/lit/ - Literature

>t. hasn't actually read Ted and doesn't realize how technology is enslaving us and actually limiting what we can do

>>13311354
They want to go back to primitive times. It's not enough for them to fuck off into the woods themselves or become backpackers/travel writers. No. They need to drag everyone else back down into the caves with them.

>>13311364
What are some things we can't do anymore because assembly lines and computers exist?

>>13311372
Well, if your kind wasn't set on destroying every wild habitat or turning them into tourist attractions maybe we could coexist

>>13311373
The fundamental thrust of Ted which I am quite sympathetic with is that you are in a state of constant reliance and dependency on other people. To establish a true hermitage or self sufficient life style has made near impossible thanks to the nature of local governments, various taxes, and laws.

To some people, the idea of having their very livelihood and survival being dependent on others is repugnant. Or they reject the social values of the time and thus wish to not engage in public play of them required to facilitate their dependency.

The average person is not only dependent on the graces of their boss, but of the customer base they serve, hundreds of bureaucrats they will never meet and other random workers who provide the services at a cost to keep them breathing, because they need the shipped in food from rural areas to get their three meals a day.

If one believes there will eventually be a breakdown, or that this state leaves the individual or family vulnerable, or they simply hate the idea of having their livelihood disconnected from nature, and reliant on the vagaries of strangers they will find a friend in Ted.

The lack of community, the lack of leaders of any virtue to warrant lifelong service, and the shackled social connection to the inept is what drives one to embrace that philosophy.

>>13311373
If you live in a heavily industrialized area you can't fucking breathe anymore

>>13311354
Free land with water, fauna, and air that isn't environmentally fucked; less immigration, and zero immigration from countries whose cultures are even worse than ours; and as much possible the instilling of a passion for great art, for romantic love and intellectual pursuits for no other purpose than personal fulfillment.

>>13311373
>What are some things we can't do anymore because assembly lines and computers exist?
Now you can't go without a computer otherwise you're not considered free. The more technology we invent the more we become dependent on it. Nowadays you must have a car otherwise you're not considered free. So now technology limits me from not being able to have a car or a computer. I cannot even get food without having get to get in my car and driving to the grocery store.

>>13311385
There are plenty of places around the world where you can live away from civilisation. You just refuse to do it because you know deep in your heart that life would be abjectly miserable without civilisation and technology.

>>13311391
All this stuff about dependency sounds a little neurotic. The kind of lifeform that has the level of independence you seem to want is extraordinarily rare in the entire history of the planet.

Also, there are still people who go on pilgrimages, take several month long trips to other countries, and so on. But again, this kind of lifestyle was always kind of rare. I can't fathom a state of society where it isn't "near impossible" for the majority of people or think of a time in history where this was the case.

Ultimately though, you didn't really answer my question. What is stopping you from creating your own community? You can form your own relationships, start your own business, donate your own time to places in town who would appreciate your help. If you want community, you can create it yourself.

>>13311421
It used to be the family unit fulfilled the majority of needs of their lands then engaged in favorable barter with their community to make up material shortfalls. It is no where near the level of dependence we enjoy today. Starting a business changes nothing, because running a successful business is nothing but following the best practices for a given economic technology and pleasing a customer base who you are reliant on. You could try forming communes and other such communities but the majority of people are trained to harshly reject such ideas in favor of broad dependence.

I think it is quite unfair to describe the concern as "neurotic", some people are sensitive to the social connections they must endure and modern society forces a cacophony on even the lowest class person.

>>13311399
This is not an argument against technology it is an argument against air pollution. You cannot simply show some ways in which some technology is damaging and act like you have made an argument against technology. For the pic you posted to have any relevance to the technology (not air pollution!) debate you must show how the development of civilisation and technology necessarily entails air pollution. I think this is obviously not the case. In fact I can quite easily imagine a world where technology exists but air pollution does not; this was the case for the majority of human history, and depending on whether we move to green energy, could be the case in the future.

Let me reiterate: showing an example of technology causing harm is no more an argument against technology than presenting an example of a bad book is an argument against the written word.

>>13311354
I just wanna smash computers man

>>13311418
This is such a strange argument. Yes, you do need a car and a computer in this day and age to get by (unless you live in a city with a lot of public transit options). What you're ignoring though is what these things enable you to do.

>>13311431
>It is no where near the level of dependence we enjoy today.
Are you sure? There wasn't the internet before, where you can just look up how to fix something or take care of a health related problem or order a replacement or list an item you want to sell in a few clicks if necessary. That's some basic examples too.

>Starting a business changes nothing, because running a successful business is nothing but following the best practices for a given economic technology and pleasing a customer base who you are reliant on.
If you ran your own business, you could work with the people you want to work with, and set your own work schedule within reason. There is way more flexibility and control as the business owner as opposed to being an employee. Also, all this stuff about having to follow best practices has always existed as long as there has been markets and trade.

>You could try forming communes and other such communities but the majority of people are trained to harshly reject such ideas in favor of broad dependence.
So what? There are still people open to doing this. The internet makes it easier to find them.

>>13311468
>This is such a strange argument. Yes, you do need a car and a computer in this day and age to get by (unless you live in a city with a lot of public transit options). What you're ignoring though is what these things enable you to do.
They enable society to be completely built around them and then you're forced to have them. We can go back to my car example. All cities are built around the concept of cars. If you don't have one you're fucked. Your freedom is limited when you don't have a car.

>>13311450
Help computer.

>>13311481
>Your freedom is limited when you don't have a car.
But when you do have a car, your freedom has expanded further than when there were no cars at all.

>>13311354
Lets remember that the most important issue here is not the present time, but the future, given that the trends of history will continue. As for now, the rising rates of depression, anhedonia, lack of motivation, etc. will show you that technology certainly is having a negative effect on our psychology.

>>13311487
Not really. There was a time when everything was conveniently in walking distance. And how does your freedom expand? You're expected to obey the system by following the traffic laws and stick to the road. When you're walking you can go anywhere you want.

>>13311518
>there was a time when the beach was conveniently in walking distance for millions of people
No there wasn't, and that's just one example. Want to be somewhere that's tens of miles away from you? Now you can be there in a few hours. You can even get away from the place once you're tired of it and be back home in a few hours.

>>13311487
But that freedom of transportation is reduced to something common and boring. The average modern person doesn’t see travel as an amazing gift, unlike people 200 years ago might have. These innovations seem spectacular, but then they become part of the everyday routine. They become a necessity, no longer a luxury

You've never read the manifesto, have you? Just download it and read the bit about surrogate activities, you idiot.

>>13311537
Going to the beach is a surrogate activity. Do what this guy said >>13311543

>>13311538
I don't follow your argument. We get bored of everything eventually, that's why we invent new things. It's why we invented all this technology. We got bored of the tiny communities and bartering. This isn't a reason to stop doing things, it's a reason to keep doing things.

>>13311547
Everything anyone finds pleasurable even remotely can be called a surrogate activity. It's a completely meaningless term.

>>13311468
>There Wasn't the Internet

Yeah, that's why communities and parents actually had to be fairly competent and not bugmen who deposited you at the learning receptacle. All technology has done is encouraged state centralized education for elite edification.

>Starting a business gives you more lateral freedom
Sure but some people just want to live off nature alone, technology has improved to the point they would easily be able to do it if the system didn't demand a pound of flesh for those trying to leave it.

>Start a commune
Yeah, sadly I'm not a jesus freak or a commie so It will be awhile before a critical mass is reached to actually have a bearable community.

>>13311563
>Everything anyone finds pleasurable even remotely can be called a surrogate activity. It's a completely meaningless term
Correction : surrogate activites are completely meaningless

>>13311385
2/8

>>13311563
Hunting, fishing, farming, and reproductive sex are not surrogate activities. For the majority of human history, we were content with these things alone and had no need for surrogate activities. Recall how, in BNW, John reacts to his new environment full of surrogate activities, removed from nature and necessity.

>>13311563
>invention and progress are products of boredom
lmao

>>13311565
>Yeah, that's why communities and parents actually had to be fairly competent and not bugmen who deposited you at the learning receptacle.
The internet being an extremely powerful tool that connects people to a wealth of information instantly, allowing them to focus on other things in their lives and not be the masters of mundane things like they had to be in the past, is not a bad thing. Such a weird way to look at it.

>Sure but some people just want to live off nature alone
You can still grow foods in your own garden and go hunting and fishing if you'd like.

>>13311567
What's meaningful is just the things you like doing. That's all the surrogate activity stuff boils down to.

>>13311587
>Hunting, fishing, farming, and reproductive sex are not surrogate activities.
Why not? I don't need sex to live myself, and I could survive on picking fruits and nuts.

>>13311597
What else are they products of?

>>13311443
>This is not an argument against technology it is an argument against air pollution.
STEMfags get the waterwheel torture.

>>13311372
>>13311443
One crisis means that every last animal will be wiped out.
Plus all your hormone pills.

You don’t know what surrogate activities are. You haven’t read the manifesto

>>13311373
feel

>>13311633
Not an argument.

>>13311668
I have read it.

>We use the term “surrogate activity” to designate an activity that is directed toward an artificial goal that people set up for themselves merely in order to have some goal to work toward, or let us say, merely for the sake of the “fulfillment” that they get from pursuing the goal. Here is a rule of thumb for the identification of surrogate activities. Given a person who devotes much time and energy to the pursuit of goal X, ask yourself this: If he had to devote most of his time and energy to satisfying his biological needs, and if that effort required him to use his physical and mental faculties in a varied and interesting way, would he feel seriously deprived because he did not attain goal X? If the answer is no, then the person’s pursuit of goal X is a surrogate activity. Hirohito’s studies in marine biology clearly constituted a surrogate activity, since it is pretty certain that if Hirohito had had to spend his time working at interesting non-scientific tasks in order to obtain the necessities of life, he would not have felt deprived because he didn’t know all about the anatomy and life-cycles of marine animals. On the other hand the pursuit of sex and love (for example) is not a surrogate activity, because most people, even if their existence were otherwise satisfactory, would feel deprived if they passed their lives without ever having a relationship with a member of the opposite sex. (But pursuit of an excessive amount of sex, more than one really needs, can be a surrogate activity.)

