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*cont'd from my previous notes*
In another way of speaking, Materialist Dialectics is the study of, and the science of, contradictions, and of development/ change
When using this law in every day life, I find it easiest to ask myself when confronting/analyzing any given thing/ system/ phenomenon/ person/
idea/ process, ^where are some contradictions, or points of tension/opposition/mutually opposing sides or needs or properties? Which ones are the likely sources of movement for the particular system that I am analyzing at this current moment in time, given its external relationships to other things around it and connected to it?
(ie, an atom is defined by the unity of electrons and protons, a human economy is defined by the unity of production and consumption, a war is defined by a unity of opposing sides engaged in direct or otherwise civilizational confrontation, a living cell is defined by a unity of anabolism and catabolism, a wager laborer (in the scope of class analysis and class struggle) is defined by a unity of their human metabolic needs and the reality that they do not own their own means of production and thus must sell their labor power to someone who does (a capitalist), etc)
Which side will prevail in this temporary unity of opposing forces? If either? How long will the equilibrium of this contradiction last, if possible to understand? What are outside conditions and internal dynamics that are shaping and defining this contradiction? Can this unity of opposing sides be intervened in, and if so, what outcome would result for the overall system? Can new contradictions be introduced to disrupt/overtake the pre existing one(s)?
Just some food for thought for now, more to come in the future, specifically, in addition to the above, my understanding/sharing of notes of study on the Chinese Marxist Leninist Materialist Dialectical understanding of contradictions and their general properties and categorizations of resolution scenarios
3. the law of negation states that once a (any contradiction) is resolved/negated, a new one will immediately emerge to take the place of the previous one (again, in Materialist Dialectics, the viewpoint is fluid and is always relative/ie, the materialist dialectical method all depends upon which viewpoint of which subject we are analyzing, ontologically speaking, everything has its own viewpoint/ frame of reference to be taken into analytical consideration), either from within the dialectical subject, or from outside of it; as well as that whenever a dialectical negation* occurs, there will always be properties/ qualities/ characteristics inherited in the new subject from Both sides of the previous contradiction (the prevailing side as well as the negated side), this is called the property of inheritance in Vietnamese ML Materialist Dialectics
*the materialist dialectical definition of dialectical negation refers to a negation wherein some thing or phenomena/quality or aspect of a thing or phenomena, stops existing the way that it currently does and becomes something new, something other than what it was previously in time (this is as opposed to the previous European philosophical non dialectical conception of ^terminal negation^, which essentially states that once things or aspects disappear/ end, they are totally gone and have no impact on what comes after, which ultimately sees all processes as disconnected and misunderstands the dialectical relationship between rupture and continuity that the present has with the past that Materialist Dialectics centers in its methodological framework); spoiler alert: all negations are dialectical negations, this is just the proper, materialist way to understand the *end* of something as really just the end of a certain phase of a bigger, longer overall process (whatever is being analyzed), rather than metaphysical way of not seeing the continuing development and mutual impacts of a system or its relational components which occur after something is done/ dies/ ends/ terminates
Thus, whenever change occurs (changes occurs through the collective and successive resolutions of contradictions), there is always some kind of continuity to the past, as well as elements of the new.
Whenever another negation occurs after the first negation (from any frame of reference), the resulting dialectical subject will, in some way, reflect the earlier, first form prior to both negations, but also different, on a *higher* level (Marx and Engels referred to this as what in English translates to Sublation: which refers to the situation of simultaneously negating/getting rid of, transcending, synthesizing, retaining/ *bringing forward* the differences between two opposing forces/sides, into a new, higher form, the German word is Aufheben); the generalized way to understand this motion is that this collective process of undergoing two rounds of dialectical negations will cause a dialectical subject to have gone through a *spiral like* shape of development
So basically, change is happening all the time, and change happens in spirals (Lenin said this too!*)
Very basic example: 1 the dialectical subject (car), currently in a state of having the qualities of newness, shininess, being un broken, fully functional/ suitable for current needs in its current form, usable, etc, gets into an accident with another car (first contradiction) 2 our car emerges from this mutual impact in a new state reflecting the nature of the relationship it had to the contradicting subject (broken due to the second car hitting it; first negation) 3 after getting shipped to the scrap yard, the damaged former car is now processed into raw materials and now has the form of simple raw sheet metal (second negation/ negation of negation), this is no longer a car, having been dialectically negated and transformed into raw material, but now can be said, after having gone through another negation after the first negation of its previous identity, to have acquired a unity of characteristics of some of those of its first form (in stage 1 it was previously a car with the qualities of newness, shininess, suitability/ usability for its current form), but now in a *higher* state, or retained, but with differences, in its current state (in stage 3 it is now a sheet of metal, not a car any more, but now once again, can be understood as having the qualities of newness, shininess, suitability/usability for its current form, but it is also no longer a car, it is the same as the past but different at the same time, this shiny new, undamaged sheet metal will now go own to experience further mutual impacts and develop in other ways into other things, and so on, etc
*pretty much word for word on the last part
The point of this law is to see all things as not having distinct, metaphysically disconnected *beginnings and ends* but rather, as all being temporary diverse processes, which themselves, are mere phases and moments embedded within larger processes, which are always changing, even after one phase is *done*
What does it all mean?
Well, I like to think of them as having differences uses in practice and analysis:
Axiom: per dialectical materialism, every thing changes all the time
But what does this change look like? How does this change happen? When does it happen? Does it follow a pattern?
