End of the world as we know it..?

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Xavderion wrote:

Why kill capitalism when it's the only way to socialism? With a bit of luck we won't kill the planet entirely and will actually ride the capitalism train until post-scarcity. Believe.

My faith tends to waver a bit when i talk to intelligent people thirty years older then me and tell them

"you do know exponential growth is an illusion right?"

And they start their sentences with "yeah, but..." in an effort to defend the model.

And to be fair, capitalism thrives on greed and the dominant/submissive model, which is an illogical path towards emphatic socialism.(which i assume is what your referring to?)

Peace,

-Boem-

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Boem wrote:

My faith tends to waver a bit when i talk to intelligent people thirty years older then me and tell them

"you do know exponential growth is an illusion right?"

And they start their sentences with "yeah, but..." in an effort to defend the model.

And to be fair, capitalism thrives on greed and the dominant/submissive model, which is an illogical path towards emphatic socialism.(which i assume is what your referring to?)

Not their fault. They're brainwashed into thinking capitalism is the next best thing since sliced bread and communism is evil. They haven't read Capital and have no idea or understanding of Marx's theory.

One of the greatest tricks of the current system is convincing people it doesn't brainwash them. At least most people in the former socialist states had a good idea the regime was bullshitting them with propaganda and learned to laugh at it to a certain degree.

^My problem with that statement is that i was able to pierce through it.

To elaborate, i stopped school at the age of fourteen, i haven't read Capital and i am not familiar with Marx.(at least not profoundly by studying up on his works etc)

All i did was look around me and apply logic.

I don't consider myself above average in therms of intelligence or logical deductions so it baffles me how people that are considered intelligent by this society have such a profound issue with simply
"looking at reality".

I could make my nephew who is currently three and a half understand why an infinite growth model is beyond ludicrous and belongs in fairy tales of the children his age, rather then the adult world which is occupied by such a model currently.

It's funny and sad simultaneously looking how it all plays out from a distance. Watching people grovel in their exquisite ego and supposed above average intelligence as a race while making blunders at the fundamentals so effortlessly.

I understand the why though, but i consider intelligence as a tool to work past the why if it doesn't suit your aim.

Peace,

-Boem-

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Bars wrote:

One of the greatest tricks of the current system is convincing people it doesn't brainwash them.

Oh please. You might have read your previous Marx, but you know that most "communists" haven't, and you know you haven't read half the books in the world yourself. We don't have time to science everything, so we faith the rest by trusting the word of others. Unless we're steeped in denial, what's surprising isn't that we're being brainwashed, it's that our trusted brainwashers gave us product of such low quality. It's the media equivalent to the Jack in the Box E. Coli incident years ago; sure there's a scandal there, but it's not like people were force-fed.

This is why it's important to sample at reason intervals. Quality control. Trust, but verify.

When I think of capitalism, what I think of is something so obviously good that attacking it is silly. But perhaps capitalism means something different to me than it does to you. I gotta run, so: what does it mean to you?

@Boem: my issue with them not having read Capital isn't that they haven't read it per se, it's that they parrot words implanted in their heads without really understanding what they're talking about. Words like capitalism and communism which were introduced by Marx. I don't have a problem with people who haven't read it. I have a problem with people who haven't read it and yet talk about a complicated subject matter as if they know what they're talking about while they're actually just blindly repeating the bullshit they've been fed.

You, on the other hand, use your head to think critically. Also, I don't know why you think your intelligence isn't above average. I'm willing to bet your IQ is well above 100. It might not be the most reliable source of gauging cognitive ability but it's something.


@Scrotie: I read your post after I posted mine. Sorry but I'm really not interested in getting in this long and ultimately pointless argument with you. I'm not saying capitalism is bad by definition. It's just a stage of social evolution. Just as it's necessary and great in certain conditions, it starts becoming problematic and outliving its usefulness in others. Let's leave it at that.

I'll just ask you to think long and hard about this big fucking assumption you're making about capitalism.

Theres a problem tho right? We may or may not be on track, China has sort of got its shit under control, Russia for all its madness is somewhat stable and in control of their patch. It starts to get a bit shaky when you look at south American countries and then we have Africa and the Middle East.. Theyre fucked, and as much as Europe is responsible for the vast majority of the chaos there, Im not entirely sure they would all be massive first world forward thinking democracies by now if we had just left them alone and either way, the current state of affairs is the reality of the situation.

