Apech

Sic transit is when you throw up in the back seat of the car.

It could be said that the body is a store house of experience, whereas the Spirit has the potential for infinite 'experience' ... although perhaps experience is not quite the right word since there is nothing 'ex' to the spirit.

I was just musing to myself that I like that word 'wonder' - because it sounds like one-der ... i.e. an act of unification. So the spirit can manifest as flesh by drawing itself together so to speak and then to imagine the body giving rise to the spirit that would turn the whole thing inside out ... a wonder of wonders. Great wealth I think refers to the creative energy of spirit and the body poverty ... which I guess means it does not have anything to give of itself and is just a vessel of the spirit. Clearly this is refuting any materialist view and giving primacy to spirit ... as you would expect ... which leaves us all rather stranded in the this current world since no-one hardly believes in spirit except as some kind of metaphor any more.

Thanks to everyone for the contributions and comments (keep them coming).

Yes! ... or no ... I think maybe ... as long as you remain resolute nothing bad can happen.

I did wonder while listening to all those statistics about murder and rape if it had occurred to Mr. Molyneux that the statistics released by the previous apartheid were accurate. Did he also factor in that being a second class citizen in your own country and the effects of colonialism coupled with economic deprivation might make people more aggressive. I have no doubt that a deal was struck before Mandela was released that he was to be built into this unifying figure, beyond blame, in order to try to hold South Africa together and avoid civil war and disintegration. Not a bad idea really. At some point a proper objective analysis of who he was and what he achieved is needed. But probably not yet and certainly not in the style of Molyneux.

Hello Zanshin our new mod. Can I be the first to say how intelligent, good looking, kind, fair, tolerant, lovely, forgiving, merciful and perfect you are. Right that's the creeping over with .... who shall I insult today?

No I don't suppose so. That was not my point. The guy in the vid said that the intellectuals like Marx, being on the science 'bandwagon' (whatever that is) tried to replace the moral authority of the church (to paraphrase) and then attacked Marx's personal behaviour as a critique. So I was just pointing out you could do the same to other so called moral authorities.

Well I'm all for freedom of expression but I find this guy's lack of grasp of anything bewildering. Nothing new that Mandela was a terrorist (Thatcher called him one) and then the long stream of statistics (many of which have nothing to do with South Africa or Mandela) to prove what? that South Africa has economic and social problems ... no attempt to show whether things were better or worse because of Mandela, no mention of truth and reconciliation and that actually the feared blood bath was avoided ... yes, Mandela has been made into some kind of saint by the media which in real life he cannot be. Oh and Winnie Mandela was at her worst when he was locked up ... so I can't se how he is responsible for what she did either. The tone of his whole talk was racist ... blacks this, whites that ... I can't help but feel that his slick (but annoying ) presentation hides something more ugly.

I didn't watch the whole of the OP vid but it was pretty clear that this is exactly where he was going. Maybe he should do another video about pedophile Catholic priests and born again preachers and their sex and money scandals and see where that takes him. But then again I don't really see the point. So Marx may have been a bit of shit in his personal life - I don't really care. And if this means there was a flaw in his philosophy then tell us what this flaw is. That's the point for me.

He's not exactly politically neutral. He was a lefty then became a Thatcherite and a right wing polemicist ... so any book he writes about Marx isn't going to be unbiased by his own views. So I can quite understand why the video guy was quoting him.

Yes I agree the words were misused to allow atrocities ... but I think that's why the whole quote is rarely seen. People usually just trot out the opiate part and miss the rest. I've read bits of Kapital and I agree its as dry as ditch water. But it is a book on economic theory and anything taught as compulsory in school is hard to get through. Even Shakespeare which I now love reading - when I was taught it in school was terribly boring and more or less incomprehensible. I don't know about the Illuminati business but I still regard Marx's reaction to the suffering he saw around him to be admirable and that he correctly identified the causes. You could say his solution, in application, was something of a disaster (to say the least) but I think that in part he failed to factor in the ability of humans to twist everything towards power grabbing and personal revenge. Even today if you go to some countries and you see high infant mortality, low literacy rates, starvation wages and people bound into work more or less as slaves - side by side with the uber-rich who own everything - something in your heart must cry out to alleviate the material conditions for these people and also to change the system so that they can reap the benefits to which they are naturally entitled, restore their dignity and so on. For many years the alternative presented was the various models of Marxism. Now we're beyond that but lack any new models really for a better and just life for all. It seems to me that many people, rather than trying to perhaps extract the best from Marx want to perpetuate cold war rhetoric as if the dichotomy is still East vs. West ... probably because they feel safer with this than facing up to the world as it really is today.

If she says does my bottom look big in this ... say no without hesitation or looking to check.

'Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo. Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower.' Not bad for a well dressed but dull writer with a pretty wife.

I see he says of himself : Stefan Molyneux has been an actor, comedian, gold-panner, graduate student, and software entrepreneur. I think that what comes across in his presentation which relies on asking us to rely not on someone's words or ideas but on their appearance ... or perhaps how they conduct themselves, is that it is more a piece of theatre than a proper argument. My objection to this is that Marx (and indeed all those living in the then European developed nations) was subject to the vicissitudes of the prevailing economic and social conditions. These were generated mostly by people becoming slaves to the machines of manufacturing and being forced to live in intolerable conditions. His objections to religion were mainly based, as I understand it, on the fact that the priests and clergy of Christianity did not challenge this (apart from a very few) and offered only the sugar pill of heaven when you die (provided you were good and did not rock the boat). So it was not so much that he wished to wrench the moral high ground from the preachers - it was that he wished to present the future possibility that human being could live in a way which did not involve subjugation or alienation. As he saw that the source of this alienation was about ownership of the means of production which turned people into cogs in the wheels of production, he came up with a model for society which involved common ownership. I think it is very hard for any American being brought up on endless cold war propaganda about communism to actually understand what it is ... since practically the only bit of information which people are told is 'they don't believe in God'. Even this is not totally true since there is a very strong Socialist movement based on Methodism in England for instance.

...'he was the only one who could leave the house because he had the last pair of trousers' ... I suppose we are being asked to choose here between (perhaps) th emost radical and world changing philosopher of the 19 century and some bald guy on the internet. I would prefer to read academic analysis which stands up to scrutiny, for instance: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/

We have hundreds of different types of ant. Tiny minute ones to huge flying brutes. They eat anything, I saw a filed of potatoes destroyed by ants one year. I was amazed. Not that I'm anti-ant just a little antagonistic.

I hope you are happy together. Seriously, although I don't agree with you I know what you mean. But still don't buy ego = reality.

ignore-ant at your peril. ignore-ants is not bliss.

I'm going to change mine to KissMyBaggyAss ... but in hieroglyphs

Easy then.

Those little golden birdies look at them And the mystic Egypt tossle dangling down Old sleeper-man shish, don't wake him Up one hand broom star was an obi-man revered throughout the bone-knob land His magic black purse slit creeped open, Let go flocks of them Shish sookie singabus Snored like a red merry-go-round horse And an acid gold bar swirled up and down, Up and down, in back of the singabus And the panataloon duck white goose neck quacked Webcor, Webcor

I accept the Clash ... in fact I like the bangles but its not punk. Punk is 1976 and spitting (a lot) bollocks really but a definite movement/attitude. Black plastic bags for dresses, safety pins of jewellry ... its over now ... it is dead .. in fact the OP proves it is. Yours An old Mancunian (person from Manchester, England).

I read this and was instantly enlightened.