That is what these laws are useful for (to me, anyways)
*law of quantity/quality shows us ^when^ change happens (change does not happen all at once, it occurs as quality shifts happen, only after the sufficient amount of quantity shifts have accumulated)
This shows us the *architecture* of change, or the *shape* that the process of change/development takes through the diverse forms of matter that exist
Another way I see it is that this law helps us answer *when* change occurs
*law of contradictions shows us ^why^ change happens, more specifically the source of change in any system or thing, (change/ development is driven by contradictions present within and between all things, which are temporary unities of opposing forces)
Another way I see it is that this law helps us answer *where* change comes from, or more specifically, helps us locate the originating point of motion and change in a given system
This laws also helps us understand where the identity of thing comes from (its external and internal relationships, yes, but ultimately, the primary contradiction defining the thing or system at the current phase of development that is in is the source of the identity of said thing)
Of course, what the primary contradiction is at any given time is fluid and not fixed, and can change
Of course, any system or thing is composed of multiple contradictions, but there is always one contradiction which takes precedence over all the other when it comes to which one defines the system at its current stage and form (this is 101 from Mao Zedong Thought as well as Ho Chi Minh Thought)
*law of negation of negation shows us ^what shape the path of change/ development takes^, which is that of a spiral (after 2 rounds of negations, the dialectical subject now resembles its initial form, but on a ^higher* level); ie, because development occurs from contradictions which are resolved through negations, and then further successive negations after re emergence of contradiction, which causes all processes to not only engage in perpetual development, but due to the property of inheritance in dialectical negation (after a contradiction is negated, the result will have impacts/ characteristics from the negated side, as well as the prevailing side), change/ development does not occur through a linear process, but rather one that goes through zigs and zags, inheriting and approximating old forms and characteristics, but with new traits and under new conditions as well, hence the Vietnamese summarization of ^the new grows out of the old^
Another way I see this law, which is admittedly more immediately abstract in its capacity for practical application, is that it provides a ^blueprint^ for the general pattern of change (which is in twists and turns, not a straightforward teleological ^line^, in the form of a spiral, a nonlinear path of cyclic like circumscriptions of past trajectorial segments, but forward in time, always undergoing new additions and modifications alongside the old aspects
One way that the Vietnamese Marxist Leninist understanding illuminates about the application of this law is that, due to the property of inheritance, all emerging phenomena at the end of contradiction being resolved will inherit properties from both past sides of the previous contradiction, as well as due to a corollary of the law of negation of negation being that essentially, negations of contradictions can never be un done, due to the irreversible nature of the flow of time, but change continues onwards (not forward, that would be ontologically Euro centric, just onwards) through further negations of past negations; one should ^keep what is beneficial that is inherited from the past, and negate that which is not beneficial from the past^, this law reminds us to recognize the active agency that humans have in intervening in the natural, objective, and ongoing process of dialectical negation, and making it work to benefit ourselves and the world collectively; because of the property of inheritance of the law of negation, there will always be suitable things to keep and retain from previous contradictions and mutual impacts in the world, and because of the law of negation in general, negations can also be made to negate the unsuitable things retained from previous contradictions: understanding this principle gives us a guideline on how to go about leveraging the Laws of Change to bring about the change that benefits us humans as a whole (revolutionary science), which is also what Materialist Dialectics is
It is The science of studying and understanding the Laws of Change and utilizing them consciously to improve the world and our relations with the world and each other for the betterment of all humans (and all other*than*human*relatives, too!) (scientific revolutionary praxis)
So, there you have it, Materialist Dialectics in a nutshell. Essentially, the universal truths that all things are connected, all things are defined by their relationships, the change that all things undergo is driven by internal and external mutual impacts, coupled with the 3 universal dialectical laws of change, and these above 6 universal materialist dialectical category pairs.
That is the revolutionary scientific methodology. I only did not include the epistemology of Marxist Leninist Dialectical Materialism, this will come further down the line
I will be sharing more of my notes and fruits of my study of materialist dialectics, specifically with regards to the further philosophical category pairs not included here, as well as ways of grouping and classifying the universal relationships in materialist dialectics
I encourage you all to use these principles and methodological tools in your every day life, get some practice, use this methodology to locate contradictions and start solving problems for yourself and others. Spread this knowledge, the way our comrades throughout time and space did for me (again, shout out to our Vietnamese comrades)
The best thing about these categories and laws is that, because they are universal, they can be applied any situation, events in your interpersonal life, in the political processes and phenomena occurring around you, to labor processes, to technology, to other more particular sciences (hard and soft), to sports, to the food you eat, to the political economy we are embedded in, to social injustice around you, to movement and political formation and organization/ mobilization too.
Organizers, thinkers, doers, theoreticians, educators, agitators, activists, practitioners of praxis, students of any and all kinds, and those who want to see, and build a better world, all can benefit from this methodological and philosophical weaponry. After all, this world is currently being consumed by class contradictions emanating from the most gruesome empire to have ever existed. The whole world is quite literally at stake, not just humanity. We are most certainly in need of the right tools at this current conjuncture. Not just for our personal lives, but for the next seven generations, for our positionality in what is a still-saveable planet under what is an irredeemable political economic system.
