I’m convinced that what is happening is that on a societal scale we are all just seeing the totality of human existence flash before our eyes before we go extinct. We can’t seem to leave 2020, we can’t seem to leave 2016. We’re cycling through all the horrible pop culture from the 2000s and the 90s and the 80s. We can only make shitty remakes of movies made just 7 years ago anymore. On top of this we’re rehashing pro-slavery arguments from the 1860s, we have unironic monarchists living among us, we’re arguing about germ theory and fighting battles that should’ve been decided centuries ago. People want to return to the viking age, paganism, the Roman Empire, the crusader era, all the way to monke. We’re talking about ancestral diets, primitive living, “paleo” diets. Human civilization is in its death throes and as we lie here taking our last gasps we are just flipping through every human memory we have encoded in our genetic code from prehistory all the way up to 2020, experiencing it all at once.
People want to return to the viking age, pagnism, the Roman Empire, the crusader era, all the way to monke.
All of this is the subconscious desire for a pre-capitalist society where everything wasn’t commodified, where you could be something that wasn’t a commodity, but all of those societies are dead, murdered, butchered up, commodified, and the lifeless remains for sale to you. There is no bringing them back, they’re dead forever, which is the fate of all societies and communities that fall under capitalism, the cultural remains endlessly recycled on product boxes to evoke faint ideas of what used to be. Nothing new can grow under this superstructure, only the endless parade of the corpses of what used to be.
There’s a good essay on Marxism in Tolkiens universe that tries to understand it’s near-universal appeal. It basically comes down to nostalgia for an idealized feudal past without forced labor, poverty, famines or plagues. There’s even a section on this in the manifesto :
Owing to their historical position, it became the vocation of the aristocracies of France and England to write pamphlets against modern bourgeois society…In order to arouse sympathy, the aristocracy was obliged to lose sight, apparently, of its own interests, and to formulate their indictment against the bourgeoisie in the interest of the exploited working class alone. Thus, the aristocracy took their revenge by singing lampoons on their new masters and whispering in his ears sinister prophesies of coming catastrophe.
In this way arose feudal Socialism: half lamentation, half lampoon; half an echo of the past, half menace of the future; at times, by its bitter, witty and incisive criticism, striking the bourgeoisie to the very heart’s core; but always ludicrous in its effect, through total incapacity to comprehend the march of modern history…
All of this is the subconscious desire for a pre-capitalist society where everything wasn’t commodified
I have found, through discussing politics and world events with friends and family, that most people have a similar idea of what a fair and good world looks like.
Most people want their neighborhood to look like the Hallmark cards, not asphalt carbrain dystopias.
Most people think it is wrong to live off the work of others.
Most people want their work to have meaning, to be part of a greater purpose; to advance humanity in the abstract, as one species and not as individuals.
Ironically on this latter point, the military actually sort of offers this. If you join the military you won’t be rich, but you will be taken care of in a quasi-socialist fashion. You work toward a greater common purpose. Yet most in the military do not realize this, how the “real” economy is far more precarious for most workers.
We can only make shitty remakes of movies made just 7 ago years anymore.
I know many people have mentioned it before but that’s the sort of thing I can’t understand. Mining some pop culture from the 1980s, 70s, 60s? It’s sad and pathetic and I’m used to it. But going back and remaking something forgettable that doesn’t even have nostalgic value is utterly bizarre to me. And even worse - sometimes it’s crap like Very Shitty Zombie Movie (I) (2016) that nobody saw or even heard of. Yet we learn VSZM 2 is in development and there’s the possibility of a VSZM tv series. On top everything else - a massive grift and tax avoidance scheme must be involved.
