I think your argument finally convinced me. Before I believed that people are people and will find a way to game any system to build power/wealth. You’re right though. Our current structure rewards greed while it spits on hard work, helping your fellow man, and generally all the good things that make society work.
Tell me why a single person can be valued at a trillion dollars. Did that man really do that much work that progressed society? So much more than mine or my neighbor so that we deserve to barely get by?
Before I believed that people are people and will find a way to game any system to build power/wealth.
I think we as a society need to sort of build “antibodies” against that, and be educated to look closer at how self serving the people looking for power are. And obviously that needs a prevailing ideology that is not glorifying greed.
I think that was sort of the idea with the second amendment in the United States, but things were different in the late 1700s. They didn’t havt roving squads of police, backed by swaths of AI detection cameras, who are willing to bomb and murder citizens to maintain order.
I agree, something else sensible needs to genuinely exist. I would like to think it’d be teaching morals and focusing on virtues again. Like making ethics a course as mandatory as science in schools, but the Milgram Experiment makes me wonder if that would even work.
I think the Milgram experiments show the power of authority to both change moral behavior, for ill but also potentially for good. And of course the participants learned from their experience. I’m sure just knowing and really understanding these experience changes people’s attitude towards authority and creates “antibodies”.
Knowledge is power. Just like we have now run the experiment and seen that capitalism is incredibly dangerous and can capture our whole global civilization and prevent action against an existential threat like climate change. Just education and full understanding how and why this happened would create “antibodies”.
Instead we’ve been taught over and over again how endless greed is good. Of course this is just speculation about how stable or unstable a better society could be against zero sum gaming.
I agree with that. Knowledge is a true good, I believe that. The challenge is currently, from my sample size at least, society is apathetic. The desire to put in the effort to learn and the difficulty to change their lives for the better if it inconveniences even for the short term does not really exist. I mean, people freaked out and bought all the toilet paper that existed basically during covid. That’s not a necessity and yet people hoarded it.
I also want a better, more knowledgeable future, and will do my part with the people around me, but I don’t even know how to begin with making a societal change. I tried to get people off Discord when I recognized I didn’t need them and they would do whatever they needed to breech your privacy, and no one left with me even though I gave plenty of equivalent alternatives.
There is a lack of vision of how it could be better. People are angry but are constantly misdirected and distracted, and no groups seem to exist to come up with a viable alternative. Or they are suppressed or I haven’t looked enough, but that is how it feels. It feels like we’re stuck with the current system. If there was a revolution today, what now? The only thing we hear is democratic socialists suggesting that maybe we could lessen the economic cruelty a little bit.
Even the communists on lemmy are mostly “conservative” communists who seem to be mostly talking about 50+ year old textbooks and want to rehabilitate Stalinism. Technology and science (political, psychological, IT, industrial) moved the fuck on you know.
About the selfishness - it’s now surprise because that is what has been taught. And you need education / accurate news, peace / security and modicum of prosperity. Then people can be expected to act with solidarity. You see the change now in Europe. Prosperity - gone, peace - gone. News? We still have better news media but even public broadcasters are somewhat captured by neoliberals, and social media is global. The memes transmit with lightspeed. The leaders don’t know how to do anything else than escalate neoliberalism.
So I don’t see a sensible way forward either, except a gradual but unstoppable collapse and then rebuilding. But there is always hope, and we need to be clear about the reasons. None of this was inevitable. It’s just that the power inequality is immense now. A group of billionaires are vastly more powerful than millions of people. Just compare how much money either group can spend on propaganda and class warfare.
What we should be focusing on now is a better political and economic ideology for the future. And ideally technology that enables higher “tech level” without requiring a global hyper-complex supply chain and pollution, like genetically engineered plants producing biofuels, plastic precursors or bioplastics, medicines, building / insulation materials. Maybe even biocomputing. Solarpunk but by doing actual research and development and preserving knowledge.
