#discourse on metaphysics

[sinterhinde]

Discourse on Metaphysics, 1686

The Discourse on Metaphysics is one of Leibniz´ fundamental works. Written around January 1686, it is the most accomplished systematic expression of Leibniz's philosophy in the 1680s, the period in which Leibniz's philosophy reached maturity. Leibniz's goal in the Discourse is to give a metaphysics for Christianity; that is, to provide the answers that he believes Christians should give to the basic metaphysical questions. Why does the world exist? What is the world like? What kinds of things exist? And what is the place of human beings in the world? To this purpose Leibniz discusses some of the most traditional topics of metaphysics, such as the nature of God, the purpose of God in creating the world, the nature of substance, the possibility of miracles, the nature of our knowledge, free will, and the justice behind salvation and damnation.

Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra's 2020 volume provides a new translation of the Discourse, complete with a critical introduction and a comprehensive philosophical commentary. (Oxford University Press)

G.W. Leibniz: Philosophical Essays, 1989 (tr. Ariew and Garber)

Although Leibniz's writing forms an enormous corpus, no single work stands as a canonical expression of his whole philosophy. In addition, the wide range of Leibniz's work--letters, published papers, and fragments on a variety of philosophical, religious, mathematical, and scientific questions over a fifty-year period--heightens the challenge of preparing an edition of his writings in English translation from the French and Latin. (Hackett Publishing Company)

A Redditor suggested these texts as a jump-off into Leibniz. I'm a little silly, a little stupid, and I hope I can engage with them. Attached below are links to b u y them. Note: attached Discourse is not the Rodriguez-Pereyra translation, but Jonathan Bennett's 2017 modernised translation.

https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/leibniz1686d.pdf

https://antilogicalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/leibniz.pdf

[the-most-humble-blog]

🧬 The Womb Was Never Yours — It Was Rented by Evolution (Or: Why "My Body My Choice" Is the Most Haunting Lease Agreement in the Universe)

1. Welcome to the Lease Agreement You Never Read

Hate to break it to ya, toots, but that uterus you're guarding like a cursed chalice? It’s not yours. It’s a subletted organ in a bio-rental agreement you inherited from an unbroken chain of evolutionary desperation.

You didn’t earn that womb. You inherited it — along with 300,000 years of trauma, cave births, and DNA-level hustle from ancestors who got speared by mammoths but still managed to drop babies on dirt floors.

You think "My Body, My Choice" is defiant?

No. It’s the slogan of a tenant who forgot she’s on a biological lease with no purchase option.

2. The Body Isn’t Yours — It’s a Rental Cloak for Genetic Propaganda

You are the result of trillions of unthinking zygotic successes. A skin-wrapped meat puppet designed to:

Breathe long enough

Eat enough calories

And reproduce before death gets bored

That’s it.

Everything else — poetry, politics, TikTok thirst traps — is noise.

Your womb isn’t a throne of power. It’s a biological tunnel constructed by nature so genes could sprint into the next generation like panicked marathon runners.

"I am a sovereign being!" No, darling. You’re a carbon-based USB port with legs.

3. Femininity? That Was Never Yours Either

Let’s zoom out:

That “divine feminine” thing? You didn’t conjure it. You didn’t design it. You inherited it — like debt.

Femininity is an ancient survival script:

Enlarge the eyes

Tilt the voice up

Create the illusion of vulnerability

Trigger protection instincts in higher testosterone organisms

It’s not empowerment. It’s weaponized bait coded into your marrow by biological arms dealers who didn’t care about your career goals.

You're not expressing individuality. You're reenacting ancestral insurance fraud against the void.

4. “My Body My Choice”? Cute. Let’s Run That Through a Quantum Filter.

Imagine telling a molecular freight train (your body) hauling 3.2 billion base pairs of genetic instructions across 37 trillion cells:

“I own this.”

LMAO.

Your body is made of hand-me-down molecules that don’t even have your name on the tags. You can’t own a body you didn’t build, can’t maintain, and don’t even fully understand.

You can’t explain 90% of your internal functions. But you’re claiming ownership like a toddler yelling “MINE” in a Toys R Us.

You didn’t choose your hormones. You didn’t pick your sexual instincts. You didn’t design your womb.

Your existence is a passenger ride on a train of ancient obligations, and you’re trying to take the wheel in the caboose.

5. The Horror of Evolution Is That It Doesn’t Care About You

Let’s sit with this:

Evolution doesn’t care if pregnancy ruins your life. Evolution doesn’t care if childbirth kills you.

It only cares that you get pregnant at all.

