#Collectivization

[thererisesaredstar]

Labor will be the ruler of the world! (1920s)

[ohsalome]

- Anne Applebaum. The Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

You may remember Xi Van Fleet. She's the Chinese immigrant who gave a speech to Loudoun County Public School warning about the teaching of concepts relating to Critical Race Theory and seeing alarming similarities to her experience with the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

--

The history of the 20th century is full of examples of countries that set out to redistribute wealth and ended up redistributing poverty. The communist nations were a classic example, but by no means the only example.

In theory, confiscating the wealth of the more successful people ought to make the rest of the society more prosperous. But when the Soviet Union confiscated the wealth of successful farmers, food became scarce. As many people died of starvation under Stalin in the 1930s as died in Hitler’s Holocaust in the 1940s.

How can that be? It is not complicated. You can only confiscate the wealth that exists at a given moment. You cannot confiscate future wealth — and that future wealth is less likely to be produced when people see that it is going to be confiscated. Farmers in the Soviet Union cut back on how much time and effort they invested in growing their crops, when they realized that the government was going to take a big part of the harvest. They slaughtered and ate young farm animals that they would normally keep tending and feeding while raising them to maturity.

We have all heard the old saying that giving a man a fish feeds him only for a day, while teaching him to fish feeds him for a lifetime. Redistributionists give him a fish and leave him dependent on the government for more fish in the future.

If the redistributionists were serious, what they would want to distribute is the ability to fish, or to be productive in other ways. Knowledge is one of the few things that can be distributed to people without reducing the amount held by others.  That would better serve the interests of the poor, but it would not serve the interests of politicians who want to exercise power, and to get the votes of people who are dependent on them.

-- Thomas Sowell on the Fallacy of Redistribution

==

Free stuff doesn't come from nowhere.

"I have never understood why it is 'greed' to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money." -- Thomas Sowell

One of the big myths about Thanksgiving is that the starving pilgrims were saved by the natives teaching them to farm. That's untrue.

https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/thanksgiving-lessons-about-the-failures-of-socialism-and-the-success-of-private-property-and-capitalism/

The first Thanksgiving was a celebration of abundance after a period of socialism and starvation. The members of the Plymouth colony had arrived in the New World with a plan for collective property ownership. Reflecting the current opinion of the aristocratic class in the 1620s, their charter called for farmland to be worked communally and for the harvests to be shared.

You probably will not be surprised to hear that the colonists starved. Men were unwilling to work to feed someone else’s children. Women were unwilling to cook for other women’s husbands. Fields lay largely untilled and unplanted.

Famine came as soon as they ate through their provisions. After famine came plague. Half the colony died. Unlike most socialists, they learned from their mistakes, giving each person a parcel of land to tend to for themselves. The colonists threw off the statist intellectual fashions of their day.

The results were overwhelmingly beneficial. Men worked hard, even though before they had constantly pleaded illness. Fields were not only tilled and planted but also diligently harvested. Colonists traded with the surrounding Indian nation and learned to plant maize, squash and pumpkin and to rotate these crops from year to year. The harvest was bountiful, and new colonists immigrated to the thriving settlement.

Think about it. Imagine you're in a class, and the teacher says that every student will get the same grade, the average of all students. The low-performing students will be thrilled and won't do much. Why should they when they're going to score as high as the best students? The high-performing students will realize they're being dragged down by everyone else and not bother putting in the effort, because they're being exploited and carrying the weight for the whole class. The average will drop dramatically compared to the class total if each student had been able to keep their own score.

Equity means forcing everybody into poverty - whether that's academic poverty, intellectual poverty or literal poverty.

[screechingcollectivechorus]

[leninvive]

Collective farm in Hungarian People's Republic in the 60s, taken on film for the American Geographical Society's Around the World Program

[continent-of-wild-endeavor]

[alter-petrus]

Collectivization of the means of production go brrrr

[on-the-clear-blue]

What if Danny didn't die? He does open the portal but for the first time in their lives the Fentons followed OSHA regulations.

