The VEF Philosophy Club

[Nobody1]

Originally Posted by Brian249x

"I'm going to get me religion an' join the Baptist church.
I'm gonna be a Baptist minister. So I don't have to work."

Which brings us to an interesting question.

Why work?

'The Protestant ethic and its vestigial bourgeois virtues have become a deadly contagion—a disease, not a remedy. Possessive individualism has finally become destructive.'

https://thebaffler.com/salvos/why-work-livingston

[Roubignol]

Originally Posted by Nobody1

Which brings us to an interesting question.

Why work?

'The Protestant ethic and its vestigial bourgeois virtues have become a deadly contagion—a disease, not a remedy. Possessive individualism has finally become destructive.'

https://thebaffler.com/salvos/why-work-livingston

What is YOUR definition of work?

Taking picture of a beautiful glamour model?
Fucking hard your favorite porn model?
Working crouched to pick up strawberries under a burning sun?
Cleaning the toilet and the floor in a hospital?
Driving a truck across European highways hearing radio?
etc...

What is your definition of work?

I'm glad with my job, but that's not work in my point of view. That's almost a paid hobby.

[Arturo2nd]

Originally Posted by xyzde69

What is YOUR definition of work?

What is your definition of work?

I'm glad with my job, but that's not work in my point of view. That's almost a paid hobby.

Back in the day, I used to LOVE going to work. There is nothing better than knowing one is using his gifts and talent to make the world a better place. Life has not been nearly as much fun without it.

[Nobody1]

Originally Posted by xyzde69

What is YOUR definition of work?

Taking picture of a beautiful glamour model?
Fucking hard your favorite porn model?
Working crouched to pick up strawberries under a burning sun?
Cleaning the toilet and the floor in a hospital?
Driving a truck across European highways hearing radio?
etc...

What is your definition of work?

I'm glad with my job, but that's not work in my point of view. That's almost a paid hobby.

Work is everything you do not like to do at a point of time when you do not want to do it, but you do it anyway because you have no other choice, since you have to pay your bills.

Only few of us workers enjoy the priviledged status of a paid hobby.

[Roubignol]

Don't you think that we study philosophy at school far too old?
In my country philosophies are taught when we reach the last two years of the college.
That means that at least 70 to 80% of the teenagers never read philosophy.
This non education of philosophy isn't it a way to manipulate masses?

[Brecht]

Originally Posted by xyzde69

Don't you think that we study philosophy at school far too old?
In my country philosophies are taught when we reach the last two years of the college.
That means that at least 70 to 80% of the teenagers never read philosophy.
This non education of philosophy isn't it a way to manipulate masses?

We have a psychology and philosophy class in Gymnasium, the Austrian equivalent to the US high school, but only in the last two years I think. But what they usually do is teach an abstract version of old Greek philosophy, blended with a number of modern philosophers like Kant, Schoppenhauer etc. It's not like you're missing something. I think philosophy should become an obligatory subject and taught from an early age. Philosophy is the mind's tool and should be an important part of our education.

[Arturo2nd]

The mind boggles at the uproar a proposal to add philosophy to the high school curricula would cause in the United States. Some places in the Bible Belt may have succeeded in getting the teaching of evolution replaced by Biblical creation myth, or at least both being presented. Plus, philosophy is such a huge, living, and dynamic subject. The pre-Socratics could be presented in one day, but then Plato kicks off the whole range of Western thought. A fair investigation of Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Hume, and Kant is the work of years and leaves so much undone. Understanding the underpinnings of the U.S. Constitution requires reading Hobbes, Locke, Edmund Burke, and Montesquieu, and perhaps some Blackstone. Is it fair to ignore the Buddha and his followers, Confucius, Lao-Tze, and Mencius? Surely, Marx and Engels ought to be presented if we are to understand the intellectual currents of the modern world, but that opens the door to the economists: Adam Smith, Schumpeter, Keynes, and Hayek. Let's not forget that the philosophy of science needs to be featured along the way.

I suppose a survey course could be designed with very brief explanations on other philosophers and spending a week or two on Plato and the other giants. But who is to be presented and how it is to be taught would be a political minefield. Are the red state Bile thumpers really going to allow the fact that a large percentage of the modern world believes that their "Divine revelation" is gross superstition? Even liberals and conservatives disagree on where emphasis should be placed within their own traditions. I am hearing the millennials are enamored of both anarchism and socialism. Do you think the Koch brothers, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump can be persuaded to have the thought of Mikhail Bakunin and the French Socialists discussed in public high schools?

