User:RD/9k/Theses on Feuerbach (Q618)

Main entries

618. Q618/Q618Theses on Feuerbach [1] -> very short text from Marx which is literally just a proposition list.
     funny how when after I've been making a big proposition list, I look at a proposition list now and it's like, "same hat!"
618. Q618/Q618Essence of Christianity (Feuerbach)

Motifs or claims

618. Q618/Q618human activity as thing / human activity as object / Hyper-Materialism (meta-Marxism; generic)
618. Q618/Q618Feuerbach does not conceptualize human activity as "thing"

Motifs or claims (Feuerbach)

618. Q618/Q618In eating, man declares Nature to be insignificant (Feuerbach) / Asking for the universe to provide or do amazing things is wholly unreasonable, because to eat nature is to hardly understand it; in eating, man declares Nature to be an insignificant object [2] -> what. this is insane. this text is the most alien thing to read because the sentences are not hard to parse but on each sentence I am struggling to understand how any of it actually makes any sense.
618. Q618/Q618When man tries to explain nature it is the bigoted extinction of nature (Feuerbach) -> I swear I have seen this proposition in Frankenstein, Jurassic Park, Fullmetal Alchemist, and Pokémon. it's bothered me every time for reasons I couldn't explain, because I couldn't clearly say what the wrong proposition actually was.
618. Q618/Q618The shape of an origin myth reflects the existing opinion of a thing, rather than the shape of the proposed origin creating opinions -> so Trotsky is credited with compiling the correct version of Leninism because people think highly of him, not necessarily because an actual event of him compiling the one correct version of Leninism created that opinion. got it.
618. Q618/Q618The shape of an origin myth reflects the existing opinion of a thing, rather than the shape of the proposed origin creating opinions -> what this is really saying about religion and Materialism is.... hard to figure out. it's like, everything except you has an inherent right to exist and be respected without being understood but you have no right to understand it? I have no capacity to understand how that's not utterly terrifying. the kind of thing that actually fills you with fear to the point of just about being a cognitohazard. the thing is, if a bunch of things or people just exist, and they can do whatever they want, you have no guarantee they don't want to hurt you or kill you. you can't just say "well it won't be that bad" — if they can do whatever they want, they can do whatever they want. this world is terrifying. the universe is full of car crashes, plagues, volcanoes, -100° winters, lead, uranium, carbon monoxide, supernovas, and planets containing constant storms of glass, as well as rapists, murderers, atomic bombs, and black holes. it's not like things that could kill you won't kill you. most of the things that can kill you aren't even animate, so it's not like they can decide not to. and you want to put people and cultures into the same category as raging glass storms? how do you think that would help anyone get along? a raging glass storm is scary. you don't want to be anywhere near it. and that's because you can't control it. that's because, for an ordinary person, understanding it is no help in diverting it or surviving it. if people start to feel like other people can't be made any less dangerous than they are currently, how does that not lead to prejudice and avoidance?
618. Q618/Q618Polytheism and monotheism come from the core principles that manufacture countable cultures; polytheism comes from open-minded core values while monotheism comes from core values of selfishness -> there is definitely some thought going on here, but I don't think it's correct. when I look at ancient Greece that isn't what I see. I see Greece as a huge empire that absorbed several separate city-states or small kingdoms (? I don't know the whole history of Greece, but I know its development approximately paralleled Egypt on a smaller scale), and "the Jews" as a very small society that is scarcely a very large tribe. a tiny society in conflict with everything else doesn't really have room to absorb a bunch of other gods or principles versus primarily think about itself. that's just what you expect it to do. this whole "analysis" feels uncomfortably similar to First World countries suddenly deciding other countries are inferior for not having the same ideas basically for reasons of size or shape or age, for instance because North Korea is smaller than the United States and barely got through its very earliest stagest of development before being attacked, and so countries need to be Kantianized. I have to wonder if all the suffering in South Korea is because it's a small country being held to the standards of way bigger countries containing more subpopulations like the United States. it's a terrible irony that Idealism aims to supposedly commit less abuse on the external world by not analyzing it, but in trying to apply arbitrary ideas to material things can end up horribly abusing them anyway.
