/edu/ - Education

>>24252
what more do you need than 'opium of the people'?

>>24253
Not the OP, but i believe not all spirituality is antithetical to the goal of communism. I think that, not the religions themselves, but some of their practices and, inevitably, some of the theoretical thoughts that circle around them, are actually beneficial and maybe even necessary for communism. I am mainly speaking of meditation, which, as a practice, implicitly entails some determinate pragmatical and theoretical structures, that are compatible with some other thoughts and practices and incompatible with some others. if done correctly, even outside of any spiritual path, meditation brings one to develop an unattachment and de-identification to the immediacy of one own's thoughts and emotions, and an association with long term decision making strategies based on a bird-eye view of its own situation. Likewise, one gains a disattachment to our own ego structure, the irrational thought that I, just because I am I (or, more accurately, just because I am AN I, because everyone is an I and nobody is special for that), I am more valuable than other Is, which is obviously something that should have some degree of general acceptance in order for communism to work. Capitalism by contrast is, deep-down, generally incompatible with the thoughts and practices that implicitly associate with the practice of meditation. It is true that, particulary, burgeois type people have repeatedly associated themselves with meditation and religions which have to do with meditation, but I believe that this is due to phenomena such a certain orientalism that leads people which percieve their lives as meaningles under the irreligious and "cold" scientific western worldwiev and, to hide from that "void", try to contain themselves into the more comfy, small world of an exotic religious oriental worldview. I also think they use it as a counterweight to the sometimes fast paced life they have to lead due to their financial profession, or to feel somehow morally acceptable by developing a peaceful ideology and being able to control unpleasent thoughts. In general, burgeoise meditation is a coping mechanism, it just reaches the surfice of the practice, and therefore, i don't think its valid to associate the full extent of the practice with the bourgeoise. On the other hand, if it is true that communism is not just a transformation of the mode of production, but also a transformation of our cognitive structure like some have theorized, i believe that the result would be similar to the mind advanced meditators. Some have theorized this before in very different strands of marxism, for example, in the otherwise (for me) uninteresting and pragmatically useless strand of freudomarxism in the frankfurt school, mainly Marcuse. I think tha the theory goes roughly like this: influenced by psychonalysis, he considers the ego to be a sort of defence mechanism against outside threat. If we consider also that mode of production shapes the social institutions we live by, for example, family, gender, identities such as being identified by the trade one works in… In a postscarcity, maybe even "post-political" (in the sense that with the abolition of the state, politics would not be defined by a conflict between opposing interest but a technical management of the interests of all because they are unified under communism), it is very likely that, even at a daily level, our way of percieving ourself and relating to one another would, with time, radically change. It is difficult for me to envision how structures such as family or gender would subsist their own economic obsolescence, since the division of labour by which they sprung as functional structures to organize society and daily life would disappear, if we follow the spirit of Engels' the origin of the family, even if its data is outdated. So, under this situation, it is possible that what we call the ego, without the arena of conflicting interests that is civil society, would actually transform into a new way of cognitive auto-perception or identification. Che Guevara's new man is also an example, and i also think that the mentioned that Engel's Origin of the Family carries these entailings. I believe that Marx and Engel's famous discourse regarding being fisherman in the morning and critic in the evening also say something about how a communist revolution entail also a cognitive one, if it is true that one's own cognition is shaped by one's own material, operational activity, and not the way around, which is a basic marxist tennet. And under such circumstance, meditation, with the mentioned operation it realices in self-cognition and that of others, would just be too useful for society not to spontanously be adopted as a general practice, it would be "naturally selected" so to say, because no other practice does that, but it would be purified from all religious content the same way that communism purifies society from its "blood and soil paradigm of identification" so to say.

>>24252
My (unoriginal) contribution to the theory of religion is that I think that there is no such thing as religion. IMO, "religion" is a bad term that originates from conflating two different things that I label as "faith" and "church".

"Faith" (also called "unorganised", "natural" or "personal" religion) is a metaphysical system (including metaphysical concepts, axioms, and teachings derived from them - "theorems", you could say) that supports and informs the worldview of a person or a group of people.

"Church" (also called "organised" religion) is a social institution or organisation whose function is standartization, advancement, and collective practice of the faith.

Christianity is a faith, Catholic Church or Mormon community are churches (although it can be argued that the faith of Mormons isn't really Christianity, more investigation is required); Buddhism is a faith, Tibetian Buddhism is a church; Islam is a faith, Nation of Islam is a church.