[bowlinggreen]

Which brings us to an interesting question.

Why work?

'The Protestant ethic and its vestigial bourgeois virtues have become a deadly contagion—a disease, not a remedy. Possessive individualism has finally become destructive.'

https://thebaffler.com/salvos/why-work-livingston

That was an interesting read. I am sure you have read Player Piano, by Kurt Vonnegut? Another interesting take on the topic from early days:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_Piano_(novel)

To tie this in with Brian's comments of the lack of philosophy courses in the curriculums available to the great unwashed, I suspect the elites greatly fear a mass of commoners with the leisure time to cultivate their minds. In days past they feared that awakened masses would rise up and strip their wealth from them. In this age of plenty, though, does this fear possess any real validity? There is enough for all, at least for living decently at a basic level.

We are indeed living in a future unimagined by such as Luther and Marx, but we still have an archaic mindset ruling our social existence.

[Roubignol]

Originally Posted by bowlinggreen

That was an interesting read. ....

Why work?

Reading Anarchists books written by Bakunin and Kropotkin that I never read during my youth, the theories of Kropotkin are very interesting.

Here is a small video (not very well sound edited) that lasts 14 minutes and very basically explains the concept of Social Anarchy of Kropotkin.

He wrote a small essay of 17 pages called : Communism and Anarchy that you can read here for free (that's a great fact in Anarcho-Communism... no money), in which he explained what are the difficulties in Communism. The challenges often are social. (Humans rarely like to live a long time together, even in small groups, there often is one guy who wants to lead the Community... etc...)

Communism is capable of assuming all forms of freedom or of oppression which other institutions are unable to do. It may produce a monastery where all implicitly obey the orders of their superior, and it may produce an absolutely free organisation, leaving his full freedom to the individual, existing only as long as the associates wish to remain together, imposing nothing on anybody, being anxious rather to defend, enlarge, extend in all directions the liberty of the individual. Communism may be authoritarian (in which case the community will soon decay) or it may be Anarchist. The State, on the contrary, cannot be this. It is authoritarian or it ceases to be the State.

Communism guarantees economic freedom better than any other form of association, because it can guarantee wellbeing, even luxury, in return for a few hours of work instead of a day’s work. Now, to give ten or eleven hours of leisure per day out of the sixteen during which we lead a conscious life (sleeping eight hours), means to enlarge individual liberty to a point which for thousands of years has been one of the ideals of humanity.

He was an intelligent man who predicted the troubles that could be caused by the Authoritarian Communism.

[LaughingBoy]

Originally Posted by Brian249x

The mind boggles at the uproar a proposal to add philosophy to the high school curricula would cause in the United States. Some places in the Bible Belt may have succeeded in getting the teaching of evolution replaced by Biblical creation myth, or at least both being presented. Plus, philosophy is such a huge, living, and dynamic subject. The pre-Socratics could be presented in one day, but then Plato kicks off the whole range of Western thought. A fair investigation of Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Hume, and Kant is the work of years and leaves so much undone. Understanding the underpinnings of the U.S. Constitution requires reading Hobbes, Locke, Edmund Burke, and Montesquieu, and perhaps some Blackstone. Is it fair to ignore the Buddha and his followers, Confucius, Lao-Tze, and Mencius? Surely, Marx and Engels ought to be presented if we are to understand the intellectual currents of the modern world, but that opens the door to the economists: Adam Smith, Schumpeter, Keynes, and Hayek. Let's not forget that the philosophy of science needs to be featured along the way.

I suppose a survey course could be designed with very brief explanations on other philosophers and spending a week or two on Plato and the other giants. But who is to be presented and how it is to be taught would be a political minefield. Are the red state Bile thumpers really going to allow the fact that a large percentage of the modern world believes that their "Divine revelation" is gross superstition? Even liberals and conservatives disagree on where emphasis should be placed within their own traditions. I am hearing the millennials are enamored of both anarchism and socialism. Do you think the Koch brothers, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump can be persuaded to have the thought of Mikhail Bakunin and the French Socialists discussed in public high schools?

Sigh....yeah.... Wouldn't it be great, though?

Instead of the treadmill of turning out Consumers?