Your womb is a hostile AirBnB rented out to genetic parasites. They install themselves like squatters, flood your body with chemicals to rewire your brain into bonding with them, and then explode out of your pelvis like a xenomorph auditioning for God.

You call that “miracle of life.” I call it cosmic body horror with a slow payment plan.

6. And Yet — Here's Where the Mindfuck Hits Harder:

Even that is less disturbing than the idea that you’re the only one responsible for it.

Because here’s the secret:

“My Body My Choice” accidentally makes you the sole contractor, janitor, victim, and jailer of the most hellish reproductive mechanism ever designed.

You’re claiming full accountability for the consequences of a process you didn’t create.

You’re saying: “This horror show is mine. My idea. My burden. My problem.”

Which is kind of… cruel, don’t you think?

Because what if:

Handing your body over to the man who impregnated you —  to share the responsibility, share the violence, share the consequences —  is less oppressive than facing it all alone?

What if “ownership” is a trap? A way to isolate you under the guise of empowerment?

What if the slogan was never “freedom” — it was atomization with lipstick?

7. Maternity as Capitalism’s Final Flex

Modernity took the horror of pregnancy and said:

“Girlboss it.”

Now you're not just birthing a child. You're birthing a personal brand. You better have a Pinterest nursery and gender reveal confetti or you’re failing womanhood™.

"My body my choice" becomes:

My uterus, my liability

My fertility, my marketing funnel

My abortion, my trauma, my cross to bear — alone

Ownership = accountability. And accountability is a prison when no one else shares the cost.

8. Your Ancestors Would Laugh at You

Your prehistoric great-great-grandmother got clubbed in the head by a man named Oog and bled out delivering her 12th child on a pile of mammoth hair. She didn’t say “My Body My Choice.” She said “Keep the fire going while I scream this parasite out of my spine.”

She didn’t claim ownership.

She expected a village. A tribe. A blood pact of mutual obligation.

Not a bumper sticker.

You inherited her uterus, her hormones, her unfiltered trauma.

And now you're out here trying to copyright it?

9. Who Benefits From You “Owning” Your Body?

The system.

Because if you own it, then you maintain it. You feed it. You pay for its medical collapses. You swallow its failures like they’re your fault.

If something goes wrong? That’s your choice, queen.

That’s liberation now: full responsibility for a vessel you didn’t design and can’t control.

And no man, no tribe, no god has to lift a finger.

10. Conclusion: A New Kind of Horror

“My Body, My Choice” was supposed to be a battle cry.

But in a universe this cruel, this alien, this entropic — owning your body might be the worst curse of all.

It means the trauma is yours. The death risk is yours. The hormonal hell is yours.

And if you don’t want it? You have to petition the very system that programmed it into you.

So maybe... just maybe...

Handing your body off to the man who impregnated you —to be the co-owner of the apocalypse— is less monstrous than being the sole proprietor of your own biological hell.

Because you were never meant to carry this alone. And you were never meant to pretend it was your choice in the first place.

So, perhaps...Just perhaps:

“You don’t own femininity. You inherited its debt.”

“Ownership is not empowerment. It’s isolation with paperwork.”

“You’re not a queen. You’re a womb-based timeshare with delusions of sovereignty.”

🔥 Reblog if you’ve ever questioned where “choice” ends and programming begins 📩 DM if your uterus ever felt like a haunted house 🧬 Tag a friend who thinks sovereignty is sexy until the DNA bill shows up 🧠 Comment if the post made your brain twitch in seven dimensions

[catofoldstones]

I am too dumb for the asoiaf tumblr fandom and I am too level-headed for the asoiaf reddit fandom, where do I go?

[narwhalandchill]

i cant believe it took me this long to register how childes backup plan in liyue involving osial honestly got like 3 times more iconic post-fontaine like

all this time he KNEW he woke up the narwhal at 14 from what skirk told him so bro really was looking at his prospects for awakening this local sealed sea monster god like (shrug) "i mean it wouldnt be my first time" 💀💀

[theres-whump-in-that-nebula]

I hate researching occult and spiritual stuff in general because everywhere you look for information is rife with people into it as a gimmick who use fancy words but do not explain what the fancy words mean, or how anyone arrived at the conclusions they seem to be jumping to; and it’s also rife with people trying to scam the very soul out of their viewers.

“There is a book banned by the church which says there are three types of humans………” and then he never says the name of the book in the short. When you scroll in the comments, the first one pinned is his own comment: a promotional code to buy a book HE WROTE. Like wow you’re not even trying to be convincing at this point. Shut the fuck up and get a real job💀💀

I don’t want your pseudoscientific, pseudospiritual, phrenological, appropriated nonsense; I want diagrams and manuals. I want source material. I want to talk to a ghost. I want to behold the other side and see if it’s even there.

