Where can we read more about this?
this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2025
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This is very obvious on discussions/articles about privacy and ads. There is a lot of talk about Meta/Google/Apple/Microsoft invading the users privacy, forcing ads, or screwing users on various different ways.
However, there are very rarely any mentions about alternatives:
- Linux may do your job for your PC needs
- DeGoogled Android (like LineageOS) may do your job for your smartphone needs
- Lemmy/Mastodon can be used as alternative social media
- Odysee/PeerTube may have the type of content one watches on YouTube
If there is no push for alternatives, capitalist services and software will continue to be used as tools for capitalism or fascism.
What's the background?
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a U.S. Representative, gained significant attention for wearing a dress with the phrase "Tax the Rich" at the 2021 Met Gala, which sparked discussions about wealth inequality and her political stance. Recently, she was instructed by the House Ethics Committee to pay additional amounts related to her Met Gala appearance due to violations of House rules regarding gifts.
Our words makes us think under the capitalist mindset.
For deem, we like to use problem solving to mitigate capitalisms disruptions. By doing this, we superficially look at the current conditions and answers similarily superficially. For deem, we say that plastic bottles pollutes our oceans and recirculation are the solution. That cars polluting are the problem and electric cars are the solution.
These are technically solutions, but they dont take an wholistic approach. They dont see the interplay of different actions. They dont necessarily try to completely answer an undesired condition. This is the unwellness of problem solving.
What we instead should do, is to start from the wholistic. View our planet as a body. To see ourselves as doctors rather than engineers. To say that we do unwellness lokening, rather than problem solving.
Because by doing this, we fundamentally change the framing. We will have a much easier time defining conditions wholistically, and thus makes it easier to find effective responses to them.
Plastics bottles are certainly an unwellness, but it is part of something bigger... The unwellness of plastic pollution where the lokening is stopping plastic production. An unwellness is cars, the lokening is stopping car production. An unwellness is advertisements, the lokening is people initiated sightsteering.
The unwellness lokening approach is in itself a way to move away from captialist realism and towards samlife.
This is very idealist, rather than materialist. Proper analysis of problems presented by capitalism must be looked at systemically, yes, but framing it based on vibes and LARPing as "system doctors" doesn't actually solve anything. We must take a consistent, scientific approach, a la Marxism.
From reading the book you gave me, I feel much more aligned with materialism. I believe that matter is the realest and the spirit world is less real - if I may put it like that.
That doesn't mean that I think we should view everything from a materialist lense.
The materialist lense is synonymous with the scientific method. But science isn't suitable for everything. Science is slow, rigid, unaccessible and never answers wholistically. Oftentimes science isn't the right approach.
For deem, if he wants to befriend her, he could look up research papers on the best approach to do so, but if she responds with something he hasn't studied, then he will have to go back to the drawing board. In this case it would be better for him to lean on meta physics such as "trusting his gut feeling" or "make her feel valued". This approach moves away from materialism, but that doesn't mean that he has turned into a luney coocoo head.
Or what you say?
I think you're looking at it in quite a rigid manner. The dialectical materialist theory of knowledge is that when we practice, we better inform our theory, better allowing us to guess. In unknowns, we can only draw on what we know, and the results of what happens help us get a deeper and deeper understanding of what we are learning. It isn't that we can never interact with what we don't already know, it's that we have to in order to learn more!
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Deliberately abandoning science and materialism in favor of idealism is counter-productive.
Yes, unwellness lokening is going away from the material frame because unwellness lokening greatens our ability to think wholistically. It doesn't weaken, but greatens our ability to systematically respond to the rampage of might and machine*.
With this framing, we relight our attention away from the abstract, towards the value of life. This weakens mights ability to coerce us in that we move away from an unliving world towards a living world. Where we view life as worthy, instead of as exploitable. Where we do not simply see a forest as a source of income, but rather as something that lives and are worthy of care.
We don't need science to see that Gaja is sick, we already know this. We know that might and machine is the source of these unwellnesses. Simply withdrawing our support and establishing mightless and samholding societies are enough to ensure samlife with Gaja. We can do this through lokenings such as moving away from overproduction towards frugile societies. Let societies not be governed by leaders, but grown by guiders. No science is needed to understand this, only an agreement about what society should be grounded upon.
*Using machine as a way to refer to the systems controlled by might that undermines our free will.
This is just idealism, it has no merit.
Quick question, is a doctor an idealist?
If they are an idealist, yes. If they are a materialist, no. That question is like asking if a doctor is 35 years old.
Gotcha mate.
We may be talking about different things, are you aware of what idealism and materialism are in philosophical terms?
I haven't delved into the philosophy of idealism, so I'm a seed in that. Just looked up the wikipedia article when you brought it up. Found it to be an umbrella term, so I couldn't really determine my stead on it.
Elementary Principles of Philosophy is a full book, but is absolutely my favorite primer on dialectical materialism, and how it came to be, going over earlier idealism, vulgar materialism, the origins of dialectics, etc. I recommend giving it a read!
By the way, could you recommend some epub reader for linux by any chance?
I think Koreader works well on Linux! I also recommend just reading it on mobile.
Thanks:) I'll peek and see if it sparks me!
Well, ditto then.
Deliberately abandoning science and materialism in favor of idealism is counterproductive.
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Oh, how delightfully condescending! Nothing says rigorous critique like dismissing thoughtful discussion as armchair philosophy from the comfort of your anti-intellectual high horse. Philosophy isn’t some gated estate reserved for tenured professors in ivory towers. It’s rooted in questioning, debate, and critical thinking, activities every person is not only capable of, but should engage in. To sneer at armchair philosophers is to imply that ordinary people shouldn’t dare reflect on ethics, society, or meaning.