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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   28802 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 21, 2025

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I'm still a bit unclear on whether you think increasingly efficient production is a good in and of itself,

I used to, but I do not anymore. Increasing efficiency is still pretty close to a primary goal, though.

However its a prerequisite to many, MANY good things. Some of those things result in less efficient use of resources, however (broadly speaking, leisure/leisure activities).

What kinds of other things?

Have they invented the wheel yet? If so, lot of things they can work on with wheel tech available.

If not, it slightly increases the odds of someone stumbling upon that invention.

That's closer to my conception (contra Hegel et. al) of how society ends up improving changing.

What if we could hypothetically assume an eternal universe? What then?

From my perspective, seems obvious: develop tech as close to immortality as you can, then go travel around to see all you can see that's out there. Unless we can mathematically prove that we'll eventually saturate our desire for 'fun' and novelty, and we can't augment those desires, seems like one can make good use of eternity tooling around the galaxies looking for cool stuff.

If we start talking like "the best man is the one who sires the most children", then all we've done is smuggle the same language of marketplace efficiency into a new domain.

I kind of use it in the broad sense of "there exist some people who can trace their genetic background to you (and beyond) and thus will acknowledge your existence long after you're gone."

Add in some sci-fi, and it becomes "you have descendants who might be interested enough in stuff that happened in your lifetime to run a simulation of you, assuming they can't resurrect you directly."

I dunno, I'm not trying to impose my terminal values on everyone else. To the extent people have different terminal values, increasing the amount of energy and resources available to people, and increase the efficiency with which we use them means more people can chase their preferred terminal values without stepping on each other's toes/inciting conflicts.

As I asked, what use does Marxism have on offer for any rational human being, other than perhaps allowing incisive critiques of the flaws in a Capitalist system which we can then try to address and fix within said system?

All the stuff I'm suggesting up there are achievable within Capitalism.

Increasing efficiency is still pretty close to a primary goal, though.

Pretty close? Is there anything closer?

You may have an answer, or you may not. It's fine to say you're not sure.

develop tech as close to immortality as you can, then go travel around to see all you can see that's out there.

Wouldn't this just be the sort of pursuit of pleasure/leisure that you've been criticizing? Or do you not see it that way?

As I asked, what use does Marxism have on offer for any rational human being, other than perhaps allowing incisive critiques of the flaws in a Capitalist system which we can then try to address and fix within said system?

I'm much more interested in the way you think about value than the way you think about Marxism.

Given the quality of your questions, I'm really interested in the way you think about value

What is valuable to you?

I believe I value multiple things, as one might expect. But I suppose if I had to put my "highest" value in as concrete terms as possible, it would be "that which pays respect to the mystery":

"[Object a] represents God. Object a is the unsymbolized object-cause-of-desire. [This position] is fundamentally unknowing, fundamentally hysterical [in the precise Lacanian sense] because at the very core of his position is an unsayable, unknowable mystery. Christ is the barred subject, because Christ goes, 'my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' And this is why it's beyond theism and atheism, because technically object a doesn't exist, right? But let's say it's the unsymbolizable real.

"It confronts the congregation to create knowledge. I want to create a church where the liturgy is hysterical. Where the liturgy embraces doubt, complexity, unknowing, and mystery in the music, in the art, in the ritual, in the sermons. You, the congregation, kind of without knowing it, we have an ideology. We have an ideology of wholeness and completeness. We would be confronted by an hysteric discourse that causes us to rethink and generate new ideas and we start to enjoy not knowing. We start to enjoy the process of life itself. And what sustains this entire project is a fundamental ontological mystery."

(I recommend listening to the whole video if you have time, it's really quite lovely.)

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