Rafiq/Ecology Discussion moo 21-12-20 05:22:32 No. 2083 [Last 50 Posts]
So some of you may have read the quite popular pdf where Rafiq dunks on eco fetishism, in that thread he references a previous thread where he had spent a lot of time focusing in on eco-fetishism, however this thread has been lost from Revleft. It's available on internet archives but to preserve it I've made this in the style of the previous popular pdf. Hope you guys enjoy!
moo 21-12-20 05:22:41 No. 2172
>>2084 Unironically born in the wrong generation. I do agree for actual discussion they are the best forms of discussion, as much as the regular channer loves to shit on tripfags, for a coherent conversation it is necessary.
It is very funny, the bit where he talks about his complete disgust for nature documentary footage with swelling classic music is fantastic. I actual brought this up the other day, with socdem/radlib people, and without even mentioning concrete they brought up themselves the idea of a 'world paved with concrete' as some sort of hell. I can understand peoples' generally repulsion to anti-ecology, since it is currently such prevalent ideology, but these people are meant to be marxists, and they can't even read Rafiq's post to understand it properly.
Comrade 21-12-20 05:22:44 No. 2201
>>2175 Why should we read it? Why do you think Sato "gets" Marx? What are Sato's main theses in the work?
In other words, make a case for why we should read the work.
Comrade 21-12-20 05:22:45 No. 2212
>>2211 It's going from an extreme of eco fascism to the extreme of techno fascism. Refusing nature intrinsic value, it is also refused to wildlife that is dependant on said nature. Some animals could be said to be approaching human levels of intelligence, such as high apes and crustaceans, possibly extending to extraterrestials. They get the axe too? Then, denying value to other intelligent life we can deny value to other human beings themselves. What, then, value is left there? Self-replication and sustainment of one's own species. What will such a society resemble, a Imperium of Man from 40k? At this point is it still communist, or technofascist? It may be what is necessary, but to what end? With space exploration and colonisation drifting more and more away from possibility with just what we already know about space and laws of physics. May be it's just my archaic sensibilities, being classically trained and all. I don't cease to be communist because Rafiq's words frighten me, I'll follow whatever comes disregardless. I just don't see the value in living in such a world, for me.
Comrade 21-12-20 05:22:45 No. 2213
>>2212 >They get the axe too? Nobody gets the axe. I don't understand where people get this notion that Rafiq wants to "destroy nature" and kill all life that isn't human.
Nowhere does he say it. All he is saying is that Marxists understand that humans, by creating value by working on nature, destroy it. Humans cannot experience nature without "destroying" it, without changing it, subjugating it to ourselves so it doesn't kill us. We "destroy" wind by hiding in houses, we "destroy" rivers by damming them up, but we also create lakes, nature reserves, rivers and seas.
The point is that we, as humans, are against nature. Nature is alien and foreign to us, because nature kills us: floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, venomous plants, snakes and insects. The only nature we can coexist with, is that which we have dominated and bent to our will in national parks and botanical gardens.
Does this outlook justify putting concrete over the planet? Of course not. This outlook saddles us with the commitment to find a way to allow space for nature to grow alongside us. It means protecting plants and animals, not allowing them to go extinct due to our industrialisation and expansion.
Capitalist logic tells us that we have to choose between industrialisation and "nature". That is a false dichotomy. It only applies in capitalism because protecting natural resources isn't profitable, while exploiting them is. It is possible to industrialise sustainably, it's just that with our current ideological conditions it doesn't make sense.
moo 21-12-20 05:22:45 No. 2214
>>2212 What intrinsic value does nature actually have, outside of what it offers to humans?
I agree as a notion we should keep apes around, regardless of how little future society develops in terms of eco-fetishism we should keep a set of oragnutans or something to see if we can 'create' consciousness, it would be invaluable really. The point is we don't deny any value to any human, we are all equal as humans regardless of individual differences. Calling this communist or technofascist isn't really the point, it will be what society wants it to be at the time. Maybe 40k dudes will seem really cool in the future and everyone will want to be one? Who could have predicted hundreds of years ago that we would have bodybuilders that would sacrifice their lives to get insanely big, just from some strange insecurity?
It does sound weird to us, since we live in a liberal world that loves ecology and saving the polar bears, even the cold Rafiq mentions how he finds solace walking around parks and stuff, because of what nature can offer us as human beings. But does that mean it has intrinsic value if those offerings can be replaced and optimized?
Comrade 21-12-20 05:22:46 No. 2229
>>2228 >The Earth has had mass extinctions before <So we should create one right now in the 21st Century
Only on an imageboard would people say this isn’t a retarded position to hold
Jingo7 21-12-20 05:22:52 No. 2295
>>2172 I was basically radicalised by online forums like revleft, I think they are a great way to get into meaty discussions, far better than a comment section on the end of a blog post, or a chan board like this one. I mean, threads like this are lost as soon as they are started, nothing is set out as a permanent legacy, I don't really understand why you would want to post here. On the other hand, this YouTube/tiktok/Twitter way of discussing is what we have to contend with, but it is most often just shit slinging, unworthy of proper discussion, it fosters retreat into dogmatism and taking sides. Taking sides is all very well, but for those we wish to convince, it's hopeless.
As for the concrete world, it is literally a joke how people can reduce a series of complex ideas to a single image. People, particularly Leftists, are pathetic creatures who can't seem to criticise their own emotions properly. Like they just state a feeling as the beginning and end of the discussion, how repulsive, how worthy of derision they really are, and how correct Rafiq is to lay into this casual 'hipster' socialism.
