Petition to Remove Churchill Street Name

[blackbird]

On 6/10/2020 at 10:05 PM, eyeball said:

From the article

Sound like we should be thankful he didn't declare an alliance with Hitler.

Speech was totally different 50 or 75 years ago.  People said all kinds of things that nobody says today.  That was the way the world was then.  Churchill's accomplishments in leading the British and Allies to victory in WW2 far overshadow any comments he might have said.  He needs to be shown respect for leading the free world in it's greatest threat and battle in history.

[Zeitgeist]

On 2/11/2021 at 9:34 PM, Right To Left said:

Nor Churchill! He was just the last of the line of British imperialists who was trying to maintain England's imperial primacy in the world as the new empire - America, was rising fast to take its place. Churchill as a political leader was a stubborn deadender, who caused unneeded death and suffering at home and especially in colonies like India, where his deliberate starvation strategies in East Bengal caused the deaths of millions!

I don't believe in the Great Man theory of history as a general rule. The leaders are not much different than coaches of winning teams getting credit because their names are associated with teams whose owners were willing to fork out more money than the other rich idiots who try to use their money to get in a photo with the championship team they otherwise, had no talent to join when they were young! 

So, back before our economic system turned into a complete joke (a magical time before central banks were comfortable creating $Trillions of new dollars to spend in and leave as a burden for future generations), an unfortunate leader like James Callahan, who gets the top job in England just as high oil prices and no domestic production yet from the North Sea, presides over the UK's 'Winter of Discontent.' His replacement - Margaret Thatcher, is a subject of scorn early on with her radical destruction of the Social Contract and anti-labour laws. But as oil prices decline, along with domestic production starting during Thatcher's reign, she and her murderous economic advisers are declared heroes by enough of the British public to win re-election. Same scenario from Carter to Reagan in the US during the 80's. 

And that aside, if it's about honoring the great hero who won the 2nd World War, then you need statues of Joseph Stalin to be put up in public squares! Because Russia and her Soviet allies had to sacrifice 27 million lives to defeat Hitler's armies on the Eastern Front.....where the bulk of the fighting was actually being done!  And today, history is being erased as Soviets are being accused of "murdering" German troops who were trying to hold Poland, Ukraine and other East Bloc territories. In some of the concentration camps-like Auschwitz, the Germans and Nazi allies were still trying to liquidate Jewish and other prisoners when the first divisions of the Red Army overran the camps and ended their slaughter.

I would credit Churchill for being the lone voice among the western leaders to decide early on that Hitler needed to be stopped before guns could be turned on the Communist East.  Roosevelt and US political and business leaders were trying to work out a deal with Hitler until Japan launched an attack on the US Pacific Fleet in Hawaii and changed their plans. 

WTF?!   No.  Stalin murdered millions of his own people, imprisoning them in gulag work camps, including returning war heroes whom he accused of being spies.  Stalin had a secret mutual non-aggression pact that he would have maintained until Hitler invaded Britain, had not Hitler invaded Russia instead.

On top of his 31 years of military service, including becoming First Lord of the Admiralty at 36, Churchill was a war correspondent, a prolific author (including writing the massive 5-volume History of the English Speaking Peoples), a painter, and PM of Britain for two terms, including raising the spirit of the Brits in their darkest hour.  It was his initiative that caused Britain to declare war on Hitler after the invasion of Poland when no one else would.  He was indeed a giant and perhaps hundreds of millions of people have him to thank for their freedom and protection from enslavement or death.  He could be difficult, but he was a brilliant orator and statesman against which few leaders in the last century can compare.

Damn right he was protecting the Empire, the same empire that sewed the seeds of many great modern, free, wealthy, and progressive democracies.  If Churchill doesn't deserve to have a street named after him, who does?

Edited February 14, 2021 by Zeitgeist

[Right To Left]

3 hours ago, Zeitgeist said:

WTF?!   No.  Stalin murdered millions of his own people, imprisoning them in gulag work camps, including returning war heroes whom he accused of being spies.  Stalin had a secret mutual non-aggression pact that he would have maintained until Hitler invaded Britain, had not Hitler invaded Russia instead.

Secret? Secret to whom? It was called the German-Soviet Non-aggression Pact, and it caused a major division within the communist international around the world. The only part of it that was secret was that Stalin knew Russia and its allies were far from ready for another war with Germany. And they knew they had to buy time to build up their armaments and military forces for the next war that was considered inevitable if Hitler's dreams of empire couldn't be stopped. The real secret non-aggression pact with Hitler and Mussolini were the political and business forces in the US and England (everyone except Churchill and Roosevelt) who wanted their nations to accommodate Hitler and work together to destroy the communist threat to the east. Even after France was invaded and England was being bombed by the Germans, Roosevelt still couldn't put together enough congressional support (or business) to bring the US into the War. It would take the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor to do that (and that's why it has been rumored ever since the end of WWII that FDR told his naval commanders they had to allow for at least a limited Japanese attack, so that the pretext to war would be firmly established. 

I'll set the 'the standard Stalin Murdered His Own People' canard aside for now, since there were a few Russian and even western historians who've questioned the many claims, statistics and numbers that are rarely if ever verified. Not much different than today's propaganda. 

Quote

On top of his 31 years of military service, including becoming First Lord of the Admiralty at 36, Churchill was a war correspondent, a prolific author (including writing the massive 5-volume History of the English Speaking Peoples), a painter, and PM of Britain for two terms, including raising the spirit of the Brits in their darkest hour.  It was his initiative that caused Britain to declare war on Hitler after the invasion of Poland when no one else would.  He was indeed a giant and perhaps hundreds of millions of people have him to thank for their freedom and protection from enslavement or death.  He could be difficult, but he was a brilliant orator and statesman against which few leaders in the last century can compare.

You can (and likely will) argue till the cows come home about Churchill's greatness as a military leader and even a painter for some reason...but like every Great Man of History narrative that gets created to explain historical events, Churchill's many flaws are just glossed over...including his work to preserve control of the British Empire's colonial holdings around the world. 

Aside from causing a massive slaughter of Bengalis (which I guess doesn't count cause they're not white people), the Empire that Churchill was the last great champion of, looted these nations for their wealth or resources and also most of the wealth earned from what their peasants produced in agricultural exports back to the motherland.  Just India for example....Churchill was part of the looting till he was forced to end the empire:

Great Britain Looted $45 Trillion From India

Indians paid the price for British prosperity

Quote

Damn right he was protecting the Empire, the same empire that sewed the seeds of many great modern, free, wealthy, and progressive democracies.  If Churchill doesn't deserve to have a street named after him, who does?

I still say F#$% the Empire!  Is the world we have now what you wanted? 

To me, it looks like global capitalism has devoured too much of the resources of this planet already, and that's why we're already on a downward spiral! A lot of people would have to grow up real quick to stave off disaster now. I don't know if it's possible anymore. Our best hope is that aliens land and take over, or a comet/asteroid hits the earth, but is destructive enough to take out 'civilization' but a remnant of humans remains alive...along with enough other creatures to rebuild a living planet, and those lucky few will need to have maintained an historic memory to never allow sociopaths and narcissists (the types of people who prosper and rise to the top under capitalism) to take over and impose their twisted visions of what is and is not 'progressive democracy.'

[Zeitgeist]

13 hours ago, Right To Left said:

Secret? Secret to whom? It was called the German-Soviet Non-aggression Pact, and it caused a major division within the communist international around the world. The only part of it that was secret was that Stalin knew Russia and its allies were far from ready for another war with Germany. And they knew they had to buy time to build up their armaments and military forces for the next war that was considered inevitable if Hitler's dreams of empire couldn't be stopped. The real secret non-aggression pact with Hitler and Mussolini were the political and business forces in the US and England (everyone except Churchill and Roosevelt) who wanted their nations to accommodate Hitler and work together to destroy the communist threat to the east. Even after France was invaded and England was being bombed by the Germans, Roosevelt still couldn't put together enough congressional support (or business) to bring the US into the War. It would take the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor to do that (and that's why it has been rumored ever since the end of WWII that FDR told his naval commanders they had to allow for at least a limited Japanese attack, so that the pretext to war would be firmly established. 

