than others, some more pleasant than others, etc., but none can be more True than any other.
who gives a fuck what a stupid book written by idiot camel herders from 3000 years ago says? who even fucking cares one single fucking iota? seriously. WHO? slap the fucking piss out of the person that does.
destroy all abrahamic religions for the sake of humanity. no fucking mercy.
and some of it was inspired or stolen from babylonian and egyptian mythology, so it could go even further back. which means absolutely nothing in the age of AI.
The elements borrowed from Babylonian mythology show up in the post-exilic period. Like, yeah, there’s Babylonian influence in the Noah story, because they had been held captive in Babylon and met Babylonians. We’re talking like 500s BCE here.
Flood stories are not really that impressive a commonality. Early civilizations were based on rivers. Sometimes rivers flood and that’s a big deal (the Nile floods consistently, which refreshes nutrients and is how Egyptian civilizations managed their longevity.)
Just so everyone knows, the word you should be using is socialism. Communism is what you call it when socialist pick up guns and other weapons and take over by force using violence. Socialism = good, communism = bad.
Can we all agree that no matter how bad this gets, we shouldn't stoop to their level?
Nope, that's not what communists mean, when communists talk about communism. What you describe is the dictatorship of the proletariat, not communism aka the time when all means of production are owned communally, everyone enjoys working according to their ability and lovingly shares all goods according to their needs.
Of course, if you use the term "communism" to refer to the political movement that tries to achieve communism through revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat, you're 100 % right.
Marxist communism hasn't been tried. Leninism is also called communism, and it's been tried. It's supposed to be a two part system where you establish dictatorship to create the classless, stateless, moneyless system... They just never seem to reach the second part once they setup the dictator. 🤷🏻♂️
The gospels were written by anonymous authors decades to nearly a hundred years after Christianity became a religion, and then became canonized centuries afterwards.
They're not the basis of Christianity, the Epistles are; and even many of those are forgeries. And those were just cementing the strictures of the existing mystery cult.
In spite of their persecution complex, Christianity is the largest religion by population worldwide and in many countries. Understanding the way they think can be useful in dealing with them.
The absolute worst is them saying socialism is pessimistic because it thinks people can't do anything for themself and coddles them with a nanny state. Then turns around and says "you have to structure capitalism assuming every single person is a greedy sociopath hellbent on fucking over everyone else to make money."
Ancaps/libertarians as well.
And that the only acceptable form of socialism is charity. And like. FFS
Not exactly, the argument (is incoherent and insane) is something like "you can't have too much democracy and centralized power because people in power are always corrupt." ✨Somehow✨ laissez-faire capitalism is supposed to naturally account for corruption and sociopathy because the free market forces(???) them to do good things because people are able to spend their money somewhere else. Always non-violent btw ❤️
But it's true. Psychopaths tend to end up in CEO, and other leadership positions more often, as they are not afraid to literally kill to get ahead.
I think it might have something to do with those "Christians" envisioning heaven as an implicit ethnostate.
Socialism seems ugly to them because it involves the people who seem ugly to them being cared for.
But they'd never say it out-loud; most can't even see that's what their twisted little hearts desire.
I think they just lack vision and don't actually want to change the real world, just dream of a better place
Seen this clip from some american fundie podcast that was... a choice.
This person was asked something like, if you could have world peace, but all governments become socialist, would you do it? They said no and fucking justified their answer with a partial quote from something like Deuteronomy 15:7-11, claiming that well the bible says there'll always be the poor so socialism is actually bad because of that, and a quick search to see if I could find it there's a lot of stuff echoing the same stuff, that socialism is unbiblical etc.
What the actual fuck is wrong with these people? I'm irreligious but was raised Christian, this is so vehemently counter to my understanding of Christian teachings (the flavour of which I was raised has atheist ministers so there's that), which was more or less, raise everyone up, accept everyone for who they are, help people, don't turn a blind eye to injustice and like just be decent to each other. Was this podcast prosperity doctrine shit or something else because yeah wow, it's honestly sinister to me.
I was raised as a fundamentalist, but I got out.
American evangelical fundamentalists firmly believe in heirarchy— children are under the authority of their mother, who is under the authority of her husband, who is under the authority of God.
They see any disruption of this heirarchy as an attack on their religion.
Taxes? You're usurping the man's authority to spend his money as he sees fit.
Women's liberation? You're usurping the man's authority over his wife.
Entitlements? You're usurping the man's authority to use his pocketbook as leverage over his family.
Immigration? You're usurping the man's authority by lowering his cultural relevance.
