RE: Capitalism - the Ultimate Religion
October 7, 2010 at 5:51 pm
(This post was last modified: October 7, 2010 at 5:53 pm by Existentialist.)
[quote='TheDarkestOfAngels' pid='97535' dateline='1286255054']
[quote='Existentialist' pid='97513' dateline='1286234119']I think capitalism has affected all human relations.[/quote]
...and... what? [/quote]
...and... what you should do now is read some of my other posts, because my case that capitalism is a religion does not rest on the sentence you have quoted here. If my case did rest on the notion that capitalism has merely "affected" human relations, that would indeed be an insipid case.
Even if you just read the first 2-3 lines of Post #1 of this thread you might be able to produce some more substantial material to criticise my position. And if you want to produce a serious evidence-based rational argument, you might want to read my Posts #1, #20, #36, #38, #54, #56, #66, and #67 in this thread. I hope it's helpful for me to list them like this so you can quote me more comprehensively. For example, yes, to use your example, Superman affected lots of people around the world. But I would ask you, is Superman, as I said in the first line of Post #1, "Authoritarian, inconsistent, making claims to be universal, dependent on sacred tenets, elevating a tiny number of individuals to the status of prophets, saints and celebrities who hold the gaze of the hypnotised masses (... etc, etc)"? Hardly.
So I agree totally with your words when you say, “Superman fandom is not a religion any more than anything else that's popular is a religion.” Capitalism is popular – of course, but that’s not what makes it a religion, so I would suggest that rather than quoting a fraction of a sentence out of context, you would do better to concentrate on addressing a bit more of what I’ve actually said during this thread.
[quote]Also... I get that you want to sound educated, but I might recommend actually forming your own opinions and using quotes and explaining them only to help your main point. If I wanted to debate Karl Marx, I'd resurrect him from the dead and discuss the political situation with him.[/quote]
See my opinions in the post listed above. They do contain quotes from writers like Marx.
[quote]Ugh... No no no no no no NO.[/quote]
Do you mean "no" by any chance?
[quote]
This isn't about me using the dictionary to beat my chest and say that I'm the most objective man at the table. This is you trying to define something as a religion when a religion is defined as a different kind of noun. Even you provided the definition in this post to make some attempt to argue otherwise but this entire arguement boils down to you misidentifying one noun as another noun using somewhat convulted logic.[/quote]
"some attempt"? I think you mean I showed you that the dictionary definition of religion fits capitalism. I also referenced Walter Benjamin and Max Weber who said the same thing.
[quote]
[quote='Existentialist' pid='97513' dateline='1286234119']Even if the dictionary were an oracle of objectivity, which I categorically deny it is, the way you've copied and pasted from dictionary.com means that unfortunately you've lost that web page's italics and therefore you have, I suspect inadvertently, though rather conveniently for you, implied that what dictionary.com cites as possible examples are actual definitions! Here's what dictionary.com actually says.[/quote]
Wonderful. Now you're accusing me of using very subjective judgement because I told you that your definition of what a religion is is wrong and I supposedly "conveniently" left things out of my copy-paste of dictionary.com's definition. [/quote]
I can confirm that's a good approximation to what I accused you of.
[quote]
How conventient. Let me know when you actually have any of these arguements because thus far you've provided none.
In other words - if you think it fits examples 2 - everything else, how about providing an arguement for why this is the case so I can simply tell you that since capitalism isn't a set of beliefs
[/quote]
and practices? ... read the dictionary, you quoted it!
[quote]
it can't fit any of them. It's a system where every part of it is well defined - it has to be well defined because you can't base a society off it if it wasn't. If a part is less-than-optimally defined, then that's why all societies have a group of people specifically devoted to defining a lacking aspect of it.
So say that because you may or may not fully understand the system and you have confidence that it can work doesn't make it a belief - otherwise I could potentially argue that my computer is a religion because I believe in the owner's manual and technical specifications of how the computer works and operates.
This is what makes social engineering, economics, and government more of a science and not at all like a religion.
And no, telling me that you can argue that or that it does fit x and y and z aspects of a definition isn't an arguement nor is it any kind of point.
Just becuase you understood the plot to the South Park episode called "Margaritamaker" (or whatever that episode was called/spelled as) as a documentary doesn't mean it's generally true now or ever.[/quote]
Sorry I can't understand what you're saying here. By all means try again or PM me, I'm afraid I can't make enough sense of what you're trying to say.
[quote][quote='Existentialist' pid='97513' dateline='1286234119']Of course, my own arguments do not depend on simply the content of dictionaries.[/quote]
Then you may as well be arguing that Capitalism is an "apple." Things are defined in a way for a reason and just because languages are a living thing doesn't mean you can redefine things at will and have it be based on fact.[/quote]
Well, no because I'm not into redefining words arbitrarily, and obviously an apple is a piece of fruit, whereas capitalism is an economic, sociological and ideological system which has so many similarities to belief systems that are indisputably religions that I'm prepared to argue that it is one. Obviously I'm not the first person ever to want to explore the proposition, seeing as Max Weber's co-writer said the same thing in 1921.
