• swim
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    26 days ago

    Spinoza asked “why do people fight for their servitude as if it were their salvation?”

    Fear, and superstition; ideology. Under certain circumstances, the masses want fascism.

    When the left buys in to the game of fear, hatred, passivity, and superstition - a game turbocharged by social media - we become complicit.

    "Instead of politics, we engage in chatter. And it is a sad chatter, whose prevailing form is denunciation. The practice of denunciation debases the multitude. In the place of action, it accepts hatred, which merely externalizes the sadness of passivity; in the place of agency, it accepts fear, and pleads for security; in place of the collective democratic subject, it accepts the superstitious mob.

    Superstitious mobs can only serve tyrants, as Spinoza knew well. We now face a new theocracy of our own making, one which through the chatter of social media decomposes our powers and makes politics impossible."

    https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/3844-why-do-people-fight-for-their-servitude-as-if-it-were-their-salvation

    • Akasazh@feddit.nl
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      26 days ago

      Thanks. I love me some Spinoza. I just wished they put a citation as to where to find this quote.

      • swim
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        26 days ago

        The Spinoza quote? As far as I understand it, it could actually be Deleuze paraphrasing Spinoza, perhaps Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, or maybe better said as “Deleuze’ translation of Spinoza.”

          • swim
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            26 days ago

            Yes! Thank you for the interesting look at Étienne de La Boétie. Deleuze wrote Spinoza: Practical Philosophy and it’s pretty cool.