Great Quotes III: Source and Context are Key

[Arakhor]

Spending time on a forum arguing that it is worse than global poverty?

 

[Borachio]

Yeah, millions of people babies meatsacks dying every day. What could be more trivial than that?

Well. Are you being deliberately obtuse?

I'll assume not.

The reason I think abortion is a trivial problem, compared with the millions who die of malnutrition, is principally because it's an eminently solvable one. All you need is effective birth control (which isn't beyond the wit of man to accomplish, I think you'll agree, and is also within the capability of each individual to achieve), and the abortion problem (an overwhelmingly first world problem, btw, though it does occur in the 3rd world too) disappears.

Of course, you may point out that malnutrition is also solvable: simply by ensuring everyone gets an adequate diet. And you'd be right, I think. But this hasn't happened. Yet. And there seems to be no sign that it ever will.

My position is that there's a category difference between abortion and malnutrition.

 

[Mouthwash]

Well. Are you being deliberately obtuse?

I'll assume not.

The reason I think abortion is a trivial problem, compared with the millions who die of malnutrition, is principally because it's an eminently solvable one. All you need is effective birth control (which isn't beyond the wit of man to accomplish, I think you'll agree, and is also within the capability of each individual to achieve), and the abortion problem (an overwhelmingly first world problem, btw, though it does occur in the 3rd world too) disappears.

Of course, you may point out that malnutrition is also solvable: simply by ensuring everyone gets an adequate diet. And you'd be right, I think. But this hasn't happened. Yet. And there seems to be no sign that it ever will.

My position is that there's a category difference between abortion and malnutrition.

Starvation isn't usually identified as the exact same issue as poverty.

Everyone will eventually get an adequate diet. It's not like we won't have nanotech someday.

 

[ReindeerThistle]

I guess you never had any use for a CB radio in your vehicle.

Breaker 1-9, bh, this is RT coming at ya on the GSP. Smokey is a no-show, traffic's smooth all the way to Cheesequake. What's your 20? 10-7...

 

[bhsup]

I truly pity anyone who came of age after the early to mid-80s.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Cheesequake is what happens when I sit on the washing machine during the spin cycle

 

[Borachio]

Starvation isn't usually identified as the exact same issue as poverty.

It pretty much is, imo. Malnutrition is a chronic form of starvation.

Everyone will eventually get an adequate diet. It's not like we won't have nanotech someday.

It's not like there's not more than enough food in the world today. It's just not reaching people because of structural inadequacies and lack of political will.

There's also more than enough money/wealth in the world. It's just that its distribution is extremely inequitable.

 

[Traitorfish]

"Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."

- Karl Marx, "Introduction to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right"


Seemed somehow appropriate.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

That quote doesn't seem as anti-religion in that context.

 

[ReindeerThistle]

Cheesequake is what happens when I sit on the washing machine during the spin cycle

This is a great quote.

Thus, the life of a JC Professor too impoverished for a night on the town.

 

[Traitorfish]

That quote doesn't seem as anti-religion in that context.

It really isn't. In full context, Marx was criticising the Dawkins-es of his day, who were content to criticise religious belief from an intellectual standpoint without exploring why religious belief held such a powerful attraction in the first place. The truncated version gained popularity as a justification-slash-expose (delete as necessary) of Bolshevik anticlericalism, but it's really missing the point.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Indeed. The materialist view of religion exists in the expanded version of that quote. Marx makes it clear that religion has a social and personal role it fulfills, which is allowed to flourish because people have little other hope to turn to. Conversely, if they are given that hope and no longer despair, and no longer require such explanations for their worldly suffering, etc., then so does the social and personal utility of religion evaporate. It's in this context that communism is [or should be] a-theistic, not anti-theistic.

 

[Borachio]

But wait. When the Soviets banned religion - if they did, I'm really not sure - didn't they do so because to allow religion would have been an admission that they hadn't actually attained the socialist paradise? And that couldn't have been true for them at all, could it?

 

[Hygro]

Of course there is a place for the major record company in the future as there is still a place for brass bands, large national orchestras and Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals. The precise function the major record companies will play in the music business as we turn the corner into the 21 st century is something we are not going to bother guessing at. One thing they and we suppose all major international companies are good at is moving the goal posts; probably because they owned them in the first place.​

-The KLF in 1988

 

[Tahuti]

It really isn't. In full context, Marx was criticising the Dawkins-es of his day, who were content to criticise religious belief from an intellectual standpoint without exploring why religious belief held such a powerful attraction in the first place. The truncated version gained popularity as a justification-slash-expose (delete as necessary) of Bolshevik anticlericalism, but it's really missing the point.

