They’re called realists and they’re everything wrong with society. We need to kill the idea of objective reality and to push everyone to choose their subjective worldview based on their own wants and needs, not society’s.
Wow, that’s… not quite what I meant. The goal isn’t to reject objective reality, it’s to question how we define it and who gets to decide what counts as “real.” Pushing people to explore their own perspectives is one thing, but encouraging pure solipsism just replaces one dogma with another. Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater, yeah?
There is no compromising with an ideology that is inherently uncompromising in nature. It’s the paradox of tolerance. Realists will never make room for experiences that defy their idea of objective reality. If they did, they wouldn’t be realists. That’s why in order to create room for everyone’s experiences and freedom, we must destroy consensus reality. We need to kill objectivism in order to have a subjective multiverse with free exchange of ideas. Realists violate that social contract.
If objective reality doesn’t exist, then your definition of ‘subjective’ is just a consensus-based hallucination you inherited from your own comfort. How do you know your ‘multiverse’ isn’t just a realist’s cage you haven’t recognized yet? Your own argument destroys the premise upon which it rests. Also, what if my subjective experience includes what I would characterize as objective reality? You would be imposing your own definition on to me, again destroying your own premise.
Alright, well I’m happy to engage with that. I know it’s not a realist’s cage because I’m actively maintaining My subjective world and making choices about what to believe on a daily and weekly and yearly basis. I’m being an active agent in a way that realists don’t. They let society tell them what is objectively true. I don’t care about that, I’m asking Myself what is useful to believe.
Without the fancy jargon, the argument is “All people must be free to do whatever they want (the paradox part they don’t say out loud is: except form a consensus)”
If you resolve the paradox, what you’re left with is exactly the same world we have now: everyone is free to do exactly what they want, including forming a consensus (that may restrict the freedom of the individual)
It’s a philosophical sleight of hand that’s easy to hide in grandiose and virtuous rhetoric. I’ve seen it often from the Libertarian Right, and I suspect so have others on Lemmy.
I recommend you check out analytic idealism instead:
Thank you! And very interesting, from My end it’s showing 4 upvotes and 4 downvotes. From your end is it showing a negative score? If so, I bet those votes come from instances we’ve defederated, because we don’t federate with realist instances like lemmy.ml. Those people over there are really big on objective reality, and we aren’t interested in arguing with them.
Anyway, sure thing! I wrote an antirealist manifesto which you can read at https://soulism.net/. But here’s the elevator pitch: You’re not a body, you’re a mind. You’re made of information, and so are your perceptions. So is the world you inhabit. Your subjective view of the world is a reconstruction, created from raw data by your brain. Babies don’t know how to do that, they have no idea what’s going on, they just see colours and shapes. You had to learn how to see objects, how to see a world. So what if you learned differently? What if you took the time to examine the way your perceptions are formed, and made conscious choices about how to do it? That is a thing that can be done, and the colloquial term for such is… magic. Rewriting reality through belief and perception. I would argue that we have an ethical duty to use magic to ensure we are perceiving the world in a way that is just. We need to be active agents in our subjective universe so that we can’t be manipulated into doing harm.
Our current consensus reality is heavily shaped by capitalist propaganda. If we achieve a material revolution but not a magical revolution, if we overthrow Capital but don’t destroy Capitalist Reality, then we’re going to reproduce the conditions of capitalism. That was one of the failures of the Soviet Union. The people in charge still thought like capitalists. They still believed that human nature was in conflict with the stateless classless utopia that Marx described as the future. The USSR leadership were believers in capitalist realism, as many Stalinists are today.
Humanity is a social construct and I want to spark a revolution that sees us move beyond it. I don’t think humanity is the “destiny” of our civilisation, I think we have a much greater potential for growth. I’m a transhumanist, and I think the mental is way bigger than the physical in that journey. I don’t think a realist can be a transhumanist in a meaningful way. Elon Musk is not transhumanist in a meaningful way. He’s very human, he’s very interested in continuing the human tradition of domination and exploitation. He’s a monkey that wants a bigger pile of bananas than all the other monkeys. I don’t think that’s the future. I think if we don’t grow beyond that, then we’re all going to die.
Yes, humanity needs a spiritual transformation of thought.
Marxists are materialists necessarily because it stems from a rejection of capitalism and private ownership. The vision of a classless communist society is extremely vague and put off to the far future.
Leftists often stay trapped in criticism, deconstruction, contrarianism. Anti- capitalism becomes an end unto itself. If the revolution is successful, revolution itself becomes a fetish.
Really? My perception of them has always been that they have a very strong belief in objective reality and are unwilling to entertain ideas of subjectivity. They often define themselves as materialists in a way that is less how Marx used the term and more how Dawkins would use it.
They’re called realists and they’re everything wrong with society. We need to kill the idea of objective reality and to push everyone to choose their subjective worldview based on their own wants and needs, not society’s.
Wow, that’s… not quite what I meant. The goal isn’t to reject objective reality, it’s to question how we define it and who gets to decide what counts as “real.” Pushing people to explore their own perspectives is one thing, but encouraging pure solipsism just replaces one dogma with another. Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater, yeah?