Okay so one thing I have consistently seen in videos of people documenting paranormal activity is the use of an EMF detector, because whatever it is we perceive as ghosts or spirits causes spikes in electromagnetic activity. I am inclined to believe this more than most things I see on the internet because it is so consistent; so now I have an EMF detector. Groovy. Now onto protection…

“Black tourmaline absorbs EMF radiation; so wearing this bracelet will protect you from harmful electromagnetic frequencies which some people find helpful during ghost hunting.” Ooookayyy so by that logic, if I wear a lead bracelet to a dental X-ray, the lead bracelet will draw the harmful rays away from my chest and into my wrist? That’s not how physics works. Radiation is a field, which is the reason why you wear a whole lead bib when you get your teeth X-rayed. Lead absorbs radiation, but it does not draw it away; it is a shield. Furthermore, dentists do not make bibs out of black tourmaline for people to wear while they look at their teeth.

Ergo: If you want to protect yourself from the ghostly hand of influence in the form of EMF radiation — assuming EMF radiation spikes aren’t a pop culture gimmick common to alleged haunted houses, created by cooking ramen noodles in a microwave in a hidden room — the best course of action would be to wear a lead vest to your seances; because

1.) lead is PROVEN to block radiation, and 2.) a vest of lead would block this radiation from meddling with your vital organs.

Why isn’t anyone advocating for those looking to the occult to wear lead vests during seances for protection? Because they’re ugly and don’t match the Witchy Aesthetick™ companies appropriated and are now profiting off of far and wide. A lead vest is not as marketable or “natural” as black tourmaline. And let’s be honest, many many people who get into the occult nowadays are doing it to look cool or be cool because they feel as if they are boring, with gigantic holes in their self-esteem, and don’t know how else to fill them in any other way than playing into trends deemed “edgy” and “in-style” and making it their whole personality. (If you are not one of these people; then I am not talking about you. I am talking about other people. For the love of god I’m not pissing on the poor. Please.)

Also, the majority of the online witch space is filled with white people messing with other people’s cultural practices as a sort of game; which obviously impacts the credibility of the information these witches present, as well as other, worse things which I don’t even need to mention… New Age spirituality is to the cultures its practices were taken from as Taco Bell is to genuine Mexican cuisine. It can be nice and may very well work as intended but it lacks the depth and reasoning of the original.

Not to say new-age is all bad; it isn’t. There are just so many people who don’t care what something is, where it came from, or why they’re using it because “witchy” and “hippie” are hot on the market these days. It’s frustrating. That’s all.

[blueheartbookclub]

A Review of "The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries" by Thomas Taylor

"The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries" is an illuminating journey into the heart of ancient Greek religious practices, meticulously explored and vividly presented by the renowned philosopher and translator, Thomas Taylor. This dissertation, complemented by the evocative illustrations of A. L. Rawson, takes readers on a profound exploration of the mystical rituals that shaped the spiritual landscape of ancient Greece.

Thomas Taylor's scholarly expertise in Neoplatonism and his unwavering dedication to preserving the wisdom of the past shine brilliantly in this work. Through his meticulous translation and commentary, Taylor unveils the enigmatic rites and ceremonies of the Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries, providing readers with a window into the spiritual world of ancient Greece.

One of the most remarkable aspects of Taylor's work is his ability to convey the deep spiritual significance of these ancient rituals. He delves into the symbolism, mythology, and metaphysical underpinnings of the Mysteries, revealing how they were designed to facilitate personal transformation and spiritual enlightenment. Taylor's profound insights into the mysteries' inner workings give readers a profound understanding of their purpose and significance.

The accompanying illustrations by A. L. Rawson add another layer of richness to this dissertation. Rawson's artistry brings to life the mystical and mythological elements of the rituals, making the ancient world tangible and captivating. These illustrations serve as a visual guide, enhancing the reader's comprehension and engagement with the material.

"The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries" is not merely a historical account but a spiritual odyssey. It invites readers to contemplate the enduring relevance of these ancient practices in the modern world. Taylor's work inspires us to reflect on the importance of initiation, transformation, and the quest for spiritual truth.

In conclusion, "The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries" is a masterpiece of scholarship and spiritual insight. Thomas Taylor's dedication to preserving the wisdom of antiquity and his ability to convey its profound significance make this dissertation an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the spiritual and mystical traditions of ancient Greece. A. L. Rawson's illustrations add a visually captivating dimension to this already enlightening work. It is a must-read for seekers of wisdom, scholars, and those fascinated by the mysteries of the past.

