Whenever I first read about what dialectical materialism is I didn't get it because it's like "that's how thinking works, duh. How else would you do it"? I've always thought that way, to the point that I struggle to think any other way. Idealism always made me extremely frustrated and confused and feel like the people using it had suddenly lost their mind. Even as a kid who didn't know what any of these words meant that is how I felt.
I figured out enough as I grew up, but I'm still not completely comfortable around people who think the way most Americans(and Westerners in general) think.
It may not be the dialectical materialism exactly that people I can more closely relate to believe in, but just the fact that they can think coherently, and consistently think coherently. They won't just accept contradictions without figuring out where they meet. If you point out a contradiction they can talk about it, they don't assume you have some special motivation for asking questions and begin searching for said motivation, ignoring what you said in the process.
I have a feeling there is some theory or something somewhere that would give me the vocabulary to talk about this more clearly. I'm struggling to find terms for these concepts.
What's up with that?
You can lead a lib to theory but you can't make them think. It's so frustrating with them and libertarians in my experience. I can introduce them to a point, but their whole ontological framework is a marketplace of coequal ideas they can pick from like cereal boxes. That basic materialist standard of observation isn't something they factor into the rest of their lives as a conscious effort. They're people who reject science or think it's a Marvel film, who hold mutually exclusive religious beliefs, and who blindly watch media that fits into their general bubble. Whatever I've said, it goes on the shelf next to the thing someone wearing glasses told them.
It's a shame because dialectical materialism is the easiest thing to grasp when you see it in technical work or something. I learned dialectics from medicine and animal rehab before I knew it was a political thing. That's driving my car. It's what makes horticulture interesting and ecology even more so. I've tried teaching it in those terms but then they don't cultivate that outward into a broader analysis. Things just aren't fundamentally systems or interdependent to them as every other perspective they're taking in on that issue is trying to mystify it. Teaching them that mystification is bad comes up against their entire core identity and how they think the universe works.
The downside of being the leftist Cassandra.
Once you know enough that you can actually start talking people through the "path" from "Thing A" all the way through to "Thing Z" you now sound like a tinfoil hat wearing conspiracist.
That too. I really hate how it's lumped with false demystification. Socialists are just hippies or libertarians or drunken uncles with some thoughts on what caused 9/11 despite it being a child's birthday party.
"That basic materialist standard of observation"...
You can blow people's minds just by stating clearly observable facts with almost no analysis. Just the idea that you first try and collect facts to analyze a situation isn't normal to people somehow.
For a plant to thrive, it needs all of its needs met like a human does. It needs to be fully dealienated from nutritional and environmental needs. Any kind of disruption to the broader systems it exists through- its need for water being denied by a drought, its need for sunlight obscured by a competing tree, its need for oxygen deprived by flood and iron by the soil's relationship to hydrogen- will harm or kill it and change those ecosystems as a result of it no longer providing some kind of labour to keep its current state. There's both a fundamental sense of balance there and a constantly evolving one, with the plant and its needs never existing in a static state along with the outside world it depends on. Like the other plants competing for sunlight and nutrition, that plant exists within a broader network of life. Herbivores depend on it and fertilise it, earthworms carve out root space while feeding on the organic matter, specific insects pollinate specific orchids and any disruption to the needs of the insect existing within that ecosystem will erase that species of orchid as a result of it not doing some kind of metabolic labour which continues its relationship. The bee transforms the pollen into the embryo in exchange for the honey that sustains its hive. There's a yin-yang aspect to that interconnectivity and it exists- has to exist- at all levels of interaction between an organism and its environment. As the ecosystem and its balance shift over time, the dialectical relationships based around resource needs and availability along with the social systems those create will make for new plants interacting with new animals in new ways.
My big interests in it are phytopathology where you're finding out what the contradictions are in a plant's needs, integrated pest management where you're directly affecting the organism relationships in the ecosystem, soil ecology where you see the fundamental engines of what enables plant life to exist on top of it, and permaculture where you're creating dealienated ecosystems.
this is a great post. i'm in a related field and i think about this a lot and it's cool to see it put into words.
Awesome. I hadn't thought about this before. Thanks for typing it all out, I appreciate it.
https://ia800900.us.archive.org/3/items/TheDialecticalBiologist/Lewontin_-Levins_the_dialectical_biologist.pdf
This book on dialectical scientific philosophy is really good. At least part of the first section is exploring dialectics through evolution.
Thanks I had no idea there was a whole division of the sciences that used dialectics
First, answering your question at face value: yes. Liberalism requires and crafts certain personality traits in its citizens and if you don’t embody that personality, it’s very alienating and frustrating.
But there’s also bits here where it reminds me of how neurodivergent people talk about neurotypical people, particularly this:
They won’t just accept contradictions without figuring out where they meet. If you point out a contradiction they can talk about it, they don’t assume you have some special motivation for asking questions and begin searching for said motivation, ignoring what you said in the process.
Personally, I find that there are social labyrinths around many subjects which make it so that, no matter what is said, it’s impossible to get across what you mean because of these unspoken inferences that get added onto your words by the listener.
I thought about making an autism disclaimer for that part, but the disclaimer would have been several times longer than the statement itself. This is distinctly different from that, I'm definitely not autistic and is something different from the struggles I've seen people with autism have.