We can consciously and peacefully reduce our populations, I mean its happening already if we didn't have so much immigration. We can move away from such a crazy growth model with all its issues, start investing our time into healthy, productive industry. But what happens to Africa and the Middle East? Theyre going to keep growing, keep industrializing and a lot of their fundamental ideologies are insane. Theyre full of batshit apocalypse religions, a lot of them are cave man level backward and theyr eliving in a world with weaponry and industry that is so far beyond what they could have come up with by themselves. If they fully industrialize the way we have then the planet is fucked, they will outnumber us by staggering amounts and they have all the resources at hand to militarize on an epic scale. Theres places in Africa where they are still burning witches, literally, this is the kind of shit were dealing with. Are we expecting witch burners to be given democratic votes and vote sensibly for a sustainable future? We cant even vote for the right things and we have large amounts of highly educated atheists among us.

Do we have to remove these fundamentally incompatible ideologies before we can move forward? I mean, doing so is in a lot of ways the antithesis of what we are eventually trying to achieve right? A peaceful, tolerant, forward thinking, stable, safe, sustainable, just future for everyone? The dream is that we love everyone and all hug and accept each other. But the big religions are incompatible with a logical, reasonable future. Christianity has been so watered down and beaten into submission thats its a fairly safe thing, its dying and helpless to stop it. But Judaism still has very militantly orthodox elements, and they have nukes. Islam has its extremes, they dont have nukes but they want them, and theres mad people among them who would use them. We are talking about religions that have apocalypse in their dogma, that the end of days will come with fire and brimstone and will herald the coming of God to save the chosen people etc. These people may not be quite as opposed to the assured destruction of a nuclear holocaust as western democracies are, some of them may in fact welcome such an event as the pinnacle of their belief structure.

Do we have to sort these people out while we are still capable of it before we can safely move on for the good of the species? Im not sure, but if we do does that mean essentially war? Both physical and ideological? How do you fight them on an ideological level? Expose the madness at the heart of their ideologies in a way that even their own people will reject it? I mean, Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Isis, these people seem to be doing a pretty good job of that. Whos funding them? What theyre doing is giving us an excuse to go in and obliterate problematic nations. Are we on track for this already? Is this just unorganized world chaos that happens to be helping? Is it hurting? Is there a larger plan afoot? The more likely idea might be a chaos of short sighted, self interested entities, and thats the more worrying one imo.

I have no idea, I dunno whats needs done, if anything is being done, all I know is that its a very complex mess. I mean we could say the world needs wiped clean and start again, I kind of agree but if that happens through chaos then its who ever randomly makes it through that will start it again, and right now on this planet we are vastly outnumbered by insane folk lead by repulsive delusions about an omnipotent space alien that watches them masturbate and judges them for it.

^^^^

not much you can do about humanities inhumane nature but like an old-growth forest - a fire is natural and inevitable

@Snorkle: We can't have a peaceful and 'tolerant' solution. The world is heading towards decades of inner and outer turmoil for every society and there are no ideal scenarios. There are only less and more pessimistic ones for the foreseeable future.

The modern liberals are completely disconnected from reality and are in for a rough awakening, which has already started with Brexit and Trump. It'll only go downhill from there.

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Bars wrote:

I'm not saying capitalism is bad by definition. It's just a stage of social evolution.

I'll just ask you to think long and hard about this big fucking assumption you're making about capitalism.

Perhaps this is far enough off the topic that you'll respond, despite asking to leave it alone, but in what way isn't the first quoted line also an assumption? People have been making that case for over 100 years, and the fall of capitalism as 'imminent' is central. According to the extremists of Christianity we've been living in the end times for about 2,000 years now, didn't you know? Mark your calendar, for Jesus will be returning any day now.

Which circles back to the OP nicely. OP - what makes you think you'll be seeing this 'in your lifetime'? What makes you expect that you'll be part of the 1% (or more likely 0.0001%) that survives the hypothetical 'reset button' of civilization on Earth?

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innervation wrote:

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Bars wrote:

I'm not saying capitalism is bad by definition. It's just a stage of social evolution.

I'll just ask you to think long and hard about this big fucking assumption you're making about capitalism.

Perhaps this is far enough off the topic that you'll respond, despite asking to leave it alone, but in what way isn't the first quoted line also an assumption? People have been making that case for over 100 years, and the fall of capitalism as 'imminent' is central. According to the extremists of Christianity we've been living in the end times for about 2,000 years now, didn't you know? Mark your calendar, for Jesus will be returning any day now.

Which circles back to the OP nicely. OP - what makes you think you'll be seeing this 'in your lifetime'? What makes you expect that you'll be part of the 1% (or more likely 0.0001%) that survives the hypothetical 'reset button' of civilization on Earth?

Victory favors the prepared - Amat Curam

but in all seriousness, the world will be unlivable within 100-200 years tops (scientific fact and no i dont have the patience to argue with someone who doesnt believe in global warming at the moment)

With that said, people on earth will know within my lifetime that their children/grandchildren are doomed and when that has completely sunk in, that will be the hypothetical straw for those living in poverty by the 0.01%. I am just hoping i dont have to wait that long to see this revolution/end of days etc