This, but only for western civilization, and the reality is that civilization isn’t actually ending. We just collectively feel like it’s ending because we can feel hundreds of years of privilege slipping away. Like how people who were previously on top of a caste system feel like they’re being discriminated against when that system is abolished, as the world of unequal exchange breaks down and the ability of the so-called First World to dictate what happens in every corner of the globe diminishes the people who live in the imperial core will feel like the world is collapsing, when in fact it’s just that other countries are rising to our level for the first time.
every time i eat an overpriced steak at a steak house or a greasy hamburger from a fast food restaurant, i think of this knowing that such a thing would become a luxury that future generations will covet and put a lot of effort and time into saving enough money to indulge in something that’s an ordinary day for me.
I’m convinced that what is happening is that on a societal scale we are all just seeing the totality of human existence flash before our eyes before we go extinct. We can’t seem to leave 2020, we can’t seem to leave 2016. We’re cycling through all the horrible pop culture from the 2000s and the 90s and the 80s. We can only make shitty remakes of movies made just 7 years ago anymore. On top of this we’re rehashing pro-slavery arguments from the 1860s, we have unironic monarchists living among us, we’re arguing about germ theory and fighting battles that should’ve been decided centuries ago. People want to return to the viking age, paganism, the Roman Empire, the crusader era, all the way to monke. We’re talking about ancestral diets, primitive living, “paleo” diets. Human civilization is in its death throes and as we lie here taking our last gasps we are just flipping through every human memory we have encoded in our genetic code from prehistory all the way up to 2020, experiencing it all at once.
All of this is the subconscious desire for a pre-capitalist society where everything wasn’t commodified, where you could be something that wasn’t a commodity, but all of those societies are dead, murdered, butchered up, commodified, and the lifeless remains for sale to you. There is no bringing them back, they’re dead forever, which is the fate of all societies and communities that fall under capitalism, the cultural remains endlessly recycled on product boxes to evoke faint ideas of what used to be. Nothing new can grow under this superstructure, only the endless parade of the corpses of what used to be.
There’s a good essay on Marxism in Tolkiens universe that tries to understand it’s near-universal appeal. It basically comes down to nostalgia for an idealized feudal past without forced labor, poverty, famines or plagues. There’s even a section on this in the manifesto :
I have found, through discussing politics and world events with friends and family, that most people have a similar idea of what a fair and good world looks like.
Most people want their neighborhood to look like the Hallmark cards, not asphalt carbrain dystopias.
Most people think it is wrong to live off the work of others.
Most people want their work to have meaning, to be part of a greater purpose; to advance humanity in the abstract, as one species and not as individuals.
Ironically on this latter point, the military actually sort of offers this. If you join the military you won’t be rich, but you will be taken care of in a quasi-socialist fashion. You work toward a greater common purpose. Yet most in the military do not realize this, how the “real” economy is far more precarious for most workers.
Black Mirror needs to turn that into an episode.
I know many people have mentioned it before but that’s the sort of thing I can’t understand. Mining some pop culture from the 1980s, 70s, 60s? It’s sad and pathetic and I’m used to it. But going back and remaking something forgettable that doesn’t even have nostalgic value is utterly bizarre to me. And even worse - sometimes it’s crap like Very Shitty Zombie Movie (I) (2016) that nobody saw or even heard of. Yet we learn VSZM 2 is in development and there’s the possibility of a VSZM tv series. On top everything else - a massive grift and tax avoidance scheme must be involved.
This, but only for western civilization, and the reality is that civilization isn’t actually ending. We just collectively feel like it’s ending because we can feel hundreds of years of privilege slipping away. Like how people who were previously on top of a caste system feel like they’re being discriminated against when that system is abolished, as the world of unequal exchange breaks down and the ability of the so-called First World to dictate what happens in every corner of the globe diminishes the people who live in the imperial core will feel like the world is collapsing, when in fact it’s just that other countries are rising to our level for the first time.
every time i eat an overpriced steak at a steak house or a greasy hamburger from a fast food restaurant, i think of this knowing that such a thing would become a luxury that future generations will covet and put a lot of effort and time into saving enough money to indulge in something that’s an ordinary day for me.