Asklemmy

Yep! Been reading Gramsci lately, and he puts into words this phenomenon really well:

The widespread prejudice that philosophy is something very difficult because it is the intellectual activity of a specific category of specialist scholars or professional and systematic philosophers must be destroyed. To do this we must first show that all men are “philosophers,” defining the limitations of this “spontaneous philosophy” possessed by “everyone,” that is, of the philosophy contained in: (1) language itself, which is a totality of determined notions and concepts and not simply and solely of words grammatically void of content; (2) common sense and good sense; (3) popular religion and therefore also in the entire system of beliefs, superstitions, opinions, ways of perceiving and acting which make up what is generally called “folklore.”

Having shown that everyone is a philosopher, even if in his own way, unconsciously (because even in the smallest manifestation of any intellectual activity — “language” — is contained a definite conception of the world), we pass to the second stage, the stage of criticism and awareness. We pass to the question: is it preferable to “think” without having critical awareness, in a disjointed and irregular way, in other words to “participate” in a conception of the world “imposed” mechanically by external environment, that is, by one of the many social groups in which everyone is automatically involved from the time he enters the conscious world; [3] or is it preferable to work out one’s own conception of the world consciously and critically, and so out of this work of one’s own brain to choose one’s own sphere of activity, to participate actively in making the history of the world, and not simply to accept passively and without care the imprint of one’s own personality from outside?

Note 1: For his own conception of the world a man always belongs to a certain grouping, and precisely to that grouping of the social elements who all share the same ways of thinking and working. He is a conformist in relation to some conformity, he is always man of a mass or a man of a collective. The question is this: of what historical type is the conformity, the mass of which he is a part? When his conception of the world is not critical and coherent but haphazard and disconnected he belongs simultaneously to a multiplicity of masses, giving his own personality a bizarre composition. It contains elements of the cave-man as well as principles of the most modern and advanced learning; shabby, local prejudices of all past historical phases as well as intuitions of a future philosophy of the human race united all over the world. Criticizing one’s own conception of the world means, therefore, to make it coherent and unified and to raise it to the point reached by the most advanced modern thought. It also means criticizing all hitherto existing philosophy in so far as it has left layers incorporated into the popular philosophy. The beginning of the critical elaboration is the consciousness of what one really is, that is, a “know thyself” as the product of the historical process which has left you an infinity of traces gathered together without the advantage of an inventory. To begin, then, it is necessary to first compile such an inventory.

Note 2: Philosophy cannot be separated from the history of philosophy nor culture from the history of culture. In the most immediate and pertinent sense one cannot have a critically coherent conception of the world — that is, one cannot be a philosopher — without being aware of one’s conception’s history, of the phases of development it represents, and of the fact that any conception stands in contradiction to other conceptions, or elements of other conceptions. The correct conception of the world answers certain problems posed by reality which are very much determined and “original” in their actuality. How is it possible to think about the present — and a well-determined present at that — with a philosophy elaborated in response to the problems of a remote and often outdated past? If this happens it means that one is an “anachronism” in one’s own time, a fossil and not a modern living being. Or at least one is “composed” bizarrely. And in fact it so happens that social groups which in certain ways express the most developed modernity, are arrested in other ways by their social position, and so are incapable of complete historical independence. [4]

Note 3: Given that language contains the elements of a conception of the world and of a culture, it will also be true that the greater or lesser complexity of a person’s conception of the world can be judged from that person’s language. A person who only speaks a dialect or who understands the national language in varying degrees necessarily enjoys a more or less restricted and provincial, fossilized and anachronistic perception of the world in comparison with the great currents of thought which dominate world history. His interests will be restricted, more or less guild-like or economistic, and not universal. If it is not always possible to learn foreign languages so as to put oneself in touch with different cultures, one must at least learn the national tongue. One great culture can be translated into the language of another great culture, that is, one great national language which is historically rich and complex, can translate any other great culture, i.e. can be a world expression. But a dialect cannot do the same thing.

Note 4: The creation of a new culture does not only mean individually making some “original” discoveries. It means also and especially the critical propagation of truths already discovered, “socializing them” so to speak, and so making them become a basis for vibrant actions, an element of co-ordination and of intellectual and moral order. The leading of a mass of men to think coherently and in a unitary way about present-day reality is a “philosophical” fact of much greater importance and “originality” than the discovery by a philosophical “genius” of a new truth which remains the inheritance of small groups of intellectuals.

• The Study of Philosophy and of Historical Materialism

Liberal spaces live and die on free speech theatre. They always have to pretend they're protecting free speech and allowing open debate. Being perceived as "authoritarian" is their kryptonite, because authoritarianism is the one thing they claim to oppose above all else.

Communist spaces will unapologetically hit you with the ban hammer for defending imperialism, fascism, capitalism, bigotry, etc. and I respect that.

on .ml the bans tend do also tend to be temp ones, unless someone's seriously harassing. so like people will be complaining about the 1984 censorship regime here but then if you look at their modlog more often than not they got a slap on the wrist for insulting people or doing the laziest anticommunism ever put into text. often both.

Yep, agreed!

I wonder what happens on .ml when you voice some alternative opinions... 🤔

Yes, haha, but in ways more similar than being FOSS would imply. .world isn't neutral.

Yep, that's a whole other can of woms, haha.