LGBTQ+ acceptance? You're usurping the man's authority by undermining the patriarchy.
You've probably noticed a pattern as to who is primarily driving these issues.
They begin with the conclusion (e.g. socialism bad), and then find whatever they can in their shitty book to justify it.
Yeah, just like everything else, they are cherry picking passages that support the conclusion they've already reached on their own
Yup. Funny all the people blaming the bible like the dude up there calling it a stupid book... obviously hasn't read it. The bible has great lessons, 90% of Christians just ignore them is all. Don't blame the book for the idiots who claim to follow it when they actually aren't. Even the stuff wanna be Christians quote thinking it supports their argument they are either misunderstanding or leaving out vital context. Real Christians are very rare and almost never associated with an organized church. They just quietly try to do their best they don't try to use their belief to justify the rest of their life and bad decisions.
It sounds to me like they want to be able to give freely and not be forced by a human law.
If everybody shares there is no need for official socialism because enough resources are shared.
The difference is that the formerly poor has to be thankful.
Here we go with the scare quotes again... They're not fake Christians just because you don't agree with their particular dogma.
This actually makes sense, once you understand what their problem is with communism.
You see, they have no problem with all the benefits that communism offers... What bothers them is the idea that those benefits would be given to people who haven't earned it.
Heaven, to them, is a reward. Only the pure, the righteous, the faithful get to enjoy its benefits. Heaven only works for them if they imagine that they will be able to look down and see hell.
A heaven for everyone, with no walls, no gates, no pitiful outcasts scrabbling to get in... That's no heaven at all.
They should know better:
Workers in the Vineyard
Interesting read. Thank you.
You’re not wrong about the reward being earned. That’s definitely the unspoken part of it.
When I grew up religious, the conversion was that communism was a bastardization of god’s plan, so it’s inherently evil. Basically, it cannot be as pure and perfect with men in charge so it will fail every time.
You’d think they’d want to try and be more like their god and his plan for their heaven but they just reject it.
They believe that only God can be the one to create paradise on earth. A primary pillar of their faith requires earth to be in a constant state of suffering until then.
It's also heretic AF. As in: It directly contradicts Orthodox, Catholic, and Lutheran, doctrine, all for different reasons.
Remove the heretics from Christianity, and you will have not a religion of billions of oppressors, but a cult of a few dozen communist hippies.
See, this is the part I can't get behind. An eternity of that disparity with even the smallest scrap of empathy would eventually be unending torment. Every day is just more "oh yeah, hell is a thing and I can't do anything about it..."
Fr, I knew for fact that there was something deeply fucked up about "The Good Place" in the TV show bearing the same name when Janet played Eleanor a short clip of sound from the Bad Place.
If working all your life for a regime does not earn you the benefits of that regime, I don't know what will in their minds
Right wing politics can be summed up as: Exclusive & Sadism
No, the issue most people have with it is that it requires a king (god) to make it work. People don't mind a higher being (god) ruling them as an absolute monarch. They do mind handing such power to a human, since we have seen again and again how such power corrupts people.
When I was fairly young my mom described Christian heaven. I remember struggling with the idea of not struggling and being happy all the time. Then she hit me with if someone you love doesn't make it to heaven you forget them. That's when the fracture began for me.
Basically heaven is a mindfuck.
It really is. It's not even a pleasant thought experiment.
So we join with the God-mind in order to understand why the person we previously loved isn't worthy of love after all...
But at the end of my lifetime, it's someone I loved, but that God doesn't love (not enough to bring them to heaven, anyway...), and so my feelings about them get updated with God's perspective?
So I learn why I was wrong to love them?
Edit: I'm just saying that Hell as a concept, alongside an all-loving God, doesn't compute, to me.
Whereas Hell as a concept, introduced by human church leaders, to keep tithes up, makes perfect sense, to me.
So it feels like an Occam's Razor situation, to me.
What's the point of religion if you're already capable of deciding what's right and wrong?
Severance
The most successful nations in terms of citizen happiness use mixed-economics. Nordic nations have the blueprint. We just need to use it.
So complete justice system reform, cut the police force, strong wide reaching unions, and strong social welfare.
That does sound heavenly...
To be fair, the heaven of the Bible is neither stateless nor classless. "The nations" are still present in Revelation 21 and 22, and inequality in heaven is a common theme in Jesus's parables.
"The nations" is just fancy for "non Jews". Remember that the bible predates modern nation states by more than a millennium.