[quote]
Yes... living at a time where space travel, time travel, green women, earth is a utopia where war, disease, and poverty were all eliminated, and hyper-deadly diseases can be cured over the course of a single star trek story arc must be a real hell to live in.
[/quote]
Granted that wouldn't make it hell. The terrible script and bad acting would make it hell.
[quote]
[quote='Existentialist' pid='97513' dateline='1286234119']In reality dictionaries can't dictate meanings to us, they can only report approximations to the most popular usage. If dictionaries were the real source of definitions, neologisms would never arise. Dictionaries can only ever be a guide to popular usage. The real definitions of words are to be found in every individual's human experience, beliefs, senses, ideas, emotions and a load of other things. This is why it takes effort for people to understand each other, and they do not always succeed, let alone agree.
[/quote]
[quote]
That doesn't mean that the dictionary is wrong
[/quote]
Agreed. Mostly incomplete though - a very broad brush of popular usages and incomplete information, but definitely not a law or a rule-book for using particular words. Also lacking neologisms.
[quote]
and that doesn't make you correct by erroneously twisting the usage of one noun to mean the same thing as another noun. In any case, you stated that capitalism is a religion and thus far you've failed to make any arguement and what arguements you have made are flimsy at best.
[/quote]
See the Post list above. Why are the arguments I've made flimsy? I'd be interested in your opinion.
[quote]
Just because you're miffed that dictionary dare to properly define words and not compensate for every single usage as it occurs doesn't make them wrong.
[/quote]
I'm not miffed. Why would I be miffed at a dictionary? They're not the law, they can't deliver justice and injustice, they merely provide information, often somewhat incomplete.
[quote]You've entered a purely semantic arguement based on your own "truthiness" (which, thanks to a hero of mine, has been a word since his hit show has arisen within the past decade) and not the facts to which an arguement to be properly based.
[/quote]
Ultimately however many facts are before us, we all have to make our own decisions, because we have to translate the facts into our brains in order to decide what to make of them, and our brains provide an incomplete representation of what the facts are.
[quote]
... In other words, just because you feel like capitalism is a religion doesn't mean it actually is one.[/quote]
I'm not arguing that capitalism is a religion just because I feel it is a religion. I have argued on the basis of observation and evidence of capitalism, and my understanding of the characteristics of religion. I've set my evidence and observations out in this thread as listed at the top of this post. Have a look. After all that evidence and argument, I still have to make my own decision, but it is based on something substantial, not just a feeling as you allege.
[quote]
There is a lot that can be said in how some people treat political issues and private enterprises like a religion but you've outright attempted to state that a system of trade within a civilization is the same thing as a religion,
[/quote]
I said it's not just an economic system nor is it, as you are now arguing, a mere "system of trade". It's got its own ideological culture, its own social strata, it is massively political and at its core seems to be widely worshipped (among other things - see all my posts listed above)
[quote]
which is easily not the case. I'm not interested in your tirade against fascist dictionaries and their definitions of "words" just because you want to attach one to the other.
[/quote]
tirade? Where?
Fascist? How?
[quote]
So you decided to tell me that 'my arguements allow me to fit capitalism to now define it in every way as a religion' but decide to then go on a tirade about a completely different arguement on how you're above dictionaries.
[/quote]
I'm sorry but I can't fully make sense of what you're trying to claim I've decided to tell you, but apart from that, I didn't go on a tirade - I think my arguments are a bit more measured than that. And I expressed my view of dictionaries because you copied and pasted a page from dictionary.com in an effort to prove that am wrong to take the position I do, an effort that was unsuccessful. Expressing my views about dictionaries was not a random detour on my part, it was a direct and immediate answer to your post.
[quote]
Yes, people write books on both religion and capitalism. People also write books on sesame street, space travel, sadism and masochism sexual techniques, and dracula - sometimes all in the same book. That doesn't make any of those a religion. You may as well tell me that communism is an apple because both are readily identified with the color red.
[/quote]
Again, I would say that my argument that capitalism is a religion is not based on the fact that people have written books about religion and capitalism. I said that capitalism cannot be adequately defined by a dictionary (because you had just quoted one at me), which is the reason why people write books about it, and other books about religion. If you're going to address my argument rationally, you'll need to quote what I actually said about capitalism being a religion, not what I said in answer to you quoting a dictionary at me.
If you wish to go on debating the fine detail of what I've said so far, feel free. Personally I plan to move on soon to why I think a lot of people become profoundly angry to be asked to seriously consider the argument that capitalism is a religion. It is, of course to do with the survival of capitalism, particularly its need to hide from full view its structure and its authoritarian mechanisms. I'll elaborate in more detail later on.
