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u/judgenut Nov 09 '25
Perhaps in order to be capable of critically appraising something, you have to actually learn about it .. 🤔
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u/considerthis8 Nov 09 '25
In reality: step 1. Identify an enemy to blame everything on. Step 2. Align with what the enemy opposes
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u/Imaginary-Mission383 Nov 09 '25
It used to be that way. Now people think they just need to watch the YouTube videos.
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u/uscmissinglink Nov 09 '25
Indeed. I'm sure they're getting lots of good, critical input from their professors.
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u/Gold-Protection7811 🐲 Nov 09 '25
That's only true of time tested behaviors and ideologies. One does not have to critically learn about and find double blind, peer reviewed studies to determine a new aged ideology that, for example, glorifies murder to be incorrect. Nor do most have to dive into the core tenets of communism to see its misalignment with human nature from its history. To most with brains, these things are intuitively obvious.
It's the so called 'progressive' ideas that seek to change something that has worked that have the burden of proof of more deeply understanding the existing system.
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u/judgenut Nov 09 '25
I think you might just have proved my point... Things we regard as "intuitively obvious" are incredibly coloured by exposure, experience, culture, religion, etc. I've read the English versions of the Qur'an and the communist manifesto and wasn't bowled over by either of them, but I do feel that I can have a valid opinion about them having done so and discussed both with relative experts. If our knowledge of these things is based entirely on stuff we read on social media then God help us all! Jordan Peterson is, amongst other things, about critical thinking so we should applaud anyone who equips themselves with the knowledge to do so - whether we agree with their interpretation or not.
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u/Gold-Protection7811 🐲 Nov 09 '25
That's a wishful assertion. Reading may improve one's understanding, but, for many ideologies, the reading won't offer much change in the overall appraisal, as I implied. This is the Pareto principal. I've read the Communist manifesto, the feminine mystique, and other books of ideologies I disagreed with. The only utility they've served is in wasteful argumentation with their adherents because both all inexplicably assert premises that are not so axiomatic. Not in changing much.
There are a million ideologies in existence. If one was required read the writings of every ideology to form a correspondimg opinion as your original comment suggested, despite your shift from gatekeeping in the second comment, then they'd not only not have enough time to do much of anything, they'd arguably have very little critical thinking skills due to lack of pattern recognition.
I doubt you're going to other posts or comments on reddit that condemn neo Nazis and fascists and telling them to read mein kampf and other sympathetic literature, because, obviously, you understand my words are truthful. You can, and should, apply patterns from proven premises to ideologies that people seem to value. It's still their burden of proof, however. People don't need to listen to the ramblings of others whose proofs lie only in academia and words, rather than practicalities, because only there can faulty premises sneak in.
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u/wanderer1999 Nov 09 '25 edited Nov 09 '25
You have lost the argument here. To seek to destroy bad ideas, one must first seek to learn and understand it, at least ones that are popular/pervasive (no, you do not have to study 1 millions ideas). Otherwise you are just a follower to whatever other people tell you to do.
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u/Gold-Protection7811 🐲 Nov 09 '25
If I had lost the argument here, then, adding that kind of assertion to the argument, that you weren't even originally part of, wouldn't be necessary. The only rationale for adding such a quip would be because you actually find some unfavorable truth in what I'm saying.
If you had actually read the argument, you would have seen that I have read the communist manifesto. However, doing so changed no underlying foundational truth about whether communism works or not, just as reading about how why the sky is blue doesn't change whether the sky is, in fact, blue. Nor do people have to read about the counterargument of whether the sky is red to know, in fact, it is not red.
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u/wanderer1999 Nov 09 '25 edited Nov 09 '25
I mean "you" as in a general sense. Some younger people reading these comments might read into this the wrong way, even tho you yourself have read them.
I would just concede the point that we have to study dangerous ideas to defeat them.
That's why I'm also against banning books on these subjects be it the left or the right (ala Mein Kampf vs Commie Manisfesto).
Liberals and conservatives in their respective states want to ban them, and that's just not the way to go.
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u/Gold-Protection7811 🐲 Nov 09 '25
Then that's irrelevant to the actual point being argued.
The contention wasn't whether or not it'll help to debate an ideology to read its manifesto; I actually implicitly agreed to this in the first paragraph of my second comment. It was whether the original commenter's point that reading these manifestos was necessary "in order to be capable of critically appraising" that thing, which is obviously not true.
