The Mamas and the Papas

If you didn't know, i'm just as fascinated with the concept of Communism as i am with music. People love throwing around the terms communism, socialism, and marxism as short-hand for "a thing i don't like," but clearly not understanding that they sound as ridiculous as i do saying "Die Antwoord sings in Afrikaans." That's like saying i'm writing this essay in North American. 

So, the one that has always confused me the most goes something like "Communism works on paper, but...," or "Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff." These statements are absurd because they imply that Communism is an actual thing that exists. It's not. Communism is an invented idea that can be believed in to accomplish some tangible social improvement. It was constructed as an alternative to Heaven or Nirvana or Shangri La or Bali Hai. The difference was that it came with a practically applicable instruction manual for getting enough people to participate to actually make some progress. 

It's certainly true that the Soviet Union was governed for most of the 20th century by people who to varying degrees believed in and proselytized Communism, but calling Russia or China or anywhere else a "Communist Country" sounds like total gibberish. I suppose you could compare/contrast a "communistic government" with a "capitalistic government" like we have in the US or most of Western Europe, but they are in the grand scheme of things observably the same. 

You see, mathematically speaking, humans have an enormous psychological problem: all things being observably equal, it's just as logical and intuitive to interpret 2 groups of 3 as it is to interpret 3 groups of 2. In the grander scheme of things it makes absolutely no difference at all, but in the here and now we have this compulsion to connect a binary opposition to every other binary opposition. I'm not making this up, by the way, go look up Setun, the ternary computer developed at Moscow State University in 1958. MSU briefly switched to binary computers in the late 60s, but at more than double the cost to acquire for the same performance, so they logically went back to ternary logic in 1970. That's coincidentally the same problem we find in Saussurian v Peircian Semiotics (binary v ternary symbolic logic). They both get the job done, but you tend to pick whichever side is less mentally taxing for you. It almost goes without saying that immense religious importance was placed on ternary division in the Judeo-Christian world, the "perfection" thing, Father-Son-Holy Ghost, binary division being "imperfect" by extension. And so, eon upon epoch, we trundle through the cosmos more concerned about the thunder clap at the intersection of inclusion/exclusion than the more rejuvenating raindrops of "all of the above." 

It's our differences that are beautiful, fascinating, exciting, and worth allowing to coexist. Thankfully, and coincidentally, they aren't called The Mamas Or The Papas.

Part 5