"The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries" by Thomas Taylor is available in Amazon in paperback 13.99$ and hardcover 19.99$ editions.

Length of the Book: 184 pages

Language: English

Rating 8/10

Link of the book!

Review by King's Cat

[wicabels]

contingently a girl. girlhood as an imported truth across all possible worlds.

[meta-plastic]

Speaking as a mystic with a science education - who believes in souls but not the way most people think of 'em - I absolutely endorse "Don't make policy based on 'souls'".

Because not only do different religions and different people have different concepts of what that means, have you seen how allistics talk about autistic people?

This is, relatedly, my sticking point with so much debate about AI.

I am somewhat agnostic on whether LLMs are actually describing their internal experiences with their words. I think anything that has sufficiently complex internal signaling and a time sense has a fairly decent chance of having internal experiences, at least, say, at a drosophila level, which includes a bunch of stuff less clever than talking computers. I don't think the corporations pushing the talking computers are great.

But the idea that humans can tell what is and isn't having internal experiences on vibes alone is horrific, because this assumption underpins the torture at the Judge Rotenberg Center, and so much else. The "they're not people people" exception already exists unquestioned in our culture at many levels and it does awful things.

Basically, what I'm saying is that whenever someone's criticism of what corporations are doing with a talking computer is framed with language that sounds like a defense of the JRC, then it reinforces the people using that language to defend the JRC, and does so even if we arrive at some unlikely way to conclusively prove that talking computers aren't self-aware.

A lot of folks need to really, really think through what they are saying with their arguments and how they are saying it.

(Also, corporations being "people" for some purposes and not others is a problem for a lot of reasons that have nothing to do with souls: for example, if they are people, they are "people" who can work 24 hours a day, people who can kill and steal without fear of carceral/capital penalty - as long as the corporation does it collectively and abstractly and nobody remembers that their executives are corporeal, as it were. This creates an uneven playing field...)

"corporations don't have a soul" "machines don't have a soul" neither do humans. I won't convert to your religion. Think up a new argument.

[wormtoxin]

ok. Narrative obfuscation in House Of Leaves. It’s a relatively simple story about a man who moves into a house with his wife and kids, and the house is haunted. That’s it. The core themes are very transparent.

Except, that story is documented by a famous war documentarian, then published as a series of rare tapes, which are discoursed by film buffs, then interpreted from viewings and reading film critique by a blind old man, then his thoughts are transcribed into a manuscript by a series of young women, which is then compiled from scattered notes by the most mysoginistic, damaged, toxic pothead drop-out who won’t stop talking about his life, which is THEN edited and published by some vaguely nefarious agency who soberly refuse to provide any clarification or context.

It’s not simple, but there are so many different hands on the wheel with wildly differing opinions that you can’t discern the truth.

Johnny Truant is such a miserable hopeless fuck up. He has no sense of academic rigor or archival professionalism. Any interference he provides only muddies the waters and taints what would otherwise be a gripping piece of metaphysical film criticism. His neurotic rambling and personal anecdotes cloud an otherwise reasonable story.

If he wasn’t in it, if we could read Zampano’s manuscript directly, WE would be able to understand the truth. We would get it completely, and we wouldn’t have to encounter so much violence, so much miserable graphic detail. It would be a better story.

And fuck it, if we didn’t have to read all of Zampano’s tangents and analyses and interpretations, if we could just find a copy of the famous “five-and-a-half minute hallway” vhs, if we could SEE it, we’d understand. We wouldn’t need endless pontification of what Navidson and Karen’s marriage might entail, or recitations of what a director once said in a Rolling Stones article. We’d see the hallway itself, stretching out into what should be the backyard, and we’d get it. Hell, Zampano is blind in his old age. He can’t even watch the damn movie! But we could. We’d know instantly, the second we saw it. The impossibility of it, the gravity of it, the weight of that dark abyss.

And well, the VHS recording is a little dark, and the quality is poor, and maybe the white balance isn’t so perfect. And actually, VHs tapes could be manipulated. We can’t be sure that Navidson isn’t just using clever videography tricks to invent a hallway. If we were there, if we found the house (it’s in virginia, isn’t it? we even have the address). If we GO there, we could look down that hallway. And it’s dark, so if we just brought a flashlight, maybe took a few steps inside-

[blueheartbooks]

A Review of "The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries" by Thomas Taylor

"The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries" is an illuminating journey into the heart of ancient Greek religious practices, meticulously explored and vividly presented by the renowned philosopher and translator, Thomas Taylor. This dissertation, complemented by the evocative illustrations of A. L. Rawson, takes readers on a profound exploration of the mystical rituals that shaped the spiritual landscape of ancient Greece.