A lot of the problems when discussing religion (including on this site) are from people conflating the faith and the church IMO.

>>24254
AAAAAAAAA

Man… Do you have no working Enter key on your PC's keyboard?

>>24256
If I wanted to make an organized text, i would not have made a leftypol post and loose time on that, where i live is some hours until night time and i want to go to the park to read a book. In that case, I would have made an essay on word. Since this is a discussion thread, and if you are interested in the arguments it may contain, and especially you being the OP i guess, if all this is true, then you are obbligated to read everything even if the presentation bore you. If this last thing is not true, then some other affirmation in the premises isnt true also.

someone's trying to resurrect Gorky's god builders and lenin is having another stroke from beyond the grave

>>24258
please explain

>>24258
Who? Me or wall of text anon from above?

>>24258
After researching a bit, and if you read closely my discourse, I think you'd find that it is unlike that of the bolshevik god-builders because:

I did not defend a theist position
I only referred to a specific practice, meditation
I didn't say that it would impulse revolution, but, if it is true that change of mode of production leads to change of identity, then meditation and its associated cognitive-practical entailings could be both a model for the understanding of, and an almost necessary tool for, people under communism.
I explicitly said that all these spiritual practices under communism would be purified of their religious elements, since like the etymology is implied, religio is nothing more than a pseudo-philosophical ideology. What we call today "spirituality", with the elimination of the economic necessity of religio, would end up falling into a new field of activity with a new name, that is associated rather to rationalist philosophy the same way that "spirituality" was linked to religion

>>24258
What's wrong with building a god?

>>24262
per se depends on what you mean by god and building it, however, the anon was talking about a specific group with a specific thinking: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God-Building

The God of the Abrahamic religion is quite stupid. If he's as good as they say and perfect, why did he create a world where you need to consume other living beings to survive? This creates an asymmetry of inequality and dependence on others, which leads to monopolies of violence. Besides, if God wanted to bring Utopia to Earth, the United States, Israel, and all their puppets would be the ones to suffer the worst earthquakes, hurricanes, and natural disasters.

I'm souring hard on "atheist" as a label tbh.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no less an atheist than ever; my issue is with "atheism" as a set of people is becoming diluted with trash like "spiritual atheists" and "cultural Christians." These people are essentially sublating their religious beliefs to be compatible with secularism rather than fully overcoming and discarding them. They want the structure and morality of religion without any of the on-its-face stupid myths and restrictions. It's basically a cope to preserve the socio-political contents and function of religion but reforming the ontological justifications, which is already what religions have been doing for thousands of years as doctrines have evolved. One of the most insidious things about these people is how they are smuggling in western chauvinism to their "atheism" and using the religiosity of other cultures as purported evidence of primitivity and/or an excuse to pull punches when talking about atheism and religion (I've even seen people describe atheism as a form of white privilege).

On the point about cultural relativism, "atheism" as a term itself is linguistically problematic. In the debate sphere you often see people arguing in terms of "atheism versus theism" to talk about debating religious people. The problem with this is that "theism" specifically means a belief in one or more gods which is not a feature of all religions, like Buddhism or animism. The framing of religion through the lens of gods ends up being reductive of both religion and non-religion. What I mean by that is that non-religion is taken to simply be a lack of belief in any gods or the supernatural, when religion is just as much about practices or moral/ethical assertions. This is where you get things like "cultural Christians" who accept Christian morality and traditions despite rejecting God as the basis for these, or "spiritual atheists" who disbelieve in God but still filter much of their lives through a lens of religion or spirituality. Therefore the term is apt for these kinds of people specifically who seem to only care about rebelling against sky daddy rather than doing more fundamental or holistic opposition to religion.

I think it might be better to speak instead of being a materialist or irreligious, even specifying that you're a communist. But idk maybe it'd be better to try to gatekeep atheism instead and out these people as basically fraudulent. Thoughts?TM

Where do the Gadget Hackwrench cult and trinity of Gokuism-Haruhism-Madokism fit in to all of this?

>>24265
100% agree

>>24265
No shit, you're right. People who are most proud of their "atheism" are basically "Look at me! I am not a slave to the sky daddy! Ain't me badass?"
Like, not being a slave is not a high bar by any sane metric! (and, hilariously, these people are often slaves to something barely better than Yahweh… like Israel or shit)

>One of the most insidious things about these people is how they are smuggling in western chauvinism to their "atheism"

Well, duh. Ask a r/atheism frequnter about Palestine and you'd probably hear that Israelis are "good guys" because they are "secular democracy defending itself against literal theocrats"

>I think it might be better to speak instead of being a materialist or irreligious, even specifying that you're a communist.