He doesn't have the powers, but he was right there when the portal opened, he saw the tear in reality and it...it did things.

It wasn't something that a humans mind was supposed to see, while the Infinite Realms are the in-between dimensions, and what is in-between the in-between?

Elder gods, slumbering calamities, fallen angels hid from their gods ever present eye, righteous spirits who reached nirvana, monsters beyond imagination...

The crack before the Realms snapped to his dimension was only open for a mere moment, a single millisecond but to the young boy it was eternity, and he could only watches as all those beings turned their attentions to him, they saw him, observed him as much as he did them.

He had fallen, screaming as he clutched his eyes, his eyes and ears were bleeding, his brain pounded so hard it felt as if it was going to knock out his eyeballs, Sam and Tucker, spared from it all as they had turned their heads when the lightning flashed and rent the portal open could only rush to the boy, trying to help him but all he could do was scream. Because what was beyond had saw him, and gave him a gift.

---

Far away, in a tall tower, a man with a gleaming gold helmet shuddered as the ankh of light in front of him shattered.

He fell to the floor, the minor magic he used failing as the more complex spell fizzled and broke, leaving him painfully wheezing on the ground, clutching at his chest.

"N-no...T-this can not be...T-The order...it...it failed...it can not fail!" Dragging himself across the Tower of Orders floor, Dr. Fate forced himself over to a lone summoning circle, falling onto it with an exhausted groan, the Gaurdian of Order muttered a soft word, and the circle flared, and in an instant he was gone, leaving the Tower shaking it it's wake.

---

On the couch of the House of Magic, John Constantine was feeling as if the world had fucked him so hard in the ass he would never be able to walk straight ever again.

And with the pounding in his skull from a truly deadly hangover wasn't helping either.

Nor was the half dead Dr. Fate puking up his guts in his living room.

"Argh" which translated to "What the bloody fuck are you doing in my house you daft shiny headed prick" but John didn't really have the strength to say that.

"Blugh" was what the ever regal Dr. Fate responded with, which obviously meant "The border between realities have been broken, the Beyond Dark knows of our existence and has seen our world, they have come to either eat upon our existence and reality or defend agaisnt the others that seek to only fill their own unexistance."

John of course, carefully and gracefully pissed himself.

---

In Faccuet City, a young Billy Batson screamed as his head exploded with noise, the gods and heros alike were all suddenly the strongest they had ever been, their powers flooded and overwhelmed his mortal form, and to save his life, the Champion of Magic forced itself into being.

Even in the Champions form the sudden influx of godly might was almost too much, steam charged with lightning billowed off him in great plooms, sparks zapped from his finger tips to the ground, and the air stunk of ozone all around him.

The gods were ranting, each talking over each other, debating in so many dead languages Billy's mind could keep up the translations.

It wasn't until Solomons voice boomed over the others that the voices fell quiet. "ENOUGH! NOW IS NOT THE TIME OF IN FIGHTING, THE BEYOND IS AT OUR DOOR..."

Taking a breath even if he didn't need it, the ancient king looked all the years he had lived and then some, "Young William...oh dear precious boy...our dear son. A great advent has begun, a door which should never been opened has been thrown wide...the beasts you face, the abominations of teeth and tentacles are just the mites that have slipped under the door...waht is to come will make all that you have faced look like mice...we will not have enough time to prepare you with what is to come..."

Solomons voice broke at the end, and he hung his head in the mental image in Billy's head "Seek out others, join forces with any. All those in touch with the arcane shall know of what just happened...as Champion you will be the spear head, the general of them all...you will lead them agaisnt the Beyond."

---

It took a week for Danny to come back to himself again, at least a little bit, he still had a haunted look in his eyes, and was far to quiet. He barely spoke at all, but when he did it was in ramblings of things not understood by any of them.

His parents assumed it had been a ghost that left in this state, their hatred for the ectoplasmic beings growing more and more as their son, their boy grew worse.