Jingo7 21-12-20 05:22:52 No. 2297
>>2212 I think that if you consider the future communist society to be one in which you would like to live, with our current sensibilities, you are making a mistake. The deep communist future, where human beings are finally freed from our bodies, inherited from nature, and the universe is continually being sculpted and produced in man's image, the abolition of biological life as such, the strip-mining of planet earth to produce the galaxy-spanning technological structure which will house mankind, the end of gender, birth, motherhood, family, sex, animals, religion etc. this should fill us with pride and empowerment. This future, which is the logical outflow of the communist society's reproduction, would be hideous to us as we are presently, fixed as we are in our human bodies and so on. Honestly, I don't care that this future disgusts you, you need to re-think your sentimentalities, because the end of capitalism means the end of any sentimentality toward that which was considered holy, money, family, sex, pleasure and nature.
Jingo7 21-12-20 05:22:52 No. 2298
>>2227 No this is simply false. In the same way that man can never 'go back' to nature, because it would mean adandoning consciousness itself, the creations of mankind exist in spite of nature, they are not an outflow of it.
Our sentiments should be with the steel and glass of the high-rises, manifestations of man's divinity, and even with the excess plastic and waste, the excrement produced in abundance. The only thing we communists say is that currently, man's creations serve to alienate and Eisenhower him, rather than being the proud products and symbols of man's mastery over nature. This is a political question. We do not oppose capitalism only to put forward a harmonious balance with nature, we say fuck nature, but let us be fully self-conscious and in control of this mastery, rather than dominated by it, as we are under capitalism.
Comrade 21-12-20 05:22:52 No. 2303
>>2298 >Our sentiments should be with the steel and glass of the high-rises I agree with you, but that's just a bougie sentiment. "muh glass towers". They're inefficient for cooling and heating, the glass needs to be changed every 15-25 years, the glass has to be cleaned often. I guess you're gonna volounteer to scrub the "altars to man's divinity" every day in your soulless communist utopia?
Stone, brick, cement, that's what we need to build out of. We're only getting memed into steel and glass because that's cheaper and faster to build (but not maintain). After the construction company builds it and makes a profit, it is then up to the building owner to maintain it, often through the same company that built it. Stone, cement and brick, hell, nearly anyone can slap some cement on bricks if need be. People can recycle bricks, recycle stone, etc. but not steel and glass without industrial machinery and lots of energy.
Fuck steel and glass buildings. And fuck everyone who likes them.
moo 21-12-20 05:22:57 No. 2368
>>2294 Thanks Jingo7. It is very true, I've been reading some older modern Marxist books (60s/70s) and they all are so critical of capitalism, for hundreds of years we've accused capitalism of being on the verge of total collapse, but alas it seems to get no closer in the West. It is more important than ever for revolutionaries to hold each other accountable and engage in ruthless criticism.
Regarding forums, I find Bunkerchan fun, but /leftypol/ is pretty much garbage and feels like it's just been getting worse. /edu/ however is so slow it acts more like a forum, threads aren't looking to die any time soon. Do you have any recommendations for leftist places online?
>>2297 Well put, let me reinforce what you say with a quote:
>As soon as there will exist for everyone a margin of real freedom beyond production of life, Marxism will have lived out its span; a philosophy of freedom will take its place. But we have no means, no intellectual instrument, no concrete experience which allows us to concieve of this freedom or of this philosophy. - Jean-Paul Satre, Search for a Method >>2303 All hail the brutalist communist utopia.
Comrade 21-12-20 05:24:54 No. 3378
>>2229 This, Rafiq is a rentard that thinks being right means yelling the loudest. I love nature, much of it is still not understood, so the fact that Rafiq thinks he could make a sweeping generalization as, “It’s not it’s own thing” while worshiping for more abstract concepts like wage labor just shows how much hubris he has. Little wonder he’s so lauded in this website. I get the impression he wasn’t highly regarded on Revleft.
The tankies that eat his shit up need to collect their parents inheritance, become republicans and leave the Internet already.
Comrade 21-12-20 05:24:55 No. 3392
>>3378 It's strange that people that can't actually counter his argument tend to direct their focus towards him using all caps at some points. Do I think it's the most effective way of communicating? No. But does it actually affect the arguments at hand? The fact your argument relies upon
>I love nature Kind of shows that you haven't actually taken the time to read his points. I love coke. Does that mean it needs to exist post in a communist future?
>tankies I implore you to read more, he's far from supportive of USSR/China or Stalinism. This word pretty much means nothing now though so if you just mean him and his follows are strict Marxists then that is true.
Comrade 21-12-20 05:25:04 No. 3503
>>2083 >I should just fucking say it: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS so-called "emotions". I think this rafiq quote from
>>2204 shows his thinking best. He's a mega-sperg that fundamentally cannot understand other people, or even why people care about communism in the first place. Hint: its because they want a better world, not some alien hellscape that just completes capitalist alienation and commodification of everything better than capitalists could.
Retards on leftypol think that saying big words and talking in an oblique way while shoehorning in his anti-nature spergery at every occasion is actually the hight of discourse and intellect. Makes sense.
