I believe I may have the solution to Mrs. Olga Zinoviev's problem with alien forms of thought. This is a problem in so many monster-sized states, not only Russia, but also the USA, China, and probably the Moon -- true, a low population but a lot of room.
First, we need to review an A.E. Housman passage:
"That two and two add up to four,
And neither five nor three,
The heart of man has long been sore,
And long 't is like to be."
Ironically, part of the passage was used by the author Helen McInnes as the title of an anti-Communist novel in the war -- you've guessed it -- against alien thought in America, that is, against subversive Communism which was going to take over everything by controlling the movies, or television, or the Democrats, or something.
So what is the answer hinted at here? It's _Sovereign Arithmetic_. Instead of using the ancient stuff concocted by swarthy Hindus and Greeks of dubious erotic habits, where 2 + 2 always add up to 4, every country can have its own arithmetic, and the result of 2 + 2 can not only be 3 or 5, but anything our duly constituted legislatures and great leaders want it to be.
Now, I admit this sounds a bit like Postmodernism, but that problem can be solved by Hobbes's method for curing geometry of its curious ideas about the sum of the interior angles of a triangle -- force. Call the cops! Olga has already come up with this idea in part, according to your report. She just needs to build some more jails and she's good to go.
So, could you forward this suggestion to her and her friends? I've misplaced her address; plus, it was written in those funny characters you guys insist on using, which are cute but hard to get into my computer no matter how I twist the keyboard. I'll take care of things on this side of the Atlantic. Spasibo!
The West created this monster. How should a people respond when the most powerful state in history decides that its destiny is to govern the world? Putin is only responding to the neocons' oft-stated resolve to subjugate the world by force if necessary. Giant conglomerates with no allegiance to any nation are behind this. Private capital is running the West. One example is the ag giant Cargill, whose machinations abroad make Putin's "cultural defense ministry" look pitiful., even quaint. The U.S. is fighting this war in Ukraine, a war we started, so that Cargill (et al) can gain control of Russian and Ukrainian agriculture. This is true for oil and gas, banking, and so on but I know agriculture best. Bayer/Monsanto is perhaps the more notorious brand, but Cargill is the most powerful of that pernicious cabal. Altogether Big Ag is remorseless. My brother, a Cargill exec, tells me that this is why his company never left Moscow in 2022 when so many others did in a show of support for Ukraine. The plan is to remove Putin, annex Russia and turn Siberia into the new global breadbasket. Cargill et al are also keenly aware of what they have done to our planet's ecosystem. Americans are getting a clue at last, owing to their own financial precarity (66% of us live paycheck to paycheck and the elites control 90% of "our" wealth), that the world is at war but it's not East versus West so much as haves versus have-nots. My country is to blame for this, not Russia.
What you posit is why Marx was so brilliant. He did not create a set of 'answers.' He gave us a methodology, a framework with which we can look at the world in all its changes, the rolling dialectic. The sad irony is that those who said they were practitioners of dialectical materialism actually hijacked and twisted the methodology to the extent that Marx finally declared, "I am not a Marxist."
As industrial civilization faces its ultimate demise (finite planet with finite resources), the only way our species has a chance to survive is by returning to forms of what Marx and Engels referred to as 'primitive communism,' a return to living within the parameters of our immediate surroundings and resources.
Thank You Russian Dissent, from an American dissenter. I s'pose this is an issue with a very, very long history and i think there is no real solution, just wrestling with the ideas continuously. This might be daring and difficult, but it's necessary for all countries, regimes and philosophy, I think.
I once believed that Boris Yeltsin would be the ruin of the post-Soviet Russian Federation. Fast forward to the present--and two years since the start of the Orwellian "Special Military Operation--and it is clear that Putin & his claque of kleptocrats have placed Russia onto the road to perdition.
Dear Boris,
I believe I may have the solution to Mrs. Olga Zinoviev's problem with alien forms of thought. This is a problem in so many monster-sized states, not only Russia, but also the USA, China, and probably the Moon -- true, a low population but a lot of room.