I'll set the 'the standard Stalin Murdered His Own People' canard aside for now, since there were a few Russian and even western historians who've questioned the many claims, statistics and numbers that are rarely if ever verified. Not much different than today's propaganda. 

You can (and likely will) argue till the cows come home about Churchill's greatness as a military leader and even a painter for some reason...but like every Great Man of History narrative that gets created to explain historical events, Churchill's many flaws are just glossed over...including his work to preserve control of the British Empire's colonial holdings around the world. 

Aside from causing a massive slaughter of Bengalis (which I guess doesn't count cause they're not white people), the Empire that Churchill was the last great champion of, looted these nations for their wealth or resources and also most of the wealth earned from what their peasants produced in agricultural exports back to the motherland.  Just India for example....Churchill was part of the looting till he was forced to end the empire:

Great Britain Looted $45 Trillion From India

Indians paid the price for British prosperity

I still say F#$% the Empire!  Is the world we have now what you wanted? 

To me, it looks like global capitalism has devoured too much of the resources of this planet already, and that's why we're already on a downward spiral! A lot of people would have to grow up real quick to stave off disaster now. I don't know if it's possible anymore. Our best hope is that aliens land and take over, or a comet/asteroid hits the earth, but is destructive enough to take out 'civilization' but a remnant of humans remains alive...along with enough other creatures to rebuild a living planet, and those lucky few will need to have maintained an historic memory to never allow sociopaths and narcissists (the types of people who prosper and rise to the top under capitalism) to take over and impose their twisted visions of what is and is not 'progressive democracy.'

Wow you really buy into the colonialism narrative.  How about the Moguls who ruled India and benefited from the Empire?   How about the Black Africans who benefited from and helped perpetuate the slave trade? How about the education systems, infrastructure, and trade routes that generated tremendous wealth for colonies around the world?  It's a cop out to reduce all injustice to race, especially when tribes in colonized countries brutalized each other no less than any modern civilizations.  Ask the Hutus and Tutsis.  Want to talk about post-colonial success stories like Zimbabwe with its farming disaster and hyperinflation?

You can try to rewrite history all you want.  A very serious injustice with large international impacts was thwarted by Churchill.  No doubt compromises were made and injustices perpetuated on the victors' side.  The firebombing of Dresden and Hamburg are cases in point.  Nevertheless, Churchill was an important figure for positive change in aggregate by far.  Hitler intentionally committed mass genocide.   As may as 70 million Soviets died under Stalin due to his regime's policies.  Read Solzhenitsyn.

With regard to climate change rhetoric, at least we're figuring out the impacts and making sacrifices in the way of taxation, recycling, efficiency, and regulations to reduce our carbon footprint.  Meanwhile China continues to build coal generating stations.  

[taxme]

On 2/13/2021 at 6:52 PM, Zeitgeist said:

WTF?!   No.  Stalin murdered millions of his own people, imprisoning them in gulag work camps, including returning war heroes whom he accused of being spies.  Stalin had a secret mutual non-aggression pact that he would have maintained until Hitler invaded Britain, had not Hitler invaded Russia instead.

On top of his 31 years of military service, including becoming First Lord of the Admiralty at 36, Churchill was a war correspondent, a prolific author (including writing the massive 5-volume History of the English Speaking Peoples), a painter, and PM of Britain for two terms, including raising the spirit of the Brits in their darkest hour.  It was his initiative that caused Britain to declare war on Hitler after the invasion of Poland when no one else would.  He was indeed a giant and perhaps hundreds of millions of people have him to thank for their freedom and protection from enslavement or death.  He could be difficult, but he was a brilliant orator and statesman against which few leaders in the last century can compare.

Damn right he was protecting the Empire, the same empire that sewed the seeds of many great modern, free, wealthy, and progressive democracies.  If Churchill doesn't deserve to have a street named after him, who does?

Hitler had nothing on the likes of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro and Kim Jung ill where between all of them together they murdered hundreds of millions of innocent people. I often wonder as to what the world would be like today if Hitler had been able to defeat and destroy comrade Stalin? Would we have communism around at all today if Hitler did end communism in Europe. Communism was the real enemy of Britain and the rest of the free world but yet Churchill decided to go with Stalin. Too late now. Today the rest of the free world has to deal with communist China. Oh joy. 

[Right To Left]

On 2/14/2021 at 4:06 PM, Zeitgeist said:

Wow you really buy into the colonialism narrative.

Yes I do as a matter of fact! What about it! 

Quote

 How about the Moguls who ruled India and benefited from the Empire?   How about the Black Africans who benefited from and helped perpetuate the slave trade? How about the education systems, infrastructure, and trade routes that generated tremendous wealth for colonies around the world?  It's a cop out to reduce all injustice to race, especially when tribes in colonized countries brutalized each other no less than any modern civilizations.  Ask the Hutus and Tutsis.  Want to talk about post-colonial success stories like Zimbabwe with its farming disaster and hyperinflation?

Got any more crap to throw at the wall as a distraction? The Moguls and the West African empires did not set the template for development of permanent colonialism, done after a capitalist system of economics developed. Hell, it was the British Empire which licensed the East India Company -- the world's first multinational corporation! And the reason why the new republic of the United States of America set up very restrictive rules (slowly abandoned in the following decades) for  gaining corporate charters. The American revolutionaries saw corporate 'artificial persons' as dangerous, destabilizing threats to any system striving for democratic governance. And boy howdy, they were right! 

So, starting with Euro-colonialism, which strived for the formation of international, universally accepted banking and commerce systems that the Moguls could not or did not think of developing (except for paper currencies), the only thing they and earlier empires in Asia and Africa had in common was establishing currency systems...since prior to the creation of money (in the modern sense of the word) about 3500 years ago, the only purpose one nation or large tribal group would have for attacking or going to war with a neighboring group was to seize all or part of their land, or plunder their wealth (usually not much beyond horses and livestock). So, from a historical perspective, there were no great land battles prior to the year 1500 b.c.  - a decisive battle between Egyptian and Hittite armies on the Plains of Megiddo. The soldiers on both sides were essentially mercenaries, because they were paid in silver or copper coins for fighting on behalf of their respective kings. 

And in our time, the American Empire utilizes a tactic that the British Empire started using when their empire started stretching past governable limits - setting up vassal states dependent on the Crown economically and militarily with a compliant useful dictator established as the local potentate. 

Quote

You can try to rewrite history all you want.  A very serious injustice with large international impacts was thwarted by Churchill.  No doubt compromises were made and injustices perpetuated on the victors' side.  The firebombing of Dresden and Hamburg are cases in point.  Nevertheless, Churchill was an important figure for positive change in aggregate by far.  Hitler intentionally committed mass genocide.   As may as 70 million Soviets died under Stalin due to his regime's policies.  Read Solzhenitsyn.

Solzhenitsyn was a Russian Orthodox monarchist crackpot who dreamed of a time when Russia would dissolve the Soviet Union and reinstall the Czar as divine representative ruler of the Russian Empire. 

Funny that you don't have a number for Hitler's killings, but you can pull out 70 million from some orifice for Stalin! 