Comrade 21-12-20 05:25:04 No. 3504
>>2083 >We Communists are well aware that we would bring about the destruction of the "environment" raffiquists get the wall, you fundamentally misunderstand the project of Capital, and dont see how the "nature fetishists" are made up. Capitalism removed people from the land, turning them into fluid labor. It takes this labor and sells them back land and food, that was taken from them. This is how capitalism turns people into things to be moved around. I dont want to be a thing, so im anti-Capital. Communists like this apparently seek to make this change irreversable, by destroying all species other than ones they need to barely survive. (look at how much the neolithic "revolution" destroyed people's health. A diverse diet and active lifestyle is best, anti-health depressed hipsters who want robots to spoon feed you culture grown sugar paste while you shitpost on twitter about your ennui can fuck off)
At least the one redeeming thing about these people is that they see themselves as anti-capitalist, and even anti-establishment, so even though their rightful place is among bourgeois engineers and academics and state runners, they'll never get there because of their own delusions about their views. And if they got their way, they're genuinely too stupid to not annihilate themselves (fun fact: we have always needed "nature" to live. This isnt fetishization, is a fact, and by "nature" i mean diverse and huge communities of living organisms, that you retards happily want to annihliate. Have fun, earth-life extinction by 2050 or ur not communisming hard enough)
Comrade 21-12-20 05:25:04 No. 3505
>>3504 (me)
>You know it's such a disgusting logic too - to be conscious of something and then to "leave it be" is called superstition. okay i need to just stop reading this shit and posting more i havent gotten far but its so densely stupid
"i see a fat pussy - do i do the communist thing and take it for my use (the logical action), or do i act like a superstitious reactionary and leave it be?"
such so-called communists literally just want to be megaporkies. Kinda sad i guess. They're almost accelerationist i guess, but without actually turning the exploitative forces back on capital - instead they keep them turned towards natural resources, and fight to keep the core of capitalist production untouched. (this is the same as what capitalists do) This isnt "dialectics" or anything, because there's no fucking change. There's no negation, its wholehearted agreement except that they want a bigger share of the pie for people. I.e. a bit more humanist than the average porky, but dont forget that most porkers are liberal fucks anyways. I dont see the difference?
Comrade 21-12-20 05:25:05 No. 3506
>>2213 >I don't understand where people get this notion that Rafiq wants to "destroy nature" and kill all life that isn't human. >We Communists are well aware that we would bring about the destruction of the "environment" - we're not in on the secret of ecology worship. >My point of paving the planet with concrete was to make the point that more then ever today we need to conform the Earth to the needs of the human species, and that entails a radical geological transformation. >This bullshit nature-worship garbage never entered into the imagination of any Communist movement, not in 1871, not during Social democracy, and not during the Comintern era. It is a particularly new perversion of the counter-culture. It is a legacy that will not only not be present in a Communist movement of the 21st century, it will be fought bitterly, it will be smashed and the discourse that opposes it will be enshrined in political action itself. >Ecology is the new opium of the masses <a science is opium of the masses
>The point is that doing nothing, or treating nature like some actual thing we ought to respect is anti-scientific <apparently "science" gives you values?
this guy is a retard, stop defending him. He has valid points against certain strains of environmentalist stuff, and then perverts it for his own weird utopian thinking that isnt based in reality or what people even want. Yeah its dumb to fucking only care about butterflies and wolves and shit, and not also care about mosquitos and leeches. That doesnt invalidate all of our actual knowledge about the environment (supposedly this scientific knoledge is just opium though), and it definitely doesnt justify blind tech worship and faith that we can just engineer all problems away after creating them, when there were already solutions. god damn
Anyways yes anyone who is okay with exploiting and destroying all nature DOES want to "give the axe" to many things. Our whole society is based on this. We are constantly choosing what dies and what goes extinct and which places will be toxic for thousands of years. We are always "giving the axe" to things. So no, not "nobody gets the axe". Rafiq is pretty explicit that anything that could die to serve Humanity SHOULD die. Fuck that bullshit. Pure exploitation mindset, and he's fighting against fucking windmills. His enemies arent in front of him, just comrades who arent hopped up on tech worship and actually seem to know the facts of what is possible better than him. Ideaology cant be a substitute for actual scientific knowledge.
>>2214 Nothing has "intrinsic" value, but why should we allow some idea of "maybe in the future people will actually like this" to dictate what we do now? Why not just allow our values and emotions to guide what kind of world we want to live in? Like whats the benefit of putting someone else's values in place of ours, or even some fictional person or people's values?? i dont really get it. "It will be what society wants it to be", but isnt the point of radicals that we change society to fit what we see as better? Saying "society will choose" seems like a cop out.
Also i do deny though that we should be okay with "optimizing" nature, as if it were that simple. It's euphamistic for destroying nature and then trying to create a prosthetic for the functions that were lost. This isnt optimizing, its the opposite. But in progressivist newspeak, to optimize means to make more technological (i.e. more "modern", which is definitely better), so we can speak about "optimizing nature" and it makes perfect sense even against the historical facts.
Im not against legit optimizing, but if it happens at the expense of the old, then really i dont trust it. Too often in the name of Science people "optimize" and get rid of the old, only to find out later that maybe the new has some problems, maybe more even, but whoops now we cant go back, sorry. Real optimizing meshes the old with the new, and allows things to be time-tested. This flies in the face of progressive mythology, where daring inventors make leaps and bounds and revolutionize society. This is very hazardous and with retrospect that we can have (dont forget that we can actually look to see whats happened before :P), we see that often there are bad side effects (lead in gasoline anyone?) that werent predicted. So im not saying changing things or creating tech is bad, but it needs to be done carefully INSTEAD of this "lets kill everything lol, oh well if that isnt the best we'll just do a different course of action i guess" that rafiq wants, because you cant just reverse, and we have to be careful with what we have. Fundamentally, we ARE animals, and we DO live in a biosphere, and even though we've dramatically changed our ecosystem, look at where we changed it. In capitalist centers, and in early states this trend started. It's never whole. Look at how indigenous people across the world fought against it. They got to see capitalism as also industrialization and proletarization, and they wanted none of it. There are still maotists out there like this. Understand that the project of Capital is the project of progress and city-building and "optimizing" and unthinking alienating of things from their environment and into their constituent elements. This happens to humans too, maybe even primarily (you can see the primacy in how early states rely heavily on slavery and capturing citizens). Communists though seem to only care that it doesnt happen to humans as much (some communists dont care at all because they dont see it), like they dont want the worker alienated from their community, from their labor (i.e. their life time and power), from the land and tools they use frequently, from their homes, etc. They want to root out the force of money infiltrating all relations and making everything for sale/destruction. The answer to this is not replacing the separatory power of money with that of the government. The answer is reuiniting the rifts that were caused and removing this tumor that we call Capital. Its about workers but about so much more.