The important part is:

> would he feel seriously deprived because he did not attain goal X? If the answer is no,

The answer is not no, however. It is rarely no. When someone is passionate about, say, music, they WOULD feel seriously deprived if they could no longer play music. If they were passionate enough, it could even drive them to suicide. All he sets up here is a term that is vague enough that it could be applied in an argument to just about anything, because he disregards how biological passions are. Not to mention, if we really do label every activity which is not directly related to his conception of biological needs as a surrogate activity and avoid these activities, then all we're essentially left with is living in a cave with our family and some friends eating some berries and pissing, shitting, and fucking when we feel like it.

>>13311683
Yikes.

>>13311714
It seems like you’re inflating surrogate activities into something larger because you’ve seen that to a few people these activities can be truly important.
Writing for example is a surrogate activity, there are a few people that love to write, and would go out of their way to do so even if it caused them harm, but for most it is an idle hobby. I enjoy writing and set goals for myself, but it’s not that important. I won’t skip work, skip a date, or skip gym time to write.

90% of things in the modern day are like this. I like my job, but I would not sacrifice income to keep it, I enjoy many hobbies, but they hold no true meaning, they are just something to do so I don’t kill myself. The only non-surrogate activity I have are working out and mass. All other activities could be replaced with anything else, and frequently are with no effect on my life or well-being.

>>13311804
But, here's the thing: based on what his idea of a biological need appears to be, you really could reduce "list of things that aren't surrogate activities" to just eating, expunging waste, rudimentary socializing, and cumming in a vagina at least once. Not only is this purportedly free life not as liberating as he or any Tedfag makes it out to be, but there are doubtless millions and millions of people today who would rather die than live so simply. Which, to me, means that all these activities of ours aren't surrogate at all, and are very biologically ingrained in us at this point.

I've also found no good reason for why he thinks this lifestyle of pure biology (as he regards it) is sustainable, or its perpetual sustainability desirable. We left that life in the past because we found other ways to take care of ourselves and collectively voted on doing it those other ways because they were more desirable, for example, agriculture as opposed to picking fruits and nuts. Almost every single invention and technological advancement happened this way. Now, the society has become immense, so when a group within it collectively votes to start doing something in a different way, there will be a group that doesn't want to do it that way. This is where the problem starts, and people like Ted get flustered, but what he's saying isn't truthful. His reasoning is not truthful. The way of life he wants to live is not any more biologically valid than the way of life someone who embraces technology wants to live. He is being intellectually disingenuous there.

>>13311857
You’re projecting passion onto a wide array of activities you don’t give shit about. Surrogate activities are simply things you do to waste time, and the distinction is made to illustrate that all of these activities are just distractions, and the “freedom” to pursue them is meaningless. If you were transported back to 1980, when we had almost all the convenience of today, but you would be unable to spend 4 hours shitposting here would you be less free? Has the internet actually made you more free? Or has it restricted you?

>>13312030
>Surrogate activities are simply things you do to waste time
Which is everything under the sun besides eating and expunging waste. Now the list has shortened to 2 things.

>the distinction is made to illustrate that all of these activities are just distractions
What is the illustration useful for, really? Is living in a cave, eating and shitting all day long, really preferable to every other lifestyle humans have deliberately created for themselves?

>the “freedom” to pursue them is meaningless.
What is the point of survival if it is only to repeat yesterday again tomorrow?

>Has the internet actually made you more free? Or has it restricted you?
Neither, really. It has enabled us in new ways, and hindered us in other ways. Just like how living in a cave and eating and shitting all day would enable us in some ways, and hinder us in other ways.

>>13312065
Do you really think you could sit in a cave and do nothing and still be able to eat? Is your position so weak that you need to distort the truth that much? Eating is the result of purposeful
activity—hunting, fishing, socializing, planning, protecting yourself from predators and the environment. All these things are not wastes of time, and they’re not surrogate activities. They’re hard-wired into our biological nature. Playing golf, driving a car, browsing the Internet, etc. are surrogate activities that attempt to simulate our natural activities, thereby fulfilling our natural desires. But these activities are too far removed from what we truly desire. We could be on the top of the mountain, but we aren’t anymore, and we’re dangerously approaching the ground.

>>13312092
>hunting, fishing, protecting yourself from predators and the environment
All mostly wastes of time now, due to technology. Our biology agrees on this point too, hence why it pursued inventing and manufacturing the technology.

>They’re hard-wired into our biological nature.
What are? Aspects of our spirit as we do these things, perhaps, like those aspects which are represented in the gods of early religions. And they are resurrected and maintained in many modern activities; simulated as you say (though their effects are no less real). Actually hunting and fishing though, those aren't hardwired into anything. We don't need to do those things specifically.

>>13312124
>All mostly wastes of time now, due to technology.
>now
>due to technology
You’re a waste of my time, sorry.

>>13311373
You can't not have a car. You can't not have a phone. You can't not have a bank account. You can't not drink fluoridated water and eat GMO food. You can't not get a basic education. You can't not get vaccinated. You are forced to do all these things. That's not freedom, it's coercion.
Unindustrialized man may not be able to go long distances quickly without a car, but he has the freedom to do so, he lacks only the means. Modern man has the means, but no freedom.

>>13312129
Exactly, you have no real argument besides your intellectual dishonesty. Once you have no choice but to acknowledge that these things are NOT biological imperatives at all, you shut down and leave.

>>13312136
Unindustrialized man does not have the freedom to get some place hundreds of miles away in mere hours and back in the same day. For every single sacrifice there is a new freedom in exchange. Generally, people prefer the new freedoms over the old, hence why society at large keeps making the sacrifices for them.

>>13312154
He's totally free to do that. No one is stopping him. He just can't. Do you think the blind aren't free to see? Are you retarded?

>>13312136
You know, here’s something to think about:
Once upon a time a tax collector would physically travel around to assess and collect taxes across hundreds of miles. Now, with great advances in technology you are required to collect and deliver taxes.

Also, I feel like as time goes on, I’m required to do more paperwork than before, despite incredible advances in technology to track and communicate data.

>>13312162
>No one is stopping him. He just can't.
He's stopping himself. His freedom stops where his own power stops.

>Do you think the blind aren't free to see?
They will be once we invent artificial eyes. Those aren't too far off from now, no thanks to Tedfags.

>>13312154
>>13312162
With the spread of the car people are more free to travel, and corporations are more free to force travel upon their employees, which seems to cancel that out.

>>13312181
Technology is innately Faustian. Faust did not grow without the deal and his sacrifice, however.

>>13311354
I have a deep hatred of paperwork. If I could kill someone to avoid doing it I would, but in our current society murder would only require me to do more paperwork or be killed, and proper expression of this hatred inspiring me to do this would only place me in a hell of enforced medication and therapy to coerce me into doing paperwork. Once upon a time I would be free to avoid paperwork. Now illiteracy means that someone will sit in a room with you and walk you through the paperwork by reading aloud. Is this how technology makes us free? I’m currently building up funds to move to Africa in the hope that there I could build a plantation and do less paperwork, but I know in my heart the only freedom will be in death.

>>13312145
You still don’t understand. What’s necessary to survive in the modern world appears to be a waste of time from our biological perspective. Paperwork, using computers, etc. is not natural yet we have to do them to live. This type of work is not fulfilling, but stressful and unnatural. Primitive ways of survival are wastes of time NOW because there are other ways to “survive.” But again, our power process is fulfilled most when we achieve our desires through natural means, as humans have done for thousands of years before technological advancement. If we could somehow adjust to any type of work as if it were as real as hunting a deer to feed your tribe, then there wouldn’t be much of an issue. But this just isn’t the case. We’re living in a simulation, an artificial system that controls us and tells us what we should enjoy. Depression and lack of motivation are obvious effects of such a world. Isn’t it a bit troubling that many people can’t find a hobby to satisfy their power process? Some simply cannot find a way to pass the time because they see no reason why they should paint or write or collect stamps. You have to put blinders on to say there isn’t a problem here

>>13311450
Start with yours.

>>13312244
>Paperwork, using computers, etc. is not natural
They are for people who grew up with these things and have a natural predisposition for these things, which is many people. Meanwhile, they would likely find the life you want to live stressful. It could be things are not balanced well, though.

>>13312304
If paperwork is natural, then it is LESS natural than primitive work. I don’t know how you can believe in evolution and not recognize that the human brain is more attuned to hunting and socializing in small tribes rather than living the modern lifestyle. You’re the type of person that believes anyone can become a genius, that there is no genetic differences in intelligence among races, etc. You’re delusional and a slave to the system. You think what the powers want you to think.

>>13312386
>>13312304
We’re at the point now where no matter how natural or unnatural paperwork is you have to do it. Even worse, in our current modern hell refusal to do paperwork is more likely to lead to starvation than refusing to work.

>>13311714
I wonder if you would contest the claim that humans walk on two legs by pointing out that cripples exist.

>>13311617
>What else are they products of?
Mostly need, greed or fame. Sometimes boredom.

>>13311373
Enjoy nature without it being full of other people

>>13311443
>air pollution and technology are not connected because I can imagine a world with technology, yet without pollution
Extremely retarded post

I'd like to see tedfags live their master's principles for a week. Go live in a dirty shed like he did . Eschew the internet (an ultimate manifestation of technology.)

For someone who values independence your thinking on this subject sure is dependant on his partly delerious , partly lucid manifesto.

>>13311714
That would suggest that music is not a surrogate activity in that case

>>13311443
>You cannot simply show some ways in which some technology is damaging and act like you have made an argument against technology.
In fact you can.

Are you literally retarded? How else can you judge ANYTHING AT ALL, if not by actually looking at how it interacts with reality?

This the argument you are making applied to a different situation.
Hypothesis: You should have chairs in your house.
Argument: Chair are useful because you can sit on them.
Counter argument: You cannot simply show some ways in which some chairs are nice to have and act like you have made an argument for having chairs.

This is LITERALLY you, call an ambulance and get yourself put into an asylum PLEASE.

>no more an argument against technology than presenting an example of a bad book is an argument against the written word.
That's a straw man of your own argument, how can you not see that? You are disregarding the consequences here, if you could point to a broad experience of books and demonstrate that reading them has had a negative impact then you would have a genuine argument.

