On NK and other stuff

Yeqon wrote:

I can see that Big Boss is your favourite male character in the series. I just realised what a shame it was for the creators never to have included a female playable character in the series.

He is. I mean, I like Solid and all, but his father's story is a thousand times more interesting to me. The ambiguity of it, his visionary nature; he's not just the pawn in somebody else's game, at least not for long. He's a pretty byronic figure.

As for the female playable character, I'm really hoping the WWII-era Boss game happens. That'd fix it, and she's awesome.

Quote:

I totally missed the Che Guevara part, I guess I don't know that much about the Lore as I originally thought I did.

It's only really in Peace Walker, so that's not really that surprising. If you played that though, it's all over the place. It's to the point where, even as a card-carrying commie, you'd wish they'd stop rambling about what Che did in every cutscene.

Quote:

I was never much of a gamer, but every once in a while some games with an extraordinary story capture my imagination that I just can't resist. I don't think I've ever played a game if I weren't in love with the story. The first ones that come to mind are the metal gear, fallout, starCraft, and to a lesser extent Warcraft franchises, although StarCraft is the only one I love enough to actually read some of its novels, like NOVA and Uprising.

For me, the only game novels I've read have been KotOR-related; I read Revan and actually loved it. Honestly 90% of what I play are RPGs in general, so that's what I mainly focus on. For a non-RPG to catch my attention it has to have either a great storyline (like Metal Gear) or be interesting in some other way (like, I enjoyed Brutal Legend for the background music mostly).

I do like Fallout a ton though, that's up with Metal Gear but not as consistently amazing. I also enjoyed Warcraft III, and its lore is very extensive, though not what I'd call unique or all that surprising. StarCraft II's story is great; I'm sure I's is too, but I could never get very far in it because honestly I'm horrible at RTS games (a colossal misnomer, they're all tactics and no strategy). I just try to overwhelm the enemy with a ton of random troops, the "zerg rush" tactic, and get killed every time because of it.

The turn-based, longer-term strategy games are where I shine, and usually the story of those is some variation on "conquer the world."

Quote:

Recently though, I've grown fond of simplified 2-D scrolling games with great stories like Mark of the Ninja, and Braid. Braid has an exceptionally surrealistic story that explores physical and human concepts like time, past mistakes and regret.

Huh, I've never even heard of those. Braid sounds interesting though; what does it do to explore those, or would that be spoiling something?

Quote:

Did you really do all that? Did you really practice with a bokken?

It's not that weird. Bokkens are used even in basic aikido, judo, and plenty of other martial arts. Especially "internal" ones, meaning ones that rely on using an opponent's force against them instead of matching force against force. Like karate, muay thai, which tend to be purely hand-and-feet-based, because using a sword in a style like that would mean badly injuring and possibly killing your sparring partner. In something like aikido or judo, you'd probably start practicing with them a few weeks in. Getting to use a real (non-wooden) sword like a wakizashi is a rare treat in advanced sessions, usually, and generally tightly-controlled for obvious safety reasons. Dodging a sword is fun, getting your arm sliced off isn't. xD

Also, it's not kendo, which is pretty rarely practiced in the West. Usually it's grappling and dodging instead of actually swinging the swords at each-other. One person is swinging, the other is grabbing the sword and dodging it and trying to knock the person swinging to the ground.

Conscript wrote:

No offense, but you need to simplify. I don't have fears of long texts, I am just similarly uninspired with your rambling, disorganized walls of text and belabored points.

For the record, that's why I stopped debating and am "playing games." Sorry, but it gets really tedious trying to respond to walls of text that don't really have any structure. If you want a discussion, try to boil it down to the essential points you're trying to make.

