History

Some people were being nasty, yeah, but I don't think its constructive for the movement to embrace fantasy. Not that all spiritual beliefs are fantasy, but they do not have an effect on real life.

It’s one of the most confusing things about Western leftists. Aren’t most of the working class religious? You’re only isolating yourself further from them and continuing to keep leftism as almost exclusively academic with most leftists coming out of college campuses than workplaces.

it was, and I don't like it. esp. since like I have some of my own beliefs and like. have had weird experiences and done some stuff like made a sleep charm in the past to help with sleep. because I got desperate to a point with how much lack of sleep has been hurting my health. like at best it helps, at worst, nothing. but I don't think it's right for someone to be harsh.

esp. when considering like. at least for me I resort to this stuff to help me get through the day. especially with the things im constantly dealing on a daily basis. it just hurts. like I do try to be critical about what I believe in and try to like. have a skeptical mind along with like a spiritual belief sort of mind? or parts of me and work that together? like I dunno.

just like. I dunno. especially since like some of this stuff helps me cope with things like and helps manage like the suicidal parts of me.

Okay glad I wasn’t the only one. I kind of just noped out of there after seeing how rude everyone was.

I just found out about that when browsing through the mod log and it really didn't sit right with me either...

I got called a nutty woo spiritualist akin to white supremacist crystal-ufologists because I:

• Said I had lived in a house that had a some unexplained events occur in it.
• Said I'd had dreams of mundane things before they happened, and I'd never been able to find an explanation.
• Said "anti-materialism isnt just when you believe in ghosts"

And I should apparently be flattered because the user deigned to call me this. Cool stuff.

It is very rude and inappropriate. Especially with like calling those who believe in magic "deeply unserious" or calling Vampire a "putz". Meanwhile like Vampire is the reason I'm even reading Das Kapital since they manage/started that bookclub for that.

god forbid an online communist community acknowledge that humans actually don't know everything about the universe. completely unacceptable mod behavior.

just to push back against the redditor atheists, here's a basic explanation of why i believe what i do, and how i see the concepts involved:

physicalist realism: your consciousness simply doesn't exist. your experiences? not real. its an illusion. and what is perceiving this illusion? nothing, since experiences are not real, nothing can be experiencing them. Doesn't that seem logically inconsistent? illusions are real in themselves, and something has to be experiencing the illusion right? well that's because you are too beholden to language or something, the universe doesn't have to make sense to your idiot meat brain and it's stupid monkey '''''logic'''''. What's going on inside your head then? nothing but matter bumping into other matter, your experience and perspective probably boil down to math somehow, don't ask how exactly but we will definitely totally find out sometime in The Future^TM^. in short, the Hard Problem of Consciousness isn't real.

the primary implication of physicalist realism: people, including yourself, literally don't exist as conscious beings, and are merely flesh-robots deterministically reacting to their environment according to physical rules. anyone's perceptions of pain, or literally anything else, are nonexistent. illusory and meaningless in any real sense. The only contents of reality are physical phenomena, measured quantities of particles and 'energy' bouncing around deterministically until the heat death of the universe.

physicalist realism and its ramifications for ethics and politics: since people aren't real, none of their opinions or desires matter or mean anything. it doesn't matter in any real sense whether you kill or abuse or steal or maim or harass anyone, or if anyone does the same to you, as it is only matter interacting with matter according to deterministic physical rules. there is no reason to fight for a better world, not even if you can expect short term improvements in your own personal quality of life, because neither you nor others exist, and your desires and ideas and pain are similarly illusory/nonexistent and meaningless. whatever happens happens and thats it, any feelings about reality don't matter in an objective sense and were pre-determined at the Big Bang or whatever other start of Time or The Universe like clockwork, and you do not exist enough to actually make meaningful choices, only playing out your Program. you might as well be a selfish asshole and hoard wealth and comfort, since this illusory experience is all you can (not) exist in, or you might as well cause yourself to die, since your consciousness already does not exist. your impact on others literally cannot matter in a meaningful way, since no ones consciousness is real to be victim to your actions, and you literally could not have chosen any other course of action in this physics-based deterministic universe. It would not matter if humanity were to be wiped out by an astronomical event, since life's value is equivalent to lifeless matter as our consciousness does not exist.

anti-physicalist-realism: your consciousness exists in some sense and has yet to be explained by physics, in even a hypothetical sense. the Hard Problem of Consciousness persists. Physics as it currently stands does not fully and accurately describe every aspect of reality or the universe.

the primary implication of anti-physicalist-realism: Your consciousness is the only thing you can ever have access to in terms of epistemology, and therefore it must be considered the primary grounds of existence, as the reality of consciousness itself is impossible for consciousness to seriously doubt, unlike any particular contents of it. Whatever you are experiencing, whether illusion or not, it is being experienced in some sense, there is a perspective to be experiencing from, even if that perspective's specific nature is mysterious. It stands to reason then, that the ideas, images, and even people in your consciousness are real in some sense, and not entirely illusory or nonexistent even if their true nature is obscured, and may even have their own internal consciousness perspective, which is as real to them as yours is to you. this means that not only do your ideas and pains and desires matter, since they really exist, but those of others do as well.

