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ViolentViolets wrote

Ayn Rand. I obviously didn't buy any of her ideas but Atlas Shrugged was the most boring, awful book ever and it was a waste of time

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Ennui wrote

Most of the stuff by the Invisible Committee. It was nice as a history lesson (I had no prior interaction with the revolts/struggles they focused on), but it had virtually no influence on me.

If I were forced to read Kropotkin again, I would regret it now.

A good half of the existentialists. Especially the white ones.

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0thinternational wrote

Whats wrong with kropotkin?

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Ennui wrote

Kropotkin's not all bad. I regret reading the Conquest of Bread because it's so horrifically outdated, and nowadays I lean towards market anarchism or anti-civ.

When I wrote this 8 months ago for some reason I gave a shit, which I no longer do.

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Dumai OP wrote

e.g. i spent a long time believing marxist dialectics were phallogocentric/latently sexist because of luce irigaray

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LostYonder wrote (edited )

Sartre - takes you in circles

Bourdieu - ultimately just bourgeois leftism

Habermas - same - bourgeois leftism

I don't regret engaging the subaltern school, but it got stuck in the colonial critique and never really matured

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_caspar_ wrote

"I don't regret engaging the subaltern school, but it got stuck in the colonial critique and never really matured"

Im only vaguely aware of this school, but I wonder if theres anyone coming from this field of study who has ditched Marx's agents-of-history calling for sociopolitical integration of the subaltern and taken up a more anti-civ or anarchistic approach instead?

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LostYonder wrote

Not that I'm aware of - most of them chose high paying academic positions in the US and have been pacified. There were a few budding ones in India, but they were murdered early on for taking activist roles. Perhaps in Latin America there are some who have translated it into a more critical perspective, but I'm unaware.

In general there has been a rise of critical decolonization theory which takes on a more anti-civ perspective, but it seems mostly piecemeal...

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kin wrote

Carl Marks

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MHC wrote

I regret reading from The Anarchist Library! That's not because its contents were or weren't any good. But rather because they were treated as being the Holy Gospel of Saint Egoist of Anarchy.I was condemned for using critical reflection. And I got denounced for having an emotional reaction. Rather, this exercise amounted to the surgical extraction of my brain! I was not permitted to be the individual owner of life experience and subjective response. I learned instead that Anarchism was a book religion, promulgated by an unquestionable Holy Church hierarchy!

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Fool wrote

I was condemned for using critical reflection

What were you reading on there?

Most of what I read on there is literally about critical reflection (in different language).

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MHC wrote

For example there was a dude who reckoned that science didn't exist. Reckoning you could float up out of your chair like an astronaut on the space station!

And despite being computer-illiterate--he had the gall to write about the Internet!

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Fool wrote

It's a library, there are thousands of authors so it seems a bit much to dismiss all of it based on one author.

I think there's probably missing context to those statements, so it's hard to say exactly if the statements were literal or figurative, to know if their ideas should be dismissed.

A lot of science is just as much based on belief as many religions, with popular hypothesis being taken in as science without much backing and other hypothesis being disregarded. Research is often created without any factual underpinning in order to create a certain perspective for the people funding it. More thorough research is often disregarded as they're unable to pay the fees to be published in the prestigious journals which dictate "Science". As such, "Science" could be treated the same as any religion when it is unable to provide tangible proof. This is not all areas, but more a about not trusting something just because it was called Science.

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MHC wrote

"Nature has no laws." So no physics, chemistry, biology, geology etc. Taken in as holy gospel by arts types! I asked a molecular biologist about unreproducible publications. "Everybody does it" was his reply! Technically it's not science until someone else tests the claims. But there's no funding for validation studies. Thus national health budgets get wasted for decades on bogus "miracle cures"!

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Fool wrote

Yes, exactly. There is a midpoint in most things that needs to be reached.

Critical Reflection is a good example of this, Social Work is a profession built on knowledge through direct experience and reflection on this - as there is no way to quantify this type of knowledge, practices are written off as unscientific, and overruled by "scientific" practices often based on coercive studies which only cover the issues rather than address them.

Nature has no laws

I take this in as not so much that there is no physics, etc. but that the "rules" we have for these things are only approximations based on observations made in regards to these things. ie. This information assists us in understanding these things, and predicting the outcomes, but the fact that certain observations contradict each other shows that these observations are not hard "laws" of how things much react. Take the example of General Relativity vs Quantum physics, both work but conflict in regards to how things work.

Of course people have trouble not taking these ideas as simple yes or no, there is a grey area of possibility, and often things fall in here.

I would also bring up the concept of astral projection - a person's consciousness leaving their physical body. Science says it's not real, but many people believe in it, and the construction of certain pre-historic monuments only make sense if people were able to view the landscape while flying. This may be what they were discussing with people rising from chairs, as such it is not inconsistent with "laws of nature", as the physical body did not fly, but an entity in a non-physical dimension (they call it the 5th dimension, after time being the 4th).
I personally have no idea if it is possible, but if true it would be evidence which explains some of these types of situations wherein people observe inconsistencies with scientific observable physics.

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MHC wrote

I'm pleased that you're interested in science. As I was told by an individualist chieftain, that technophobia was de rigueur! Psychological theories were taught outside their validity. Maslow was based on a sample of American academic high achievers like Einstein. Yet his needs hierarchy got taught to lower-range accounting students in Australia! Similarly textbooks memorized overseas, were based on unethical experiments that may not be repeated nowadays! And anyhow, college funding was devoted to teaching the same--not conducting (say validation) research. Also governments proclaim which patch of dirt is reserved for wildlife. So indeed human legislation even applies to nature! I recall an anarchist book club prescribing so much reading that it couldn not possibly be critically discussed at meetings! All that was required, I gathered, was full-throated adulation. This to me was hagiography. Guru so-and-so said that the-moon-is-made-of-green-cheese, so no alternative theories were allowed! There are social sciences in which people's beliefs were important. For example, in a marketing project, the client was a retailer. And its chief explained that when the store's ownership had changed from Protestant to Catholic, its sales doubled! Open mindedness has been important in innovation. Whereas the papacy had persecuted Gallileo for claiming that the cosmos was not a simple sphere. Indeed particle wave duality was not taught to me until what is here second year university.

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Fool wrote

I think I now understand what you were mentioning about rejection by Anarchists. Many Anarchist can take a fundamentalist stance where certain ideas can't be challenged, so even attempts to clarify can be met with aggression.

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MHC wrote

Yeah. I had come across authoritarianism in a supposedly broad socialist party. That turned out to be run by un-reformatted old school commies! But finding devotion to the One True Guru amongst supposed freedom lovers, was a bit much. I happened to score Anarchist, and so came here.

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Ennui wrote

Ich esse gern Eis.

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MHC wrote

I don't consider anarchist tomes to be iced confection!

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