Is that so? I can think of the story with the lamps where it's about getting into the kingdom of god or the treasure in the field where it's about finding the kingdom of god. Or that the poor will inherit the kingdom of god while rich people cannot get into it. Nothing about inequality inside the kingdom of god.
You have to keep in mind that the kingdom of god isn't really heaven as we think of it even tho Matthew uses the wording kingdom of heaven (to avoid the word god as a good jew). We think of heaven as life after death but the kingdom of god is on earth when Jesus returns and the dead arise and he builds his kingdom here.
"Least"/"Greatest" in "the kingdom of heaven" is a construction that appears at least once off the top of my head, Matthew 5:19. I'm sure there are more. But also, Jesus is depicted as a literal monarch and heaven a kingdom like you said, so there's at least one extra class right there.
There’s also 11 classes of angels in a ladder system under Jesus. My boys Metatron and Enoch up top if I’m not mistaken.
Is that a Catholic thing?
It’s a Dead Sea scrolls thing
Why are you guys all able to recall random bits of the bible. What normal people are even reading this stuff in the last 40 years?
I had it drilled into my head as a kid. When I left home I forgot most of it. Then as an adult I brushed up on it to argue with the kind of people who drilled it into my head as a kid.
lol.
I see your point but hear me out:
Saying "The only one I call king is the one who died at the cross" subverts the very concept of a king. Not only is this guy no longer here to directly command anyone but his death was the most humiliating to him and his followers possible. In this way, it's anti-authoritarian. Similar with the greatest in the kingdom of god. It's the last you would think of: the poor, the children, ... . Sure, this leaves place for interpretation. You can say it's just a new hierarchy. Or it's so radically putting everything into question that it's in effect a call against all hierarchies. Or that it's so radical, it can't be taken serious at all so barely means anything anymore.
Christianity as a whole shows all of this. The first communes shared everything in common, there was "neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus". (Gal 3, 28). Later a new hierarchy establish which, once established, wasn't new or subversive anymore but just a top down hierarchy. Once in a while someone came with a more subversive reading, more often than not founding a new organization that ended up with a strict hierarchy.
I think the biggest flaw is that there is no sustainable alternative given. You can criticize capitalism all day long and reinforce it as a system without an alternative if you don't give one. Some Christians found alternatives and supported them with the scripture, others supported very different things with scripture. That's the thing with all world religions: They start in opposition to society but fail to think outside the box and so they end up reinforcing it while keeping the seldom fulfilled potential for a better society ("world region" in the sense Graeber uses the term in Debt and Graham discusses in this podcast episode I guess but I'm not sure).
All that said, since the first Christians certainly had a very egalitarian, anti-authoritative reading, this is the most authoritative reading (pun intended).
This is good stuff; your argument is well reasoned. Brings me back to my Bible study days.
I still think "all hierarchies" might be overbroad. The Bible itself prescribes elders/bishops and deacons to administer the church, for instance, and it's radical enough regarding obedience to authority that, in my experience, modern day theologically conservative churches trend toward authoritarianism and mostly unchecked abuse of power more often than not. This would have been contemporaneous with the communes.
As for the more heavenly hierarchies, I looked back at some of the points of evidence that I was going to bring up here that I thought supported my case, but the "outer darkness" in Matthew 22 I once thought might not necessarily be hell sure seems like hell upon rereading, and as for the parable of the unforgiving servant who was sent to the "torturers" despite his debts being forgiven, it looks like that word "torturers" is connected to jailers, i.e. debtors' prison, so I can't argue confidently that the servant was "saved" from anything and given a different punishment instead. There are still a few passages I can't totally square though:
The parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32): He gets welcomed back into the family, and he sure seems saved in the sense that I think most Christians would read into it, but his inheritance is spent; he doesn't get more. All the father has belongs to the other son.
The purifying fire of 1 Corinthians 3:9-15: Both groups of people are explicitly "saved". One is rewarded, the other suffers loss.
The parable of the talents/minas: In the Matthew 25 version of the parable, the first two servants get the same reward (authority over "many things"). No issue there. But in the Luke 19 version, the rewards are proportional. And the one with 10 minas gets a bonus at the end.
That's as far as I got before my eyes glazed over.
This is really fascinating. I never heard of this.
Is there a non-religious, ELI5 resource I can read more about this?
I never had much use for non-religious secondary sources back when I was a believer, so I can't recommend any, but the New Testament isn't actually that long; you could probably finish it in a week if you read 20-30 chapters a day, and the chapters are short. The first three books, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and to a lesser extent the fourth, John, are all the same; you can probably just pick one (John is probably the most interesting) and read the rest of the NT as is. Whether or not it's worth your time is entirely up to you. I certainly have no intention of reading it again any time soon.