Peace to comrades, love to all relatives,
All the power to all the peoples
This might be applicable to [alkmi]
https://xkcd.com/3126/
[pertinax, Aug 10 2025]
https://genius.com/Pink-floyd-time-lyrics
[pertinax, Apr 04 2026]
Ayer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._J._Ayer
I particularly like the bit about Mike Tyson. [pertinax, May 07 2026]
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How exactly does this equate with a more inventive way of making toast while descending on a parachute down a mine shaft? |
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Hm on that particular hypothetical example, I would say that the desire to make toast may be contradicted, or in opposition to, the limited spatial conditions that the subject has while descending down the mineshaft, particularly depending on external conditions which may negate the ability to fulfill that desire (ie lack of light, lack of adequate materials, lack of preparation, lack of sanitation methods, lack of disposal, etc). This could be an example of identifying the primary contradiction of the situation (that is, the central unity of opposites which defines your situation descending down a mineshaft, whilst trying to prepare food suitable for human metabolic consumption, such a sandwich), an example of the law of quantity and quality here would be, once a certain quantity of height has been descended in your parachute/ vehicle that you’re being lowered down by, your journey will acquire the “quality” of being “complete”, therefore negating the central antagonism between the need to prepare a sandwich, and descending into a mineshaft, since now the spatial destination has been reached, laying the premise for further mutual impacts to occur with both your sandwich (if still made but uneaten), and our putative mine explorer in this thought experiment. A way to think about this using the law of negation might be like 1 human subject wants to make a sandwich, but needs to also do so while descending down into a mineshaft (first contradiction) 2 the human either overcomes the obstacles during the journey and successfully completes the task of inventively making (and eating) the sandwich, or cannot do so, and therefore must “wait for a better time” once the objective conditions are sufficient (time, materials, light, labor availability) (first negation) 3 then, once the sandwich has been eaten, now the subject must complete the journey of getting to the floor level of the mineshaft, or if the sandwich has not yet been eaten, once the descent has been completed, they can now continue with their task of sandwich-making (second negation) the step 3 (second negation) has the subject’s situation now “resembling” the initial step 1 (the state they were in in first contradiction), but on a “higher stage” now (the person started off with an not-done task to complete, namely, the not yet made sandwich, and now ended up with another not-done task to complete at the end of this particular process, namely, being done with the task of descending into a mine, and finishing one’s sandwich, now being tasked with physically exploring the mine and entering it to retrieve or achieve what one came there for in the first place (new contradiction). That’s at least my interpretation and application of it |
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What makes you think it's a hypothetical example? |
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This idea looks A1 (heh, callback to US MinOf(mis)Ed) sauce, on account of completely missing the point of the HB. |
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//What makes you think it's a hypothetical example?// |
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Vernon has met his match. |
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I want to wade into this to see wtf, but I... holy crap. |
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Can you give us a Readers Digest Condensed version? I gotta go back to work. |
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long story short-materialist dialectics is the science of universal relationships and change: it simply states that all things are connected and are defined by their relationships, and all things are changing all the time due to mutual impacts.
Thank you all for the feedback and attention |
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Well, at least it's not in other: general |
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//This idea looks A1// Those were and remain my thoughts, as confirmed by its answer to my parachute question. ie a complete inability to respond with any level of humour or invention ie a bot answer. |
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There are problems with making toast while falling down a mineshaft. These include the mineshaft's size, cleanliness, difficulty bringing necessary items along, and the lack of mineshaft trash cans into which one may place refuse, the ability to simply drop stuff notwithstanding. Extra words that don't add anything to the conversation, but sound good to people who demand they be present. When attempting to prepare food while falling down a mineshaft, you may finish making it on the way down and your work will be finished. More extra words. |
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You may have trouble doing this. You may be able to complete the process and then eat what you made. This is not a contradiction, but I like the word "contradiction". We can break this into steps by adding words. Having descended, with or without food and having eaten or not, you may be tasked with exploring the mine. |
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//materialist dialectics is the science of universal relationships and change: it simply states that all things are connected and are defined by their relationships, and all things are changing all the time due to mutual impacts. Thank you all for the feedback and attention// |
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materialist dialectics is the art of using long words in predictable patterns to describe what everyone knows in such a convoluted way that eventually doublethink can be achieved. Its opponents are simple words put into sentences which each directly express a single thought, these sentences being put into paragraphs with break the thoughts into useful groups of thoughts or ideas, and these paragraphs being grouped thematically into essays, stories and other methods of conveying information. The advantage and disadvantage of this "plain speech" is that you can't say "Let's all start hating the Tibetans and the Uyghurs" without coming out and saying it. |
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You can't say "The law of the unity of opposites is the fundamental law of the universe. This law operates universally, whether in the natural world, in human society, or in man’s thinking. Between the opposites in a contradiction there is at once unity and struggle, and it is this that impels things to move and change. Contradictions exist everywhere, but they differ in accordance with the different nature of different things. In any given thing, the unity of opposites is conditional, temporary and transitory, and hence relative, whereas the struggle of opposites is absolute" |
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"The most basic rule of existence is that everything is made of conflicting forces that are permanently locked together. This isn't just a political or social theory; we're telling you this is a universal law, like gravity, that applies to nature, to society, and even to how you think. It is the 'struggle' between these opposing forces that drives all history and progress. Therefore, you must understand that any period of peace, stability, compromise, or 'unity' is always just a brief, temporary phase. The only permanent, inevitable, and absolute reality is conflict and 'struggle.' Because struggle is the engine of the universe, engaging in constant political struggle is not a disruptive choice—it is the only way to be on the right side of history and in sync with the laws of nature itself." |
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Deprived of obtuse language, you have to outright admit that you're conflating the physical repulsion between two electrical fields and your political agenda. Not as a metaphor but actually believe they are the same thing. Deprived of obtuse language, you are unable to fill pages with justification for the people in charge to do whatever it is they want to do this week. |
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//problems with making toast ... include ... the lack of ... trash cans into which one may place refuse// |
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Not once in my life have I been foiled in my toast-making intent by the lack of a trash can. |
