Eli5 what exactly is dialectical materialism
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Materialism: The idea that there is an objective, natural reality that exists and nothing beyond it. This is in contrast to other philosophies that claim the supernatural can exist (eg. the spirit, the life force, the divine).
Dialectics: The idea that we achieve understanding of the world by comparing things to each other and seeing how they compliment or contradict each other, refining our understanding. Often, two contradictory things can be true at the same time, and when we ponder (and accept) these things contradictions, we arrive at a better picture of the the world – eg; I love my brother but I can’t stand how ignorant he is. Well, those are two contradictory statements. So how do we reconcile them if both are true? We can reconcile it to “love is an emotion that is capable of surviving minor annoyance”
When you put them both together, you come up to an idea which is something like: Only the physical world exists, nothing supernatural. Everything is caused by a natural process. The way we understand the world is by observing it, developing ideas about it, noticing contradictions that challenge our ideas, and then re-developing our ideas to taking those contradictions into account. Rinse and repeat. This happens on every level of society, from the individual to all of humanity. We replace our ideas with new ones when we see contradictions in what we believe. Companies upgrade machines when they see what new ones can do. Business models die out or merge over time. Technologies converge together. This all ends up leading to a state of continuous and constant improvement. Karl Marx thought this would lead to communism.
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