618. Q618/Q618God is hidden sorrow / Nature listens not to the plaints of man. Hence man turns away from all visible objects. He turns within, that he may find audience for his griefs. Here he utters his oppressive secrets; he gives vent to his stifled sighs. This uttered sorrow of the soul is God, a tear of love shed in deepest concealment over human misery / the concerns of his heart made objects of the independent, omnipotent absolute being [3] ->
     and this sounds like Feuerbach made a Deltarune theory.
     this describes, like, exactly what I think is going on. magic and adventure are both vaguely connected to pain. you can get to the Dark World by "turning away from all visible objects". but you get to the Titan world below it by turning fully inward and diving inside your own pain. "god" is the player, so like, at some times you can replace the concept of god with the concept of RPG quests. in that you can replace the Dark World itself with god, or the Titan world. the Titan world is a 'tear of love' apparently, that could not come out. "God is pure feeling made objective" — like the Dark World and Titan world are psychology made into a world.
     ...my memory of this is faint, but I half remember Flowey saying something like "I will become a god". is that.... relevant? wait no, yeah, Flowey was the one abusing the word 'love' to mean level of violence. they all knew what it meant due to some kind of dream logic but he's the first to say it. so his tear of love becomes level of violence? I guess. he has to absorb all the monster souls to become his most powerful form, so... is that fight even 'real'. or is it going on inside the heart-shaped objects somehow. there is something weird going on with Flowey.
     so the key to creating worlds in Deltarune is... your deepest wishes rising to the level of "god", which means either the realm of pain or the realm of RPG worlds. the characters notice that Dark Worlds are this inner realm made of their wishes, and then they get the bright idea that their world itself is an inner realm made of wishes, and find the way to cut through their inner thoughts to the outside to become in control of their overall world. this is the significance of Spamton "reaching heaven" — it's not talking about Spamton literally getting to the Light World, it's hinting at the concept of characters in the Light World reaching through to take control of the Light World without literally rising out of it. this was created as a method to banish the Angel because if they have control of their world that's all heaven is and they have heaven in their hands. I guess that might be theoretically possible for the Darkners too, to take control of 'heaven' without leaving the Dark World. which would be weird, it would be like, Ralsei being a piece of paper or whatever that is just able to talk now and function in either his world or the higher world; I don't actually see any problem there with all objects having to be alive because I think it would only happen to major characters with a lot of meaning placed on them anyway, and the others would fade away.
     if Gaster is "upset" at Dess it would be because Dess tried to take the place of Gaster first before he turned around and did the same to her.
618. Q618/Q618The Christian made the requirements of human feeling the absolute powers and laws of the world, created in prayer an absolute identity of the subjective and objective, but recognised man and universal feeling only under the limitation of belief in Christ / The heart's need is absolute necessity, the fate of the world / Prayer alters the course of Nature; it determines God -> this makes it sound like there is no difference between Christianity and Existentialism or secular animism. which could be true.
     also another quote that I swear ended up in Deltarune. the 'heart' has power over the fate of the world (there we have it) because when the need of one 'heart' matches the needs of all it becomes absolute necessity
     am I. going to have to put Feuerbach in the Deltarune ontology. I think I am. because this is much too close to a coherent explanation of how Undertale and Deltarune work to set aside
618. Q618/Q618Prayer is the self-division of man into two beings — a dialogue of man with his heart / The struggling heart bursts the barrier of the closed lips -> do I even need to say anything
     oh wait I do, I need to say that "The Barrier" is a psychological barrier between man and God or the realm of pain.
