It is possible that the original text referred more generically to bourgeois ideology

Would there be much of a difference in the modern world? Liberalism is the successful form of bourgeois society. All those medieval burghers and small producers may have been bourgeois but they weren’t really liberal. Today you only really have the liberal kind of bourgeois, unless we’re splitting hairs about modern fascists.

Liberal can be a synonym for bourgeois. But maybe it’s like this:

• all liberal societies, etc, are bourgeois
• not all bourgeois societies/arrangements are liberal
• liberalism is the dominant bourgeois form
• in particular, US (neo)liberalism is the dominant bourgeois form
• people in the US use liberal to refer to ‘left-wing’ bourgeois politics and political parties
• the US has no reason to distinguish liberalism from other political economies or ideologies because bourgeois liberalism is presented as the only option (and bourgeois seem to believe that capitalism is the only option without any question)
• the English-speaking internet is dominated by US platforms, media, and people
• English speakers mostly hear the US usage, meaning the US usage is common

Your English is good, btw. It’s definitely good enough to explain what you mean about liberal/bourgeois. The fact that you have been misunderstood is not because of your English. I think it is because of the exact problem that you have identified—the confusion between liberal/bourgeois.

Would ‘liberal’ not be the umbrella term for all other types of liberalism? That would make it accurate to refer to a neoliberal as a liberal.

I’d also use bourgeois to refer to the ideology of capitalism. Whereas I agree that bourgeoisie would refer to the capitalist class.

It’s a strange choice, isn’t it, leaving all the ‘post-game’ material for after the ending. I found the whole thing unsatisfying because of the structure. The story itself was decent. The atmosphere throughout—wow; very ffvii disc one!

Is it the metadata or because people will be able to recognise you from you art?

Why shouldn’t you? Because you might get doxed?

Not embarrassing at all. I’d be interested in hearing others’ answers. Would you ask this in a post in !asklemmygrad@lemmygrad.ml?

Good question. But very broad! Sounds like you’ve got the essentials sorted. What do mean by ‘broader analysis of society’? If you give me something a little more specific I might be able to run through an analysis with you to show you how I’d do it. (Depending on the topic!) I could give you some quotes relating to what I interpret as ‘broader … society’ but it’ll be very abstract.

It’s the oldest trick in the book. It means that people look at what you want them to see rather than what you don’t want them to see.

Not to mention that disgruntled and/or naive employees will leak things that their employer doesn’t actually want leaked.

I suspect the number of Indian immigrant doctors abroad is due to brain drain rather than an abundance of doctors/lack of need in India.

R. Edward Terence. Ed for short and the R stands for Rupert but I don’t really use that name except on government forms. Hence redtea, a play on R. Ed T.

What makes you think that none of those authors are dialectical materialists? Just because they avoid using certain jargon?

I see. I don’t know, though. That seems to externalise gravity as something beyond, as universal. As if gravity and the rest of physical matter are not internally related. It seems to assume (a) an epistemology that puts some knowledge beyond human comprehension just because we can’t know for sure that our models are correct – like an epistemological scepticism – and (b) that something is unchanging just because we can’t (yet or necessarily) perceive it’s changes.

It seems incorrect to (i) need dialectics to explain a phenomena but (ii) deny that dialectics governs that phenomena on the basis that humans might one day transcend dialectics to arrive at a more accurate or deeper understanding of matter.

The notion that our understanding of nature is only an idea rather than our best approximation of the material seems anti-materialist. Dialectics doesn’t necessarily exclude unchanging laws; it posits that development happens according to such laws, which are dialectical.

I don’t think we conceive of ‘changes’ or of dialectics in the same way. But maybe we’re saying the same thing in different words or talking past one another. That or I’m misunderstanding you.

I thought you meant that. Just so you know, ‘I can see an argument for that’ usually suggests that you agree with the initial statement. It’s like saying, ‘I could also make an argument in support of that statement’.

This is so the Brits can send their new conscripts over to fight Russia to protect their heritage rather than because NATO is getting directly involved.

What do you mean? Beside the OP text, does not the notion that internal contradiction drives change explain a lot in physics?

The same with the unity of opposites?

And the insistence that all subject matter is relational?

I have some questions, which are not intended to be rhetorical or sarcastic. My questions stem from this assertion:

Well gravity itself is not a dialectic since gravity itself remains unchanging.

I’m struggling to see how you can say all that and begin with saying that gravity is ‘not a dialectic’. Doesn’t this framing imply that gravity can mean something/anything in the abstract, as an isolated thing that exists outside of relations. No one thing can be a dialectic because a dialectic is a relation.

The questions, which may be the same question worded in different ways:

1. Dialectics is the study of change. Does that presuppose (measurable) change in everything?

2. That is, if gravity is a relation, if it (partly) explains why matter is in constant motion, is it true that gravity is not dialectical just because it appears (and may be) unchanging in the abstract?

3. How can you/we be sure that gravity is unchanging?

4. How can gravity not be dialectical and yet only be explained as a relation/process?

5. Does “Well gravity itself is not a dialectic since gravity itself remains unchanging” treat ‘gravity’ as a thing in itself? I.e. rather than a part/property of certain material relations?

There seems to be quite some confusion as to what dialectics is in this thread. I wonder if it comes down to those who accept that everything is contradiction and those who say that dialectics is just a good heuristic. I’m with you in the first group, I think.

Hope she’s doing well.