you seem very confused.Dilbert_X wrote:
I think I'm going to go into publishing. I have a degree, all you do is find authors and send their stuff to printers.
I can spend most of my day playing golf.
I could probably be a minister of a department in the time left over from that, all you do is delegate.
That's because they replaced God with the religion of science in their schools and homes. The same thing happened with the Nazis and Fascist Italy. Hitler and Mussolini turned their backs on their Catholic heritage and look at what happened.uziq wrote:
the most technocratic nation on earth which explicitly places a very high valuation on scientific expertise and engineering 'pragmatism' is also quite possibly the most inhumane, anti-democratic, nightmare state on earth.
I doubt there is anyone working in govt who hasn't had the experienceuziq wrote:
There is more to policy, and more to guiding an orderly society, than 'make an algorithm for it'. this approach to human affairs is either asinine or autistic: make your choice.
No, the inhuman evil came first, they're using science as a tool. Tools can be used for good or evil.uziq wrote:
the most technocratic nation on earth which explicitly places a very high valuation on scientific expertise and engineering 'pragmatism' is also quite possibly the most inhumane, anti-democratic, nightmare state on earth. doesn't that give you pause for thought?
strange you don't mention communist russia, which was explicitly the most atheistic and technocratic of them all, in that sort of progressivist-utopian strain of 'reinventing man' and so bringing about a worldly paradise, etc-ra. marx's original philosophy is very theological and messianic in that way. fascism sort of came to an accommodation with religions, actually. hence why the catholic church has so many skeletons in its closet about nazi collaboration or turning-the-other-way.SuperJail Warden wrote:
That's because they replaced God with the religion of science in their schools and homes. The same thing happened with the Nazis and Fascist Italy. Hitler and Mussolini turned their backs on their Catholic heritage and look at what happened.uziq wrote:
the most technocratic nation on earth which explicitly places a very high valuation on scientific expertise and engineering 'pragmatism' is also quite possibly the most inhumane, anti-democratic, nightmare state on earth.
Last edited by uziq (2020-10-17 18:04:00)
what does that even mean? so vague and convenient. 'they were inhuman and evil!'. no, they were humans just like anybody else. humans who had the idea that science and scientific truth could be asserted as a transcendental value, an a priori, that would methodically sort and solve all of humanity's problems.Dilbert_X wrote:
No, the inhuman evil came first, they're using science as a tool. Tools can be used for good or evil.uziq wrote:
the most technocratic nation on earth which explicitly places a very high valuation on scientific expertise and engineering 'pragmatism' is also quite possibly the most inhumane, anti-democratic, nightmare state on earth. doesn't that give you pause for thought?
Last edited by uziq (2020-10-17 17:56:25)
The Soviet Union at least tried to put their techno-atheism to a good end though. The Soviets did want to continue to dominate the space and near space of the Russian Empire but their influence did put pressure that advanced human rights in the far flung colonies of the British and French and even the U.S. civil rights movement. The Soviet Union did send engineers to develop former colonies and worked hard to educate potential leaders in governance. Of course most of that was part of undermining the western nations but then what excuse does the west have for not developing their colonies for so long that the Russians had to do it? Meanwhile the Germans and Italians fascist weren't trying to do anything much more extreme than reestablish the empires that World War 1 took from them. The Germans were just more murderous and had better sense of aesthetics.uziq wrote:
strange you don't mention communist russia, which was explicitly the most atheistic and technocratic of them all, in that sort of progressivist-utopian strain of 'reinventing man' and so bringing about a worldly paradise, etc-ra. marx's original philosophy is very theological and messianic in that way. fascism sort of came to an accommodation with religions, actually. hence why the catholic church has so many skeletons in its closet about nazi collaboration or turning-the-other-way.SuperJail Warden wrote:
That's because they replaced God with the religion of science in their schools and homes. The same thing happened with the Nazis and Fascist Italy. Hitler and Mussolini turned their backs on their Catholic heritage and look at what happened.uziq wrote:
the most technocratic nation on earth which explicitly places a very high valuation on scientific expertise and engineering 'pragmatism' is also quite possibly the most inhumane, anti-democratic, nightmare state on earth.
the soviet union and china were/are both expert-led, centrally planned, technocratic societies who tried to replace a bourgeois and 'decadent' liberal intelligentsia with a 'caste' of enlightened engineers and experts. that was kind of the whole deal. dilbert can keep saying playing his little pan-pipe 'no true scotsman' tune all he likes, declaring so-and-so 'not a real engineer' or this-and-that 'not the correct approach', but the simple fact is that we've tried the scientistic-society thing several times. not only the radical-utopian left, either, but also the hard-right. pinochet and many latin american dictatorships were hard into 'pragmatism' and scientistic central planning. 'not the real deal!' says dilbert. we're waiting. oh and those scientists and big data wonks being used in the UK now to devise disastrous algorithms ... also not the real thing.
lol. we could be here a while.
