Wez
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‘I’m terrified instead by human actions.’
If the concept of an infinite void doesn’t scare you a little then you’re very unusual. Of course you’re right to be terrified of some human actions but there are also examples of heroism, self-sacrifice, incredible intelligence and creativity – one shouldn’t ‘throw the baby out with the bath water.’‘To say it is our role to bring self-consciousness to the universe is, therefore, arrogant and ludicrous.’
I’m not saying that at all. I’m just using your own logic – we are part of the universe and we are conscious of it. As you say there may be many other examples of the cosmos becoming conscious of itself and we are one of those examples. You say we should feel ‘awe’ but it is equally appropriate to feel lost within an immensity of nothing. Cold dark space provokes nothing in me but fear and loneliness. This tiny blue dot within the infinite may be the only example for billions of light years of the evolution of consciousness and I think this deserves the awe of which you speak not the lifeless void of space dotted with equally dead rocky planets.TM – why do you continually speak of our ‘smallness’? Small is good, microchips are quite impressive wouldn’t you say? Indeed you could say that inner-space is as infinitesimal as outer-space is huge. Size is not relevant here. We are part of the universe and we are good at abstract thought which brought about science which, by your own logic, must be an example of the universe becoming conscious of itself. The term ‘proper humility’ sounds very Christian to me.
“the universe becoming conscious of itself through our agency.”
What human supremacist arrogance!
We are a tiny microscopic blip in one planet’s evolution
TM – I don’t know why you would say that! I didn’t exclude the possibility that this might have also happened on other planets but the chances of contact with them seem remote. As you say, we are part of the cosmos so our role might be to become conscious of ‘the cosmos’. I don’t see anything ‘supremist’ or even remotely arrogant about that. To me science seems to represent the universe becoming conscious of itself and scientists are human!TM – I’ve always thought of the process as one of the universe becoming conscious of itself through our agency. Like all dialecticians I’m not overly fond of separating intellectual (scientific if you will) disciplines into discrete boxes. To completely understand anything is to understand everything in terms of dialectics but as the intellect could never sustain such information we categorize but always remembering that the universe is holistic.
‘How am I paying off any interest, Andrew? I’m not in employment so I’m not producing what you’d choose to call surplus value. The only regular outgoings I have, other than sustenance, are utility bills, transport costs and £32 Council Tax each month – money left over is mine to spend entirely as I please.’
Lizzie45- All of the costs you mention will rise to finance the debt. The NHS will suffer further cuts, infrastructure will deteriorate even more. I could continue but I think even you must know the consequences of government debt.
‘your pipe dream’
Lizzie45 – so all these emergency payments are proof that 100 years of reformism have been a success? That’s the real delusion – governments have borrowed from the 1% and you and I (and our children and grandchildren) will be paying off the interest on that for ever and a day – let alone the full amount. Your ‘pipe dream’ has turned into a nightmare of eternal debt.“Hell, the American capitalist regime has more than enough firepower on its own to defeat the Russian capitalist regime”
This may well be true but it’s not just ‘firepower’ that wins wars – Vietnam and Afghanistan come to mind.chelmsford – the Materialist Conception of History does imply a high level of determinism (like all science) but the establishment of socialism cannot be considered ‘inevitable’ since we have to take a larger frame of reference including the possibility of global warming destroying the planet and the equally disturbing possibility of a mass extinction due to a meteor collision etc. Of course there may be other elements determining cultural/political evolution that we have yet to discover – a kind of political version of dark energy/matter that has wrecked the physicists models of a deterministic ‘inevitable’ universe.
“Much too harsh, TS. The SPGB is engaging in the same abstract propaganda which they’ve been undertaking for 118 years. Please give credit where it’s due. 🙂”
Lizzie45 – I can’t see how your continual sniping contributes to the debate? You seem to be content to remain on your knees begging for more crumbs from your betters. If that’s how you wish to spend your life that’s your choice but it is not ours. You’ve said the begging is the only game in town so why bother with this forum – get back to your: ‘Please sir, I want some more’ strategy.TS is such a throwback to the ’70s and ’80s – an equal mixture of ignorance and arrogance. He’s the kind of egotistical vanguardist that put a whole generation of the working class off politics. Such anger and intolerance is always a sign of insecurity. Thankfully his breed are dying out but it’s good to be reminded of how correct we were in opposing everything he stands for. As I’ve said, the main point of discussing anything with him is to confirm to any reader of this forum the reasons why we oppose the left. I must admit to laughing out loud at his contention of his knowledge of ‘the truth’. Anyway I’m done with this parody of an individual but I’ll leave him with a disconcerting thought – I’m just as surprised as he is that Russia seem to be losing this war!
Is it a coincidence that all of the ‘independent’ journalists cited by TS agree with his perspective on the Ukrainian conflict? Can he name one independent journalist who does not share his ideological bias? Just utter nonsense as usual. Having reread some of our past articles concerning the fall of the Russian Empire they all seem to agree on its inevitability and that the world has moved on – except for a tiny minority within the left, like TS, who like to live in the past.
Two points of interest – is it the Party case that the old Russian empire was ‘betrayed’ by its elite contrary to the wishes of its people? I had always thought that the relatively peaceful transition to the traditional ‘bourgeois’ rule was due to the widespread contempt for the ruling ‘nomenklatura’ and their lies by the people? Not that it really matters since what was important was that the oppressive Russian empire was destroyed. I’m surprised that a comrade on here referred to it as the ‘Soviet Union’ as I thought that the Bolsheviks had destroyed all the soviets decades before?
There’s a lot of debate about ‘sources’ of information in this discussion. As far as I’m aware there are no independent journalists covering the conflict. The only news we get is either from ’embedded’ journalists (who can only report what the military allows them to see) and a bunch of reporters huddled in a hotel bar in Kiev spouting whatever the pentagon wants them to say. I’m sure it’s the same on the Russian side. As ever it will be up to historians to try and sort out the ‘truth’ after it is all over – what we can be sure of is that the lies will be coming from both sides.