Jazz, unlike her parents listened to what Danny described, studied what she could and figured out what she couldn't, at each dead en she pushed, with Tuckers help she gained access to computer systems that held secrets of the occult, and with Sam's freely given credit card? Oh she dived deep into spell, trying desperately to find any kind of cure for Danny's predicament.

As time went on the boy only got worse, he had begun seeing the beings in the Beyond, some whispered wisdom, of long lost ways to calm the millions of mutterings in his gray matter and the pounding of his heart, while others screamed, in jubilation and rage, as it is only in being seen did they become real, and becoming real meant they had a foot hold in existence.

The wise figures, while helping had also steered him to their own goals, some told him to hate the jabbering hordes, others said that the only way to truly to be rid of them was to be nothing as well, to go far past being a person, into being one with the Byond.

Some of the mutterings lead to more questions, they spoke of Gods long forgotten and recent, of their betrayals and what they did to fall, others claimed that they were not fallen, that they were there to protect him from those that were.

The more and more he listened the more and more he saw of them, until Danny began to not understand what was real and what wasnt.

So he didn't even flinch when a group of imposing figures were in his room when he came up to his bed, hoping that the voices of Parathax the Unbeliever would be quiet enough for him to sleep.

Oh he did scream quite a bit when the sad trench coat man with a multi fractured sould reached out and touched him.

[mcromwell]

Let's build a future for each other, together!

(New lino coming soon to small prints, cards, and patches ✨)

[letsdeconstructtogether]

Ancestry Mood Board

Women of the 1. Fulani (Mali) and the 2. Biafade (Guinea-Bissau), 3. Queen of Rwanda Rosalie Gicanda (1928 - 20 April 1994), 4. a woman of the Mangbetu (Democratic Republic of Congo), as well as women of the 5. Zulu (South Africa) and the 6. Oromoo (Ethiopia)

Our hair is not a curse, it is a gift.

[monsterblogging]

The thing a lot of people don't get about Lovecraft's cosmic horror is that it's about how it feels when you really grapple with the fact that you live in a dangerous and chaotic world that doesn't really care about you, and where terrible things can happen to you because you are not life's main character. It's not about a fear of the unknown, per se.

It's about feeling out of control and overwhelmed by it all while feeling certain that true relief will never come.

It's about feeling like you're the only one who has really reckoned with this, and feeling like this knowledge is crushing you.

It's about how it feels when you understand that the stories people tell themselves about loving higher powers and ancient advanced civilizations that will one day rise again are just copium.

The weird and scary things in Lovecraft's writings are tools and devices to talk about this all feels - how overwhelming, frustrating, and depressing it can be. If you think his style of horror is dead because he was wrong about X thing or bigoted about Y people, you've missed the point of his work.

Think about how it feels when you know that your life will be impacted by political choices made by people who don't care whether you live or die.

Think about how it feels when you stop and think about the fact that human rights aren't guaranteed, and there is no absolute assurance that things are going to keep progressing in the long run.

Think about how it feels when you know that you live in a world where a new pandemic could do incalculable damage on top of the damage wrought by the last one.

Think about how it feels when you see women on TikTok getting into pseudoscientific and far right stuff because they think it's going to save them.

Think about how it feels when you see guys talking about how the patriarchy must be restored so men can feel strong again.

Think about how it feels when you start to fathom the depths of how deeply racist the US government is and how it's how it's always used this racism to sustain itself.

Think about how it feels when you see people being like "Oh yeah, I can't live without ChatGPT, I need it to write essays/grocery lists/emails" while knowing the costs and impact of generative AI.

Cosmic horror isn't actually about scary things from space. It's about things that are so far beyond your personal ability to control or change that they feel like they might as well come from space. It's not really about feeling scared because you can't understand things, it's about feeling scared because they feel so immensely overwhelming and you feel powerless to really do anything about it.

[0nsyu-archive]

An interesting analogy

[whereserpentswalk]

Something I love about Worm is how well it subverts (or just avoids) the rugged individualism that a lot of superhero stories fall into. Even the most powerful beings (with the obvious exeption of truly inhuman entities like Zion or the enbringers) are beholden to society and its systems.

