Defense Mechanisms of the Ego

François-Marie Arouet (1694-1778) known by his mom de plume Voltaire, was a French Enightenment writer, historian and philosopher sais it, ->

According to Isaac Asimov  (born 1920 Petrovichi, Soviet Russia - died, April 6, 1992 in NY) the classic dilemma is that religious moderates and scientists do not argue to force everyone to follow the dictates of science, but in almost all (now also high) societies and nations, religious fundamentalists strive to force their beliefs on all and make disagreement illegal.

Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. 

According Asimov there are these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all: who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes.

The true enemy may be the substitution of thought, reflection, and curiosity with dogma.

This influence is Mephistophelean, said Rudolf Steiner, even though dogmatists fear devils: they have dogmatized it into a spiritless image that, in reality, serves the needs of darkness.

Anna Freud (1895-1982) addressed one particular problem (by her work The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence that is with the ways and means by which the ego wards off unpleasure and anxiety, and exercises control over impulsive behavior, affects, and instinctive urges. 

Anna Freud, daughter of Sigmund Freud, was a very brilliant theorist in her own right. 

She catalogued many of the ways the ego defends itself—not just in pathology, but also in the ordinary movements of life.

See that Anna Freud’s Defense Mechanisms of the Ego and the Dharma Path.

According to Eckhart Tolle (Ulrich Leonard Tölle, born 1948) we can stop this cycle of ego-defence by stepping out of your thoughts, becoming the silent observer of our mind, and anchoring our awareness purely in the present moment.

To understand the core teachings of Tolle on anxiety, we have to recognize one fundamental truth: individuals are not your anxiety, and are not the voice in our head.

Questioning causality

Since brain physics does not provide an exhaustive explanation of consciousness, one author suggests that consciousness may not, in fact, be a by-product or causal consequence of brain activity:

"Phenomenal consciousness has no satisfactory explanation in the strict natural scientific physicalist framework. This may be an indication of consciousness not being a causal outcome of neurophysics at all. If this is the case, there would be no grounds for postulating that the collapse of neurophysical structures at death would dissolve consciousness and its constituent elements. If consciousness does not disappear when neurophysical functions terminate, the near-death experience could be an indication of the continuation of consciousness after the collapse of brain functions. This would be in line with the proposal that higher spatio-temporal dimensionality is involved in the emergence and maintenance of phenomenal consciousness, even after death."

This quote by Pekka Reckhard (pictured ©Suonna Kononen) represents a dualist or idealist view in the philosophy of mind, challenging the prevailing materialist and physicalist understanding of consciousness.

Here is a concise breakdown of the text's key arguments and their logical progression:

What is The Hard Problem? The text begins with the observation that the natural-scientific, physicalist model fails to explain phenomenal consciousness—that is, internal, subjective experience or "what it is like" to experience something.

Considering life after death: If consciousness is not bound to the physical functioning of the brain, there is no logical basis to assume that the cessation of the brain's electrochemical activity (death) would extinguish consciousness.

What are near-death experiences (NDEs)? Viewed in this light, near-death experiences are seen as potential evidence that consciousness persists even after brain function collapses, rather than merely being hallucinations caused by cerebral oxygen deprivation.

Reckhard's short text refers to a hypothesis suggesting that phenomenal consciousness might be linked to higher space-time dimensions. This would explain how consciousness persists and functions independently of the three-dimensional material world we know, even after death.

Reality and Fantasy in AI Development

What was mere fantasy just a moment ago is now stark reality.

Princeton University [image] has successfully simulated the neural network of a fruit fly's brain. The insect's brain capacity - comprising 166,000 neurons and over 125 million synapses—provides a model sufficient for interacting with the environment and engaging in autonomous reasoning.

The "toaster" metaphor for AI used by Prof. Pekka Abrahamsson as recently as six months ago—now falters more than ever, a fact he himself acknowledges: a toaster has tiny legs.

In a test environment, this tiny insect’s neural network—microscopic in scale and smaller than the head of a pin—learns to analyze and resolve various situations, such as steering a vehicle by performing the necessary reasoning.

