I know things are arguably better now than they ever have been before. That doesn't mean things can't be vastly better. "End of history" my ass. We've still got a long way to go. In some regards I think we've even regressed- the historian Yuval Noah Harari outlines in his book Sapiens that hunter-gatherers enjoyed many things modern humans don't: a more egalitarian structure, an abundance of leisure time, a tight-knit community with strong social ties. I'm no anarcho-primitivist, and I think technology and science have immense emancipatory potential for the human race. But for all our high-tech fancy gadgets and gizmos we sure operate under some primitive, even barbaric institutions. No civil society should have citizens struggling to meet their basic needs. No civil society should be predicated on the inherently coercive paradigm of "work or starve". What's the point of living in a society if not to harness the collective power of its citizens to uplift them all? We are squandering our potential.
Right on. I think that one of the more important concepts that we can spread is that tech is simply an amplifier. It will make achieving our goals easier, but if our goals are shit, better tech will just make things shitty even faster.
Automation seems a useful way to reach people about this: "Hey everyone, I developed a robot to automate your jobs!"
Capitalist dystopia: :blob-stabby: :
Communist utopia: :party-blob:
Also, I guess he probably never actually said it but, a quote you may enjoy:
Journalist: What do you think of Western civilization?
Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.
Right on. I think that one of the more important concepts that we can spread is that tech is simply an amplifier. It will make achieving our goals easier, but if our goals are shit, better tech will just make things shitty even faster.
Absolutely. Technology is just a tool, it is our political organization that determines how it's used/distributed. Just look at the Texas power outage. People deprived of an essential utility when they didn't have to be, because the people who control the resources would rather power empty corporate offices than homes.
Automation seems a useful way to reach people about this: “Hey everyone, I developed a robot to automate your jobs!”
Indeed, under capitalism, technology doesn't exist to serve human need. Capitalism is a parasitic, morally repugnant system.
Also, I guess he probably never actually said it but, a quote you may enjoy:
Where's the lie? I raise you a quote from Dostoyevsky in return:
The only gain of civilisation for mankind is the greater capacity for variety of sensations–and absolutely nothing more. And through the development of this many-sidedness man may come to finding enjoyment in bloodshed. In fact, this has already happened to him. Have you noticed that it is the most civilised gentlemen who have been the subtlest slaughterers, to whom the Attilas and Stenka Razins could not hold a candle, and if they are not so conspicuous as the Attilas and Stenka Razins it is simply because they are so often met with, are so ordinary and have become so familiar to us. In any case civilisation has made mankind if not more bloodthirsty, at least more vilely, more loathsomely bloodthirsty. In old days he saw justice in bloodshed and with his conscience at peace exterminated those he thought proper. Now we do think bloodshed abominable and yet we engage in this abomination, and with more energy than ever. Which is worse? Decide that for yourselves.
Except that the only reason our species has made it this far is literally because "apes together strong". We're social creatures, we evolved to be part of a tribe. And why do people act like human needs and desires would magically disappear if the capitalist mode of work was abolished? As long as humans have needs and desires, humans are going to expend effort to meet those needs/desires.
Hell, I’m reading Practical Ethics right now and Peter Singer (who I thought had some Marxist sympathys) makes the HuMaN nATuRe claim early on in regards to how to achieve an egalitarian society lol
I've been meaning to read Singer. Has he never heard of historical materialism?
I think he's a neolib. The effective altruism movement that he spawned is shady as hell, with major backing from billionaires like Gates, and often questionable positions. For example, many effective altruists claim that its ethical to prioritize making as much money as possible, because then you can donate more to charity.
The argument that we have a moral obligation to donate to suffering people is from Singer's "Famine, Affluence, and Morality". Since then, he's written multiple books building up the tenets of effective altruism and lauding figures like Bill Gates. According to this article he argues that you should "choose a career based on what they can accomplish through philanthropy". He has repeatedly argued against Marx, rejecting his ideas on the basis of "human nature" while upholding neoliberal capitalism as the best we can do rn.
There are leftist critiques of his views on effective altruism, and I'll see if I can dig some up. Outside of his more serious stances, he churns out some real dogshit arguments sometimes, probably just to court controversy.
Dogshit: When Will the Pandemic Cure Be Worse Than the Disease?
EDIT: Here's one leftist critique of the arguments underlying effective altruism Scihub link: https://sci-hub.se/10.1080/00455091.2002.10716510
Animal Liberation was an incredibly formative book for me. I was evangelical about veganism for a few months afterwards.
Same, while I'm more critical of Singer now, I'll always have a soft spot for Animal Liberation.
Holy shit. Lmao. No thank you Mr. Singer. No fucking thanking you.
i've thrown back this before: wouldn't you rather work with people who want to be there with you? make them imagining "carrying" other people who are forced to work with them because they are miserable vs. working with productive, happy people that will share the load. i know this is simplifying things but i've gotten through to some actual conservatives like this.
The dark ages and feudalism never ended except for countries that had successful socialist revolutions.
No civil society should be predicated on the inherently coercive paradigm of “work or starve”.
"He who does not work shall not eat" is a vastly superior paradigm to the one we have now. It's not the endgame for human society, it only has to be in place until all the bourgeois have starved to death. But god damn would it be an upgrade.
Ideally the endgame would be "From each according to his ability to each according to his need".
I hear you. As it is, "civilization" is mostly just a category we use to separate ourselves from all the people we devour.
yeah, some big asterisk on "better now than they ever have been before." just for (some) people near the center of empire
Name one piece of technology that actually liberated anyone challenge.
It becomes a lot clearer when you view things through the lens of humans using physical technology to turn other humans into tools.
Physical technology progresses forward, while social technology lags behind, as every individual ends up struggling indirectly to become the master and to turn everyone else into the slave.
This documentary does a really good job of expounding the concept: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WZ40iYPNFQ
The word “civilization,” after all, can be used in two very different ways. It can be used to refer to a society in which people live in cities, in the way an archeologist might refer to the Indus Valley. Or it can mean refinement, accomplishment, cultural achievement. Culture has much the same double meaning. One can use the term in its anthropological sense, as referring to structures of feeling, symbolic codes that members of a given culture absorb in the course of growing up and which inform every aspect of their daily life: the way people talk, eat, marry, gesture, play music, and so on. To use Bourdieu’s terminology, one could call this culture as habitus. Alternately, one can use the word to refer to what is also called “high culture”: the best and most profound productions of some artistic, literary, or philosophical elite.
Remember that story about the guy who put his flag down on great britain and colonized it? That was a good bit
