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PositiveStrength5694 t1_itpu7an wrote

I believe it might be more accurate to not talk about technology but the essence of technology, as that is what Heidegger is really interested in. Furthermore saying that "everything is now measured by its instrumental value" seems to slightly misrepresent the phenomenological relation we now have, how things are not merely seen or measured as, but ARE only its instrumental value. A stationary airplane is no longer an airplane that can move an x amount of people, but becomes ONLY the potential of this transport of people.

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bogmire t1_itqwbbm wrote

But there is a whole culture of fetishism around these objects, I'm guilty of it myself. Perhaps the people who celebrate the airplane as an object are on the outside so to speak, not the ones operating or purchasing them though.

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PositiveStrength5694 t1_itr4l7h wrote

That's an interesting point. I think it might be because it is also a certain conquering of nature, an impressive scientific accomplishment of physics make an iron bird fly. I think telescopes, missions to the moon and certain other technological projects in the name of discovery or merely accomplishments (e.g. the space race) can maybe not be as accurately described by this and provide a different category of technology all together. Heidegger, in his "the question concerning technology" talks about demanding resources from nature, but I do not see how a telescope is demanding anything.

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Icy-Performance-3739 t1_itrdhtp wrote

The telescope is demanding spectral and electromagnetic information from the cosmos

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salTUR t1_itt4zih wrote

It also demands the materials used to build the telescope, literally

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dgblarge t1_its583j wrote

To think he didn't live to see the the catastrophe that is social media. The platform it gives to idiots and the echo chamber of contracting world views and the abandonment of truth in favour of opinion. He must be spinning in his grave.

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hapticeffects t1_itt677z wrote

I mean he was a literal Nazi, I hope the only thing he's doing in his grave is miserably rotting in it.

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darknova25 t1_itt7u2l wrote

Yeah and his journal entries reveal he wasn't just a Nazi because the Nazis were in power and it was required to be a member of the party in his academic position, but a true adherent and horrendously anti semetic.

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salTUR t1_itt5vkj wrote

It's possible that this opinion about social media is shared by many, many more people than one might expect. We only hear from the humans who use it. Maybe a mass exodus from social media is in our best interest. Including from Reddit.

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Zkyaiee t1_ittphgy wrote

See leaving social media would be cool, if I wasn’t disabled and could see friends in real life often.

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Krytos t1_itu8u7p wrote

It is for sure. But I can't quit reddit. But I did the rest of them lol.

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crazzz t1_its0a4o wrote

I disagree. A plane is still just a plane, a physical object in the physical world. It's not a "blur" of potential. This might be coming from the fact that people are "living" more of their lives in the "digital world" which isn't really the "digital world" it's the normal world while using the internet.

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Maraude8r t1_ittwx9k wrote

I think 9/11 showed us a plane is more than „it’s potential to transport people“. It’s never that simple.

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FeDeWould-be t1_itpxv40 wrote

Well that automatically brings capitalism into the picture if you want to answer any of those questions. The plane is owned by people who only have 1 purpose for owning that plane, if we were to use it for anything else we would be breaking the law

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bogmire t1_itqvdg7 wrote

I find it interesting that people are so quick to correlate capitalism with any form of thinking based on maximizing utility, all economic systems do this to varying degrees of efficiency. A communist system would not build aircraft for any reason other than to move things. I understand that the discussion here is about paradigms of thought and certainly the capitalist mindset does encourage this sort of thinking, but it is present in any large scale human organizational structure to some degree, and more telling of our state of industrial/technological civilization, rather than a direct relationship to economic systems, if the two can be separated.

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Dodaddydont t1_its3roa wrote

Just as a side story, I once saw someone say that Uber was terrible and exploitative and wouldn't exist under socialism. So I asked if any form of taxis would exist under socialism. They said: of course not! I asked why that would be, and they said: well because there would be no cars of course!

So anyways, according to that guy, I'm guessing there wouldn't be any airplanes under socialism as well, lol

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[deleted] t1_ittpma9 wrote

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coke_and_coffee t1_itrcl48 wrote

This subreddit is really really really anti-capitalist. If you push back even the slightest on any kind of critique related to capitalism here you will get swamped with downvotes.

I would argue that this kind of anti-capitalist mentality is the root of many deranged philosophies.