A show I was listening to which went through the claims and counter-claims about what Stalin did or did not do provided this reading list for source material. Aside from Michael Parenti, I think all the other books are old enough to be in public domain and I have three of them ( Douglas Tottle, Ludo Martins, Grover Furr) available free online.

sources 

"Another View of Stalin" by Ludo Martins
"Fraud, Famine and Fascism" by Douglas Tottle
"Khrushchev Lied" by Grover Furr
"Class Struggles in the Soviet Union" by Charles Bettelheim 
"Stalin" by Ian Grey
"Stalin" by Isaac Deutscher
"Origins of the Great Purges" by J. Arch Getty,
"Blackshirts and Reds" by Michael Parenti  

https://revolutionaryleftradio.libsyn.com/joseph-mother-fucking-stain
It's said that History is written by the winners/not the losers. Well, in Stalin's case, he had the misfortune of being the great enemy of fascism and western capitalist imperialism during his time, and then he was repudiated by renegade Marxists like Leon Trotsky, who had once caused slaughters in his drive to enforce the rules of collective farming in Russia and Ukraine when he turned the Red Army on people who were following proper socialist principles. In comparison...Stalin looked like a moderate!  And then after the War, a lot of highly placed Communist Party officials started thinking about getting rich and feathering their own nests. This was how Kruschev almost got sent to the gallows...which he apparently never forgot, since he led the repudiation of Stalin, that mostly featured attributing everything bad that happened in the Soviet Union from 1920 to 1952 to Stalin personally. This created a psychological break that modern Russians still can't put together: how to brag about Russia's great economic and military achievements in WWII without recognizing the success of the communist system and its long time leader - Joseph Stalin!  Stalin is a rough equivalent to Churchill, and if he was put on some international trial after his office, I'm sure the defense would claim that he had to often be ruthless and despotic to prevent....well, what eventually happened to the Soviet Union!

Quote

 

With regard to climate change rhetoric, at least we're figuring out the impacts and making sacrifices in the way of taxation, recycling, efficiency, and regulations to reduce our carbon footprint.  Meanwhile China continues to build coal generating stations.  

 

Last I heard, China is leading in all of the green tech stuff like building windmills, solar panels and thousands of miles of high speed rail tracks. If they are still building coal-fired power stations (like Europe is as a matter of fact) it is a much smaller part of their planning than it was 10 or 20 years ago. 

Most of the human-produced carbon added to the atmosphere was put up there starting when the Industrial Revolution switched from water power to coal-fired generating stations in the 1830's and China, India and other third world nations haven't had significant carbon footprints until very recent times. And it's also worth noting that up till now, most of China, Vietnam, Indonesia's and others are producing carbon because of outsourcing of production to make clothing, shoes and other crap for US and western-based corporations. The reasons why branch plants were set up there are the same that a company I worked for 40 years ago moved its production of silica for making sandpaper to Argentina --- to escape from increasingly restrictive Canadian air pollution standards!  

The outsourcing allowed for flatter increases in CO2 production from the US and allies, and that's why we were hearing bullshit 20 years ago that our new technology had decoupled capitalist growth from growth in energy use and carbon production. 

Back to your street name dilemma: I don't have strong feelings whether or not you keep Churchill or not, or name a street for Stalin...all the same to me! But, I don't think either leader or hardly any political leader is in need of valorization as some great icons of history. 

Some years back, I came across some writing by Ernst Becker, who developed a theory he called Terror Management Theory -- to explain the apparent denial of death many or most people feel, and is expressed through the economic and social costs of funerals and leaving memorials for posterity. It's as if some people believe that if a big cross or a statue is on their grave or they have streets, buildings, let alone cities named after them, they gain some form of immortality. In the cases of important people who've died, their worshippers seem to feel some degree of immortality .... like if their leaders live on after death, so do they! For me, I'll take cremation and just dump my ashes somewhere convenient!

Edited February 16, 2021 by Right To Left

[Johnny]

It's just a name and is not rude or referring to anyone that has done anything evil. The name is not racist or vulgar, so just let it be what it has always been. Sir Winston Churchill Blvd. History can not be changed and should never be forgotten.

[Michael Hardner]

53 minutes ago, Johnny said:

  History can not be changed and should never be forgotten.

History is written for the audience of today and always has been.  If people want to change this name, then they will.  Logic has nothing to do with it and never has.

[OftenWrong]

59 minutes ago, Michael Hardner said:

History is written for the audience of today and always has been.  If people want to change this name, then they will.  Logic has nothing to do with it and never has.

This has more to do with the future, than past. What kind of future do we want.

And those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.  That sounds logico.

[Zeitgeist]

11 hours ago, Right To Left said:

Yes I do as a matter of fact! What about it! 

Got any more crap to throw at the wall as a distraction? The Moguls and the West African empires did not set the template for development of permanent colonialism, done after a capitalist system of economics developed. Hell, it was the British Empire which licensed the East India Company -- the world's first multinational corporation! And the reason why the new republic of the United States of America set up very restrictive rules (slowly abandoned in the following decades) for  gaining corporate charters. The American revolutionaries saw corporate 'artificial persons' as dangerous, destabilizing threats to any system striving for democratic governance. And boy howdy, they were right! 

So, starting with Euro-colonialism, which strived for the formation of international, universally accepted banking and commerce systems that the Moguls could not or did not think of developing (except for paper currencies), the only thing they and earlier empires in Asia and Africa had in common was establishing currency systems...since prior to the creation of money (in the modern sense of the word) about 3500 years ago, the only purpose one nation or large tribal group would have for attacking or going to war with a neighboring group was to seize all or part of their land, or plunder their wealth (usually not much beyond horses and livestock). So, from a historical perspective, there were no great land battles prior to the year 1500 b.c.  - a decisive battle between Egyptian and Hittite armies on the Plains of Megiddo. The soldiers on both sides were essentially mercenaries, because they were paid in silver or copper coins for fighting on behalf of their respective kings. 

And in our time, the American Empire utilizes a tactic that the British Empire started using when their empire started stretching past governable limits - setting up vassal states dependent on the Crown economically and militarily with a compliant useful dictator established as the local potentate. 

Solzhenitsyn was a Russian Orthodox monarchist crackpot who dreamed of a time when Russia would dissolve the Soviet Union and reinstall the Czar as divine representative ruler of the Russian Empire. 

Funny that you don't have a number for Hitler's killings, but you can pull out 70 million from some orifice for Stalin! 

A show I was listening to which went through the claims and counter-claims about what Stalin did or did not do provided this reading list for source material. Aside from Michael Parenti, I think all the other books are old enough to be in public domain and I have three of them ( Douglas Tottle, Ludo Martins, Grover Furr) available free online.

sources 

"Another View of Stalin" by Ludo Martins
"Fraud, Famine and Fascism" by Douglas Tottle
"Khrushchev Lied" by Grover Furr
"Class Struggles in the Soviet Union" by Charles Bettelheim 
"Stalin" by Ian Grey
"Stalin" by Isaac Deutscher
"Origins of the Great Purges" by J. Arch Getty,
"Blackshirts and Reds" by Michael Parenti  

https://revolutionaryleftradio.libsyn.com/joseph-mother-fucking-stain
It's said that History is written by the winners/not the losers. Well, in Stalin's case, he had the misfortune of being the great enemy of fascism and western capitalist imperialism during his time, and then he was repudiated by renegade Marxists like Leon Trotsky, who had once caused slaughters in his drive to enforce the rules of collective farming in Russia and Ukraine when he turned the Red Army on people who were following proper socialist principles. In comparison...Stalin looked like a moderate!  And then after the War, a lot of highly placed Communist Party officials started thinking about getting rich and feathering their own nests. This was how Kruschev almost got sent to the gallows...which he apparently never forgot, since he led the repudiation of Stalin, that mostly featured attributing everything bad that happened in the Soviet Union from 1920 to 1952 to Stalin personally. This created a psychological break that modern Russians still can't put together: how to brag about Russia's great economic and military achievements in WWII without recognizing the success of the communist system and its long time leader - Joseph Stalin!  Stalin is a rough equivalent to Churchill, and if he was put on some international trial after his office, I'm sure the defense would claim that he had to often be ruthless and despotic to prevent....well, what eventually happened to the Soviet Union!