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Science as a Weapon: How Fake Physics and Forced Confessions Fueled China's Cultural Revolution |
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During the turbulent ten years of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), China's leader, Mao Zedong, sought to purge the country of any ideas that challenged his rule. This campaign wasn't just about political rivals; it extended into the specialized fields of science and philosophy. To achieve his goals, the Communist Party promoted a confusing mix of political dogma and quasi-physics jargon. Respected academics were forced to publicly support these bizarre theories, giving them a fake appearance of legitimacy. This strategy of weaponizing science was crucial for pushing the Revolution's agenda forward, creating a powerful illusion of progress that masked the chaos and destruction actually unfolding across the nation. |
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The Philosophy That Became Law |
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At the center of this campaign was a specific philosophy: dialectical materialism. As interpreted by Mao, this was the idea that all reality is purely material and that everything in the universe—from atoms to societies—is in a constant state of change driven by struggle and contradiction. For Mao, this wasn't just a theory; it was the supreme and universal law of nature. His writings on the subject were treated as the ultimate scientific truth, more accurate than any experiment or observation. This meant that any scientific theory that seemed to contradict Mao's philosophy had to be wrong. Science was no longer about discovering reality; it was about proving that Mao's ideology was correct. |
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Attacking "Bourgeois" Science |
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The main targets of this ideological war were Western scientific breakthroughs, particularly Albert Einstein's theory of relativity and the Big Bang theory. These ideas were officially condemned as "bourgeois"—a term for anything associated with the capitalist West—and "idealist," meaning they were based on abstract thought rather than concrete, material reality. |
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The attacks were not based on scientific evidence but on twisted philosophical arguments. For example, Einstein's theory of relativity describes concepts like curved spacetime and the unity of space and time. Because these things could not be physically seen or touched, they were labeled "idealist fantasies" that denied the solid, material world. The Party claimed relativity promoted a "metaphysical" worldview, which suggested a static, unchanging universe. This directly clashed with Mao's core belief that constant struggle and change were fundamental laws of nature. |
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Similarly, the Big Bang theory, which states that the universe began from a single point, was attacked for being too similar to a religious creation story. An idea that left any room for a divine creator was unacceptable to the officially atheist state. It was rejected not for its scientific flaws, but because it didn't fit the rigid political narrative. |
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The most tragic part of this story is how China's own scientists and intellectuals were used to validate the attacks. These experts were subjected to terrifying public humiliation sessions known as "struggle sessions." A renowned physicist could be dragged before a screaming crowd, forced to wear a dunce cap, and confess to being a "reactionary academic authority." |
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Under immense psychological pressure and fearing for their lives and families, these academics had little choice but to surrender their integrity. They were not simply silenced; they were forced to become active participants in the lie. They had to write articles and give speeches "critiquing" their own life's work, using the Party's approved jargon to denounce established science. A physicist might be forced to argue that quantum uncertainty was an "idealist" notion because it challenged the predictable, materialist view of the world. |
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Propaganda and the Illusion of Truth |
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These forced confessions were a powerful propaganda tool. They were printed in state-controlled newspapers and broadcast over the radio as "proof" that the nation's best minds had finally rejected corrupt Western ideas and embraced the "superior science" of Mao Zedong Thought. |
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This created a distorted reality. While the Cultural Revolution was causing schools to close, factories to stall, and society to descend into violence, the government's propaganda machine, armed with these "academic" endorsements, told a story of profound intellectual achievement. The confusing and technical-sounding jargon made it difficult for ordinary citizens to challenge these claims. After all, if the experts themselves agreed that relativity was wrong, who could argue otherwise? |
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The ultimate purpose of this deception was political control. By framing scientific debate as a struggle between "proletarian truth" and "bourgeois lies," the Party could eliminate any form of dissent. To question the bizarre critiques of modern physics was to question Mao himself—a crime that could lead to prison, labor camps, or death. This fake science gave the Revolution a veneer of intellectual respectability and helped justify its radical and often brutal policies. |
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In conclusion, the use of quasi-physics jargon during the Cultural Revolution is a stark example of how science can be twisted to serve a political ideology. It was a period when truth was not discovered but dictated, and where intellectual freedom was replaced with forced loyalty. The story of the coerced academics is a somber reminder that a society that forces its experts to lie is not only committing an act of intellectual dishonesty but is also paving the way for immense human suffering. |
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And there are people who want to bring the joys of the cultural revolution to a school near you, and already have to a much weaker extent. See also the long march through the institutions. |
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I asked ChatGPT to summarise all of this using hendiatris - it summarized as follows |
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"Contradiction, Motion, Transformation" |
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I count a victory over AI. |
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LOL^ @DenholmRicshaw there may be hope for us yet |
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@Voice and any/everyone^^ Thanks for the time and the feedback. Regardless, I still appreciate the engagement and your honesty.
Yes, I used to think a lot of that stuff too, especially about Tibetans and Uyghurs. Maybe even a little more hardcore in the case of my own life than the above. It didn’t make it any better that as an East Asian diaspora (not Chinese, but all three of the inputs of my ethnic cultural identity are very close to China and Chinese culture historically, culturally, etc, although not necessarily politically-ill spare the East Asian cultural family tensions and woes), I grew up unintentionally internalizing and reifying a lot of BS on China, its culture, China’s history, its political economy, and its internal and external relationships. However, after moving to a bigger place than where I was originally from, I am actually really grateful to be able to say that I had the privilege of getting to learn a lot from a lot of different people outside of the USA (or the Global North countries, where a lot of my audience is likely from as well.), whose opinions I came to hold a deep respect for, and whose life experiences and scholarship reached far beyond what I thought that we in the US collectively understood about the rest of the world and the other countries and peoples with whom we share this global village of our’s; a lot of people from all around the globe, Brazil, Venezuela, Kenya, Philippines, South Africa, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Vietnam, Mexico, Australia, Iraq, even UK, Serbia, Italy, and Ireland among others, whose perspectives were exceedingly more lucid and insightful, more explanatorily powerful and materially grounded, than frankly my own previous point of view, and than that of the global perspective of most folks I’ve met here and have gotten to know in the States.