It's why the protectorate worked so well as a deconstruction of superheroes. It's not that any of them are too powerful and at risk of snapping like how most dark takes of superheroes are, it's that all of them are still fundamentally in a position of enforcing society's will. Someone like Miss Milita or Arms Master isn't that powerful from their shard abilities alone (at least in the broader context of the universe), but they wield massive amounts of power as given to them by society to enforce its laws through violence. And as we've seen from people like Miss Milita, they don't have the same power to go against society. Having superpowers doesn't allow you to escape the power that society has over people. Like, any member of the Wards could easily kill any prt director (prt directors who are secretly parahumans aside), but every prt director wields power over Wards, because of the societal power they have.

I think the best example of this Weaver as a probationary member of the Wards, vs Shadow Stalker as a probationary member of the Wards. Weaver is forced to move to a different city, given extremely strict rules to follow, and before the deal is made for her to join the Wards, she's in real danger of being put in the birdcage. Meanwhile, Shadow Stalker is never really restricted on her ability to commit the same type of violence she was committing as a vigilante, to the point where joining the Wards was basically a promotion for her. This is because the crimes that Shadow Stalker committed were fundamentally in service to the system, while Weaver/Skitter's crimes were all things that subverted the system's power. The reason why Skitter was treated as a more serious threat than any other teenage villain once she started holding territory, was that her crimes were a threat to the state's power.

The thing that makes the protectorate morally corrupt isn't that any of them have personally chosen evil. It's the much more subtle and realistic way all of them are fundamentally working to uphold society, and at higher levels they're complicacy in cauldron's crimes. Someone like Alexandria isn't someone actively trying to hurt people, she's someone whose decided that she's going to violently enforce everything wrong with society, up to protecting the practice of human experimentation, because she's so intwined in those systems.

It allows for plotlines that are so much more interesting than what most superhero stories are capable of, because when you break out of the mold of rugged individualism, you can have stories that are more complex than bad person wants to do bad and good person has to punch them. Like, Worm's awareness of systems power over people allows for such unique storylines. From large scale things like the effort to expose cauldron or the undersiders conquest of Brokton Bay, to small scale things like Foil leaving the Wards to be with Perian. Hell, even just the fact that Worm can have a character like Perian who is relatively low powered and rarely fights, but whose story is still relevant, and who still has an effect on the plot, is an example of what breaking from rugged individualism has done for Worm.

Also, it should be noted that the one time a character dose become the type of rugged individual whose will alone is what matters, with everyone else becoming irrelevant, it's when Taylor becomes Khepri, and it's shown to be fundamentally horrifying. Khepri is the one human in the plot of Worm who is above all societal systems, at it makes her something both extremely disturbing, and extremely tragic.

[licorice-and-rum]

The Lilo & Stitch remake is not only a complete disregard of the Hawaii indigenous' suffering under colonialism but also, it's a clear way of erasing non-white values of collectivism and community through hyper-individualistic white morals

[katharsisboy101]

Lunarians vs Lustrous - A look into Individualism and Collectivism in Houseki no Kuni

As I've mentioned before in my posts, these two races have a lot of parallels in regards to real life cultures and philosophies, and I'd like to examine what characterizes each of them more closely and how their portrayal and subsequent differences reflect the themes and messages of the manga.

The West and the East

There's many factors that cemented the difference between the individualistic collectivist cultures, but in essence, what separates them is what each of them valued according to their cultural and religious beliefs. Beyond looking at what caused that each side of the world turned to a different way of living (which in and of itself is massively simplifying it, because not the entire west is individualistic and viceversa, it's a lot more gray than that), it's important to understand what each philosophy entails.

It has to be said that this separation, through globalism and its subsequent capitalism, became blurrier and much more skewed towards the western way of doing things, in which eastern spirituality is just another commodity, but I'll talk more about it later.

By the way, my little analysis of the incredibly underdeveloped Admirabilis is that they basically aim to represent a culture under monarchy (because of their designs), but I don't think there's a lot more to extrapolate from that other than the fact that they represent the missing piece of how humanity can organize itself and its beliefs, I guess.

