The very many questions-not-worth-their-own-thread question thread XXVII

[Cheezy the Wiz]

How so? I don't see anything teleological in it.

It assumes that human society must follow a definite and prelaid path. Marx didn't look at communism and say "how can we get there from here," he looked at capitalism and said "what will happen after this, based on what I have discovered about the past?" Not that he wasn't thinking about communism, mind you, but it's not part of the dialectical approach to the problem.

If I understood it right, the Bolsheviks and Lenin believed a 'capitalist-ish' phase was necessary to develop proletarian class-consciousness.
Or perhaps I'm confusing the Bolshevik economic plan with their cultural goals for a unique proletarian culture.

Once we leave the Cheka my understanding of Revolutionary Russia begins to drop off until we hit Kruschev.

Eh, not really. What they grappled with was what to do about the fact that Russia had never gone through the capitalist phase by the time the Bolsheviks took power. Trying to explain NEP as a "mini-capitalist phase to precede socialism" is a mistake; NEP was a necessary ideological retreat because of peasant unrest, and an easy way to get the economy to recover to pre-war levels before they leaped forward again. It was nonetheless decidedly state-capitalist, though; Lenin said so himself.

Marx was a theorist of capitalism, so speculation as to the possibility of achieving a communist society without passing through a capitalist "stage" are really outside the terms of Marxist theory.

Or at least outside of Marx's theory.

 

[Kennigit]

Random question(s):

1) Do you remember people's eye colour well?

2) Can you "picture" someone's eye from memory?

For example, I have a good shot at remembering my immediate family members' eye colours, and I might be able to "picture" it mentally for my mother and father (my mother has eyes similar to my own afaik, and my father is blue). But, even then, I can't really remember anything about his blue eyes, just that he has (pretty bright) blue eyes.

I don't know a single one of my coworkers' eye colours. (Edit: or friends. Anyone except mother father and me)

don't get smarmy either, I mean iris color.

And although various non caucasian ethnicities pretty much are 95+% brown or whatever, the second question is still valid. For instance, if you just google "brown eye color" or something, I would never ever remember the difference between just the first few photos, just that person A has "brown" eyes

and the only chance I have at being right are generically guessing "brown" or if it's blonde hair, I can guess blue.

But there are maybe 3-4 people I can try to imagine what their eye even looks like, and that includes myself.

maybe if they had super long natural eyelashes or something I could remember that.

I would never be able to say "you have your father/mother/serial killers eyes" because I would never remember that

 

[Hygro]

First of all, 'neoliberal' isn't a thing. It is a buzzword invented by socialists that were too lazy to study classical liberal lines of thinking.

You've been saying this for a while. Please read David Harvey on neoliberalism.

 

[Tee Kay]

It's a misnomer if anything. The prefix "neo-" really shouldn't be used on people who wants to turn back the clock several centuries.

 

[The_J]

1) Do you remember people's eye colour well?

Only if I get enough time to look into someone's eyes, or if I plan to do that. Means only for girls I'm interested in. Else...no clue. Couldn't say what eye colour my mother, father, sister, coworkers, neighbours, or whoever has.

Eye colour is nearly worse then phone numbers.

 

[cybrxkhan]

It's a misnomer if anything. The prefix "neo-" really shouldn't be used on people who wants to turn back the clock several centuries.

Man, when I was a kid I used to dream of Neo-Byzantine this, and Neo-Roman Empire that, and Neo-Aztecs this, and Novya Russia that, and Neo-Mongolian empires and. Neo everything.

 

[Tee Kay]

Neo-Byzantine

jokes

 

[cardgame]

Random question(s):

1) Do you remember people's eye colour well?

never, ever, ever. OK, one exception: mother's eyes are green, girlfriend's blue

2) Can you "picture" someone's eye from memory?

similarly, no, not a chance in hell. I can sort-of-kind-of for family, but it's hazy.

 

[Hygro]

It's a misnomer if anything. The prefix "neo-" really shouldn't be used on people who wants to turn back the clock several centuries.

They dreamt of and helped facilitate the cyberpunk dystopia we live in today.

 

[gay_Aleks]

As I foretold, neo will be the new "e-"! But you fools refused to listen.

 

[Farm Boy]

never, ever, ever. OK, one exception: mother's eyes are green, girlfriend's blue

2) Can you "picture" someone's eye from memory?

similarly, no, not a chance in hell. I can sort-of-kind-of for family, but it's hazy.