>>13311443
Without cheap energy prices for everything will skyrocket and we'd be forced to become less reliant on technology since production can't continue at this rate if you're eliminating pollution.

This thread, as every other one like it has shown that any and all actions taken to restoring a natural order at the expense of technology will not be a consensual action for the vast majority of consumers. You cannot expect boomers, techies, and redditfags to voluntarily consume less. You simply cannot expect it. You cannot convince them unless you have power over their lives.
What has to happen is a removal of the option (I.e. technology/infrastructure). This impersonal approach is the only feasible way to address the issue. Bomb factories, not the people who own them (although Ted was right to do so). Burn farms and slaughter-houses instead of asking people to eat healthier foods. Destroy roads and bridges instead of begging for "greener" cars or people to take the bus more. And so on.

>>13312386
>You’re the type of person that believes anyone can become a genius, that there is no genetic differences in intelligence among races, etc.
You say this in response to a post that says outright that there are different kinds of people. This applies to you.

This Ted guy sounds pretty cool. I don't come around /lit/ often and haven't read him yet, but I agree with everything here. I followed Schopenhauer's denial of the will-to-life to the forfeit of pleasure, losing sense of suffering yet sweetly suffering all things. I followed Deleuze and Guattari's nomadism to the forfeit of property (including self and idea), losing sense of possession yet possessing all things. What do I want from life after years of destitution and poverty? To ease suffering and give to others, compassion is blissful when your reserves are endless. Acting willfully will always distort synchronicity and dharma, when there is no goal we succeed each moment. "Lord, either let me suffer or let me die."

>>13313079
This poster speaks the truth. Consuming and loooking for the "next new thing" has become the veritable pastime for those with high enough income. Men has never ceased to be hunter-gatherers, and instead of searching for berries, fruit, roots and animals, Men hunts income and gathers technological trinkets. The vast amount of people enthralled by the allure of the sillical knick knack must be fed, and large swathes of labor must be put in place to ensure the midwit's search for The New. People like OP do not understand the normative aspect of technology. He keeps saying people are "free" to do whatever they please, but he simply does not understand the fact that the existence of modern technology places rules that must be followed by all. We should look at him with pity.

>>13311419
Not really true. Even if you find a relaitively unspoiled wilderness you'll get slapped by with a government notice in a week because your water supply isn't up to regulation standard.

>>13311354
>What is it that you want?
Earth not to turn into Venus.

>>13311443
>showing an example of technology causing harm is no more an argument against technology than presenting an example of a bad book is an argument against the written word.
Literacy was a mistake to be honest.

>>13313155
Alarmist death-cult propaganda. Off yourself

>>13311563
>We got bored of the tiny communities and bartering.
No, some of us got bored of tiny communities and bartering and ruined it for everyone else.

>>13313182
This.

>>13313180
>not wanting to die is a death cult

>>13313145
>Men has never ceased to be hunter-gatherers, and instead of searching for berries, fruit, roots and animals, Men hunts income and gathers technological trinkets.
So what's the problem then? You can fulfill your hunter gatherer drive just as well in modern society according to you. Go hunt down that job, secure a top position, buy the house you want and the vacation homes along with it.

Ted didn't really like primitive living, he tried it and it sucked. http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ted-kaczynski-the-truth-about-primitive-life-a-critique-of-anarchoprimitivism

That said, he's really pessimistic about human society. He argues
1. Societies (self-propagating human systems at any level of complexity) are subject to Darwinian pressures
2. This makes them impossible to be directed consciously - societies that try to put the brakes on for environmental reasons get surpassed by those that don't
3. Even when they see disaster coming, they literally can't stop themselves from seeking short-term gain at the expense of the long-term, because systems are made of systems and those are also competing
4. We WILL get a disaster we can't recover from unless we shut down industrial society yesterday.
5. Hopefully we've already used enough easy-to-reach resources we can't start another one.

Ted's not in favor of living like savages, he's just against global supply chains.

>>13311419
>life would be abjectly miserable without civilisation and technology.
I don't understand this mindset. For thousands of years people lived without that shit and were perfectly happy. Life is more convenient now and there is more material abundance, but what difference does that make? People were happy before that, too. It seems the point you are making is that if someone is exposed to modern technology and conveniences, than they will be unhappy once they don't have them. Unhappy for how long? Permanently? Have people become completely dependent on technology and modern conveniences for happiness? If so, what's the difference between modern technology and a heroin addiction? In fact, why shouldn't we all be heroin addicts? From what I hear, heroin makes you feel better than anything else on Earth. Isn't that happiness?

>>13313204
>This makes them impossible to be directed consciously - societies that try to put the brakes on for environmental reasons get surpassed by those that don't
This is the crucial part. If only the most powerful system could be the one trying to fix everything

>>13313079
The worst part about you Tedfags is how disingenuous you are. You can't admit that you lost the cultural race and got sidelined by the majority. You have to take it a step further and disingenuously assert that the majority lives are "unnatural" and that your lives are "natural." You have to come up with asinine ploys like "surrogate activities" to denounce everything in civilization ever produced that you don't like. Such ignorance is contemptible.

>>13313196
No, no you can't. That's the whole point you absolute fucking dingus. Look at the amount of misery around you, of people who don't understand what they're working towards, or why they work. Their happenings in life has no meaning: a baby means another project towards the life of specialized labor. To have a son in this day means strategically preparing every ounce of his being to do meaningless work for a meaningless corporation, hunting for income.

>>13313209
It's pure scientistic fearmongering, "you owe your life to tech and would die in a day if anything about our current system changed."

>>13313215
>You can't admit that you lost the cultural race and got sidelined by the majority.
That's literally a central tenet dude

>>13313217
>Look at the amount of misery around you, of people who don't understand what they're working towards, or why they work.
This has nothing to do with technology. It has to do with stupid people.

>Their happenings in life has no meaning: a baby means another project towards the life of specialized labor. To have a son in this day means strategically preparing every ounce of his being to do meaningless work for a meaningless corporation, hunting for income.
Fucking what? In the past it would have been the same case except you'd have to train your son to do something else like hunt and fish. Work just as meaningless since we die in the end anyway (although it isn't meaningless, and neither is doing work at a corporation today for the same reason). You also don't have to train your son to be a pencil pusher or code monkey, if you have your shit together and have the resources to give him a different kind of education, you can prepare him for any number of things.

>>13311563
>we invent new things
>we invented all this technology
You and I didn't do jack shit. Someone else invented those things and now we are forced to live with them, whether we like it or not.

>>13312242
This reads like a page of Kafka, very good

>>13313217
>implying the Market that Fixes Everything will optimize for men raising their own sons
https://nypost.com/2019/06/15/the-sperminators-50th-baby-mama-is-a-homeless-18-year-old-from-the-bronx/

>>13313223
So follow it then instead of adding all that incongruent bullshit on top of it.

>>13313238
Why should people give up just because they lost once?

>>13313232
>It has to do with stupid people.
Then why are intelligent people depressed/unmotivated/stressed/anhedonic?

>>13312154
>Unindustrialized man does not have the freedom to get some place hundreds of miles away in mere hours and back in the same day.
Who fucking cares? For what purpose?

>>13313246
YOU’RE ON THE WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY BIGOT REEEEEE SHUTUP AND OBEY

>>13313262
So you can take pictures of yourself in whatever deracinated Americanized tourist trap took over the culture there.

>>13313258
Because you want to believe they all are and that it's not just the result of hypercompetition and low intelligence.

>>13313215
>You can't admit that you lost the cultural race and got sidelined by the majority.
You say that like it's a good thing. Do you think direct democracy is the most conducive method of governance for human happiness?

>>13313262
Who fucking cares about living at all when life amounts to the same routine every day ad infinitum (aka primitive life)?

>>13313154
This isn't true at all. People go camping in the wilderness all the time, Tedtards just keep making excuses to stay at home and debate ideology instead of actually trying to be in Nature. At least the man himself actually lived by his word.
Online anprims are massive hypocrites.

>>13313281
So pre-industrial life is no better or worse than post-industrial life?

>>13313281

>>13313289
>At least the man himself actually lived by his word.
Then his favorite spot got bulldozed so he bombed people and suggested we all do the same.

>>13313313
When your principles are shit, yes. It's the same crap.

>>13313316
What specific principles are you talking about?

>>13313315
>my feet hurt
>I wish I was in my swamp cumming and farting all day while the woman does everything for me
Riveting.

>>13313237
>>13313237
This happens because these people are living in pre-capitalistic conditions since they have lost the income race. Although they do no hold enough income to optimize their life towards the accumulation of Capital, modern life allows for these many years It's children to go on living. It's another argument against the modern world; if anything.

>>13313326
Now it's working a dumb job in order to maintain a "Netflix and chill" lifestyle. No one is going to convince me this shit is good or that technology has improved man's mental state.

>>13313326
>I have food, water, shelter, Internet, friends, and a promising future
>I better kill myself
Many such cases

>>13311354
I don't get it either, op. Everything is literally as perfect as it could be. We are *literally* living in peak humanity right now. Pretty disgusting that these people think they know what's better for us than we do. Like fuck off, right?

>>13313349
Exactly. Technological society hasn't swallowed up the rest of nature yet, so it probably never will, and we'll be able to camp out if we hate being oversocialized wankers.

>>13313232
We’re at the point that if you take a 100-300 level Econ class an there’s a good chance hour of your time will be spent listening to a sales presentation for a piece of textbook software that is required to do your homework. This is the world technology has wrought. You don’t even get to own the software, just a year long license to use it.

>>13313359
This. I mean, I think it's pretty cool that I can go to the beach and find dead birds with stomachs full of plastic bits, or McDonald's wrappers all throughout national parks.

>>13313325
The principles which state that life is meaningless if you are not submersed in a pleasurable state as often as possible rather than as intensely as possible.

>>13313333
>Now it's working a dumb job in order to maintain a "Netflix and chill" lifestyle.
So do something better with yourself like the OP says. You're not obligated to live like Homer Simpson, except if you are Homer Simpson.