Last I heard, China is leading in all of the green tech stuff like building windmills, solar panels and thousands of miles of high speed rail tracks. If they are still building coal-fired power stations (like Europe is as a matter of fact) it is a much smaller part of their planning than it was 10 or 20 years ago. 

Most of the human-produced carbon added to the atmosphere was put up there starting when the Industrial Revolution switched from water power to coal-fired generating stations in the 1830's and China, India and other third world nations haven't had significant carbon footprints until very recent times. And it's also worth noting that up till now, most of China, Vietnam, Indonesia's and others are producing carbon because of outsourcing of production to make clothing, shoes and other crap for US and western-based corporations. The reasons why branch plants were set up there are the same that a company I worked for 40 years ago moved its production of silica for making sandpaper to Argentina --- to escape from increasingly restrictive Canadian air pollution standards!  

The outsourcing allowed for flatter increases in CO2 production from the US and allies, and that's why we were hearing bullshit 20 years ago that our new technology had decoupled capitalist growth from growth in energy use and carbon production. 

Back to your street name dilemma: I don't have strong feelings whether or not you keep Churchill or not, or name a street for Stalin...all the same to me! But, I don't think either leader or hardly any political leader is in need of valorization as some great icons of history. 

Some years back, I came across some writing by Ernst Becker, who developed a theory he called Terror Management Theory -- to explain the apparent denial of death many or most people feel, and is expressed through the economic and social costs of funerals and leaving memorials for posterity. It's as if some people believe that if a big cross or a statue is on their grave or they have streets, buildings, let alone cities named after them, they gain some form of immortality. In the cases of important people who've died, their worshippers seem to feel some degree of immortality .... like if their leaders live on after death, so do they! For me, I'll take cremation and just dump my ashes somewhere convenient!

You're just so wrong on Stalin.  I lived in Russia for a while and studied the language, culture, and history in some depth.  There is so much that can be said about the NKVD, repression of free speech, work slavery, forced industrialization, starvation through agricultural mismanagement...I'm not bothering to go into any of it because it's so well-documented.  Same for Hitler.  

You make the same mistake of current left-wing orthodoxies: lionizing pre-industrialized and pre-colonial civilizations as somehow more progressive and civilized than modern western civilizations.  Of course they were not.  Most pre-industrialized societies functioned along feudal lines: vassals rented and worked lands in exchange for protection by the wealthy nobility who organized modest state functions and military defense (that often required the service of farmers/workers).  There was no public education.  People lived subsistence lifestyles on what they could farm, hunt, and gather.  The first farming communities gave rise to the earliest civilizations with laws, currency, and collective protections such as military defense.  It also gave rise to the notion of property and meant that people might have a little spare time to do more than just work, but most of existence was work, living in fear of threats of invasion, crop failure, tyrannical leaders, and other such miseries.  The hunter-gatherer egalitarian tribe that some idealize today was a hard existence centred mostly around small tight-knit extended families who had to be light on their feet and ready to move. 

Pretending that the tremendous scientific achievements, wealth, freedoms, improved public health, vast expansion of literacy through public education, and social safety nets provided by modern liberal-democratic nation states are more dangerous, corrupt, and inhumane than these pre-industrial societies is ridiculous.  Even a century and a half ago the industrial, colonial, Victorian British Empire provided a much higher standard of living for the vast majority of people in a place like Ontario than anything that existed in Ontario before it.  The threat and waging of wars was the key reason the Six Nations formed the Iroquois Confederacy.  According to Craig Keener, "Archaeological evidence confirms the prominent role of warfare in indigenous societies well before the arrival of permanent European settlers. As early as the year 1000, for example, Huron, Neutral, Petun and Iroquois villages were increasingly fortified by a timber palisade that could be nearly 10 metres in height, sometimes villages built a second or even third ring to protect them against attacks by enemy nations."  Tribes attacked and pushed each other out of territories.  Tribal warfare took place across Africa and around the world for thousands of years.

No doubt there were various forms of exploitation sanctioned by colonial powers.  There were winners and losers.  Over many centuries empires shifted away from exploiting slave or cheap labour through rules established by the wealthy and powerful to a fairer system that actually counters priviledge and taxes at progressive rates according to level of earnings.  Context is everything, which is why I'm always very analytical about the justifications given for removing street names and rewriting history.  Important questions to ask are, Was the person recognized an important force for positive change IN THE CONTEXT WITHIN WHICH HE OR SHE LIVED?  When history is rewritten, is the account both deep (carefully researched from multiple sources) and wide (accounting for the perspectives of all of the representative groups impacted at that time in history)?  We have a sad knack of going to extremes in our hall of mirrors social media world.  The pendulum swings and suddenly all of the progressivism of a period or person is the source of oppression.  The boneheads who want to remove the name of Winston Churchill from that street should visit Auschwitz, read about how Poles were sent to work as slaves on German farms, and see the bombed out city centers that resulted from the Battle of Britain, which could've been replicated far beyond Europe if it wasn't for Churchill.    

Edited February 16, 2021 by Zeitgeist

[Right To Left]

2 hours ago, Zeitgeist said:

You're just so wrong on Stalin.  I lived in Russia for a while and studied the language, culture, and history in some depth.  There is so much that can be said about the NKVD, repression of free speech, work slavery, forced industrialization, starvation through agricultural mismanagement...I'm not bothering to go into any of it because it's so well-documented.  Same for Hitler.  

You make the same mistake of current left-wing orthodoxies: lionizing pre-industrialized and pre-colonial civilizations as somehow more progressive and civilized than modern western civilizations.  Of course they were not.  Most pre-industrialized societies functioned along feudal lines: vassals rented and worked lands in exchange for protection by the wealthy nobility who organized modest state functions and military defense (that often required the service of farmers/workers).  There was no public education.  People lived subsistence lifestyles on what they could farm, hunt, and gather.  The first farming communities gave rise to the earliest civilizations with laws, currency, and collective protections such as military defense.  It also gave rise to the notion of property and meant that people might have a little spare time to do more than just work, but most of existence was work, living in fear of threats of invasion, crop failure, tyrannical leaders, and other such miseries.  The hunter-gatherer egalitarian tribe that some idealize today was a hard existence centred mostly around small tight-knit extended families who had to be light on their feet and ready to move. 

Pretending that the tremendous scientific achievements, wealth, freedoms, improved public health, vast expansion of literacy through public education, and social safety nets provided by modern liberal-democratic nation states are more dangerous, corrupt, and inhumane than these pre-industrial societies is ridiculous.  Even a century and a half ago the industrial, colonial, Victorian British Empire provided a much higher standard of living for the vast majority of people in a place like Ontario than anything that existed in Ontario before it.  The threat and waging of wars was the key reason the Six Nations formed the Iroquois Confederacy.  According to Craig Keener, "Archaeological evidence confirms the prominent role of warfare in indigenous societies well before the arrival of permanent European settlers. As early as the year 1000, for example, Huron, Neutral, Petun and Iroquois villages were increasingly fortified by a timber palisade that could be nearly 10 metres in height, sometimes villages built a second or even third ring to protect them against attacks by enemy nations."  Tribes attacked and pushed each other out of territories.  Tribal warfare took place across Africa and around the world for thousands of years.

