Unipolar to Multipolar: The Road to Conflict?

DemonicAppleGuY said:
I'm not saying they were heavily indoctrinated. RT is saying the reason the Soviet Empire fell is because they were not indoctrinated enough.
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There's no such thing as indoctrination. There's just education. Every single ideology "indoctrinates." When people are educated, their education is inexorably injected with the ideology of the educator. It's how the educator filters the world and the truth that they have decided to present to the student. It's inescapable, because humans are humans. There is no neutral, there is no objective. Your education in the West contains as much capitalist, liberal/conservative, religious/non-religious, American/Canadian/British/French, whichever of those apply to you, indoctrination as any other student in any other society.

You just think it's indoctrination when people are educated in cultural circles that you are unfamiliar with/disapprove of, because you think your education is the norm. They think the same of you. Let that sink in.
 
Cheezy the Wiz said:
You just think it's indoctrination when people are educated in cultural circles that you are unfamiliar with/disapprove of, because you think your education is the norm. They think the same of you. Let that sink in.
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Oh no, I'm well aware we all undergo indoctrination. I'm just pointing out that a truly "good" system should theoretically not need indoctrination. RT claims a communist society is the best society. He also claims to believe the Soviet empire fell because people were not indoctrinated enough.
 
DemonicAppleGuY said:
Oh no, I'm well aware we all undergo indoctrination. I'm just pointing out that a truly "good" system should theoretically not need indoctrination. .
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What this statements means in context is "a truly good system needs no education." Which is a very silly thing to say.

DemonicAppleGuY said:
The USSR itself was a continuation of the Russian Empire and the Eastern Bloc took orders from Moscow.
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*sigh* It's like people don't even read what I write.
 
Traitorfish said:
Hegemony isn't the same thing as Empire.
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If you're influencing them to the point that they are puppet states that you invade should they not listen, that is an empire.

If it makes you feel better, an "American Empire" existed until basically the Cold War ended. And it still kind of does, but not really.
 
DemonicAppleGuY said:
It should be noted that education and indoctrination are not the same thing. There is a thin line, but they are not the same thing.
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As I have already explained, no there isn't. You saying "yeah, but, I'm still right" doesn't make it so.

Like, is it not an empire?
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Like, nowai, d00d.
 
Isn't indoctrination teaching someone something, but not encouraging them to think critically about that subject?

While education is facilitating someone to learn and think critically about a range of subjects?
 
Cheezy the Wiz said:
As I have already explained, no there isn't. You saying "yeah, but, I'm still right" doesn't make it so.
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So the acquisition and understanding of knowledge is now indoctrination?

I always got the feeling all this calculus stuff was really just capitalist propaganda!


Like, nowai, d00d.
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Well since you haven't provided an argument to the contrary, we'll assume it is an empire. Moving on.
 
DemonicAppleGuY said:
If you're influencing them to the point that they are puppet states that you invade should they not listen, that is an empire.
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That's a pretty crude description of the relationship between the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc. The reality was rather more complex, much as it was within the borders of the Soviet Union itself, with the relationship between hegemonic and dependent regimes always a matter of give-and-take rather than an uncomplicated slave-master relationship. The military interventions of 1956 and 1968 represented a crisis of Soviet hegemony (in 1968, a potentially terminal one), not its logical conclusion.
 
DemonicAppleGuY said:
So the acquisition and understanding of knowledge is now indoctrination?

I always got the feeling all this calculus stuff was really just capitalist propaganda!
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I forgot you are still at the age where you would rather be snarky than learn. And you wonder why we sneer at your age?

Well since you haven't provided an argument to the contrary, we'll assume it is an empire. Moving on.
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You didn't listen to the last argument I made, why should I waste my time with another one you won't even try with?
 
Cheezy, I happen to know that you're not a person at all, but a talking, man-shaped cheese. Since you haven't presented a satisfactory argument to the contrary, we're just going to assume that I'm right by default because reasons.
 
You could, of course, be Edam. Which is red and waxy on the outside, but white(-ish) on the inside?
 
The direction this thread is taking is not gouda. Perhaps a DeGaulle quote on Hegemony is in order:

How can you govern a country which has two hundred and forty-six varieties ofcheese?
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Check out the UN GA debate speeches by Venezuela and Bolivia. Awesome. At UN.org. Google 68 General Assembly debate. America is no longer alpha dog.
 
DemonicAppleGuY said:
The former USSR's citizens are somewhat better off in some places and in others are probably the same. Ukraine, the Baltics, the Caucasusian Countries are definitely better off. Central Asia is not amazing, Russia is better off now.
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Better off by what measure and in comparison with what time period? "Russia is better off now" sounds not much more comprehensible than saying "Napoleonic France was better off than Roman Empire". I can repeat specially for you, USSR in 1960s-1970s reached the level of developed world by many parameters, and Russia now has yet to catch up on things like life expectancy, criminality and others.

Not long ago I posted here photos of ordinary Soviet people in their usual context, which caused idiosyncrasy in several forum members, indoctri pardon, educated according to Western standards. It was hard for them to understand, why Soviet people could have normal food and clothes, be happy and beautiful :). "Wait, where are those grey robes, barbed wires and machine-gun turrets??"

 
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