Comrade 21-12-20 05:25:05 No. 3509
>>3507 "Hence by a sort of house-that-Jack-built, the destruction of the mosquito that feeds the trout, that preys on the mayfly, that destroys the eggs that hatch the salmon that pampers the epicure, may occasion a scarcity of this latter fish in an area where he would otherwise be abundant. Thus all nature is linked together by invisible bonds…"
George Perkins Marsh, Man and Nature, pg 91
I actually couldnt find much evidence that they feed on salmon spawn, and that work is from like the 1800s, but this 1980s doc confirms that there are carniverous and omnivorous mayfly larvae
https://www.ephemeroptera-galactica.com/pubs/pub_b/pubbrittainj1982p119.pdf >True omnivory is of limited occurrence in the mayflies and is restrictedto some species in genera such as lsonychia, Siphlonurus, Stenonema, andEphemera (55, 66). The predatory habit is also relatively uncommon in themayflies. In North America, Dolania, Analetris, and the heptageniidg,Pseudiron, Spinadis, and Anepeorus, feed largely on chironomid larvae (66,134, 223). The baetid genera Centroptiloides and Raptobaetopus have car-nivorous nymphs (1, 80, 165). Within the Prosopistomatidae there are alsocarnivorous species, although within the single genus Prosopistoma thereare both detritivores and carnivores (80). Several species, such as Siph-lonurus occidentalis and Stenonemafuscum, may change from a predomi-nantly detrital diet in the early instars to one containing a significantproportion or even a dominance of animal material in the mature nymphs(3). Comrade 21-12-20 05:25:06 No. 3523
>>3520 yeah…. like in parts i get what he's saying, that we shouldnt reify nature as some absolute and untrouchable thing, but only libs and super deep eco ppl think like that (but for different reasons). Most nature lovers who have a problem with fucking everything over also want to use nature for human goals, and as long as people have been around we've changed our environment. All animals do that…. and some more than others, like beavers create niches for toooons of species by their activity. The difference is that on one side you have ppl that see humans using nature to their advantage as this total obliteration if necessary, an the "upgrading" of nature and shit. On the other, you have people who want to live "in harmony" with nature or whatever, basically respecting other creatures, caring for our environment around us, giving each part of our (ecological) community their share by not taking what we dont need or being totally cold to all nonhuman life. They arent in fundamental contradiction, like both are pro-human, just one is a narrow humanism that alienates the human from their environment and their living nonhuman community and food sources and all that.
But also i notice in hyper-industrialist and transhumanist types, their base philosophy seems to be centered around the idea that what makes people content and live good lives, is fundamentally very difficult to get, and maybe a neverending problem of having to build more and more in order to get closer and closer to a good, healthy, happy life. This contrasts with the epicurean "What is good is easy to get". Personally i disagree with it also, especially considering that its odd that even with how miserable the modern world can make us, some people insist that we were even more miserable before. Why not just kill yourself then? How did we get here? And surely we didnt evolve to be naturally miserable, and crave things that we never knew about in order to be baseline content.
Comrade 21-12-20 05:25:06 No. 3524
>>3523 (me)
>Why not just kill yourself then? here i mean why would they have not all killed themselves in that situation, if we started out in pure agony and misery all the time
Comrade 21-12-20 05:25:26 No. 3702
>>3497 >Countered all the time Maybe, with varying quality. In these 2 big ecology posts there is not nearly enough effort to counter his points for what they are. The problem is that these people don't actually understand what he's saying, not because he is a genius, or because they can't handle it, but because they don't try very hard.
>>3498 Coke and nature are the same in the fact that they give a number of people pleasure. This makes no bearing on whether or not we should take it into the communist future.
>Science says we can't live without nature Does it? It does it say we need oxygen to breath (a biological process that happens independent of the human thinking process)?
>>3503 This is a very very poor reading of that paragraph. He is not saying humans don't feel any emotions and therefore should give up 'feeling' for communism or some stupid shit. He's in fact saying the exact opposite! He's saying 'so-called' emotions (i.e. 'natural' emotions in this context) don't exist
>a genuine human 'emotion' is that IT CANNOT be reduced to anything natural, because it shakes the foundation of any and all kinds of representations of the natural world in the first place, it SHAKES the very foundations of the ethical imperative and injunction to reduce it to something natural >I can't read therefore everyone else is a pseud Nope sorry
>>3504 >Neolithic revolution destroyed people's help Anprims get the wall first, you know this
>People who want to automate things can fuck off Can Marx fuck off too? Who else is excluded from your dream world?
>Bourgeois engineers Shit dude what are you talking about?
>We need nature to live How the fuck do we need living organisms around us to live? Says who? Morons said thousands of years ago you need various things to live, who gives a shit about them now?