>>13313349
Bitch, no one is saying life is perfect. And the past has its own problems, shit like bears could rip your fucking face off one day during a hunt, or you could wound up with some infection that leaves you in absolutely horrid pain for days on end until you die at the elderly age of 24.

>>13313270
One of the best things from my trip to the Grand Canyon was watching foreigners feeding and attempting to touch squirrels in front of a sign saying, “Do not feed local rodents, they carry the plague”
Pretty soon the world will hit back.

>>13313289
As someone who enjoys hiking and the wilderness there’s a shitload of little technical crap to deal with if you want to go into many wilderness areas and do things. Fuck the FWC

>>13313373
If it's really important the market will fix it.

>>13313402
Absolutely.
>>13313387
Life is perfect, though. See the above post

>>13313387
>And the past has its own problems, shit like bears could rip your fucking face off one day during a hunt, or you could wound up with some infection that leaves you in absolutely horrid pain for days on end until you die at the elderly age of 24.
Right, which is why we should be trying to find a way to benefit from the good things we've learned without turning the Earth into a landfill and our brains into chemical dumps.

>>13313387
>shit like bears could rip your fucking face off one day during a hunt
At least in that life you are active, immersed in your surroundings. Everything is REAL. Life or death. Every day is a challenge but the rewards are nice. Now it’s all about consuming and fighting off boredom through surrogate activities. Men play video games because a part of them wants to be in the game, in the face of death fighting for everything.

>>13313418
None of those things are happening, though, you disingenuous disinfo anti-tech shill

>>13313423
Did you just learn the word "disingenuous" this week? Because it's really messing with your writing style.

Industry bad
Society bad
Freedom good
Pay me

>>13313421
Sebastian Junger found people in the siege of Sarajevo who had been spirited away to safety then actually faked papers to go back to the fight. When presented with the choice a lot of people would rather be bombed than be in our society.

>modern world good
>car good
>constantly worrying about flow of currency good
>min maxing life towards the retention of Capital good
>being shunned, reviled and scorned if you don't do so good

Let’s remember that the future is what’s most important. Both sides should be eager to prevent a dystopia due to technological slavery.

>>13313421
>At least in that life you are active, immersed in your surroundings. Everything is REAL. Life or death.
Are you a brainlet? It's still life or death. You're bitching and moaning because you're getting railroaded by wealthy technocrats. Your back is pushed so close to the wall that you are inventing twisted ideologies to justify murdering people or defending others who have done this. How is this situation not a matter of life or death? You yourself even realize that it is, hence why you are clamoring for extreme retaliation.

>Now it’s all about consuming and fighting off boredom through surrogate activities. Men play video games because a part of them wants to be in the game, in the face of death fighting for everything.
It was actually always about fighting off boredom. It's how we got where we are. Men figured out how to hunt well, but that was not enough. He wanted to out-hunt his neighbor. That renewed the joy in him. It wasn't enough that he had a woman to fuck, he wanted to fuck his neighbor's woman too. That renewed the joy in him. It wasn't enough that he knew how to kill cleanly and prepare a tasty meal, he wanted to eat tastier meals and make sauces too. That renewed the joy in him. All technology and industrialization happened as a byproduct of that.

>>13313448
No such thing as "technological slavery." Grow up

Just wanted to add that Ted was an actual brainlet who a) thought reverting back to a pre-technological state was possible; and b) this goal could be achiveved through random acts of violence. Some of his anti-tech arguments are good, but he was ultimately a sociopath, no different from many of these tech moguls and capitalist assholes who kill people for profit.

>>13311373
Most people today have never actually seen the stars in their true, natural glory. This is probably why materialism is the reigning world view of the day

>>13313438
>old world good
>hunting good
>constantly worrying about not dying today good
>min maxing life towards physically overcoming wild animals good
>being shunned, reviled and scorned if you don't do so good

This is literally spelled out in ISAIF. A man's goals in the industrial society are removed from his day-to-day labour and survival. You can have a goal to be rich, or have a family or whatever and there are steps that you take to fulfill that but your day to day existence wont be one of goal attainment through your autonomous effort. You can have goals and attain them in modern society but it isnt something that your survival depends on, the psychological need is fulfilled by hobbies etc. You can have goals at work etc but you are generally not the one who sets these goals for yourself, everyday major decisions that effect you are taken by collectives that you have a minimal voice within or are out of your control entirely. You can think its not a big deal if you decide but I dont know why you are acting like this is some vague thing that isnt addressed when its basically what the entire manifesto is about. This whole "you can set any goal you want" thing is explicitly addressed in the book which can be entirely read in less than 2 hours just read the fucking thing if you want to know what it says why did you even make this thread

>>13313471
>actual brainlet
He was a brilliant mathematician, like Fomenko. Lots of incredibly smart people come up with incredibly out-there ideas, it's why so many engineers are obsessed with perpetual motion.

>>13313486
techies stopped reading once they saw the critique on leftists

>>13313486
This is imo why vidya and especially MMOs are so popular, they present a world where effort is 1:1 with payoff. I don't think it's an accident of easily codable mechanics that most of what you do in an MMO is hunt.

Techies would rather live in Isengard than in the Shire. They aspire to be literal Uruk-hais.

I used to watch TED, but those talks went downhill fast. It's too bad

>>13313511
At their prime they were hitting like a pipe bomb

>>13313486
>You can have a goal to be rich, or have a family or whatever and there are steps that you take to fulfill that but your day to day existence wont be one of goal attainment through your autonomous effort.
Yes it will be. It requires day to day effort to achieve those goals. Also, these goals are as mandatory for survival as goals in the past. Read the thread.

>You can have goals at work etc but you are generally not the one who sets these goals for yourself, everyday major decisions that effect you are taken by collectives that you have a minimal voice within or are out of your control entirely.
And the goals of day to day survival in primitive times were set by ourselves? No. We are at the whimsy of technological society today to a major extent, just like we were at the whimsy of Mother Nature herself back then to a major extent.

>You can think its not a big deal if you decide but I dont know why you are acting like this is some vague thing that isnt addressed when its basically what the entire manifesto is about.
All that literature doesn't mean it was properly addressed. This discussion why is already taking place in the thread.

>>13313464
What is medicating people into a state of mind optimized for technological society then? Children are forced through an education system that molds them to operate within the technical work day created by the old captains of industry , adults are forced to continually pay for any property capable of supporting life outside the system (car, boat, house, land) on pain of repossession by the bank or state, the elderly are being bribed at the hilariously low rate of 1k per month by social security to maintain the status quo. You’re trapped in a capitalist cage dancing to a beat set by shocks and candy and have the audacity to say that the boxes occupants aren’t slaves because they are choosing to jump and eat in the wonderful box made for them (nevermind that the doors have been welded shut)! It’s absurd!
Maybe the idea of blowing the hinges off the door is wrong, but denying the existence of the cage is stupid.

>>13313608
No if it weren't for technology you would die of the plague, now bow down it's pride month

>>13313608
>What is medicating people into a state of mind optimized for technological society then?
People

>>13313618
This. Every human died before the advent of modern medicine. Fucking tedtards

>>13313608
>Maybe the idea of blowing the hinges off the door is wrong
In what way could it be wrong? In what fucking way could freedom and liberation ever be wrong?

>>13313660
>In what fucking way could freedom and liberation ever be wrong?
Maybe we don't all share your postmodern axioms buddy boy.

>>13313668
True. Slavery can be rewarding

>>13311373
see a real live auroch

>>13311537
there was once a time when living walking distance from a beach was a major liability because you'll be the first people the viking band finds

>>13313048
music as organic human expression isn't (e.g. real folk music). but music-making divorced from that context (e.g. as a theory, as a profession, and as hobby) absolutely is

>>13313608
don't bother arguing with them, you will never talk cattle out of domestication. These people are physiologically domesticated.

>>13313826
What's the metric for when expression stops being organic?

>>13313827
Tedfags are cattle who learned to read and write. It's why their philosophy is full of holes and make believe shit.

>>13313927
rationalisation

>>13313930
>it's rationality, I ain't gotta explain shit
OK

>>13311391
>To some people, the idea of having their very livelihood and survival being dependent on others is repugnant.
Those people should move on from the attitudes of a 14yo rebelling against his mom. Community/society is a harmony that has to be maintained.

"Muh independence" leads to a narcissistic dead-end and schizo ideologies like libertarianism.

>>13313154
Bullshit. Not every country is on obsessive power trip like the fucking US.

Come to remote parts of South America, for example. Orthodox Old Believers from Russia settled in Bolivia a hundred of years ago and still live in a small an-prim communes.

>>13313471
>but he was ultimately a sociopath

>>13313471
>Just wanted to add that Ted was an actual brainlet
Yeah sure, the guy with a PhD in mathematics was a brainlet...

Call him deluded, insane, whatever, but the one thing he CERTAINLY wasn't was a brainlet.

>>13314146
Being a math nerd is just an atypical form of brainletism

>>13314165
Not being able to do basic functional analysis is a sign of mental problems, bucko.

>>13314178
Being good at mathematical abstraction does not mean you are suited for philosophy or politics

>>13314190
Sure and?

>>13314198
Well, Teddy was not suited for them lol

>>13314201
That may or may not be true, but most certainly he wasn't a brainlet.

>>13314190
STEMlords over the world just got triggered. Try finding somebody more arrogant in humanities than CS major.

t. STEMlord

>>13313039
An enormous part of his point is that today, you CAN'T live like that. It is prohibitively difficult, if not outright impossible, for anyone born into society to reject it and go live a natural life. Even if they beat the odds and successfully do, they will do it alone, lacking the community that humans also naturally have and remaining isolated and not fulfilled.
Another point: if the average fully-grown adult today is such a dependent little bitch that they would physically be unable to survive alone in nature, that's a serious problem. In an emergency situation, almost all of us will die. Laugh at it and blame them, sure, but a society producing most of its people like that is seriously flawed.

>>13314228
You can add this to the list: the envy of the trinket. Most people, provided they're never tempted with the shiny metals of technology, would never care for it. But their allure stems from marketing, from an appearance of sexiness. Any community based in rural values would either become an insane cult or disband because shitty members would try to bring stuff from the outside inside the community.