Using my own faith/church dichotomy I had outlined in >>24255 I'd have recommended for you to answer "What's your religious beliefs?" with "Religion is a bad term. My faith is communism and I am secular (i.e. I have no church)"

we have the /edu/ board for this kind of shit

>>24269
Then move /isg to /edu/, too. Religions are immeasurably more important to the people than whatever internet drama you think is big news.

>>24266
they are the trinity of a technocapital coming apocaliptic godhead, worshipped not in temples but in goon caves, that will bring with itself the complete otakuzation of society and the total destruction of reality, by deleting the boundaries of reality and media consoomer fiction world

>>24253
I thought about it and I think the soulless conditions come about through capitalism promoting psychopathy and function over form in aesthetics, so in communism the opium isn't a moral question but becomes existential (the suffering and limitation in existence itself).

>>24253
just because you are satisfied with being unreflective about any part of life besides critique of political economy and revolutionary strategy doesnt mean thats true of everyone and most of the time when people are dismissive of any discussion outside of these things its not because theyre a devoted professional revolutionary, but because theyre jaded and have an inferiority complex towards people with other interests

>>24261
I have a very surface-level understanding of Buddhism honestly, but isn't it not just incompatile or alien, but is outright hotile to Marxism even without all of the superstitious garbage? The core message of Buddhism, even without all supernatural claptrap seems to be "You should not wish to change the world", while the core message of Marxism is "The point is to change the world".

>>24274
*hostile to Marxism

>>24276
Certified classic. Do you think it can be applied to non-Abrahamic religions too, though

If you call yourself an agnostic, you're a racist.

An agnostic is always agnostic about the God, the singular omnipotent creator. The (modern) Abrahamic God, the western philosophical God or Absolute. They're never, ever agnostic about Krishna or Quetzalcoatl or the Jade Emperor or Zeus or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Because those aren't their White God. Agnostics reject them out of hand, or at the very least do not actually question or wonder about their existence. The notion that the agnostic position is the most reasonable or respectable one is pure cope. There is no more reason to give this God more consideration than any other besides chauvinism.

>>24278
This is because the concept of god as absolute is superior to the merely folk religious concept of this or that god of this or that natural element, custom, behaviour (war, love etc…). It is not racist, a universal god is obviously far more conceptually advanced than a merely local god, that is in contradiction with itself because it pretends to be at the same time universal and particular. This is also why the muslim and the christian concept of god are superior to the jewish god, since the former is universalist, and the latter, contradictorily universalist and nationalist god. Your mistake lies in treating all gods as just gods, without any conceptual nuance, in a typical liberal abstraction where all religious concepts are of equal value just because they are in the realm of religion, which is an intimate personal private realm

>>24279
i mean, CONSIDERED BY LIBERALS to be a private, intimate, personal, untouchable realm

>>24278
>>24279
>>24280

ultimately, though, all religions are irrational in their concept of God, even those who treat it as universal or as an absolute, because then, if God is truly the absolute being, it then follows that its truth can't be appropiated by a merely local community and set of dogmas, with merely local events, such as christ being born in palestine, mohammed being born in arabia… This is why all religions are retarded, but not all religions are in the same level of retardation due to the logical advancedment of their implicit concepts, so that a pantheon of gods of random things are more conceptually poor than a god as absolute

>>24274
Buddhism? Yes. It's practices aka meditation? no. Has western philosoophy engaged in those practices and developed concepts to understand them? No. Has buddhism done that? Yes. Is it worth learning some buddhist philosophy in relation to one's advancement in said practices while critically not surrendering one's own beliefs to their retarded irrational dogmas (like a lot of westerners do)? Yes. In fact, it would be lovely for a non new age bullshitter to engage in a western philosophy of mind and an ethics that has a first person and scholarly knowledge on these practices, it would save us a lot of time skimming through conceptually undeveloped buddhist treateses of commentaries of commentaries of commentaries…

Shitty mystic thread
Shame on you

>>24252
Absolutely retarded.

>>24282
>I need a non new-age bullshitter to do new-age bullshit
Secularized corporate mindfulness practices gives me the ick. I can't really articulate it, but it just seems wrong.

