Respectfully, I do understand it, I am just not familiar with that particular model of metaphysical thinking, as I am only particularly familiar with Hume, Kant and Hegel’s versions of metaphysics, not with whatever flavor of dichotomy modern Western thinkers have cooked up.
I never said people who care about it are stupid. I just hold the opinion that metaphysics and metaphysical discourse is a dead letter. Proving the particular from the particular is difficult enough, proving a universal based on a series of particulars is practically speaking impossible. In terms of leftist thinking trying to approach it from a metaphysical angle is not particularly Marxist, and I have serious doubts around it’s efficacy as theory.
Like, sure, I can agree that an Augustinian framework places itself as more of a structural concern related to order, and that framing a leftist movement as bringing about order could potentially be useful, but I don’t think it really means anything that different outside of purely a rhetorical shift. There are plenty of actual particular historical events and accounts that point to the need for construction among the ruthless criticism of all that exists. No need to bring in a larger metaphysical framework.
is not particularly Marxist
Marx wrote extensively about metaphysics. The whole discussion of dialectical materialism vs historical materialism is a metaphysical debate. Also you’re treating Marxism as metaphysical dogma: we can evolve from a 150-year-old idea of world and history, you know? Especially since it’s failing to deliver big times in the West.
No need to bring in a larger metaphysical framework.
Same argument as before: whatever we used so far paralyzed us and made us weaker and the results are clear. Most of the metaphysical framework employed by the traditional left is paralyzing, disempowering, and on top of that stuck into an idea of “modernity” that has been dying for a while. The far-right took note modernity is over and this enabled them to operate in ways that the Left fails even to process, let alone to imitate. The indigenous people of a good part of the world always rejected modernist metaphysics and are now free to produce more interesting theory, practices and struggles than most of the Global North. China is its own thing.
The 20th century is over and the world has changed. Any ecosystem achieving meaningful political results employs an anti-modern metaphysical framework. Maybe it’s worth considering that there might be a problem with the modernist, teleological, reductionist 19th-century framework you operate in.
Oh goody, overbroad generalization of ideology with nothing actually new to offer, my favorite!
And what has actually been accomplished within this ‘anti-modern’ framework? Are indigenous people any closer to realizing actual sovereignty using these new anti modern frameworks? Or did we not just witness a genocide of the indigenous which none of the perpetrators will ever be brought to justice?
More importantly, how does abandoning a modern materialist framework help indigenous cause, especially when a large degree of what modern indigenous sovereignty exists is based in the embrace and use of those materialist lens, particularly in the revolutions of the mid 20th century.
The world hasn’t fundamentally changed, the historical forces that existed in the 19th still exist in the 21st, they just have intensified and calcified to make them feel permanent, in the same way monarchy felt permanent in the 16th century.
You are mistaking overwhelming material structural disadvantage as a problem of ideological framing. You can’t just shift your way of thinking and it will suddenly go away and not be a problem.
“stuff I don’t understand is worthless and people who care about it are stupid”. Sure, bro.
Respectfully, I do understand it, I am just not familiar with that particular model of metaphysical thinking, as I am only particularly familiar with Hume, Kant and Hegel’s versions of metaphysics, not with whatever flavor of dichotomy modern Western thinkers have cooked up.
I never said people who care about it are stupid. I just hold the opinion that metaphysics and metaphysical discourse is a dead letter. Proving the particular from the particular is difficult enough, proving a universal based on a series of particulars is practically speaking impossible. In terms of leftist thinking trying to approach it from a metaphysical angle is not particularly Marxist, and I have serious doubts around it’s efficacy as theory.
Like, sure, I can agree that an Augustinian framework places itself as more of a structural concern related to order, and that framing a leftist movement as bringing about order could potentially be useful, but I don’t think it really means anything that different outside of purely a rhetorical shift. There are plenty of actual particular historical events and accounts that point to the need for construction among the ruthless criticism of all that exists. No need to bring in a larger metaphysical framework.
Same argument as before: whatever we used so far paralyzed us and made us weaker and the results are clear. Most of the metaphysical framework employed by the traditional left is paralyzing, disempowering, and on top of that stuck into an idea of “modernity” that has been dying for a while. The far-right took note modernity is over and this enabled them to operate in ways that the Left fails even to process, let alone to imitate. The indigenous people of a good part of the world always rejected modernist metaphysics and are now free to produce more interesting theory, practices and struggles than most of the Global North. China is its own thing.
The 20th century is over and the world has changed. Any ecosystem achieving meaningful political results employs an anti-modern metaphysical framework. Maybe it’s worth considering that there might be a problem with the modernist, teleological, reductionist 19th-century framework you operate in.
Oh goody, overbroad generalization of ideology with nothing actually new to offer, my favorite!
And what has actually been accomplished within this ‘anti-modern’ framework? Are indigenous people any closer to realizing actual sovereignty using these new anti modern frameworks? Or did we not just witness a genocide of the indigenous which none of the perpetrators will ever be brought to justice?
More importantly, how does abandoning a modern materialist framework help indigenous cause, especially when a large degree of what modern indigenous sovereignty exists is based in the embrace and use of those materialist lens, particularly in the revolutions of the mid 20th century.
The world hasn’t fundamentally changed, the historical forces that existed in the 19th still exist in the 21st, they just have intensified and calcified to make them feel permanent, in the same way monarchy felt permanent in the 16th century.
You are mistaking overwhelming material structural disadvantage as a problem of ideological framing. You can’t just shift your way of thinking and it will suddenly go away and not be a problem.