Maybe 60%-70% of the music I listen to is metal. I occasionally wear shirts from local bands and go to shows whenever I can afford to. I buy all my music. But I do not feel compelled to wear a uniform. Boots are uncomfortable and my color options extend beyond black. I do not hide the fact that I love metal, but I also don't shove it down the throats of my friends. (In fact, only one of my friends is a metalhead, and we share no bands in common.) I love hip-hop, folk, blues, indie rock, pop, electronica, experimental music, punk, and trip-hop maybe somewhat less than I love metal, but with just as much fervor.
Am I a metalhead? Who in the ☺☺☺☺ cares? It's an arbitrary title. If you want to call yourself one, fine, cool, whatever gets you hard, but I think it's sort of absurd to determine with finality another person's quality as a fan because they don't meet the standards that you've sort of capriciously invented, conveniently based on your own behaviors.
I stumbled upon a fantastic Rapper from my home state of Maryland that really needs more exposure. He goes by the name Cubbiebear and he SLAYS.
I'll look him up. I'm always looking for new hip-hop.
Which two Anaal Nathrakh albums did you pick up? My favorites are the latest two they've put out, although all of their material is good.
The Codex Necro & When Fire Rains Down from the Sky [etc]. I'm enjoying Codex Necro more between the two, but they're both pretty great. I guess if I had a complaint it would be that I prefer my black metal a little more raw. Actually, I want all my black metal to sound more or less like early Darkthrone, which is sort of an absurd expectation.
Been rolling on a pretty strong hip-hop kick recently. Biggie, Wu-Tang, Aesop Rock, Cage, & Nas, mostly. "Ether", from Nas's album Stillmatic, may be the best diss track ever; if it's not, it's only because "Hit em Up" can probably never be beaten.
Also: picked up two Anaal Nathrakh albums recently, both of which are pretty fantastic.
1) Ideas, no matter how repugnant, ought not to be made criminal; more free speech is always better.
2) Censoring an idea does not get rid of it. If anything, it gives ammunition to those who espouse the idea.
3) And from a purely historical perspective: we already **** with history enough, through propaganda, there's no reason to make it worse. As you say, pretending it didn't happen doesn't change the fact that it did.
Your ignorance about the islam is just offending. Islam is not that different from christianity. So in all muslim countries (Turkye, Morocco, Syrië, Israel) women are getting raped and enslaved by men? Please for christs sake travel to such countries to see how dead wrong you are.
It's not an unreasonable generalization, even though it is not true in every case.
The charges against Communism made from a religious, a
philosophical, and, generally, from an ideological standpoint,
are not deserving of serious examination.
Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man's ideas,
views and conceptions, in one word, man's consciousness, changes
with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in
his social relations and in his social life?
What else does the history of ideas prove, than that
intellectual production changes its character in proportion as
material production is changed? The ruling ideas of each age
have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.
When people speak of ideas that revolutionise society, they do
but express the fact, that within the old society, the elements
of a new one have been created, and that the dissolution of the
old ideas keeps even pace with the dissolution of the old
conditions of existence.
When the ancient world was in its last throes, the ancient
religions were overcome by Christianity. When Christian ideas
succumbed in the 18th century to rationalist ideas, feudal
society fought its death battle with the then revolutionary
bourgeoisie. The ideas of religious liberty and freedom of
conscience merely gave expression to the sway of free competition
within the domain of knowledge.
"Undoubtedly," it will be said, "religious, moral, philosophical
and juridical ideas have been modified in the course of
historical development. But religion, morality philosophy,
political science, and law, constantly survived this change."
"There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice,
etc. that are common to all states of society. But Communism
abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all
morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it
therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience."
What does this accusation reduce itself to? The history of
all past society has consisted in the development of class
antagonisms, antagonisms that assumed different forms at
different epochs.