[quote='Existentialist' pid='97513' dateline='1286234119']I think capitalism has affected all human relations.[/quote]
...and... what? [/quote]
...and... what you should do now is read some of my other posts, because my case that capitalism is a religion does not rest on the sentence you have quoted here. If my case did rest on the notion that capitalism has merely "affected" human relations, that would indeed be an insipid case.
Even if you just read the first 2-3 lines of Post #1 of this thread you might be able to produce some more substantial material to criticise my position. And if you want to produce a serious evidence-based rational argument, you might want to read my Posts #1, #20, #36, #38, #54, #56, #66, and #67 in this thread. I hope it's helpful for me to list them like this so you can quote me more comprehensively. For example, yes, to use your example, Superman affected lots of people around the world. But I would ask you, is Superman, as I said in the first line of Post #1, "Authoritarian, inconsistent, making claims to be universal, dependent on sacred tenets, elevating a tiny number of individuals to the status of prophets, saints and celebrities who hold the gaze of the hypnotised masses (... etc, etc)"? Hardly.
So I agree totally with your words when you say, “Superman fandom is not a religion any more than anything else that's popular is a religion.” Capitalism is popular – of course, but that’s not what makes it a religion, so I would suggest that rather than quoting a fraction of a sentence out of context, you would do better to concentrate on addressing a bit more of what I’ve actually said during this thread.
[quote]Also... I get that you want to sound educated, but I might recommend actually forming your own opinions and using quotes and explaining them only to help your main point. If I wanted to debate Karl Marx, I'd resurrect him from the dead and discuss the political situation with him.[/quote]
See my opinions in the post listed above. They do contain quotes from writers like Marx.
[quote]Ugh... No no no no no no NO.[/quote]
Do you mean "no" by any chance?
[quote]
This isn't about me using the dictionary to beat my chest and say that I'm the most objective man at the table. This is you trying to define something as a religion when a religion is defined as a different kind of noun. Even you provided the definition in this post to make some attempt to argue otherwise but this entire arguement boils down to you misidentifying one noun as another noun using somewhat convulted logic.[/quote]
"some attempt"? I think you mean I showed you that the dictionary definition of religion fits capitalism. I also referenced Walter Benjamin and Max Weber who said the same thing.
[quote]
[quote='Existentialist' pid='97513' dateline='1286234119']Even if the dictionary were an oracle of objectivity, which I categorically deny it is, the way you've copied and pasted from dictionary.com means that unfortunately you've lost that web page's italics and therefore you have, I suspect inadvertently, though rather conveniently for you, implied that what dictionary.com cites as possible examples are actual definitions! Here's what dictionary.com actually says.[/quote]
Wonderful. Now you're accusing me of using very subjective judgement because I told you that your definition of what a religion is is wrong and I supposedly "conveniently" left things out of my copy-paste of dictionary.com's definition. [/quote]
I can confirm that's a good approximation to what I accused you of.
[quote]
How conventient. Let me know when you actually have any of these arguements because thus far you've provided none.
In other words - if you think it fits examples 2 - everything else, how about providing an arguement for why this is the case so I can simply tell you that since capitalism isn't a set of beliefs
[/quote]
and practices? ... read the dictionary, you quoted it!
[quote]
it can't fit any of them. It's a system where every part of it is well defined - it has to be well defined because you can't base a society off it if it wasn't. If a part is less-than-optimally defined, then that's why all societies have a group of people specifically devoted to defining a lacking aspect of it.
So say that because you may or may not fully understand the system and you have confidence that it can work doesn't make it a belief - otherwise I could potentially argue that my computer is a religion because I believe in the owner's manual and technical specifications of how the computer works and operates.
This is what makes social engineering, economics, and government more of a science and not at all like a religion.
And no, telling me that you can argue that or that it does fit x and y and z aspects of a definition isn't an arguement nor is it any kind of point.
Just becuase you understood the plot to the South Park episode called "Margaritamaker" (or whatever that episode was called/spelled as) as a documentary doesn't mean it's generally true now or ever.[/quote]
Sorry I can't understand what you're saying here. By all means try again or PM me, I'm afraid I can't make enough sense of what you're trying to say.
[quote][quote='Existentialist' pid='97513' dateline='1286234119']Of course, my own arguments do not depend on simply the content of dictionaries.[/quote]
Then you may as well be arguing that Capitalism is an "apple." Things are defined in a way for a reason and just because languages are a living thing doesn't mean you can redefine things at will and have it be based on fact.[/quote]
Well, no because I'm not into redefining words arbitrarily, and obviously an apple is a piece of fruit, whereas capitalism is an economic, sociological and ideological system which has so many similarities to belief systems that are indisputably religions that I'm prepared to argue that it is one. Obviously I'm not the first person ever to want to explore the proposition, seeing as Max Weber's co-writer said the same thing in 1921.
