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When asked which Economic Model Does he Prefer Cornel West had this to say

{ When you think about self respect, when you think about self determination, when you think about self defense, that comes from a bottom up orientation.

What does a democratic economy look like? It doesn't look like a capitalist economy. Capitalism is not a democratic form of organizing at the workplace, it's heirarchal, so I'm for workers control.

Am I a socialist? certainly there's a strong socialist dimension to what I'm talking about but that's just a moment... but we've got spiritual and cultural dimensions that go far beyond isms, far beyond ideoogies.

In the communist tradition I would be closer to council communists than the vanguard communists "the Soviets Without Bolshevicks" that's what happened at the Kronstadt Rebellion when they were crushed. Soviets are Workers Organizations whereas the Vanguard Party were imposing their will upon the Workers Organizations so that the workers counciles got crushed. So people like Pannakoek or Gorder(?) . . . These are so called Council Communist who become revolutionary socialists critical of Vanguard Parties orientation... }

!cornelwest2024@slrpnk.net

I really never expected to be shilling for a candidate like this, but I've been a fan of Cornel West for over 10 years, I don't agree with him on everything ( i'm not a christian) he's the only candidate talking about Cop City or Prison Abolition, he has a better stance on Israel than many leftists, he's constantly name dropping revolutionaries like CLR James or Angela Davis, he say of his campaign that it's "looking at the world through the eyes of what Franz Fanon called The Wretched of the Earth" and saying other things I would never Imagine a Presidential candidate ever saying in a million years. So I think he's gonna get a big following and educate/radicalize a lot of people, maybe even de-radicalize some right wingers.

Anyway that's my spiel, if you're unsure about West's politics -- there has been a lot of just bad faith takes and misinformation out there -- I implore you to listen to one of his recent interviews, like this one with the Mau Mau hour

"In the socialist tradition I would be closer to council communists than vanguard communists, you know "the Soviets Without Bolshevicks" that was what happened at the Kronstadt rebellion when they were Crushed. Soviets were workers organizations so that the vanguard parties were imposing their will upon the workers organizations so that the workers councils got crushed, So people like Pannekoek.. "

come hang out at !cornelwest2024@slrpnk.net

{ Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) said Sunday he wants President Biden to stand down on his 2024 Democratic presidential primary bid to give another Democrat a shot at the White House.

Why it matters: Phillips has previously called on others to challenge Biden in the 2024 Democratic nomination but is not committing himself to running as of yet.

• "I would like to see Joe Biden, a wonderful and remarkable man, pass the torch — cement this extraordinary legacy," Phillips said on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday.
• "And by the way, this is not how everybody thinks, but I do believe the majority wants to move on," he added.
• Phillips said his views on Biden stepping down are not based on the president's age but rather "how people feel."

By the numbers: 56% of U.S. adults said they had an unfavorable opinion of Biden, compared to just 32% of those with favoring opinions on the president, according to a CNN poll in June.

• Prospective voters in the CNN poll also had an unfavorable view of former President Donald Trump at 59%.
• An April poll from NBC News revealed that 70% of Americans think Biden should not seek another term. Of those responses, 51% came from Democrats.
• 60% of those polled by NBC also thought Trump shouldn't run for president again. Of those, a third identified themselves as Republican voters.
• "Joe Biden right now is down seven points in the four swing states that will decide the next election," said Phillips, who also pointed to Biden's historically low approval numbers.
• Phillips added that he's not saying Biden is "not up to a second term," but that the numbers reflect that Americans want change and a new Democratic candidate. }

Hello, I just wanted to start a conversation here, since personally I have been increasingly leaning towards what I would think is an animistic or pantheistic worldview, apparently many people are also of the same mind so I just wanted to get some other perspectives.

I increasingly do not think that humans have some monopoly on consciousness or intelligence it also appears that there is something more to evolution than simple random selection, that there is some kind of underlying intelligence to how all life operates, adapting perfectly to it's environment, this and having had some very powerful experiences on psychedelics ( and yes I do think it's more than trust a high-dea ) that maybe there is something like consciousness underlying all existence, that everything, even non-living things are in a way "alive"

Other ideas that make me wonder are the discoveries of quantum physics and observation of subatomic particles, which seem to imply that observation itself influence or creates reality. Many New Age types have jumped on this to promote their own Neo Idealistic theology, I think we should be skeptical of those aspiring prophets, but these discoveries do pose serious challenges to the traditional positivist way of understanding reality.

It really makes you wonder like maybe Hegel was right, and that everything is just Mind, history is just God figuring himself out or whatever the fuck he was talking about

All that being said I don't strictly believe in 'spirit' or 'soul' and I'm not a fan of crystals and all that mystical woo shit. There may well be something deeper to our consciousness than just the observable brain, that our ability to observe, is based on some rudimentary basis of energy becoming consciousness of itself and maybe we're all just part of one cosmic consciousness, but to me that would mean that the consciousness is physical in origin, and that actually all matter has some underlying living quality to it. Like maybe the Earth or the Sun or Galaxies themselves are "consciousness" and "alive" in the sense of dynamic self regulating organisms.

All that being said I still think the skeptical/empirical worldview is the best way to go about operating in the real world, and we can speculate about these things, but it is very dangerous to form any rigid dogmatic belief, lest we turn this isn't some other dogmatic religion, which we humans should have learned by now, is not the way to go.

Thanks for reading, I look forward to seeing other perspectives