No doubt there were various forms of exploitation sanctioned by colonial powers.  There were winners and losers.  Over many centuries empires shifted away from exploiting slave or cheap labour through rules established by the wealthy and powerful to a fairer system that actually counters priviledge and taxes at progressive rates according to level of earnings.  Context is everything, which is why I'm always very analytical about the justifications given for removing street names and rewriting history.  Important questions to ask are, Was the person recognized an important force for positive change IN THE CONTEXT WITHIN WHICH HE OR SHE LIVED?  When history is rewritten, is the account both deep (carefully researched from multiple sources) and wide (accounting for the perspectives of all of the representative groups impacted at that time in history)?  We have a sad knack of going to extremes in our hall of mirrors social media world.  The pendulum swings and suddenly all of the progressivism of a period or person is the source of oppression.  The boneheads who want to remove the name of Winston Churchill from that street should visit Auschwitz, read about how Poles were sent to work as slaves on German farms, and see the bombed out city centers that resulted from the Battle of Britain, which could've been replicated far beyond Europe if it wasn't for Churchill.    

You don't say when you lived in Russia! So, I'll hazard a guess that it was after Stalin's death in 1953, and especially after Kruschev started the revisionism later in the 50's, in the effort to create a communist system that performed along capitalist lines... i.e. producing a consumer-driven economy pushed along by advertising and marketing-driven product demand. It's no small wonder that by the 80's, the Soviet Communist Party stood for little beyond maintaining its power and control over the political process...similar to the empty ideology of today's Chinese Communist Party. 

Maybe communist governments have a limited shelf life after the revolutions and initial building process establishing industrial production. Once communism survives the initial challenges, like the post-WWII Soviet Union, but struggles to find meaning afterwards if it's organized in a top-down manner like Stalinism. Same thing with China...and the main reason why Chinese communism almost has disappeared as an ideological force and just lives on as an authoritarian capitalist state. If Mikael Gorbachev had been able to turn the economy around, it's more than likely that the Soviet Union would have survived and just sent Russian Communist President - Boris Yeltsin to the gallows for high treason...who knows. 

But, it's much easier to understand why the Trotskyists and others believed in "Permanent Revolution," which would have required endless war against the capitalist states. What's different today, is that we now live at a time when growth-dependent capitalism has revealed it has greater flaws than generating and maintaining economic inequality, but is also pushing our entire world towards mass extinction in a very short time frame.

And that's why myself and many other people around the world from all different backgrounds and vantage points started dusting off our old books on Marxism and the communist movements and governments of the last century. Because somehow, some way, a new system of organizing politics and economics has to be created which can live within allowed resource limits and keep most everyone happy and alive!

As things stand today, we are heading over a cliff as the American Empire, which finally achieved global hegemony 30 years ago, struggles to maintain its control against rising power - China, and its the US political and military leaders which are threatening to move towards using nuclear weapons (something unthinkable most of my lifetime) to maintain their advantage by any means necessary!

And, I don't want to make this too long, but you are totally wrong about how our prehistoric ancestors lived! What you have been immersed in is mostly rightwing propagandist narratives created by atheistic humanist scientists and philosophers of the past 50 years, who keep falling back to denigrating the anthropological studies of past and present simple societies as "Noble Savage" narratives! The facts remain that the whole reason why Karl Marx and more particularly - Frederick Engels and the many 'utopian' socialists of the mid-19th century started trying to develop egalitarian communist systems was from their readings of the first generation of modern anthropologists - like American - Lewis Henry Morgan and contemporaries who lived among the "savages" and interpreted the accounts of many explorers and would be conquerors  who wrote accounts of natives in the lands where they started arriving and their shock and surprise that unchristianized 'savages' were more 'christian' in action and conduct than the vast majority of their European contemporaries. Now that most of the "savages" have been contaminated or went into extinction after "civilization" arrived, modern narrative managers working for well funded think tanks who can buy the kinds of historical, economic, and scientific research that suits their demands. So, in a nutshell, the fraudulent science calling itself "evolutionary psychology" which attempts to explain human behavior in terms of modern culture and gets heavy promotion for its writers like Stephen Pinker, who writes large volume, authoritative looking books that mostly consist of him cherry-picking his way through history and prehistory to pull up the conclusions that are invariably: man is savage by nature, prehistory was "nasty, brutish and short" in the same way Thomas Hobbes portrayed the recent and distant past of his era, but adds that the promises of innovation and technology guided by capitalistic forces are and will continue to pave the way for a better, more fulfilling and more peaceful future for the citizens of this planet. Pinker's bullshit narratives may have carried some serious influence 20 years ago, but this dystopian new century is already unwinding everything that Pinker and other evo-psych enthusiasts claim to believe in! And this has taken a lot more time than I intended, so I better quit here. 

[Michael Hardner]

7 hours ago, OftenWrong said:

This has more to do with the future, than past. What kind of future do we want.

And those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.  That sounds logico.

You are wrong.  The present view is a fashion, and always has been.  How exactly do we learn things?  The greatest ideas of the past are unknown to all but a few.

[OftenWrong]

15 hours ago, Michael Hardner said:

You are wrong.  The present view is a fashion, and always has been.  How exactly do we learn things?  The greatest ideas of the past are unknown to all but a few.

No, that's why conservatives exist. People who oppose the more nutty liberal ideas. Someone has to hold the reigns, eh?

... Lest that unbridled beast trample us all, under cloven hooves!

Edited February 17, 2021 by OftenWrong
added dramatic licence

[Zeitgeist]

4 hours ago, Right To Left said:

You don't say when you lived in Russia! So, I'll hazard a guess that it was after Stalin's death in 1953, and especially after Kruschev started the revisionism later in the 50's, in the effort to create a communist system that performed along capitalist lines... i.e. producing a consumer-driven economy pushed along by advertising and marketing-driven product demand. It's no small wonder that by the 80's, the Soviet Communist Party stood for little beyond maintaining its power and control over the political process...similar to the empty ideology of today's Chinese Communist Party. 

Maybe communist governments have a limited shelf life after the revolutions and initial building process establishing industrial production. Once communism survives the initial challenges, like the post-WWII Soviet Union, but struggles to find meaning afterwards if it's organized in a top-down manner like Stalinism. Same thing with China...and the main reason why Chinese communism almost has disappeared as an ideological force and just lives on as an authoritarian capitalist state. If Mikael Gorbachev had been able to turn the economy around, it's more than likely that the Soviet Union would have survived and just sent Russian Communist President - Boris Yeltsin to the gallows for high treason...who knows. 

But, it's much easier to understand why the Trotskyists and others believed in "Permanent Revolution," which would have required endless war against the capitalist states. What's different today, is that we now live at a time when growth-dependent capitalism has revealed it has greater flaws than generating and maintaining economic inequality, but is also pushing our entire world towards mass extinction in a very short time frame.

And that's why myself and many other people around the world from all different backgrounds and vantage points started dusting off our old books on Marxism and the communist movements and governments of the last century. Because somehow, some way, a new system of organizing politics and economics has to be created which can live within allowed resource limits and keep most everyone happy and alive!

As things stand today, we are heading over a cliff as the American Empire, which finally achieved global hegemony 30 years ago, struggles to maintain its control against rising power - China, and its the US political and military leaders which are threatening to move towards using nuclear weapons (something unthinkable most of my lifetime) to maintain their advantage by any means necessary!

And, I don't want to make this too long, but you are totally wrong about how our prehistoric ancestors lived! What you have been immersed in is mostly rightwing propagandist narratives created by atheistic humanist scientists and philosophers of the past 50 years, who keep falling back to denigrating the anthropological studies of past and present simple societies as "Noble Savage" narratives! The facts remain that the whole reason why Karl Marx and more particularly - Frederick Engels and the many 'utopian' socialists of the mid-19th century started trying to develop egalitarian communist systems was from their readings of the first generation of modern anthropologists - like American - Lewis Henry Morgan and contemporaries who lived among the "savages" and interpreted the accounts of many explorers and would be conquerors  who wrote accounts of natives in the lands where they started arriving and their shock and surprise that unchristianized 'savages' were more 'christian' in action and conduct than the vast majority of their European contemporaries. Now that most of the "savages" have been contaminated or went into extinction after "civilization" arrived, modern narrative managers working for well funded think tanks who can buy the kinds of historical, economic, and scientific research that suits their demands. So, in a nutshell, the fraudulent science calling itself "evolutionary psychology" which attempts to explain human behavior in terms of modern culture and gets heavy promotion for its writers like Stephen Pinker, who writes large volume, authoritative looking books that mostly consist of him cherry-picking his way through history and prehistory to pull up the conclusions that are invariably: man is savage by nature, prehistory was "nasty, brutish and short" in the same way Thomas Hobbes portrayed the recent and distant past of his era, but adds that the promises of innovation and technology guided by capitalistic forces are and will continue to pave the way for a better, more fulfilling and more peaceful future for the citizens of this planet. Pinker's bullshit narratives may have carried some serious influence 20 years ago, but this dystopian new century is already unwinding everything that Pinker and other evo-psych enthusiasts claim to believe in! And this has taken a lot more time than I intended, so I better quit here. 

