While we find that abhorrent today, if you understand the material conditions of the time, it really was more realistic to teach acceptance of your fate rather than delude people into dreams of liberation.
Free peoples and kingdoms were essentially just fuel for the unbeatable slave empires of the era. And it took centuries of stagnation and invasion provoked partially by climate change before any of them cracked. And what replaced it was Feudalism, so, legitimately, it would be pretty foolish to have hope and commit yourself to struggle in that period.
Industrialism and the equalizing power of firearms are basically a necessity for systems based on equality like socialism. Otherwise, the arguably inevitable trajectory of agricultural societies is into some form of despotic hierarchy.
Yeah, that’s exactly my point. It was a lie to keep people complacent in their oppression and it’s still around today. Sure, there were material reasons behind why it was propagated and enforced but that doesn’t somehow make it less evil.
What's the point of that judgement in the absence of an alternative though?
A bunch of oppressed people created a bunch of lies to help each other survive an unthinkably cruel system. Rather than...what exactly? Staying atomized and utterly crushed by it?
Ironically, those lies took over the whole fucking empire. Which is pretty insane, if you think about it.
The alternative of... not lying to people to get them to accept their oppression? Seriously, I understand why the lie was created and propagated, but it was still a lie.
It may have initially been a creation of the oppressed, but it was quickly co-opted by the oppressors and used as a weapon to keep the oppressed from even imagining an end to their oppression. It didn’t “take over the empire”, the empire took over and co-opted Christianity and wielded it as a weapon against the lower classes. Believing a lie like that doesn’t serve the lower classes.
That's not an alternative. You're just framing it as one. Of what fucking value is the truth if it cannot set you free?
The people who internalized the truth, "you are a slave being oppressed," either used it to rebel, which failed basically 100% of the time and resulted in death or a fate much, much worse than death, or they were completely fucking miserable and encumbered by the truth until the day they died.
You've never needed a lie to sustain you, so you can't understand why they would do it. But in a truly hopeless situation, which is what they were in, they needed it to get them through it.
Marx doesn't call it "the sigh of the oppressed creature" for nothing.
You're essentially getting mad at people for not being more miserable, for being subject to a brutal condition.
Religion inevitably grows where people need the will to carry on. It's pointless to be bad at that. Make the situation better, and it won't grow.
That’s not an alternative. You’re just framing it as one.
It absolutely is an alternative. You do realize that not every part of the world believed in Abrahamic religions, right? Alternatives have always existed, some better and some worse.
Of what fucking value is the truth if it cannot set you free?
Why is a lie that keeps you enslaved a good thing? The truth is always better, because the lie will always eventually run into reality and cause harm and destruction. Do you think the idea that God would eventually fix everything and that therefore the environment doesn't matter has been a harmless lie?
Do you think people were set free when they were told that their dead unbaptised child was in hell? Or that their loved one who committed suicide was being tortured for eternity? What about the women accused of being witches and burned at the stake? The LGBT people? The women who needed abortions? The pagans executed because they would not convert? Or do you think these people being unjustly persecuted for millennia is worth it because it meant the majority didn't feel bad about being oppressed?
You’ve never needed a lie to sustain you, so you can’t understand why they would do it.
Seriously, fuck you. I was a devout Evangelical until I was 26, I don't want to hear any bullshit about me never needing Christianity. It was my life.
Marx doesn’t call it “the sigh of the oppressed creature” for nothing.
Marx was explaining why religion existed, not saying it was good.
You’re essentially getting mad at people for not being more miserable, for being subject to a brutal condition.
I'm getting mad at you for saying a lie made to justify oppression and keep the enslaved from resisting their slavery was a good thing. I understand the reasons why people embraced Christianity and I don't (necessarily) judge them for it. But just because many people embraced a shitty idea because they couldn't stand the truth does not mean that idea was somehow good.
It may have been foolish but as far as I know militant liberatonary nationalist movements were quite widespread in the first century Judea. Zealots and what not.
Yeah and they were fucking annihilated and brutally tortured and executed. Their adjacents probably raped and enslaved. The entire Jewish diaspora and all of its suffering can arguably trace its persecution back to this single rebellion.