I don’t want to take any credit for the argument, I’m mostly paraphrasing Marx. I personally love this rendition of it by Andrew Collier:
To look at people in capitalist society and conclude that human nature is egoism, is like looking at people in a factory where pollution is destroying their lungs and saying that it is human nature to cough
I think your argument finally convinced me. Before I believed that people are people and will find a way to game any system to build power/wealth. You’re right though. Our current structure rewards greed while it spits on hard work, helping your fellow man, and generally all the good things that make society work.
Tell me why a single person can be valued at a trillion dollars. Did that man really do that much work that progressed society? So much more than mine or my neighbor so that we deserve to barely get by?
I think we as a society need to sort of build “antibodies” against that, and be educated to look closer at how self serving the people looking for power are. And obviously that needs a prevailing ideology that is not glorifying greed.
I think that was sort of the idea with the second amendment in the United States, but things were different in the late 1700s. They didn’t havt roving squads of police, backed by swaths of AI detection cameras, who are willing to bomb and murder citizens to maintain order.
I agree, something else sensible needs to genuinely exist. I would like to think it’d be teaching morals and focusing on virtues again. Like making ethics a course as mandatory as science in schools, but the Milgram Experiment makes me wonder if that would even work.
I think the Milgram experiments show the power of authority to both change moral behavior, for ill but also potentially for good. And of course the participants learned from their experience. I’m sure just knowing and really understanding these experience changes people’s attitude towards authority and creates “antibodies”.
Knowledge is power. Just like we have now run the experiment and seen that capitalism is incredibly dangerous and can capture our whole global civilization and prevent action against an existential threat like climate change. Just education and full understanding how and why this happened would create “antibodies”.
Instead we’ve been taught over and over again how endless greed is good. Of course this is just speculation about how stable or unstable a better society could be against zero sum gaming.
I agree with that. Knowledge is a true good, I believe that. The challenge is currently, from my sample size at least, society is apathetic. The desire to put in the effort to learn and the difficulty to change their lives for the better if it inconveniences even for the short term does not really exist. I mean, people freaked out and bought all the toilet paper that existed basically during covid. That’s not a necessity and yet people hoarded it.
I also want a better, more knowledgeable future, and will do my part with the people around me, but I don’t even know how to begin with making a societal change. I tried to get people off Discord when I recognized I didn’t need them and they would do whatever they needed to breech your privacy, and no one left with me even though I gave plenty of equivalent alternatives.
There is a lack of vision of how it could be better. People are angry but are constantly misdirected and distracted, and no groups seem to exist to come up with a viable alternative. Or they are suppressed or I haven’t looked enough, but that is how it feels. It feels like we’re stuck with the current system. If there was a revolution today, what now? The only thing we hear is democratic socialists suggesting that maybe we could lessen the economic cruelty a little bit.
Even the communists on lemmy are mostly “conservative” communists who seem to be mostly talking about 50+ year old textbooks and want to rehabilitate Stalinism. Technology and science (political, psychological, IT, industrial) moved the fuck on you know.
About the selfishness - it’s now surprise because that is what has been taught. And you need education / accurate news, peace / security and modicum of prosperity. Then people can be expected to act with solidarity. You see the change now in Europe. Prosperity - gone, peace - gone. News? We still have better news media but even public broadcasters are somewhat captured by neoliberals, and social media is global. The memes transmit with lightspeed. The leaders don’t know how to do anything else than escalate neoliberalism.
So I don’t see a sensible way forward either, except a gradual but unstoppable collapse and then rebuilding. But there is always hope, and we need to be clear about the reasons. None of this was inevitable. It’s just that the power inequality is immense now. A group of billionaires are vastly more powerful than millions of people. Just compare how much money either group can spend on propaganda and class warfare.
What we should be focusing on now is a better political and economic ideology for the future. And ideally technology that enables higher “tech level” without requiring a global hyper-complex supply chain and pollution, like genetically engineered plants producing biofuels, plastic precursors or bioplastics, medicines, building / insulation materials. Maybe even biocomputing. Solarpunk but by doing actual research and development and preserving knowledge.
I don’t want to take any credit for the argument, I’m mostly paraphrasing Marx. I personally love this rendition of it by Andrew Collier:
As a transgender, black , height-disadvantaged man I fully agree with with his argument and find that it has changed my life as well.