>>13314253
This is true. As the system exists today it will swallow up anything it can. It's near impossible to start up any sort of anti-social communes because they are too weak to stand up against the system on their own so they are either wiped out or conform to the system's standards in one way or another. Almost every little experiment like that to start up a community away from society fails. In part too it's impossible to reconcile the exponential growth of technological advancement with maintaining rural values. That growing tech force is always much stronger and will seep its way in every niche it can. He said it better himself too when he talked about advancements that were novelty becoming necessities (ie cars, phones, etc.)

>>13314024
>Orthodox Old Believers from Russia settled in Bolivia a hundred of years ago and still live in a small an-prim communes.
And they had to leave Russia because it turned into a Modernist hellhole, after being an anprim paradise. Industry doesn't leave resources untapped and this generation or the next it will reach that far into Bolivia.

>>13311354
An prim is like anti natalism: you're not going to stop people from advancing and you're not going to stop people from reproducing. Those who live in cabins or don't reproduce are just weeded out of the gene pool.

>>13313215
Surrogate activities are not an "asinine ploy". It's just another name for hobbies or passion projects. Then again you're a brainlet who thinks inventions happened because people wuz bored lol.

>>13314427
You still can get lost deep in Siberia, Amazon, Patagonia.

>>13314582
All places industry is deeply incentivized to exploit in the near future.

>>13314563
You're a brainlet if you think inventions happened, technology advanced in an iterative process that did involve a lot more boredom and laziness than Edisonic showman muh perspiration.

>>13314541
which is probably why kaczynski wrote an entire book undermining the anprim ideology and the romanticization of primitive life, I guess.

>>13311391
>To establish a true hermitage or self sufficient life style has made near impossible thanks to the nature of local governments, various taxes, and laws.
Its also against human nature durrr

>>13311431
>some people are sensitive to the social connections they must endure and modern society forces a cacophony on even the lowest class person.
That's more or less what neurotic means. The problem is tedheads seem to think this applies to most people when it clearly is not

>>13314632
read kaczynski lmao

read kaczynski you fucking brainlets

we've had TK threads for 3 years and nothing ever changes. retards who haven't read TK come and pollute the threads with their high school opinions that are deconstructed 2 pages in any of his books. You really think you've thought about it more than a man who spent 18 years in the wild writing a manifesto, then another 20 years in jail reading and writing everyday?

>>13314563
>It's just another name for hobbies or passion projects.
This is like the third definition of surrogate activities provided in this thread. The previous one was that they're things you do to waste time, which was disputed. Same problem here: there is no way to rationally measure "hobbies or passion projects" in order to distinguish them from "biological needs" therefore the term is useless for psychoanalysis and drawing conclusions on sociopolitical matters.

>>13314648
I have, genius. He was a turboautist incel who literally got pain from loud noises, nothing he says should be taken as a general model for anything.

>>13314585
You are building justifications for your narrative. Siberia, Canadian north, Patagonia are already exploited to some extent. But they are fucking vast, you can easily find spots of hundreds hectares with no humans around.

>>13314818
I have never denied that they are big, only that there is no reason industry will not expand to fill the void.

>>13314818
Every single inch of the planet has seen its fate decided by industrialisation. If there are hundreds hectares with no humans around it's simply because industrial society has deemed better not to exploit it for ressources, maybe because it lacks ressources or because we don't have the technological means to harvest them. So no, he's not 'building justifications for his narrative', you on the other hand, can't seem to understand the basis of the system you're defending. lmao. Reminder that technophiles and techno-optimists are all ignorant on technological matters, as proven once more.

Every single inch of the planet has seen its fate decided by industrialisation.

>>13312092
The problem in that reasoning is that the "surrogate activities" often involve the same kind of effort and mobilize the same kind of skills and habits than hunting, fishing, etc.Although it varies from an activity to another it seems the essential difference is that with "necessarily biological activities" the result of the activity is keeping you alive.

Another problem is how hunting, fishing, socalizing, planning, protecting yourself from predators and the environnment naturally leads to developing various approach for completing essential tasks, which in turn creates ground for the arising of surrogate activities. Not every surrogate activity involves looking at a screen for hour on ends, the way you describe it I would guess people have been engaging in surrogate activities for the better part of the past ten millenias at the very least.

It also doesn't explain very satsfactorily the role of certains near universal practices in ancient societies such as burying rites. Are they that necessary for survival ? And do they not take wildly different forms from a culture to another ? Yet they seem an essential component of socialization, but in a way that is hard to relate to getting food and surviving.

You could say it helps building strong relationship and a sense of self-sacrifice that can be essential in the nick of time (say during a dangerous hunt). Still by nature it points to something else, and that something else is, again, a huge door open on surrogate activities.

Simply put it seems Uncle Ted is being beholden to a overly functionalist conception of human nature and behavior, even if he takes care to look holistically at the practices of basic human survival.

>>13312553
Such an observation should actually shifts your understanding of the assertion "humans walk on two legs". Not enough to completely invalidate it, but enough to modify it, else the statement would be empirically inaccurate.

>>13312672
A lot of inventions came about because the guy who thought it up found it cool. Only later did they become useful products.
Technological innovatin is hard to account for, because it is so reliant on random encounter and happenstances, and yet has a systematic tendency to piggyback on itself once it finds something new.

>>13314683
No, you idiot. Surrogate activities are the ones you do when you're free of immediate survival. That's literally it.

>>13314900
Humans walk on two legs; cripples don't

>>13314818
Two issues with these giant tracts of land:
You will have to abandon your home, family, friends, and community. You will be alone, and any chance of forming a community to live naturally is dead because for 99% of all modern men, society has hooked them in too deep.
Second, every single day those places shrink. Capitalism MUST expand constantly, there is no equilibrium to reach and nothing, not even the imminent destruction of the biosphere, will ever serve to stop it as long as technology continues to allow for this expansion. Maybe we can go there now, but a hundred more years of this and such places might be gone forever.

>Yet another thread from some retard that hasn't read Ted and points out issues he specifically addresses

>>13314874
What is wildly misunderstood, and rightly so, the surrogate chapter being the weakest part of the manifesto - it's that TK does not explain to us how primitive people behave once they are done harvesting/hunting. They are contempt with just sitting for hours on hand. They do not have the urge to do anything. Hence any type of activity that is not directly linked to survival is neurotic - and did not exist before the transition to agricultural society. I find it amusing that nobody ever talks about how TK's works is very contemporary, and borrows in some ways from dialectical materialism and freudian psychology. But then not many posters actually read.

>>13313054
You're not representing his argument very accurately, even though your objection makes sense.

A better example would be: you shouldn' tuse chairs because I know a lot of people who got hurt by falling off chairs.
Now you're left deciding whether those people hurt are unfortunate but avoidable consequences or if they're part of a larger problem with the design of chairs.

Neither you nor the anon you're conflicting with have conclusively argued anything so far. Do you think pollution is a inherent or even very likely consequences of using technology, or could we make an technological society with little to no pollution (or even get rid of pollution using technology) ?

>>13314911
Thank you for the fourth definition in the thread.

>[activities] you do when you're free of immediate survival.
Which we do out of biological necessity, because boredom is a biological reality for humans.

>>13313079
I get what you're coming from but this will most likely lead to counter-effects. If Unabomber had bombed a couple factory, what would have changed ?

>>13314924
>because boredom is a biological reality for humans
Wrong. Absolutely wrong. Hahahaha. >>13314920

>>13314024
>Community/society is a harmony
Hahaha
>that has to be maintained
Ok ok, at least you're not retarded

>>13314920
that line of thought is evolutionary psychology

>>13314928
Nothing much. But for him, people were a better target (more media coverage). Moving forward, and now that the seeds are sown, dedicated individuals the world over need to focus on impersonal targets. That's all. 10,000 people in every industrialized country would probably be enough, but that is obviously near impossible to organize and lone-wolf attacks are wasteful of lives and in effect

>>13314928
The only reason anyone in the world knows the name Ted Kaczynski is because of the bombings. Terrorism works, in that sense.
Once they put him in jail, he wrote a second, much more detailed book about how exactly people should go about dismantling technological society. I haven't read it, so I'm not sure how good it is, but resigning to "we can't do anything so eh" is not how men should behave. Even blindly raging against the system and dying in a failed oil pipeline bombing would be better than that.

>>13314944
This.

>>13314933
>Wrong.
So explain why we kept creating things for the last several thousand years after figuring out how to survive.

>>13314942
Anti-Tech Revolution has a sort of Rules For Radicals section toward the end, it's definitely not as solid as the criticism of tech society in the beginning because organizing people really isn't an exact science.

>>13314709
insipid psychologizing. you're a woman.

>>13314959
I need to read that. But I doubt he can really advocate for more violence being in the state's grasp

>>13314965
no it's the truth. Guy was not normal.

>>13314973
Define "normal"

>>13314960
>last several thousand years
So agriculture? Did you even read the post I quoted?

Primitive people have no concept of boredom, and sit idle for hours (days) when they are done harvesting and hunting. That's like anthro 101 nigger. Do the fucking work you fucking mongoloid. goddamn. Imagine being wrong, illiterate, ignorant, having 100% of the evidence against you, being able to google it in one second, yet clinging to your shit argument till death.

>>13314987
>Primitive people have no concept of boredom
So explain how we got to this point. Was it aliens, anon?

>>13314980
not screechingly autistic to the point you get headaches from loud noises. Stallman hated the sea and he was still productive...

>>13311674
this.

>>13314987
>Primitive people have no concept of boredom, and sit idle for hours (days) when they are done harvesting and hunting.

lol what

>>13313209
>For thousands of years people lived without that shit and were perfectly happy.

I'm not sure about that. It boils down to what you're able to withstand ultimately (remember pre-industrial society have very high infant mortality for instance) and this might not be the same for everyone. Any general claim about the inner happiness of people dead before the advent of writing should be highly suspicious.

The best we can do is looking at the remaining hunter-gatherers tribes in remote area. They superficially seem to be fine, but it's hard to assess without living among them. And dont forget the crucial point: you've been raised in an different environment than they have (and so have your ancestors for the past six or seven millenias at the least). Assuming you'd be miserable is very bold, imagining that you'd fit in decently is very naive.