Can't do phone numbers. Can't do names. Can't do dates that things happened. Can do eyes. I like eyes. So much of the interaction between friends is in the eyes, even if the contacts are sporadic and fleeting. So much of the shwing is in the eyes too. Nothing like a smoldering evening look to take the brain below critical levels of blood to function at full capacity.

 

[Traitorfish]

Or at least outside of Marx's theory.

Even then, I think Marxism and capitalism are pretty inseparable. You can certainly apply historical materialism to non-capitalist societies, but I don't think that would be Marxism, even if it might be Marxian. Marxism is most fundamentally about modernity and modernisation, which Marx identifies almost directly with capitalism.

 

[Chukchi Husky]

The intended audience and the level of difficulty. If an author is creating for a given age range, he'll consider the average abilities of kids in that range. Books will be shorter, the writing will be simpler, the plots will be less complex.

Are those the only way to find out?

 

[Ajidica]

Are those the only way to find out?

It varies quite a lot. For example, in one of my sister's favorite novels, Searching for Alaska or something like that by John Greene is marketed as a young adult novel, but includes some rather descriptive scenes of teenagers have oral sex and abuse of hard drugs. Conversely, Ringworld by Larry Niven and The Ophiuchi Hotline by John Varley aren't marketed as young adult novels but the sex scenes contained in them are far more tame (in fact, I would say the books themselves are far more tame excepting some of the mind-bending bio-wizardy and ethic discussions in Hotline). Even when Niven started to enter his 'dirty old man' phase with The Ringworld Engineers the descriptions don't reach the detail found in Searching for Alaska.

Plus, it isn't like there is anything wrong with children's books. One of my favorite books today, Sir MacHinery is a wonderful book but still a children's book.

EDIT: Some books, like The Very Hungry Caterpillar or Midnight Crossing* are undeniably children's books, but things get a lot fuzzier once you move into young adult books.

*The book basically consists of you making the sounds a train makes as it goes over a crossing at night.

 

[Chukchi Husky]

One of the books I read got dismissed for being a kid's book. I know it's not for little kids, but I'm no good at English to really know any better.

 

[Takhisis]

Did I just see someone use ponies to attack the glory of the Byzantine Empire?

 

[cybrxkhan]

jokes

Glad to be of service.

Did I just see someone use ponies to attack the glory of the Byzantine Empire?

Yes, unfortunately, this is a very dark day for the great Basileia tōn Rhōmaiōn.

 

[Tahuti]

You've been saying this for a while. Please read David Harvey on neoliberalism.

I did. The biggest flaw of his analysis is that he goes to great pains to portray it as a distinct ideological movement that is fairly new, disregarding any ideological influences of the past. Furthermore, the term rather incoherently describes anything that isn't intellectually left-wing as neoliberal, pointing to economic deregulation at one point as a common thread, disregarding the possibility these reforms may perhaps been more the result of pragmatism on the part of political leaders than any ideological orthodoxy. Ironically, he points himself that they aren't ideologically orthodox themselves. It is yet another flawed attempt to attribute a common systematised ideology to what is effectively are the individual decisions of individuals.

It's a misnomer if anything. The prefix "neo-" really shouldn't be used on people who wants to turn back the clock several centuries.

It is quite telling how 'neo-' is almost universally applied to non-left-wing movements, as if there is moral equivalency between 'neoliberals' and 'Neo-Nazis'. It needs to stop. Nazis are just Nazis. There is nothing new about it.

 

[Takhisis]

I prefer the term 'Roman Empire' as it is, my good makrio-Asiatic fellow.

 

[Flying Pig]

I did. The biggest flaw of his analysis is that he goes to great pains to portray it as a distinct ideological movement that is fairly new, disregarding any ideological influences of the past. Furthermore, the term rather incoherently describes anything that isn't intellectually left-wing as neoliberal, pointing to economic deregulation at one point as a common thread, disregarding the possibility these reforms may perhaps been more the result of pragmatism on the part of political leaders than any ideological orthodoxy. Ironically, he points himself that they aren't ideologically orthodox themselves. It is yet another flawed attempt to attribute a common systematised ideology to what is effectively are the individual decisions of individuals.

Ideology can work like that, though. You don't need to be consciously following formally codified principles in order to have defined principles. Indeed, conservatives throughout history have claimed 'we don't believe in ideology, we just use common sense' while acting according to remarkably consistent principles, just like anybody else. At its most basic an ideology is just an abstracted idea of what the world is like (as all such pictures must be), which is married to a similarly abstracted view of what the world should be like by means of a plan to bring A into B.