[quote]
Yes... living at a time where space travel, time travel, green women, earth is a utopia where war, disease, and poverty were all eliminated, and hyper-deadly diseases can be cured over the course of a single star trek story arc must be a real hell to live in.
[/quote]
Granted that wouldn't make it hell. The terrible script and bad acting would make it hell.
[quote]
[quote='Existentialist' pid='97513' dateline='1286234119']In reality dictionaries can't dictate meanings to us, they can only report approximations to the most popular usage. If dictionaries were the real source of definitions, neologisms would never arise. Dictionaries can only ever be a guide to popular usage. The real definitions of words are to be found in every individual's human experience, beliefs, senses, ideas, emotions and a load of other things. This is why it takes effort for people to understand each other, and they do not always succeed, let alone agree.
[/quote]
[quote]
That doesn't mean that the dictionary is wrong
[/quote]
Agreed. Mostly incomplete though - a very broad brush of popular usages and incomplete information, but definitely not a law or a rule-book for using particular words. Also lacking neologisms.
[quote]
and that doesn't make you correct by erroneously twisting the usage of one noun to mean the same thing as another noun. In any case, you stated that capitalism is a religion and thus far you've failed to make any arguement and what arguements you have made are flimsy at best.
[/quote]
See the Post list above. Why are the arguments I've made flimsy? I'd be interested in your opinion.
[quote]
Just because you're miffed that dictionary dare to properly define words and not compensate for every single usage as it occurs doesn't make them wrong.
[/quote]
I'm not miffed. Why would I be miffed at a dictionary? They're not the law, they can't deliver justice and injustice, they merely provide information, often somewhat incomplete.
[quote]You've entered a purely semantic arguement based on your own "truthiness" (which, thanks to a hero of mine, has been a word since his hit show has arisen within the past decade) and not the facts to which an arguement to be properly based.
[/quote]
Ultimately however many facts are before us, we all have to make our own decisions, because we have to translate the facts into our brains in order to decide what to make of them, and our brains provide an incomplete representation of what the facts are.
[quote]
... In other words, just because you feel like capitalism is a religion doesn't mean it actually is one.[/quote]
I'm not arguing that capitalism is a religion just because I feel it is a religion. I have argued on the basis of observation and evidence of capitalism, and my understanding of the characteristics of religion. I've set my evidence and observations out in this thread as listed at the top of this post. Have a look. After all that evidence and argument, I still have to make my own decision, but it is based on something substantial, not just a feeling as you allege.
[quote]
There is a lot that can be said in how some people treat political issues and private enterprises like a religion but you've outright attempted to state that a system of trade within a civilization is the same thing as a religion,
[/quote]
I said it's not just an economic system nor is it, as you are now arguing, a mere "system of trade". It's got its own ideological culture, its own social strata, it is massively political and at its core seems to be widely worshipped (among other things - see all my posts listed above)
[quote]
which is easily not the case. I'm not interested in your tirade against fascist dictionaries and their definitions of "words" just because you want to attach one to the other.
[/quote]
tirade? Where?
Fascist? How?
[quote]
So you decided to tell me that 'my arguements allow me to fit capitalism to now define it in every way as a religion' but decide to then go on a tirade about a completely different arguement on how you're above dictionaries.
[/quote]
I'm sorry but I can't fully make sense of what you're trying to claim I've decided to tell you, but apart from that, I didn't go on a tirade - I think my arguments are a bit more measured than that. And I expressed my view of dictionaries because you copied and pasted a page from dictionary.com in an effort to prove that am wrong to take the position I do, an effort that was unsuccessful. Expressing my views about dictionaries was not a random detour on my part, it was a direct and immediate answer to your post.
[quote]
Yes, people write books on both religion and capitalism. People also write books on sesame street, space travel, sadism and masochism sexual techniques, and dracula - sometimes all in the same book. That doesn't make any of those a religion. You may as well tell me that communism is an apple because both are readily identified with the color red.
[/quote]
Again, I would say that my argument that capitalism is a religion is not based on the fact that people have written books about religion and capitalism. I said that capitalism cannot be adequately defined by a dictionary (because you had just quoted one at me), which is the reason why people write books about it, and other books about religion. If you're going to address my argument rationally, you'll need to quote what I actually said about capitalism being a religion, not what I said in answer to you quoting a dictionary at me.
If you wish to go on debating the fine detail of what I've said so far, feel free. Personally I plan to move on soon to why I think a lot of people become profoundly angry to be asked to seriously consider the argument that capitalism is a religion. It is, of course to do with the survival of capitalism, particularly its need to hide from full view its structure and its authoritarian mechanisms. I'll elaborate in more detail later on.