I think nothing outside of the gospels is of any merit. It is probably worth your time to read the red words in the bible. Jesus was on some real shit, minus all the son of god stuff
Before people get huffy yes I have read the entire bible; it is not "the most beautiful book ever written" nor anything close to that, but Jesus was an interesting dude
You also can not read the bible as if it's modern English and interpret it as such. Always consider 1. who was talking then, 2. who they were talking to, and 3. the context in which they were speaking at the time.
Yeah it’s called Theogany by Hesiod
How is Ancient Greek poetry about the origin of the Greek gods relevant here?
Peep this.
It’s the inspiration for the Bible.
How?????
Like, you can do some really interesting conversations about Neo Platonism and philo-semitism around the time some of the New Testament was being written - Gnosticism undoubtedly comes from Greek philosophy - but many portions of the Hebrew Bible predate Hesiod entirely.
Can you provide any form of argument, or is this some shit you picked up from like Zeitgeist or something.
Alan watts
Didn’t Alan Watts usually talk about (his extremely westernized interpretation of) Zen Buddhism? When has Alan Watts made the strange argument that ancient Israelites were somehow aware of Greek mythology and a specific text that wasn’t even written until at least many of the minor prophets books were written?
When has Alan Watts ever really been focused on the development of the Hebrew Bible and New Testament and it’s relationship to Greek mythology? Do you have a link to his argument?
Edit: Checked out and skimmed Myth & Ritual in Christianity online to see if what you are saying is in there. I strongly suspect that you are seriously misinterpreting ideas related to Jung and the collective unconscious (as does Zeitgeist), but feel free to clarify.
Dan McClellan videos on YouTube and TikTok are great and accessible discussions of a lot of academic Bible research.
Revelation 21 and 22 describe changes in the city of Jerusalem and basically nothing else. 🤦♂️
In the eternal words of Bob Marley:
🥰🫶🏻
Fundies have a more two-class system in mind for Heaven: God-King and unquestionably loyal fans.
So like Trump and MAGA. Figures
I asked one “so when do I actually die?” and they couldn’t comprehend that I didn’t want to exist forever
I suppose that whatever heaven does to you, you would want to exist forever...for whatever reason.
You can sit on that bench as long as you want. Whenever you're ready, you just walk through.
Heaven is an autocratic police state though
Yup. The common answer to "why does evil exist" is that humans have free will.
Therefore it follows that if there is no sin in heaven, there is also no free will.
Ssshhh, you're not supposed to actually think it through!
Or you know, it's almost impossible to make an evil choice, and the chances get smaller over time. Or you only have good choices.
Then it seems awfully cruel to design this life otherwise.
Indeed. Gods, in general, being huge assholes - well, it would explain a lot.
I like the malevolent creator theory. But it's most likely that since the universe runs on entropy, it just optimizes for misery as a side-effect.
Me listening to tankies describe communism as a moneyless, stateless, classless world, then criticise anarchism
What's a tankie? I know what it means but for others that don't go ahead and drop an egg of knowledge on them.
A supporter of the Soviet Union and its habit of using tanks to suppress uprisings.
I choose to imagine it's actually because they all wear tanktops
people still use the word tankie ? my guy most communists these days are anarcho communists.
tankie was never funny anyways
We can only make the world stateless by having one all-encompassing state. Anarchism would result in a mosaic of states.
Nice satire
sadly I actually do believe this. help me 😭
What if we have zero states?
I'd rather 0 than 51
Well that's what anarchism tries to do
I’ve come to the conclusion that Christians that vote republic just dissociate their “church” brain vs their non “church” brain. Their religious beliefs ONLY apply to religious things. Everything else just goes to whatever their true value system is.
Nah, they're the ones complaining jesus is too woke
I think this dude is incapable of dissociating, so he just forces his true value system onto his church beliefs. He will ignore the text that contradicts his own values. There’s definitely lots of people like that.
I mean that basically describes Christianity as a whole. The entirety of the religion throughout human history is basically people reforming it to suit their needs. True of most religions really.
I don't think most religious people have any beliefs, they just roll with whatever stances are currently popular amongst their peers. If a large enough number of their peers say their god says slavery is valid, then they will say slavery is valid, or a million other horrible things
Funny you mentioned this.
Apparently feeding school kids for free was controversial (and still is controversial).
And I watched a fellow parent on Facebook post an event about bake sales to raise money, to immediately sharing talking points about why it's bad for kids to get free school lunches.
