People were shitty monsters before capitalism, and after too. People have been people regardless of economic system.
“Humanity is a disease” is not the same statement as “humanity is capable of committing atrocities” though. The latter leaves the door open for a “but”, while the former makes humanity itself a systemic problem but refuses or “forgets” to pin the blame on anyone or any system.
Such statements devolve the conversation into defeatist pseudo-nihilism, where a “true nihilist” knows that the betterment of humanity will have to come from within.
I do agree that capitalism is not the root of all evil, but it is central to the particular “planet’s fucked, housing is unaffordable, and no-one cares” doomer sentiment that is depicted in the meme (at least that is how I read it).
Society start to become unwell only when the few “monsters” get power, especially in a unbalanced way.
And yes some have and always will try to get it, but i don’t think it’s very relevant here…
Capitalism is a very powerful way for them to use our economic system to get their power, hence why it’s a problem in itself.
And that’s also why we could have hope for a system where they can’t get power. Democracy is one solution, although limited, for example.
Humanity has put monsters in charge since the beginning. There are monsters in charge of all of us right this second.
Sir, this is Lemmy. Everything bad past, present, and future is the fault of capitalism.
Oh yeah, everything bad is the fault of cars too. Almost forgot that one.
Some one on that “we need more sensitive men like in LOTR” post one of the top comments was about how men aren’t like this because capitalism. I point out the absurdity of that message and get ratio’d
Its such an echo chamber
Like yeah capitalism in it’s current state us the cuase of a lot of problems, but the inevitable communist revolution isn’t going to do much about the crushing expectations society puts on men.
People really do love to try and tie every world issue into one thing, when the fact of the matter is that things like “the patriarchy” or “capitalism” are just tools of the oppressor and not the oppressor themselves.
It doesn’t matter what ideology you run a society with if the people are the top are all shortsighted, self interested ideologues.
People accosiate monarchs with oppression for a reason.
So much global equivocation in so few words.
Hey sad person, my parents are super rich so I could afford to go to a fancy university that had a legit communist poli sci professor. That’s where I learned how to talk to the poors. Which is what you are.
You see your problem is that you’re poor because you didn’t have rich parents like I did. No I’m not going to do anything to help you, I gotta get of the hair salon LOL. But now that you understand that you’re unhappy because you’re poor, that’s going to make your life so much better! Ok, I’ve done my good deed for the day so I don’t have to feel bad about having a trust fund. Gotta go, byeeeeee!
Tbf the fact that education requires money is also a problem of the system.
Everytime I think rich kids must feel bad for inequality, I remember how easy it is for them to cure their own guilt with the small platitudes of progressivism that won’t at all effect the system that empowers them to our detriment.
Joke’s on you, I learned most of this stuff from Wikipedia.
But now that you understand that you’re unhappy because you’re poor, that’s going to make your life so much better!
Unironically, yes. Specially if you also understand the reason why you’re poor.
Finally, the Disney princess we need - the one that wants to burn down Disney.
I’d watch that
To bad fixing it costs resources that are largely hoarded and contrived by the people who profit off it being broken.
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Yummy, I love having class consciousness with my lunch
The girl is the reason the guy is literally me.
How sad
I fear he has internalised the current dynamics of the life-struggle, and failed to appreciate the profound beauty of the dynamic near-equilibrium that permits the sorrow of life (and the joys that they imply) to ever exist in the first place
In a way which misplaces blame and in turn obscures the actual dynamics of culpability for their struggles?
Very much so
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Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
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No it has nothing to do with my specific situation it has everything to do with looking at human history and realizing we’ve been destructive barbarous cunts the whole time.
We literally just act like we’re not or ignore the obvious violence that has been constant on this planet.
And honestly it’s not even just humans. Other animals are also incredibly violent and cruel. They just generally don’t have the ability to know what their doing is cruel.
Like a monkey eating another animal alive because killing it takes more effort. Or a group of hyenas gnawing at the ass of an animal because it’s the easiest part to chew through which results in the animal staying alive until it’s about halfway eaten and dies of blood loss. Or the fact that a lot of animals can survive with mortal wounds for days just prolonging their suffering before their certain death.
Life is fucked all the way through.
Hunter gatherers weren’t so bad, it was just when we started saying “this land is mine” that we ran into true savagery.
Pretty sure even our pre-human ancestors fought over territory.
Yeah Homo Sapien wasn’t the only species to evolve as a bipedal hunter gatherer and yet somehow we are the only ones left… Hmmmm
Number 1! Number1!
