Maine.

  • happybadger [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    2 months ago

    You have a herbivore and a carnivore. If there is no carnivore, the herbivores eat themselves into starvation and cease to exist. If there is no herbivore, the carnivores starve and no longer exist. Both are interdependent on the other to sustain their relationship and the wider ecosystem of relationships they participate in. There are contradictions in that interdependence, places where resource scarcity and social conflict favour the needs of one group over the other. These contradictions will mount- drought driving waterway changes driving vegetation distribution driving caloric availability and shelter- until there’s a catastrophic rupture. Suddenly the population of rabbits stalls and the foxes have nothing to eat. Either new relationships are formed to meet the needs of those former intertwined groups, the groups in their current state die out, or their relationship finds a new equilibrium. As you study how the natural resources drive those interconnected relationships in the ecosystem, you’re doing dialectical materialism. As you study that change over time you’re doing historical materialism.

  • homhom9000 [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    2 months ago

    I told someone I matched with that I like dialectical materialism. We’re now discussing Palestine with historial materialism. That’s dialectics

  • Wheaties [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    2 months ago

    since nobody knows for sure, I’m going to take this opportunity to say what I think it is but it’s probably wrong so ignore this

    I think it’s called “dialectic” because it’s like a “dialog”. Events, history and problems and such, unfold logically until they reach an impasse, a contradiction. To resolve this, you have to take into account what has come before; your response can’t just be a non-sequitur. So, like, reactionaries look at a problem that exists and say, “We have to go back to before this problem existed and just do that” – but it never works because what came before eventually became what is. Or sometimes people try to brush away all the context, find a clean slate to start over. That really doesn’t work. Your still plugged into the same context, and in attempting to wipe away everything you’ve just made a whole bunch of new contradictions as well.

    So to be dialectic, you gotta pay attention to what’s going on and what’s already happened. You gotta really study the context you are in, so that when you decide to respond you are prepared for how that in turn unfolds to the next contradiction.

    …i think that’s what it means, anyway

  • LaughingLion [any, any]@hexbear.net
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    2 months ago

    its just cause and effect

    you know how liberals like to argue as if things happen in a vacuum. the dialectic argues that no, we live on a continuum of cause and effect

    • lil_tank [any, he/him]@hexbear.net
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      2 months ago

      Just cause and effect would be vulgar materialism

      Dialectics means that all things are changing each other rather than one another, it can be idealistic or materialistic

      Marxism is dialectics + materialism

      • LaughingLion [any, any]@hexbear.net
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        2 months ago

        look i was keeping it simple

        i didnt think id need to explain the transformative properties of adding chocolate to milk makes the milk taste like chocolate and the chocolate taste milky because the milk and chocolate has been transformed. people understand that cause and effect in a complex system transforms the system itself give people some credit goddamn

        • lil_tank [any, he/him]@hexbear.net
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          2 months ago

          give people some credit goddamn

          In my book giving people credit is actually explaining something even if it sounds simple to you because you respect the fact that not everyone has learnt the same things as you and might not deduct the same consequences to a given statement