I don't have children or religion and I believe every child should be fed for free at school and that should include breakfast.
It is like UBI, just for kids
And don’t get me wrong, I am all in into making capitalism a little bit less bad by introducing UBI.
https://song.link/i/1706212581
The Bible as a text has zero issues with slavery. The Old Testament thinks it’s fine to sell your daughter. The New Testament tells slaves to submit to their masters.
Your average Christian has very little knowledge of what the Bible actually contains. Non denominational Protestant Christianity’s focus on the personal relationship with God and their interpretation of ‘Biblical literalism’ means that you just squint at the text and read what you want from it.
I remember listening to some particularly painful exegesis on David killing the Amalekite messenger being some kind of message on not tattling to your boss about things. They don’t read things in context - they read snippets and verses and work in their pop culture understandings about hell, Satan, and salvation into the text.
True, I definitely think most religious people don’t think too much about what they’re believing in.
You can be anything you want, so long as you go to church on Sunday and say "sorry". For example....mafia, pedophile priests and politicians.
Even little old me? I should start going to church and also start being evil.
Yes, my son. You may be as evil as you wish, so long as you say "sorry" on Sunday, Heaven's doors will be open to you. God help you if you die on a Saturday, though... :)
That's not how it works. You have to mean it when you repent. If you go killing someone with the intent to just repent later, you are basically screwed. As you probably won't truly regret what you have done.
Maybe, but I don't think that's how the bad guys see it. Else there would be no bad guys who are religious.
It's not only that, but you must also turn from your sin and towards God. That is, make a conscious commitment not to sin.
"Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord," Acts 3:19
(2) "Jesus answered, "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? (3) I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish." Luke 13:2-3
😈I sowwy jebus
LOL
Do we have to censor the word communism now?
Self censor so hot right now!
Now = since Red Scare
Can’t have designer outrage without it.
If i could take a moment to cite the opening to the lords prayer:
The ability to make one being a christian not by default be a socialist as well is a continuous theological labor for the capitalist
There are plenty of Christians who specifically and deliberately oppose attempting to make life on earth more like heaven. They’re not being hypocrites for this, this is their belief system. To disagree with them is to wade into a theological debate, not just a political one.
Jesus was a socialist
Agree.
Jesus was a first century Jew, he was almost certainly not a socialist.
Why are we censoring "communism"?
same reason people say "unalive" and "fuggen" and "child 🌽".... the Internet has become a place for self censoring idiot babies afraid of being algorithmically demonitized/banned
corporate monopolies of all popular platforms has kneecapped actual free speech by training entire generations to be afraid of violating terms of service, I guess
I was going to upvote but you were right at 666 so I couldn't bring myself to
What if heaven is just whatever you need heaven to be? Like, what if it's just a temporary state of affairs? You enter Heaven, and it is exactly what you need to be at peace with your death and your life before that. Then, when you're ready, after however much time you need, you can decide to move on and stop existing, or send your soul to be reincarnated.
This is similar to what Rick Riordan (author of Percy Jackson) suggests in one of his other works - that the afterlife is simply whatever you believe it to be. It's pretty comforting imo.
Personally I wouldn't like it to be what you believe it to be, rather what you need it to be. Some people don't know what they need until they have it. You can believe that Heaven is endless sitting in a circle and piling devotion upon God, but if that isn't actually going to help you be at peace, then what good is it gonna do you? How is a baby going to form a belief of what their afterlife is?
No, I reckon Heaven ought to be what you need, not what you want. I want my afterlife to be me being a series of Isekai protagonists in my favourite fictional universes because I secretly want to feel clever and powerful and knowledgeable about things to come, but indulging me probably isn't the best way to put me at peace.
Seems to be the approach of MCU as well 🤔
Watch The Good Place.
Funny you should mention temporary - in a way, that's true of Christian view. 'Heaven' in a broad sense is much broader, but the sense of where are 'you' after you die, is temporary until the resurrection, where people are once again in a very physical body (but now immortal and undamaged) on a very physical (re)new(ed) earth.
Meh, all I remember of what the Bible says of heaven is it will be none stop worshipping of god. Like hillsong forever or something.
Well if we turned earth into heaven, then there would be no reason for anyone to convert, duh
It's only "communism" if the equality goes to individuals outside of your group. If your group gets the benefits, well, that's because you're awesome and you deserve it; but fuck those other guys.
Heaven is described as being populated by perfected people, not by their own doing.. The world we live in is populated by selfish people primarily. Hell even toddlers are selfish. It's a redefinition of human nature. Whether or not it's a fantasy, it would actually make it work flawlessly.
