28 replies to this topic

[pyke]

Ermmm... not to stomp on your parade, but it's just a game Simon. The developers make it like it is to have people go batshit crazy and essentially promote the game, by condemning it, Beck's probably just an old irritable crybaby.

Glenn Beck is a tool

Fixed that for ya.

[pyke]

Learn to think dialectically; you'll have much more effective discourse. Not insulting you or anything, formal logic is especially prevalent in western culture.

I just think it's far fetched

Some old fool raving about a game doesn't add up to an attempt to squash out dissent in my eyes. I'm sure it happens a lot, there is undoubtedly corruption, I just don't think it's the case in this situation.

[Amagius]

Learn to think dialectically; you'll have much more effective discourse. Not insulting you or anything, formal logic is especially prevalent in western culture.

You assume too much of Glenn Beck and his ilk; he has to have material, and playing to his audience on its legalistic morality-based politicalism can give him just that. While I could agree with some of the political and philosophical theory in there, it's built upon the assumption that Glenn Beck has a government affiliation other than "loud pundit."

[Ives]

(so it doesn't get overlooked)



If you look at the grander scheme of things, Glenn Beck is a (government) tool under the very (US) state-friendly CNN. GTA depicts killing policemen, and crime which disrupts the capitalist. It is in their interest, both the government and CNN subsequently to shun this game which encourages disobeying authority and law, the very bureaucracy which pushes the repression of the people by the state.

Edit: To elaborate.. (btw not necessarily a fan of gta, but just judging everything around it)

Alright so what is the state, the state is this bureaucracy consisting of the police system, the courts, army, navy, and so on. The state comes into power only at the event in the progression of the society where you have the split between those who have and those who ain't got, and so this class antagonism develops. The state is, of course, brought about by the higher class in society as an entity that is -above- the laws of society and is supposedly neutral. We know this to be true in capitalism: Capitalistic democracy (the two are not mutually exclusive or synonymous) is a system that favours the rich, and of course in turn the system will act in the interests of these bourgeois and the corporations and thus it is flawed. There is a lot of dissent against all the things which branch off under this, but any effective form of dissent against the state and its policies is against the law. Combine this with the fact that it is representative instead of radical democracy and you have a repressive state that puts corporate interests over all and has an elaborate web to shun dissent against it.

What is GTA4? GTA4 is a game which encourages the idea that it's easy to disobey authority and law. It shows that the police force, FBI, army - ultimately the bureaucracy of the state, are not bulletproof. It's deconditioning us to the convenient subservience to the bureaucracy... it is dissent. So why the huff and puff over banning the game and so on.. why do we even consider banning games? These are all things which exist in the context of our own reality. It is because the game exhibits a real life struggle.

Why would the system shun dissent and why does it exist? Revolutionary philosopher Franz Fernand teaches us that these two groups exist (bluntly) the oppressor and the oppressed. Of course the oppressor is at the top; the oppressed begins to agitate and attempts many means to achieving the state for himself at which his oppressor is in (of freedom). After he has attempted many means to free himself from his shackles, he begins to imitate his oppressor - breaking the one taboo in the relationship between the two - the oppressed (in imitating his master) begins to act violently against him. So if then the people are violent, it is their oppressor which has taught them to be so.

Anyway, there's my two cents.

I actually sent this to Simon on MSN. He's busy right now but I figured instead of delivering a preplanned argument against what hes saying I'll post what I wrote spontaneously about it on im.

Reeshu says:
I don't think what we have is capitalism, not in the true sense. Far from it, it's in the governments best interest to hide their agenda under the mask of
capitalism. It's entirely working their way, too to make it seem to the ordinary folk as if we're free.

Armang www.alwaysquestion.info says:
How is it not capitalism? The economic system of capitalism is there

Reeshu says:
Obviously I'm not arguing for libertarianism. You and I agree that if someone can operate a car, a machine so utterly deadly, we can trust them to make democratic decisions and run society.
Reeshu says:
I would point to the writings of Mises. It's capitalism with a mixed command economy in a sense that its very precise, paticularly in education.
Reeshu says:
We're not quite what Prussia got to at their peak of lack of freedom, but that whole idea is still there with less welfare in return from government.
Reeshu says:
When you go back to the early 1800s the main problem was arguably slavery. And indeed had slavery not existed at the time the economy wouldn't have done as well, but slavery was a sort of institution that was passed on generation to generation so it was difficult to get abolished.
Reeshu says:
However, by the same count, most people were entrepeneurs, often as a family working together on a farm. The steel workers came with the industrial revolution, obviously, and thats where the crime arguably began.
Reeshu says:
Guys like Carnegie, JP Morgan, Rockefeller,etc. were utterly tied into government to such a sickly point it was awful. They managed to intrude by what was at first activists, often socialists, suggesting we as a country were going to have our government overthrown and that North America would fall into anarchy.
Reeshu says:
Their goal of getting more workers was to essentially deprive society of their creativity and individualism in many ways, and they did so, depriving rights of workers in awful ways, ways we as a generation wouldn't wrap our finger around in a second.
Reeshu says:
Marx had valid points, but unfortunately his solution to this sorta "capitalism" we see today to a lighter extent was with utopian ideas which value the common good and require a certain sense of organization that can't be done by the people after visible decline and abuse, hence social organizers.
Reeshu says:
That doesn't invalidate communism but by the same count it doesn't invalidate capitalism in the sense guys like Adam Smith had in mind; they're only realistic once you phase out the utter failure that is education and the concept of people working towards a common evil.
Reeshu says:
The reason I disagree with communism is because I'm skeptical as to the "common good" concept which is centralized about the idea of a dictatorship of the proletariat. It's much more difficult to de-school society and then tell them they ought to go for a common anything except for basic nessecities.
Reeshu says:
be it statism or libertarian socialism

Edited by Athean, 06 May 2008 - 06:21 PM.