The Lustrous

I normally call them gems, but I guess their official name is the Lustrous, right? Well, whatever, maybe I'll use it interchangeably as I write.

The Lustrous are clearly a collectivist society, which are associated with Eastern cultures. Characterized by favoring community, which many times means the suppression and neglect of those who don't fit in it or those who aren't in it, it's clear that characters like Phos and Cinnabar are meant to be the misfits in a society like the one Kongo promoted. The arrangement at the start of the manga, in which everyone knows Cinnabar is suffering but no one does anything about it because it's more convienent that way is a perfect example of this.

Even those who fit in and take pride in their usefulness (the value that reigns supreme in the gems' society) have to compete in that regard, as a collectivist society which values a specific trait will have a "supposed way of being" that isn't as tolerant of differences and different ways of expressing yourself and achieving success as an individualistic society would.

Just take a look at Dia and Bortz, the former who despite being at the top of the "usefulness hierarchy" still feels like she isn't enough because she has Bortz as a partner, or the latter who feels like she constantly has to live up to her reputation of being the strongest and actually feels relieved when others step up to cover for her. (Like when the Lunarians stop attacking.) Everyone is bottling things up and no one is doing anything about it because it's easier that way... except it obviously isn't.

Hell, even though I do agree that Phos' loneliness is self inflicted for the most part, it can't be ignored that the reason the gems alienated them so easily and quickly was also partly due to this collectivist mentality, in which the gems are "us" and everything else is "them*.

Phos further strayed from the "us" with each transformation, to the point that she is rejected understanding because of her differences with the rest, despite her seemingly good intentions. This black and white way of viewing people and beings in general results is dangerous, and can justify inhumane acts such as what Phos was made to bear during her prayer. And of course, the "architect" of this society is Kongo/Adamant, though I do understand the reasoning behind it.

The Mastermind

I'd say that Kongo overcorrected, and created a society that separated itself from the selfishness of humanity along with the earthly pleasures that he saw dominated the humans, to the point of the gems' worth becoming completely about how useful they were in their work and neglecting their emotions and the fun they could have in between along with ignoring the importance of their individual relationships (as opposed to just their cordial relationship to each other, out of being part of the same species).

Kong actively discouraged feeling, discouraged crying for Phos—he discouraged humanity, with the good and the bad.

This has both pros and cons, because even though it keeps the gems together and allows them to effectively counter the threat that the lunarians pose, it also eaves them in a stagnant society, one in which they have to bear the risk of losing the people they care about while still being expected to keep their composure for the sake of each other and tradition.

It's a society that is afraid of change, because change is a stand out, and no one should stand out in a collectivist society—and yet, it's that same unchanging quality and resilience for the sake of each other that strengthens the bonds of the gems after Kongo reveals the truth to them. Their loyalty to Kongo and each other gives them meaning, and allows them to keep going year after year.

Whatever the case, that status quo is broken the moment Moon Phos enters the picture. And I'd say the main difference between her and the rest of the gems is her selfishness, the selfishness to see how far she can push herself and to discover what's out there. This is where we start to enter into individualism, with all the progress and independence usually attached to it, that many gems secretly admired, to the point of calling her their "hope".

The reason we call the Phos with Lapis' head "Moon Phos" is because once she arrived to the moon, she assimilates with the Lunarians in a way—she's extremely compatible with their way of being and the optimization and research they constantly promote, but she also has the disadvantages that come with being like that, in how that obsession for optimization and rational planning keeps her mind away from those who are supposedly important to her, just being tools in her game and ultimately causing her downfall as she's broken by those whose trust she broke with too many mindgames and rationality. But in order to analyze this more in depth, let's take a look at individualism in general.

The Lunarians

Personally, I see individualism as a cult of of rationality and its subsequent optimization, in which the only logical conclusion of valuing independence and progress over everything is the commodification of any and all experiences and resources in order to sell them and increase your own gains. Everything is a tool, a means to an end, feeble feelings like love and community aren't as important as the american dream and the self made man. Individualism, and the economic version of it, capitalism, are systems that perpetuate the ideas they represent and instill them onto the mind of those born under them.

