this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2025
79 points (93.4% liked)
Asklemmy
51083 readers
173 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Get into non-dual spirituality. Zen Buddhism is a good start. Stop thinking you can win the cycle of suffering by spinning the wheel a little differently.
Marxist nonsense will succumb to the exact same human frailties as capitalism. Greed, tribalism. It's the same thing, they just demonize a different group of people and thought. They're still creating a division and separation. No system of thought that's not grounded in what can be said to be inarguably TRUE is free from tyranny - the only way out is to release your attachment to anything that could be used to control you, to force you to act unlike you truly feel called to act.
Materialism is the ultimate means of oppression. And it's something you've been conditioned to believe in since birth. Socialists, communists etc. still rely on materialism to drive their ideology and somehow think they're better because they make nice noises about equality. Childish. At least capitalism is logically consistent with it.
Unless you are willing to take a really fucking hard look at your core beliefs about the nature of reality, you will not change anything. You're just giving the leash of materialism around your neck to a different master.
I like how you just stated that Marxist "nonsense" will succumb to the same issues as capitalism, with no qualifications or real justifications, and instead are arguing for idealism and a rejection of science and understanding.
Aw, did your brain just go "nooo I need others to think how I think". Congratulations, you just unlocked tyranny.
The evil tyranny of science vs the proud rebellion of the Flat Earth Society?
I understand the desire for spirituality. I'm not some Reddit atheist that claims to be on a war against religion. In my view, religion is something that will likely gradually fade, and doesn't need to be directly fought against. What I don't like is when people use spirituality as a cudgel against science, and use it as the basis for arguing against a better world. Religion has been weaponized against queer folk like me, women, ethnic minorities, etc, and have lobbed attacks against science for centuries.
Nice strawman equating nonduality with flat earth and other materialistic religions. Top critical thinking, very science and logic.
If you are so sure of your stance, prove to me that matter exists outside consciousness. And good goddess, at least try to do better than pointing at an extracted brain will you? Nonduality has been around for thousands of years and it's yet to be debunked despite there being a very clear criteria for it.
I answered your strawman with something equally dishonest. I'm not interested in getting into a debate with someone who genuinely believes matter does not exist outside of consciousness and fully believes in idealism, rejecting materialism. There's absolutely no evidence for ideas being primary over matter, and moreover all it does is open up the way for absurdities and fantasy to exist as equals to hard science. Materialism helps us genuinely understand and interpret the world, each successive year affirming its utility as science expands and we understand more and more. Idealism is a willing rejection of understanding to entertain the idea of fantasy.
Can't do it huh? For all your talk of science, you sure are ready to take the belief in materialism for granted. Just another belief you demand others have, demand others have the same thoughts as you. The road towards fascism is short indeed.
Unless you can provide scientific proof, I have no reason to subscribe your belief system and neither does anyone else. Go read https://www.bernardokastrup.com/ or https://bradleyhook.com/donald-hoffmans-concepts-simplified-understanding-reality-and-perception/, debunk them and you probably have grounds for your ideology. Else, it's just another house of cards built on a foundation of fiction.
You reject materialism, then ask for a materialist (science is materialist, it is the measuring and understanding of mater) proof of materialism. Nonsense.
Oh you were SO CLOSE to getting it.
Why can't materialists prove it though? By all their own rules, they should.
Nothing exists.
Do you actually have thoughts in your head or do you just pick random internet retorts? I've never seen someone work themselves up so much while being so completely void of anything they're saying
Nah, not going to waste my time entertaining justifications for belief in the unprovable. I already told you, I'm not here to debate like a Reddit atheist, I just wanted to address your absurd strawman in the beginning. Thoughts are products of the brain, not of some idealist "soul" or other analogue. Matter is objective, measurable, and knowable, through scientific analysis and repeated testing. It isn't subjective.
No, lol. The ideas of people like Kastrup and Hoffman rely on consciousness being distinct from matter, and not a product of matter. Brainwaves are measurable, as biology advances we understand the electrical signals and chemicals forming perception. Further, matter is measurable and consistent, many humans can measure the same rock's mass in isolation from each other and get the same result without knowing the mass or the results beforehand.