First, we need to review an A.E. Housman passage:
"That two and two add up to four,
And neither five nor three,
The heart of man has long been sore,
And long 't is like to be."
Ironically, part of the passage was used by the author Helen McInnes as the title of an anti-Communist novel in the war -- you've guessed it -- against alien thought in America, that is, against subversive Communism which was going to take over everything by controlling the movies, or television, or the Democrats, or something.
So what is the answer hinted at here? It's _Sovereign Arithmetic_. Instead of using the ancient stuff concocted by swarthy Hindus and Greeks of dubious erotic habits, where 2 + 2 always add up to 4, every country can have its own arithmetic, and the result of 2 + 2 can not only be 3 or 5, but anything our duly constituted legislatures and great leaders want it to be.
Now, I admit this sounds a bit like Postmodernism, but that problem can be solved by Hobbes's method for curing geometry of its curious ideas about the sum of the interior angles of a triangle -- force. Call the cops! Olga has already come up with this idea in part, according to your report. She just needs to build some more jails and she's good to go.
So, could you forward this suggestion to her and her friends? I've misplaced her address; plus, it was written in those funny characters you guys insist on using, which are cute but hard to get into my computer no matter how I twist the keyboard. I'll take care of things on this side of the Atlantic. Spasibo!
This is not a Russian problem. The campaign to sterilize public discourse is being conducted simultaneously on every inhabited continent.
The West created this monster. How should a people respond when the most powerful state in history decides that its destiny is to govern the world? Putin is only responding to the neocons' oft-stated resolve to subjugate the world by force if necessary. Giant conglomerates with no allegiance to any nation are behind this. Private capital is running the West. One example is the ag giant Cargill, whose machinations abroad make Putin's "cultural defense ministry" look pitiful., even quaint. The U.S. is fighting this war in Ukraine, a war we started, so that Cargill (et al) can gain control of Russian and Ukrainian agriculture. This is true for oil and gas, banking, and so on but I know agriculture best. Bayer/Monsanto is perhaps the more notorious brand, but Cargill is the most powerful of that pernicious cabal. Altogether Big Ag is remorseless. My brother, a Cargill exec, tells me that this is why his company never left Moscow in 2022 when so many others did in a show of support for Ukraine. The plan is to remove Putin, annex Russia and turn Siberia into the new global breadbasket. Cargill et al are also keenly aware of what they have done to our planet's ecosystem. Americans are getting a clue at last, owing to their own financial precarity (66% of us live paycheck to paycheck and the elites control 90% of "our" wealth), that the world is at war but it's not East versus West so much as haves versus have-nots. My country is to blame for this, not Russia.
What you posit is why Marx was so brilliant. He did not create a set of 'answers.' He gave us a methodology, a framework with which we can look at the world in all its changes, the rolling dialectic. The sad irony is that those who said they were practitioners of dialectical materialism actually hijacked and twisted the methodology to the extent that Marx finally declared, "I am not a Marxist."
As industrial civilization faces its ultimate demise (finite planet with finite resources), the only way our species has a chance to survive is by returning to forms of what Marx and Engels referred to as 'primitive communism,' a return to living within the parameters of our immediate surroundings and resources.
Thank You Russian Dissent, from an American dissenter. I s'pose this is an issue with a very, very long history and i think there is no real solution, just wrestling with the ideas continuously. This might be daring and difficult, but it's necessary for all countries, regimes and philosophy, I think.
This article suggests that authorities tasked to manage academics sense extreme fear from top leadership that Russia is approaching a moment of truth, the brief window of opportunity to free Russia and its people from the influence of the security apparatus that has controlled Russia for centuries. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/09/11/russia-post-putin-democracy-window-nuremberg-lustration/
I once believed that Boris Yeltsin would be the ruin of the post-Soviet Russian Federation. Fast forward to the present--and two years since the start of the Orwellian "Special Military Operation--and it is clear that Putin & his claque of kleptocrats have placed Russia onto the road to perdition.