So I was wondering how I can get better at analysing the world through dialectical materialism. I’ve read a fair share of theory and other comprehensive stuff about dialectics and materialism and I do think I get the core principles. What I think I need is to get some kind of practice to overcome my idealist way of thinking. I’m not really sure what I’m looking for, maybe a collection of applied examples, maybe even exercises with solutions? Or you could let me know how you guys got better at thinking in a marxist way. Thanks in advance!

    • @3lava3OP
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      42 years ago

      Haha I think it makes sense, but could you maybe provide an example of what A, B and X could be?

  • @kretenkobr2
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    132 years ago

    Read history and ask yourself “why did this happen?” and try to come up with a solution, then read more about that event, then update your thinking and so on. Dielectic materialism is just scientific method applied to politics and history.

  • @lxvi
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    122 years ago

    Start thinking about the dual contradicting natures of things. The hospital for us is one thing but to the capitalist is another. The same with the grocery store, and every other facet of life.

    Start paying attention to everything as propaganda. When you go out to eat and see the restaurant littered with propaganda, or you go to the store, pay attention to who is speaking to you and how they are trying to control your identity, your thoughts and your world view.

    Stop looking at things as red vs blue and start viewing groups of people according to selfish class interests. Start paying attention to whether a person is proletarian or petit bourgeois. Are they blue collar or white?

    Know what you do know and what you don’t know. Always be frank about your lack of knowledge. Don’t let your ego get in the way of things. Always keep in mind what the other person knows or doesn’t know. When a person says they are representing a total group who legitimizes them? Pay attention to bourgeois mechanisms. They are attempting to force reality into their image and will pull you along with every trick in the book. The only people who really understand the nuances of a country are the people who live in it.

    They’ll take your ignorance and say you should shut up and take for granted the words of this refuge or that cultural stand in. But the danger of ignorance is you don’t know enough to take their words seriously or not. You have to know the limitations of your knowledge attempt to address them but always understand them. Speaking out of your ass and believing things that you’re not justified in believing is the greatest folly of youth and so is listening to those who do the same.

    • @3lava3OP
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      82 years ago

      Wow this is great advice. Thank you!

      • @lxvi
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        32 years ago

        Thank you for thinking so

  • @Idliketothinkimsmart
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    102 years ago

    Here is a lovely explanation of dialectics and some examples included.

    You basically want to think about things in their entirety, consider it’s historical and current application, take into account it’s contradictions, etc.

    One of the examples used on the video is the moment of death. Death is understood as the ceasing of life, but what exactly is that? Because the heart can stop before the brain does. Your hair and nails can still grow after you die.

    A dialectician would recognize this and see death not as some singular event, but rather a protracted process.

    • @B0rodin
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      62 years ago

      Just to add to this:

      I have noticed, recently, that death is far more protracted, even, than that. medicine has now advanced to a stage where we can prolong the life of the body to the point that what gives way first is not the heart, or the body, but the mind. Certainly in the UK, dementia and Alzheimers are now the leading cause of death - not heart failure. Death, I would argue, occurs long before the heart beats its last. Rather, from the moment we are born, we start to die. We get ill and our immune system slowly weakens; we age and organs develop new problems; we grow old and our minds whither. Hence, from a dialectical point of view, I would expand on your example, and say that the conclusion to be drawn by a dialectician must be from this an even wider realisation that all processes conducted during our lifetimes are simply stages of death, the process being continuous and ongoing. As a phenomenon, it does not start at any decisive moment, but rolls ever forward. In our final years it does not begin, it merely accelerates to more noticable levels.

    • @lxvi
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      42 years ago

      I like this one a lot. I’ll get frustrated with someone and respond that history didn’t just begin today with either a domestic issue like race tensions or the state of the economy or a foreign issue such as Ukraine or Afghanistan. Americans we especially go out of their way to not remember what happened even a few years ago.

      I think it’s very important to view history as a continuous flow into the present and out through the future rather than a thing separate and apart. I’m not saying anything especially significant except that we live in a culture constantly pressuring us to forget and see ourselves as apart from history.

  • @PolandIsAStateOfMind
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    2 years ago

    Reading more works, at least for me. The more i read, the more i start to apply that knowledge, reflexively, to my cognition process in increasing amount of situations.

  • @roccopun
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    82 years ago
    1. Always derive conclusions from facts. Don’t be like libs with the other way around: always starting from a conclusion in mind, then desperately seeking facts (of course leading to things like confirmation bias and pathetic self-validation) to justify it.

    Don’t support AES like DPRK/Cuba/China because they belong to your tribe. Have principles like anti-imperialism and human development, healthcare and education, freedom of self-determination and democratic will, and support them because they actually check the boxes.

    1. Ask why, try to seek the logical flow (like before and after), connecting dots and the big picture. Don’t be like libs who only know what they are told to think: no way of judging truth from falsehood for themselves, always parroting the “authority” mistaking it as knowledge. Even when correct, a parrot can be trained to recite the most deepest truths and its brain remains to be a void of any knowledge.

    Alternative is to be clueless because you accept to be trained to only see in a vacuum. It’s literally being a blind man feeling an elephant. Too many classics to list. DPRK had a famine in the 90’s therefore it is an inferior system that starves the people. Where’s that inferiority in the forty years prior? Maoist communism is the biggest killer ever seen because millions died in one Chinese famine, just ignore the 20 famines during capitalism and the biggest leap in life expectancy in human history afterwards. Censor or stay willful ignorant of the 50 overwhelmingly successful stories of Chinese lockdown over the 2 year pandemic and only report the Shanghai disaster and boom 100% disaster rate for your sample, and ignore all the reasons behind it, and all western cities that did worse while you are at it. Censor the killing in Eastern Ukraine for the last 8 years and start reporting the moment Russia begins killing and boom Russia is the aggressor. This is how clownish you are otherwise.

    1. Draw comparisons (be it patterns in similarities or contrasts) from modern times or history to enhance understanding. Shocker: looking at actual reality is a great reference to understanding reality. Don’t be like libs who prioritize imaginary make-believe over reality. One can have some idealism in life in absence of, or even despite current material reality (in fact this can be key), but that’s a huge difference from living in constant delusion prioritizing idealism over reality.

    Famine in DPRK in the 90’s is horrible. What if you actually applied capitalism and democracy to it like some claim that should be done? Imagine if the UK was globally embargoed as France and America did wargames on its shores. Oil and foreign currency runs completely dry due to sanctions. How can the election and stock market save the economy? Oh it’s almost as if it’s the sanctions that starved, the lack of oil that made machines not run, not ideology and words the government uses in speeches, and you don’t magically make tractors work and food production grow by yelling about capitalism either.

    1. Don’t be afraid of criticizing and disagreeing, but you need reasons and alternatives. Disagreeing because you don’t like it is simply a tantrum. Disagreeing with good reasons is only half the way if you can’t offer any alternative. If you criticize something, but your “fix” will have worst the results overall, then somebody else’s flawed plans is just literally better than your even more flawed plans.

    You can think the DPRK government is dumb for this policy and that. If you can’t even conceive any alternative that’s better then he literally is giving the least worst option, aka the best possible one. How much do you understand the situation, why things happen and what effects for the issue at hand but also affects on completely unintended topics? Whenever someone claim to have a perfect 2-step solution to a grand problem in 30 seconds, they are probably completely clueless and infantile.

    • @3lava3OP
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      12 years ago

      This is very helpful, thank you comrade!