Let's pick an example. Currently humans need oxygen to function. I don't NEED various organisms to produce this. I could make it in a factory (yes I know this sounds very 'sad' and 'crazy' to you but that doesn't matter here). Humans have come so far technology-wise, who are you, random bunkerchan poster, to say we have reached the limit of human existence and now must rely on nature? We used to rely on nature to communicate, with birds, smoke signals, whatever
>No you cannot get rid of the birds we need them to communicate! Then phones were invented.
>>3505 >Capitalists do something so it is bad >This is bad because it 'sounds' porkie Why should I leave nature be? Can you give a single reason not oozing with superstition?
(btw, if you say it may be "it may be useful in the future" then you are still saying it is our right to NOT leave nature be)
Comrade 21-12-20 05:25:26 No. 3704
>>3506 <"So yes, the 'Earth' will have to be taken into account if for the simple reason of keeping those services stable until they can (can they?) be replaced by artificial means."
>The answer is, yes, they can be. Other than that, I generally agree, but to even pursue this requires a recognition that there is no mystique, no emotional, ideological or superstitious investment in what we call those "natural processes" - we must purely approach them from the standpoint of practicality, and convenience. Soberly, of course. He doesn't really refer to ecology as the science of what plants grow well with other plants. He means the ideology of it. To be honest ecology in the scientific sense can just be referred to as biology. However I agree it is a poor word choice, but if you know 'ecologists' or people invested in the 'ecology' movement you know how absolutely drowned in anti-scientific mysticism they are.
Why do people want things? Obviously because of the ideology of the society. This is a nothing argument. People don't 'want' communism right now. Shall we give up?
>He rejects knowledge about the environment Again, no where does he deny any facts of environmental science. We know why tsunamis form, this has no baring on whether or not we should try and stop them. Idiots would claim that we shouldn't try and stop them because that would be 'interfering with nature'. As communists that's exactly what we do, we destroy the current 'nature' of things. Should I also stop living in a house because the house 'gets in the way' of the oh so natural wind? Nature has no consciousness, has no agency, it doesn't care whether it exists or doesn't. To say otherwise is by definition mysticism.
So how much nature are you okay with destroying then? Just enough so that the western world can develop, but not enough so that the whole world can live pleasant lives?
>Rafiq is pretty explicit that anything that could die to serve Humanity SHOULD die Why not?
>Muh exploitation Who am I exploiting? Who owns the land that I am appropriating? Oh yeah the human race because we are the only things ever to exist that have a conception of 'possession'. Like I have said you can't exploit the Earth unless you accept the mysticism that the Earth is conscious or some other God 'owns' it.
Communists are those that acknowledge the fact there is no god and choose to change the world ourselves, as opposed to waiting for the divine right to by anyone else. We don't wait for an afterlife, we create it here on Earth. This heaven won't necessarily adhere to your liberal beliefs regarding how great the environment is.
Yeah why should we save nature because 'some people in the future might like it'? The point is that a future society removed from the ideology of capitalist society won't share your views on 'nature'. It won't view 'nature' as this sacred thing that we mustn't mess with, lest we bare the wrath of 'God' (climate change to the ecologists in this context). You are sold this ideology on years of disney films where animals can talk. The idea of this hidden animal world where they are conscious beings, but is this true?
Optimizing nature destroys everything natural about it. You think it's natural for us collect millions of tonnes of crops an ship them across the globe with great ease? It is not natural; it is the product of thousands upon thousands of years of human labour.
Here is the anti scientific view of the ecologist. Who gives a shit about the old?
<I'm not against optimizing tsunamis to kill as little people as possible but destroying tsunamis alltogether? Why would we do that!
Do you see how arbitrary your argument is?
>Real optimizing meshes the old with the new …No it doesn't it just makes it better. We optimized communication with phones. We didn't just breed carrier pigeons to fly really fast.
Granted this doesn't mean there haven't been technological failures. Like you mention with lead in gasoline. They weren't predicted because of various reasons. If we don't have capitalism to pressure people into releasing things prematurely we limit this problem. Also with better understanding of science these problems get minimized as well.
In the quote at the top it spells out Rafiq's position quite clearly. No one is saying we should blow up the Earth tomorrow. The process would be a slow one where everything that is deemed unnecessary is removed. This isn't about burning down the amazon tomorrow, however the extreme ideological reaction in this thread paints it that way.
So if indigenous people fight against us stopping them rape and kill each other it's 'good' is it? Reactionaries are reactionary, it doesn't matter how 'natural' and 'pure' you find their so-called 'culture' to be.
>There are still maotists out there like this. This tells us nothing. There are also unironic anprims, they are reactionaries too. It doesn't matter who you are, it matters WHY you do something.
>Understand that the project of Capital is the project of progress and city-building and "optimizing" and unthinking alienating of things from their environment and into their constituent elements. Why can't we do this in a communist society? Why can't we remove plants from the ground in a society where humans are treated fairly? I fail to see how "progress" is bad intrinsically.
>[communists] dont want the worker alienated from their community, from their labor (i.e. their life time and power), from the land and tools they use frequently, from their homes, etc True.
>The answer to this is not replacing the separatory power of money with that of the government. The answer is reuiniting the rifts that were caused and removing this tumor that we call Capital. Its about workers but about so much more. What are you *actually* proposing here? We return to monke?
<"For you Communism is a fantasy, plain and simple, it is the 'good' of capitalism minus 'the bad'. What you fail to understand is that the overthrow of capitalism entails just that - both what you perceive the 'good' and the 'bad' are sublated, because both are conditions of the other's existence."
