onlooker wrote:Again Ibon I must belabor the point though I would rather focus on the present and future than the past. Will you not see that the creators of our world are more culpable than the easily seduced and prodded masses. One is about willful premeditated intent the other is about inherent vulnerability to be swayed. One is fashioning a world inherently immoral, the other is succumbing to our natural appetites on an individual basis. The transgressions are at different levels.
dohboi wrote:Good try, onlooker, but it sounds like that's his story and he's stickin' to it.
"As I see it, culpability is ... spread pretty evenly across ... socio economic background."
That's his position, nice and clear.
The tiny percent of the world's elite population that possesses most of the wealth and therefor has most of the power--both direct economic power and the ability to sway elections, politicians, policies, research--to their will and their benefit..those folks have essentially the exact same level of blame/culpability for our current situation as the billion poorest people on the planet living on about a dollar a day, constantly short of food and safe water, with essentially no ability to influence any political structures much less fund research, etc.
That's his (absurd) position and he's sticking to it. So no sense in trying to talk sense to him.
dohboi wrote:Rather an...odd...position for an administrator of a website, to imply that all those the use the site are utterly hapless losers. In any case, it's really none of your business what kind of political activities we engage in offline, but it is obnoxious to suggest that we have no other agency than posters online.
dohboi wrote:If you think I have mischaracterized the above, let me know. But don't try to change the subject to wiggle out of it, please.
As to "What are you doing outside of this cyber venue," I already pointed out that it's none of your business, and its beside the point anyway.
Again, trying to change the subject rather than admit that your basic position is morally reprehensible.
how bizarre as an administrator of a site to ridicule people for participating in the site. Is that how this site plans to promote itself from now on, by ridiculing people who post here merely for the act of posting here. We really are getting into bizarro world here!)
Ibon wrote:dohboi wrote:" that does not mean that most people would wish to be the engineers and designers of a world that is perversely and insatiably about greed and money. A world where the profit motive reigns supreme over all other considerations including the life and well being of all living creatures present and future. "
Nicely put.
Not every time, but often enough, native peoples have been offered large amounts of money to relinquish their rights to sacred lands that they technically still have rights to be treaty. These are generally very poor people, and the dominant paradigm would assume that they would accept such large pay outs, since there is little chance that they're ancient treaty rights will ever actually be recognized. The rich can't understand such things, and just call them 'irrational' and worse. But there are in fact other value systems in the world besides the one that says, "I want to have all the toys in the store."
According to many of my former business associates I made a very irrational decision when I pulled the plug on the world of commerce and came down here to Panama and invested money in creating a private reserve. My exceptional action is exactly the exception that proves the rule. As is Dohboi's example of indigenous culture resisting selling their land. If we were arguing that humans can't do this then both Dohboi's example and my own actions would be proof otherwise. But let's put aside a moment our own moral positions and actually look at the vast cultural landscape, nation states, language groups, religions, ethnic and racial communities around the planet and see how they have fared in resisting the consumption machine that these so called evil elites have set up. All of this planet's inhabitants wanting to materially progress from their first washing machine up to cars and homes and plane rides etc. etc.
A weird Ibon going off to Panama or an indigenous culture here and there that held onto to their tradition over consumption is not making your case. Not when you put this side by side with the thrust of humanity embracing consumption culture.
I am not pessimistic about this changing. I actually believe that a strong bounce back toward traditional values and community and more sustainable life styles isn't that far off on the other side of consequences. I am only observing where we are now, at this moment, and most of worlds inhabitants have swallowed the consumption bait hook line and sinker..... still this late in the game.
Tanada wrote:Ibon of course they do! If they can lay all the blame on the "rich" or the "elites" instead of acknowledging the people they vote for and put into office foster those "rich" and "elite" people then they can separate themselves from the consequences of their votes.
USA for good or ill is a democratic republic where the voters decide who leads. The politicians have divided themselves up into 'pro-business' claims (republican) and Anti-rich claims (democrats) in their rhetoric, but the reality is they all belong to club of Elites and 99 percent of them work every day to maintain that club for their own personal benefit.
In terms of the technology trap, the elites have been working to reduce the influence of Joe6P and Jane6P for generations. Vast swaths of laborers have been priced out of the market squeezed by automation on one side and globalism labor wage pressure on the other side. I see lots of technotopia stories popping up in the media about driverless cars and wonder advances in soar energy technology all of which completely ignore the double edge cost involved. The latest one I just read is about driverless dump trucks for large open cast mines. Basically eliminating 80 percent of the remaining work force in the mining industry if this change gets pushed through. The double edge is, who is going to pay for this new technology? and Where is the energy to power this new technology going to come from?
The world population today is becoming less and less employed due to technology, while at the same time energy to power that technology is getting herder and harder to extract. You have to be some sort of starry eyed utopian to believe the automation revolution will supply all the basic needs of 8 Billion humans who will be living in the lap of luxury with no opportunity to work even if they want too.
Ibon wrote:
Some of you are familiar with some of my rants on the grip cyber reality has on humanity in the way it eclipses organic reality. Of course this is only the most mature manifestation of something that started back with television and how slowly american culture became socialized through the conduit of dumbed down media and entertainment. Trump is the embodiment of this and truth be told there is a huge percentage of Americans that enjoy seeing American politics reduced to what feels and looks and sounds like an episode of The Jerry Springer Show.
So this reality is the fault of the corporate media elties is what Dohboi would have us believe and the American voter is simply as powerless as beef cattle in the feedlot 40 days before heading to the slaughterhouse?
Ibon wrote:In a healthy eco system you have predator prey dynamics, parasites, pathogens, decomposition, growth, competition, cooperation, a complex web of life and death and recycling that is as much about symbiosis as it is tooth and claw. A functioning economic system should mirror this dynamic. Unfortunately our global economic system no longer is recycling and churning in this way. It is flowing in one direction and the average citizen is being sapped and sucked dry.
I think we are close to an inflection point finally. We have been wrong about this in the past and when it seems things cant possibly become more dysfunctional low and behold they actually do! So I am not holding my breath. There is a disintegration happening that is slowly reaching a breaking point BUT the capacity of the average citizen to eat the shit that is fed them and delude themselves that it tastes like chocolate has been underestimated repeatedly again and again.
So where is the breaking point here?
jerry_mcmanus wrote:Funny, this is sort of what the movie "Logan's Run" was about. Can a technologically advanced society live within the carrying capacity of its habitat, even an artificial habitat? Maybe, but it would probably require a very obedient population willing to completely forgo reproductive rights and willing, nay even HAPPY to march right into an early death.
The ending of the movie was telling, the protagonists discovered a whole world outside the domed cities that had returned to a sort of garden of Eden once it had been freed from the burden of human overpopulation.
They promptly freed the other people from their "technology trap", presumably to start breeding like rabbits again...
onlooker wrote: Oh and I also hope both you Ibon and you Dohboi do not become like Ennui and Pstarr ie. mortal enemies
dohboi wrote:
"With greater power and privilege comes greater responsibility."
dohboi wrote:"With greater power and privilege comes greater responsibility."
dohboi wrote:
"I do not hold them culpable " By this did you mean "I do not hold them any more culpable than the I hold the populace, or do you mean they are actually not culpable at all"
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