And for the record I actually agree the Soviet Union's government structure wasn't ideal, that it was too centralized and stagnantly bureaucratic. Centralized and bureaucratic structures are easy to infiltrate, and if a few social democrats and/or capitalist opportunists started to monopolize the top (which happened), they could bring it all crashing down. I think most of our point is that Lenin didn't really have a choice in the matter, he was simply being pragmatic. The USSR was incredibly divided, with a long drawn-out Civil War right on the heels of the Revolution. The Whites were threatening to undermine everything the Bolsheviks fought for, backed by Western capitalist powers who would have gladly jumped in and instituted a capitalist regime. Under those circumstances, a measure of centralization is an absolute necessity. We can't deal with the world we want to have, our goal is to create it. That means dealing with the world that is.

Ohh lets higyenize the party and get rid of the dissident voices via whatever means possible, even if we need to debate about games to disperse the thread or complain about the dissident's lack of writing style

I call it ended. You lost the debate the momment you resorted to those tatics.

AldoBrasil wrote:

Ohh lets higyenize the party and get rid of the dissident voices via whatever means possible, even if we need to debate about games to disperse the thread or complain about the dissident's lack of writing style

I call it ended. You lost the debate the momment you resorted to those tatics.

Wow, could you be more narcissistic? Nobody's out to get you. Nobody even cares, and it has nothing to do with your (mostly bad) arguments. We just don't want to slog through and respond bit-by-bit to a billion rambling, barely-coherent posts. Nobody likes doing that, whether someone agrees with us or not; people just skim past posts like that.

As I said, if you want a discussion, boil it down to the essentials. Organize your thoughts. Then people will be motivated to respond, and then we'll talk. If you don't have the courtesy to do that, then yeah, you'll be ignored.

Maybe when you don't write like shit I'll consider you. But otherwise, I gave you a chance to reiterate your position, preferably more coherently.

Enough of the victim mentality. As miss said, nobody cares. This is an internet forum of primarily english speakers. There's nothing wrong with asking you to write better so we can have that debate in the first place.

Yes, because we cant refute the arguments (if they are bad they could be refuted quite easily, right ?) lets attack the text structure, writting style, the person arguing, etc...

But not the arguments

How can I refute something I can't understand?

This

Quote:

You make that remmark again and again. If you have a true power of the soviets, why do you need to be lead by Stalin and other bureucratic people ?

Simply, because "having a soviet" is not tantamount of trully having a soviet.

IE.: Joining a bunch of people in a room and telling "lets vote for comrad stalin", and then people repeatedly vote in what they are taught to... This is no soviet, this is a facade of soviet used to jutify stalinism.

You had the gosplan in soviet union, people told what they liked and wanted and the gosplan made the plans.

This is not the vigour of a people's assembly. You have a father figure in head and the soviet is just used to make his decisions more palatable.

In a true soviet state theres nothing besides the soviets itself. The soviet is trully supreme.

The objective of any and all socialist revolutions is to build that kind of power structure.

First by dennouncing the pseudo separation of government into economic sphere and political sphere, by letting the soviets rule the factories and other means of production. And later, having the soviet decide it all, via concentric rings of power.

Theres one element that links almost all ditactorships and similar concentration of power. The projection of father figure into ruling politicians.

Papa Stalin is the leader of a great family, as is Kin Jong Il.

The society is made out of families, each family joins another one in a concentric ring of authority. Theres where the likes of hitler, pol pot, king jong il derives their power.

We must break with this. Grown man have no parents. They are their own head (and the heads of their families and childs).

While people find opportunity to have someone else to think for them, there is no true soviet. At least not in spirit. Because people find it easier to not burden the risk of doing mistakes. They fear being collectibely the heads of the state, becuase that means an unbearable burden.

What i am talking about commodity fetichism ?

Because that another case were the power to decide is placed outside man.
Its the state that decides, its the market, the unknown natural forces, its the gods.
And men always finds a way to project the reasons for his own choices into external things. Totens.

No, the state should be the consequence of the soviets. The soviets choose the state that they will have. Because they already do. Because we cant avoid chosing. Even wen man deposites his confidence in a leader, believing that this father figure will solve everything for him - as long as he is obedient (and this can go so deep that man becomes able to kill other man for stupid things like : "he is jew") - even them, he is chosing, chosing to be lead nevertheless.

