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The answer for many people, including myself would be: Not Soon Enough!
The usual regrets aside, my descent into critical thinking, strangely enough, started after University as it was only then that I had enough time to really start powering through the books that I had been accumulating while working on my degree. All that stuff that I was ‘responsible’ for learning was still there, but my curiosity led me down the path toward a greater understanding of the mechanics of how our society works. I owe a great deal to Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn and Ronald Wright for fuelling my intellectual growth and move toward a more nuanced understanding of how history and society works and access to a larger context background that helped(s) make sense of world events as they unfolded.
The difference in taking courses before and after my degree was quite startling as learning because you ‘have to’ versus because you ‘want to’.
The challenge now is to continue the journey and start reading again seriously. With the rise of the siren song of social media and video games maintaining an intellectual focus is quite challenging. Getting back into the reading for comprehension and understanding groove is quite difficult. I’m thinking that hitting the University for some courses may be the tonic to this particular problem.
We’ll have to see what’s in the cards and hope to heck there is something interesting to take this upcoming spring/summer. :)
Seasonal is the true organic.
Information and education break folks. Let’s take a peek at what Dialectical Materialism actually is and help shoo away some of the bogymen people like to propagate when discussion Marxist thought.
“This article outlines Marx’s method, dialectical materialism, a theory and manner of understanding change. It is a theory that grasps how many of the competing social forces driving the movement of society are often hidden or mystified, and that gives us a way of uncovering them. It is a method that understands that unveiling social forces must be done in such a way as to foster class-for-self-consciousness within the working class as a revolutionary force. Toward these ends this article introduces the major components of dialectical materialism, including the negation of the negation, sublation, the unity of opposites, and the transformation of quantity into quality.
What is Marx’s method?
In developing his method, Marx challenged what he considered to be vulgar materialism for its tendency to ignore the totality and the relationship between consciousness and material reality. A philosophical term, the “totality” refers to the total of existence in any given moment. At the same time, Marx rejected pure idealism for substituting material reality with the idea of reality (i.e. with abstract thought). Idealism therefore leads to the false assumption that alienation or estrangement can be overcome in the realm of thought alone, as if we could change our material reality by changing our ideas and beliefs.
Rather, Marx’s dialectical method is based on “the unifying truth of both” (1844/1988, 154). What this means is that “it is not enough that thought should seek to realize itself; reality must also strive toward thought.” In other words, Marx’s method entails the examination of the relationship between ideas and material reality, specifically as it pertains to class struggle and the emancipation of the proletariat. Marx’s dialectics are called “dialectical materialism” in contrast with Hegel’s dialectics. Marx wrote that he “discover[ed] the rational kernel within the mystical shell” (1867/1967, 29) of Hegel’s dialectics.
To realize this revolution the working-class must not only understand the interaction of forces behind the development of society, but it must understand itself as one of those forces. The dialectic is a powerful weapon because it breaks through the capitalist illusion of individualism and atomism and disrupts the idea that isolated facts speak for themselves. Only by situating facts or ideas in the historical totality of society do they begin to make real sense. To comprehend this revolutionary movement we must conceive the interaction of forces as much more than the interaction of static and independent entities. When the parts of the totality change, their relationship to the totality changes, and they themselves change. Dialectics presents reality as an ongoing social process; nothing is ever static or fixed.”
I suggest reading the whole article, it is quite non-threatening and informative. :)
Aeon magazine is just a grand cornucopia of interesting facts. My knowledge of medieval sexual practices has been doubled if not trebled by just reading the one article I’ve quoted here. :)
It is fascinating how well we actually did without the scientific method to back up our ‘facts’/ Admittedly there is some wack-a-loonery to be had when it came to medieval medicine, but sometimes they got it right (for the wrong reasons usually though). Katherine Harvey writes:
“Although the most famous cases of death by celibacy relate to male clerics, women were, in their own way, equally vulnerable to this medical problem. According to contemporary medical theory, both sexes produced seed that was necessary for conception – and just like semen, the female seed needed to be expelled from the body during regular sexual intercourse. In a woman who was not sexually active, the seed would be retained within her body; as it built up, it would cause suffocation of the womb. The symptoms of this condition included fainting and shortness of breath, and in the most serious cases it could be fatal. For women, as for men, the best way to avoid death by celibacy was to get married and have regular, Church-sanctioned intercourse with one’s spouse. If this was not possible, there were a range of useful remedies, including restricted diets and vinegar suppositories. Some physicians, however, recommended a rather startling alternative: masturbation.
Unsurprisingly, the medieval Church took a rather dim view of this practice: most medieval penitentials (handbooks for confessors) identified masturbation as a sin, and imposed heavy penances for it – typically around 30 days of fasting, but sometimes as much as two years. On the other hand, masturbation was usually placed towards the bottom of the hierarchy of sexual sins, and confessors were permitted to make some allowance for those (including unmarried youths) who lacked another outlet for their desires. This caveat reflects the Church’s awareness of contemporary medical teachings: it was impossible to ignore the fact that medical authorities from Galen onwards had recommended masturbation as a form of preventative medicine for both men and women.
Later medieval physicians were rarely as explicit as Galen and other ancients. Late medieval medical books rarely mentioned male masturbation. For women lacking regular sexual relations, they offered a variety of treatments, including, stimulation of the genitals (either by the patient or by a medical professional). Such treatments were particularly suitable for women who were suffering from suffocation of the womb. If such a woman could not marry (for example, because she was a nun), and if her life was in genuine danger, then genital massage might be the only solution, and could even be performed without sin. The 14th-century English physician John of Gaddesden thought that such a woman should try to cure her condition through exercise, foreign travel and medication. But ‘if she has a fainting fit, the midwife should insert a finger covered with oil of lily, laurel or spikenard into her womb, and move it vigorously about’.”
It must have been quite the controversy as the medical solution meant you were going to hell. It makes me glad that we can now laugh at people who use terms like “the devil’s doorbell” earnestly. :)
I wonder if we’ll look to orbital debris skeptics to inform our choices on this issue…
I think it may be expository blog post week here at DWR. I found this first video on how a small portion of writing for the screen happens, and then the Ted Talk it referenced. Both are intriguing and I think are good glimpses through the keyhole at how these people practices their craft.
And the Ted Talk by Andrew Stanton:
bleatmop
The Intransigent One
Mystro
The Arbourist
Your opinions…