A thing nobody seem to care mentioning itt is how many "primitive" kinds of living there are. The general spirit might appear the same to us, but the all-important specifics change sometimes from village to village. If you want a primitive lifestyle you will have to build it yourself, that involves actually building new practices for everything even if you take inspiration from old ones.

>>13314994
Oh, so it's a "not x" definition, where x is conveniently something you are not

>>13315009
lol seething

>>13314991
Explain how primitive people feel boredom, explain how boredom is 'a biological reality for humans', when it has been proven wrong, and every single anthropologist living amongst primitives have documented this fact?

>>13313215
>Disingenuous
>Calls the concept of surrogate activity an "asinine ploy"
Dude, it's very fucking obvious when comparing the acts of hunting the animal you will eat that night and hunting boars in a video game to get XP while eating some Doritos TM, which one is the surrogate activity and which one isn't, and why.

Just because at the lower levels of abstraction you act like an autistic pedant and can cast some ambiguity over whether an activity is a surrogate or not under Ted's definition, does not make the concept invalid at all. Categories are always fuzzy at the edges.

>>13315021
link to the study that showed primitive people didn't experience boredom?

>>13314991
Explain how primitive people feel boredom, explain how boredom is 'a biological reality for humans', when it has been proven wrong, and every single anthropologist living amongst primitives have documented this fact?

>>13315003
? it's simply what has been observed for over 150years of anthro work. Come on, give me a source that invalidates what I'm saying!

>>13315030
>no argument so he gets fussy

lol maybe you just weren't built for modern society

>>13315034
>to the study
LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

THE STUDY WHERE PRIMITIVE PEOPLE DONT EXPERIENCE BOREDOM

LMAOOOOO THATS THE ENTIRE FIELD OF ANTHRO FUCKING BRAINDEAD ZOOMERS HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

>>13315042
>>lol maybe you just weren't built for modern society
None of us were, Anon :(

This was my first day on /lit/ in 6 months. hahahahahahahahaha it's pathetic how low this board has fallen. I swear it's only 14yo anglos nowadays

>>13315021
>Explain how primitive people feel boredom
Same process from which we feel boredom. You reach a point where you have enough idle time to notice the redundancy of what you're doing, and it no longer satisfies you, so then you start to look for new things to do.

>explain how boredom is 'a biological reality for humans'
Look at history and what we have done, then tell me that humans with time to spare do not, almost universally, grapple with boredom.

Now answer my question.

>>13311443
Dumbest post in this thread ITT

>>13315039
>? it's simply what has been observed for over 150years of anthro work
Then link to even one example of this observation pls because that's news to me and it sounds like you pulled it out of your ass to justify your inane rambling.

>>13313326
In all fairness the life of the amrican natives now is horrifically worse. They're one of the most ucked-up minority in the US and that's saying a lot.

>>13315051
I'm doing just fine thank you :)

>>13315050
no it isn't sweatheart

>>13313335
From what I gather the promising future is the part where it doesn't hold up. "Promising" here means "the same kind dumb jobs my parents did but with less relative income and independance and more work".

>>13315081
Except we have the internet now so you're wrong leftard ;)

>>13314920
While this is somewhat true to a degree of *some* indigenous peoples, it's largely calorie conservation, as they still always come up with shit to do, eventually. Even the most primitive of tribes has games, dances, and events. Shit to break up the monotony that has nothing to do with survival of the flesh. Hell, even monkeys goof off and play games.

Boredom is a key survival mechanism in all higher mammals. It's what stops you from doing the same fruitless thing, forever, realize when all options are exhausted, and tells you when to give the fuck up. You can trace the neurological pattern generated by such activities, and people who are brain damaged in such a way as to lack the ability to be bored, a lot like those few who are immune to pain or emotion, often don't function in society, or live very long.

Now boredom as a plague to be avoided at all costs is almost an aspect entirely unique to well to do civilizations (though not just modern ones - goes back to the Greeks, at the very least, who wrote volumes on the subject). Certain technology and advertisements in modern society give us more access to more things to do than ever, and that particular unending hedonistic treadmill can be deemed unhealthy, sure... But boredom not being part of the human (or hell, mammalian) condition? No.

>>13313471
I know this is bait, but
>thought reverting back to a pre-technological state was possible
It's not only possible, it's inevitable.

>>13315050
anthro is a meme discipline anyway, half of it is people outright lying

>>13315070
Has more to do with their semi-recent history of being murdered and raped to oblivion than anything else

>>13315095
No it's a real science and will get its first paper that replicates any day now.

>>13315097
lots of peoples get murdered and raped to oblivion, the recent hunter-gatherers have the hardest time recovering from it

>>13315113
>lots of peoples get murdered and raped to oblivion
Yeah and they end up fucked up for centuries and only ever recover, if they do, when a shit ton of time has passed and they've effectively changed their identities

Ten posts telling me that boredom is part of the human condition (?), that primitives were definitely bored, that rituals (games, dances, events...) exist to break up the monotony of life.

Holy shit. This board is beyond salvation. It's clear none of you reads. I'm reacting this way because this is high school level knowledge. This is 'I'm a sophomore and picked up my first Bourdieu' type of knowledge. Zoomers truly are fucked up, physiologically. Their brains are fucking fried.

>>13315137
where are the proofs?

>>13315137
Yeah. My generation is death. I'm sorry you have to deal with this shit, and it's probably worse for you than me.

>>13315119
Especially if they're recent hunter-gatherers, come on I'm not arguing with you.

>>13315137
>ten posts demanding you back up your assertions
>you responding with increasing indignance
>it's the generational cohort's fault

>>13315139
suce mon chibre gamin, n'importe quelle étude anthropologique de terrain chez les primitifs, par exemple? Ah c'est plus dur quand c'est pas un youtubeur qui te sert le contenu. cette génération déchèt bordel.

>>13315162
Not an argument lol

I remember Anthro 101, the prof was using Margaret Mead as an authoritative source and got flustered when I asked why we cared when her entire corpus was basically her being trolled by polys.

>>13315162
just post the studies and the nightmare will be over

>>13315137
>Ten posts telling me that boredom is part of the human condition
And zero posts explaining why we left the primitive life in exchange for literally thousands of years of scientific endeavor and technological progress.

>>13315182
wtf I hate academia now?

>>13315193
I mean since then nobody really gave me a reason to take anthropologists as infallible fonts of wisdom.

>>13315190
Because we wanted more certainty and less famine, and we figured out ways to make food more certain in the near term at the cost of ecological collapse (Mesopotamia, Tang China, the Sahara) in the long term, meaning we pretty much took out payday loans from God, and modern society has taken out the biggest loan of all.

The thing I don't get about Ted advocates - it that it's basically a death sentence for mankind and all life on the planet, come the next cosmic golfball or any of the other possible 50,000 world ending events. I mean folks joke about the roaches taking over and shit, but this sphere's not got enough time left in the Goldilocks zone to develop another species with any potential of spreading its story beyond its biosphere. When we go, that's it - anything that survives us is just waiting for the final death knell in blissful ignorance in a billion years when the oceans boil away.

Though I've never been able to hop on board any of these entirely self-centered philosophies, as all I can figure is that they are for people who have decided anything that doesn't personally benefit them is pointless, and care about nothing outside of their own lives. The usual solipsistic nihilism that just seems to be an excuse to be a selfish asshole, because anything that doesn't affect you is "ultimately meaningless". Neglecting the fact that everything is "ultimately meaningless", that we are meaning making machines that grant meaning, be it to our own comfort, those of others, or to the survival of all.

I mean, I get being pissed at civilization and the dehumanizing effects of often being more number than man... But going full Amish doesn't seem a sustainable solution for collective survival.

>>13315206
Science doesn't pretend to be infallible, brainlet.

>>13315213
Yeah but you pretend it is.

>>13315218
lol no I don't, just more informed than your average poltard

>>13315207
You think another civilization-capable species could not develop within the next billion years? Consider it was only 65 million since the dinos died.

>>13315221
youre 'informed' of the particulars of a delusional pseudo-religious doctrine, you know fuck all about the world

>>13315206
>Because we wanted more certainty and less famine, and we figured out ways to make food more certain in the near term at the cost of ecological collapse (Mesopotamia, Tang China, the Sahara) in the long term, meaning we pretty much took out payday loans from God, and modern society has taken out the biggest loan of all.
You're not saying anything all that different from >>13314590

It was an iterative process, where boredom, laziness, and will to power combined pushed us forward. Nothing we did was unnatural. The occasional story of a mad scientist or sick artist having an influence on things is simply a romanticization of the iterative process everyone else had to go through to make significant progress in their fields, something that we regularly do to our history and even immediate surroundings because, despite what you believe, flavor is a biological need.

>>13315207
Ted's not against technology, that's an enormous misconception. He's against technological society, which is the collective unchained id of mankind, completely unable to do things like planning for the future unless there's a profit right now - this is why, for example, we haven't already started space colonization programs, why we went to the Moon then cut back space exploration to probes and the Space Shuttle (itself a fantastic example of the perverse incentives of the technological system), because the Invisible Hand isn't actually smart.

Ted's ideal society could use tech, would probably become very adept at it, but wouldn't be used by it.

>>13315213
>anthropology
>science

>>13315243
nice copout poltard, academia is not some mass delusion regardless what Peterson and Alex Jones want you to belive

>>13315227
Usually anything that manages to wipe us out has to be catastrophic enough to also wipe out nearly all complex life. Took well over two billion years to go from simple to complex, and another billion to get from complex to complex-enough to be us. Yer getting set back at least a billion years, and you don't have another billion to go.

Granted, true, this is somewhat less true if we're reduced to the technological state of the Amish. Still, even primitive man is pretty damned resilient.

>>13314915
Based and ableistpilled.

>>13315251
Academia doesn't pretend to be infallible either. But I understand to some of the more militant NEETs the mere notion of challenging your beliefs is sacrilege

>>13315246
Those are both me btw. I never used the term "unnatural," it's ill-defined and obfuscating. There was nothing really evil about most individual decisions that took us here, a tragedy Ted talks about in Anti-Tech Revolution where it's the systems they formed, like tornadoes, that are causing the damage.