618. Q618/Q618Social prayer is more effectual than isolated prayer. What we are unable to do alone we are able to do with others. A sense of solitude is the sense of limitation; a sense of community is the sense of freedom (the lack of limitation) / Freedom is the lack of limitation in the sense of limited capabilities -> well there's a definition of Freedom for the surely very tall pile. that word makes me so uncomfortable, because there must be at least five totally distinct definitions of freedom that are all different things, and people will still act like that word intuitively means something.
     you know why the word freedom is really stupid? because by this definition Stalin believed in freedom and toward the end of his life was entirely focused on freedom. but nobody believes that if you tell them that. Stalin wrote about the removal of limitations on capabilities in the form of periodically upgrading socioeconomic structures. that actually fulfils the requirements of this particular definition of freedom. it conceptualizes freedom as a momentary thing which comes in the form of transitions, but like, Deleuze and Guattari always conceptualize freedom that way too, so what's the difference? Stalin is the only good post-structuralist philosopher, change my mind.
618. Q618/Q618The child does not feel dependent on the father; he has in the father the feeling of his own strength, the consciousness of his own worth, the Guarantee of his existence, the certainty of the fulfilment of his wishes -> the hidden and otherwise baffling connection between Lacanianism and Christianity.
     something bothers me. I don't see how this is at all different from the "egoistic" Old Testament god. this statement says that Christianity is actualized through the psychological development from dependence on 'the father' to full confidence in the self, as the child takes the place of the parents. but I really do not see how the "egoism" of the Israelites isn't the exact same thing as full confidence in the self. they would have gone through that exact same transformation, becoming convinced of religion because they're confident in themselves and the power of their under-developed feudal society. the only real difference is the size of the society. which still causes people to really hate feudal societies and some small republics for their acts of defensive aggression today.
     you could take this statement and apply it to North Korea. you could say North Korea is actualized when its people stop depending per se on Kim Il-sung and they become confident in their own abilities to build society, and their confidence in their own abilities will bind them to the Workers' Party of Korea as they realize the power of their own abilities and being part of an organization based on the power of their own abilities. you've invented nationalism. you've explained why being part of a small society causes people to become utterly confident in their ability to defeat other countries or populations.
618. Q618/Q618Love does not command, and so will easily see its wishes fulfilled; faith in omnipotence is faith in the unreality of the external world, the absolute reality of man's emotional nature, which feels every determination, every law, to be a limit, a restraint, and dismisses it [4] -> this is just it, isn't it. sociality grants total confidence on human beings because they can turn to each other to overcome anything. but it's also specifically sociality that brings arrogance, not 'religion' or 'ideologies'. sociality and 'the inherent duty of love' are also the best way to overcome people that are getting in your way. and that's how all of humanity's greatest problems begin, when "love" and "freedom" and "confidence" are inappropriately applied to solve problems that require other solutions. and when love, freedom, and confidence themselves turn to hatred, oppression, and abuse without changing themselves at all.
618. Q618/Q618The man who does not exclude from his mind the idea of the world, that every effect has its natural cause — such a man does not pray, he only works; he transforms his attainable wishes into objects of real activity -> I see Marx's train of thought in here now. amazing. so according to Marx this statement uttered by a Christian in some kind of derision would be backhandedly true.

Subjective themes

618. Q618/Q618Why is Feuerbach so anarchist? [5] -> I swear the opening paragraphs of this chapter sound almost exactly like the stuff anarchists say. I'm going to guess that Idealism is the answer, and that likewise, the reason that both Pokémon and anarchism remind me of this text is that they're both Idealist.
618. Why do we do anything? / If aesthetic appreciation is inherently better than taking action to survive or accomplish goals, why do we do anything rather than avoiding existence? -> this is either a silly question you'll laugh at or one of the scariest cognitohazards you'll ever come into contact with that. uh. could maybe lead to actual suicides (pronounced redacted).

Ideologies or fields

• ML / early Marxism
• ML / Marx