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VitriolicViolet t1_itsh6mz wrote

most critiques either use strawmen (most people cant define terms like capitalism or communism) or end up asking for an entire dissertation on an alternative system.

i would argue the blind devotion to capitalism most people show is it self deranged.

and i say that as someone who doesnt like any system (nothing we have invented is fit for purpose, we need a new ideology not rehashed 200+ year old ones).

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coke_and_coffee t1_itsojrn wrote

> i would argue the blind devotion to capitalism most people show is it self deranged.

I’m talking about the world of philosophy though. Yeah, most laymen have a pretty poor understanding of capitalism and simply support it blindly, but people who study philosophy should know better than to be so rabidly anti-capitalist/anti-liberal.

I think a lot of people get very frustrated at those of us who defend liberalism because it’s just so easy to imagine a world that is better than the one we inhabit. And they’re frustrated that we seem to be “blocking” them from making that fantasy a reality. But the more wizened among us should know to urge great caution in pursuing these fantasies.

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iiioiia t1_itt4s8f wrote

Do you think the level of broad discussion of "utopian" ideas/goals/etc is too little, too much, or just about right?

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PositiveStrength5694 t1_itpylzp wrote

Not sure if it does, nor does Heidegger himself ever suggest it, this essence of technology could be present in, and I think could be argued to have been, present in all industrialized nations, regardless of what economic system they used, at the time of Heidegger's writing.

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FeDeWould-be t1_itpzjc6 wrote

I’m probably taking it too literal then, capitalism does what Heidegger was talking about in an incredibly literal way, but deeper than that it is true that we have some shit going on with that also

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Meta_Digital t1_itq2b6s wrote

Heidegger isn't always consistent as a person. I agree that there is an inherent critique of capitalism in his works more broadly, especially in his critique of emerging technology (which to me feels compatible with Marx), but the guy was also a Nazi. He asks interesting questions and makes interesting observations, but it's like none of that informed his life.

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yang_gang2020 t1_itq4lbr wrote

Criticism of capitalism is very compatible with Nazi ideology

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Meta_Digital t1_itqabi7 wrote

Okay I'll bite. What's the Nazi critique of capitalism?

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cristobaldelicia t1_itqjirc wrote

Doesn't look like the poster is going to answer, but such people forget how ruthlessly anti-Communist the Nazis were. From the beginning of Hitler's power, Heinrich Müller, head of the Gestapo, was appointed to hunt and imprison Communists. That was soon changed to include Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and whoever else the Nazis declared an enemy. Nazis have nothing to do with leftist international socialism. A lot of Americans are too dense to appreciate the difference and see the word "socialist" and go crazy.

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Meta_Digital t1_itqjs6x wrote

Exactly, and the same misunderstanding is happening again now with regards to Russia and the anticommunism of Putin.

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yang_gang2020 t1_itrsgil wrote

One can be anti-Communist and anti-Capitalist at the same time. Communists do not hold a monopoly over criticism of capitalism.

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platoprime t1_itqhqy9 wrote

>What's the Nazi critique of capitalism?

I think they were upset about their belief that Jews were running it?

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Meta_Digital t1_itqizv3 wrote

Sure, but that's not a critique of capitalism, that's just anti-semitism. They purged the Jews and ran a hypercapitalist society that was backed by capitalists around the world. Meanwhile they also purged the socialists and communists (to them a Jew, a "cultural Bolshevik", and a communist were all the same thing).

Meanwhile, Heidegger's philosophy contains elements that are inherently critical of capitalism, though it's never explicit.

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platoprime t1_itqj88t wrote

Yeah I'm not the person who you replied to. Sorry I was just being facetious.

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Meta_Digital t1_itqjefk wrote

Haha, yeah I figured as much. It's really hard to claim that fascism is critical of capitalism in any imaginable way.

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that_blasted_tune t1_itqoshv wrote

Intertwined in the antisemitism and what made it so attractive to the antisemetic people was that they could put the failings of capitalism onto Jewish people.

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bac5665 t1_itqqddr wrote

Well, once you prohibit a class of people from participating in a marketplace, you're not practicing capitalism anymore. You're not letting the marketplace decide the efficient owners of capital.

So Naziism is, by definition, a critique of capitalism.