Man should be stuck by this lightning that is liberty. To awaken, and face the fear of solitude that responsability generates.

You are alone in the world when you dont have a father (either because he died objectively or because assuming an adult posture makes you have to face reality with your own choices).

Thus, Korea, Soviet Union, Cuba, whatever socialist state we had, never incited true freedom.

is a mess. Compare to MissStrangelove's reply which breaks your post down bit by bit with quotes and keeps things nice and tidy.

AldoBrasil wrote:

Yes, because we cant refute the arguments (if they are bad they could be refuted quite easily, right ?) lets attack the text structure, writting style, the person arguing, etc...

But not the arguments :?:

No, we just don't care to, and the reason should be pretty clear. Take your head out of your ass and step in someone else's shoes for a second. Do you have any idea how time-consuming responding to a long, incoherent, aimless rant is? We have other things to do with our time, and you aren't the center of the universe or really saying anything we haven't heard before from every liberal on the planet.

Again, quit it with the persecution complex. It's not like you're some brilliant persecuted genius whose ideas we can't wrap our puny little heads around. We don't care enough to be out to get you. What we care about is having a discussion that isn't full of overwhelmingly tedious posts. People just don't like responding to those, it's annoying. People take a look at posts like that and skim them, they're just hard to get through because they lack any structure. If you organized your posts in a way that actually invites a response, then we could have a nice fruitful debate.

Of course, you dont care

Walk along, dont look there proletariat, its not important.

Quote:

It's not like you're some brilliant persecuted genius whose ideas we can't wrap our puny little heads around.

Its the other way around. This kind of side-attacks were the hallmark of stalinism (you can see the concept in Stalinist answers, he never attacks the root argument, but uses non sequiteurs, strawmans etc, all sorts of phallacies).

Basically, if my argument is badly formated etc, how can Yeqon made a long post answering what i said and his post was lauded.

If it was only incoherent babble etc as you claim now, he would have nothing to answer to.

So, you at first took my arguments seriously when you felt safe in the fact that someone (A "resident bolchevique") answered them.

But as soon as i returned with a point by point answer to Yeqon and you runned out of arguments, you switched to Argumentum ad Hominem.

You know, i know, everybody knows, you dont have an answer to my questions. PERIOD.

I really think it's just that

- your positions are entirely unoriginal (I've been there)
- you still fail to make a compelling argument for them.

Where did i claim originality ?

Pls show me.

On the other hand, like i said earlier, if my arguments are so lame and easy to refute, why dont you take care of refuting it ?

There are reasons why the soviets lost their function and it's not the Bolsheviks.

And so the reasons were ?

AldoBrasil wrote:

Walk along, dont look there proletariat, its not important.

So, you're the proletariat now, being beaten down by a bunch of big mean Stalinists? You're some guy making rambly posts on a forum people go to when they're bored. But awesome, keep proving my point.

Quote:

Its the other way around. This kind of side-attacks were the hallmark of stalinism (you can see the concept in Stalinist answers, he never attacks the root argument, but uses non sequiteurs, strawmans etc, all sorts of phallacies).

First off, I love me some nice juicy "phallacies." Second, no, it's seriously not an ideological thing. It's a human thing. Your posts are long and very scattered, they go on aimless tangents about dozens of different things. That's called being incoherent, and it's a problem in anyone no matter their ideology. You're not being persecuted, so cut the narcissistic preaching.

Quote:

Basically, if my argument is badly formated etc, how can Yeqon made a long post answering what i said and his post was lauded.

It was lauded in part because we admired his taking the time to do that. I'm sure it was time-consuming, my responses all were and they were hard to get through. We have better things to do with our time.

Quote:

But as soon as i returned with a point by point answer to Yeqon and you runned out of arguments, you switched to Argumentum ad Hominem.

You know, i know, everybody knows, you dont have an answer to my questions. PERIOD.

