asg70 wrote:No. Consumption culture is a symptom of TOO MUCH freedom, aka tragedy of the commons.
You’re only thinking in terms of the freedom to consume. It is implicate in your statement.
Freedoms Americans don’t have:
-The right to bodily integrity
-The right to communicate without intrusion by unwanted 3rd parties that can impose financial and legal consequences on the things one says
-The right to health freedom and health privacy(HIPPA laws are a joke and don’t protect these things)
-Right to travel without being scanned, scrutinized, and/or molested and/or placed at risk of arrest for made-up or catch-all charges(see TSA, see civil asset forfeiture practices)
-Right to unabridged freedom of speech and the right to protest (“free speech” zones that you are “allowed” to protest in and where you are monitored and can face arrest for no reason at all do not count as they defeat the purpose)
-The right to privacy of transactions
-Freedom from unwanted mass surveillance
-The right to private property without any strings attached (even the unabomber was forced to pay taxes on his shack, and never truly owned it. But the Rothschilds, Warburgs, Rockefellers, other well-moneyed dynastic families and their ilk get to have allodial titles on all their property that you and I are not allowed to get)
-The RIGHT to bear arms (unconditional of background checks, otherwise it’s no longer a right)
The list goes on. Check the following link as it’s way more comprehensive than anything I am willing to type right now:
https://washingtonsblog.com/2015/09/americans-have-lost-our-rights.htmlYou and your neighbors are expected to conform with norms and laws created not by you and your neighbors, but by moneyed interests seeking to profit off of forcing your behavior in a certain direction. You are expected to exist as a piece of inventory to labor not for the purpose of enriching yourself, but for enriching people who capitalize on your labor just by the “virtue” of being born as wealthy owners, where failure to comply with this lopsided and unfair arrangement has unnatural consequences not of your own making designed to prevent you from pursuing life or even existing altogether. You’re not even allowed to live like a primitive, even if you want to, as there are nearly infinite ways to criminalize your existence as such all because someone with money who pays for nice things is unhappy if you get to live for free, regardless of whether its from your own efforts or not.
That’s not freedom. It’s its opposite. It’s a form of slavery that you’re told to believe is freedom, and where one is derided as unpatriotic or communist or any other type of label when they don’t believe it.
I see plenty of individuality out there, really too much (tats and piercings and what not).
It's not individuality that's in short supply, it's any sort of spiritual grounding or purpose in life beyond narcissism.
That more falls into the “buying crap” category, more consumerism.
What about individuality of thought? That seems to be in very short supply these days. Everyone has their own opinions, but they are overwhelmingly just talking points that were force fed to them by a government-infiltrated propaganda machine pretending to be a free press. You’re looked at as an oddity at best and even a menace or possible terrorist at worst if you read certain books and/or have unauthorized thoughts, and you can’t even check a library book out any longer without the possibility of it being subject to scrutiny by people with the power to imprison and kill, all without even a single vote on your part.
What about individuality of action? Those deviations from the mean that outright reject the BAU lifestyle, are cast aside, rejected, imprisoned, rendered destitute, labeled mentally ill, ect. just for refusing to go along to get along with all of the madness around them. Here’s a list of things that are not illegal or even directly harmful to anyone that can get one labeled a “domestic terrorist”:
https://publicintelligence.net/fbi-suspicious-activity-reporting-flyers/Do you keep more than 7 days of food in your home? Insist on paying with cash instead of credit card? Assert your rights when an officer asks you to waive them? Get nervous standing in long lines with crowds of people? Are an environmentalist? A Christian? Frustrated with a mainstream ideology? Own a gun? Been to a protest? Pro or anti abortion? Dissatisfied with the direction of a political policy?
ANY of the above can get you labeled as an extremist or potential terrorist. Acting independently these days can subject you to scrutiny at minimum, and is effectively a punishment without one even having to commit a crime.
You’re mistaking that very narcissism you mention for this individuality I mention, and they are not the same thing. Any spiritual grounding or purpose in life beyond said narcissism has individuality as a prerequisite. Perhaps that lack of individuality is why such a thing is so rare these days?