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Meta_Digital t1_itqr2k5 wrote

The "marketplace" isn't a person who decides things. It's just whoever controls the market. Whether it's a cabal of wealthy billionaires or the state, it doesn't really matter.

In the end, all capitalism is, is a system that separates people into employers and employees. You got that and you got some form of capitalism.

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bac5665 t1_itqtrdr wrote

So did Communism under Lenin, under Mao, and under Castro, so that's just not a useful definition.

You should actually read some Adam Smith. You might learn something.

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Meta_Digital t1_itqwa94 wrote

Yeah none of them achieved a socialist economy.

Edit: Also, Smith wrote before the word capitalism even appeared.

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bac5665 t1_itqy434 wrote

So capitalism is something we define only by how it's practiced, but socialism and communism are only defined by theory, and any attempted implementations should be called something else if they don't conform to theory?

Am I understanding you correctly?

And Smith is called the father of capitalism. His works are the foundation for the theory of capitalism, every bit as much as Marx is for communism. Just because the term for Smith's new system wasn't used in English until the 1850s doesn't change the historical lineage of that system.

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Meta_Digital t1_itr56mu wrote

Nobody but Stalin claimed achieving socialism, and you can believe him if you'd like I guess.

Smith was describing, not prescribing, economics. Maybe you should read him?

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yang_gang2020 t1_itrsd8z wrote

Ever heard of Strasserism? Just because they were pushed out for practical reasons does not mean Nazi ideology and criticism of capitalism are incompatible. Also, I understand that capitalists want Nazis to have been socialists, and communists want them to have been capitalists, Ludwig von Mises in this essay (https://mises.org/library/planned-chaos) lays out their system in a way that does not seem entirely capitalist or socialistic, almost like a “third position”.

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Meta_Digital t1_itrvcsd wrote

I mean there's a ton of nonsense ideologies out there, and the fact that the Nazis were calling themselves "national socialists" in opposition to the "international socialists" (who were the actual socialists the Nazis purged after coming into power) is certainly going to aid in that confusion.

Western capitalists very specifically funded the Nazis to fight against the communists / socialists to the East. It wasn't until the Nazis invaded to the West that this changed. Fascism is the attack dog of capitalism, not a capitalist led transition into socialism (which makes no sense at all).

The communists didn't want Nazis to be capitalists, either. In fact, after the Soviet Revolution, it was hoped that Germany would have a socialist revolution. It went the opposite way, and this spelled disaster for socialism in Russia. It was one of the reasons for the disorder in the USSR; they had to rely on their own feudal lords to run a presumably socialist economy.

As for the article, it's very long and I'll have to check it out later. Keep in mind, though, that capitalism and socialism both can appear in many various forms, not just one. Nazi Germany was certainly one example of a capitalist society. We haven't had any real examples of a socialist society as of yet because it's a rather new ideology and attempts at it have either been sabotaged from the outside or collapsed from internal forces. Not all that different from any historical period of transition where old forms are struggling to maintain control as new forms begin to emerge. So we can speak rather authoritatively on capitalism as it has a few centuries (~350 years or so) of data we can look back on. For socialism we only really have some experimentation at best, and false promises at worst. I'm sure the end of the feudal period looked similarly as new mercantile systems were appearing and being put down by feudal lords who felt threatened by a shift in power structures. We're not really to the point where we have a "third position" because we haven't properly seen the alternative to capitalism, but given enough time it too will come along and replace whatever comes after capitalism whether it's socialism or something else.

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yang_gang2020 t1_itrxwzj wrote

You have stated that 1. Capitalists funded Nazi Germany, 2. that the USSR was disappointed Germany did not have a Bolshevik revolution, and 3. that Nazi Germany was in practice a capitalist regime. While these premises all may be true, these do not lead to, and you have not proven, or even spoken to, the possibility (or impossibility) that there could be a critique of capitalism under the framework of Nazi ideology.

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robothistorian t1_itsk26y wrote

>the possibility (or impossibility) that there could be a critique of capitalism under the framework of Nazi ideology.

