What is the value of "ideological' words?

>>9614104
>language is abstract

wow, great insights there

>I'm a socialist but I do capitalism

>>9614104
>poetry was dead yesterday
>today it's being mourned

>>9614104
All getting rid of those words would do is deprive us of a vocabulary to describe what people believe. What's the utility in that?

They do actually help us clarify our thought and let us get a grip on the world.

>>9614104
In order to get anything done in parliamentary style democracies, people have to group together with other groups of people who they may not agree 100% with. That's where these ideological terms come in.

>>9614239

Getting rid of those words would actually help us in describing what people believe.

When people say "I am a libertarian" or "I am left wing" these statements are so vague that they are useless. Imagine if instead they actually had to say what kind of laws they wanted passed, how they wanted government money to be spent and where they wanted to take money from.

>>9614104
When Leopardi was accused by the Italian intelligentsia of writing too pessimistic poems that didn't celebrate the achievements of the 19th century science, he replied: "Positivism? Progress? Liberalism? What empty words". Now we still read his poems but we've forgotten the names of those intellectuals.

Ideological words are dull because everyone uses them with different meanings, and their meaning constantly changes over the years. They always need a specified context, otherwise you can't understand them. If you learn to contextualize concepts, it helps you to handle philosophy with agility. But, overall, such words usually prove to be empty and sadly unable to express eternal truths.

>>9614268
Right, but this comes at the expense of efficiency.

>>9614262
And like this anon says, how are people of similar beliefs ever going to group themselves together without some sort of identifying term? Imagine a country with the "Fiscally Conservative, Anti-Immigration, Pro-Market, Foreign Interventionist, And So On And So On Party" versus the "Pro-State, Pro-Immigration, Anti-Market, Anti-Foreign Interventionist, And So On And So On Party".

>>9614285
Why would there be eternal truths about politics anyways?

Politics is complicated, contingent, and ever-changing, and it's no wonder its vocabulary is too.

>>9614331
Of course, that's why literature should have nothing to do with politics. Good literature refuses contingency.

>>9614268
Most people's politics are pretty vague. You don't need to be specific if you participate in what is essentially a two-party system anyway. If someone says they're a Republican or they're a Democrat you know what they'll be doing every four years.

For people who are deeper into politics they will probably specify more what they believe, i.e. anarcho-capitalism, anarcho-communism, anarcho-syndicalist, anarcha-feminist, etc.

So basic terms like 'socialist' are useful for surface-level discussions on politics i.e. what you basically believe in as distinct from other labels ('capitalist') where you don't actually need to go into any great detail.

>>9614356
I don't see why literature should not be able to serve the needs of its time. Maybe you could qualify literature that deals with the eternal as "better" because its relevent forever, but it seems like contingent literature is necessary for proper human living.

>>9614380
Your thought is pretty sectarian. Literature can serve the needs of its time and deal with eternal truths at the same time. But if it's just a blunt and contingent disquisition about current political ideas, it's not good literature. There's no need to discuss this, I think

>>9614405
I don't mean to separate the two so much.

I see how you might find contingent political literature to be aesthetically offensive, but I tend to subordinate aesthetics to ethics, so I don't really bother to say that such literature is bad, assuming it's necessary for political processes, evolution, or whatever.

Describing what you believe and what you want is about all you can do when society is absolutely only about maintaining power and privilege in the fewest hands possible. People abstract when they cannot or are forbidden to express.

>>9614104
I agree. These are just things for people to group themselves in and feel speshal, as well as simplify the world. We need nuanced models that accurately describe things, not malformed tribes inherited from fanatics.

>>9614422
Germinal by Emile Zola is full of ethical and "political" themes, contingent for that time. Same goes for the hundreds of socialist novels that aimed to defend the workers' rights. So what? So Germinal is still considered a masterpiece while the hundreds of socialist novels are down in the trash. This is because Germinal didn't strive to say something "political" at all costs, but rather committed to say and build something else, something more profound.

>>9614104
Their value is in encapsulation.

Compressed within one word is a snapshot of an entire complex subject and worldview. This saves time.

If someone tells me they are a socialist, I instantly have an idea of their viewpoint on any given political subject - indeed, even on many subjects apolitical. Additionally, I can reference this point of view against objective action data which will then suggest what they believe a socialist is. Likewise, a wide range of discussion points manifest through such self-description; there are also a large number of personal values which are hinted at - again, the way to use this information is not to use it by itself. One must cross-reference this information with the external facts surrounding the person in question (i.e., age, gender, socio-economic standing, nationality, personal history, hobbies, etc.)

I would add this however:

The precise nature of these words, that they are short-hand, is their intrinsic weakness.

Many try to intuit the meaning of these words, which are meant as shorthand for the erudite, but which become commonplace with widespread use, and gradually begin to take on life and meaning potentially very different from their true, or original, meanings.

Most strengths are also weaknesses, and weaknesses strengths; it is the principle of the unity of opposites.


Granted, I am an INTJ, and everything I just said can be credited to dominant Introverted Intuition, auxiliary Extroverted Thinking, and the subtle influence of hyper-repressed Introverted Sensing, so perhaps my perspective will be of little use to you.

>>9614104
I'm a revolutionary communism, I have decided to dedicate my life to the destruction of the capitalist mode of production. got any tips?

>>9614770
Yes, shut up.

You don't get to speak until you stop being such a meme.