But whatever form they may have taken, one fact is common to all
past ages, viz., the exploitation of one part of society by the
other. No wonder, then, that the social consciousness of past
ages, despite all the multiplicity and variety it displays,
moves within certain common forms, or general ideas, which
cannot completely vanish except with the total disappearance of
class antagonisms.
The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with
traditional property relations; no wonder that its development
involves the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.
But let us have done with the bourgeois objections to Communism.
(I exaggerated its brevity, but not by much.)
Now, here is how I read the argument, and you can correct me if I'm wrong: Moral and philosophical arguments against Communism fail because under a Communist system, the the conditions of existence will be so radically different from any previous system that ideologies that arose within those previous systems will be swept away along with the systems. Or: ideologies that arise within an economic paradigm are only relevant within that paradigm.
Now, he does refer specifically to the ruling class's ideologies, but I see no reason why the principle wouldn't apply to any ideas or ideologies.
Also, I'm talking about how black people still cite slavery as a reason they are still oppressed. Put 2x2 together.
Right. I get that. What I don't get is your objection, since it's pretty much the case. Slavery, and the subsequent oppression, especially but not exclusively in the South, is directly related to their current situation.
This is an issue that has come to me in the past couple of years. I believe that many minorities have been self-segregating themselves to reap benefits from society. Think about it- the race card is played by blacks in many situations. One that springs to my mind is college admission. Colleges began fearing black people and other minorities calling "racist!" when they denied college admission, so now we have the lovely quota system. This limits the amount of hard-working students that can be accepted and replaces them with self-labeled "ghetto" inner city kids that end up dropping out. But nobody complains. Nobody wants to speak up in public about quotas, for fear of being branded a racist themselves, when they are trying to speak out against a self-segregating system that is supported by the segregated.
This whole section would be much more compelling if you actually cited facts.
So how do these minorities self-segregate? One example is the entire "ghetto culture." Many inner city underprivileged minority youth dress, speak, and act like the complete idiots. They perpetuate the entire stereotype. And when ol' whitey comes along and calls them ghetto or calls them the n world(albeit wrong, although black people call themselves it all the time), he gets fried and is called a cracker and is branded a racist. Hell, even Al Sharpton does it.
I have no idea what you mean by "act like complete idiots". & also, cultures develop in isolated communities. That's how it happens. I'm not sure why you don't seem to take exception to Jewish culture in Brooklyn, or, for that matter, white culture in the suburbs.
Another issue is the whole "slavery" deal with blacks, (and "holocaust" deal with Jewish people, but them not so much). They are not slaves anymore, why act like it happened yesterday, they have there rights, but they insist on perpetuating the stereotype that they are angry slaves.
What do all these events have in common? They all came to light within the past two years and all involve men treating women like less than dirt.
I thought what they all had in common was the disproportionate attention they garnered in the same countries that largely ignore the sexual slavery of hundreds of thousands of girls in East Asia and throughout the developing world.
I mean, I don't want to diminish the suffering of the girls you talked about, but there's this tendency in the Western media to go ****ing ape**** when a nice white girl is abused and to remain totally silent when poor minority girls experience the same or worse.
Quote from Mad Mat »
Relativists think that there is no way to morally judge acts on an absolute basis (i.e. there is no absolute moral guideline to which we can compare acts and hereby determine their morality). Hence, you can't judge what someone does as immoral, because there is no absolute authority to appeal to, except your own (or the one of your culture) and that one has equal merit as any other. So, they say, if within an other culture something occurs that we detest, we just have to accept it as it's part of that culture, just like they will detest some parts of our culture (like how we treat our women as equals to men).
They're also made out of straw and scare birds.
Yeah, exactly. It's an untenable position, which is fine, since no one actually holds it.
EDIT:
Quote from sentimentGX4 »
We should respect Muslim tradition and tolerate their upholding of their freedom to marry at whatever age they desire. Despite not being common in the Western world, we are always arguing for more freedoms and it may appear conflicting to Yemenis if we argue for freedoms such as freedom of the press and women's rights while arguing to take others away.