Well I have a philosophy background, so there's a lot to unpack.  I've also read Pinker, whose historical data analysis through the lens of neuropsychology tells the truth in about the best way we can speak about truth.  The reality is that across all metrics living standards, education levels, and health outcomes have steadily improved over time, including over the last 20 years.  There are occasional setbacks or delays.  I do think we're seeing some negative impacts of the anthropocene era in terms of natural blowback from the impacts of growing industrializing populations.  However, the birth rate will flatten as people become more educated and urbanized, as we see in virtually all developed countries. Canada would struggle to maintain her population without immigration.

Our industrial technology is becoming greener and more efficient.  Probably a certain amount of climate change is inevitable.  We can and should make moves to slow it, but we will have to adapt, and substantially lowering growth is dangerous for the multiple setbacks it would cause technologically.  Balance is key.  Beware of totalitarian solutions that undo freedoms. 

Also, real communism has never existed because it's counter to human nature.  People need to be able to apply their talents and explore their ambitions.  An economy that is over-managed obfuscates real demand and the innovations that supply it.  I suggest reading the pragmatists, revisionists, and utilitarians, as they all seem to understand that progress happens gradually through the free exploration of competing ideas that are validated by providing the greatest happiness to the greatest number and preventing clear injustices (Mill, Bentham, Bernstein).

Edited February 17, 2021 by Zeitgeist

[Right To Left]

18 hours ago, Zeitgeist said:

Well I have a philosophy background, so there's a lot to unpack.  I've also read Pinker, whose historical data analysis through the lens of neuropsychology tells the truth in about the best way we can speak about truth.  The reality is that across all metrics living standards, education levels, and health outcomes have steadily improved over time, including over the last 20 years.  There are occasional setbacks or delays.  I do think we're seeing some negative impacts of the anthropocene era in terms of natural blowback from the impacts of growing industrializing populations.  However, the birth rate will flatten as people become more educated and urbanized, as we see in virtually all developed countries. Canada would struggle to maintain her population without immigration.

Our industrial technology is becoming greener and more efficient.  Probably a certain amount of climate change is inevitable.  We can and should make moves to slow it, but we will have to adapt, and substantially lowering growth is dangerous for the multiple setbacks it would cause technologically.  Balance is key.  Beware of totalitarian solutions that undo freedoms. 

Also, real communism has never existed because it's counter to human nature.  People need to be able to apply their talents and explore their ambitions.  An economy that is over-managed obfuscates real demand and the innovations that supply it.  I suggest reading the pragmatists, revisionists, and utilitarians, as they all seem to understand that progress happens gradually through the free exploration of competing ideas that are validated by providing the greatest happiness to the greatest number and preventing clear injustices (Mill, Bentham, Bernstein).

Well since this is so far off track of Churchill and the importance/or unimportance of street names, I just want to make the point that over the past 20 years, as education has ended up more and more under the thumb of wealthy interests looking to finance the kinds of science and science-related subjects that serve their likings and economic interests (even indirectly), it has become clear to me (a non-academic with no advanced education) that there is a group of public intellectuals like Pinker, who seem to have the red carpet rolled out for them for their lectures and books, while others who may not catch the attention of a billionaire or two, go unnoticed. 

*let's not forget that Pinker was among the notables willing to whore himself out to Jeffrey Epstein, when one of his foundations was seeking out big-named academics for some bizarre transhumanism workshop he was trying to set up in Nevada....before the wall closed in on him! So, especially when it comes to the  social sciences which are much more subject to interpretation, I don't take someone who actually has no credentials in anthropology himself, and just provides a mountain of indexed source references to be the expert on the subject!

A nice, heavy and expensive book I picked up some years back on paleoanthropology is called "War, Peace and Human Nature" compiled together from several contributors who work in a range of studies, by Douglas Fry(2013). The size, cost and plainness of the text meant that this book wouldn't be sought out by casual readers browsing through Chapters or the local book store. 

When it comes to the question of is human nature innately violent and selfish/or usually peaceful and generous, the study of our ancestors should weight in heavily in the debate; because as primatologist- Franz de Waal has said many times about human primates--'we spent most of our approximately 200,000 years as a distinct species living in small hunter-gatherer groups which usually had to travel frequently. Historians in recent years are determining that there was no sudden jump to settled agriculture...and surprisingly, it was also not the preferred choice of living when humans  first started cultivating and even hybridizing preferred grains such as rye, as far back as 15,000 years ago. A pattern of seed-planting in spring at different elevations in Anatolia (for one place) went on for millennia until population densities made it easier to stay in place year round about 6 to 10,000 years ago. So, which style of living would have the most genetic effects on human nature. And then there's industrialization, modernity and high tech city living much more recently! 

Today, we have to live with huge gaps of structural inequality, whereas or roving small extended family groups of ancestors lived in relative equality and shared all of their food (big break with earlier primates) together, and even the much maligned Neanderthals, wouldn't 'leave a man behind' so to speak. In one of the neanderthal digs 40 years ago, paleontologists were shocked to find a relatively old woman (in her 40's) who had been crippled for years because of rickets. As her band moved about, someone in the group would have had to carry her along. The mostly hunting-dependent Neanderthals of the Pleistocene, invariably lived close to extinction whenever major hunts didn't go right, and yet this family group would not abandon someone who was physically at least, a burden for the rest of them. Why?

So, it seems that if we have spent most of our history as a species preferring equality over the modern day striving for success and superiority over others, then that would mean that most people today are trying to adapt to a system that is likely the main source of depression, anxiety and mental illness disorders that get worse as life becomes more and more unequal, precarious and challenging. For many psychologists and epidemiologists looking at a wider scale, the biggest surprise of modern capitalism is that even most of the successful rich aren't happy either! Just the sociopaths who thrive from chaos excel under today's conditions.

[Zeitgeist]

3 hours ago, Right To Left said:

Well since this is so far off track of Churchill and the importance/or unimportance of street names, I just want to make the point that over the past 20 years, as education has ended up more and more under the thumb of wealthy interests looking to finance the kinds of science and science-related subjects that serve their likings and economic interests (even indirectly), it has become clear to me (a non-academic with no advanced education) that there is a group of public intellectuals like Pinker, who seem to have the red carpet rolled out for them for their lectures and books, while others who may not catch the attention of a billionaire or two, go unnoticed. 

*let's not forget that Pinker was among the notables willing to whore himself out to Jeffrey Epstein, when one of his foundations was seeking out big-named academics for some bizarre transhumanism workshop he was trying to set up in Nevada....before the wall closed in on him! So, especially when it comes to the  social sciences which are much more subject to interpretation, I don't take someone who actually has no credentials in anthropology himself, and just provides a mountain of indexed source references to be the expert on the subject!

A nice, heavy and expensive book I picked up some years back on paleoanthropology is called "War, Peace and Human Nature" compiled together from several contributors who work in a range of studies, by Douglas Fry(2013). The size, cost and plainness of the text meant that this book wouldn't be sought out by casual readers browsing through Chapters or the local book store. 