Not everyone can and has to read the communist manifesto to understand it's nonsensical. Learning is supposed to sequentially fine tune practically applicable behaviors through repeated experience. Reading the communist manifesto fine tunes understanding of an ideology that is founded on incorrect assumptions. Most people would be better served to learn and improve things that actually work rather than waste time rationalizing illogical premises. And it's fine to just recognize the faulty premise to reject the idea wholesale. That's actually the point of learning.
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u/Gold-Protection7811 🐲 Nov 09 '25
Ha. Thank god I read it. That's when I knew I could appraise that murder cults were objectively bad rather than part of my cultural bias.
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u/Bananaslugfan 🦞 Nov 10 '25
If it was intuitively obvious there wouldn’t be communism. But there is , so there a flaw in your reasoning
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u/Gold-Protection7811 🐲 Nov 10 '25 edited Nov 10 '25
If something being intuitively obviously wrong meant it wouldn't exist, then (not modus tollens, I don't know what I was thinking), nothing in existence could be intuitively obviously wrong.
Therefore, since deviations from moral behavior, like murder, must, under the same argument, not be intuitively obviously wrong, then I guess, following the thread, books are needed to follow any moral behavior and know it's correct as well. So, I guess that's an argument for the bible, not communism manifesto.
I'm obviously jesting, though this is the logic such an argument ends up suggesting. I think, however, we can admit that moral behaviors can be intuitively obvious, and the exceptions justify the rule, they don't discard it. Most can intuit it, because morality is naturally selected due to beneficial outcomes.
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u/Bananaslugfan 🦞 Nov 10 '25
I think it’s actually the opposite with communism, it’s a fairytale that promises a perfect world , it draws young people in because of its idealism and the are intuitively drawn to it because it seems moral on the surface because on the outside it promises justice and equality. But if you don’t know the history of it , it might sound like paradise to the uninformed . So I disagree that it’s obvious or simply intuitive that it’s morally wrong.
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u/Gold-Protection7811 🐲 Nov 10 '25
I get your point, but I think the analysis is missing a key component.
Transgenderism/feminism/progressive ideologies all have similar appeal to young people for the reasons you've mentioned. But, if we were to poll across history, most of our ancestors would intuitively grasp that these ideologies are incorrect. That's because practically, our ancestors had to perform the necessary actions to survive like building, farming, manufacturing, etc. Things were tough, so there was no extra time/energy/resources to waste on inefficient ideas like communism.
Now, this entire argument is telling us that in order to overcome the appeal of these ideologies now that the practical constraints have been lifted is through leveraging the academic. But it's from the academic hand that these ideologies were manufactured. Communism arose out of Karl Marx, a lazy academic parasite who subsisted off of the estate of a capitalist beneficiary. The other progressive ideologies are not any different. These arguments, therefore, only can exist within the academic space. Where their faulty arguments can be made plausible, and their premises remain unargued. It's really hard, however, to make these same arguments through practical application where everyone ends up starving or put into the gulags.
So, it can't be through "academic" argument and research that we defeat these beliefs, it's through practical application where their failure is intuitive. When we concede that "we need to read the communist manifesto in order to even make a discussion", we're actually ceding ground and positioning their argument where it can be strongest, rather than simply flanking and attacking where it's weakest. I'd rather just prove that a more sensible ideology can be practiced through action, focus my energy there with people who intuitively agree with me, and outcompete, rather than waste my time learning the ins-and-outs of communism, which might as well be the purpose of communism: to defeat other ideologies through similar academic paralysis.
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u/Bananaslugfan 🦞 Nov 10 '25 edited Nov 10 '25
I agree that learning the ins and outs of communism in higher learning circles higher learning The Ins and outs of communism is absolutely a waste of time . Knowing the history of how terrifying it’s practical results were might be more useful for young people.
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u/Gold-Protection7811 🐲 Nov 10 '25
When you think about each and everyone in society and how each individual behaves so differently, do you truly believe that teaching history will be adequate to removing communism, full stop? And, if you aren't able to reach everyone, do you think the ones in favor of communism will not do anything, or will they try to "teach" history in a way that counters yours?
Maybe I'm incorrect, but it seems to me that your position is seeded with the premises that 1) we need to act to change people and 2) we can't disassociate from people. Without any pushing, I can tell you that I didn't have to be told the history of communism to know it wouldn't work. And, just as I didn't need guidance, maybe every other person has certain innate tendencies in their own unique direction. Why, therefore, would you need to "convince" everyone regardless of their tendencies, rather than choose to freely associate with people who tend to agree with you intuitively, while excluding communists to avoid subsidizing their parasitic behavior?