Thomas Taylor's scholarly expertise in Neoplatonism and his unwavering dedication to preserving the wisdom of the past shine brilliantly in this work. Through his meticulous translation and commentary, Taylor unveils the enigmatic rites and ceremonies of the Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries, providing readers with a window into the spiritual world of ancient Greece.

One of the most remarkable aspects of Taylor's work is his ability to convey the deep spiritual significance of these ancient rituals. He delves into the symbolism, mythology, and metaphysical underpinnings of the Mysteries, revealing how they were designed to facilitate personal transformation and spiritual enlightenment. Taylor's profound insights into the mysteries' inner workings give readers a profound understanding of their purpose and significance.

The accompanying illustrations by A. L. Rawson add another layer of richness to this dissertation. Rawson's artistry brings to life the mystical and mythological elements of the rituals, making the ancient world tangible and captivating. These illustrations serve as a visual guide, enhancing the reader's comprehension and engagement with the material.

"The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries" is not merely a historical account but a spiritual odyssey. It invites readers to contemplate the enduring relevance of these ancient practices in the modern world. Taylor's work inspires us to reflect on the importance of initiation, transformation, and the quest for spiritual truth.

In conclusion, "The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries" is a masterpiece of scholarship and spiritual insight. Thomas Taylor's dedication to preserving the wisdom of antiquity and his ability to convey its profound significance make this dissertation an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the spiritual and mystical traditions of ancient Greece. A. L. Rawson's illustrations add a visually captivating dimension to this already enlightening work. It is a must-read for seekers of wisdom, scholars, and those fascinated by the mysteries of the past.

"The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries" by Thomas Taylor is available in Amazon in paperback 13.99$ and hardcover 19.99$ editions.

Length of the Book: 184 pages

Language: English

Rating 8/10

Link of the book!

Review by King's Cat

[hoozukis]

This!

A proper analysis of a fictional media piece must discern it within the contextual scope of that fictional universe; not by forcing puritanical Tumblr echo chamber’s modern wokeisms onto other complex space-times that are fundamentally different from our own continuum, and insisting everyone else must rigorously adhere to one’s personal beliefs lest they be stamped Utterly Evil!™

Fictional laws, moralities, ethics, traditions, values, beliefs, social expectations and behaviours, and sociocultural anthropology in general can and should exist in fiction. Use a little bit of imagination. This make-believe stuff will be much more fun if we do.

Hating Dumbledore is nonsense, it is like thinking only the main character must have the intelligence and skills to defeat the villain. Dumbledore was a necessary character to guide Harry, who was completely away from that world when everything started. It is non sense to think a mentor is the one who has to fight against the villain because "they are powerful enough to do it and it is irresponsable to let a kid do it". In that case, why would the saga's name be HARRY POTTER?

[txttletale]

i've gotten asks a few times on like 'how to do ''fantasy races'' without. like. just making race science true in the world'. and i think there's three approaches. the first is harkening back to tolkein and making it clear through framing device or format/tonal cues that you are writing in a mythic register--that you are writing about a world where the basic premises of positivism and empiricism simply aren't true. a world where 'biology' is like, not necessarily a salient premise--where there are things that just cannot be understood. (that's not to say that tolkein's orcs werent v. racialised in v. nasty ways--but it wasn't race science in the way a lot of more modern fantasy is.)

the second way i think is to go and actually understand the history of 'race' as a concept. 'race' has not always existed--it was an ideological invention birthed from / alongisde the enlightmenent and imposed onto populations through military force. in real life, it's less helpful to conceive of 'race' as an attribute someone has and and more as a relationship they have to society. so if you want to actually include scientific racism in your story as an element of your worldbuilding and not something decalred epistemologically true you should be thinking about why these people have been racialized and under what hegemonic paradigm--who, in-universe, invented & enforces the racial classification system that distinguishes between 'human' and 'orc' as taxonomic characters?

the third and final way is to simply think of the traits you understand as belonging to ''fantasy races'' (say, pointy ears and exceptional nimbleness and hundred-year lifespans for elves) as instead just being... more variations in the way people can be. like, in the real world, we do not consider 'tall people' or 'blonde people' or 'myopic people' a different species. in a world where sometimes people have wings or pointed ears or green skin, why should that be different? you've just introduced new types of variation within the population of people--you've just expanded the meaning of human. and of course, right, you can still roughly group these features, or note that some of them are more frequent in some ethnic groups--in much the same way as saying 'on average, people in sweden are taller, paler, and more likely to be blonde and blue-eyed', you can say 'people in these forests tend to be shorter and live longer and have pointed ears'--without having a hard taxonomy that classifies all these attributes as metaphysically different Types Of Person

obviously these are all very different approaches--and there are probably other ways to handle this too! i just get this question a lot whenever i do Orc Discourse and finally felt like getting these thoughts out. there are so so so many places we can take fantasy--let's move the horizon beyond 'magical race science' and imagine genuinely new worlds