Neither I nor the man in the can are arguing that flavor isn't something humans. We're just trying to get people to try and get it in a way that'll let humanity survive the next couple hundred years.

>>13311418
>I cannot even get food without having get to get in my car and driving to the grocery store.
As opposed to what? Having to go out and hunt? That was much more of a pain in the ass than driving to the store.

>>13315207
This level of growth is completely off the rails is not sustainable. Going to reach 10 billion people on a planet that can reasonably sustain only 10 or 15% of that. So if shit's gonna crash, better it crashes sooner than later.

>>13315251
>He's against technological society
Yeah because his autism made it so that he couldn't cope. The fact that you unironically thing humanity should follow his example entirely because it's "natural" is ridiculous

>>13315280
You have been spluttering about your beliefs being challenged this entire thread.

>>13315266
It's worse than a mass delusion, it's a scam.

>>13315266
That's why barely any of it outside hard sciences is replicable and people who cross taboos get hounded out. Your mind is filled with dogshit you couldnt defend for 5 minutes and youre smug about it as it oozes out of your nostrils

>>13315288
>The fact that you unironically thing humanity should follow his example entirely because it's "natural" is ridiculous
nice strawman

>>13315281
Throwing up your hands in defeat is not finding solutions, kiddo.

>>13315271
I suppose if you are talking about something not targeted at humans, which you did suggest. But your faith in humanity's ability to address such a catastrophe is extreme, in my opinion. Even with tech, we'd almost certainly have to run away to another planet. And who will be doing that? The rich/successful. Not anymore one in the 99%. Not saying it's not a possibility that humanity could survive such an event, only that my family will be left behind so it doesn't matter whether humanity survives or not, personally

>>13314944
Why not try to change the system from the inside ?
>because we can't do anything so eh

it seems blindly raging is merely an aesthetic cope for failure. Martyrdom is generally more enticing that groundwork, but the latter sometimes surprisingly turns out to work.

>>13315207
>The thing I don't get about Ted advocates - it that it's basically a death sentence for mankind and all life on the planet
First off, we "ted adovcates" could give the same argument, with better conviction. Industrial society is a death sentence for mankind and possibly all life on the planet. But then you would probably give the usual talk about saving our specie or whatever, but this argument has no basis in reality at all. it's the latest liberal fantasy required to fuel the system with the enthusiasm it requires for growth.
Then, you must understand that the main appeal to TK's works is its pure unadulterated anarchism. Why the fuck would I care about the survival of our specie 50000 years down the road? Why would I shoot myself in the foot, limit my own freedom because of some scenario that will have zero impact on my life, 50,000 years down the road? But let me ask you. Do you really think your drive to 'save our specie' is noble? I'd argue that it's straight up insanity, the modern type. Your second paragraph is right. But you somehow think that your delusions of 'saving the specie' are noble, and not simply a way by which the system has parasited your mind for his own survival (not yours). Ever wondered why you should care about life in 50,000 years? About "collective survival"? Collective survival, as it is understood today, is a modern phenomenon. Back then you worked for the survival of the group, not "collective survival" (which is on par with the enlightenment notion of 'humanity' and 'human condition' - nonsense) this post is all over the place but my nephews are too fucking much and I cant concentrate

>>13315297
What are you talking about?

>>13315290
No I've been calling your challenges out as retarded and baseless.

>>13315293
>Your mind is filled with dogshit you couldnt defend for 5 minutes and youre smug about it as it oozes out of your nostrils
Says the poltard, irony. I'm glad my posts make you seethe.

>>13315310
>Why not try to change the system from the inside ?
Ted advocates that we use tech to dismantle tech.

>>13315316
>No I've been calling your challenges out as retarded and baseless.
While, ironically, acting like a retard and providing no basis.

>>13315294
Not a strawman if that's actually your argument. Cope :)

>>13315311
> Industrial society is a death sentence for mankind and possibly all life on the planet
No it isn't it just needs to be kept in check.

>>13315251
Meh, been awhile since I skimmed his work, but seemed his manifesto was demanding a return to the "primitive ways".

I mean, I'm all for putting the human back into human civilization, allowing forward thinking beyond short term profit and such. The idea that an adult gives up short term pleasure for long term gain, should apply as much on the individual level as it does to the collective. But as much as a stranglehold short term thinking has on mankind at the moment, I don't think one needs really hit the reset button to achieve a more big-picture and long term oriented society.

>>13315325
You're the one making retarded claims like how primitive people don't experience boredom without coming up with a single source outside of your schizoid propaganda

>>13315285
We had a billion people before we even figured out how to extract nitrate from the air... And besides, overpopulation is a problem that takes care of itself - just, often in nasty ways.

>>13315330
You can have village government and still have midwives wash their hands and a radio link to the next village and an alcohol-powered tractor.

>>13315057
It's always been like that. People rave about the good days of /lit/ but truth is /lit/ has two good days out of seven, all others being shitty, and that has been the case from the past 7 years if not more.

>>13315281
>We're just trying to get people to try and get it in a way that'll let humanity survive the next couple hundred years.
Consider making China your target first before Western technocrats. Their CO2 emissions are almost double that of the US.

>>13315336
No, I stayed out of that discussion since I haven't really read ISAIF, I just thought it was funny that your only argument is "how STUPID can you be to not believe me when I say ANTHROPOLOGISTS think this"

>>13315328
>No it isn't it just needs to be kept in check.
you're an idealist. the world should not be in the hands of drugged out technophiles who think that everything will be good once the system is 'kept in check', when we have 12,000 years of history of it never being kept in checked, and a grand total of 0 event where this fantasy ever worked.

Technophiles are literal fanatics. They are insane and should be stopped. Take a second to look at the post I replied to.
>No it isn't it just needs to be kept in check
They will be saying the same things in 300years when 95% of the species are dead and when we'll breathe through oxygen masks.

You're all a bunch of retards. Nearly 100% of the world's population recognizes technology as a boon without which life would be much more difficult. Your issues with technology are personal problems, and your autistic "revolution" will never amount to anything.

>>13315316
Try defending the theory that every human population on earth has the same potential for cognitive development, something the entire academy takes as sacrosanct. Try finding even one study that plausibly suggests that perspective. Because there are dozens of studies that show the reverse, unspeakable position.

>>13315303
>only that my family will be left behind so it doesn't matter whether humanity survives or not, personally
Which brings me back to: >>13315207

If all ya care about is you and your own, fine, but one has to ask oneself, if one can care that much, why not strive for more?

>>13315347
RW environmentalists in general are keenly aware of this. Ted's not a mainstream environmentalist, most of that stuff is a scam fully cordycepted by corporations.

>>13315352
huh? TK, and myself recognize technology for the comfort it brings. That's not the point at all, ahahahahahahaha.

>>13315340
...and a space program?

>>13315337

>>13315350
When it's something as ridiculous as they being unable to experience boredom to the point of literally idling by when there's nothing of utility to be done, yeah I'd like to see some sort of proof to go along with that.

>>13315355
>one has to ask oneself, if one can care that much, why not strive for more?
Why do we have to?

>>13315353
>Try defending the theory that every human population on earth has the same potential for cognitive development, something the entire academy takes as sacrosanct.

No they don't you retard, find me one academic study that argues this.

>>13315364
Yeah, it would be a lot more difficult to do that with more primitive economic systems, but it would be completely impossible with everyone dead. And maybe Elon Musk will get us established in space but in general there's just not any incentive for it.

>>13315368
If you're going to assign meaning to anyone's survival, ya can just as easily apply it to everyone's.

...and if you don't give a shit about the state of mankind, why advocate Ted to begin with? (Or send out poisoned envelopes, for that matter.)

>>13315365
I've been keeping clear of Greer since this is a Ted thread but honestly I think he's got a better grasp on things.

>>13315386
>If you're going to assign meaning to anyone's survival, ya can just as easily apply it to everyone's.
But why do ya have to?

>...and if you don't give a shit about the state of mankind, why advocate Ted to begin with? (Or send out poisoned envelopes, for that matter.)
Because I'm part of mankind.

>>13315355
What am I striving for? A fulfilling pre-industrial life or a dystopian technocratic hellscape? I want what is best for the most amount of people. Yes, a dismantling of technological society would invariably result in the deaths of billions, but the lives of the remaining people would be immeasurably better than my own. And if the only thing they have to worry about is a meteor or whatever you had in mind a few thousand years away, they will either re-establish technology and use it appropriately or die simultaneously. The other option is subject billions of people to a similar death while a select few escape.

>>13315388
Plenty of people do, Ted is literally mentally ill

>>13315393
What you think is best, but in reality is just a bunch of insane schizoid rambling

>>13315407
Oh, ok. Excellent conversation

>>13311354
It's just that the industrial revolution demolished a lot of "natural" boundaries humanity had. It's all a consequence of post-scarcity:

1. This economic system/model isn't sustainable in the (very) long term, we just can't continue to do this forever

2. Overpopulation lead to plenty of social issues

3. Our genes never caught up the pace at which we develop science-technology and never will

>>13315401
Greer is literally a druid lol

But he makes sense and he's comfy. Yes, collapse will come, it always has, we'll start bouncing nature's checks and the Gods of the Copybook Headings will with terror and slaughter return, but with enough iterations we'll figure out how to live with technology as sustainably as modern hunter-gatherers live with their environments.

After Ted he's practically Pollyanna.

>>13315365
Still takes care of itself, it's just not pleasant. Reducing yourself to primitivism, on the other hand, is eventual guaranteed extinction.

Yeah, we're about as apt to end the planet as save its genetic record and our history and culture via some distant offspring. The tools that put us into the position to be the planet's savior have also put us in a position to be its executioner, and all that ironic drama. Toss those tool's aside though, and it's just over.

Ya either find a way to sway the odds towards savior rather than executioner, without abandoning that which makes both possible, or you give up on mankind, and ultimately, life.

>>13315409
Yeah, you're retarded for continually bringing him up. He deserves to rot in peace

>>13315413
>Our genes never caught up the pace at which we develop science-technology and never will
good thing AI will take over :-^)

>>13315137
>getting haughty without providing any substantiation

Our generation may be fucked but you proudly belong to the eternal order of the self-satisfied imbeciles.