>>24282
I have a thread up on Siberia asking about experiences with secularized Buddhism. I'm interested in it myself. I can recommend a few books if you wish.
>>24274
>but is outright hotile to Marxism even without all of the superstitious garbage? The core message of Buddhism, even without all supernatural claptrap seems to be "You should not wish to change the world", while the core message of Marxism is "The point is to change the world".
Not a single statement you typed is correct. Not a single one. Congrats on your massive ignorance. Trot flag really is a cherry on the top.

>>24285
I addressed that here: >>24254

>>24274
it depends on the way you want to appropiate their concepts. If you just leave them as they are in their autoctonous context, i.e. if you consider them under the EMIC approach, this might be the case, but even still, buddhism is not a homogenous set of dogmas, there are many distinct traditions with many different believes. Pure land buddhism i think could be an example of what you are saying. without considering this essential heterogeneity of what we call buddhism, we, as outsiders, have the privilege of approaching their systems of thought in an ETIC approach (see emic etic distinction) and appropiate the concepts developed by them in the way WE see fit, accomodating them in our own more conceptually advanced western philosophical-scientific outlook. It is always easy to criticize another system, to present it as poor and underdeveloped from the coordinates of our own system, but this is a libidinal trap, a trap through which we believe that we are gaining something from that kind of activity, when as a matter of fact the most productive thing is trying to take whatever advantage we can get from them, and silently and diligently working for our own advancement and ideally that of others and the system we live in.

But in general, the focus of buddhism is awakening, and the cessation of all suffering, and for them it is the case that their "dharma" or "dhamma" is the one and only true means for those ends. So, this goal is compatible in many ways with political practice, although the principle of not increasing general suffering, if approached in a deontological/kantian sort of way, may lead to severe political inaction, but this is not necessarily the case. Nor is it necessarily the case for this principle to be taken as a sort of utilitarianism, since their concept of suffering is not merely quantitative, but qualified: suffering is due to ignorance of the true nature of reality, and this ignorance is in turn a product of the imposture of the ego-construct as our real cognitive form and identity.

I believe many buddhist, especially mahayana (i.e., as of now, east asians) and vajrayana (i.e., tibetans) buddhists, if convinced that politics was a political system that facilitates the genaral goal of enlightement, they would consider it a skillfull mean for the goal of a bodhisattva, as long as that means doesn't degenerate into not achieving the goal. I find the concept of the bodhisattva especially interesting: the bodhisattva is the person who has decided that their goal and main priority in this life (and according to them, their next ones also) is facilitating awakening to all sentient beings, going as far as to postpone their cessation of reincarnation in favor of continuing to pursue this goal in many lives. If we take into account that they are positively convinced of that (admiteddly wrong and unscientific) metaphysical structure, theirs is the ultimate attitude of diligence and hard-work, since they could in principle achieve their metaphysically absolute "summum bonum", but their will is still connected to the task of delivering it to everyone without exception.
This is why some buddhists show adherence to marxism (notable example: the dalai lama, with all the controversies of the chinese raison d'état affairs with tibet and all, i am not showing disagreement with that). This might also be the reason why the asian communist countries have historically been buddhist majority countries, and as of now we could name Sri Lanka as a recent example, due to the electoral success of their communist party. I don't mean by this that buddhism has had a causal role in the revolutions of these countries, as a marxist I am not this politically naive, but i am saying that perhaps there are signs of greater ideological compatibility, which contradicts what people say about buddhism: that it is a practice for bourgeoise western people.

Continuing with the bodhisattva theme, its utmost cooperative attitude is accused by many to translate to a naive self-sacrifice that leads to actually doing nothing and only elevate oneself morally, but this is not the case at least for buddhism, due to the concept of "skillfull means". A lama in my city i used to go listen to always stressed this point: buddhism is not just an indiscriminate good attitude towards everyone, and in a typical way he would give some analogical examples: a person that doesn't know how to swim shouldn't try to save a person that is drowining in the sea. Or another one: if a town is in need of a water supply, you can just mindlessly build a water canal, lest the city might be flooded; what is needed is a technical system of water distributon for supplying water without flooding at the same time, and this is skillful means.