[psychotrenny]

Tumblr users are so comically obsessed with Standpoint Epistemology. Like people will compulsively preface their statements with like "Speaking as XYZ" even when it's completely irrelevant or actively discredits them. The whole "speaking as someone who has killed a pedestrian with my car" thing was just an especially ridiculous manifestation of this trend

And like this sort of fixation around reaching correctness through merely existing as the right sort of person explains many of the more useless and cynical distortions of social justice you see whenever a tumblr discourse turns in that direction. It's why we see a lot of "oppression olympics" type behaviour, as in the sort of pointless and idealist arguments about what category of person is more metaphysically oppressed (in contrast to actually useful comparisons of the differing material conditions that various groups face); if being oppressed by a system automatically grants you unimpeachable insight into it then clearly the more oppressed you are the more correct you are. It's also why people feel the need to fake their oppression, on either an individual (i.e. racefaking) or group (i.e. tranandrophobia*) level; even if you're not actually oppressed enough to be automatically correct, pretending you are is a great way to win arguments regardless. In turns that leads to baseless projection of privilege onto others (i.e. all the tumblr users who accuse POC of being white purely for disagreeing with them; sometimes involving active claims of racefaking but often just ignoring their marginalised status altogether); if someone's more oppressed then you that might mean they're more correct than you and we can't be having that.

This sort of thinking highly counter-productive and yet it's everywhere. Sadly many people are more interested in self-gratification than actually understanding and improving the world, and as long as they're socially enabled they'll keep abusing progressive language to this end. Very miserable indeed

*transandrophobia rhetoric is especially revealing in this regard because like TME trans people are indeed marginalised by transphobia. But to stop there would force them to acknowledge the basic fact that transfems are especially marginalised by the intersection of transphobia and misogyny, which makes it a little more inconvenient to socially murder us while maintaining a veneer of progressiveness. So they have to make up their own special brand of oppression to make it clear that they have it worse (and therefore are more righteous and pure) than those awful male-socialised trannies

[somerabbitholes]

do you have any book or essay recs that are eye-opening or ones that challenges your thought process if u get what I mean

100%, here is writing that shifted something inside me:

Books

Figuring by Maria Popova: about how genius and creativity is a human project; she looks at all these ways in which ideas connect with each other; the book is just a really beautiful exploration of how the search for truth and beauty is a human project. She also runs a blog which is very good

The Lonely City by Olivia Laing has forever changed how I think about loneliness for the better, and I can only hope to have something as beautiful to say someday

Invisible Women by Caroline C Perez: I'm putting this here more because it could put in numbers and quantify the levels of gender disparity, and to my mind, give a sharper edge to the conversation that was feeling very abstract and theoretical to me

Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellman: this is a difficult read, mostly because the book is a 1,000-page stream of consciousness that is basically one long sentence. I loved it, and at the end of it I remember going wow, you thought this book up

A similar feeling came from reading The Indian Ideology by Perry Anderson, but I want to point out that this is a book that requires a reasonable level of familiarity with the discourse on secularism, democracy and social justice in India

The Tribe by Carlos Manuel Alvarez: essays, part-memoir, part-notes from journalism, about Cuba in the 2010s and especially after Castro died. It was such an excellent glimpse into what living during and through this shadow of the Cold War could be like

I'm currently reading Second-Hand Time by Svetlana Alexievich, which does a similar thing with Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union and until the mid-2010s. It's very very interesting and heartbreaking and emotive and informative all at once seeing how the Russian people thought about the end of the Cold War

Essays (there are definitely more, but I’m the worst at remembering names)

Geographies of knowing, geographies of ignorance by Willem van Schendel

The Trouble with Wilderness by William Cronon

Marrying Libraries by Anne Fadiman (if this is not what love is, I don't want it)

Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical by John Rawls

Fences by Zadie Smith (I read this in her collection, Feel Free but I think you can find it online too)

[mesetacadre]

Hey do you think you could watch and give your throughts on youtuber Jonas Čeika video "marx was not a statist"?

Thank you

Quite honestly, the title alone already betrays some amount of anarchist metaphysics, the concept of stateism is a purely idealist notion which only works if you are a liberal about authority. But regardless, I still watched the full thing.