Hunter gatherers hunted and gathered mega fauna to extinction too. So aggressively did we hunt before we even wrote anything down that we had to settle down and say “this land is mine, and you may not take the grain from it”
Mass Extinction Cycles have been part of this Planets normal cycle for a LOOOOONG time before humans started doing it too. Oxygen, the thing that all current life in this planet needs, caused one with its mass introduction. Literally everything that people list as reasons for hating humans show up everywhere in nature and other animals. Theres a shitload of good things we have accomplished that cant be said for nature and other animals though. The thing thats unique about humans, and why I think it means we need to eventually leave this planet and turn it into a nature reserve, is that we managed to escape Natures checks and balances, which, to be clear, is death and starvation. Being able to provide quality life for almost all humans born, regardless of health and mental conditions is amazing, but unfortunately makes us incompatible with nature, and if we removed our selves from that, NOT by killing ourselves, but instead by creating our own environments on space stations and dead planets, we can have all of the positives, without the negatives of being incompatible with Nature
Humanity has driven 70% of all species to extinction since our first steps.
We are equivalent to a super volcano or a meteor.
How many megafauna did we hunt to extinction before we even invented language lol. Humanity is literally a disease. We exploit resources until there is nothing left to exploit. Every. Single. Time.
I encourage you to look at experiments with kids involving altruism. The research suggests much of our fucked up nature is rather learned through the environment. The more we improve our environment, the more we’ll likely see that altruism shine through. Not to say psychopaths don’t exist, but they are extremely rare, and research demonstrates that they can live relatively well without acting on their impulses with proper treatment, too.
I don’t think capitalism is responsible for humans being noisy and smelly.
Noise and smell are natural parts of being human. Any social system that doesn’t accommodate the existence of human physiology should not be used for humans.
In regards to noise and smell, open space offices and Amazon toilet breaks are prime examples of how capitalism have failed to accommodate for human physiology.
Okay but they’ll still be noisy and smelly.
When you’re stuck in traffic, remember, you are traffic.
Believe me, I know. The worst part about humanity is that I’m one of them.
That’s probably true.
Unless they’re playing music on the bus through their phone speaker,
or using some shitty body spray.
I switched to lemm.ee partly to avoid the constant doomerism vibe in reddit. Unfortunate to see lots of lemmings here trying to keep the negative vibe tho.
Let’s have a quick reality check: human civilization is young AF. We are cosmic toddlers. No need to throw in the towel just yet on our collective (and individual) ability to be/come more self-aware and ethical. Let the sample size grow, fam.
I am also not a fan of the doomerism. Feels harder to avoid here unfortunately
Even the elderly can learn. But also we’ve existed less long than any known member of our genus so yeah we aren’t cosmic toddlers, we’re Terran toddlers
This fits the “leftist meme wall of text” archetype to a T
Based to the nth degree
And if they truly are one, they won’t see anything morally wrong with it. It would be on them for not being able to prevent it.
Nonsense.
I’m no “repressed worker exposed to the constant violence of capitalism…”. I retired happily end of my 20s, living carpe diem every day since and never have to worry about the technicality of life. But just because i profit personally from the world, doesn’t mean i have to like it the way it is. I would give that up for a fair and just world.
My “misplaced blame” lies very well placed on our species itself.
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We made capitalism which makes the lifes of most people just miserable and has a system-immanent failure included for free.
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we enslave people as a commodity, treat women like animals and property, treat animals even worse.
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we torture and kill our own species for fun and sport and war and feelings and whatever else reason there comes up
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we care mostly just for ourselfes. We only care for others when nothing is at stake or we fear our god’s wrath.
And it’s not really “a few individuals”. It’s true that those hold the rudder, but I’d bet my left nut on it, that the vast majority of people that currently think to be “good” would instantly be one of “those” if given the chance. And do everything to defend it then.
Yes, I’m a misanthropist for >2 decades. Doesn’t mean i hate humans, i hate humanity. I’m the nicest shit to other people. Be the change in the world you want to see. Still doesn’t blind me to the way the world IS.
So what you’re saying because “power over” is bad, humans are bad? There are plenty humans civilizations who did a better job at preventing power, maybe your misanthropy is a symptom of a narrow worldview?
Oh yeah. Where are those civilizations?
Exactly. But you’re right. It must be narrow worldview.
Our species even favors/rewards the “dark triad”-personality traits. Nice people (or civilizations) have no chance in the long run, as all it takes to topple it, is one of the aforementioned with enough ambition. History shows, life all around us show.
Sarcasm aside, I’d really prefer if it’d just be my “narrow worldview”. Then the problem would die with me 😊
This worldview is getting increasingly more common with more people falling for eco-fascist talking points. In my experience it most often boils down to two reasons why this happens: lack of education or unwillingness.