I actually missed a point
>Fundamentally, we ARE animals, and we DO live in a biosphere, and even though we've dramatically changed our ecosystem, look at where we changed it. You didn't read either of the Rafiq threads, did you? You think a fucking cockroach is of equal worth to humans? You think humans have no agency in changing our environment? I offer you all of known human history as my source to back this up.
This is what I talk about in my other post just now about the lack of care of anyone to read the threads. They just read
>environment go bye bye and shut their eyes and ears.
>>3509 This has already been addressed. It honestly baffles me how anyone could read this in good faith and come away thinking that he is advocating destroying everything all at once tomorrow.
Comrade 21-12-20 05:25:26 No. 3705
>>3523 >Only libs think like this That's only the majority of the western world… no need to critique that…
>ONLY libs This thread is extremely clear in disproving this fact. You may not literally kneel every night and pray for nature, but it is still your God. It is the Other that you dare not disobey.
>if it happens at the expense of the old, then really i dont trust it. You are scared of going against nature, even though it is all we have done throughout human history. The mere existence of humanity goes against nature. The idea of a communist society is AGAINST NATURE. What you're saying doesn't come from a place of critical thinking, and what you call 'science' it comes from a place of deep ideology.
You are just inventing this random utopian society in your head like it is in anyway possible.
>No you can't be cold to nature! >You must respect other 'creatures'! >NOOO DONT MOVE THAT ROCK MOTHER NATURE PUT IT THERE Only libs believe in this shit? You're a lib then, or a deep ecologist (I like how you say 'super deep eco', as if deep eco isn't fucking moronic and reactionary in itself by very definition).
We can't go back to monke. You think the majority of people are going to follow you to your shitty little commune where you all 'respect' nature and braid eachothers hair? Where you gonna get your health care then? Are you going to have plumbing? What central system are you connecting this plumbing too? If not, you're going to need the dreaded TECHNOLOGY to collect water. Or even more advanced technology to synthesize water when mother nature says
>'no rain this year!' >yes dear… Why should I want to do any of this? Why should humans want to respect other creatures? Or care for my environment? They are not conscious agents. Unless you believe that Bambi was a documentary or something. The only thing I care about is not having nature oppress humans in any way. Should we respect nature by not killing tumors in humans? When does it end?!
We're not saying that content happy lives are hard to get, but the pure nature of human existence is our lack of nature. We say "fuck you" to nature and decide our own evolution.
>Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. We don't invent some utopian world where everyone stays in their place with their small village farm patch living 'sustainably', 'as one' with nature and aim for it. The seek the conclusions of current contradictions. This is the different between socialism as a science and you wishing to simply extend the already alive ideology of capitalism. You wish to extend the alienation man experiences into communism by treating nature as valuable as it 'just exists'. It's not just capitalist ideology, it is RIGHT WING ideology. "Muh sacred land" "muh birth right" "Muh pure culture" "Muh white wife and 2 white kids and a golden retriever".
Humans 'natural' state isn't agony, but it is curiosity to some extent. Our meaning is defined by how we work towards things (i.e. labour). Read this
>How did we get here? By some sick accident as far as we're concerned.
>Are we naturally miserable? We live in late neoliberalism. Everyone is fucking miserable. It isn't in our DNA. But I think it's clear humans will always be able to 'progress', the desire for 'more' is unlimited.
Let me be very clear. No one is denying environmentalism as a science. No one is denying the climate crisis. However it means nothing to us ideologically. It is not the divine wrath of god. It doesn't mean we should return to monke. It is nothing more than than the failure of humans to plan their control of nature properly, due to the limitations capitalism puts on us.
Comrade 21-12-20 05:26:20 No. 4294
>>3704 >He doesn't really refer to ecology as the science of what plants grow well with other plants. He means the ideology of it. Which is a strawman that borders on a parody of ecologists being hippy earth worshipers.
>To be honest ecology in the scientific sense can just be referred to as biology. No it, can't. That's like saying Epidemiology could be called Internal Medicine. They're looking at two different things a completely different scales.
>Why do people want things? Obviously because of the ideology of the society. Self preservation isn't something that society needs to instill in people. You don't have any knowledge of the history behind environmentalism. Just like a propagandist you cherrypick the historical periods that fit your narrative. As early as the 1960's the public used to think exactly like Rafaiq. They saw the environment as simply something to utilize, and that was a part form them. It's very much a colonialist mind set which you and Rafiq obviously share.
We know now that humans are very much effected by nature in a symbiosis that we barely understand. Rafiq rants on about ideology because he's an idealists with no understanding of the material roots behind it, particularly the history.
Also, I'm not so sure what's so ideological finding nature sublime. Yet somehow thinking that seeing nature as only a utility is somehow escaping ideology.
Rafiq is a left version of an autistic atheist. Proselytizing that there's definitely no god with zero self awareness that that itself is a faith based belief.
Comrade 21-12-20 05:26:20 No. 4295
>>3705 >This thread is extremely clear in disproving this fact. You may not literally kneel every night and pray for nature, but it is still your God. It is the Other that you dare not disobey. I don't disobey nature because it's more powerful than me that a cursory reading of history shows myself and humanity still don't understand.
When you see a "High Voltage" sign do you still insist on playing with the wires inside? You don't? Huh…I guess electricity is your God that you dare not disobey. So fucking retarded.
