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 Inevitability in social/species evolution

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PostSubject: Inevitability in social/species evolution   Inevitability in social/species evolution Icon_minitimeFri Feb 26, 2016 6:57 am

I tend to come down on the side that truth is inevitable to break into/through history and the present moment, leading to the fact that overall progress of humanity is inevitable to a large degree. The other side is the critical position common to Left thinkers that speaks against "historical inevitability" or as Marx said that this historical necessity is always retroactive, always appears only after the fact, and that capitalism reproduces its own conditions thus preventing real progress from occurring. This latter view rejects inevitability and sees all progress as particularly situated effects of real struggles in those moments, namely that all progress is always only "material".

The reason I tend to side with the former position is that even if we accept the latter it is the case that this very situation of materiality is itself determined by meta-historical factors and trends; evolutions that individual histories and moments within histories are only exampling as instances, and the fact that the conditions for 'real struggle' within materialities are already presupposed by past arrangements and present circumstances, not least of which the collective knowledge and subjectivity-modes available having been passed down and refined over time by prior peoples and civilizations, the total accumulated history of thought, etc. Also not discounting the basic genetic situation of human beings and the fact that we are driven by virtue of what we are biologically and psychologically to "naturally" seek out truth and that our work also naturally instantiates truths, even if we dont know it or try to work against that fact.

Inevitability seems given to me, but that doesnt dismiss the point of the Leftist critical positions, largely because those critical positions are mostly concerned with avoiding a capitulation to entrenched capitalism forms and forces, a capitulation that can occur if we of the former view also fail to realize the subtler distinction between inevitability and "capitalist necessity". Clearly that distinction exists and a dialectic rests between them -- equally clearly is the larger fact that even the differentiated existence of these two (inevitability as such vs. capitalist necessity) and their relations is itself beholden to a larger inevitability, which simply means that inevitability itself is the cause and reason for the fact that these differences and dialectics exist. The fact that capitalism has its own necessity is no different or more mysterious than the fact that organisms have their own necessity, genetically and socially determined, and environmentally situated.

If necessary I would like to dig deeper into the notion of inevitability as outlined here. If anyone else views it differently, please let me know. I cannot find a way around inevitability, but nor am I inclined to throw out Leftist criticism and its own raison d'être of operating against capitalism, even where that operation seems to require the inclusion of certain self-ignorances on the part of the absolutization of those motives with respect to larger issues and truths, such as per above meta-historical inevitability. The critical view must reject the premise of inevitability in order to avoid giving the appearance of inevitability to that which criticism wants to overthrow and destroy; yes that is very easy to understand, but not a philosophical position and rather is simply a pragmatic one.

    "Demands appealing to bourgeois ideals such as ‘we are citizens’; ‘we are hard working’; ‘we are also human’ confront a state whose main concern is to police and silence (if not kill) proletarians who are treated as an inessential appendage to capitalist reproduction ... Theory cannot presume a decision-making revolutionary unity, because the latter can only begin to be produced in the process of abolishing the social divisions that fragment it. The very premises of the question of categorising ‘oppressive’ and ‘emancipatory’ social forms and mediations are then mistaken." -Anna O’Lory [<--- this is an example of the kind of otherwise good thinking that must avoid larger philosophic integrations and comprehensive vantages, in order to secure its own 'inevitability']
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PostSubject: Re: Inevitability in social/species evolution   Inevitability in social/species evolution Icon_minitimeFri Feb 26, 2016 8:41 am

Speaking of inevitability, capitalization as social and human force results from the simple fact that this kind of technological, linear rationality and "machinization" of human beings is required for complex arrangements of infrastructure, production and administration to keep functioning. Society has become so large and complex, so heavy in terms of that complexity and technical requirement to keep working that it was inevitable for capitalism to create intense social pressures to turn people into essentially robots going through pre-set motions, and people who think in terms of this kind of self-robotization simply because it takes too much psychological energy and dissonance to try and remain human while working in these capitalist hyper-technical and overdetermined roles.

As a result personality is stretching and trying to find ways of accomodating both human being and robot being. Sometimes than accommodations succeeds to some degree, other times it fails to some degree. Marx knew humans were being used as machines but couldn't foresee the actual turning of human beings into machines, literally, as a consequence of recent technological advances and the resulting massive irreducible complexity of society-wide, national and international systems. Ceding more control to computers and technology for the maintenance of these systems actually causes human being to become more determined in the terms of the requirements of those systems, because now we are not only required to maintain machines but also to maintain the more complex computer and technical systems that in part themselves help maintain the machines.
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