We can clearly see how Ichikawa meant for the Lunarians' extravagant lifestyle to be a complete contrast to the simpleness and community-focused society of the Lustrous.

They are literally a society expecting and wishing for their demise, too caught up in it to value what it is and keeping their minds busy with sensorial pleasures and progress—"what will be". They are much more technologically advanced than the gems due to this, which is good, of course, but it also comes with a cost.

And that's the magic of comparing these two cultures—each of them is incredibly flawed, and yet changing them also comes with losing something of value in the process. It shows the contrasting nature of certain philosophies and ideas and how the overreliance on them leads to black and white thinking and unhappiness, whether it is from suppressing yourself too much like the gems or not allowing yourself to compromise and live at all like the Lunarians.

Maybe, just maybe, instead of grand philosophies that apply to everyone and anyone, idealizing their principles and taking them as a gospel to live, it's better to just be, like Phos learns to do in the last arc.

Assimilation and Conquest

Remember what I said about how globalism blurried the line? I'd say the assimilation of the gems to Lunarian society, becoming Lunarians themselves, reflects this perfectly.

Now, they're allowed to be who they are, seek their own interests, indulge into the endless pleasures that were prepared for them and discover a whole new world in which love, food and entertainment are part of their day to day life. However, as great as it sounds, much is also lost through the assimilation—the gems' glitter is gone, and their care for each other isn't really touched upon.

The gems, upon first arriving on the moon, are made to wear new clothes, fancy and more feminine, they are shown the pleasures they can indulge in, and the possibility of keeping the culture and mantaining the positive aspects of their bond is neglected, almost ran over, in what is in essence a colonization.

Cairngorm is a clear example of this, and although she becomes happier by allowing herself to show her true colors (literally) and falling in love with Aechmea, there is this constant feeling that she strayed away from who she should have been, from her relationship with Phos, from her own wishes and interests… because she never discovered them.

She always lived for the sake of others, for Phos, for Lapis, for Ghost, and even if it is under the mask of a loving relationship, she repeats this pattern with Aechmea. Their relationship is all that is great and wrong with Lunarian culture, in which you are drunk with pleasure and forget your true self as a result. Why else do you think Cairngorm is continually portrayed as hyperfeminine and small, almost child-like, compared to the manipulative, dominating and masculine Aechma?

These labels are the ones that individualism and capitalism pushes in order to survive and keep the power dynamics that characterize it. They are images and illusions of what "should be", of masculinity and femininity that the characters fool themselves into wanting in order to continue with the "blinding-youself-with-pleasure" charade.

There's a foreboding sense that Cairngorm—no, that the Lustrous, have lost their purpose and are trying to distract themselves from their inevitable demise through the eartly pleasures that the Lunarian society offers. There's a reason why the album of photos starring the gems living on the moon is called "Party of the End"—because that's what the life of the Lustrous on the moon is.

A party, which involves overindulgence on sensorial pleasures, that is done in order to create an instance away facing their own mortality and having to reflect upon their actions. A celebration that precedes the end, in which they become nothingness and yet they also become something else without ever having come to terms with who they were, like Phos does.

We are all the Same

With all of that in mind, I believe that rather than choosing to ally with a certain philosophy, religion, or culture, Houseki no Kuni shows unabashedly the ugliness that each possibility holds, the selfishness and selflessness of humans, and how those traits manifest differently depending on the ideas and principles that surround you. It's a story that blurries the lines between a selfish collectivism and a selfless individualism, between the organic and inorganic, between what is us and what is something else (Phos), and it arrives at the conclusion that it's all ultimately meaningless in the face of a simple happiness—that binarisms are misleading and in truth, even cultures as different as the Lustrous and the Lunarians have as much in common as they have differences, especially in their selfishness. It's an examination of humanity and the way it deals with each other and itself.