What about the freedom of the young girls? They don't "desire" it; their parents do; their husbands do. They can in no way be expected to provide informed, reasonable consent for something that is well beyond their ability to understand. If it ain't consensual, it ain't freedom.
Plato, Kant, Darwin, I think. I mean, limiting it to three is sort of absurd, so any list is necessarily laughable, but those three are sort of my heroes, so I'll roll with it.
I'm not sure what it is you expect from the "relativists" (or, for that matter, what it is precisely you imagine a relativist to be), but I'm going to go ahead & guess that none of them (are there any?) are going to support the rape of young girls. It's obviously repugnant to any basic moral sense.
Am I the only one who is unreasonably excited that Tom Waits is in this film? Especially after his baffling performance in Wristcutters: A Love Story. I can't wait.
Again, I assume he would have found some way to sidestep this problem, and ground the reasons for Communism in something that the previous point can't touch. Some proposal of of how to have "values, ideals, etc.", but different from what we currently mean by those, such that they can prop up a proposal of a socio-political system, but such that the other argument doesn't apply.
Maybe, but if he did so, he didn't do it in the Manifesto. The thing is, the argument occupies all of 1/3 of a page; he assumes the reader agrees with the premise, & so does not elucidate the premise. He probably put forth a more complete version elsewhere.
But from my totally-not-as-smart-as-Marx perspective, I'm not sure how he could work around the problem without compromising the validity of the argument.
I've recently been reading the Communist Manifesto with a friend, and there is a point in the argument I'm having trouble with: the claim that the ideas, conceptions, and values of an age are inseparable from the social, political, historical, and economic circumstances of that age.
To what extent, I wonder, is this actually the case? And if it is true, then do ideas conceived of under one system have any validity under another system? Because I mean, wouldn't that sort of invalidate Marx's own ideas of a post-Capitalist system, as they were conceived of in a Capitalist context?
I guess my problem here is that he uses the argument that morals and ideas arise only within a given system to shoot down philosophical or moral counter-arguments to Communism. He seems to say they are moot, since they wouldn't apply if the Capitalist system were swept away. Why wouldn't that apply to his own morals and philosophies?
Am I a metalhead? Who in the ☺☺☺☺ cares? It's an arbitrary title. If you want to call yourself one, fine, cool, whatever gets you hard, but I think it's sort of absurd to determine with finality another person's quality as a fan because they don't meet the standards that you've sort of capriciously invented, conveniently based on your own behaviors.
I'll look him up. I'm always looking for new hip-hop.
The Codex Necro & When Fire Rains Down from the Sky [etc]. I'm enjoying Codex Necro more between the two, but they're both pretty great. I guess if I had a complaint it would be that I prefer my black metal a little more raw. Actually, I want all my black metal to sound more or less like early Darkthrone, which is sort of an absurd expectation.
Also: picked up two Anaal Nathrakh albums recently, both of which are pretty fantastic.
2) Censoring an idea does not get rid of it. If anything, it gives ammunition to those who espouse the idea.
3) And from a purely historical perspective: we already **** with history enough, through propaganda, there's no reason to make it worse. As you say, pretending it didn't happen doesn't change the fact that it did.
Next: Lil' Wayne- A Milli
It's not an unreasonable generalization, even though it is not true in every case.
philosophical, and, generally, from an ideological standpoint,
are not deserving of serious examination.
Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man's ideas,
views and conceptions, in one word, man's consciousness, changes
with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in
his social relations and in his social life?
What else does the history of ideas prove, than that
intellectual production changes its character in proportion as
material production is changed? The ruling ideas of each age
have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.
When people speak of ideas that revolutionise society, they do
but express the fact, that within the old society, the elements
of a new one have been created, and that the dissolution of the
old ideas keeps even pace with the dissolution of the old
conditions of existence.