About 15 years ago, I wrote one of the first overviews of the emerging world of AI for *Kanava* magazine. I used the "intelligence" of the dandelion as a coding example: the plant systematically shortens its stalk to protect itself from the blades of a lawnmower—an adversary that repeatedly attacks it. Eventually, the flower stalk becomes so short that the blade cannot harm it. Simulating a mosquito's flight was too complex

For a long time, the flight of a mosquito in a room remained such a complex multivariate problem that simulating it using a mechanical computer model was beyond reach. In a real mosquito's neural network - and the associated data fusion - far too many variables interacted simultaneously.

Multivariate modeling is advancing rapidly, yet there is still a long way to go.

A dog's brain contains an estimated 2.2 billion nerve cells, or neurons. Of these, approximately 430–623 million neurons in the cerebral cortex are responsible for complex thought and decision-making. A single cortical neuron forms, on average, between 2,000 and 10,000 synapses.

In the field of robotic automation, we are approaching a threshold where a machine's neural network—and its data fusion processes—might make unexpected, autonomous decisions, particularly if the boundary conditions governing the AI's operational scope or the "safety cut-offs" in its evolutionary code fail or leak.

Included here is an image from Princeton showing a fruit fly's brain. The fruit fly was already a classic subject for genetic modeling in high school biology classes. The Chronological Path to the Emergence of a Thinker

What has bothered me about the AI ​​discourse since the beginning of the decade is that the loudest voices belong to parties with absolutely no background in computer science—not a single credit hour of study nor any coding experience involving even a single algorithm. This seems to result, among other things, in a failure to grasp the validity of binary logic. In my own teaching, I have used pseudocode to illustrate how intelligence functions in real-life scenarios, and I have witnessed the moment when the lights come on in people's eyes as they finally understand what is actually at stake.

Without this foundation, it is impossible to comprehend edge computing, language models, neural networks, or the workings of embedded circuits. While there is no shortage of popular, fictionalized threat scenarios, they lack any grounding in reality. I have observed that when an author truly understands and has mastered the subject matter, the reader is at least offered a chance to get a handle on the actual reality.

Princeton’s image of a fruit fly’s brain.

The existence of external and inner world

What is scientific faith based on?

Now I want to tell you the mechanism of its origin.

Scientific faith is based on a set of unprovable philosophical presuppositions about reality.

Scientific faiths trust that the laws of physics and natural processes are constant across time and space, meaning what happens in a lab today worked the same way in the distant past and applies across the observable universe.

Why?

Science assumes that repeating consistent observations and testing hypotheses allows us to make valid, generalized predictions about future. 

This is partly true. It does not solve fundamental problems, such as where do we come from and where are we going?

Who foists the lie on modern materialists and monists that there's nothing eternal, that the soul is contained in the physical body and ends with it. 

Scientific faiths can approach men because of their fear. 

According to Rudolf Steiner It's not too bad if it's only normal fear of which a man can easily become aware. But it's worse if the fear is slumbering in subconscious depths. Such a man falls prey to the power, what we can call Ahriman or Mephisto.

That's why he foists the lie on modern materialists and monists that there's nothing eternal, that the soul is contained in the physical body and ends with it. 

This fear is in adherents of materialistic science, although they wouldn't believe it if you told them, and it's in all people who have no relation to the high spiritual world.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is quite right when he lets Mephisto say that simple folk never sense the devil's presence, even if he has them by the throat.The Meaning in Goethe's FaustInvisible Influence: Mephistopheles operates subtly in human life. 

He does not always appear as a terrifying monster from old legends.Human Blindness: People fail to recognize destructive, cynical, or materialistic forces when these forces disguise themselves as modern ideas, routine, or intellectual progress.

Goethe is quite right when he lets Mephisto say: 

"Simple folk never sense the devil's presence, even if his hands are on their throats. "

"If one goes to a laboratory where many people are working one soon sees how impregnated their etheric bodies are with Ahriman", said Steiner.

A clairvoyant sees the very same forms there that he sees in the etheric body of someone who's filled with fear. If a man passes a mirror he sees his image, that however can only be there because the man is there. 

Elon Musk's management of Twitter must approve an "extensive independent audit" of the platform by next year

European Union warns Elon Musk that Twitter faces ban over content moderation - Financial Times reported on Wednesday.

EU industry chief Thierry Breton made the threat during a video meeting (30.11) with Musk on Wednesday.

Breton had previously urged Musk to comply with landmark EU rules against online hate speech and disinformation. The European Commission's justice chief Didier Reynders had also voiced similar comments.

