The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 147
We’re hearing a lot about “joy” now that the Kamala Harris and Tim Walz campaign have made it a byword of their project, so we have to ask what they mean by it. We all know, by this point, that Communists share your vocabulary but do not share your dictionary. So what might they mean by “joy”? Well, it appears what they mean by joy is “radical joy,” which is a kind of religious ecstasy associated with believing they are going to accomplish Communism, or at least their revolution. Radical joy is rooted in “critical hope” together with a certain anger, hatred, and libido dominandi, all as expressions of “erotic” energy seeking liberation. In Herbert Marcuse’s words, it is “the joy of rebellious victims.” In this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay walks you through a variety of Marxist sources to discuss the concept of “radical joy” and reveal it for what it is. Join him to see through the mask of “joy”!
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6 comments
@James,
You said that Trump is a likeable guy? A loveable guy??
You are obtuse.
Trump’s political philosophy is Statism in its expression in Fascism and Theocracy. He is in favor of Eminent Domain, which undermines private property rights. He is in favor of civil asset forfeiture, an attack against private property rights. He admires tyrants, including Duterte and Kim Jong-un. THAT is the reality of Trump. There is NOTHING likeable, loveable about him!
@Chris,
You are not paying attention. There are four expressions of Statism: socialism, communism, fascism, and theocracy. Democrats promote socialism and communism. They support and promote the 10 planks of Marx’s Communist Manifesto. The first plank, the abolition of private property, has been set over a century ago with the permanent imposition of income tax theft (legalized theft but theft nonetheless) and its implicit denial of private property rights. Eminent Domain, a device of monarchies that gives government control and thus factual ownership of all types of property (land, etc.), was incorporated in the US Constitution at the outset, and it provided a precedent and a “justification” for all subsequent types of tax thievery perpetrated at the local, state, and federal levels of government. By government’s denial of private property rights, all of one’s other legitimate individual rights (personal liberty; freedom of speech; privacy; self-defense; keeping and bearing of any and all types of weapons; freedom of association/non-association; freedom of contract; freedom of assembly) are undermined. Republicans advocate fascism (government control, thus government ownership, of businesses behind the scenes while allowing the surface appearance of private property ownership), and now with the overturning of Roe v. Wade on religious grounds, they are promoting theocracy. As Ludwig von Mises correctly pointed out, the terms “right-wing” and left-wing” are meaningless. Democrats and Republicans are two sides of the same Statist coin.
Never mind that one of the fundamental bed-rocks of the American ethos is the free pursuit of happiness. And of course the principal theme/calling of advertising is the hope/promise that you will become happy if you purchase the latest bright/shiny new product.
Everybody now knows that happiness is a clean toilet bowl and a germ free house!
Eternal and total freedom, wisdom, and happiness are the primary needs and ideas of human beings.
Every living being has the instincts and the Destiny of Infinite Life.
Always remember that your inherent heart-disposition wants and needs Infinite, Absolute, True, Eternal Happiness.
Happiness is the now-and-forever Mystery that IS the Real Heart and the Only Real God of every one.
All of which is to say or point out that our True Condition is Sat-Chit-Ananda Being, Consciousness and Bliss. The Orthodox Christian philosopher David Bentley-Hart wrote an entire book investigating this theme.
It could also be said that the essential theme of the work of the book The Master & His Emissary by Iain McGilchrist is how our normal left-brained dreadful sanity shuts down this heart-based impulse. His second book the Matter With Things explores how the happiness-based Master Principle can be cultivated.
McGilchrist’s and his ilk scribble mystical poetry in prose, florid fiction, like that of Ouspensky and Gurdjieff, but not an objective, i.e reality-based guide for living here on earth. They and their ilk are mystics of spirit.
“As products of the split between man’s soul and body, there are two kinds of teachers of the Morality of Death: the mystics of spirit and the mystics of muscle, whom you call the spiritualists and the materialists, those who believe in consciousness without existence and those who believe in existence without consciousness. Both demand the surrender of your mind, one to their revelations, the other to their reflexes. No matter how loudly they posture in the roles of irreconcilable antagonists, their moral codes are alike, and so are their aims: in matter—the enslavement of man’s body, in spirit—the destruction of his mind.”–Ayn Rand
Oh, stop it now! America has two parties and smaller offshoots of them – they are right wing and very right wing. Neither of them do communism.
They only look “right wing” if you’re a Maoist. Neither party approaches anything resembling the extremely limited government of an actual right wing. They might be “to the right” of many European parties, but that’s only because Europe is a extreme left totalitarian cesspit where anyone who objects to being invaded by Third World thugs or dares to talk about it is “far right”.