The Dialectic, or, Scholars are Stooopid!

"You’re using words for which you don’t know the definitions." — Boxer (Boxer is a career student who after fourteen years of study - ten of which he claims are about Marxism - still doesn't have a Ph. D.! Can you say "Worthless?")

The Reply:

Or maybe I’m simply following Orwell’s Politics and the English Language, and choosing to find words that communicate clearly rather than impress people.

Sure, Boxer. The Dialectic merely means an argument. Hegel didn’t invent it. If Position A (Thesis) is correct (1+1=2) then traditional logic dictates that Position B (Anti-thesis) is incorrect (1+1=3). Easy Speazie! No need to carry on.

Hegel took Position A (Thesis) and Position B (Anti-thesis) and equalized them in value, claiming the truth lay in the Synthesis, or compromise/consensus, that arises out of the two. [(1+1=2) + (1+1=3)] divided by 2 = 2.5 (Synthesis). This synthesis now becomes the new Thesis and another anti-Thesis is pitted against it, creating yet another Synthesis, and so on, and so on, and so on. It works in a “staircase” fashion over history, one new truth building upon another – more or less like when a precedent gets set in a court of law, it becomes a “new truth” that is the basis for future court cases.

eg. Since we’ve already established that 2.5 is the new Thesis, we can now go [(1+1=2.5) + (1+1=4)] divided by 2 = 3.25 (Synthesis/New Thesis)

This is the foundation of Hegel’s work, which ultimately boils down to “The Truth is Relative.” This was fundamental and groundbreaking at the time, because up until Hegel did this, the Western World followed the standard of Absolute Truth, because they were following the Bible (God is a representative of the Absolute Truth – no truth can over-ride him, not one). This is why Christianity and Marxism cannot co-exist in the same philosophical space. They are 100% contradictory.

Now, keep in mind, that is only what Hegel did. Next is where you get into manipulating the Dialectical Argument. (Hegel’s version finds the synthesized truths in a “natural” or haphazard fashion).

Marx then came along and said, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in different ways. The point, however, is to CHANGE it.”
 
Marx says, “Hey, you know, how can I use Hegel’s thing-a-ma-jiggy to bring about the goals I want to see in society?”

So Marx BEGINS with what he would like to see, and then thinks of the arguments, or a series of arguments that will lead people to that conclusion.

Marx says, “How can I convince society to believe that/ask for the 3.25 synthesized truth to appear, and he purposefully thinks up arguments – sometimes 3 or 4 or 5 steps ahead, which will lead society to this conclusion. So, in other words, while Hegel’s version finds the “truth” in a haphazard fashion, Marx’s version already has a predetermined goal. Marx works the equation backwards, or more accurately (if I could put diagrams in this comment instead of math) from the “top down” while Hegel works from the “bottom up.”

“Dialectical thought is related to vulgar thinking in the same way that a motion picture is related to a still photograph. The motion picture does not outlaw the still photograph but combines a series of them according to the laws of motion.” — Leon Trotsky

Of course, the purely accurate term for the whole crapola is Dialectical Materialism.

But then again, hey, what I just described above is just so flippin’ easy to understand and, well, it’s so positively engrossing for the average reader, why not throw in big words that mean nothing to laymen, like Dialectical Materialism, which really don’t mean jack-shit to anyone but those airheads who think fancy degrees and big words make them above others.

I’d rather clearly communicate ideas, than impress with vast knowledge coupled with big words and not get my point across but to only 1% of the people who read it – also known as Academic’s Disease (See again, Politics and the English Language linked above).

Not that the men on this board are children, but think of it this way:

If you are teaching a child to cross the street, you want him to be able to identify what a car is. All I am concerned with is that he understands what a car is (it has four wheels, moves fast, goes vroom vroom, and is dangerous). That is what is needed to get my point across.

It is completely unnecessary, at this point anyway, to also explain that a car has an exhaust system, shock absorbers, a radiator and a fuel injection system. And also, that it technically ought not be called a car but rather an “automobile.”

I long ago decided that if I was to speak of complex issues to the MRM, I was going to stop trying to impress people with big gobble-die-gook terms, and rather bring things to them clearly, by talking like a trucker or a farmer.

And boy oh boy, can I sometimes talk like a farmer in the barn or a trucker in a traffic jam!

Besides, I have so much disrespect for all things Academia, that I just love watching their nerdy little heads explode over the minute details that really don’t matter a whit to 99% of the population, nor should they.

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"This is just the voice of an ordinary Canadian yelling back at the radio - "You don't speak for me!"

"I don't know what the scholars will think of it. Nor do I care. I'm not writing for them. I'm writing for Canadians."

Q: "... but has any researcher made a serious longitudinal study on this?"
A: "Maybe you should do a longitudinal study on the overall effectiveness of always depending on longitudinal studies."

"But there we are, what do I know, eh? I am just a poor lonesome country boy with nothing but chicken wire to sit on and a rusty old marble to play with."


"Great men take themselves and the world too seriously to become what is called merely intellectual. Men who are merely intellectual are insincere; they are people who have never really been deeply engrossed by things and who do not feel an overpowering desire for production. All that they care about is that their work should glitter and sparkle like a well-cut stone, not that it should illuminate anything. They are more occupied with what will be said of what they think than by the thoughts themselves. There are men who are willing to marry a woman they do not care about merely because she is admired by other men. Such a relation exists between many men and their thoughts. I cannot help thinking of one particular living author, a blaring, outrageous person, who fancies that he is roaring when he is only snarling. Unfortunately, Nietzsche (however superior he is to the man I have in mind) seems to have devoted himself chiefly to what he thought would shock the public. He is at his best when he is most unmindful of effect. His was the vanity of the mirror, saying to what it reflects, "See how faithfully I show you your image." In youth when a man is not yet certain of himself he may try to secure his own position by jostling others. Great men, however, are painfully aggressive only from necessity. They are not like a girl who is most pleased about a new dress because she knows that it will annoy her friends." -- Otto Weininger, Sex and Character, Talent and Genius