Bijou Drains
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
I was using the term human being as a synonym for the animal Homo Sapien (or what sometimes referred to as Homo Sapien Sapien in older texts).
The point I was making about the development of emotional attachment refers to all mammals not just placental mammals, so marsupial and monotremata. That’s why it’s called Mammalian Attachment
“Some animals can survive without their mother, and human beings need their mother for several years; some animals know how to feed themselves, and we depend on our parents for several years”
I don’t think being able to survive without their mothers is necessarily a strength.
Attachment Theory has its basis in the concept that the more cerebrally complex the creature is, the more likely it is that the animal will spend longer periods being dependent upon their mother or mother replacement.
Generally, mammals have more complex brains that most other animals, and generally mammals with larger brains have longer periods of dependency on their mother/parents. This is because animals which have bigger brains need to get through the birth canal at an earlier stage of development, therefore they will spend longer periods between birth and maturity.
If you consider for instance sheep. A lamb can walk within minutes of being born, it takes a human baby about a year after birth to reach that level of physical and cerebral development.
Although the apologists for capitalism argue that competition and and aggression are the main springs of human nature, the reality is the opposite, competition and aggression are the exceptions not the rule. Nurture, compassion, cooperation, etc. are built into mammalian instinct and behaviour. We are all a product of on going nurture and cooperation. We have all survived due to long term cooperation and nurture. If we had not received the benefit of at least minimal nurture, care and cooperation, none of us would have survived infancy.
Humans (in a similar way to other types of mammal behaviour) have evolved to instinctively respond to certain infant behaviours such as babies crying, infants making eye contact, proximity seeking behaviour, etc. I would argue that the traditional Socialist response to the “Human Nature” argument, i.e that humans are capable of a wide range of responses as result of various learning experiences (a kind of Skinnerian approach) is actually too weak.
The reality is that, yes we learn from experiences as we grown, but the bedrock of our behaviours are from our inbuilt instinct to be cooperative, to nurture, to care. We also learn from our early years experiences to maximise the available care and support and also to care of and support others. Even despite the depredations of capitalism about 60-65% of children and adults demonstrate secure attachments and behaviours, whilst those who have insecure attachments often show high levels of preferences to cooperation, nurture and care.
I would argue that rather than the traditional neutral stance on Human Nature, that we are able to learn to be socialists, I would argue that all of the evidence is that practically all human beings are actually a kind of naturally occuring proto socialist.
TM “I think that the SPGB keeping roughly the same number of members through over a century is maybe due to a father to son handing down of consciousness. Not in all cases of course.”
Think that is a bit of a fallacy, it might be a bit of a limited phenomenon in the London area, but not really a huge thing, from my experience, outside of that area.
Interestingly enough though, I did the opposite, I passed the party case to my mother, who at the age of about 70 left the labour Party after 55 years and joined the SPGB!
One of the ways I have tried to use when talking to fellow workers is not to talk about their lives of struggle, uncertainty and worry, but to look to the future of their offspring.
Inspired by Republican propaganda from the Spanish Civil War, the line “If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next” often seems to get people thinking. It is often easier to tolerate suffering yourself than it is envisage the same struggle for your family and future generations.
No I don’t. Russia is clearly struggling after 4 and 1/2 years of outright war and over 12 years since the start of the conflict in the Donbas region. I can’t realistically imagine that the Russian ruling class would sanction Putin to get involved in an even greater conflict which will decreasr the amount of surplus value that they have to spend on super yachts and champagne.
In one of Hardy’s economics classes I remember him saying that there is always a point where the ruling class decide that the impact and cost of the “praetorian guard” becomes greater than its value to the ruling class.
At some point various sections of the ruling class will decide that having Xi, Putin, and to an extent Trump, etc. having the ability to “chop the heads” of the property owning classes is more expensive and more risky than developing a much cheaper and less risky bourgeois democracy.
I do, however, acknowledge that there are pressures on politicians and state officials from other sides. Army leaders will always want bigger budgets to inflate their egos and their salaries. Arms manufacturers will be keen to make hay whilst the sunshine of workers being killed burns brightly.
The ruling classes do have some interests that unite them, but there is also conflict between them.
Just like the five families of the New York Mafia, they will cooperate at times, fall out with each other at times, encourage hapless fools to kill other hapless fools in the the interests of their own particular section of the ruling class just as long as this allows them continue to act as parasites on those they prey on.
When that starts to threaten the part of the pie they are able to devour, they usually agree on a compromise, I’m pretty sure that will happen soon. I would predict that Russia (with or without Putin) will be partially reintegrated into the world economic system within the next 5 years.
An old definition of a rifle is “a steel tube with a member of the working class at each end”
Britain and France have over 615 nuclear war heads over 400 of which are currently deployed, nearly 300 of them are French, which are independently operated. I personally do not think it will be likely that either side would take the chance of starting a thermonuclear war.
“And does Canada really think that it and Europe can militarily challenge Russia without US military backing?”