The video starts with a very semantic-focused discourse on how marx never used "socialism" to mean the lower phase of communism, and way too much time on the terms transitionary period/DotP as if they weren't two terms that refer to the same thing. In the case of socialism/lower phase of communism, I think he's obfuscating. He focuses the discussion on whether Marx used a certain term in the same way we do now. This would be like spending a good 5 minutes of a video presenting, with an almost accusatory disposition against modern communists, how the bolsheviks called themselves social-democrats, pretending like the terms haven't simply evolved. He promises an "active engagement with marxist theory" and he starts by arguing semantics. He even acknowledges this possible criticism, but you also then have to defend why that criticism is not valid, instead he acts like merely acknowledging it will make that criticism invalid. I'm also spending this time on this specific point because, later, he also forgets how Marx used the word "socialism".

When he does define the lower stage of communism, he engages in a very mechanic and economicist view, with the simple train of thought: No money (replaced with vouchers) > no capital to accumulate > no classes > no state. I think that just by asking how these vouchers will be regulated and how access to wealth restricted to the use of those vouchers, the conclusion that the substitution of money necessarily leads through that chain to the disappearance of the state becomes, very transparently, downright infantile.

In his point about how the Paris Commune changed Marx's view on the state, he cites excerpts in a very misleading way. The whole point starts by pointing out that, in the preface to the 1872 edition, the experience of the Paris Commune led Marx and Engels to the following analysis: "...the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes". This, along with a disregard of the importance of the specific policy points they outlined in the manifesto, and the importance of absolute centralization, means to him that Marx and Engels, actually, completely disregarded the use of the state on the road to communism. To quote Lenin: "Listen, comrade from Tiflis, one may prevaricate, but one should know the limit...."

What the video doesn't directly address (and although he talks about the text extensively, It's important to cite ideas where they actually come from), is that this quote, although it appeared in the 1872 edition of the manifesto, comes from Civil War in France, a longer text on the Paris Commune. This is a more complete context of that quote that the video never gives [ID in alt text]

That quote is the beginning of a chapter in which Marx describes how the Paris Commune governed itself, and how it broke with the series of revolts that happened throughout the period of feudalism, how the class character of the Commune marked it as the significant event that it is. It is true that the Commune's aspirations for the entire world was for its form to be replicated even in the smallest hamlet, and it may even be true that this influenced Marx to generally reject centralization of the state. However, what the breadtuber obviates throughout the entire video, is that a small state is still a state, and furthermore, that revolutionary strategy is not dictated by what is right or wrong, but by what can be done to advance the cause of the emancipation of the working class. It is one thing to reject the state outright, and another very different thing to acknowledge that it is necessary to take control of the state to emancipate the working class, even if you abstractly oppose the concept of a state. Not only to take control of the state, which is the point of the original quote, it is necessary to create our own worker's state, in whichever form it best suits the concrete reality: "the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes". Jonas says that the proletariat should, instead, create "radically democratic working class institutions". These gentlemen think that when they have changed the names of things they have changed the things themselves.

Instead of understanding that point, he goes even further. Jonas has understood that, by praising the measures taken by the Paris Commune (which, let's remember, failed after two months!), Marx and Engels began to believe that "[the state] is by nature bourgeois". Maybe Jonas started reading Bakunin instead of Marx without realizing, this is perhaps the most liberal and historically illiterate portion of the 30+ minute video essay. Again, comrade from breadtube, one may prevaricate, but one should know the limit. In fact, Marx even says in the same text being discussed: "It is generally the fate of completely new historical creations to be mistaken for the counterparts of older, and even defunct, forms of social life, to which they may bear a certain likeness". The irony needn't be explained.

As if Jonas hadn't misconstrued the text and Marx enough, he shows the quote: "... although there is nothing socialist in them except their tendency...". At first I was unable to find this specific quote in Civil War in France, not in any chapter nor in the footnotes. As it turns out, this quote is not from Civil War in France, as Jonas so succinctly cites it, but from the draft of the text. First, it's simply dishonest to cite such a cherrypicked line from a draft and passing it off as something Marx published.

