ChicagoCommunist [none/use name]

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  • 11 Comments
Joined 30 days ago
Cake day: August 19th, 2024
  • ChicagoCommunist [none/use name]@hexbear.nettoComics@lemmy.ml•CommunismEnglish
    141·
    13 days ago

    In a sort of similar vein to the above comrade’s comment, you may enjoy these quotes:

    From Disco Elysium:

    The Deserter - “The mask of humanity fall from capital. It has to take it off to kill everyone – everything you love; all the hope and tenderness in the world. It has to take it off, just for one second. To do the deed.”

    “And then you see it. As it strangles and beats your friends to death… the sweetest, most courageous people in the world.” He’s silent for a second “You see the fear and power in its eyes. Then you know.”

    YOU - “What?”

    The Deserter - “That the bourgeois are not human.”

    From Carlo Cafiero’s summary of Capital:

    So the daydreaming worker arrived at home; and there, dined, went to bed, and slept deeply, dreaming of the disappearance of bosses and the creation of government workshops.

    Sleep, poor friend, sleep in peace, while hope still rests within you. Sleep in peace, for the disappointing day will soon come. Soon you will learn how your boss can sell their goods for profit, without defrauding anyone. He will make you see how one becomes a capitalist, and a large capitalist, while remaining perfectly honest.

    Now your dreams will never again be so peaceful. You will see capital in your nights, like a nightmare, that presses you and threatens to crush you. With terrified eyes you will see it get fatter, like a monster with one hundred proboscises that feverishly search the pores of your body to suck your blood. And finally you will learn to assume its boundless and gigantic proportions, its appearance dark and terrible, with eyes and mouth of fire, morphing its suckers into enormous hopeful trumpets, within which you’ll see thousands of human beings disappear: men, women, children. Down your face will trickle the sweat of death, because your time, and that of your wife and your children will soon arrive. And your final moan will be drowned out by the happy sneering of the monster, glad with your state, so much richer, so much more inhumane.

  • ChicagoCommunist [none/use name]@hexbear.nettoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•What was the most fascinating thing you learned from the last book you read?English
    3·
    19 days ago

    Pretty much everything in The Dawn of Everything tbh. The diversity of social organization going back thousands of years, regardless of means of subsistence. The range of conceptions of property, ethics, hierarchy, power, rights, etc.

    Particularly interesting in American societies pre-colonization, since it seems the implicit image of them in the popular consciousness is a homogeneous series of small, isolated tribes, consisting of either noble savages or primitive barbarians, entirely ignorant of agriculture. When in reality a good many of them practiced agriculture in various ways, some of which colonizers simply didn’t notice because they weren’t as invasive as European methods.

    Also that agriculture isn’t necessary for the development of complex, large social structures, nor does the advent of agriculture necessitate the development of rigid hierarchies and exploitation.

    Turns out the agricultural revolution and its consequences weren’t a disaster for the human race. Sorry David Quinn.

  • ChicagoCommunist [none/use name]@hexbear.nettoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•What was the first record of HomophobiaEnglish
    2·
    24 days ago

    Human civilization is a lot longer than history and a lot more complex than specific normative behaviors blipping into existence at some defined point in time. Check out The Dawn of Everything for a recent anthropological perspective.

    Various cultures approach gender and sex (and thus sexuality) differently. Homophobia as we understand it can’t exist universally because sexuality as a static individual trait isn’t a universal conception. Though that doesn’t mean there aren’t other norms and deviations and whatnot.

    Caliban and the Witch is adjacent to this topic and discusses how sex and gender norms developed out of middle age Europe.