I know that's not your point, I just want to point out that toddlers aren't selfish as much as they just haven't developed empathy yet, as a sense of empathy usually only develops after the 4th birthday. The golden rule just doesn't work for toddlers, they can't put themselves in someone else's shoes and imagine how they feel. There's a riddle/test with a doll and a closet that illustrates this well.
Of course they are selfish, but it is Ok and natural.
I think that a person that never experienced empathy from others will most likely never develop empathy and stay selfish.
It is the job of society to teach/show the society empathy, and if we do not, we are fucked.
https://song.link/i/1706212581
Cooperation and sharing are just as much "human nature" as selfishness. We contain lots of "natural" impulses, but people will prioritize and grow into those impulses which society most rewards.
Yea, and pure capitalism rewards assholes the most…
Heaven is a post-capitalism utopia
Communism in theory: A stateless, classless, moneyless utopia where everyone shares resources based on need. Communism in practice: Authoritarian regimes, economic inefficiency, suppression of dissent, and a state that never ‘withers away’ like Marx imagined.
Every major attempt, USSR, Maoist China, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, has resulted in centralized power, mass repression, and economic collapse. The problem isn’t just ‘bad leaders’; it’s that a system requiring absolute cooperation and selflessness on a societal scale is fundamentally unworkable. Human nature, resource scarcity, and the need for incentives all get in the way.
So yeah, communism sounds nice on paper, but history proves it turns into a dystopia instead of a utopia every time.
We need to stop idealizing communism because it doesn't work.
Unchecked capitalism also leads to bad outcomes, including ecological collapse.
We need something that isn't "a handful of people have all the power"
Like decentralized socialism?
Social democratic republic with heavy consumer backed regulation and woodchippers
It would be important that the regulation is constantly protected. The forces of greed will constantly be trying to dismantle it, and people are kind of stupid.
Maybe the woodchippers do some of the heavy lifting there, but you then need to make sure they don't get used for evil
Probably also need to really invest in education. People don't just magically know political theory, and a lot of bad ideas can sound good at first
Interestingly enough, it's mostly the right wing that is anti education.
Totally agree. I would also say that what we have now in America is really capitalism anymore... It's something else.
Couldn't you use that argument to disqualify most government types? I mean show me a type of government that hasn't been perverted. Does North Korea disprove all democratic republics? I mean they call themselves a democratic republic therefore they are a republic right? That's what you're using as a definition to deny communism right? Hell I don't even have to look at the worst example is there a good example of a government that hasn't been perverted?
They're saying the opposite
No, but objectively, some governments are far better than others. For example, I wouldn’t want to live in the Republic of the Congo or North Korea. Despite the issues we face in America, I still live a comfortable and peaceful life here, and I have no desire to leave. If I were in North Korea or China, however, I would likely be looking for a way out.
Your comment does however provide great examples of the no true Scotsman and appeal to purity fallacies. Though I’d argue that acknowledging the flaws in all governments doesn’t mean they are all equally bad. Some are demonstrably worse than others.
So you're saying of this vanguard existed I mean as it would work?
For now. Why not keep looking and find a way to make it work?
Of course we need to continue to do this just not with Communism.
Based and food pilled
The ubermensch concept was very popular in the early to mid 1900s, and has even been attempted before! Refer to world War 2 and Nazi ideology for more reading on that topic.
If you mean Nietzsche type ubermensch then the broad genetic cultivation needed among most humans that I’m talking about for communism to work is very close to the opposite of that. Nietzsche strongly suggested that humanity needs to go back to a predatory morality that predates Christianity. He advocated that cooperation and communal good was a slave morality and a bad thing.
If You are cleverly hinting that purposeful breeding among humans is a bad thing because Nazis advocated it, then you should go hound people that grow rose bushes and condemn governments that have health departments because Nazis also did that.
If you are surmising that I am personally advocating these things then you have glanced over what I wrote too hastily. I will leave the details as an exercise for you reread and figure out in your own.
You sound like a Nazi. That is literally 100% out of their playbook. Musk would be proud of you.
I’ve addressed your misunderstanding in another response
I've always wondered about this. One of the Great Filter issues is that a species must cooperate together instead of destroy itself. Maybe in our evolutionary history we needed some of those narcissistic traits to survive as individuals, but now we need to evolve.
It's not psychopath sociopathic narcissists that don't allow communism not to work it's general human Nature on a large societal scale.
The Spartans practiced a form of eugenics and they were one of the greatest societies in human history and that still doesn't make them right about what they did.