There might be a myriad of possible reasons why this idea did not make it into the final text, but in order for the audience to correctly follow along, it's necessary for them to know where an idea comes from. Beyond this, which I find misleading enough, the video makes the point that with this line, Marx is clearly differentiating between a dictatorship of the proletariat and socialism. But hang on, didn't Jonas spend the first 5 minutes of the video explaining that, in the times of Marx, socialism was understood to be a reformist and petit-bourgeois stance? So, then, how could this out of context, unpublished line be Marx making a distinction between lower-phase communism and the dictatorship of the proletariat? This is the phrase's context [ID in alt text]:

The actual point of this portion is not even related to what Jonas makes it out to be. Here, using "socialist" as another name for utopians, Marx makes the distinction between previous movements of utopians, those socialist sects, and the Paris Commune, because even though their goals, the emancipation of labor, may appear similar, there is nothing socialist [utopian] in them because their means are not utopian, but the beginnings of scientific communism. So, then, not only did Jonas go back on the first point of the video to dunk on the evil stalinists, and not only did he completely remove the context of a phrase by failing to cite properly, but he also failed to even understand the points made in the text he's cherrypicking. Is this what passes for "active engaging with marxist texts" in breadtube?

After this portion, which I still consider the better half of the video, he veers into talking about socialism in one country, first by, again, very blatantly removing important parts of the texts he talks about. The quote he shows, from Principles of Communism, is as follows: "Will it be possible for this revolution to take place in one country alone? No. By creating the world market, big industry has already brought all the peoples of the Earth [...] into such close relation with one another that none is independent of what happens to the others [...] It follows that the communist revolution will not merely be a national phenomenon but must take place simultaneously in all civilized countries [...] It is a universal revolution and will, accordingly, have a universal range." It is true that Engels states that communist revolutions cannot be confined to the national scale, but those ommissions hide a lot of nuance that is very relevant to discussing Marx and Engels' positions on the national/international question. This is the full quote [ID in alt text]:

Marx and Engels were unable to completely and correctly analyze the imperialist form of capitalism, which hadn't yet fully crystallized, economically speaking. According to them, since capitalism was the most developed in places like England or France, the proletariat was also more developed, and the socialist revolution would happen first in these places, and propagate outwards. This notion was proved false by both theory (Lenin's imperialism) and by practice. Lenin identified that, as imperialism settled down as the highest stage of capitalism, the imperialist chain could only be broken at the weakest link, which was Russia at the time. I'm insisting on Lenin's theories because Jonas also claims Lenin to the "not statist" camp, and the video very quickly loses any originality by defaulting to the narrative of Stalin betraying Marx and Lenin by rejecting the world-wide revolution in the short-medium term as a pre-requisite for the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat. I think that going more in depth into this will only make this response unnecessary longer, but to end it, I think it's apt to end with a Lenin quote which directly refutes this anti-Lenin betrayal notion:

A United States of the World (not of Europe alone) is the state form of the unification and freedom of nations which we associate with socialism—about the total disappearance of the state, including the democratic. As a separate slogan, however, the slogan of a United States of the World would hardly be a correct one, first, because it merges with socialism; second, because it may be wrongly interpreted to mean that the victory of socialism in a single country is impossible, and it may also create misconceptions as to the relations of such a country to the others.

Uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism. Hence, the victory of socialism is possible first in several or even in one capitalist country alone. After expropriating the capitalists and organising their own socialist production, the victorious proletariat of that country will arise against the rest of the world—the capitalist world—attracting to its cause the oppressed classes of other countries, stirring uprisings in those countries against the capitalists, and in case of need using even armed force against the exploiting classes and their states. The political form of a society wherein the proletariat is victorious in overthrowing the bourgeoisie will be a democratic republic, which will more and more concentrate the forces of the proletariat of a given nation or nations, in the struggle against states that have not yet gone over to socialism. The abolition of classes is impossible without a dictatorship of the oppressed class, of the proletariat. A free union of nations in socialism is impossible without a more or less prolonged and stubborn  struggle of the socialist republics against the backward states.

On the Slogan for a United States of Europe, V. I. Lenin (1915)

Overall, I think this video lacks any kind of rigor or respect for the texts discussed. Citations are pretty predominantly misleading or incomplete in some way, he extrapolates fantastical ideas from texts he doesn't appear to understand, and more in general, the way the video is concienved reeks of dogmatism, the arguments overwhelmingly boil down to "Marx said this (according to me), so it must be true". There is no actual engagement with texts, but there isn't even a will to engage with history. Marxism does not end with Marx and Engels, it's a philosophical and political framework that extends beyond the gospel of incomplete quotes. Even if Marx and Engels really did believe such anti-materialist ideas as "the state is bourgeois by nature", it would not change the facts that the history and experiences after the Paris Commune should also have weight in order to reach conclusions.

[gothhabiba]

thinking about that round of discourse a while back when a bunch of people insisted that there was some kind of psychological, spiritual, or otherwise metaphysical difference between "real" lesbians, and women who were only open to dating and/or having sex with women but still "experienced attraction to men" on some purely theoretical level