WW3 fought over diminishing resources will plunge us back into the stone age, if it doesn’t see our extinction.
WW3 (between the US and USSR) nearly happened at least once already, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and that was at the peak of our prosperity in many respects.
When climate change really starts taking off, peak oil and uranium, an economic collapse or coronal mass ejection, and they will, one or more of these catastrophes will occur and all’s it takes is one, WW3 will practically be unavoidable.
In the near future I will make a thread going into detail about what forms of production I wish to cut back on, but for now, the bottom line is this: something like 90% of our economy doesn’t need to exist.
We, particularly the rich, but even the poor in some respects, consume far, way too much.
There’s too much hedonism, materialism, inefficiency and waste, and much of it will come to an end, one way or the other.
My approach thus far has been mostly top-down, outside-in where as Alan Watt’s approach was more bottom-up, inside-out in dealing with these, and other issues, and I don’t see why we can’t combine both approaches, they needn’t be mutually exclusive, in fact they’re mutually conducive, the objective is basically the same: harmony between man and nature, man and man, and man and himself, whereas what we have now is a kind of havoc, that’s been dressed up nice.
Yeah I used to think that but after Fukushima I’m not sure. Plants and animals are thriving there.
People are more prosperous now than in the 60s. Machines are doing so much more.
I don’t think we can do much about that.
We’re drowning in oil, right? A year or so ago we had tankers backed up in the ocean sitting there for lack of a place to put it all. Bad grades of oil actually went to negative prices (had to pay for someone to take it).
But there is nothing we can do to prevent coronal mass ejections.
Cant’ give me one example of a product we have too much of (besides oil lol)?
Lots of needless jobs; that’s true.
Houses are too big.
Here’s a bit I transcribed:
[i]We’re always trying to find a way to be one up.
So how do I not do that?
Why do you want to know?
Well, I’d be better that way.
Yeah but why do you want to be better? You see, the reason you want to be better is the reason why you aren’t. We aren’t better because we want to be. Because the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Because all the do-gooders in the world, whether they are doing good for others or doing it for themselves, are trouble-makers. On the basis of, “Kindly let me help you or you’ll drown”, said the monkey, putting the fish safely up a tree.
How do you know what’s good for others? How do you know what’s good for you?!? If you say you want to improve, then you ought to know what’s good for you. But obviously you don’t because if you did, you would be improved. So you don’t know.
If you ask me for enlightenment, how can you ask me for enlightenment? If you don’t know what it is, how do you know you want it? Any concept you have of it will be simply a way of trying to perpetuate the situation you’re already in. If you think you know what you’re going out for, all you’re doing is seeking the past… what you already know… what you already experienced. Therefore, that’s not it, is it? Because you say you’re looking for something quite new. But what’s your conception of something new? You can only think about it in terms of something old.
We WASPs have been on a rampage for the last 100+ years to improve the world. We have given the benefits of our culture, our religion, our technology to everybody. And we have insisted that they receive the benefits of our culture and even our political styles, our democracy. “You better be democratic, or we’ll shoot you.” And having conferred these blessings all over the place, we wonder why everybody hates us. Sometimes doing good to others, and even doing good to one’s self, is amazingly destructive because it’s full of conceit.[/i]
His position seems to be that there is no way to tell what is good, and yet you want to control every minutiae of everything. Isn’t that inconsistent?
I moved away from supporting revolution when I appreciated just how much suffering is necessary to actually get enough people to resort to similar ideas about revolting on their own accord - which is a lot. Way more than we have in the West, despite all the huge relative inequality - and I wouldn’t change that for anything.
In the minds of capitalists, this is a huge success, and it is in many ways, but I refuse to believe that such success needs to come at the cost that it does. As much as we need revolution to bring about less of this cost, it will take a lot of reform first, in order to get anywhere near the point when revolution can happen. Nobody reacts well to sudden revolutionary change, not even the instigators - you have to take into account a kind of human inertia - even to the best of ideas there will be mental and emotional resistance.
I think so too, though on a scale of Existentialist to Essentialist, I am overtly Existentialist. In as far as things are relatively more biologically or socially determined, I happen to know the answer, which is that they are an interaction of environment with genetics - and I’m guessing the test interpreted that as me basically saying that it’s mostly all nature over nurture. This is a fault in the test, and pretty much all of these kinds of tests. Upon facing most of these questions I found myself thinking “well it depends”, which these tests can’t take into account, so you kinda have to judge which answer best reflects a kind of average of all the different variables at play - that was the best I could do.
Put another way, I regard Leftism as a potentially essential part of humanity - a healthy expression of egoism even. It’s simple reasoning to understand that helping others in a team helps yourself better than competing with everyone, and a better reputation through exemplified trustworthiness over trying to take opportunistic advantage has far better long term advantages. Competing is great, but only within a context of cooperation.
The word essentialist is kind of misleading, it’s a more metaphysical word, when this issue is over biology versus culture.
They could’ve used the word naturism, versus constructivism, to avoid confusion.
I also lean existentialist over essentialist, and I suspect many-most people who’re philosophically inclined lean existentialist, these days.
Right, just because you recognize nature plays a role, doesn’t mean you think it plays the exclusive or even the, essential, role in determining human variability, that is a limitation of the test.
For me there’s a time for everything, a time for isolation, competition and symbiosis between individuals and groups, as well as a time for competitive symbiosis or collaboration, but extremists think it’s right, or preferable to be one way all the time, or nearly always, they think like we’re linearly moving from a dark epoch of isolation and competition to a radiant one of cooperation.
Some even go so far as to suppose we’re inevitably eternally and infinitely ascending, becoming some Godlike race or cosmic supraorganism of perfect unity and symbiosis.
What about Trump’s possible trump card of.playing.footsie with China/Norrh Vietnam, Russia to reward.them for 2 years of relative silence.until he can indeed.pardon some.people.and.fire r.Mueller… If this.was.Vegas, i’d wager on at least 3/1 on this.scenario, a super.skirmish for the test
of.dealing all the right cards.
If .this high card gamble will save the world, why not.go for.a pseudo isolationism, as an artful deal. Machiavelli couldn’t have done it better.