Nope, just think, if someone had bought a few more of Mao's pamphlets, Stalin's poems, Hitler's paintings we wouldn't be having this discussion.uziq wrote:
what does that even mean? so vague and convenient. 'they were inhuman and evil!'. no, they were humans just like anybody else. humans who had the idea that science and scientific truth could be asserted as a transcendental value, an a priori, that would methodically sort and solve all of humanity's problems.Dilbert_X wrote:
No, the inhuman evil came first, they're using science as a tool. Tools can be used for good or evil.uziq wrote:
the most technocratic nation on earth which explicitly places a very high valuation on scientific expertise and engineering 'pragmatism' is also quite possibly the most inhumane, anti-democratic, nightmare state on earth. doesn't that give you pause for thought?
claiming that someone was 'pure evil' is just metaphysical, and indeed unscientific, rubbish. it actually forecloses understanding. what ahistorical and illiterate nonsense. 'the explanation for this is that he was actually pure Evil'. why not just call them possessed and demonic? the fuck does that even mean?
i think you really are susceptible to some seriously religious ways of thinking. your manichaeism, your black-and-white, good vs evil stuff. arts and humanities versus scientists! the noble and righteous versus the corrupt unbelievers! you don't really think like a scientist at all. a scientist recognizes the limits of their understanding and the provisionality of their knowledge. you start out with these absolutes. 'inhuman evil'. you sound like an old lady in a calvinist congregation.
I've worked with various Russians over the years, our local informal shooting coach was Russian/Polish, one of my current colleagues is Russian.In his first school year, Mao befriended an older student, Xiao Zisheng; together they went on a walking tour of Hunan, begging and writing literary couplets to obtain food.[
Last edited by uziq (2020-10-18 00:38:32)
Not everyone is going to be a high achiever, but rejected artist does seem to be a bit of a theme amongst homicidal tyrants.uziq wrote:
if being rejected from arts school makes tyrants out of failed artists, why has there only ever been one hitler? do you have any idea how many people get rejected from art schools? a lot more than get accepted, i’ll tell you that. why isn’t the world full of raving anti-semitic lunatics who blame all their problems on shadowy ‘others’ who must be brought to hell?
Last edited by Dilbert_X (2020-10-18 00:32:08)
shahter doesn't get drunk. he does enjoy russian poetry though, mayakovsly especially. songs too.uziq wrote:
stalin wrote and recited poetry -- like pretty much every young person in pre-television times. it was an amusement, an entertainment, an art. you've never spoken to a russian person, have you? they memorise poetry a lot. their culture is very 'oral'. i bet you shahter gets drunk and recites poems or sings russian songs. that's just what they do.
for a person who claims to know stuff about russia you post too much cold war propaganda bullshit. stalin was a great patron of arts, literature especially. he knew a great deal in that field and, while he wasn't an artist himself, he dedicated much of his time and effort to support russian artists of the time. a lot more time than he took repressing the undesirables - for that he had other people.stalin was never serious about poetry. were you ever paying attention to how many artists and writers he took pleasure in crushing?
Last edited by uziq (2020-10-18 01:06:37)
3/3 is like over 90% +/-10%uziq wrote:
that is not good statistics. please learn how to be a scientist.
it didn't make any sense from the moment you started talking about "systematic persecution, censoring and torturing". none of that happened on the scale that you have served to you by your propaganda machine.uziq wrote:
that sounds like a bit of a nonsense to me. ‘stalin loved arts! really all those artists who were repressed and crushed feared beria, not stalin. other people did the censoring and the torturing’. that doesn’t make any sense, and you know it.
that's what i'm talking about. stalin didn't have any preference in repression of artists any more than any other undesirables - he spent most of his life preparing and then fighting the worst war in history. and that war was as much about ideology as it was about everything else - that's the only part where pasternaks of the time mattered. so yes, the fucktards didn't have the greatest of times, but no more so than any other who would oppose soviets in their fight for survival. some rash and unjust stuff happened, yes. but systematic persecution of artists? - no, definitely not.everyone in the west is of course familiar with doctor zhivago. pasternak lived in fear of stalin and really it was only his whim that spared him. many poets didn’t survive stalin. why would you lie about the history? even tarkovsky, who lived near the lubyanka, was continually under threat of being taken in.
that i would agree with. stalin was, first and foremost, an excellent crisis manager, his character was pretty much defined by that trait. poet, failed or otherwise, doesn't really enter into that imo.all this is just to say, anyway, that stalin wasn’t the man or leader he was because he was a ‘failed poet’ or ‘thwarted poet’.
Last edited by uziq (2020-10-19 08:23:11)
as i said - too much cold war propaganda bullshit. stalin is long dead, soviet union is long gone - it's okay to drop your pitchforks and torches and start looking at stuff objectively now.uziq wrote:
an excellent crisis manager? the guy who ignored all the warnings about barbarossa and witnessed the holodomor?
Last edited by uziq (2020-10-19 08:26:41)