Now The European Union has threatened Elon Musk's Twitter with a ban unless the billionaire abides by its strict rules on content moderation, setting up a regulatory battle over the future of the social media platform.

Breton told Musk he must adhere to a checklist of rules, including ditching like an arbitrary approach to reinstating banned users and agreeing to an "extensive independent audit" of the platform by next year, according to the report. the FT reported this by citing people with knowledge of the conversation.

Elon Musk's management of Twitter must be agreeing to an "extensive independent audit" of the platform by next year.

Good!

Alcohol destroys human chromosomes

Human Chromosomes' telomere length medical concept and 
telomeres located on the end caps of a chromosome resulting in 
aging by damaging DNA or protection.
Credit: Lightspring Shutterstock.com

Alcohol’s impact on telomere length, a proposed marker of biological aging, is almost clear. 

The studyTrusted Source, published by Nature, in Molecular Psychiatry, is the largest of its kind to date.

Shorter telomeres were found in those who drank heavily or had alcohol use disorder (for example, there were about 400,000 alcoholics in Finland, in other words, about seven percent of the entire population).

In this case researchers reviewed data of over 245,000 UK individuals to assess how alcohol impacts aging.

We performed the largest observational study to date (in n = 245, 354 UK Biobank participants) and compared findings with Mendelian randomization estimates, 

they say.

Telomere length is linked to biological aging and disease onset.

The pros and cons of drinking alcohol are frequently relayed, and there’s a new addition to the ever-growing list. Research conducted by Oxford Population Health, part of the University of Oxford, indicates excessive alcohol consumption can speed up the aging process at a biological level.

Data on participants’ weekly alcohol consumption — self-reported when joining the Biobank — was used as the basis of an observational analysis.

Observational analysis findings indicated that heavy alcohol drinkers and those with alcohol use disorder (AUD) were significantly more likely to have shorter telomeres — an essential part of our chromosomes linked to aging and the onset of various health concerns.

Meanwhile, the MR analysis also found a strong link between telomere length and genetically-predicted AUD. The most influential gene was discovered to be AD1HB, which acts as an alcohol metabolizer in the body.

Also stress has even been reported to accelerate aging and the onset of age-related diseases. Recent research links both chronic and perceived stress and alcoholism with telomere shortening, a phenomenon with a known relationship to cellular aging.

Why?

China’s Sky Eye

In September 2020, Sky Eye, which is located in China’s southwestern Guizhou province and has a diameter of 500 meters (1,640 feet), officially launched a search for extraterrestrial life. 

"The team detected two sets of suspicious signals in 2020 while processing data collected in 2019, and found another suspicious signal in 2022 from observation data of exoplanet targets,"

  Zhang Tonjie, chief scientist of an extraterrestrial civilization search team co-founded by Beijing Normal University - has said according to the Bloomberg.

China’s Sky Eye is extremely sensitive in the low-frequency radio band and plays a critical role in the search for alien civilizations.

China said its giant Sky Eye telescope may have picked up signs of alien civilizations, according to a report by the state-backed Science and Technology Daily, which then appeared to have deleted the report and posts about the discovery.

The narrow-band electromagnetic signals detected by Sky Eye -- the world’s largest radio telescope -- differ from previous ones captured and the team is further investigating them, the report said, the National Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of California.

It isn’t clear why this report was removed from the website of the Science and Technology Daily, the official newspaper of China’s science and technology ministry; though the news had already started trending on social network Weibo and was picked up by other media outlets, including state-run ones.

A rendering 3D digital billboard

Designed by District, the elevated tank is actually a massive anamorphic illusion:
a Massive Wave Crashes in a Seoul Aquarium

The Part of the World’s Largest Anamorphic Illusion in the City of Seoul.

The digital media company created the public project utilizing the world’s largest advertising screen that spans 80.1 x 20.1 meters (via Design You Trust). As shown in the video, the deceptive aquarium looms over the outdoor area and splashes repeatedly into the sides. 
An enormous aquarium with perpetually crashing waves has popped up amidst an urban landscape in South Korea, wow, however don’t expect to hear the water sloshing around if you walk by. 

one whistele blows like birds

. The British Parliament shares images from Frances Haugen's
testimony before the Online Safety Committee Monday.

Facebook Whistleblower Frances Haugen to gave evidence to UK Parliament. Evidence session was on Monday 25October from 2.30pm.

