Gee, Thanks America! U.S. Sanctions Make Russian Economy Stronger and Precipitate Multipolar World

Reply to Jason

Konstantin Yuon, ‘A New Planet,’ 1921. Tempera on cardboard, The Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

Jason: The notion that we once assumed that the earth was flat overall, could that be an example of truism? Kind of? In a relative way? A lesser truth or a partial one? In way, depending on how you view the earth, it remains flat. Our point of view, frame of reference and outlook all provide different ways of perceiving phenomena, so how can there be only one version of truth.

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Hi Jason,

My position is materialist. I therefore hold that truth, for it to be truth, must reflect objective reality and can and should be tested in the practice, inevitably within the limits of our knowledge.

Objective reality is driven by contradiction. That same contradiction can be seen in the deepening development of truth (e.g. from a flat to a spherical earth) which Lenin wrote, in On the Question of Dialectics, ‘grows on the living tree of living, fertile, genuine, powerful, omnipotent, objective, absolute human knowledge’ – specifically, the old notion of ‘truth’ competes and recedes as the new notion emerges.

The example of the truth of the earth being flat, replaced by the deeper truth of the earth being a sphere is a good example.

The shift in our thinking was gradual, reflecting developments in our knowledge and activity – in exploration, navigation and trade and particularly in the development of scientific enquiry and equipment for greater accuracy in recording and measuring etc.

Hegel wrote beautifully about this emergence of the new from the old and the tension between them, leading to a qualitative leap, regarding his mystical Spirit:

‘…it is not difficult to see that ours is a birth-time and a period of transition to a new era. Spirit has broken with the world it has hitherto inhabited and imagined, and is of a mind to submerge it in the past, and in the labour of its own transformation. Spirit is indeed never at rest but always engaged in moving forward. But just as the first breath drawn by a child after its long, quiet nourishment breaks the gradualness of merely quantitative growth – there is a qualitative leap, and the child is born – so likewise the Spirit in its formation matures slowly and quietly into its new shape, dissolving bit by bit the structure of its previous world, whose tottering state is only hinted at by isolated symptoms. The frivolity and boredom which unsettle the established order, the vague foreboding of something unknown, these are the heralds of approaching change. The gradual crumbling that left unaltered the face of the whole is cut short by a sunburst which, in one flash, illuminates the features of the new world.’

G.W.F.Hegel, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, Trans., A.V.Miller, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1977, 6-7

Cheers,

Phil

‘Humanity’s present concepts are susceptible to being supplanted by greater truths’ (it was once true that the earth is flat)

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap230604.html

The One Chart That Explains Everything — Desultory Heroics

Look at the chart above. The chart explains everything. By Mike Whitney Source: The Unz Review It explains why Washington is so worried about China’s explosive growth. It explains why the US continues to hector China on the issues of Taiwan and the South China Sea. It explains why Washington sends congressional delegations to Taiwan in […]

The One Chart That Explains Everything — Desultory Heroics

Change when there’s no climate

The world is nothing but matter in motion

Now that the ideological caravans of modernism and post-modernism have run out of steam, what next? Mysticism? But this is a very hot potato – for two reasons: the primary Western form – Neoplatonism – has been treated by generations of academics as the pornography of modern Western philosophy, even as its Siren call has been eagerly responded to, particularly by male philosophers, and its profound influence on their work dissembled about or denied. To explore mysticism in this regard threatens to undermine gods, expose ideologically motivated lies, damage careers and lay bare a cultural arrogance and self-delusion that we in the West are the champions of (the Man of) ‘Reason’ while others stare at their navels or are obsessed with filial piety and particularly, as Marx recognised, its contradictory core, now absorbed by him into materialism, is nothing but revolutionary. It rings the bell for the passing of all and everything but matter in motion itself – it speaks of a mobile infinity.

What is truth?

Tom Roberts, On the Goulburn River, 1927, oil on canvas

Truth is to say of what is that it is.

But what is the ‘is’ and by what method do we know and say it is?

Marx, Engels and Lenin showed that the ‘is’ is objective, for ever changing, prior to consciousness and, in truth, reflected by it.

We can never step into the same river twice.

Further, what is is driven by contradiction, the engine of Neoplatonic dialectics, developed by Hegel and recognised by the materialist Marx, in the highest yet one-sided development of that philosophical current initiated by Plotinus, as the engine of the world.

To discern the truth is to develop our reason not abstractly but by passing from living perception to abstract thought and then from this to testing the product of that thought in practice.

Ideology – a system of belief delimited by the interests of the most powerful – is the ever-present foe of reason.

To speak the truth is to dialectically reflect in an ever-deepening manner – it was once true that the world is flat – objective reality.

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This is how nature works – infinite power and a unity of contradictions

NGC 3314: When Galaxies OIverlap

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The Empire Does Not Forgive — Desultory Heroics

The Americans, like the British and the Soviets before them, dug their own graveyard in Afghanistan. By Chris Hedges Source: ScheerPost.com The Carthaginian general Hannibal, who came close to defeating the Roman Republic in the Second Punic War, committed suicide in 181 BC in exile as Roman soldiers closed in on his residence in the […]

The Empire Does Not Forgive — Desultory Heroics

Reply to all those who put the determinations of consciousness before those of objective reality and fail to understand the relationship between the two

Biden, Johnson and what’s ‘is name from down under

I listened to the 1st 1/2 hr of the video and pulled the plug – the level of ‘ideas’ was so unrelentingly stupid. Not once in that 1/2 hr did either White (for whom I used to have some respect) or the thug and standover merchant Mearsheimer use the words ‘capitalism’ and ‘socialism’ – they spoke of everything but. Another word they didn’t use is ‘necessity’ – the engine of the world. It was necessary that capitalism emerge from feudalism – nothing could stop it. And it is necessary that forms of socialism will replace capitalism. Again, nothing can stop it. Engels wrote to a friend in the US (I have posted on it) that the US would have to become socialist in order to compete with China. Similarly, Europe will become socialist as will that fearful, utterly servile nation Australia. These things will happen not because I like socialism or hate capitalism but because I recognise what necessity is and how it functions. You were born, will age and die. So was and will I. And the working of necessity goes on…

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