What you're doing is deliberately holding onto idealism as the basis for justifying what you personally wish to be true. Idealism always returns, in some fashion, to religion, as explanation. It's a further abstraction from science and replicatable results in favor of subjectivism and vibes.
You're having a bit of a meltdown now because you can't actually argue against science. You have a hypothesis, and reject anything going against that on the basis of your hypothesis resting on the immeasurable and immaterial.
Yes. Good. You got it. Now definitively prove that consciousness arises from matter and not the other way around. No, brainwave scans exist in consciousness. Everything you say exists in consciousness. Prove to yourself that ANYTHING exists outside your consciousness, prior to thought (as thought is only a reflection of what is, like an image in a mirror but it's not the thing itself).
Else, you are just insisting that your beliefs are the correct ones without proof. All I need to prove consciousness is be. You're the one insisting on extra steps. You're just taking materialism as a fact because that's what you're used to doing. You put the block of materialism at the bottom and use the blocks you put on it to try to prove it. This is called circular reasoning.
This is circular reasoning on your part, equivalent to positing that I'm not real simply because you are not me. Consciousness is a material, measurable process, that increasingly is better understood the more science advances. It isn't that I require no proof, it's that materialism is the best method for understanding, and the more science advances, the more it affirms the materialist understanding. You flip this on its head, affirming that even if materialism is the better method for understanding the world and is increasingly affirmed while idealism remains stagnant and increasingly disaffirmed, you prefer it to be true so you hold to it.
Again, prove it. It is YOUR system of thought which requires that every claim must be backed with objective proof. Where is the objective proof of matter? All the rest you're saying hingest upon that being a fact. But if you can't prove it as a fact, all you have is an unverified belief that you insist everyone else should have. Which, again, makes you exactly the same as any other oppressor. In your own system of thought. And before you parade some scientists in front of me, ask yourself if you can know that they know what they are talking about, or do you just believe them because they share the same core belief system as you?
This is getting very, very silly. You're rejecting any and all proof of matter despite the continuous and replicatable proof of the same experiments resulting in the same results, across double-blind testing and more, of matter behaving in the same way regardless of who is percieving it.
Because all your proof hinges on matter being real and prior.
And since we require perception to say anything about matter, what does that say about which comes first, matter or consciousness?
Matter comes first, because consciousness is represented through brainwaves, electrochemical signals, and stimuli from material perception ๐
For someone harping about science, you certainly fall for logical fallacies a lot. You keep pointing at the extracted brain, textbook appeal to the stone.
You are pointing to contents of consciousness to try to prove matter comes prior.
Maybe take the hint that you don't understand the argument (and aren't willing to try) and thus aren't really equipped for this conversation.
This is reddit-tier reverse-atheism, lol. Matter comes prior to consciousness because the brain is a physical organ responding to stimuli as reflected from the material world, a phenomenon further affirmed by the same results happening even from people completely unaware of the other. I think you need to settle down, maybe relax a bit, rather than acting so condescending baselessly.
Nah, you came in here declaring materialism to be tyrannical, when historically it has been idealism used by monarchists, fascists, and liberals to exploit the people while materialism has been liberatory, and used in service of working class liberation.
Wow. You really actually believe that? You actually equate non-dual ideology which necessarily posits a non-hierarchial ultimate reality without absolute good and evil with the bullshit of theistic religions?
Damn I have seen the memes about Marxists thinking they're way smarter than they are but I thought they were exaggerating.
I don't equate it, but it's in the same family. I don't really care how you spin it, dialectical materialism is the liberating philosophy of the proletariat, and any attempt to spin it as "the ultimate tyranny" is just vibes and nonsense.
Friend, with all respect, only one in this conversation is intent on pushing their perspective.
Op made an public question I answered. I however did not ask anyone's opinion.
I think the barn is obscuring your view of the moon.
I'm reminded of The Preacher and the Slave by Joe Hill. The pie in the sky is a lie. Everyone needs to eat. Religion does not feed people.
Tell me you don't know shit about spirituality without telling me you don't know shit about spirituality.
I said Zen Buddhism is a start. Not the end.
Materialism was historically just one way of understanding the world. Over time, it got accepted more and more because it could make testable (and useful) predictions, and they turned out to be right.
Because it works.
Because it works.