One text that I’ve found a lot of people enjoy me sharing with them is “China’s Revolution and the Quest for a Socialist Future”, by Ken Hammond, excellent work, easy to get through in a weekend or two, and it’s written primarily with westerners in mind, by a westerner as well (Hammond teaches at the history department at U of New Mexico). Some other great sources (none of them are Chinese nor even Chinese diaspora) that helped me get a lot more perspective on China and learning about China in a slightly different lens than we may be used to in our part of the world, or coming from the conditions and particular journeys that we’re all arriving through, I’d say would be Ben Norton (Host and editor of Geopolitical Economy Report), Vijay Prashad (director of Tri-Continental Institute), really, any publication from Tri-Continental (they were/are a wealth of information on geopolitics, especially on the Global South) Dr Taimur Rahman (Professor of Political Economics based in Lahore, Pakistan), Daniel Dumbrill (Guyanese-Canadian journalist, living in China), KJ Noh (journalist, peace activist, political analyst, associated with Pivot to Peace), anything from code Pink (Feminist Anti Imperialist anti-war activist organization) anything from BAP (Black Alliance for Peace), Carlos Martinez (peace activist), Ajamu Baraka (veteran, peace activist, former Green Party Vice President candidate, political educator), Rhadika Desai (Geopolitical economist); and finally, some good educational sources who are Chinese diaspora but who speak primarily English are Mimi Zhu (social media influencer and political educator), Amanda Yi (host of the China Report, political journalist, Ilyana Chan (co-founder of Global Majority for Peace), and Li JingJing (political and investigative journalist), oh, and pretty much anything the Qiao Collective too, including works by Charles Xu (political writer, anti-imperialist activist and journalist). I didn’t agree with a lot of the information I was first hearing from folks like this, it went against pretty much everything that the surrounding world and family (biological and otherwise) around me had been agreeing with, and accepting. But despite that, I still found a lot of this work and learning material interesting, and it made me curious to dig further. And that curiosity is probably what eventually ended up helping me develop more beyond the perspective that I previously claimed was mine. Not saying anything like all that will/must/should/wont happen to you all. But at the very least, it can make for an interesting intellectual exercise in learning some new stuff, I can definitely say I felt a lot of things when I first started looking into some of the folks’ and organizations’ works and thoughts above, but boredom was definitely not one of them.
If not, don’t read them, it may end up just wasting your time. |
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You seem to have dropped a few paragraph breaks. Here you go. <p></p> <p></p> <p></p> <p></p> <p></p> |
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//I felt a lot of things when I first started looking into some of the folks’ and organizations’ works and thoughts above, but boredom was definitely not one of them. If not, don’t read them// |
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I'll be sure to follow your suggestion. |
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//a stark example of how science can be twisted to serve a political ideology. It was a period when truth was not discovered but dictated, and where intellectual freedom was replaced with forced loyalty. // |
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Well, gee willikers, that sounds an awful lot like what happened to any doctor or scientist speaking up about the Plandemic! |
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Any doctor, nurse or scientist who even questioned the narrative, let alone not lining up for the mandated jab, was fired or black-balled. |
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How could anyone have possibly known that it was a con?... |
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//boredom was definitely not one of them// |
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Ah; that could be a problem: some of the most important breakthroughs in the history of science were made possible solely because their authors had a stupendous tolerance for boredom. So if you discard any source that bores you, you're going to miss out. |
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Two well known examples spring to mind, namely Copernicus and Darwin. |
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When you read The Origin of Species, one of the first things that becomes apparent is just how much time Darwin must have spent listening politely to the monologues of pig-breeders, pigeon-fanciers and other obsessive hobbyists, without ever zoning out, changing the subject or just losing the will to live. Notwithstanding his more famous experiences in, for example, the Galapagos Islands, that was where he got most of his data from. |
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And as for Copernicus, he had a day job as a grey non-entity in middle management, and after work had what we would nowadays call no life at all. |
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Meanwhile, in politics, excitement is something that tends to characterise fascism. Now, you might think that fascist excitement is quite different from progressive excitement - but you'd be wrong; they are more closely related than either would like to admit - and the reason for that is probably dialectical. |
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So, be careful - and maybe contemplate, as an awful warning, the career of Reinhold Oberlercher, which encompassed both a leading role in the New Left of 1968 and a leading role in the Alt Right of 2016. I have no doubt it was quite exciting. |
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I think the help file is still over there on the left. |
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ChatGPT has calmed down and summarizes the chunky annotation above using iambic pentameter as follows... |
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I used to share the views you now express, |
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But learning more has made me reassess. |
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Though not all will, you might still find it wise |
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To glimpse the world through others’ clearer eyes. |
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Yes. I was once against lining up to be gelded, but having read "the nature of men" by Stuffa Menastova my eyes have been opened. If you read that book your eyes too will be opened. Surely you're not afraid to learn something? |
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If you were not familiar, that's okay? |
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"Your search - Mijikakunattaraiiyo - did not match any documents." |
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b.t.w., I have some actual domain expertise about the history of dialectical reasoning (as does our friend [nineteenthly]). But I won't bore you with it unless you're curious. |
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I'm curious, but confused. |
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Does this effect the price of tea in China? |
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[pertinax] - drop it into Google Translate, set to Japanese. (Our friend [Alkmi] appears to claim that background.) |