I highly recommend that you go back and read through some human history before making idiotic comments like this.
All of human history is selective breeding. The lunatic desert people in the Middle East where 1 rich guy has 10 wives and 40 kids is one way of doing it. And, thankfully, post-Magna Carta cultures and ones with greater-female-human-autonomy cultures have another method of selective breeding. And what you just said about broad human nature supports my original statement because fundamentals of human nature change and not just from environmental conditions but inherited tendencies.
Side note: what was so great about Spartans? They seemed like slave-dependent authoritarian assholes that disappeared in a flash.
700 years for a society as strict as Sparta is a pretty big blip whatever a blip might mean to you. Especially since elements of their society is still incorporated in our own.
It sounds like you're using lots of 100 dollar words in 10 dollar sentences without knowing what they mean. Did you read up on any of that human history we talked about before?
What you lack in reading comprehension you make up for in smarmy quips.
Ya. That's what all you dodos say when I point out your gibberish.
At the same time you call the era of the Spartans a blip. 🤷
Can we just have tiny villages where we tell ghost stories and just all contribute to each other's well being?
I don't have an issue with communism, but with communists.
I'm kind of the opposite. I have no problem with (well intentioned and rational) communists. But if we had full blown communism with Trump in charge, it would be game over for everyone.
Does that make Trump a communist if he would actually love if the US was a communist state? Maybe I actually agree with you.
The state of communists right now is:
I know what's good for you, you suffer from propaganda. You don't have to vote, otherwise the people who don't have your best interests in mind will get into power.
This has nothing to do with an ideology. It's just the people who claim to follow this ideology are being authoritarians.
They aren't called tankies for nothing.
Any ideology can be forced upon a society through authoritarianism. Communists aren't popular in democracy. So they long went with the authoritarian way.
There's a very easy answer that most Christian conservatives will quickly provide - God makes all things possible. Whether in its most primitive, logic-defying form, or in the more thought-out "Humans are imperfect and thus cannot run a perfect system, unlike God", few Christians will actually be caught on the surface-level contradiction.
Problem is real world communism always ends up as authoritarian dictatorships.
it's almost like American imperialism has made sure that any attempt has failed by economic and military disruption and injecting dictators with the goal of dissuading others from trying.
the second there's a success story western capitalism becomes unnecessary and a better system comes into view.
Also communist economy is impossible to implement since there is no all knowing god to fuck all the people siphoning the money out via corruption. Communism is great if you can remove humans from the equation. Mofo humans fuck every system up, we are the problem.
Lol, heaven is also an authoritarian dictatorship
Also, heaven is an absolute monarchy. The fact so many commies don't even see the difference between communism and a monarchy should tell you all you need to know.
Also, heaven is an absolute autocracy. The fact so many fundies don't even see the difference between US and facism should tell you all you need to know.
Tends to on a nation scale. But there's still some good lessons to learn from it for smaller scale and nation scale too.
Socialist capitalist democracy works pretty well though
Source: Scandinavian
That's a pretty boilerplate criticism. While true to a great degree, it's also true of a lot of western capitalist nations.
It's pretty hard to find information about real communist societies because media companies have it in their best interest to bury any good that has possibly been done by a communist society, meanwhile demonizing them and making them the enemy. You really have to dig to find honest information about communist societies.
Moreover, a lot of otherwise successful communist regimes have been sabotaged and poisoned by capitalist interests. Either by literally arming fascists, or just by demonizing them with foreign policy and media coverage.
If there is heaven and there are people there, it's already a problem for me. No need to add other things.
Socialism/Communism are ideologically still revolving around materialism and defining the success of the society through production and consumption.
They follow the same core pitfall as Capitalism, by seeing humans through the lens of producer and consumer.
eh, we're long past the point of foraging for berries to survive, we kinda have to be both. interesting take though
If only they could listen to Jesus first
You can read you through it all, no magic involved. Jesus is the only hero I've ever looked up to
The pope literally wrote a fucking document called "Rerum Novarum". What the hell are these people even discussing? Christians are a joke politically because they can't have their own political stance and keep inheriting liberal beliefs.
Religion is like a shoe. Yours won't fit me and mine won't fit you. So let's just let each other walk.our own ways without trying to push us along our paths
Religion is a tool to manipulate people according own will based on stories that happened similar in real world. Similar, meaning, the religion master picked stories that helped them explain why people have to behave like he says and maybe added som flavour here and there.
Please, people, can we just stop falling for it?
And what do you think the Buddha's big master plan was, what with telling people to seek enlightenment?
