Human beings are social animals. They need social interaction to survive. Being isolated is recognized as a form of torture. Interactions being draining is often a consequence of contingent societal factors rather than an essential property of interaction itself.

I think you’re both right. They are right about religious institutions in class societies. You use the word “initially” and are right about religion in those very early, classless societies called “primitive communism”. When people started using agriculture, classes arose with material surplus, patriarchal structures formed to manage inheritance of that surplus and over some time, the violent suppression of oppressed classes by the ruling class was taken up by various institutions that coalesced into states. Religious institutions fit in here. They became tools of oppression or were oppressed and destroyed themselves. Those that survived fell in line. And their task in class societies is to produce hegemony. In a revolutionary moment, religion has sometimes been adapted to serve liberation and that could happen again.

It’s important to make these two distinctions when talking about religion. First, between individual believe and organized religious institutions. Even a deeply religious person can still condem all religious institutions. And second, based on the societal context: religious institutions at what time, in what society? Religious believes of members of which class? Do they help to liberate or oppress? Do they urge to accept circumstances or to fight for freedom? Both is possible.

There’s also a third distinction that comes up often: between orthodoxy (for example what’s written in holy scripture) and lived historical reality.

Personally, I’m an atheist, but I have religious friends who I respect deeply.

Why the down votes? It literally happened exactly this way. Who could possibly deny this?

And western “leftists”

The benefit is for Google to make more profits if people are locked into their “ecosystem” without competition driving the prices down.

It’s possible to avoid anti-semitism and at the same time acknowledge the structural problem with Zionism prevalent in Jewish institutions. The many international statistics in the link prove, that many or most Jews are zionists and support genocide. One should also acknowledge the material privilege of being able to move to stolen land, profit from cheap apartheid labor, move into a stolen house, receive support from colonialist nations, commit violent crimes with impunity and so on, that comes with being (white, western and) Jewish in the world today, as well as the responsibility and the immense task that comes with this privilege for Jewish people to build better, non-zionists Jewish institutions who brake with the status quo of organized religion largely materially and ideologically supporting massive crimes against humanity.

I have great respect for the task of being a parent in our time. Not just the social pressure and the workload is immense, figuring out how to share it is a hard task on it’s own. It’s great, that it seems to work for you.

I’m just always a little irritated, when people talk about men “helping out” in care work, as if it is not their main task, as if it is extra applaudable when it’s men that do the same exact thing. I might read way to much into this choice of words, so feel free to ignore, but would you call what you do as a parent “helping with parenting”? Whenever workers share an equal workload e.g. on a construction site, one wouldn’t usually say about the other:“they helped out”, they would say:“they did their part, same as I did, same es everyone else”. Directing people, keeping everything in mind and telling them when something needs to be done is a lot of work too, a kind that’s easily ignored.

I guess if one person has to do a lot more wage labor than the other to fill a shared account, than that’s a piece of their part of the work too and that might mean less care work. In the end whatever setup works for everyone involved is fine, as long as it is consensual and meets everyones needs as much as possible.

Yes, that’s true. I wouldn’t call them Nazis, just fascists.

Being a Muslim is not an ethnicity, it’s a religion. Neither is being German, it’s a nationality. Despite the ideology around the maternal line, there are many different ethnicities among Jewish people in “Israel” alone. Many of which experience intense racism by white European Jews, often based on their skin color.

Being a German during the Nazi rule came with the immense privilege of profiting from forced labor, stolen land, stolen resources, getting to live in or sell the houses of victims of the Holocaust, getting to go through their stuff and steal it and much more. Just being a German in Germany was very much morally problematic unless you take very concrete steps to reject this privilege. Migrating, resisting, hiding people, etc.

It’s the same for white people now. Just being white is a huge privilege, that comes with the responsibility to reject that privilege and use it to help racialized people. The same goes for abled people, neurotypical people, cis people, people in imperial core countries and so on.

Within any religion, there’s a contrast between institutions and personal believes. Being Jewish in today’s world comes with the privilege of being able to move to occupied Palestine, steal land, steal a house and the stuff in it, profit from cheap apartheid labor, etc. It’s a privilege to even just have this option, even if it is not used. This privilege has nothing to do with private believes, but it is actively and monetarily supported by many (not all) Jewish institutions. Being Jewish today therefore comes with the responsibility to reject those institutions (not the believes) and to build Jewish institutions, that do not aid genocide. That’s why it is a relevant category to speak of, but, as you said, not to criticize in general, as that would be antisemitic.

They fit every definition of fascism.

The purpose of terrorism is to spread fear in the population beyond the immediate victims and their families. This is done to achieve political gains by intimidation that align with the terrorist actors agenda in the region. Terrorist organizations, like the US military and intelligence agencies, figuratively and literally use the blood of their victims to write a clear message visible to all the world: “submit!”. Critically, they want their victims to give up all hope and cower in fear instead of resisting.

Those won’t require id

Yeah, I remember a while back I introduced a friend to some simple basic facts about capitalism and it just made him really sad to the point of passivity and not wanting to learn any more. I guess my approach was wrong at the time. I have more success now, but I’m not sure what I do differently. Maybe contradictions have just increased.

You could write a whole article about this. I’d read it. I’m mean, you basically did. Maybe with some statistics added in about more commodity export than capital export and about how countries benefitted from trade with China and about how China is mostly a victim of and not benefiting from unequal exchange.

The slogan “oppose all equally” may sound revolutionary in its refusal to compromise, but detached from dialectical and historical materialism it collapses into abstract moralism that objectively serves the very hegemony it claims to reject.

Yes! Say it louder for the people in the back. Even some well meaning western marxists really struggle with this, because it touches on their privilege.

Soon: school shooters use drones for shootings

Don’t judge

Thank you :)

Wow! It really works:

• Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still.
• Of all our human resources, the most precious is the desire to improve.
• The best way to get rid of an enemy is to make a friend.
• He who laughs at himself never runs out of things to laugh at.
• Success lies in the hands of those who wants it.
• Patience is your alley at the moment. Don’t worry!
• It takes less time to do a thing right than it does to explain why you did it wrong.
• I am worth a fortune.
• Do not mistake temptation for opportunity.
• Don’t pursue happiness – create it.
• I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.
• It’s amazing how much good you can do if you don’t care who gets the credit.
• Happiness isn’t an outside job, it’s an inside job.
• Enter unknown territory.
• He who expects no gratitude shall never be disappointed.

Make sure you only use transparent envelopes.