However, for or these positive things I have said regarding buddhism, it is undeniable that there are still problems. First, buddhism is still a non-secular, non-scientific and conceptually underdeveloped thought system, which is still metaphysical in the modern sense, mythological in many ways, and not rational enough. Some schools and a lot of western conceptions of buddhism suffer from the vices that anon was referring to, which leads to political inaction. Nontheless, I still believe there are many things conceptually that are still not worked enough in the west, mainly, meditative practices and their cognitive and ethical practical powers and theorical consecuences, and fully compatible and contributive to communism, as i have explained here: >>24254

>>24288
>if convinced that politics was a political system that facilitates the genaral goal of enlightement

i meant:

<if convinced that COMMUNISM was a political system…

First of all, if you write of religious matters, you can only use a religious framework to properly describe them. Philosophy or science might give answers telling you why religion exists, but religion is only comprehensible when it is a sphere of activity unique to itself. Every religion immediately must contend with every other religion that exists and with religion as a concept. One does not simply start a new religion based on an idea or some piece of technology they think is cool. Every religion necessarily must explain the origin not just of itself but of all things that could be of religious significance. The easiest way to do this is to recognize their origins from other religions directly. There can never be a "clean break" from religion while continuing to reference the same subject matter. So, unless Marxism is a religion for you—maybe it is—you can't speak of a "pure Marxist take" on religion, and Marxism has no real answers to that. It suggests a way religions can be destroyed by ideology, but it was tailor made for the destruction of Christianity which it opposed for reasons not difficult to figure out. Marxism and Christianity are certainly incompatible, but Marxism might be reconciled with other religions, and based on the nature of its claims it has to and attempts to reconcile with religion generally. It cannot claim neutrality, and when speaking of religious matters, there can never be neutral ground. The only "neutral ground" that might exist is the world prior to religion or that was not corrupted in any way by the practice of religion, and everything humans touch is corrupted by religion simply by virtue of humans all being members of societies where religion in one form or another was dominant and invasive. Even the invalid who as a rule are not allowed to join religion are subjected to religion, almost always victimized and shamed by it, but may themselves find in religion some explanation.

What is religion's true function? It is the study of the evil, for whatever purposes that may serve. Religion studies the evil to defend against it, or to summon it. Religion has no other legitimate purpose, and admits readily it cannot answer naturalistic or scientific questions, nor questions rooted in rationality or technology unless they are reframed with some religious purpose. Other things may study the evil, but religion has a unique ability to do this because it alone can approach what "evil" really entails. There is no way by logic or science to demonstrate that "evil" exists beyond a suspicion or superstition, or to substitute something far inferior to the proper study of evil such as ethics or the various excuses children work out to justify their shitty behavior. Religion may take on other functions out of necessity, but at its core religion exists as a study of the evil and in particular knowledge that pertains to that evil or the practice of such. Religion is the only thing that can really suggest true expectations of evil and what someone does to not do evil, or willfully summon evil for whatever purposes they have. Religion has nothing to say about "the good" as something apart from the evil, or it can only say things that are quite removed from a legitimate study of "goodness" or righteousness. It can however describe things that are highly averse to anything good, like Satan or dark spirits. Only from that basis does religion work out its systems of knowledge, its cosmology, always conscious that the study and practice religion entails can be used for evil or to ward off evil, and these aims need not be mutually exclusive for the practitioner. Probably the hardest thing for a naive scholar of this matter is getting that most humans, probably the overwhelming majority, really have no problem with doing evil and acknowledging themselves as essentially evil. What might surprise a lot of people is how few are at all interested in exemplifying "goodness". Much of the discourse we read about goodness is specifically from Christian notions of the goodness, which is identified with the Christ and Christ-like figures. Most of the world, and most nominal Christians, do not care in any way whatsoever about "being good" or any promise of eternal glory or an afterlife to spare them. Having seen enough of the world, most humans will conclude that "life is suffering" or that their existence in the world at the least is somehow malign, and try to reconcile with that however such a thing may be possible. It is trivial to prove by rationality that humans are by their nature and deeds "essentially evil" and cannot redeem themselves, and Christianity in particular has an elaborate system to explain why you really can't be redeemed ever in that sense. The best you can do in Christianity is a pale imitation of the Christ, who you're supposed to figure out is a fictitious character, and usually after you fuck up too much they'll just tell you it's a story. The point of the story is to illustrate the nature of evil and what extreme lengths are necessary to ward it off, as the Christians see it. The inner secrets of the religion of course teach how to enclose, monopolize, and exercise the very evil the Christ supposedly wards off, so that they alone hold this power. That is the general purpose of Christianity in particular, and by now it's not particularly well hidden. Why else would the followers of Christ-Lucifer get on this high a horse? Christianity doesn't really "dupe" people in the way the more crass practices do, but gives to the desperate an elaborate system of mental cheating and also notions of what a proper life would be as long as one pays their dues to the religion and its true community (a community which is defined by its exclusion of most people).