There is no compromising with an ideology that is inherently uncompromising in nature. It’s the paradox of tolerance. Realists will never make room for experiences that defy their idea of objective reality. If they did, they wouldn’t be realists. That’s why in order to create room for everyone’s experiences and freedom, we must destroy consensus reality. We need to kill objectivism in order to have a subjective multiverse with free exchange of ideas. Realists violate that social contract.
If objective reality doesn’t exist, then your definition of ‘subjective’ is just a consensus-based hallucination you inherited from your own comfort. How do you know your ‘multiverse’ isn’t just a realist’s cage you haven’t recognized yet? Your own argument destroys the premise upon which it rests. Also, what if my subjective experience includes what I would characterize as objective reality? You would be imposing your own definition on to me, again destroying your own premise.
Do you want to argue so that we can both learn from each other or do you want to argue so you can change My mind?
Neither. I just enjoy picking apart philosophical arguments.
Alright, well I’m happy to engage with that. I know it’s not a realist’s cage because I’m actively maintaining My subjective world and making choices about what to believe on a daily and weekly and yearly basis. I’m being an active agent in a way that realists don’t. They let society tell them what is objectively true. I don’t care about that, I’m asking Myself what is useful to believe.
How do you define what a realist cage is without being informed by objective reality?
Subjectively.
Yours is the most challenging and interesting reply to this post. Of course it‘s downvoted by the intellectual nepotism babies.
Could you elaborate a bit or share links for some reading?
Not really all that interesting. It’s just the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_paradox wearing the cape of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism
Without the fancy jargon, the argument is “All people must be free to do whatever they want (the paradox part they don’t say out loud is: except form a consensus)”
If you resolve the paradox, what you’re left with is exactly the same world we have now: everyone is free to do exactly what they want, including forming a consensus (that may restrict the freedom of the individual)
It’s a philosophical sleight of hand that’s easy to hide in grandiose and virtuous rhetoric. I’ve seen it often from the Libertarian Right, and I suspect so have others on Lemmy.
I recommend you check out analytic idealism instead:
https://philarchive.org/rec/KASAIA-3
Thank you! And very interesting, from My end it’s showing 4 upvotes and 4 downvotes. From your end is it showing a negative score? If so, I bet those votes come from instances we’ve defederated, because we don’t federate with realist instances like lemmy.ml. Those people over there are really big on objective reality, and we aren’t interested in arguing with them.
Anyway, sure thing! I wrote an antirealist manifesto which you can read at https://soulism.net/. But here’s the elevator pitch: You’re not a body, you’re a mind. You’re made of information, and so are your perceptions. So is the world you inhabit. Your subjective view of the world is a reconstruction, created from raw data by your brain. Babies don’t know how to do that, they have no idea what’s going on, they just see colours and shapes. You had to learn how to see objects, how to see a world. So what if you learned differently? What if you took the time to examine the way your perceptions are formed, and made conscious choices about how to do it? That is a thing that can be done, and the colloquial term for such is… magic. Rewriting reality through belief and perception. I would argue that we have an ethical duty to use magic to ensure we are perceiving the world in a way that is just. We need to be active agents in our subjective universe so that we can’t be manipulated into doing harm.
I was wondering, if you were referring to Soulism. I first encountered it, when a Soulist instance was announced.
What you’re saying jibes well with themes I know from psychology, therapy, and occultism.
Contrary to materialist Marxist victim thinking, soulism seems to empower the individual to change.
Our current consensus reality is heavily shaped by capitalist propaganda. If we achieve a material revolution but not a magical revolution, if we overthrow Capital but don’t destroy Capitalist Reality, then we’re going to reproduce the conditions of capitalism. That was one of the failures of the Soviet Union. The people in charge still thought like capitalists. They still believed that human nature was in conflict with the stateless classless utopia that Marx described as the future. The USSR leadership were believers in capitalist realism, as many Stalinists are today.
Humanity is a social construct and I want to spark a revolution that sees us move beyond it. I don’t think humanity is the “destiny” of our civilisation, I think we have a much greater potential for growth. I’m a transhumanist, and I think the mental is way bigger than the physical in that journey. I don’t think a realist can be a transhumanist in a meaningful way. Elon Musk is not transhumanist in a meaningful way. He’s very human, he’s very interested in continuing the human tradition of domination and exploitation. He’s a monkey that wants a bigger pile of bananas than all the other monkeys. I don’t think that’s the future. I think if we don’t grow beyond that, then we’re all going to die.
Yes, humanity needs a spiritual transformation of thought.
Marxists are materialists necessarily because it stems from a rejection of capitalism and private ownership. The vision of a classless communist society is extremely vague and put off to the far future.
Leftists often stay trapped in criticism, deconstruction, contrarianism. Anti- capitalism becomes an end unto itself. If the revolution is successful, revolution itself becomes a fetish.
lol no they aren’t
Really? My perception of them has always been that they have a very strong belief in objective reality and are unwilling to entertain ideas of subjectivity. They often define themselves as materialists in a way that is less how Marx used the term and more how Dawkins would use it.