I think a better way of saying that is many people are so used to just using mystical thinking about certain things that they literally cannot comprehend that you are trying to actually talk about something. The idea that you are actually just trying to talk about the thing and not trying to pull something is so alien to them they get all defensive and scared.
Okay yeah then I think it’s closer to the first thing I said about unspoken implications and I definitely share your frustration. Thank you for clarifying
This is a good post. But... And there is a but, as much as we know we know, there is much we don't, and we don't always know what we don't know. Listening and learning is just as important, if not more, than talking and teaching. The more you learn, the better and more you can teach. Keeps you better off mentally too, imo.
I was gonna say this. When I first started reading about communism I had such debate-bro tendencies with my anti-communist liberal uncle. I sensed that he just got sick of talking to me, it was kind of toxic.
But recently I've calmed down a lot. I've come to understand that my uncle is actually very smart, smarter than me in many ways, reads a lot of history. I'm now much more able to genuinely work through concepts with him together, rather than it being some kind of battle.
It's really toxic to think all liberals are dumb, or even that all liberals are wrong on everything. You might find someone in your life was right about something you're wrong about, and then you'll feel like a damn fool for not hearing them out.
Glad to hear someone else feel the same things.
At least you're talking! It's not about changing someone's mind, as much as it is understanding why someone thinks so differently. That said I've definitely swayed my uncle a lot, but I sometimes underestimate how much he's swayed me.
A tangential example since you brought up cops, a few years back I had just read "Are Prisons Obselete" by Angela Davis and went on constant tangents about how prisons shouldn't exist and cops are evil and racist. My uncle was like "ok bro sure." Which is like... a completely understandable thing for a working class American to say. So we clashed hard.
But I guess I'm more "moderate" on cops these days - you can't really convince working class Americans that we need to abolish cops. In isolation it's such a terrible idea. You have to address poverty first. I'm sure this is obvious to everyone, but it's only thru talking to my uncle over the years that I understood this. We're now basically on the same page, which is "cops are an inefficient and horrific way to deal with poverty but the US has no interest in solving poverty so in capitalism cops are necessary" (obviously lots of caveats here, ACAB still stands)
Well, it is important to know and distinguish that learning (much like volunteering), in of itself, is not praxis. It can be something on the road to praxis, but the actual coalition building required for successful political movement will require intersections of material interests to keep culturally conflicting parties involved and engaged, not just ideological waffling.
Before dealing with the police, prisons, or any larger systemic issues, one must first recognize themselves as working class, and more broadly, sharing material interests within the whole of the working class, and seeing those interests in opposition and conflict to the interests of management and ownership. We, in the U.S., are still at that part of the game and it is impossible to move the ball forward without that becoming actualized. And the only thing that historically has actualized this is enough hard laboring people being stuck in the same place, in the same shitty circumstances and the same jobs for long periods of time (generally 5-10) with no way out for them or their children, which is not a thing in the U.S.
However, if gas prices continue to rise, it may yet become a thing. Or it could all turn tits up and the fascists will win in this country. Certainly a possibility.
Sorry for the late reply
Yeah I don't disagree, conversations can both change minds and be a learning experience. I just had the absolute worst 'radical' takes only a few years ago and was arrogant, just sucks eventually being a dick about things you're not even sure about. But on that note, my uncle's wayy more open to explictly leftist shit these days, it just took being more open to his POV as well. He's definitely starting to come around to the 'poverty is the root of crime' thing, and in my experience once that sticks it's hard not to come around to a politics around eradicating poverty. We'll probably never agree on everything but still, he's at least somewhat closet lefty now.
I don't have the capacity at the moment to digest the full post and comments, but one thing I can say for myself is that as I've gotten older, I definitely purposefully try to keep me IRL interactions with only leftists. Just because simply put - 1) it gives us common things to talk about (anticapitalism, etc), and 2) I simply do not like arguing, even when I know I'm right.
Also, my poor mental health probably plays a large factor in that, but all the people in my life that I honestly consider my real friends (there are few, admittedly) are leftists with the one exception of an apolitical guy (fuck, the amount of times I've heard him complain about his body hurting and not having health insurance, I could have ranted for days about how he should try to unionize and at least advocate for universal health care)
- it gives us common things to talk about (anticapitalism, etc), and 2) I simply do not like arguing, even when I know I’m right.
i just had to spend three weeks on the road with a hog who believed that vaccines were fake, mask mandates were a part of (((them))) wanting to control you, and that laura ingraham was the smartest person on cable tv. dude was technically my supervisor so i just nodded along at everything he said and shut up as i didnt want to stir shit/make my life worse while i had to be around him.
but it was also completely boring; we had nothing to talk about. if i tried to talk about a common interest, like cars, it would set him off on a brandon rant about Priuses and libs. Small talk like complaining about gas prices would set him off into another brandon rant. if we talked about our working conditions the company puts us under, he would just talk about it as if its his own personal failure they expect too much of him, and any attempt to refocus it to the higher ups fucking us over was met with, "yeah well what can you do you know."
definitely made me appreciate the couple friends i have and that they are also leftists
I have a feeling there is some theory or something somewhere that ...
Cognitive dissonance maybe? Term/theory about how a person responds to contradictory information.