All for what, so your ruling class could be a similar ethnicity? What was the best case outcome?
While we find that abhorrent today, if you understand the material conditions of the time, it really was more realistic to teach acceptance of your fate rather than delude people into dreams of liberation.
Free peoples and kingdoms were essentially just fuel for the unbeatable slave empires of the era. And it took centuries of stagnation and invasion provoked partially by climate change before any of them cracked. And what replaced it was Feudalism, so, legitimately, it would be pretty foolish to have hope and commit yourself to struggle in that period.
Industrialism and the equalizing power of firearms are basically a necessity for systems based on equality like socialism. Otherwise, the arguably inevitable trajectory of agricultural societies is into some form of despotic hierarchy.
Yeah, that’s exactly my point. It was a lie to keep people complacent in their oppression and it’s still around today. Sure, there were material reasons behind why it was propagated and enforced but that doesn’t somehow make it less evil.
What's the point of that judgement in the absence of an alternative though?
A bunch of oppressed people created a bunch of lies to help each other survive an unthinkably cruel system. Rather than...what exactly? Staying atomized and utterly crushed by it?
Ironically, those lies took over the whole fucking empire. Which is pretty insane, if you think about it.
The alternative of... not lying to people to get them to accept their oppression? Seriously, I understand why the lie was created and propagated, but it was still a lie.
It may have initially been a creation of the oppressed, but it was quickly co-opted by the oppressors and used as a weapon to keep the oppressed from even imagining an end to their oppression. It didn’t “take over the empire”, the empire took over and co-opted Christianity and wielded it as a weapon against the lower classes. Believing a lie like that doesn’t serve the lower classes.
That's not an alternative. You're just framing it as one. Of what fucking value is the truth if it cannot set you free?
The people who internalized the truth, "you are a slave being oppressed," either used it to rebel, which failed basically 100% of the time and resulted in death or a fate much, much worse than death, or they were completely fucking miserable and encumbered by the truth until the day they died.
You've never needed a lie to sustain you, so you can't understand why they would do it. But in a truly hopeless situation, which is what they were in, they needed it to get them through it.
Marx doesn't call it "the sigh of the oppressed creature" for nothing.
You're essentially getting mad at people for not being more miserable, for being subject to a brutal condition.
Religion inevitably grows where people need the will to carry on. It's pointless to be bad at that. Make the situation better, and it won't grow.
It absolutely is an alternative. You do realize that not every part of the world believed in Abrahamic religions, right? Alternatives have always existed, some better and some worse.
Why is a lie that keeps you enslaved a good thing? The truth is always better, because the lie will always eventually run into reality and cause harm and destruction. Do you think the idea that God would eventually fix everything and that therefore the environment doesn't matter has been a harmless lie?
Do you think people were set free when they were told that their dead unbaptised child was in hell? Or that their loved one who committed suicide was being tortured for eternity? What about the women accused of being witches and burned at the stake? The LGBT people? The women who needed abortions? The pagans executed because they would not convert? Or do you think these people being unjustly persecuted for millennia is worth it because it meant the majority didn't feel bad about being oppressed?
Seriously, fuck you. I was a devout Evangelical until I was 26, I don't want to hear any bullshit about me never needing Christianity. It was my life.
Marx was explaining why religion existed, not saying it was good.
I'm getting mad at you for saying a lie made to justify oppression and keep the enslaved from resisting their slavery was a good thing. I understand the reasons why people embraced Christianity and I don't (necessarily) judge them for it. But just because many people embraced a shitty idea because they couldn't stand the truth does not mean that idea was somehow good.
It may have been foolish but as far as I know militant liberatonary nationalist movements were quite widespread in the first century Judea. Zealots and what not.
Yeah and they were fucking annihilated and brutally tortured and executed. Their adjacents probably raped and enslaved. The entire Jewish diaspora and all of its suffering can arguably trace its persecution back to this single rebellion.
All for what, so your ruling class could be a similar ethnicity? What was the best case outcome?