Comrade 21-12-20 05:26:21 No. 4306
>>3705 >Why should humans want to respect other creatures? Certainly not because of any ideological reasons or because we think "nature" is sacred. We should respect other creatures because we understand that respecting other creatures, treating them well, helps ourselves, our own psyches. Dogs and humans evolved alongside one another for tens of thousands of years (some research says even longer), it is expected that we would have some sort of "bond" to the animal – they found that both humans and dogs release oxytocin when looking at each other's eyes and interacting. Those dogs that were friendly, with puppy eyes, etc. we kept around, the rest we killed or simply didn't accept/feed and they died. There is something "real" that you feel towards your dog, but it is only you that feels it, your dog is acting on instincts and survival (if he goes against the pack, or isn't on friendly terms with the pack, he'll be cast out). So there is a perfectly good materialist explanation for the human-dog friendship phenomena, that doesn't involve Disney magic.
Compare dogs to our other "domesticated" pet. Cats probably came to humans by chilling on the outskirts of settlements, catching the rats and other small creatures attracted to our garbage. That's why cats today still seem independent, and most are OK changing owners, going somewhere else when they need, because that was their lifestyle around early human settlements, as long as there's food, they stay. Dogs on the other hand are pack animals and are not suited for the solitary life, so it is expected that their behaviour will be more "social".
Comrade 21-12-20 05:26:21 No. 4307
>>4293 "This" to a very large post. "All you're going to get from sycophants is strawmanning" to a post with a very large response… Come on bruh.
>if you don't worship him wahh wahh This is pathetic. Spend more time reading and learn how to criticize things. I'll be responding to the rest shortly.
Comrade 21-12-20 05:26:22 No. 4311
>>4294 Okay it's not a strawman, you gotta stop using this word. It makes you look like a Destiny or Vaush watcher. It's fucking stupid. Just say what you think is wrong or say where you disagree. Do you know ecologists? Do you know biologists? Do you have academic training at all? This isn't to shame you: and yes it is relevant.
I can't prove to you that every ecologist is a hippy tier retard, however that isn't the point. From my experience with the left and ecologists I can attest to the utter ideology that permeates through this field. In the same way when you watch a Zizek film you don't go 'pffft prove it that every person thinks this way!', we know this because we live in society, and interact with it everyday and can attest to the truthfulness of the statements. Do you genuinely believe there is no eco mysticism seeping into the left? This idea that we should be 'one' with nature. The idea we shouldn't 'mess' with nature, and be good little boys? If you had bothered to read Rafiq you'd know what is oh so disgusting about this line of thought.
Okay I agree here. As it field it is something separate from biology, however it comes with ideological baggage because of this separation. My personal background is in mathematics and physics and I could write a book or so regarding the ideology implications of these sciences in the same way Rafiq has here. It isn't really that surprising.
>Just like a propagandist you cherrypick the historical periods that fit your narrative. >As early as the 1960's the public used to think exactly like Rafaiq. Straw manning retardation. Has nothing to do with the point at hand.
>They saw the environment as simply something to utilize, and that was a part form them. How is this bad? "not being a simp for muhther nature = colonialism" won't cut it. Literally not an argument dude. It's as stupid as those morons who claim "efficiency is capitalist!" and what not. I don't give the slightest shit how 'bad' something sounds to your liberal mind. Communist revolution sounds bad to your average joe, that means nothing. It means less than nothing to the value of communism.
>Wow nature is so pure and holy we barely understand how great it is 🙏 >What is ideological about finding nature sublime? Wow it's really mask of time, isn't it? Are you acquainted with eco fascist work? Deep ecology shit? I suspect you are not since your lack of self reflection speaks bounds.
Do you know what nature is, 'Comrade'? Nature is shit and filth. It is disease. It is women dying at childbirth because the baby is too large. It is the mentally and physically ill suffering and being killed because they are not strong enough. It is rape, it is starvation and it is endless struggle. How is this torture sublime? The only thing that is sublime is the human intervention in this so called 'natural' process. This is what you think is nature. What you think is nature is specifically sterilized 'natural parks' and animals in zoos and pathetic petit bourgeois attempts of 'returning to nature'.
>muh autism >muh atheism >actually you're the one with no self awareness! uh huh
Comrade 21-12-20 05:26:22 No. 4313
>>4295 >I don't disobey the owner of my land! They are more powerful than me! >I don't disobey my slave master, they are more powerful than me! >I don't disobey my capitalist! They are more powerful than me! It's clear: you're not a communist. "High voltage" is the complete fucking antithesis to nature you moron. It is the human ability to harness such great power and contain it by the sheer use of human labor. Electricity doesn't rule us, it doesn't 'decide' what we do like famines and capitalists do. The fact you act so smug after such a pathetic analogy really sums it up. You are so involved in your ideology, so narcissistic in your lack of understand, it's depressing.
Nature is not all powerful. It is not a god. You can believe it is, by all means, but you're not a communist. You are a reactionary, since when humans say 'we should improve our lives' you cry about how hard it looks.
Comrade 21-12-20 05:26:37 No. 4505
>>4498 Based.
>>4499 >>4500 The point isn't that I am choosing to bring these things to the communist future, I'm REJECTING the idealism of 'I like thing therefore it will exist in communism' that the nature defenders are proposing.
If it got to the point of brains in jars, why not? It's no more monstrous than what we already are compared to our animal brethren.
>>4501 >No you don't understand science, you're not heckin valid!!! I'm fully fucking aware of the extremely basic concept that our biology is complicated. This is painfully obvious to every human alive. But are you going to sit there, in a world we have irradicated diseases with labor, with buildings hundreds of metres tall, dude we've been to the MOON. Does the concept of destroying all animals slowly really sound that crazy? Or creating cyborgs? I'm not saying it's desirable, the point is that doesn't matter.