Huh? Marijuana is being legalized across the US
a) Not federally
b) Not in practice. You can have your kids taken from you for smoking it, even if you’re not abusive, where the odds are great that they will be abused by the state or by a foster family, or even trafficked should they wind up in state custody all because the parent took a toke. You can smoke it and still be jailed for driving under the influence of it or being intoxicated in public, even after the effects have worn off hours/days/weeks ago thanks to zero tolerance per se laws. As well, you can lose your job or be denied a job, have your assets seized, and any other number of nasty consequences imposed on you that have no natural relation to the action of ingesting it, all consequences imposed by other people who for some reason think they have the right to micromanage your life choices all the while claiming you are free and criticizing and/or penalizing any opinion to the contrary.
c) I was referring to ALL drugs. Let people own and control their own bodies for a change. Stop trying to control, monitor, regulate, and punish what people can choose to freely ingest. It is expensive, it doesn’t work, it is a massive waste of resources, it doesn’t really make us safer(in fact, it does the opposite by providing a black market and the associated crime that comes with it) and is a tired excuse that has been used for more than a century and is still being used to “justify” the unceasing erosion of our civil liberties.
and were you asleep during Occupy Wallstreet
No. Were you?
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/07/14-specific-allegations-of-nypd-brutality-during-occupy-wall-street/260295/http://www.justiceonline.org/commentary/fbi-files-ows.htmlhttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coordinated-crackdown-occupyhttps://www.democracynow.org/2014/3/25/why_did_fbi_monitor_occupy_houstonhttps://nypost.com/2018/01/09/occupy-wall-street-protester-only-awarded-one-cent-in-suit/Lets see here. Documenting and databasing of everyone at the protests, even the ones who never did anything illegal, only for many of them to be haunted later on for even participating because they needed a job and now can’t pass the security clearance/background check because they are labelled potential troublemakers/terrorists, even though they may not even have a criminal record. Police beating up on journalists and lawyers who did nothing illegal but document abuse. Kettling then arresting en masse entire crowds, hundreds and even thousands at a time, including journalists, for the “crime” of being at the protest after a small percentage, possibly agent provocateurs hired by the state, turned violent. Some of these same arrestees were then crammed shoulder to shoulder into buses for 12-24 hours straight with no food or water, and forced to piss and shit themselves because they weren’t even unshackled so that they could use a toilet. The FBI/Homeland Security/fusion centers all coordinating a crackdown on the protests at taxpayer expense and the FBI even knowing of a plot to kill Occupy leaders while doing nothing to stop it or arrest the conspirators, and after it wasn’t carried out, refusing to let the would-be victims even know who wanted to kill them. Then, those who have ironclad proof of being unjustly assaulted by police, get no real compensation in the court system.
And you think the problem is too much freedom?
To anyone paying attention to this event, it confirmed the U.S. is a democracy in name only, and not in practice. It confirmed the U.S. is a corporate-run dictatorship of sorts pretending to be a free country, the leaders of which then punish those that contradict the official narrative of it being a free country by daring to protest the fact that it isn’t.
and Pussy-hat mania?
Dissent that doesn’t disrupt the activities of the power structure and its greatest benefactors is mostly allowed in the world’s “Democracies”. In fact, the Extinction Rebellion was allowed up until the point that it started to disrupt the unelected bureaucrats and commercial interests in the City of London making then policy decisions, often in defiance of the will of the voters who are allowed to “vote” for their puppet of choice.
You're complaining about things that aren't in any way a problem.
Maybe they aren’t a problem to those who are comfortable and well off, and unwilling to do anything about the problem other than a token effort, content that they already got theirs.
When your grandchildren ask you what you did to help stop the clusterfuck of a future they inherit, what are you going to tell them? If you tell them nothing could have been done, they probably won’t believe you and may in fact resent you, because it is simply not true.
Besides, what exactly does people getting high or protesting accomplish, really, besides a lot of broken windows with bricks in them and stoners?
Perhaps instead it could trigger a shift away from consumption culture? The counterculture movement of the 60s was making some headway regarding this, until it too was coopted and eventually destroyed.
The more I read of your posts the less respect I have for you, especially when you hold a murderer like the unabomber up as an idol.