Well, EU defence annual spending (which does include some non NATO defence spending) has a 2026 Projection: €454 billion ($528 billion) total expenditure. Canadian defence spending is about $63 billion. UK defence spending is about $90 that makes about $681 billion. Add to that Ukrainian defence spending is $84 billion you get a sum of $765 billion of spending without US support. Given that Russia has a spend of about $190 billion and is struggling a little with regards to that state’s war aims, I it would be a reasonable assumption that Europe and Canada would probably feel confident that it could challenge Europe without US backing. Given that defence spending is a very crude estimate of military capability, for instance a Russian 5th Generation Main Battle Tank costs an estimated $6 million, and a Japanese 5th generation MBT is estimated at $11 million, it would still seem that joint European and Canadian defence forces would easily challenge Russia militarily.
Wars are not caused by hysteria generated by anyone. Hysteria is used to whip up workers to mass slaughter. Wars are caused by the competing commercial, strategic and economic interests of the various different gangs who are exploiting workers in each geographic region.
TM – “Why is Canada invested in Europe’s Russophobia?”
As the crow flies the distance at the closest point between Canada and Russia is 770 miles. Not far off the distance between Lands End and Lerwick in the Shetlands. Between the two two closest points between Russia and Canada are vast areas of so far generally untapped mineral rich resources. There are also, due to global warming, increasingly important and lucrative shipping and trade routes across the arctic region. I’m sure you can work the rest of it out.
Well, I suggested that people could cheer themselves up by watching the footy, but apparently they weren’t keen
⚽️🥅It is interesting that in effect part of what the Trots had been arguing for years has come to pass.
Many Trotskyist groups argued, back in the day, that it was right to support the Labour Party and other leftist parties, despite knowing that their reforms will come to nothing, knowing fully well that they will not provide the milk and honey they promised as this would expose the uselessness of their reforms.
Once the shells had fallen from their eyes the Trotskyists will be able to whip on their ordinary labourist clothes and reveal their superhero costume and say to the workers, yes “but you can still have the milk and honey because we the political caped crusaders can lead you to that promised land.”
I even had one member of the Militant group “explain” to me that the “only way to deal with reformism was to support it.” he followed that on with the priceless “That, comrade is how the dialectic works! It’s the inter-penetration of the opposites”.
Sadly for these early Harry Potter wannabees, their magical spells didn’t quite work out. Some of the workers have grown tired of being promised the grassy uplands by leftist parties and being let down and have started to believe the spells chanted by wizards of the far right racist left.
Coming back to Robbo’s original post, I do think that the growth of the far right is rather over stated in some countries. I think what has happened in some cases is that there has been a split between the general coalition within the right wing parties of what in the UK was known as one nation conservatives and what Cameron once described as “the swivel eyed loon” faction of the conservative/right wing. I think certainly in the UK, the views of parties such as reform were similar to views espoused in large groups within the conservative support, if not their leadership. In the UK since 1945 roughly 52-55% of voters have voted for what would generally be described as progressive parties (LAB, Lib, Lib Dem, SNP, Plaid, etc.) and about 45-48% have voted for right wing parties, usually the conservatives. If you look at he UK polls the split is still about the same.
It is similar in other countries, the rise of Independent Ireland, a right wing party in the Republic of Ireland has been commensurate with a fall of the two traditional conservative parties Fianna Fail and Fine Gael. In France the same thing has more or less happened. You cannot really argue that the Gaulists did not have their share of right wing populists within their ranks. It seems that on the right the swivel eyed loon faction has become the dominant faction within the right across areas of Europe.
Robbo asks how do we reason with the irrational? I think that there is an assumption that rationality and irrationality are two different states of mind, however I would argue that at times we are all rational and at times we are irrational. We all have irrational thoughts, from lucky numbers to thinking everything in our lives has gone wrong, to believing in little green men. Most people with irrational thoughts have some degree of rationality that you can touch base with and build rationality into it. I know someone who was really into the whole QAnon crap, but talking with her calmly and gently putting forward factual explanations, counter arguments, etc. etc over several years has led to her being far ore rational in her political arguments, whilst I cannot say she is now about to join the party, she will accept at least some of our views and thoughts. Changing minds is a slow process , but we cannot afford to write off a section of the working class as unreachable.
Apologies, TM if my language was a little agricultural, you were being patronising, but my response was inappropriate
“Please read the thread before commenting. Thank you.”
You wrote “most academics”, not most academics in a particular field,
Please write carefully before posting, you patronising twat
TM, I assumed that you meant all academics in terms of all those involved in any academic work, rather than those who are involved in what has sometimes been described as “paleo Christianity”, bible history studies, etc.
In terms of the wider group of people I was thinking of, I would think the vast majority of academics, physicists, chemists, engineers, geographers, artists, etc. could give a flying feck.
Christianity is dying on its arse, regardless of the propagandists of religion say, whilst trying to use dodgy statistics to claim otherwise.
The fact that there are a higher proportion of fundamentalist involved in many Christian groups is not because that viewpoint is growing, it’s because they are they becoming more and more the only ones left.
Despite the propaganda the same process seems to be seen in UK Muslim communities. I work with young people in a city that has a big Muslim population. I see more and more young people choosing to marry non Muslims, dressing less conservatively and when in conversation they often say they attend mosque to keep their parents happy.
I found a survey somewhere which was carried out confidentially and about 23% of “Muslim” respondents stated they were either agnostic or atheist