If you want to discuss the human skin microbiome or something we can have a thread for that, but the actually intricacies of that are not relevant here, it's a philosophical discussion regarding humanity's relation with nature.
Comrade 21-12-20 05:26:38 No. 4510
>>4505 >I like thing therefore it will exist in communism That's not what they're proposing. Did you even read Marx? You're the idealist thinking we exist separate from nature.
Why the fuck do you think we need to destroy all animals? We can do communism without this shot. You're taking communism and extending it to weird transhumanist shit that has nothing to do with the relations of production. At least be honest. You're a transhumanist not a communist.
Comrade 21-12-20 05:26:38 No. 4513
>>4510 Let us go through the comments
>>3378 I love nature, much of it is still not understood, so the fact that Rafiq thinks he could make a sweeping generalization as, “It’s not it’s own thing” while worshiping for more abstract concepts like wage labor just shows how much hubris he has.
<I love coke. Does that mean it needs to exist post in a communist future?
Our love for these things have no bearing on their use in communism, our personal opinions on these objects are useless. More of an argument needs to be made. We don't exist separate from nature but nothing is more unatural than the human. And NOTHING worse than the communist. Nature abhors equality, freedom, the weak being given a chance, and rejection of 'natural' ways of life. Can you name a single less natural thing than democracy? We are against nature and we seek to destroy it in every fibre of our existence as humans. As beings that labour.
Why not destroy all the animals if they are of no use to us? Post capitalism and we gain no pleasure from our fake relationships with pets, dogs will just go extinct. Not because we genocide them mao style, but because the course of human history dictated it to be so. My question for you is have you read Marx?! What constitiutes the relations of production dictate everything in society! You know why they didn't call the commodity fetishism thing ideology? Because it is literally the core of our society and it's functioning, it's not a structure on top of it.
Comrade 21-12-20 05:26:39 No. 4525
>>4522 I made that and no, that is just a single forum discussion about ecology (it's posted in the OP). Good to see it getting reposted however.
>>4521 But it's not the concept of democracy that we have. That 'everyone should get their say', you know? What we see as democracy is just a way of running a hive that is effective at not leading to the death of the species, democracy as we know it is a complete rejection of the social order, of kings and queens, of tribe leaders and so on. I guess what I mean is the idea we should strive for some level equality is completely bizarre for nature, where disease runs rampant and food chains of constant death cannot be escaped.
Comrade 21-12-20 05:26:39 No. 4531
>>4529 I guarantee I'm far more rigorously qualified from a better university than you are. The point is these things SOUND absurd to anyone not with our level of knowledge. Imagine 200 years ago and telling someone of the technology we have today. The sheer arrogance and ignorance it takes to declare some arbitrary thing 'really hard' means nothing to humans. It doesn't matter if you think it's personally very difficult to do things that would serve humanity, humanity will do them anyway.
Of course I know that the literal process of getting to the moon isn't 'insanely complicated', but the course of technology that needed to occur to allow this to happen, when you compare it to the most grand achievement of a dolphin or something -like dude my background is maths/physics I'm not ignorant here- ITS FUCKING BONKERS. We left our planet!!! Who knows of the possibilities the future holds for us? Certainly not random anonymous pseud number 6151
Anonymous 05-03-21 09:34:11 No. 5100
>>5063 >>5073 Rafiq wasn't a pseud who tried to obfuscate because he didn't know what the theory of value was. Their philosophies arent anywhere near each other either. Haz when pressed reveals he doesn't know shit and says you have to do idealist leap of faiths and "believe in the people" when it comes to truth. As already pointed out its Heidegger shit. The reason Rafiq was aggressive was because he knew what he wanted to get across and was tired of repeating himself. Read any of his posts and you get a clear explanation and position on whatever topic.
Haz just screams and yells because he doesn't know how to explain shit he just read once and doesn't understand. He would call Rafiq an Anglo for actually knowing something instead of pretending with big words. And hopefully Rafiq would shoot him and push the body in a ditch.
Anonymous 02-01-22 02:10:05 No. 9156
>>4529 >Those accomplishments only blow your mind largely due to your ignorance of science. Really just shows how some people on /leftypol/ don't know shit about the "worldview" they supposedly believe. Determinately, it's obviously the case that humans have given "biological" or "natural" limits, but these are mediated by the social and technological arrangements which are themselves mutable through our practical activities, which can in turn can alter these limits.
What you're insisting on is in fact a prototypical ideological element of conservatism, in your case from fetishizing "Science" and "Nature" without reflecting on the historical and practical underpinnings of both science and nature, or of yourself and your own individual preferences. If Haz is Rafiq, he is, or used to be, smarter than the morons criticizing him here, like >>3378's "I Love Nature, and It's Hubris to Alter the Unknown Natural Balance, therefore the argument is wrong."
Anonymous 07-02-22 05:38:06 No. 9670
>>9649 >They both hate Chomsky >They both bold their texts and write aggressively >Haz is upper middle class and Arab. Rafiq is the child of arabic immigrants >Rafiq is ultra leftist >As for the guy talking about Lysenkoism, it's obvious that Haz is using this as a stand-in for the same principle. >Tahir in Michigan? >Multipolarity >Nuanced patriotism >Webm is not an effort post
Anonymous 10-02-22 14:23:39 No. 9701
>>9698 Yes, anon, most of it was written by Michael Millerman, a Dugin scholar. Here is a video of him reading the article the day after.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tusRUfmVnUQ He tries to pretend like he has never seen the article before, but his reading over typos and errors like they aren't there betrays his familiarity with the text. He has contributed heavily to the article.
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