Considering your near constant use of ad hominem attacks to address my statements since you’ve been on these forums, I’ve questioned whether you ever had any at all. Not that it matters much.
I really think your mentality is part of the problem, not the solution, although you'll never acknowledge this, because you've developed an angry revolutionary mindset as you search for something external to blame for your own personal life circumstances.
I’m not “searching” for anything to blame for my circumstances. I could have done a lot worse and am content in knowing I tried to do the right thing, even if I may end up destitute some day as a result of it. What bothers me is there isn’t much of a market for solutions, only more consumption, more extraction, and more systems to help perpetuate it even at the barrel end of a gun if necessary, until it blows up in everyone’s faces and possibly results in a mass dieoff. The biggest money to be made is in mass murder, mass surveillance, mass control, participating in the structures and processes that make these things possible, and with the financial graft that makes it all possible. Isn’t it curious that the priority of the current leadership is not actually in solving those components of the world’s problems that are technically solvable, as they throw token efforts in that direction to look good, hoping that the public forgets the other policies that dwarf them and cause great destruction all over the world. There's always money to throw at endless wars, controlling people, imprisoning people, spying on people, social engineering, conquering, empire building, harassing people into giving up money, "creative" new ways of taxing people, but when it comes to a similarly massive effort to find ways to stabilize humanity's future, to end government debt, to get off of fossil fuels, to change unsustainable business practices and ways of living, it is always derided as "unrealistic". I didn't create this world. Other people created it for me, and are forcing me to participate in it in a way that suits them, and not me, lest they lock me in a cage or kill me if I refuse to be locked in a cage.
Nor were the circumstances with which I was raised conducive towards being one of the lucky few to be successful, given that the greatest predictor of success in this country(and the world) is to be born into it. And I wasn’t. That’s not my fault. I worked for everything I currently have, modest it may be, and as far as I can tell, have never caused anyone harm in the process, and if I ever did, certainly never deliberately. I produced far, far more value than I was ever paid, and had to pay taxes on it, while those who extracted the surplus value didn’t have to pay as much taxes, and have yet to see any significant reward for all those thousands of hours of my life spent working. Mere survival is not a reward, as the primitives can achieve that with greatly less hours of their lives expended toward that end.
I only mentioned my circumstances in this topic to illustrate just what is going on in this country and how things really are. I was not joking or exaggerating at the number of jobs I applied to, and it says a lot, because I was extremely competent at the work I did when I had the job that required me to do it. I know I’m not alone either, as people I graduated with who are skilled and capable are or were fucking homeless, through no fault of their own, with no real or likely legal means available for them to claw their way out. One of them got a roof over their head over a period of months of living on the street by selling dope to get a deposit on an apartment, because their McJob wages were garnished to pay a student loan that went into default when they got out of college and couldn’t find well paying work in a “high demand” field where companies clamored for H1Bs to fill the gap while this person ended up homeless working a McJob, unable to this day to even make the minimum payment on their student loan at that wage. What conclusions am I supposed to draw from these experiences of others as well as my own? Blaming myself for circumstances external to myself is not conducive to finding a solution. Nor is pretending that these external circumstances don’t exist, which is what the mainstream media likes to do with its claims of a “booming” economy that isn’t there in practice or while the government claims inflation is low when my receipts kept over the last decade tell a very different story. Yet I’m part of the problem for not toeing the company line and agreeing with things that are demonstrably false? That’s called gaslighting.
You’re trapped in a bubble of upper-middle-class comfort and do not see how those less fortunate than you live and what events and circumstances they are dealt that influence and filter the choices they are able to make.
In fact, I bet you’ve never had to experience ANY of the following in your life:
-dysfunctional family during childhood
-parent(s) with drug addictions
-parent(s) in prison
-abusive foster families
-molestation
-childhood homelessness
-going 2 or more days without eating
-family members/friends attempting or committing suicide
Or as an adult, you’ve probably never personally experienced the following:
-homelessness
-shootings within your own neighborhood
-close friends/family members committing suicide
-police brutality
-crippling college debt just to get a permission slip to work
-living paycheck to paycheck with nothing to show for it, even when living responsibly and not being wreckless with money
-parents that leave nothing behind but funeral bills when they pass away
I’ve personally experienced and/or witnessed most of the above. And I was not to blame for ANY of it. And it did impact my life choices greatly. But the problem is much bigger than that.
