I just watched it this weekend and for whatever reason the copy I acquired had this very funny ending where John Connor becomes Gavin Newsom at the end. “Here, on the battlefield of the Senate, his weapons are common sense… and hope!” Laughed out loud.
You’ve got to give us some warning if you’re going to link directly to news from Child-killing Bari’s Station.
By that logic, are we part of the makeup of the actual material conditions or are some groups more complicit than others? Your hands and your “peeps” are looking pretty bloody as well, comrade.
Well yes, the US is funding genocide and extracting money from me to do it, but I don’t really get why you’re coming for me personally, edgelord.
I don’t have volitional control over the US Military and I don’t find the US military and its child killing actions heroic in the slightest, and its a continuation of nasty genocidal work from the foundation to the modern day through My Lai and Abu Ghraib.
I oppose those policies and am actively organizing with my fellow socialists to end this, but we both know it will take more than me saying “no”, it will take mass organized revolutionary action. We are all born into a world with disturbing contradictions and injustice and have a burden to work toward a more just world.
I was talking to a USA Democrat relative and she told me that watching Israel’s actions had made her start to get angry when she saw Jewish people. And that she “knows about the holocaust and all that” but that she “doesn’t feel sorry for them anymore” because what they’re doing in Palestine is wrong. I was surprised that she was self-aware enough to realize she was developing a strong anti-Jewish prejudice, but also that she seemingly was okay or even proud of her prejudice. I tried to talk her out of it but she basically clammed up when I started talking about her duty as a person to counteract the prejudice.
Ultimately, it exposed some of the inner workings when someone is developing a prejudice. They go through life with a simple, wrong heuristic, assigning humans to groups and making them collectively liable for actions of their group. That group is then judged as “good” and worthy of praise, or “bad” and worthy of scorn. It’s not complicated stuff but it is shameful and common.
That’ll show em!
Ah, in that case, I have a solution: simply end the existence of Technocrats.
The “brain is a computer” model is a useful metaphor for understanding some parts of how the brain works. There are those who think there’s a stronger computational theory of mind, but mostly people who study this professionally would concede the instinctual and language points you’ve identified as matters of fact.
What do you see as the dangers of over-reliance on this metaphor? Dehumanization? Some sort of spiritual dimension?
I have read and enjoyed the Ibex group translation. It is not as rich a world as DE, but has complex and interesting characters. I would not recommend it as a standalone novel, but good if you enjoyed DE and want more.
Another distraction from New. I wish people would focus on the movies.
This was a good read, thanks for sharing.
I recently read Homage to Catalonia and found myself admiring his actions, but clearly he has some serious wrongs to account for when you look at a fuller picture. I remember in my Florida teenage years both Animal Farm and 1984 were explicitly taught to prove to us the dangers of Communism in what was supposedly an English class. (And on reflection, ‘English’ was a more accurate label than ‘Literature’.)
The life sandwich of Colonial stooge, brief interlude fighting the fascists, to anti-Communist state tool is hard to swallow. I’ll make a note and just reserve my historical admiration for the good fight and seek out some other authors less tainted by all the baggage.
Are they planning to put “Allow discretionary public executions by the state? Yes or No” on the ballot?
Exactly. This type of person has sold zero revolutionary newspapers at the farmer’s market.