#capitalist ideology

[this-is-adultism]

This bs in my over the summer PE class orientation. As if the student can control all of that on their own???

[Start ID: A cropped picture of what seems to be text on a computer screen. It contains two bullet points. The first reads "The student should anticipate the wordload based on these recommendations and adjust their schedule accordingly. Reduce work schedules (if applicable) and extracurricular activies." (End quote). The second reads "The following are nor considered excused absences: work, vacation, missionary trips, school trips, extra curricular activies such as sports, family reunions. If a student is ill or experiences a death in the family (or other family circumstance that is beyond the student's control) the parent can submit a note to verify the absence and the instructor can allow a late work submission." (End quote) End ID.]

This is adultism, amatonormativity, and capitalist ideology.

Wow that is abhorent, unbelievably disgusting and unaccommodating. This would be terrible and unacceptable for anyone-- if this were expected of an adult at a job, that would be (or should be) considered exploitation (and is a reality for many people of all ages unfortunately).

Also, I listed it as amatonormativity because of the implication that typical/biological family structures are more important than other relationships. I imagine that something like a close friend that you considered family passing away wouldn't count for these alreadh highly strict rules.

I hate that things like this exist and are so normalized.

[alone-in-a-cafe]

One of the main reasons why we find it easy to commodify animals and recognize them as mere numbers is related to the capitalist practice of referring to individual lives as "resources" (labor, in case of 'human resources'). The only purpose capitalism sees of any individual life is the value that it can produce, the use of it. This is done with humans as well as animals.

This is why veganism is an important point in leftist arguments as veganism does not see animal lives as resources that can be used in any way (mostly to gain profit) but as individual lives that should be free to exist in their natural environments.

[liberashen]

“Conventional opinions fit so comfortably into the dominant paradigm as to be seen not as opinions but as statements of fact, as 'the nature of things.' The very efficacy of opinion manipulation rests on the fact that we do not know we are being manipulated. The most insidious forms of oppression are those that so insinuate themselves into our communication universe and the recesses of our minds that we do not even realize they are acting upon us. The most powerful ideologies are not those that prevail against all challengers but those that are never challenged because in their ubiquity they appear as nothing more than the unadorned truth.”

- Michael Parenti

[philosopherking1887]

LOL, someone blocked me for suggesting that selfishness and altruism are both basic components of human nature, and that selfishness wasn’t invented by capitalism. This confirms me in my hypothesis that many people on the far Left are ideologically committed to a neo-Rousseauian worldview according to which human nature is fundamentally good, meaning altruistic and cooperative, and that people only behave in selfish and competitive ways because they’ve been corrupted away from their true nature by capitalist society. To which I would want to ask: where did capitalism come from? Aliens?

I say that they are “ideologically committed” to this view of human nature because their desired political aim -- socialist anarchism -- is only viable if they are correct, and once capitalism has been eliminated no one will try to break the social rules or free-ride. Or if they do (because those old capitalist habits might be hard to break!), they can be successfully reeducated. Except maybe for the profoundly evil ruling classes, who must be guillotined, because they are the source of all evil in society. Does any of this sound familiar?

You can’t literally blame Rousseau for the Terror, because he probably didn’t expect that his ideas would be taken as gospel by any governing regime, but there’s a reason that historians point to the Jacobins’ espousal of Rousseau’s philosophy as an important causal factor. The reason is this: if you think human nature is basically good, but certain people persist in acting badly (i.e., selfishly), you’re committed to thinking that these people are either reparably corrupted, and hence amenable to reeducation, or irreparably corrupted, or somehow not quite human. In the latter two cases, you have no choice but to eliminate them to keep them from corrupting anyone else.

Most systems of laws depend on the assumption that human beings are mostly cooperative, but sometimes they aren’t. Norms will be followed most of the time because people are cooperative and inclined to want to do their part in keeping the community running smoothly; but for people who aren’t motivated that way, there’s the threat of sanction. I fully acknowledge that capitalist culture has been damaging because it emphasizes the selfish aspect of human nature, rewards approved kinds of selfishness, and regards other kinds of antisocial behavior as inevitable and only manageable through increasingly harsh punishment. (Well, there are a lot of factors in that latter, including Christianity’s “human beings are inherently sinful” attitude.) My warning is that failing to see selfishness as equally a part of human nature, failing to expect and account for the moral grayness of human nature, can lead to horrific regimes of oppression.

[competingabsolutes]

[bookowlnews]

In the predominant Marxist perspective..we must search for this hidden essence, effective social relationships (the class relationships hidden behind the universalism of formal bourgeois rights, for example).

However, ..the social field ..masks ..not [some] hidden essence, but rather the void, the impossibility around which the field of society structures itself.

- SLAVOJ ZIZEK

[bookowlnews]

Of course we know that bureaucracy is not all-powerful, but our "effective" conduct is already regulated by a belief in its omnipotence.

SLAVOJ ZIZEK

[bookowlnews]

The .."Kafkaesque universe" is not .."fantastical.." but ..is the staged representation of the phantasy that is already at work at the heart of social reality itself.

SLAVOJ ZIZEK