She has told MPs (a joint committee of UK MPs and Lords) about Facebook - it unquestionably making hate worse, as they consider what new rules to impose on big social networks.

"Facebook has been unwilling to accept even little slivers of profit being sacrificed for safety".

According to Ms Haugen self she is  

"incredibly proud of the UK for taking such a world-leading stance".

"The UK has a tradition of leading policy in ways that are followed around the world. I can't imagine Mark (Zuckerberg) isn't paying attention to what you're doing."

She was talking to the Online Safety Bill committee in London.  

Mark Zuckerberg and Nick Clegg have complained that She has only presented a partial view of the company, whereas they want to stop any insights into how the company manages harmful content to get into the public domain, unless they have personally approved them.

Sure, Frances Haugen's evidence has so far strengthened the case for an independent regulator with the power to audit and inspect the big tech companies.

Mystery of Consciousness

The consciousness is not produced by or dependent on the brain. 

The Theosophists said so - because it is so.

Now Eben Alexander, M.D., a distinguished neurosurgeon who spent much of his career on the Harvard medical faculty (and who has authored 150 publications and delivered over 200 papers) got 

near-death-experience in 2008 at age 54 while in a seven-day coma when he battled the rarest of illnesses – bacterial meningitis caused by E. coli.

"The plain fact is that the materialist picture of the body and brain as the producers, rather than the vehicles, of human consciousness is doomed,"

says Alexander in Newsweek.

During his coma, the neo-cortex of Dr. Alexander's brain, which "is responsible for memory, language, emotion, visual and auditory awareness, and logic," shut down completely, making conscious experience, he says, impossible. 

Nevertheless, inexplicably, he began a spiritual journey that took him to three destinations. The first was a dark, Jello-O like, red-brown "muck," a mud pool with a rhythmic, pounding sound, that he calls "the Realm of the Earthworm's Eye." 

The second, which he calls the Gateway, featured a bright light, captivating music and song, and an angel guide, a beautiful woman with high cheekbones, blue eyes, and golden-brown hair. 

Here, with his companion, he found himself in clouds flying over trees, fields, streams, waterfalls, and people. 

The third, which he calls the Core, was the culmination of his journey. In the Core, which he describes as an orb-like ball of light, he encountered God, the all-powerful, all-loving, and all-knowing Creator, who gave him this message:

"God loves him and all others unconditionally;

Evil is necessary on earth because without it human free will and human growth are impossible - and

Love will triumph over evil."

Remarkably, after his visit to the spiritual world, Dr. Alexander's triple intravenous antibiotics defeated the E. coli and, slowly he awoke from the coma-

He find his earthly self, which had been absent during his journey, and eventually resumed his professional practice. 

But he was now a changed person with an urgent aim: to share his journey with others.

We are "spiritual beings currently inhabiting our evolutionarily developed mortal brains and bodies," we get closer to our genuine spiritual selves by manifesting love and compassion on earth, and the materialistic worldview embraced by many scientists is mistaken.

He invites skeptics near and far to do what he failed to do before his transformative journey, that is, to keep an open mind and to investigate the voluminous and ever-growing body of research on near-death and out-of-body experience. 

Here comes a book, Eben Alexander: Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife, 2021.

Mass–energy equivalence its not enough

For much of the past century a debate has raged in physics about how to reconcile quantum theory and general relativity. 

"The science of can and can’t is at a deeper level than general relativity and quantum theory. It was proposed by quantum computing pioneer David Deutsch to expand on the quantum theory of computation. Like the latter, it consists of deeper physical principles – guidelines for consistently putting together different laws of motion, such as quantum theory and general relativity, while still preserving their respective core features. So it provides key new tools to help with that question. 

And that’s good. It’s like with Covid: you want to try all possible ways to solve the problem,"

says Tri Chiara Marletto in the Guardian.

Furthermore, the development of human consciousness is not in balance with technological development.

There needs to be a big change here.

I think we need a development that Rudolf Steiner has already talked about, where the forces of humanity help to build the human whole.

Mutual aid - the chief points were clearly stated

Consequently, when my attention was drawn, later on, to the relations between Darwinism and Sociology, I could agree with none of the works and pamphlets that had been written upon this important subject, so said Pëtr Kropotkin in his work Mutual Aid - A Factor of Evolution, 1902.