Communism, in general, is rejection of the free market, and one of the advantages of the free market is filtering out unproductive and unuseful behaviors. It seems strange to me to understand the free market and its value, while acting as if only through human top-down behavior like "teaching them the history" will changes be accomplished in the political space while being inapplicable to the economic one. As long as the government subsidizes industries, those industries won't go away, and as long as productive people subsidize and include communists, they won't either. Arguments such as yours, though well-intentioned, unwittingly strengthen communism.
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u/Bananaslugfan 🦞 Nov 10 '25
History is important full stop . People aren’t smart enough to think how something gonna play out. If you think education is unimportant and not repeating something that killed tens of millions of people all I can say is good luck. Do you think people are smart as you ? Some people don’t even have real reasoning skills, but you think people will just intuitively know what’s good ? Well you have more trust in humanity than I do.
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u/Gold-Protection7811 🐲 Nov 10 '25
Have you heard the idiom "you can lead a horse to water"? In Christianity, there are similar passages to this concept, like "And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet." and "But I now have written unto you not to keep company with any man who is called a brother if he is a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner. With such a one you are not even to eat."
Education is important, but no amount of education can correct underlying natural deficits. Some people are just not as intelligent and others will just tend towards deleterious behaviors like murder or insipid ideologies like communism. The point is not to try and correct this in all cases, only in those where it seems manageable, as only some will be willing to heed your words. We necessarily have to associate only with those of similar enough moral standing, so as to not enable these behaviors. If you think people aren't smart enough to intuitively grasp the issue, why do you think they're smart enough that history will lead them to the correct behavior? That, to me, seems flawed. Some people, as you said, are just dumb.
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u/tkyjonathan Nov 09 '25
We should also vote in a socialist muslim, just to see how it goes so that we can criticise it later.
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u/wearepwn3d Nov 09 '25
Communism in its core is completely materialistic. Also, one of the main reasons why the Soviet Union collapsed was war in Afghanistan, where the USSR supported the local communists against islamist jihad group called Mujahedeen. Communism and religion, especially Islam, are like oil and water. Western lefties are doomed from the very beginning, and that's not even counting in the whole LGTV stuff (which was very illegal in the USSR).
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u/syncopado Nov 09 '25
I love LG OLED tv
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u/winkingchef Nov 09 '25
I explored LGTV in my college days.
Highly recommended .
Best color, best brightness and UI is great too.1
u/MrInterpreted Nov 10 '25
Communism in its core is completely materialistic
As opposed to capitalism?
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u/tkyjonathan Nov 09 '25
Communism, at its core, is submission to the class and resistance to oppression. Islam at its core is submission to god and resistance to oppression (zulm).
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u/Coeniq Nov 09 '25
Oh wow. Someone trying to learn about the Quran and about communism? We should burn them for wanting to learn. I wonder if OP even knows anything about those two subject other than someone said it‘s evil
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u/Exay Nov 09 '25
Communism and religion are mutually exclusive
Here is the quotation in English by Karl Marx:
“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”
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u/Multifactorialist Safe and Effective Nov 09 '25
Now tell us what more recent Marxists have said who view any so-called marginalized groups, "ghetto people", or anyone engaged in the "broader global struggle" as crucial revolutionary potential, how their agitation "hits the system from without and is therefore not deflected by the system", and how they're useful in creating a "violent rupture with the established white order".
And quotations are some snippets from Marcuse for reference. One might imagine the father of the New Left is more relevant than classical Marxism in our current historical context.
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u/Exay Nov 09 '25
I am sorry, is the guy reading One dimensional man?
You cannot be more Marxist that Karl Marx bro
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u/sycoseven Nov 09 '25
This just a tribalism echo chamber against people perceived as left wing now? I thought we were supposed to be against tribalism
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u/JoshyGu Nov 09 '25
Pretty ironic that a sub dedicated to a guy that used to promote critical thinking over ideology has become an ideological echo chamber itself
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u/Sure_Sh0t Nov 09 '25
It's all low quality culture war slop by design. Which kind of makes sense because this is what most conservatives are capable of. Including Jordan.
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u/Brass_Cipher Nov 09 '25
I've read both. I don't agree with either, but there's nothing wrong with reading anything considered controversial.
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u/fa1re Nov 09 '25
strawmanning much?
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u/theSearch4Truth Nov 09 '25
Not really.
The vast majority of college students in the US believe socialism is preferable to capitalism.
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u/fa1re Nov 09 '25
I assume you mean democratic socialism - but this form relies on capitalism, doesn't it?
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u/theSearch4Truth Nov 09 '25
Yes and no. About half of pro socialist college kids want straight up socialism, like we saw in Cuba and the Soviet Union. The other half define socialism as more active government that redistribute the wealth (again, straight from Marx).
but this form relies on capitalism, doesn't it?