The problem with Marx's theory (and the Nietzschean linking of Slave morality to Christianity) is that the American economic and political elite seems to be more religious than the general populace. Like, far-right political philosophers tend to be more inclined towards religion than left-wing ones.

But wait. When the Soviets banned religion - if they did, I'm really not sure - didn't they do so because to allow religion would have been an admission that they hadn't actually attained the socialist paradise? And that couldn't have been true for them at all, could it?

Well, what the Soviets did was arguably contrary to Marx' ideas, which simply suggested that religion would gradually dissappear, rather than get destroyed in all out effort to destroy religion.

 

[Traitorfish]

The problem with Marx's theory (and the Nietzschean linking of Slave morality to Christianity) is that the American economic and political elite seems to be more religious than the general populace. Like, far-right political philosophers tend to be more inclined towards religion than left-wing ones.

They're certainly more attached to religious institutions. But do they make more passionate believers? That's not self-evident, and generally speaking the real fiery, passionate kinds of religiosity seem too be associated with, if not actual poverty, then with dispossession and suffering. To take an example with which Marx would have been familiar, the ossified Catholicism of the Vatican had little on the ecstatic popular piety of the Marian cult when it came to the enthusiasm of the faithful. Marx isn't really concerned with religions bodies, here, but with religious experience and the rejection of religious experience.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

But wait. When the Soviets banned religion - if they did, I'm really not sure - didn't they do so because to allow religion would have been an admission that they hadn't actually attained the socialist paradise? And that couldn't have been true for them at all, could it?

They didn't ban it, but they did restrict it and propagandize against it. I think their aversion to religion was moreso because of the central position which the Russian Orthodox Church had played in the oppression of the Russian Empire's people (the Church was a literal department of the state); in Muslim areas, for example, the practice of religion itself was somewhat more tolerated than in Orthodox areas; but in turn, a lot of traditional practices were divested of their religious content but promoted as secular "national traditions." But in general, religion was something to be practiced in private and never preached in public. No one was ever arrested for "being" of a particular religion, but rather for propagandizing it.

But it might generally be said that the Soviets took a "cart in front of the horse" approach to a lot of social things; the New Soviet Man, for instance. Stakhanovism is pretty blatantly anti-socialist, because such an attitude, if it does arise, would come about because of new economic conditions for the workers, it's not the new attitude that brings about the new economic relationships! Religion we might consider in the same vein.

 

[SeekTruthFromFacts]

They didn't ban it, but they did restrict it and propagandize against it. I think their aversion to religion was moreso because of the central position which the Russian Orthodox Church had played in the oppression of the Russian Empire's people (the Church was a literal department of the state); in Muslim areas, for example, the practice of religion itself was somewhat more tolerated than in Orthodox areas; but in turn, a lot of traditional practices were divested of their religious content but promoted as secular "national traditions." But in general, religion was something to be practiced in private and never preached in public. No one was ever arrested for "being" of a particular religion, but rather for propagandizing it.

But it might generally be said that the Soviets took a "cart in front of the horse" approach to a lot of social things; the New Soviet Man, for instance. Stakhanovism is pretty blatantly anti-socialist, because such an attitude, if it does arise, would come about because of new economic conditions for the workers, it's not the new attitude that brings about the new economic relationships! Religion we might consider in the same vein.

You seem top be saying that the role of the Russian Orthodox church, rather than Marxist ideology, was the main factor behind Soviet hostility to religion. Is there another case where a different history lead a Marxist regime to be far more positive about religion?

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

You seem top be saying that the role of the Russian Orthodox church, rather than Marxist ideology, was the main factor behind Soviet hostility to religion. Is there another case where a different history lead a Marxist regime to be far more positive about religion?

Despite the Vatican's prolonged hissy fit, Cuba's had a rather nice attitude toward religion.

The Nicaraguan regime in the 70s and 80s was practically built by radical Catholic clergymen who'd had enough of the Somozas' kleptocracy.

Although it's worth remembering that until 1991, most communist regimes took their cues from how Moscow had done things, so many countries emulated such social practices because "meh, it seems to have worked well enough in the USSR."

 

[ReindeerThistle]

But wait. When the Soviets banned religion - if they did, I'm really not sure - didn't they do so because to allow religion would have been an admission that they hadn't actually attained the socialist paradise? And that couldn't have been true for them at all, could it?

There is a great story of how Sydney and Beatrice Webb were speaking with Stalin in his office, I believe:

Beatrice Webb asked Stalin if it was true that to be safe in Russia, one had to be an atheist and a communist.

Just then, church bells began clanging loudly in the square and Stalin waited for the church bells to stop, and said:

"Yes, it is true that you must be an atheist and a communist to be safe in Russia."