Even in those few spots where animal life teemed in abundance, I failed to find — although I was eagerly looking for it — that bitter struggle for the means of existence, among animals belonging to the same species, which was considered by most Darwinists (though not always by Darwin himself) as the dominant characteristic of struggle for life, and the main factor of evolution. ...

And:

— in all these scenes of animal life which passed before my eyes, I saw Mutual Aid and Mutual Support carried on to an extent which made me suspect in it a feature of the greatest importance for the maintenance of life, the preservation of each species, and its further evolution.

According to Propotkin after we are mentioning that in the evolution of mankind mutual aid played a still more prominent part, as Professor Karl Kessler concluded as follows:

I obviously do not deny the struggle for existence, but I maintain that the progressive development of the animal kingdom, and especially of mankind, is favoured much more by mutual support than by mutual struggle.... All organic beings have two essential needs: that of nutrition, and that of propagating the species. The former brings them to a struggle and to mutual extermination, while the needs of maintaining the species bring them to approach one another and to support one another. But I am inclined to think that in the evolution of the organic world — in the progressive modification of organic beings — mutual support among individuals plays a much more important part than their mutual struggle.

So. We have seen that.

Dolphins have been proven to have one kind of language system

According to fresh studies  dolphins have a highly developed language.

A study by researchers at St. Petersburg Polytechnic University used equipment to measure the acoustic signals of bottlenose dolphins in the Black Sea. The study registered dolphin pulses and sets of pulses as words and sentences and concluded that because dolphin language 

exhibits all the design features present in the human spoken language, this indicates a high level of intelligence and consciousness in dolphins, and their language can be ostensibly considered a highly developed spoken language, akin to the human language.

A Swedish language startup called Gavagai AB hopes to use AI to decode the language of dolphins. Working with researchers at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, the company is collecting data from recordings of dolphins and wants to crack their language by 2022, with the goal of eventually being able to reverse engineer a way for humans to translate their own language into dolphin speak. 

This would effectively facilitate interspecies communication for the very first time.

Mystery

Rembrandt: Man in Armour.

Cell repair may mean that the aging of the bio-organism can be controlled.
Researchers have restored vision in old mice and in mice with damaged retinal nerves by resetting some of the thousands of chemical marks that accumulate on DNA as cells age. The work, published on 2 December in Nature1, suggests a new approach to reversing age-related decline, by reprogramming some cells to a younger state in which they are better able to repair or replace damaged tissue.
Black mice in a container on a lab bench.

Mice with retinal-nerve damage can have their vision restored through cell reprogramming.
researchers also caution that the work has so far has been carried out only in mice, and it remains to be seen whether the approach will translate to people, or to other tissues and organs that are ravaged by time.
it will be an epigenetics gold rush - new controls for gene expression
- if reversal of biological clock restores vision in old mice

reprogramming’ approach seems to make old cells young again.
David Sinclair, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, asks: 

Can you reverse the clock?

So,

These results clearly show that tissue regeneration in mammals can be enhanced, 

says an other, Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, here.

I assume that this mechanism, like others same kind, can be controlled by through human consciousness, as the stories about Christian Rosenkreuz tell, for example.

The planet is a tramp

Image: © Jan Skowron / Astronomical
 Observatory, University of Warsaw.

An Earth-size planet is careening untethered through the galaxy, but nobody has ever seen one here — yet.

We know very well earth orbits the sun like a ship sailing in circles around its anchor.   But least one star flyes helplessly and heedlessly through interstellar space ans a planet goes rogue.

Either we were very lucky, or such objects are very common in the Milky Way. They may be as common as stars, 

wrote Live Science.

Earth orbits the sun like a ship sailing in circles around its anchor. But what if someone — or something — cut that ship loose? Unbound from any star or solar system, what would become of a tiny world flying helplessly and heedlessly through interstellar space? What happens when a planet goes rogue?

This discovery demonstrates that terrestrial-mass free-floating planets can be detected and characterized using microlensing.

Some low-mass planets are expected to be ejected from their parent planetary systems during early stages of planetary system formation. 

Although in practice such objects do not emit any light, they may be detected using gravitational microlensing via their light-bending gravity. 

The evidence and the science show, what?

The market in January 1930 in Eastern Finland.

The evidence and the science show that Donald Trump has badly damaged the U.S. and its people—because he rejects evidence and science.