When it comes to the question of is human nature innately violent and selfish/or usually peaceful and generous, the study of our ancestors should weight in heavily in the debate; because as primatologist- Franz de Waal has said many times about human primates--'we spent most of our approximately 200,000 years as a distinct species living in small hunter-gatherer groups which usually had to travel frequently. Historians in recent years are determining that there was no sudden jump to settled agriculture...and surprisingly, it was also not the preferred choice of living when humans  first started cultivating and even hybridizing preferred grains such as rye, as far back as 15,000 years ago. A pattern of seed-planting in spring at different elevations in Anatolia (for one place) went on for millennia until population densities made it easier to stay in place year round about 6 to 10,000 years ago. So, which style of living would have the most genetic effects on human nature. And then there's industrialization, modernity and high tech city living much more recently! 

Today, we have to live with huge gaps of structural inequality, whereas or roving small extended family groups of ancestors lived in relative equality and shared all of their food (big break with earlier primates) together, and even the much maligned Neanderthals, wouldn't 'leave a man behind' so to speak. In one of the neanderthal digs 40 years ago, paleontologists were shocked to find a relatively old woman (in her 40's) who had been crippled for years because of rickets. As her band moved about, someone in the group would have had to carry her along. The mostly hunting-dependent Neanderthals of the Pleistocene, invariably lived close to extinction whenever major hunts didn't go right, and yet this family group would not abandon someone who was physically at least, a burden for the rest of them. Why?

So, it seems that if we have spent most of our history as a species preferring equality over the modern day striving for success and superiority over others, then that would mean that most people today are trying to adapt to a system that is likely the main source of depression, anxiety and mental illness disorders that get worse as life becomes more and more unequal, precarious and challenging. For many psychologists and epidemiologists looking at a wider scale, the biggest surprise of modern capitalism is that even most of the successful rich aren't happy either! Just the sociopaths who thrive from chaos excel under today's conditions.

Again, you seem stuck on the noble savage trope that came out of J J Rousseau and Romanticism.  Actually many of our modern obsessions come out of this period, such as individualism, the psyche (mental health and wellness being an outgrowth of this), personal space, etc.  The freedom and time afforded by technology and mass production in the industrial revolution created unprecedented surpluses that allowed for the indulgences of having a personal identity worthy of public attention.  Prior to the Renaissance many books didn't have known authors because authorship became important with the rise of respect for the individual and the idea that "man is born free."   I'm not complaining about it because it was an important advancement in the living standards of the masses.  My point is that the ideas you have about happiness, freedom, etc. arose out of advancements in technology and wealth.  

Strip away those material gains and you strip away much of what we value as a society.  Most people would never choose to live in the wildernesses fighting for survival.  Rather than undo our advancements in some kind of anti-social retreat from civilization, we should further advance civilization. The focus today for capitalism is reducing our carbon footprints, and our ability to do that depends on advances in technology and social organization, the next stage of civilization.  It's actually very Darwinian because we are adapting as a species to natural phenomena, such as a pandemic.  

Edited February 18, 2021 by Zeitgeist

[Michael Hardner]

I really should read this thread.

[Right To Left]

7 hours ago, Zeitgeist said:

Again, you seem stuck on the noble savage trope that came out of J J Rousseau and Romanticism.  

Who says "noble savage" is a trope? I said before that the origin of the term came out of the surprise white European explorers felt when they first started meeting "savages" during the era when voyaging and colonialization was first beginning. And Rousseau prefigured the era of romanticism, which arose after the rapid societal shifts caused by early industrialization of the 18th century. What you're saying is a repeat of the capitalist enlightenment trope best expressed by the smartest and most useful intellectual tools of the oligarchs, starting with Stephen Pinker.

Quote

Actually many of our modern obsessions come out of this period, such as individualism, the psyche (mental health and wellness being an outgrowth of this), personal space, etc.  The freedom and time afforded by technology and mass production in the industrial revolution created unprecedented surpluses that allowed for the indulgences of having a personal identity worthy of public attention.

Again, was it wrong that a few people took a step back and asked if the net results of sudden privatization of common lands, forcing many itinerate farmers off the land to go on desperate searches for factory work in the new, dirty and dangerous factories of growing industrial cities, was a step up for the former peasant farmers.....it certainly was a step down for the thousands of skilled craftsmen and women who worked in their little shops or homes producing fewer, but better quality products than factory line work was capable of!

Quote

Prior to the Renaissance many books didn't have known authors because authorship became important with the rise of respect for the individual and the idea that "man is born free."   I'm not complaining about it because it was an important advancement in the living standards of the masses.  My point is that the ideas you have about happiness, freedom, etc. arose out of advancements in technology and wealth.  

Now, where is this crap being shoveled from? What you're describing on authorship is about enforcing copyright...not about knowing the author! And now that we have a few multinational corporations owning most of the copyrights to almost all books, music, movies etc., how is the modern regime of permanent copyright-- with no more cultural products winding up in public domain anymore!  Same problem with patents that never expire, and are now effectively permanent monopolies on drugs.... new identical drugs are created and pushed on the public and the former drug that goes generic is pushed to the side for new ones with big ad campaigns and doctors paid to push them on patients. Same goes with everything else under patent!  It's just an excuse for someone who is almost never connected with inventing the product to keep profiting from it forever! 

Quote

Strip away those material gains and you strip away much of what we value as a society.  Most people would never choose to live in the wildernesses fighting for survival.  Rather than undo our advancements in some kind of anti-social retreat from civilization, we should further advance civilization. The focus today for capitalism is reducing our carbon footprints, and our ability to do that depends on advances in technology and social organization, the next stage of civilization.  It's actually very Darwinian because we are adapting as a species to natural phenomena, such as a pandemic.  

Well, in a world with green, livable spaces shrinking at faster and faster rates, certainly we are at a point in time when it is not possible to go back and live in nature as many of the 18th and 19th century romanticists had hoped for!  But, what does 'further advancing civilization' mean anyway? The advances in civilization you and others have mentioned, have made most societies increasingly unequal, more violent and toxic, and after a claimed turnaround in living standards in the Third World (mostly because of economic growth in China and other Far East nations) are clearly coming unglued today, as extreme poverty grows, more and more people die from food shortages, and migrations of the desperate increase, whether the nations of the global north like it or not!

Capitalism is the main reason why our collective fate is sealed as the cancerous forces of capitalism keep demanding more and more economic growth to push the debt off further and further into the future, where it becomes a burden for future generations to deal with. At some point, the capitalist ponzi scheme will fall apart, and the captains of banking and industry today at the WEF working on their 'Great Reset,' are just sociopaths who are only interested in making sure disaster doesn't happen until after they're gone from this earth!  So, if anyone thinks Bill Gates, Elon Musk and other liberal multibillionaires are working to fix environment and other crises/ rather than lining their own pockets, they're only fooling themselves!

Edited February 18, 2021 by Right To Left

[Right To Left]

5 hours ago, Michael Hardner said:

I really should read this thread.

Umm, does that mean you're going to try to drag us out onto the main road?

[Right To Left]

3 minutes ago, Right To Left said:

delete.

 

Edited February 18, 2021 by Right To Left

[Michael Hardner]

On 2/7/2021 at 10:17 PM, Zeitgeist said:

Neither Biden nor Trump is a giant.  

But you expect the same people who refuse vaccines (and that is a lot of people) and who generally reject the common epistemic reality to appreciate Churchill.  I think you have to throw your cards in and give up the model that the average citizen is thoughtful, careful, charitable and kind ... as do I.

I think we need to create a society that is designed for natural hierarchies, that aspires to be a meritocracy, and that doesn't abuse the design of the system by expecting the masses to behave like the public.  The trick is, to do this without excluding people.  A kind of self-serve system where people who carry the attributes of a good member of a "public" enjoy participating, and short-attention-span emotives do not.  