When the ancient world was in its last throes, the ancient
religions were overcome by Christianity. When Christian ideas
succumbed in the 18th century to rationalist ideas, feudal
society fought its death battle with the then revolutionary
bourgeoisie. The ideas of religious liberty and freedom of
conscience merely gave expression to the sway of free competition
within the domain of knowledge.
"Undoubtedly," it will be said, "religious, moral, philosophical
and juridical ideas have been modified in the course of
historical development. But religion, morality philosophy,
political science, and law, constantly survived this change."
"There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice,
etc. that are common to all states of society. But Communism
abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all
morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it
therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience."
What does this accusation reduce itself to? The history of
all past society has consisted in the development of class
antagonisms, antagonisms that assumed different forms at
different epochs.
But whatever form they may have taken, one fact is common to all
past ages, viz., the exploitation of one part of society by the
other. No wonder, then, that the social consciousness of past
ages, despite all the multiplicity and variety it displays,
moves within certain common forms, or general ideas, which
cannot completely vanish except with the total disappearance of
class antagonisms.
The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with
traditional property relations; no wonder that its development
involves the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.
But let us have done with the bourgeois objections to Communism.
(I exaggerated its brevity, but not by much.)
Now, here is how I read the argument, and you can correct me if I'm wrong: Moral and philosophical arguments against Communism fail because under a Communist system, the the conditions of existence will be so radically different from any previous system that ideologies that arose within those previous systems will be swept away along with the systems. Or: ideologies that arise within an economic paradigm are only relevant within that paradigm.
Now, he does refer specifically to the ruling class's ideologies, but I see no reason why the principle wouldn't apply to any ideas or ideologies.
Right. I get that. What I don't get is your objection, since it's pretty much the case. Slavery, and the subsequent oppression, especially but not exclusively in the South, is directly related to their current situation.
This whole section would be much more compelling if you actually cited facts.
I have no idea what you mean by "act like complete idiots". & also, cultures develop in isolated communities. That's how it happens. I'm not sure why you don't seem to take exception to Jewish culture in Brooklyn, or, for that matter, white culture in the suburbs.
What are you even talking about? O.o
I thought what they all had in common was the disproportionate attention they garnered in the same countries that largely ignore the sexual slavery of hundreds of thousands of girls in East Asia and throughout the developing world.
I mean, I don't want to diminish the suffering of the girls you talked about, but there's this tendency in the Western media to go ****ing ape**** when a nice white girl is abused and to remain totally silent when poor minority girls experience the same or worse.
Yeah, exactly. It's an untenable position, which is fine, since no one actually holds it.
EDIT:
What about the freedom of the young girls? They don't "desire" it; their parents do; their husbands do. They can in no way be expected to provide informed, reasonable consent for something that is well beyond their ability to understand. If it ain't consensual, it ain't freedom.
I'm not sure what it is you expect from the "relativists" (or, for that matter, what it is precisely you imagine a relativist to be), but I'm going to go ahead & guess that none of them (are there any?) are going to support the rape of young girls. It's obviously repugnant to any basic moral sense.
Maybe, but if he did so, he didn't do it in the Manifesto. The thing is, the argument occupies all of 1/3 of a page; he assumes the reader agrees with the premise, & so does not elucidate the premise. He probably put forth a more complete version elsewhere.
But from my totally-not-as-smart-as-Marx perspective, I'm not sure how he could work around the problem without compromising the validity of the argument.
To what extent, I wonder, is this actually the case? And if it is true, then do ideas conceived of under one system have any validity under another system? Because I mean, wouldn't that sort of invalidate Marx's own ideas of a post-Capitalist system, as they were conceived of in a Capitalist context?
I guess my problem here is that he uses the argument that morals and ideas arise only within a given system to shoot down philosophical or moral counter-arguments to Communism. He seems to say they are moot, since they wouldn't apply if the Capitalist system were swept away. Why wouldn't that apply to his own morals and philosophies?