It was also observed that most of these problems, more often than not, were spurned from a grinding sort of financial insecurity that is often deliberately ignored in this country even when it is being experienced first hand, a level of financial insecurity that was induced by (at the time)artificial scarcity, mass manipulation, the lack of honest money combined with endless printing, money issued as debt, wide availability of credit to make up for declining real wages, and the greed of a few people who profit off the collective misery in every direction that they can. These things have consequences to everyone, even when they may not be direct, even if these variables may not be easy to articulate or chart over time. It filters into the prices of everything, the need for credit/loans to afford anything especially needs like food/shelter/transportation/utilities even when one WANTS to save for these things to avoid interest charges and even when one is careful to keep costs down, the medical costs, the crime rate, the culture of materialism, and many other things, all creating a series of feedback loops that encourage and exacerbate the worst tendencies of the rabble you despise from the comfort of your relative ivory tower middle class existence.
I didn’t have things the worst, but were it not for the actions of other people that have worked against my interests, my life could be a lot better today than it is, and were it not for the steps I took to try to better my circumstances, things could be a lot worse for me than they currently are, and were it not for other people exploiting me in some form in most facets of my existence as a condition thereof, I’d probably be much happier as would many others like me. But I cannot unsee or unexperience the things I have seen and experienced, no matter how often you tell me to ignore them.
Angry people with a revolutionary mindset do not occur in a vacuum, or as the result of some malformed ennui or confusion. But go on blaming the “angry revolutionary mindset” as the source of a series of problems caused by the actions of the very leadership you steadfastly defend that the “revolutionaries” are critical of. As long as you “tend to” your “own garden”, you can be comfortable in knowing that you have the metaphorical land with which to tend one at all, blaming everyone else who CAN’T for not doing so, forgetting that the reason they don’t tend theirs is because they don’t have said land to even start one AND it is priced out of reach by any honest work at the prevailing wages. Do keep in mind that in a collapse scenario, people could always take your advice to heart, and get themselves a garden to tend to by taking yours away. How would that make you feel?
If you really want outright collapse, keep supporting the status quo, because that is precisely where it will lead. The angry mob tactic is actually a last ditch effort to halt it, and is most often resorted to as such only when the masses find the status quo unlivable(I'm not referring to soccer riots or mob stupidity here, but genuine revolt, civil war), and the prospect of death no worse than their current existence, even if this tactic's chance of successfully initiating a positive change is low. At least it’s a chance. Of course, the leadership could always step aside, give up their power, and get out of the way too, and when they don’t, or when they even use violence on the rabble in effort to stop them, that isn’t the rabble’s fault.
The low and high roads are not what they seem at first glance. If we had real leaders, they would actually lead by setting an example and practicing what they preach, and not trying to manage and manipulate the rabble for their own profit, taking a cut out of every aspect of the rabbles’ collective existence, and inserting fees/restrictions in everything the rabble wants to do under the guise of the common good while the "leadership" extracts a hefty profit along the way.
You like to give these “leaders” a free pass because they were “elected” as a result of a series of rigged, filtered, and vetted processes that the average voter didn’t even have a say in, with candidates that the rabble may even find a closer match to its views locked off the ballot and out of the debates altogether, “leaders” that, even when replaced, result in no significant change in policy because there are special interests behind the scenes dictating the laws and regulations everyone else is forced to live by, special interests forcing the status quo on everyone regardless of whether they even want it, with or without their input.
You might find the following study enlightening:
https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdfJoeSixPack’s actual impact on the decisions of the “leaders” he “voted” for, is effectively zero, and choosing different ones wouldn’t have made any substantial difference. J6P is not to blame when these “leaders” behave like Pol Pot or Hitler, not perhaps unless you blame J6P for not using violence upon them when it is necessary to make their actions cease.
The unnecessary felling of a tree, perhaps the old growth of centuries, seems to me a crime little short of murder. ~Thomas Jefferson