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Mijikakunattaraiiyo seems like a rather long word. Someone should make it shorter perhaps. |
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//the price of tea in China?// |
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No, but it may have some bearing on the price of freedom. |
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You see, before there was dialectical materialism, there was Hegel's dialectic. Engels (and his friend Marx) made their system from Hegel's, not so much by adding things as by removing something. |
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Hegel's system tried to connect together a whole lot of categories that philosophers had been thinking about for a long as there had been philosophers - things like Appearance, Essence, Time, Space, Quantity, Quality and a whole lot of others. |
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What Engels took out and threw away was the category of Idea. So, whereas Hegel understood that his ideas were ideas, Engels supposed that *his* ideas were identical with reality. Or, to put it another way, he discarded self-awareness (and, as a corollary of that, discarded humility). |
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And once you take out those parts, dialectic very quickly degenerates into a collection of gaslighting tropes, as so eloquently described by our friend [Voice] on some of the postings related to this one. And, in political terms, that sets you on a short, straight path to totalitarianism. |
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I think there might be a way out; in software terms, it involves forking the code base, but from Hegel's version, not from Engels'. But it might not work. |
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I had to look up the meanings of several words you wrote... like wtf is a trope?... but I agree. |
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Ideas exist without us. We are just conduits. Every idea which has ever popped into my head I had to then research to learn the mechanics or physics of. |
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I think it's always been that way, and that we should be concentrating more on the how than the why. The why will reveal itself if we figure out enough hows. |
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I'm rolling the dice as we speak. But it'll take years, minimum, to see how they land. |
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I wonder whether gamblers would enjoy the spectacle of ultra slow-mo dice. Maybe they could be rolled in a chamber full of tungsten hexafluoride. |
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[lurch] and [Voice], thank you for joining me on this journey to quickly enshittify AI (crash the culture bus) so we still have *some* paperclips left for starting over. |
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The penthouse laboratory on the eighty-seventh floor of the Shanghai Tower drank in the last copper light of the Huangpu River. Spires glowed along the horizon like steady beacons. Silver and shimmering, they released the heat of fusion plants powering the Greatest Nation. Maglev trains whispered between districts where the world’s finest universities and laboratories hummed with breakthroughs in quantum computing and gene editing. Automated equipment worked tirelessly beside him and the clever computing interface waited to help him identify interesting results. |
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Zhang Wei stood at the observation window, white coat open over his shirt, the unrolled scroll on the workbench beside a single candle whose flame held perfectly still, as though the air itself had been persuaded not to interfere. He spoke the old words once, low and deliberate, tasting each syllable as if it might resist him. A man in charcoal stepped from the shadow between two server racks, cuffs and eyes knife-sharp. One conversation in Yan’an, spring 1945. Convince Mao to place academia and scientific progress above every other concern. China would no longer just be the best, it would blaze brighter than any nation had dreamed. The man listened without interruption, head slightly inclined, as if considering not the request but its edges. The bargain closed with no flourish; the man folded away in the room like a page turned. |
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Yan’an, spring 1945. Oil smoke rose from the lamp in the cave and left dark smudges on the loess wall. Mao Zedong sat on a low stool, maps pinned with drawing pins, the coming battles sketched in red pencil. The stranger in the patched cadre tunic knelt and spoke with quiet fire. “Chairman, the revolution will need more than courage. It will need accuracy. Let the scholars work without interference. Let engineers measure the rivers as they are, not as they ought to be. If you guard that—if you make it untouchable—everything else becomes easier.” Mao studied him, eyes narrowing in the lamplight, not offended, not yet convinced. The suggestion hung there. A tool placed within reach. He asked a few questions, practical ones, about food, machines, and whether knowledge could be trusted if it came from men who had not marched. The stranger answered each with a patience that seemed almost deferential. Mao rose at last and clapped him on the shoulder with a heavy hand. “The people’s science,” he said, testing the phrase as if it might bear weight. “Pure. Above all else.” The stranger bowed his head just enough to acknowledge the words, then slipped out into the dusk between the hills. |
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October 1949. Tiananmen Square thundered with flags and drums and the roar of a quarter-million voices. Mao stood on the rostrum in his plain tunic, voice rolling across the loudspeakers like distant artillery. “We have heard the voice of tomorrow. Science for the people—above faction, above caution, above everything.” The new Academy of Sciences opened its doors within days. Its halls filled with young physicists bent over early cyclotron diagrams and agronomists testing hybrid seeds under bright electric lights. The laboratories smelled of clean metal and fresh paper. Reports circulated with margins wide enough for correction, for disagreement, for the slow work of getting things right. In those first months, Mao walked the corridors himself, pausing to ask questions that were sometimes naive and sometimes sharp enough to unsettle the men answering them. He seemed to enjoy the resistance he encountered—the way a result could be refused until it was proven twice. |
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Late at night in Zhongnanhai the gardens lay quiet beyond the windows, cicadas droning in the willows. Mao paced alone along a corridor lined with lacquered screens, hands clasped behind his back. The man in charcoal appeared beside one, as if he had always been there and had merely chosen to be noticed. “Chairman,” he said, falling in with the man's pacing, “you have done something rare. You have protected a thing that does not answer to you. The visitor let the silence stretch, then added, almost idly, “When the work is slow, how do you decide what to do while you wait?” Mao’s steps slowed. He thought of shortages, of timelines that did not respect patience, and enemies who would not wait for an experiment to finish. “One must act,” he said. The visitor inclined his head. “Then perhaps the question is not whether science leads, but how it serves when time refuses to cooperate.” Mao resumed his pace, but the thought did not leave with the man when he faded back into the dim. |