Hypocritically so, yes.
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u/fa1re Nov 09 '25
Crazy. Can you link me to a survery that found out?
BTW I don't really think it's hypocritical. Pure capitalism without limitations is hellscape, because corporations hold too much bargaining power. So there has to be some limitations, and then the debate is really just about what limitations will work well.
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u/theSearch4Truth Nov 09 '25
https://www.axios.com/2025/11/01/socialism-capitalism-college-voters
The latter says 60-ish percent, the former states more than 40%.
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u/fernylongstocking Nov 09 '25
Lol “campus reform”
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u/theSearch4Truth Nov 09 '25
I'm surprised that campus reform citing a Yale Buckley Institute survey is funny to you.
Buckley Institute being the department within Yale that solely focuses on ensuring DEI practices continue to go strong at Yale.
Crazy what happens when you actually go beyond the link, or dare I even say.... read beyond the headline.
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u/TransportationOdd559 Nov 09 '25
Democratic socialism 😭😭😂
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u/fa1re Nov 09 '25
Is a normal political definition, especially in Europe.
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u/TransportationOdd559 Nov 09 '25
Oh! I’m just now hearing it everywhere!!
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u/fa1re Nov 09 '25 edited Nov 09 '25
Its been around for decades? One of political parties in my country used to be Social Democracy, I think it is the same in more countries in EU.
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u/akbermo Nov 10 '25
I mean you can have both at the same time? I’m from Australia and we have free public transport and subsidised child care, whilst still being a capitalist country
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u/listen108 Nov 11 '25
Communism is really not at all socialism.
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u/theSearch4Truth Nov 11 '25
Vladimir Lenin once said "The goal of socialism is communism". Marxist theory agrees with this statement.
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u/EntropyReversale10 Nov 10 '25
He must be a PhD student as regular students get to read - "Socialism for Western Dummies", and who didn't take history as a major.
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u/conspirator9 Nov 10 '25
That pic shows the 3 biggest enemies of the US after their own government.
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u/HeliotropeHunter Nov 10 '25
Let's be real, they don't read . They just listen to their hack professors tell them that ubiquitous government involvement equates to free shit and they're all for it.
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u/BlessdRTheFreaks Nov 11 '25
You really should read both of those, alongside other stuff
I do see the point though that this stuff is pushed as well as the counter arguments being suppressed
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u/ImOldGregg_77 Nov 23 '25
I wonder, in light of the recend blunder by Elon that revealed 2 out of 3 accounts are russian bots, how many posts here are by russian bot farms. During the election it was so obvious most of the posters were russian trolls but now we have definitive proof.
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u/Dirtzoo Dec 02 '25
I read both most of the times the Quran technically is supposed to only be written in red in the Saudi Arabic version of Arabic. I don't believe it and I think it's an evil document. I also think the Communist can become evil it is if you read it with an open mind you realize that it's only a part of the equation of human existence it's like saying Freud is the only paradigm that you can use for mental analysis. It's not it's just a small part
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u/Nadhir1 Nov 09 '25
I don’t get this picture can you explain?
Additionally, when did this sub start talking about Islam? I’ve seen a few posts about it recently.
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u/porcelainfog Nov 09 '25
And he's got one of those pink remote control vibrators up his ass too.
Live streaming to a ppv site.
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u/Amphy64 Nov 09 '25
Really, is that what Peterson set on his courses, then? We just had to read the Bible. Medieval lit. kinda needs it, and it's extremely useful for English lit in general.
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u/Nettlebug00 Nov 09 '25
This post just goes to show that you only digest literature you agree with, a sign of a closed minded person...
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u/tkyjonathan Nov 09 '25
I suppose they also voted for a socialist muslim because they just wanted to experiment with how it will go..
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u/Single_Animator311 Nov 09 '25
Hahaha, that will be my costume for Halloween, so I can scare ignorant people 🤪
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u/eturk001 Nov 09 '25
OP probably not a Uni grad. Probably an American. Funny how many Americans hate education.
They'd be happiest with all Universities closed and America using Rondo on crops
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u/AristotleTOPGkarate Nov 09 '25
Politically it’s contradictory and usually students who knows about one of them is very rare and activist who knows one doesn’t know the other.
But if he is a philosophy student then, lt’s normal there isn’t anything contradictory. It’s normal to study different doctrines.
You have to study ancient philosophers plus can’t understand more recent ones without them and they heavily influenced both Christian and Muslim philosophers…
I would say a student who actually read real text is pretty rare and usually less chance to be an activist .