anti-physicalist-realism and its ramifications for ethics and politics: since consciousness exists in some sense, its contents are worthy of some consideration. other people like you have their own internal experiences, desires, pains, and ideas, which all really exist in a meaningful sense and warrant consideration. therefore, there may be reasons to consider avoiding harassing, abusing, or hurting others. additionally, regardless of the existence of any 'afterlife' or 'soul', your actions will at least live on in the real consciousnesses of other people who will come after you, whose Actually Existing Sensations will be affected in some way, meaning that it is necessary to consider your impact on those around you, and even work together for everyone's benefit even if you personally get no physical reward - your feelings can be reward enough. It would be tragic if humanity were wiped out, since our consciousness and pain and hopes were all real, non-illusory phenomena that distinguished us from inanimate matter or automatic mindless biological reflex

i'm going to keep believing that the hard problem of cosciousness hasn't been solved or handwaved away successfully, i'm going to keep believing that humanity has yet to discover everything in the universe, i'm going to keep believing that worker ownership of the means of production are necessary to creating a more just society, and that democratic centralism is a good way to accomplish that goal, and i'm going to keep calling myself a Communist, even if i might have specific philosophical/epistemological/ontological differences with certain interpretations of some of it's ideological founders.

I think the threads are super annoying and Vamp was being especially annoying in them, but banning him over this rather than having some kind of intervention is really childish and irresponsible

I question why we have so many "accepted" religious comms, but then the mod staff can be this dismissive toward pagans. Like, why shouldn't I be reporting every single religious comm I see from here forward like "this comm is genuinely an embarrasment to all involved, if you pray to a magical Abrahamic sky-daddy you're deeply unserious and deserve disfellowship" like nah, I'd be RIGHTFULLY called sectarian and wrecking over it! But y'know, it's okay when it's paracausality because that's the accepted whipping dog for Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Shinto, and all that to still propagate, right?

Shit was disgusting and I had to FIERCELY fight a wave of petty over that.

Yea that's overly harsh, else better x out all those religious subs quick.

My issue was with my phrasing but whatever, magic is a bit too simple of an approach but I wouldn't go with damn full on censor. There's a lot we still don't know and I'm not going around gaslighting what did or didn't happen in people's experiences since perception is fly, knowledge is gated, and we've all probably had one weird thing happen to us at one time or another, or even multiple. In our 21st century knowledge we can easily dismiss visions and 'dancing' of medieval peasants being caused by ergot poisoning, but in their collectively held social experience, there was some mystical thing going on and I bet even if you were to somehow implant all the information about bad rye and fungi into them they'd still hold the event in a degree of awe.

There's a lot of cases through history of liberation movements drawing from religion or spirituality since its the only refuge allowed to the poor or seen as socially acceptable within the time period. Many of the movements in the global south come to mind. Even historically, the original communal were utopian, not scientific because of conditions of knowledge and society were not set for otherwise. Atheism is sadly still in the realm of academia because conditions are yet still that undeveloped in say the US that people need prescription strength religion and mysticism. Religious institutions are the last places in the US for a lot of communities where mutual aid is still done without interference from authorities (where I live even this is in question now), otherwise people are cast out in a sea of alienation from themselves and each other in capitalist hell.

A lot of the woo folk would be very open to our ideas and learning theory, we seek to make the outer material reality more comfortable instead of merely seeking solace within. Animism is sort of the ancient's approach to materialism with the best knowledge they had access to, and I'd bet the modern animists are no different.

Tf. If I wanted to chat with a bunch of chauvanistic, militant atheists, I'd just sign back up to Reddit. If people are really going to wholesale shit on religion or mystical thinking as a commie, they're not much better than the assholes pushing Islamaphobia and anti-Semitism out there. Edit: mixed up my words.

And there is a spiritual component to people's feelings - this sense of bigger things, of being a part of something even while we're distinct.

Revolutionary optimism is - as one poster mentioned some time ago on here - the irrational belief that things will get better. But they didn’t say this in a negative way. I mean, why would anyone pick up a gun and kill tyrants if they don’t believe their children can finally eat one day - or if not their own children, then their neighbor’s children - even if the situation is dire? Why would Hamas or any of the anti colonial forces in the previous decades keep fighting even in the face of supposedly superior firepower? Without the irrational hope, then morale disappears, and you get savage spite. And I don’t even think savage spite is all bad either because if you know objectively you will fail, and you no longer have hope, then you’re gonna take as many of these bastards to hell with you if they want to roll that way.

Of course, this is not to say that these people are 100% irrational. Morale is also bolstered by superior tactics and victories. It’s a combination you have to balance and master for an effective resistance against exploitation and misery because exploitation and misery caused these spiritual, ‘irrational’ conditions in the first place

ruling ideology has been principally nonreligious

horseshit

Wondering if its fair to suggest probably every premodern peasant rebellion had some religious component. I'd guess that's why the early modern/modern examples are so interesting, like a closeness bias thing

Chinese Emperors are so non-religious that they built Temples to Heaven to carry out yearly sacrifices for good harvests

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_of_Heaven

Huh is this directed at me, or at respondents in the other thread?

We see how far "opposition to book worship" goes-- which is to say, 'right out the window' when it comes time to dunk on spiritual practices outside the Western 'Enlightenment'. Peckerwoodery.