If you think I'm slagging hard on Christianity in particular, I can tell you the evils of nearly every religion that has any prominence in society, from Islam to the fruity ones like Scientology or the seemingly harmless ones like Raelianism (and our good friend Rael has blood on his hands, they don't tell you that in the brochure). The religions that get anywhere usually entail some sort of horrible sacrifice that spawned their existence and most will practice sacrifice afterwards. Christianity is bizarre in that it suggests that there will be no more sacrifices (this of course is a lie, the true goal is to maximize sacrifices and say they were all wicked sinners and Christ will dispose of them). And of course, Satanism is the oldest religion there is and they just say outright the Dark Lord is the one true god and anything else is hogwash.

You cannot be a proper atheist without being religiously atheist, which means you would have to be for all intents and purposes a nihilist at the end of the day. Not many people have it in them to follow proper atheism to its conclusion. They usually succumb to some faggotry or justify the most shitty behavior as "nature", because they would—without a proper grounding in history to judge this—have nothing to go off but nature. The claim that there is anything "other than nature" begins at the very least as a superstitious claim, and then invites questions of the evil. That's why religion has a unique ability to answer questions of the evil, at least of the means humans have developed thus far. A small number of people are "attuned" in some way to the study of this evil, and they don't have anything "special" about them other than this. A larger number of people, I'd estimate about 15-20% of the human population, are more or less "natural Satanists" who are ruled by an instinct to dominate. They cannot be reformed and will screech like nothing else if you try. It is not really a law of nature that requires this, but you'd have to not just engineer their bodies and create a whole new "system" to remediate these "natural Satanics", but suggest a religion that acknowledges properly what the subject matter of religion generally is, and suggest a society where this study doesn't bring productive life to a grinding halt or destroy all security. That is the only outcome of any "future religion", and it will eventually become the dominant question. Right now, though, there is only the currently dominant religious milieu that precludes any salvation. The "Christ" for those who really want to answer this question of the evil hasn't arrived and perhaps will never exist, but the question will become so prominent that it cannot be papered over by any ideology or excuses. For the "natural Satanics" though, they cannot be "saved" nor do they want such a thing. It doesn't occur to them that the world or society would be anything else, and while such people might adapt and become something more, they will always be amenable to various "Satanisms" and generally disdain the study of the evil for any purpose other than "what's in it for me" and "what is the biggest god". I still consider "natural Satanics" on average superior to the type of Satanic that is promoted today, where the ugliest behaviors of such a tendency are glorified and what lingering animal decency they possessed is destroyed. And of course, a "Satanist" does not themself need to be a "Satanic" by proclivity. It is entirely possible to conclude that Satan or some other malevolent figure is the true god and make of that what you will. Usually, though, "good Satanists" do not happen, and Satanics are uniquely drawn to the iconography and practices of Satan or similar malevolent forces, because that's what they themselves are. It's an ugly system, but as I say, it's the oldest religion there is. In the past they made no bones about it.

Until this type of question can be answered, you'll probably be at loggerheads when speaking of any religious matter. We can speak of what religion is and has been, and make a few projections about where religion itself is heading, but you're not going to arrive at anything close to a final answer or "great theory". Humans are in my estimation still largely animalistic in their habits, and in the past century they were intentionally degraded by a profoundly sick and evil society. They were before this time making small signs of progress, suggesting maybe the world didn't have to be whatever the hell "this" is. Maybe that was all wishful thinking of so many people, because it became possible to see that we didn't need to suffer like this. That only became more apparent in the past 50 years, as most of humanity really made "full contact" with the rest of the globe for the first time by then. All the way before then, people knew their town and perhaps their city, and a few notables in the wider region and some connections the next town over, but human life was until today's communication and transportation primarily local and the thing at the center of that was one's family or a substitute for the family. So, we see now the conditions of humanity, and saw two things very clearly. First is that none of the suffering we've been made to endure this whole time was at all necessary. The second is that humans figured out they really didn't like each other, now that they actually "know" each other and can verify this knowledge with all of the scientific knowledge available today. For the longest time, humans held on to the belief that there's probably someone decent out there who gets it, but in our time we have seen and proven… no. That's not what humans are. Satanics, of course, never had to ask this question once. That's why they're Satanics. A "Satanist" might ask this question as an academic exercise, but the very idea of the question is anathema to a Satanic, dismissed immediately as absurd. That's about 15-20% of humanity right there, never going to be any other way without severe engineering.