Except the fact is we do. There have been tons of debates on these exact same questions on this very forum. We haven't "run out of arguments," we just don't care to go through every detail of your posts. You write them in a rambling way that's hard to respond to in the first place, and despite what you might think, you're saying nothing we haven't heard before countless times. We'd just be repeating our responses to those other people. You're a legend in your own mind.

Mabool wrote:

I really think it's just that

- your positions are entirely unoriginal (I've been there)
- you still fail to make a compelling argument for them.

Exactly.

Yeqon's post isn't a fragmented mess and has flow. Look at how his use of one-line sentences is emphasize points he's making, for example.

Yeqon wrote:

Everything AldoBrasil said about Stalinism and revolution with a communist vanguard party can be summed up very easily by saying that the system is not perfect. Imperfect as it may be, it is far more realistic than left-communism and has already been implemented many a time before to the extent that at one point it covered almost 1/3 of the globe's landmass with 1/3 of it's population to boot.

On the other hand, his left-communism, perfect as it may be in theory, will exist only in one's imagination. Homo sapiens sapiens will have evolved into homo superior long before his ideas would have even the slightest chance of being implemented - ideas of somehow being able to educate the majority of the proletariat to the extent where they wouldn't need any sort of vanguard party or governance is either extremely naive or borderline insane.

He pointed out all the faults he saw in stalinism and leninism (and quite well I must admit) without offering a concrete and solid alternative. It's a common mistake way too many people do. He has so much blind faith in the whole of the proletariat to actually believe that they can all simply be morphed, educated, brainwashed, or whatever into becoming benevolent, honest, virtuous, hard working people who put the betterment of humanity before themselves, thus making a government unnecessary.

If only it were that easy.

How exactly do you teach people that? Schools that teach concrete science to children and teenagers (the ages when the mind can be most easily moulded into believing a chosen set of ideas - brainwashed if you will) have proven not to be as efficient as they were intended to be.

AldoBrasil is offering to somehow teach something that isn't an exact science but an ideology to the majority of grown people who's minds and brains have already reached maturity thus making it more difficult to convince them that a certain set of ideas are correct. He bases his assertions on no concrete evidence whatsoever. Where in history have you seen a prosperous and stable society linger solely on the good will of the people? Ideas have to be enforced for the majority to believe it. Every single productive society is proof of that.

An ideology is based in philosophy. Marxism is an ideology:

A. it is a philosophy based on the belief in materialism, a belief in itself that says the material world creates ideas.

B. it utilises scientific reasoning and dialectics to the best of its ability in order to find a solution to the injustices of our modern capitalist world.

AldoBrasil on the other hand is an idealist. He simply chooses to believe that enlightening the majority of the working class in the virtues, or better yet in the benefits of Marxist thought would be the ultimate solution to achieving communism even though no event in history has even come close to presume it a possibility.

His posts contradict each other. He at one point says that a vanguard party subjugates instead of liberates the proletariat by taking away political and economical responsibility from them. Then he says that the party should be utilised to enlighten the masses to govern themselves instead of the party governing them. In other words the party should lead the masses through a revolution and then give the power to the masses in order to choose what to do next and accept that, even if that leads to their overthrow and to the end of the socialist system.

Then he says that the party should educate the masses properly before the revolution so that they wouldn't turn reactionary after the revolution. His proposals are just too far-fetched. What he proposes is too vague and lacks practicality. People would spend most of the time arguing about what the next step should be and less time in implementing anything practical.

His arguments have more to do with the concept of democracy than with socialism.

In comparison, you write in a sort of rambling, stream of consciousness kind of thing where you can't decide on format. One looks quality enough for a paper and is inviting, the other is a wall of text with no apparent flow or organization (especially since you don't quote what you're replying to).

Quote:

And you keep ignoring my last posts, i know they are hard to answer, but replying selectively shows you are trying to convince, not by simple sincerity, but by ignoring key criticisms.

