Late Stage Capitalism & Historical Prophecies
There's no such thing as late-stage capitalism. The entire idea is based in the neo-Marxist material dialectic, a claim that history proceeds in set patterns. When someone tells you they can predict history? You should laugh at them. At best, you can compare the present to similar past civilizations. Those comparisons work best when the comparisons are more specific in nature- for example, comparing the topsoil loss via farming between today and ancient Sumeria, or income inequality rates compared between us and the Roman Empire.
![[Image source]](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Suburbia_by_David_Shankbone.jpg){kind=link}
Admittedly, things are pretty shitty right now. High income inequality, ballooning lower class debt, etc, etc- it sucks. But if there is one thing that history should teach us, it's that things getting worse sure as hell isn't an indicator they're about to get better. The entire idea of late-stage capitalism contains an element of "it's causing our problems, when it collapses the problems will go away as well."
This isn't to say that sins of historical thought are limited to advocates of the idea of late-stage capitalism- its foes often fall into equally severe traps. The "end of history" is often used as a counterargument against late-stage capitalism. Its sin is assuming change will not occur, which is frankly worse than assuming you can predict the direction of its change.
This isn't necessarily a critique of neoliberalism or neo-Marxism, just of the way they address history. Whenever you assume that you can understand history through the lenses of a single theory, that theory will fail you. History is the sum total of all human activity and the natural forces acting upon it. We need to respond it its twists and turns, rather than expecting it to conform to our expectations of it.
The 'end of history' indeed. History is eternal.
"History is the sum total of all human activity and the natural forces acting upon it"
Check out Veblen and Path dependence. If change is linked to an ontological rather than an epistemic question - (uncertainty theory) - then it's all just blind drift. Futility and meaninglessness. sss.
Ooh, that sound fun, thanks!
Short but sweet, but could benefit from being longer I think (rare thing to hear on steemit, someone complaining about the brevity of an article!)
The ideas here remind me of the Christian endtimes. "Apocalypse is just around the corner. So exerting ourselves or making any long term plans is pointless: problems are gonna take care of themselves."
The Christian theology regarding "end-times" was likely intended to motivate the faithful to lead virtuous lives, rather than waste time chasing vanities. Your theory of "use" is applicable here, as the core philosophy regarding Christianity, as well as other religions, is serving God (or gods). A person's value derives from his "use" to his God (or gods), much like a tool's value derives from its ability to serve a function. Thus, the Christian conception of the "end-times" as being akin to parousia, time of official examination or inspection.
The popular so-called "Christian" end time scenarios, mostly popular in the US and the related low Protestant factions, somewhat miss the original intent of the "apocalypse" or revealing. Their illiterate babblings do lead people astray with their despair engendering drivel, but then when has any populist whore-mongering ever generated anything positive?
True, the philosophy of the endtimes is mostly limited to those factions you mentioned. However - even though you're right about them being babbling illiterates - I respect their stance, because I think it's actually the correct one! I've read the Bible in classical Greek and Greek and English, and (although I didn't conduct a thorough investigation) I think there's no way about it: we didn't evolve from apes; if you count all the generations from Adam to Eve then you get the number of years humans have existed on this planet; the endtimes was supposed to have happened while Jesus' apostles were still alive; etc. I remember talking to a girl, who in 1995 believed evolution wasn't true, and in 1996 believed it was true, because her Pope said so. If we compare that kind of believer to the US evangelists, I don't know who'd come out looking better! In my few years on this planet, I've seen religion change with the times - but fighting progress every step of the way. I can ask a theologian today what he thinks about same-sex marriage, and I can mentally travel back to my teens and ask the same question to the priest who was teaching us theology (that's what we call religious studies), and I'd get the exact opposite response. I don't like this chameleon eel-like nature of religion. To me, the evangelists etc. are closer to the "true" religion, based on what the actual Bible says.
Never thought to apply the "use" idea to how God sees us! It does indeed chime with some of the vocabulary used, like people being vessels for God's love or instruments etc. It leads to a kind of alienation of self from body, since the body is meant to praise God, and doing anything unseemly with it (e.g. masturbation, which Kant famously argued against) is seen as offensive to God, because this is God's body basically we're doing this to.
Indeed, modern day "religions" are as you describe, chameleon, jettisoning inconvenient doctrines with shifting winds of populism. It is inaccurate to impute ludditism to religion, since the core of all human societies, prior to the Westphalian state, was religion and her institutions. All progress (scientific or otherwise) for vitually all of written human history were sponsored by religion at the center of social matrix.
Protestanism denies the real presence of their Messiah in the eucharist, which all of Christianity affirms and remains at the center of its religious rituals. "Evangelicals" would not be closer to God's word, given that they ignore the basis of Christian religion: theophagy.
Since Vatican 2 reforms, Western "Christianity" is as you encountered: empty, hollow, useless. They assume that God commands good, rather than What God commands is good. Thus, they run in circles discussing philosophy, art, politics, then back-around again in the Pandemonium fortress of psudo-religious drivel. In some ways, I too prefer the ignorant fanatics of ISIS to a Western "Christian."
I was super tired when I wrote it, so I didn't really have the energy to write more. I could probably expand more on the ideas later, though.
Humans, in general, have always placed themselves at the center of spacetime. Past calender conventions established temporal reference to founding of an insignificant city-state, even less significant reign of some egotist, and, beginning with the Arab-Muslim empire, regional religious establishment.
Marxist and neo-liberal conception of spacetime "ending" with their ultimate victory is just another egotist bias regarding the universe. Even the "conventional" historical narrative consigns the past as but a prelude to current utopic times: "ancient," "Dark" Ages, "Middle" Ages, "modern" times, etc. History seems to be an illustration of man's egotism writ large across perceived spacetime.
Absolutely spot on. Much of my life has been an intellectual backlash against anthrocentric ideas- it's what attracted me to existentialism as a teenager (not nihilism- I'm too much of a cheerful dork for that), it's a big part of what attracted me to the study of geology now. The geological timescale is the least human centric timescale, where a million years is super short term.
img credz: pixabay.com
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That is the view of the air force.