As you mentioned you’re in a privileged position, I am just gonna accuse you of the second. And that’s a shame. I bet with all the time you have from being free from being forced to do wage labour you could actually do good in the world. Your generalisation is an insult to every good person in the world, and I find that to be narrow-minded and disgusting.On the off-chance the reason is the first, I recommend Kropotkin’s “Mutual Aid” as an intro. It’s free in the anarchist library and other places.
It’s neither, but I will still give it a read. Knowledge never hurts.
No reason to be ad hominem.
I do despise my species, yet i actually do good with my tons of spare time. What I consider “good”. I picked a fraction of this world that is wrong. I help the mentally ill that have no other help and are alone in this world. It often takes more time of a day than some job would take. People who where abused their whole life, raped, beaten, tortured, whatever. The aftermath of what evil people leave behind.
I don’t need to do it, i don’t even have children or a family (beside a wife), so i couldn’t even care less for the world i leave behind.
But i would be a hypocrite to hate people and BE one of those I hate myself.
So, i won’t ask you what YOU are doing to make this world better, other than insulting random assholes like me on the net, as it’s no contest. Whatever you do, it’s the best the world can ask for.
Also: sorry, if you actually felt personally insulted by that. Not intended. I give every person a chance to proove me wrong. I just obviously start from a different prejudice. You seem to hate me more than i hate you 😊
That’s great to hear you’re trying to be better than your skewed view of humanity! I hope I was wrong.
I don’t know you, so hating you is kind of difficult and I don’t want to anyways :). I do absolutely despise the opinions you’ve presented in this thread though. I understand them on an emotional level, but I really encourage you to try to grow past them. It only helps those who want to make the world a worse place, and I personally think that empathy and cooperation is the way out.
I understand that’s more difficult than just throwing the towel.It’s hard to “grow past”, when I grew past the more optimistic view decades ago and grew into misanthropy. Rationally by observation and deduction, not emotionally (How else could I love my wife). There surely are exceptions. Great people who really do good, not just because their god told them to, or they want to reap some benefits in the long run or for whatever ulterior motive else. It’s just incredibly tiresome to check thousands of empty shells for some rare pearls. And also totally useless for the big picture outside my little box. One tainted apple is enough. One unvaxxed is enough. One evil ambitious fucknugget is enough. We’re even on the brink of witnessing the first trillionaire. That is a force no “empathy and cooperation” could compete against.
Not saying you’re wrong. Keep that optimism as long as you could.
Anyhow: “Nothing can make our life, or the lives of other people, more beautiful than perpetual kindness.” (Leo Tolstoy)
That’s a pretty valid point of view. You’re right on the fact most are corruptible by power, so i personally wouldn’t blame individuals, i only blame the system.
And it’s true the better systems didn’t last… Doesn’t mean we can’t try to improve ever so slightly.
Now i’m not sure how much we can learn from history though.
The problem is that our paradigm is changing much too fast alongside our technology.
So i think we can’t really predict what the gamble of technology will give us next.
Might be bad, might be good, or something just different, but i bet we will be extremely surprised by how fast change will come.
I don’t see how tech will change anything? It’s just a tool, it doesn’t alter US.
And yes, of course, we sure can and should try to better the world. Yet it should be globally clear at this point, that capital is deciding and not us. One musk might change the world. But none of those extreme moneybags will ever change it for the better. And no working-class joe will ever have the chance to change anything other than in his utopia-vision. Doesn’t mean the vision isn’t valid. Just futile.
You don’t see how tech is the only reason for the world changing like it does recently?
Internet and digital tech for exemple, is what made Google, Amazon or Facebook…
Their capital didn’t came from just the guys running things, pretty far from it. Without them their company would still exist, just with a different name and guy at the top, they would give the same service.
What created those company and the capital is what was invented and developed by programmers and scientists.
And only profit is driving it, not any one person.
Today what is changing things repeatedly is digital techniques like AI.
And let’s be honest gafa aren’t the one chosing to invest, they just know if it’s not them the opportunity to make billions will be to someone else, it’s just reality of technical advancement.
And that’s what changed our society, always has been. Same could be said about coal, electricity and petrol, cars…
The market just follows the flow of technology, and the problem is that it doesn’t care for people in the process, you just can’t miss an opportunity.
P.S. I’d also argue it change a lot about US in some sens, it changed our vision of the world, our culture and our way to interact.
I think you overvalue tech. At least in regard to the topic. Sure, it lays new paths. And in the case of the Internet it were gargantuan changes (i witnessed it all and loved it). But it didn’t and doesn’t change the nature of man itself. It just makes it easier and offers new ways and tools.
Also AI won’t change that much. It’s not even intelligent. It’s “just” a titanic amount of data with no conscience or intelligence. AI is just a great buzzword. Sure it’s awesome and will change a lot in the tech-industry, but it’s no game-changer for capitalism or us.