It could be argued that the Nazi concept (or at least the valorization by the Nazis of the concept) of "blood and soil", which formed the core of the Völkisch movement could be construed as a proto critique of Capitalism. It reinforced the connection between people and the land they cultivated and was marked by elements of organicism, racialism, agrarianism, and populism. Key Nazi officials like Walther Darré (Minister of Food & Agriculture) and Reichleiter for agricultural policy were strong proponents of this concept. Interestingly, even Heinrich Himmler was a proponent of this though in a highly fantasized (unrealistic) way. Himmler's ideas in this regard were supposed to be the foundations of how "the eastern territories" after the war were to be organised, which was also echoed by Hitler at one point in time (I don't have the reference to this off-hand, but I can dig it up). Edit: I wanted to add that Alfred Rosenberg (Reich Minister for the Eastern Territories) was another high-level Nazi official who was aligned to these kinds of views.

The point that I am trying to make is this: Nazi ideology to the extent that it existed as a coherent body did position itself against capitalism and communism. It did so by invoking a mythical condition involving what they referred to as "Blut und Boden" (the Blood and Soil concept), which attempted to establish an inextricable link between people and the land they occupy and cultivate. In many ways, this concept valorized "the peasantry", whose culture (ethos, one could say) would be - at least in Himmler's and Hitler's terms - warlike (this being the key "to keep the blood fresh and invigorated").

To this extent at the very least Nazi ideology could be considered to be contra the basic principles of capitalism (and communism).

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WarrenHarding t1_itpyuu0 wrote

Really? If mr millionaire decided to buy his plane as a big metal toy with lights for his kids to draw on and play on, would that be illegal? I think the government would let him get away with it. All technology usually has a few other potential uses even if it’s completely unorthodox.

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FeDeWould-be t1_itpzq4m wrote

So what’s your point, is that good or bad. The public don’t benefit from it is it even relevant?

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WarrenHarding t1_itq22ys wrote

I’m wondering what the point of “if we were to use it for anything else we would be breaking the law” is here, that’s what I’m challenging. If we were to use a billionaires plane in a way that specifically benefits the public I don’t see any relevant use of it besides it’s initial intent: to transport x people to y place. Now sure, the government can and very well might decide this public use to be illegal. However this doesn’t change the idea of the airplane purely becoming the essence of being transport. Whether it’s used for the public or for one individual, capitalist or communist, we’re still appropriating the use-value in materials in a way that alienates us from what they truly are.

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FeDeWould-be t1_itq2r0l wrote

It’s about the type of barrier. The legal barrier is a concrete literal barrier which will reward any imagination or alternative usage with punishment. The internal blocks we have where we fail to imagine other uses for things isn’t so much of a literal barrier, it is the result of a process and can easily or eventually be broken out of. Although.. surely these things are intertwined so how useful is it to even separate them ideas-wise, when in the world they come as a package.

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WarrenHarding t1_itq4bgz wrote

Thanks for clarifying! I’m wondering though, if in an ideal or non-innate sense they are separate ideas (these physical and mental restrictions on creativity), does that still make Heidegger’s problem here a problem of capitalism or something greater? I guess I’ve just been trying to say that I’m seeing things from an angle that this problem will still present itself to us even in a socialist world. Perhaps in the sort of “enlightened” sociality that full-on communism could bring us, we will not have such an alienated relationship to use-value, but until we reach that “ideal” social and mental state amongst each other I think even in a petty socialist society with no laws restricting creativity we would still have this problem.

So I suppose I agree with you that the question of capitalism becomes relevant in working on this problem in todays context, but I don’t think addressing capitalism will get us closer to solving the problem, just getting another obstacle out of the way. Besides, illegality never stopped anyone from imagining better futures anyways 😉

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SecretHeat t1_itq989t wrote

I think you could say it emerged historically with capitalism but wouldn’t necessarily disappear with the disappearance of capitalism.

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North-Philosopher-41 t1_itsjk75 wrote

Agreed the primary problem with the use of nature as resources is derived from capitalism, where even tho all the needs are met production must continue or else the whole system starts to breakdown, capitalism in its root can only exist as production is maximized for profits hence the need for perfectly usable things to be thrown away or hidden to keep prices in check. For example more than 7 times the food needed to feed the world is thrown away each yeR

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LookingForVheissu t1_itq1g70 wrote

Well. Yes and no. Your example is correct, but what if it were a truly communist society. No class, no money, etc etc.

While that plain is sitting there, it is still only potential.

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