Do you follow ?  

I hope so.  I think you and RtoL are having a great discussion and I'm going to try to read it now.  I mean - I will be successful in reading it, and maybe understanding it.

[Zeitgeist]

35 minutes ago, Michael Hardner said:

But you expect the same people who refuse vaccines (and that is a lot of people) and who generally reject the common epistemic reality to appreciate Churchill.  I think you have to throw your cards in and give up the model that the average citizen is thoughtful, careful, charitable and kind ... as do I.

I think we need to create a society that is designed for natural hierarchies, that aspires to be a meritocracy, and that doesn't abuse the design of the system by expecting the masses to behave like the public.  The trick is, to do this without excluding people.  A kind of self-serve system where people who carry the attributes of a good member of a "public" enjoy participating, and short-attention-span emotives do not.  

Do you follow ?  

I hope so.  I think you and RtoL are having a great discussion and I'm going to try to read it now.  I mean - I will be successful in reading it, and maybe understanding it.

Seems reasonable 

[Zeitgeist]

8 hours ago, Right To Left said:

Who says "noble savage" is a trope? I said before that the origin of the term came out of the surprise white European explorers felt when they first started meeting "savages" during the era when voyaging and colonialization was first beginning. And Rousseau prefigured the era of romanticism, which arose after the rapid societal shifts caused by early industrialization of the 18th century. What you're saying is a repeat of the capitalist enlightenment trope best expressed by the smartest and most useful intellectual tools of the oligarchs, starting with Stephen Pinker.

Again, was it wrong that a few people took a step back and asked if the net results of sudden privatization of common lands, forcing many itinerate farmers off the land to go on desperate searches for factory work in the new, dirty and dangerous factories of growing industrial cities, was a step up for the former peasant farmers.....it certainly was a step down for the thousands of skilled craftsmen and women who worked in their little shops or homes producing fewer, but better quality products than factory line work was capable of!

Now, where is this crap being shoveled from? What you're describing on authorship is about enforcing copyright...not about knowing the author! And now that we have a few multinational corporations owning most of the copyrights to almost all books, music, movies etc., how is the modern regime of permanent copyright-- with no more cultural products winding up in public domain anymore!  Same problem with patents that never expire, and are now effectively permanent monopolies on drugs.... new identical drugs are created and pushed on the public and the former drug that goes generic is pushed to the side for new ones with big ad campaigns and doctors paid to push them on patients. Same goes with everything else under patent!  It's just an excuse for someone who is almost never connected with inventing the product to keep profiting from it forever! 

Well, in a world with green, livable spaces shrinking at faster and faster rates, certainly we are at a point in time when it is not possible to go back and live in nature as many of the 18th and 19th century romanticists had hoped for!  But, what does 'further advancing civilization' mean anyway? The advances in civilization you and others have mentioned, have made most societies increasingly unequal, more violent and toxic, and after a claimed turnaround in living standards in the Third World (mostly because of economic growth in China and other Far East nations) are clearly coming unglued today, as extreme poverty grows, more and more people die from food shortages, and migrations of the desperate increase, whether the nations of the global north like it or not!

Capitalism is the main reason why our collective fate is sealed as the cancerous forces of capitalism keep demanding more and more economic growth to push the debt off further and further into the future, where it becomes a burden for future generations to deal with. At some point, the capitalist ponzi scheme will fall apart, and the captains of banking and industry today at the WEF working on their 'Great Reset,' are just sociopaths who are only interested in making sure disaster doesn't happen until after they're gone from this earth!  So, if anyone thinks Bill Gates, Elon Musk and other liberal multibillionaires are working to fix environment and other crises/ rather than lining their own pockets, they're only fooling themselves!

Rousseau is a key figure of Romanticism.   Much can be said about that movement and its antecedents, but I mentioned authorship because many books from the medieval and earlier periods don't have known authors as the identity of the author wasn't considered nearly as important as it is today.  Identity itself is a fairly modern idea which relates to the focus on self and private space.  It's not a coincidence that the field of psychology started during the height of Romanticism.

The noble savage comes from the idea that "Man is born free but is everywhere in chains".  It's an idea about the natural state of people versus the corrupting forces of society.  However, as many commentators like Northrop Frye have convincingly stated, the first thing people do when faced with the ravages of nature is protect themselves from it by creating a human world.  That's civilization.  It includes the arts, sports, literature, fashion, and everything that we call culture.  It includes the human world that humans value  

While there are ancient stories across cultures that describe a kind of precultural humanity that lived in harmony with nature, following instinct without question (Garden of Eden before Adam's eating of the apple from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil), that Fall from Grace, whether true or fictional, has been our reality since time immemorial.  Religion promises a return to harmony, but if you're an atheist or agnostic humanist like a growing number of the population, and perhaps even if you're religious, or if you studied comparative mythology/religion, you know that ancient beliefs correspond to a time when people had much less scientific knowledge. They experienced natural forces such as lightening and floods as supernatural phenomena.  That's why the gods in ancient religion are nature gods (thunder, sea, etc.).

The bottom line is that we can't undo the knowledge we have gained, nor would most people choose that.  We need to use the tools developed by civilization to protect civilization from challenges like pandemics or flooding/desertification due to climate change, etc..  Basically we need to use science and human ingenuity to solve our problems.  We have to be careful that when we impose carbon taxes, regulations, and other strategies to fight today's challenges, that we don't destroy civilization and the developments that best position us to meet challenges.

To bring the conversation back to Churchill, the reason we keep landmarks like Roman or Napoleonic arches that celebrate victories which may have hurt people is because history is instructive and artefacts are precious insights into the past.  In the case of brutal dictators and highly offensive symbols, it's going to happen, quite justifiably, that those people and the ancestors of people who were oppressed will seek to remove such items   

Churchill, however, in his historical context, was a great liberator and defender of freedom relative to the forces he fought.  Failing to recognize that and our indebtedness to that fight shows great disrespect for a whole generation of Canadians and Canadian allies who fought Nazism.  

Edited February 18, 2021 by Zeitgeist

[Michael Hardner]

Well... I read it.  

Although it was fairly complete, you did leave out Ancient Persia, Nicola Tesla vs. Edison, the Mound Builders, and the founding of New France among other topics.  I kid, I kid.

Really my feelings on LtoR and Z's posts are summarized by David St. Hubbins of Spinal Tap, here:
 

 

[Right To Left]

3 hours ago, Michael Hardner said:

Well... I read it.  

Although it was fairly complete, you did leave out Ancient Persia, Nicola Tesla vs. Edison, the Mound Builders, and the founding of New France among other topics.  I kid, I kid.

Really my feelings on LtoR and Z's posts are summarized by David St. Hubbins of Spinal Tap, here:
 

 

Can't lose with Spinal Tap! 

They created their pseudo-rock supergroup as a parody of bloated, overblown and unfocused rock music of the 70's, and the same lessons apply across the board on many public issues and no-nothing celebrities who are asked or just feel entitled to tell everybody else what they should think or believe on any given subject.

Almost 25 years ago now, when my 13 year old guitar student step-son, wanted me to bring home  "This Is Spinal Tap" from the local video store, I'm pretty sure he and his friends thought they were a real rock band; since being featured on the Simpsons so many times blurred the lines between real life and fake parody. No doubt Harry Shearer (Spinal Tap guy with moustache), who was a Simpsons head writer along with being a voice actor for the shows at the time, wanted to sneak Spinal Tap into Simpsons' plotlines whenever possible. And nowadays, hardly anyone knows or cares what the difference between real and unreal is anyway! But if This Is Spinal Tap pretty much ended the self-indulgent, bloated phenomena called 'Rockumentaries' (thinking of the Who docs with more Pete Townsend monologues than songs) then that was a good thing!