dohboi wrote:
Sooo, you start with a strawman, but then can't even manage to knock him down, and instead use arguments that tend to support it rather than knock it down.
I think it was you who singled out the educated wealthy as culpable a few pages back. This is not a binary choice. As I see it culpability is multi faceted and spread pretty evenly across the whole spectrum of religions, cultures, nation states and socio economic background. That is all I have ever claimed. Something universal in the hive mind of modern humans.
40 years ago I remember well how easy it was in those early days to single out WASP and wealthy white imperialist americans. Back then when white America dominated the cultural and economic landscape. It is not so easy today to single out one group, one race, one socio economic group, one nation, one ethnic or
language group.
Back then before China and India emerged when their ancient cultural traditions and religions seemed to represent an exotic and totally different paradigm. Back then when the soviet union structured itself differently. Back then when there seemed to be more viable cultural choices and models.
How ubiquitous across the whole globe that we now see the current consumer based economic system underscores an underlying appetite and vulnerability, call it ambition, that has to date not really presented any resistance or viable options.
The fact that Onlooker for example has to reach for an almost extinct indigenous philosophy really does prove the point.
If culpability was primarily in the domain of the wealthy elite then surely we would have seen greater resistance or viable alternatives by now.
If it is further true that the masses have been misled and duped into submission by the powerful propaganda tools of the wealthy elite in the form of advertisements then even in this case I wouldn't lay the culpability on to the wealthy.
Surely a population permitting themselves to be duped shares equally the responsibility for their position. This is probably the source of why we come back and repeatedly debate this.
I see the willingness of the masses to accept and live mediocre lives as making them equally culpable as the wealthy puppet masters. Especially when you consider that the vast majority of these masses are compromising themselves with aspirations to increase rather than decrease their dependency on the system that exploits them.
The poor masses of exploited humans all clustering around their TV's, digital devices and shopping venues. Cruely exploited by a cynical and educated wealthy elite.
Look around. They seem awfully content.
Patiently awaiting the pathogens. Our resiliency resembles an invasive weed. We are the Kudzu Ape
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