According to Scientific American it has never endorsed a presidential candidate in its 175-year history. This year we are compelled to do so. We do not do this lightly.

Maybe now it hit his ax in the stone.

For the sea currents are now in the same position as in 1915, when, according to press reports, behind there were four snow-free winters in Scandinavia - and large cooling begun little by little.

Really, all we can do now is look at - 

we cannot take computer simulations as a very serious science.

I want to see it self. 

However, with regard to the climate, everything possible must be done because of the precautionary principle.

Warning about grays

One of those grays, R71, tells 
(through the binary)  that
he/she is coming from
Zeta Reticuli. 

Look at this one.

In this crop circle, the shape is looking like an alien stands behind a disk.  There is an extraordinary short message on this something kind of the binary encrypted circle. Scientists had found that there is a message in the disk. 

There it is a binary code,  and it can be translated exact:

Beware the bearers of false gifts and their broken promises. Much pain, but still time. Believe there is good out there. We oppose deception. Conduit closing. 0x07 

The binary code of 0x07 at the end of the message would produced a bell sound similar to that of an old typewriter or bell sound.

For scientists it is looking like a warning for human beings and also for their future. This crop formation is not artificial, but it is done by some paranormal activity. All know that its a warning (there were grays ones behind nazism's technology, for excample).

Rudolf Steiner's work in
the Goetheanum
- first building made of wood-plastic 
the Human representative, Lucifer 
and Ahriman.

According to Britannica, crop circles are large geometric patterns made by flattening the crops of farmers. Sure, it is suggested that the purpose of the markings is to create a guide for other space crafts or to communicate with us.

Crop circles are most often found in England, but they have been reported across the globe. The first crop circle was very simple and was spotted in England in the 1970s. But the first publication of crop circles was by John Capron, in July, 1880.

Over the next two decades the number of crop circles and the complexity of the patterns increased.  One major theory involves aliens. Proponents of this theory believe that aliens are either physically making the crop circles or these extraterrestrial beings are using some energy forces from their spacecrafts to create them. 

The first binary code from human computer art, based on a crop picture near Crabwood, England, in 2002 , explained and decoded:

We are your galactic neighbors. Disclosure is coming - no more pain and deception.

Conduit closing. 0x07

Time is right?

Antti Tuuri skriver om riktiga saker

Idag talar man mycket om att vissa människor läser helt enkelt inte böcker.
Dom tänker inte alls.
Det kommer att berövas dem sina förmåga att tänka själva.
Här kommer ett dokument (på finska) om yttrandefrihetens gränser.

the age is my own

The long-term high-volume physical activityin adult age did not slow down or accelerate biologicalaging; the relatively small sample size cautions againstdrawing far-reaching conclusions from these results. More about this kind of biological aging.

Back to Marx - ac-tu-al-ly is a noun.

Soviet's poster for the International Women’s Day
Year 1935 (?)

Listen,
The Marxist tradition can be kept alive as an essential political component of the Left.
Marxist crisis theory can show how a rejuvenated notion of exploitation can illuminate the analysis of the class structure of welfare state capitalism or the assessment of international migration.
Philippe van Parijs has convictionded about that.
The structure and potential of historical materialism as a general theory of social change.
They explore and advocate a ‘capitalist road to communism’ that expands the realm of freedom while bypassing socialism, and they develop those aspects of the Marxist project consistent with ecological concerns.

However the last idea brings us back to Steven Lukes’s question:
Can a Marxist believe in Human Rights?’

If a ’Marxist’ is someone who follows the Marxist text with literalist fervour, the answer undoubtedly remains ’no’. 

If, however, a Marxist is someone who – albeit recognizing that Marxist theories are

shot through with errors of detail, even have basic conceptual flaws, yet remain immensely fertile in their overall conception

simply can trace the ancestry of his most important beliefs back to Marx.
Te answer then becomes: ’Yes, she can. And in fact, she should’. This moreover, is what S. Lukes himself means when he asks whether the Marxist conception of liberty can really be achieved without elaborating a true theory of justice and rights in its support.
Lukes, Steven, 1985:  page 149. Marxism and Morality, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

In point of fact Marx saw that humans make both their life activity and 'species' the object of their will. They relate to their life activity, and are not simply identical with it. But Human, according to Marx, are capable of making or shaping their own nature to some extent.