Sure it doesn’t change our nature. But i don’t think our nature is the only factor in how our society evolve. It’s not the only thing that matters to us anymore, i wouldn’t be able to talk to you let alone read (i haves glasses). Most of the things we do aren’t natural.
Now sure AI isn’t really intelligent let alone conscious. But it is such a tool that impacted a lot industry and our daily lives. Writing or art, gaming, programming, all changed to some extent. And it seems to still have a long way to go.
Now of course it will not change that much on its own, but in the future alongside with everything else we’re going to invent, i think it will make things change, like previous invention made our modern society.
Yes, we need to practice with ourselves before we get to meet the evil xenos from the stars and avoid getting curbstomped by them. I think we are doing great.
Oh yeah. Where are those civilizations? Exactly.
Would you mind explaining how you answer that question yourself? Just so I don’t misunderstand you.
There are plenty humans civilizations who did a better job at preventing power
I didn’t make the claim. I’m honestly curious as to what civilization(s) you meant? I couldn’t name one currently.
Many native societies (who often still exist today), the zapatistas, in the ZADs, the Paris commune, Rojava, and also potentially most of the time humanity existed. I could dig up more, but arguing with somebody who has opinions like that is tedious.
“Meanwhile, antihumanists have divested the very concept of Progress of all relevance and meaning in the farrago of human self-denigration that marks the moods of the present time. A skepticism that denies any meaning, rationality, coherence, and continuity in History, that corrodes the very existence of premises, let alone the necessity of exploring them, renders discourse itself virtually impossible”
Bookchin, you can find the context here
Not arguing about the existence of probably better societies in the past (it’s also hard to argue about things in the very long gone past). But where are they today? How is any of that applicable to our current world? Hunter-Gatherrers are gone. We’re consumers now. Worker-ants. The only reason those native societies are still there, is that they have got nothing anyone wants. If they would’ve, they would’ve been eradicated too. Like every other civilization that were weaker.
But hey, I absolutely don’t want to convince you otherwise. Would be futile anyway.
To quote Dostoyevski (I’m pretty positive it was him): “I have seen the truth. I have seen and I know that people can be beautiful and happy. I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal condition of mankind.”
I feel like when you see some people being evil, and your conclusion is that everyone would be evil if given the chance, you kind of have to also be evil to come to that conclusion. Good people don’t “turn evil” easily. If you suddenly “become evil” as soon as the opportunity presents itself, were you ever truly good?
Ever heard the phrase “power corrupts”? Sure, there might be people who are good and come to might and power. But how often does that happen? Name one powerful person that does good? Even if you can, name another 3. While naming poweful people who fuck(ed) this planet and everything and everyone it, is prerty easy.
So, without even discussing the nature of man, the simple observation of what currently is and always was, seems to suffice.
Also you’re not wrong with your last statement. That is basically what i said. They weren’t truly ever good. We play by the rules until we mustn’t anymore.
I’ve heard the phrase, but that doesn’t make it true. Power attracts bad people and gives them the opportunity to be more bad. This doesn’t mean it turns good people bad.
Then name one person who ever reached true power by being good and then remained good. Maybe you could even name one, but could you name three? Yet the list of people that would rather proove that point is easy to fill to the brim.
Most people who are good don’t make the news, but unironically: MrBeast, Jesus, and Bernie Sanders
Never thought I’d put any two of those people in the same category lmao
Wow, what a combination. But sorry, a youtuber that earns his money by being “good” and is literally living off this “making news” isn’t really counting in my book.
Jesus… Dunno about some figure that might or might not have existed in this or another way. Hard to argue.
Sanders… I’m no American so i don’t know enough about the guy, other than that he want the good changes. But who cares, he won’t make it. Good people never get power. That’s the point. You’ll probably end with clown-face-billionaire-pedo again.
Yeah I made this hard mode with my choices lol
a youtuber that earns his money by being “good” and is literally living off this “making news” isn’t really counting in my book.
Why not? He’s basically a walking nonprofit organization. He makes videos of spending the money to make more money through ad revenue and merch sales, but that earned money is reinvested into future charity. I wasn’t able to find specifics, but it’s a significant amount (several million, multiple times). Is he also enjoying being a celebrity? Yeah, probably. But that doesn’t mean he’s not both good and powerful.
Sanders won’t get in power
I mean, he was fairly close to being the democratic presidential nominee, and he’s a pretty productive government member even now. He’s always had a very clear positive stance on things like gay marriage and other democratic policies, even far back into his early career when those were much less popular.
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Damn I totally read all that shit. For sure
You can be a bit of both sides, sometimes. Knowing the stuff on the right makes me feel the stuff on the left, if that makes sense. But not to such an extreme degree
The solution is always to watch the LOTR extended editions.
