deadken posted:

lmao labourers engaging in some lofty pursuit; how does it go again...

"as compared with other occupations, philosophy, even in its present case, still enjoys a higher prestige, enough to attract a multitude of stunted natures, whose souls a life of drudgery has warped and maimed no less surely than their sedentary crafts have disfigured their bodies. For all the world they are like some bald-headed little tinker, who, having come into some money, has just got out of prison, had a good wash at the baths, and dressed himself up as a bridgegroom, ready to marry his master´s daughter, who has been left poor and friendless. Could the issue of such a match ever be anything but contemptible bastards?"

babyfinland posted:
i dont really see how that comments on laborers at all

you don't think labourers have stunted natures, warped and maimed by their station?

Lykourgos posted:

babyfinland posted:
i dont really see how that comments on laborers at all

you don't think labourers have stunted natures, warped and maimed by their station?

No more than management types or doctors, no.

Ironicwarcriminal posted:

Lykourgos posted:

babyfinland posted:
i dont really see how that comments on laborers at all

you don't think labourers have stunted natures, warped and maimed by their station?

No more than management types or doctors, no.

I think we all agree that doctors are little more than glorified mechanics, and management types can be low class, too, but that doesn't take anything away from the statement.

I would just add that the quote refers to people that are given to their work; I could imagine a high class doctor in the sense that he might heal people for a living, but at the same time he would recognise the superiority of the political science and metaphysics, and by studying them he would subsequently be elevated to gentlemanhood. A manual labourer could be the same way, and it wouldn't be unusual for him to make a living stacking shelves if times were unjust and people were yet to recognise his superiority above the common man.

Ironicwarcriminal posted:
Well I dunno: All these archaic ideas seem to go out the window when we live in a society where plumbers and electricians earn more (and therefore are of a Higher Class) than journalists or priests.

no, for a number of reasons. first, you are subordinating the eternal to the passing; I don't know if plumbers and electricians earn more everywhere than journalists and priests, but even if they do it does not follow that they always will, or that our modern economic order is how things ought to be. Actually, I'm pretty sure that depending on how you look at things, priests earn way more money; I don't know how much money all the electricians and plumbers draw in, but the catholic church for example is tremendously rich, has countless people willing to die for it, and claims dominion over countless electricians and plumbers. secondly, who said money is a proper metric for determining class? it isn't. you can be filthy rich but dreadfully low class.

Ironicwarcriminal posted:
Not any more pal, this ain’t your daddy’s superstructure.

Cash Rules Everything Around Me and your precious “eternal morality” is being subsumed under the nihilistic onslaught of hyper-capitalism. Our leaders are crass and money-driven, low-born, priests are being increasingly consigned to irrelevancy.

Capitalism really, really doesn’t care about the way things “ought to be” mate, we’re not going backwards.

nope, this isn't the end of history, and cash isn't some sort of sole consideration controlling everything around you. That sort of view is just an intellectually lazy position held by the common sort and outsiders. It doesn't even make sense to say that eternal morality is being subsumed by something; just because certain people don't study right from wrong in detail and allow it to control every aspect of their life, doesn't mean that it is any less right.

Your purebred capitalist hobgoblin simply does not exist; there is no human who thinks only in terms of dollars with no consideration for anything else they have ever studied or experienced. The world you describe is just an ephemeral fantasy that will be successively replaced as the times change; yet what will be common to those theories is that they will be simple minded and wrong unless they are fleshed out by those woven from a finer thread.