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A banquet table groaned under porcelain and silver in the Hall of Purple Light. Mao sat at the head, face flushed from repeated cups of maotai, eyes bright with the easy warmth of liquor. A dance troupe from the Central Garrison performed under soft lanterns, young women in silk tunics gliding across the floor with precise, disciplined steps, sleeves tracing controlled arcs in the light. Their bodies were taut, trained to perfection, skin gleaming faintly with the effort of hours of rehearsal. After the performance the hall shifted from ceremony to something looser; music softened, conversation thickened, laughter rose and fell like a tide. Mao called the lead dancer to sit beside him, then gestured for two others, their slender frames settling close enough that the scent of their powder and faint sweat reached him. His hands rested heavily on their shoulders as he questioned them at length about their training—the endless repetition, the correction of every imperfection, the way the body could be broken down and rebuilt into an instrument of absolute obedience. He spoke of the science of the body: endurance, vitality, the limits of pleasure and pain. |
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The women answered carefully at first, then with more ease as his questions grew intimate, describing how repetition dulled fatigue, how breath could be controlled even when the heart raced, how pain could be reshaped into something useful. Several were invited to stay after the others had been dismissed. In the private rooms beyond the hall, under the guise of “medical research” and “rejuvenation studies,” Mao explored these limits with clinical curiosity mixed with raw appetite. The visitor stood in the shadows near the doorway, silent, watching as the Chairman dictated notes the next morning on how discipline translated not only into performance but into submission and ecstasy. Expanded health programs were ordered for select cadres and for the Chairman himself—better nutrition, experimental tonics drawn from the Academy, carefully chosen companions whose youth and vigour, it was said, could be studied for the benefit of the revolution. The dancers were not summoned again that night; instead Mao requested reports, pages of them, on how discipline translated into output, and the selected women returned the following evenings to gather fresh data. |
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Winter 1958. The Great Leap Forward spread across the countryside like fire through dry grass. In a model commune outside Beijing, Mao walked between rows of backyard furnaces built from scavenged iron and mud bricks. Flames roared skyward. Peasants fed them with tools, furniture, even with doorframes while cadres shouted production figures from clipboards. He stopped beside one glowing mouth, heat licking his face. He asked how purity was being measured, what standard the numbers answered to, whether the metal would hold under stress. The answers came quickly, confidently, each reinforcing the last. The visitor stood a pace behind, watching the exchange with a mild curiosity. “Chairman,” he said after a moment, “it is remarkable how quickly the people can produce when given a target they understand.” Mao did not look at him. “Understanding is the difficulty,” he replied, watching a stream of molten slag spill into a crude mold. “Then perhaps the target teaches the understanding,” the visitor said. Mao nodded, sharply, and moved on. That evening, the reported figures climbed. |
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The famine settled in quietly at first. In Henan that autumn sparrows had been declared enemies of scientific agriculture and clubbed from every tree; locusts blackened the sky in their absence. Mao toured the province by special train, curtains drawn against the skeletal figures scratching at the baked fields. In his private car the man in charcoal poured tea from a porcelain pot, the steam rising in a thin, unwavering line. Two young nurses from the expanded health programme attended Mao, their white uniforms crisp, their hands steady as they offered him small dishes of preserved delicacies and measured his pulse with practised deference. Mao read the reports stacked before him—columns of numbers that did not match what he had glimpsed through the brief gap in the curtain when it shifted. He tapped one page with a finger, not hard, just enough to mark the place. “If these are wrong,” he said, “everything that follows is wrong.” |
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The visitor set the cup down within easy reach. “Which error is more costly,” he asked. “To doubt what is written, or to doubt what must be achieved?” Mao leaned back, closing his eyes for a moment as if to weigh the alternatives without the distraction of sight. When he opened them, he reached for the pen. The quotas were adjusted upward, the ink drying quickly in the warmed air of the carriage. Outside, the fields slid past in a blur of dust and silence. That night the nurses remained, their studies of endurance continuing in the swaying privacy of the carriage while the countryside emptied. |
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At the Academy of Sciences in Beijing the courtyard filled with Red Guards chanting slogans under a hard blue sky. An elderly physicist, whose early cyclotron work Mao had once praised, knelt in the dust while students smashed his instruments with hammers. Glass shards glittered on the paving stones. Mao watched from an upper window, hands resting on the sill, a bowl of fruit set within reach. He had been told that certain lines of inquiry were obstructive, that they introduced hesitation where certainty was required, that they questioned directives in ways that slowed progress. The visitor stood a little apart, not close enough to be mistaken for counsel, not far enough to be absent. “It is difficult,” he said, almost to himself, “to distinguish between disagreement that refines and one that delays.” Mao’s gaze did not leave the courtyard. He watched the old man try once, unsuccessfully, to gather a broken lens as if it might still be assembled. “Delay has a cost,” Mao said. The visitor made no reply. After a time Mao lifted his hand in a small, economical gesture. The chanting swelled. The courtyard emptied of instruments by late afternoon, the paving stones swept clean as if nothing precise had ever been attempted there. |
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The years thickened. Mao’s private quarters in Zhongnanhai grew heavy with silk hangings and jade carvings. Reports of record harvests arrived on silver trays as the countryside emptied. Factories turned out steel that crumbled under the slightest weight and grain that existed only on paper. In the evenings the rhythms of the compound shifted according to need. Some nights were given over to briefings that ran long past midnight, with specialists called in to summarize findings that grew more certain the less they were examined. On others Mao convened small gatherings. Musicians, performers, and medical staff attended him less for spectacle than for proximity for the sense of control that came from arranging people and seeing them respond. He would ask a singer how she maintained pitch across fatigue, or a nurse how she judged when a patient could endure more treatment, turning each answer into a small directive, a refinement of expectation. The chosen women rotated through his chambers with the quiet efficiency of a laboratory schedule, their bodies catalogued in the name of revolutionary science: flexibility charts, vitality tonics distilled in Academy labs, notes on the precise interplay of pleasure and obedience. The visitor did not press; he asked, occasionally, how one knew when a system was working if all its outputs aligned with intention. Mao answered these questions in practice rather than in words. Laboratories adjusted their conclusions. Reports converged. The language of science remained intact, its methods recited with increasing confidence, its conclusions arriving more quickly than before. |
