I think it depends on what you need.

Personal, non-institutional practice is kind of beyond reproach in isolation (unless you’re talking to somebody who reads Marx and co. dogmatically or something, but those folks can safely be ignored as having missed the point before they even got started)

But you can’t… you cannot make the catholic church socialist by trying to be a socialist AND a catholic, and both your catholicism and your socialism will be impaired by the dissonance you will feel. Protestant and catholic churches are all, as an institution, deeply embedded in the history of anti-socialist and reactionary politics.

I have private religious practices. I will even congregate with other people to read and study (we’re talking one, maybe two people) - and I basically mark it like this - my spiritual and religious tendencies are for organizing my interior - my priorities, my actions, my symbolic understanding of reality, all comes from a religious place, and that place is deeply rooted in christian (well it’s increasingly more islamic these days) belief.

Marxism is the core of how I navigate the external world. It’s the main toolset i use to understand politics at any scale. It’s what I use to theorize/imagine how to build a better life for myself and others.

But it’s really not useful for spiritual matters. Lots of key figures explicitly only analyze religion of any sort (though a lot of marxist-speaks-on-religion material i’ve read has a really huge problem with reducing belief to being something that is essentially a european flavor of christianity and it sucks) through the lens of its material political expression.

This isn’t useless, but it absolutely isn’t useful for understanding the value of belief systems in terms of what it’s actually useful for, which is the transformation of self and identity.

You can be Christian and socialist. You can’t be catholic, or protestant, and socialist, if that makes sense?

like a socialist brand of christianity would need to emerge in dialogue, joining other socialists who are christian to define how their belief structures integrate with the larger marxist project, and in that context you will basically always have certain types of people who are mad you’re even around them, having that conversation.

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They [the people in charge, they dont need to be overly unified] really want to reinforce the elements of this world that make it more brutal and miserable and I hate it

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im going to double post oh my God I hate AI so much. LISTEN. I bet it’s really nice to have certain intellectual tasks offloaded to the dead-eyed thing, but no dude. The marginally less destructive, subjectively better origin doesn’t make this technology safe.

there are real dangers in letting the US govt have this tech because it will gleefully rot brains to control people and enact their so-called perfect panopticon

but that doesn’t mean that by changing the social and intellectual role of this technology, it becomes more acceptable. The problem with the technology doesnt change just because we can envision a more ethical owner and distributor of said.

the technology as a consumer product is poison. It does not care if it is rotting the brain of a citizen of your nation or another. it does not care.

They’re both selling a solvent based paint

the chinese solvents are notably less dangerous to the environment, but it still gets you wicked sick nasty high, like tripping balls

but it’s still paint. You’re still huffing paint fumes, you, yourself; emotionally, can allow yourself to enjoy your huffed paint, if you want, as more ethically sourced?

BUT YOU are STILL HUFFING PAINT

i would rather reframe the danger frankly

because it actually is like alarmingly dangerous

just not as some embarrassing skynet concept

redirecting fear and anxiety is easier than being a wet blanket anyway, and if people want to freak out about the danger, the scientific fact that this tech rots our brain is a perfect concept node to redirect that kind of fear monger-marketing towards

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i hope somebody can help

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