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32929855
And you think the BBS accurately represents the teachings of the Buddha, and the whole of Buddhism? I asked about the Buddha's master plan, you're trying to answer my question with this BBS article?
Well, one can use religion manipulation for things that are not evil as well.
Doesn’t makes it any better in my eyes, as think it is disrespectful, telling people fictional enhanced stories to manipulate. I prefer the scientific way of thinking and explaining. People understand way more than you think, if you just try to explain it in logical steps that they can follow.
So you think Aesop's Fables are bad?
I don’t know them, but if they are written to manipulate I surly dislike them, yes (I assume that because of the style you are asking)
Replace "Religion" with "Truth" and you'll see why this doesn't work.
With our concept making apparatus called "mind" we look at reality through the ideas-about-reality which our cultures give us. The ideas-about-reality are mistakenly labeled "reality" and unenlightened people are forever perplexed by the fact that other people, especially other cultures, see "reality" differently. It is only the ideas-about-reality which differ. Real (capital-T True) reality is a level deeper that is the level of concept.
We look at the world through windows on which have been drawn grids (concepts). Different philosophies use different grids. A culture is a group of people with rather similar grids. Through a window we view chaos, and relate it to the points on our grid, and thereby understand it. The ORDER is in the GRID. That is the Aneristic Principle. Western philosophy is traditionally concerned with contrasting one grid with another grid, and amending grids in hopes of finding a perfect one that will account for all reality and will, hence, (say unenlightened westerners) be True. This is illusory; it is what we Erisians call the ANERISTIC ILLUSION. Some grids can be more useful than others, some more beautiful than others, some more pleasant than others, etc., but none can be more True than any other.
Any idea why communism is spelt with a zero here?
gotta censor it
who gives a fuck what a stupid book written by idiot camel herders from 3000 years ago says? who even fucking cares one single fucking iota? seriously. WHO? slap the fucking piss out of the person that does.
destroy all abrahamic religions for the sake of humanity. no fucking mercy.
Holy Reddit atheists, Batman
Yeah. They’re the worst. They make it difficult to have actual atheistic views.
The only parts that are even possibly that old are random bits of poetry.
and some of it was inspired or stolen from babylonian and egyptian mythology, so it could go even further back. which means absolutely nothing in the age of AI.
The elements borrowed from Babylonian mythology show up in the post-exilic period. Like, yeah, there’s Babylonian influence in the Noah story, because they had been held captive in Babylon and met Babylonians. We’re talking like 500s BCE here.
Flood stories are not really that impressive a commonality. Early civilizations were based on rivers. Sometimes rivers flood and that’s a big deal (the Nile floods consistently, which refreshes nutrients and is how Egyptian civilizations managed their longevity.)
Whoah there buddy, we're supposed to tolerate the sickness until they go on a shooting spree.
i didn't get that memo
Just so everyone knows, the word you should be using is socialism. Communism is what you call it when socialist pick up guns and other weapons and take over by force using violence. Socialism = good, communism = bad.
Can we all agree that no matter how bad this gets, we shouldn't stoop to their level?
Nope, that's not what communists mean, when communists talk about communism. What you describe is the dictatorship of the proletariat, not communism aka the time when all means of production are owned communally, everyone enjoys working according to their ability and lovingly shares all goods according to their needs.
Of course, if you use the term "communism" to refer to the political movement that tries to achieve communism through revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat, you're 100 % right.
No.
Capitalism failed and continues to fail every day. When do we get to try something else?
It has been 2025 years since the death of Christ, and we still do not have a functional economic system!
No matter what angle you look at it from, it's insanity.
It's also not stateless. Quite the opposite in fact.
Then it wasn't tried
Marxist communism hasn't been tried. Leninism is also called communism, and it's been tried. It's supposed to be a two part system where you establish dictatorship to create the classless, stateless, moneyless system... They just never seem to reach the second part once they setup the dictator. 🤷🏻♂️
I think at this point we need to accept that the only communism we've seen in practice, is communism.
Anti-Christian communists should read the gospels. They’re the actual basis of the Christian religion and are enlightening.
The gospels were written by anonymous authors decades to nearly a hundred years after Christianity became a religion, and then became canonized centuries afterwards.
They're not the basis of Christianity, the Epistles are; and even many of those are forgeries. And those were just cementing the strictures of the existing mystery cult.
Blabla your sky daddy doesn't interest me
In spite of their persecution complex, Christianity is the largest religion by population worldwide and in many countries. Understanding the way they think can be useful in dealing with them.