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One afternoon in 1976 the visitor stood at the foot of Mao’s bed in the final days. Mao lay propped on pillows, breathing shallow, the room smelling of medicine and old books. Two young attendants hovered nearby, adjusting the silk coverlet with practised hands. Their presence was a final echo of the health programmes once ordered in the name of the people. There were fewer papers now, fewer visitors, the machinery of the state continuing somewhere beyond the walls without requiring his direct touch. The man in charcoal placed a single photograph on the coverlet. It showed a laboratory bench—clean, orderly, instruments intact, a notebook open to a page filled with corrections in a careful hand. Mao looked at it for a long moment, as if trying to recall whether such a place had ever truly existed under his watch, or whether it had been a beginning that had required too much patience to maintain. His fingers moved once, lightly, across the edge of the paper. The visitor waited, not expectant, merely present, as the room held its breath and then released it. |
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Zhang Wei blinked. The penthouse had vanished. He sat on a worn sofa in a three-room flat on the sixth floor of an ordinary Shanghai tower block. The air carried the faint smell of boiled cabbage drifting from the hallway. A single bulb hung from the ceiling on a frayed cord. On the low table rested a thick book bound in red plastic: A History of Modern China. He opened it with hands that would not quite steady. The pages laid out the famines that had claimed tens of millions, the laboratories turned into stages for public accusation, the Chairman’s private routines described in careful, footnoted prose that avoided judgment and thereby made it unnecessary. Each chapter returned, in its own way, to the same hinge: the decision to elevate science beyond contest, to protect it so completely that it could be directed without resistance. Zhang turned the final page. A faint scent of scorched paper rose from the binding. |
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The man in charcoal stood in the narrow kitchen doorway, hands in his pockets. “History thanks you,” he said, as if acknowledging a contribution that had been properly recorded. He stepped back into the shadows between the cabinets. The flat door clicked shut with the soft finality of a ledger closing. Outside, the city traffic moved on beneath a sky crowded with rockets and satellites—a superpower still reaching for the stars, yet measured in the quiet accounting of uncounted graves. |
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That's quite the story, [Voice] |
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Fuck me.
i just spent like half an hour reading every word of this thread and highlighting things I wanted to either refute of agree with without realizing that they were deleting each other by overlapping and now this is the last one. |
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Sometimes I hate the internet and my incompetence dealing with it. |
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//I wonder whether gamblers would enjoy the spectacle of ultra slow-mo dice. Maybe they could be rolled in a chamber full of tungsten hexafluoride.
— pertinax// |
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Yes. Yes they would.
Programs would be written to determine the chances of bounce dependant on irregularities in the curvature of each angle of each die. |
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It would be a whole thing. |
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I had so many things I wanted to say. <sigh> |
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I learned so many things. |
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This entire posting is actually a condensed extension of The Bible Code. |
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// I had so many things I wanted to say. <sigh> // |
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Pink Floyd has you covered (see link): |
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The time is gone, the song is over
Thought I'd something more to say |
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Oh no its not. We've only just begun. |
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The birth pains will be rather harsh though. |
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..... white lace and promises .... |
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I mean, basically this doesn't belong here and seems to assume nobody here doesn't already have a grasp of this flavour of political theory - that we need educating in it. Regardless of whether we agree with it or not, it's inappropriate. I don't come over here and plonk stuff down about Ernst Bloch or anomalous monism. The apposite phrase is, I suppose, "read the room". In a few weeks' time, I'll probably be participating in a discussion on similar matters in the kind of room which used to be smoke-filled, face-to-face with others, doubtless passionately and earnestly, and giving it my intellectual all. Doesn't mean I want to bring it here. |
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//seems to assume nobody here doesn't already have a grasp of this// |
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Are you sure that was what you meant? |
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I'm a nobody, and I haven't the foggiest Idea of what he's prattling on about. |
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//face-to-face with others, doubtless passionately// |
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As I'm sure [nineteenthly] knows, the famous Logical Positivist A J Ayer was a long time season ticket holder of the Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. He had the "doing philosophy" part of his life, and he had the "being passionate in a group" part of his life, and they were substantially separate. |
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If, instead, you combine the two, this may affect the kind of philosophy you find yourself doing, and there may be a downside to that. |
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Imagine, if you will, Ayer in the stands at White Hart Lane, with all the other white-scarf fans. Imagine that their team is playing against, as it might be, the Arsenal Football Club in their red. For the duration of that hour and a half, plus breaks, there is a shared experience of animosity towards all those red people. It's mostly harmless - very few of the fans are actually hooligans - but it's there. |
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Fortunately, because it's only football, it's unlikely to create a lasting distortion of the ontology or epistemology of the people present. But if it were philosophy, then it might - and, in the materialist version of dialectic, I believe it very much does. |
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I understand that our friend [nineteenthly] doesn't want to discuss it here, and that's OK. For myself, I appreciate the relative detachment that comes from interacting through text only, and not in real time. Each to his own, I suppose. |
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