We can abstract human nature from a given material reality, even taking intl consideration the various states of those realities, scaling back into a more generalized focus, or zooming in on a more specific part of the greater whole. From this we can even identify the contradictions and oppositional forces at play for our subject, formulate and work out theories of interplay and resolution. There is wide berth to dialectical thinking for any given system or set of systems, so long as we acknowledge the motion of such processes. When we remove the abstracted into an essentialized abstraction that can exist on its own, as an ideal transcendent of materiality, is when we move away from the dialectical framework and into metaphysical and ahistorical ontological categorical suppositions of being-ness of the subject and in turn attempt to objectify it as perpetual.
In the case of human nature, metaphysicians would claim it innate, as the driving force that shapes the material works. Dialectical materialism would attempt to identify the material forces that drive the behaviors.
For example humans have an the ability to murder, but that does not make it innate to our nature.
Selections from Maurice Cornforth, “Materialism and the Dialectical Method” (1963)
Think about the best teacher you ever had for a moment. I will guarantee this rings true. They were broad thinkers who taught from a materialist historical perspective in their subject matter, and weren’t fettered to simply passing on existing knowledge, they instead encouraged you to explore further than the artificial boundaries of that particular classroom. To expand your literacy from reader of the semiotic domain to composer within its knowledge base. The most effective provoked you to deepen your study on your own.
The neoliberal order will wax heavy and misty eyed about democracy in the abstract, but when pressed always seem to obfuscate to whom this liberal democracy is actually available to.
A look at the material reality of 21st century American society is that such a lofty vision of democracy is reserved for the elite few. For the rest of us it’s the tyranny of the strict top down hierarchy of the workplace, the false scarcely imposed by the oligarchs, and the showmen in the halls of congress acting out a comedy, if it weren’t so tragic to the populace at large, worthy of broadway production.
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