Then claim it's because you argue too well, even though all of us have heard such a liberal view before. frag off.

Liberal ? What part of my post is liberal ?

Werent they too incoherent to be understood ?

Now they are comprehensible enough to be labeled liberal ?

You are right. I am wrong. Pls send to the Gulags, i need some reeducation.

PS.: i am still waiting for Mabool to show me the reasons. You two i know gave up due to the higher nature of the debate (And found nice excuses in "text style", "comprehension" etc - ok ok dont feel ashamed).

The few decipherable bits where you just talk of a generic masses vs the party dichotomy, the railing against vanguardism. Your views seem liberal and you (perhaps mistakenly) identify as a left com, your posts just make that impossible to tell. At least, as much as I'm willing to try and read them.

Quote:

You two i know gave up due to the higher nature of the debate (And found nice excuses in "text style", "comprehension" etc - ok ok dont feel ashamed).

You'll be lucky to get any interest at all in your ideas with that attitude.

Quote:

i am still waiting for Mabool to show me the reasons. You two i know gave up due to the higher nature of the debate (And found nice excuses in "text style", "comprehension" etc - ok ok dont feel ashamed).

civil war, poverty, failure of international revolution

Leon Trotsky: Stalinism and Bolshevism - read this, and if you think you still haven't been refuted, come back to me.

AldoBrasil wrote:

PS.: i am still waiting for Mabool to show me the reasons. You two i know gave up due to the higher nature of the debate (And found nice excuses in "text style", "comprehension" etc - ok ok dont feel ashamed).

The "higher nature of the debate"; see? You're essentially saying we disagree with you because our minds are too puny to understand your genius, so we're persecuting you instead. Instead of looking at yourself and why someone might be annoyed dealing with you, and dismissing off-hand any criticism we happen to give. Basically, you're just acting like some petulant narcissist.

I also find it really funny how he claims we're ignoring his arguments because he's too good for us, and yet he hasn't responded to a single pragmatic, non-theoretical point here. So, I'll reiterate: "We can't deal with the world we want to have, our goal is to create it. That means dealing with the world that is."

A dude walks in a bar in a rural part of USA and asks for a bottle of coke and a cup.

The bartender brings the coke and the cup to the dude.

He takes the coke, puts some in the cup and proceed to drink it.

Arggg - he exclaims - Its hot !

The bartender looks at him confused.

He asks, can i have some ice rocks ?

The bartender yells with a redneck accent - Ok, i will bring ice rocks for you, mister hollywood actor !

Thats how i see you now

Quote:

The "higher nature of the debate"; see? You're essentially saying we disagree with you because our minds are too puny to understand your genius, so we're persecuting you instead. Instead of looking at yourself and why someone might be annoyed dealing with you, and dismissing off-hand any criticism we happen to give. Basically, you're just acting like some petulant narcissist.

Nope, i am just mocking at you because you dont know how to answer yet pretend you know.

Typical childish answers :

- Your post is incomprehensible (Maybe my posts are just ok but you dont want to understand, or having understood, dont want to accept).
- You think your post is original (with a USA redneck accent - as if i win anything from posting here something original)
- You are babbling (denial mode on)
- Its not that your posts went unanswered, its just we are too tired to answer them, we discussed that things before... (Can be summarized as : I know the answer, but i dont want to tell)

And so on, so on...

Quote:

I also find it really funny how he claims we're ignoring his arguments because he's too good for us, and yet he hasn't responded to a single pragmatic, non-theoretical point here. So, I'll reiterate: "We can't deal with the world we want to have, our goal is to create it. That means dealing with the world that is."

Yes, but you cannot leave fundamental tasks to do later, because as Stalin shows, as as soon as a new class of rulers are placed in power, they will fight and repress the proletariat to avoid losing power to the people. As soon as the revolutionary wave was tamed by a "great leader", people will sit down and watch their "socialism" be destroyed in front of them. Dealing with the world as it is means dealing with the fact that people love power and go whatever means to keep it.