>>24315
wrong: practices originating in religious contexts can be appropriated from religions, as well as concepts and anything you want, just like any other activity. The issue is making them work, of course. I doubt that a revolutionary will be worse by meditating or being interested, in its own ethical outlook, in the benefit of all sentient beings. Both are things that in this case have come through buddhism, but buddhism does not exhaust their use as items in other systems, other systems can even outcompete buddhism in the use of said items. Now, a lot of items you should not incorporate, rather, you should do an immanent critique, incorporate them as poor moments of your own system and make that work, like marx shows how liberal values are mere bourgeoise ideology. Now, when you got a communist blindly appropriating liberal values, you got a radlib, when you got a communist blindly appropriating christianity, you got a Tolstoy kind of guy. But someone that in his childhood had an interest in christianity and became a communist, but at the same time mantained an ethics that is about the redemption of humanity, or whatever, does not necessarily make his system worse: it depends on how he makes the appropriated items work. By definition, philosophy is the ultimate appropriating activity: while religion cannot take an outside concept freely because it must ideologically stand by its dogmas for x or y historical reasons, philosophy can appropriated everything freely and minmax the conceptual items that are constantly being produced in all other activities. Maybe you think that just because some ideology has configured itself in a certain way and immanently gives some hermeneutical rules to understand it, one has to play by the book and follow said rules just because they say so, but this is not true: you can extract and reconfigure any item, be it a theoretical or practical concept. Maybe you didn't know you could actually do this, but now you know: now go on and explore any system of thought you want and do whatever you want with it. Maybe you think that if this is true everything would just be a frankestein of different items but this is not true because: there are emergent properties, such as those that arise dialectically, which make so that not all configurations are functionally the same if handling the same items. So, not everything works, just like in any other activity.

I'm gonna apply to a university of philosophy next year. Hope they're gonna accept me

>>24330
You obviously didn't read why and just recapitulated the talking point that knowledge is generally interchangeable and irrelevant. The point is that the claims of any religion, even an ersatz personal religion, are not claims that can be reassembled freely. That is what makes it religion of any sort. Either your religion is right or wrong, with nothing in between. Anything else is intellectual cowardice of the worst sort and will be held in contempt. Buddhism explicitly rejects the Christian claims and vice versa. And of course, you cannot be a Marxist communist and a Christian. Christianity is utterly incompatible with Marxism, which is why the Marxists become so pigheaded about religion, almost as if destroying Christianity was the greater objective and all of the stuff about socialism was just an excuse.

>>24332
Why? Study something useful in university. Study philosophy in your own time. You're handicapping yourself for no reason.

>>24334
hahaha true, i just didnt

>>24334
120 autism score detected

>>24252
OP I think its wrong to build a reading list on religion from a Marxist perspective because Marxist analysis (outside of hard economics) is often an obstacle to understanding religions rather than something that clears things up. A socialist perspective is more interesting.

>>24335
This.
People think college/university should be like some idle playground for wannabe intellectuals.

This is why I say higher education should require mandatory entrance exams.

>>24494

this seems counter productive and enables class inequality. unfortunately a lot of educational institutes do have some form of indoctrination, and the barrier to entry is high enough for the average person. Why require a mandatory entrance exam?

>>24495
Why shouldn't there be entrance exams to higher education?
Most non western countries have entrance exams for all grade levels of education.
We have screening for working folk yet education is supposed to be universalised in entry?

Don't you understand this is why we are seeing a decline in academic competency in students?
This whole "muh inequality" when it comes to higher education is why it's bourgeois

It's why we have so many students wrecking their livelihoods on electives to finish a degree they may not be fully learned about on

They say that around two-thirds of college students drop out before finishing their degree.

Anyone who wants to attend college should be evaluated to see what competency level they're at
And, it should be multi faceted.

You have kids who are good at math but suck at language arts.
You have othere who are good with history but struggle with math.

The problem is, people think that all personal academic prowess is uniform in all differing disciplines.