>>13315419
>thread is started by someone demanding tedfags explain themselves
>"why do you tedfags keep bringing him up"

I suppose life seems more imminently valuable when you expect to die at 30 instead of past 60 :)

>>13315420
Human GMOs will be a thing before IA breaks loose.

>>13315419
So this is the depth of anti-ted shills? Impressive. Enjoy the new iPhone™

>>13315427
yes this thread brought about as a response to the constant Ted threads that pop up everywhere where dilettante try to shame actual readers into taking him seriously and basically there's a reason you're failing in life and it's closer to you than you may think ;)

>>13315432
this but unironically
Say there was a machine that would double your lifespan but you'd have to stay in there with nothing to do while being gently tortured till you expired at 160. Would you step in?

>>13315162
Dis-moi garçon ça te dirait de citer le titre d'un seul putain de livre ? On demande même pas un chapitre ou (à Dieu ne plaise !) une citation explicite, juste une putain de recommandation, sur cette planche qui reste, malgré toutes les preuves du contraire, consacrée à la littérature et aux livres.

N'est-ce pas triste de mépriser la "génération youtube" quand on est soi-même né après la débâcle spirituelle de 1945 ? Tu n'as aucun lieu de nous prendre de haut sale fils de pute.

>>13315441
>actual readers
>no anti-ted shows any indication of reading him

>>13315438
Again, plenty of actual writers have explored Ted's questions with more impressive depth and scope. If you're looking for depth, try them.

>>13315454
oh ok I'll just follow the link in your post

>>13315452
Nice non argument lol. I've read him, but I've also read plenty of better shit and nothing Ted says is particularly novel

>>13315444
Kind of a stupid analogy because there's plenty to do today.

>>13315462
An easy one, for starters ;)

https://www.amazon.com/Wanting-Seed-Anthony-Burgess/dp/0393315088

>>13315464
Pretty weird that you'd totally miss his point though.

>>13315424
My entire point was that this is fundamental knowledge that doesn't need 'substantiation'. For the sake of discussion, you come with a minimum of knowledge, so we don't get caught up in explaining basic concepts and leave before we've had any time to share interesting information. In this case, primitives people not doing anything with their freetime isn't something to be 'sourced' since it is the very basis of the anthropology. It's like having a thread on biology and people asking me for sources when I say that CHNOPS are the elements of life. Ridiculous.

But zoomers don't comprehend this concept. They want everything handed to them, they have no concept of coming prepared. This is simultaneously plebiean, by the way. I come from a rich, educated family and I was not brought up like this. If you come unprepared, you are a slob. Be it an anniversary or a philosophical discussion. Respect yourself, be prepared.

>>13315454
I don't even know why you're harping on Ted's literature. I didn't even bring it up. But fair enough

>>13315451
si fils de pute, si t'es pas foutu de connaitre les FONDATIONS de l'anthropologie je vois pas pourquoi je me casserais le cul pour des illétrés comme toi. Vraiment, réfléchis deux secondes et lis ce poste >>13315477 je vais pas perdre mon temps à sourcer un truc qu'une poignée de branleurs ne lira même pas. je vais pas perdre mon temps à t'expliquer un truc aussi basique que ça alors que t'es sur internet et il suffit de cliquer sur nouvelle onglet pour faire ta recherche

>>13315474
I don't though, it's just a stupid one.

>>13315477
I don't think that the notion that primitive people never experienced boredom is "fundamental knowledge" lol

>>13315477
>It's like having a thread on biology and people asking me for sources when I say that CHNOPS are the elements of life. Ridiculous.
You could just provide one in that case.

>>13315418
Arguing that technological society is the only chance for the survival of the human race because of the sun is absolutely fucking asinine. The sun won't leave the main sequence for five billion fucking years, but if the unrestrained expansion of capitalism doesn't have some kind of serious and violent external brakes applied, we've only got somewhere between five decades and five centuries left.
If life on earth needs to die with earth, so be it. If we turn earth into an unlivable hell artificially in an inconceivably small fraction of that time, then that's unacceptable and should be fought against tooth and nail.

>>13315485
Probably because all the fanbois in this thread try to paint it as illuminating and good

>>13315393
>The other option is subject billions of people to a similar death while a select few escape.
Ya only need two... With some genetic engineering. Or none, with embryo ships. It's not a population transfer, it's a new population carrying the legacy.

But I'd much rather have a mankind that's miserable and survives until The Last Question becomes an issue, than one that's just happy and doomed in a comparative blink of an eye.

I mean, either way, but you, and I, and probably all our children and grandchildren will both be long dead before either of these fantasies comes to fruition. For all the doomsday talk, even when 75% of Europe was wiped out, they didn't exactly abandon their way of life afterwards.

>>13315502
Not as asinine as what Ted argues lol

>>13315464
>nothing Ted says is particularly novel
I always see people saying this. So asking sincerely here, who are others so said the same stuff? Aside from Ellul.

>>13315516
Do these embryo ships have anti-gravity drives? Do they travel faster than light? Because those are just as plausible right now.

>>13315526
Huxley

>>13315526
Burgess, Orwell, Pynchon... the list goes on.

>>13315536
He definitely spoke against the dehumanizing aspects of technology, sure. The rest not really.

>>13315502
>The sun won't leave the main sequence for five billion fucking years
Sun's getting hot enough to boil the oceans in less than a billion. This rock will be molten slag by the time it leaves the main sequence.

But there's also 50,000 some odd other things that could wipe us out at any given moment, many without warning, so that's *best* case scenario. Granted, it doesn't help that, every once in awhile, we invent a new one.

>If life on earth needs to die with earth, so be it
Four billion years of the struggle for life on Earth would like to say, "Fuck you." That's a suicidal philosophy.

Survival first, worthy of survival second. Given how fundamentally fucked up we are, mankind is going to need that extra time to evolve into something greater, and probably have to do it via some distant descendants elsewhere that we'd never recognize as ourselves. ... or we midas well just all hold hands and walk into the ocean now.

>>13315518
Significantly more asinine. You don't light yourself on fire because you're afraid you'll get cold in a few months.

>>13315565
So then why do you agree with Teddy "light a fire under modern society or else we'll be dead in generations" K?

>>13315552
I'm a Tedfag myself, no need to convince me.

>>13315526
It's moralizing anglos who can't stand the killings. You're right, only ellul covers all of TK's works. The rest of the authors mentionned only talk about specific parts of the technological question.

>>13315527
If you had either of those things, ya wouldn't need the embryo ship, ya'd just send people. But I'm only speaking of technology within our conceivable near future grasp under the rules of physics as they are currently understood, rather than taking into account that they may turn out to be fundamentally wrong and open new doors.

>>13315577
You mean you've only read ellul and ignore any contrary argument to Ted's nonsense

>>13315550
Wait a minute, are you under the impression that Ted Kaczynski bombed people because he was a garden-variety dystopian thinker? Confirmed for not reading him.

>>13315553
Sun's probably hot enough to boil the 3BYA oceans already, but the atmosphere changed. The biosphere is incredibly resilient and has survived a really insane amount of threats over a really insane amount of time. Life on earth is really good at surviving, it doesn't need our help, especially when we're a walking extinction event.

>>13315570
Gotcha. I suspect we've got more people in this conversation than the format really supports.

>>13315526
>I always see people saying this.
i think it's the same retard

>>13315553
>it doesn't help that, every once in awhile, we invent a new one.
This is a much bigger problem than you're making it out to be. We invent a new one every once in a while IN THIS TINY BLIP OF TIME WE HAVE BEEN TECHNOLOGICAL. That is a much, MUCH faster rate of "things that could wipe us out at any time" than Earth normally has and should probably be our first priority. It's like there's a murderer in the house and you've got the revolver but you don't want to shoot him because maybe in a decade the dam will burst and you want to ask him for a ride then.

>>13315585
>are you under the impression that Ted Kaczynski bombed people because he was a garden-variety dystopian thinker?

no

>>13315592
Making these TED threads? Yeah wouldn't surprise me.

>>13315553
Even a billion years is still incomparably more time than industrial society will afford us. A century ago, the end of the world was inconceivable without some kind of divine intervention coming down to do us in personally. In that time we've invented two major ways for us to completely wipe ourselves and most life on the planet out, and there are dozens of other little side projects (ocean acidification, toxins building up in our blood, some new superbug plague, take your pick) that could easily take out a chunk of us with enough time to develop.
Do you know how many of these threats we will willingly protect ourselves from with major sacrifices and changes to our ways of life? None. There is no way - no fucking way - we make it a billion years on this trajectory without one of these bombs going off or without inventing a new one none of us can even imagine. A thousand years would be incredibly generous.
In long-term lifespan of the human race, primitive society avoids all of these possibilities and is limited only by the planet we're on, which is orders of magnitude more time than industrial society affords us.

>>13315622
If you say so

>>13315585
>Sun's probably hot enough to boil the 3BYA oceans already, but the atmosphere changed. The biosphere is incredibly resilient and has survived a really insane amount of threats over a really insane amount of time. Life on earth is really good at surviving, it doesn't need our help, especially when we're a walking extinction event.
No matter how resilient it maybe, without technology, it will eventually end here. A billion years is the accepted timeline, but if it's instead three billion, just for shiggles... Well, same source of life, same means of survival, so its entirely possible that any technological civilizations that come after us us, if such a thing were possible, may come to the same suicidal conclusion. The antinatalism of "Better to collectively die stupid and happy than survive miserable with some hope of becoming something better", may not be a uniquely human conclusion at that point.

And given everything we know that can go wrong, and how close some of those things that did were to ending it all, it's nothing short of proof of divine providence that life on Earth has survived so long. Not something I wanna keep putting bets on, but ultimately, eventually and inevitably, this little blue dot and everything it has learned, evolved, and created, is toast.

It's equivalently utilitarian suicide. "There'll be less misery if we're all dead."

>>13315648
>Dude, trust me.

>>13315622
>Even a billion years is still incomparably more time than industrial society will afford us.
If it doesn't leave the biosphere, I entirely agree. And that's a real possibility, given the societies propensity to favor short term over long. But without it, you don't leave the biosphere, and guarantee eventual oblivion. Much rather take the chance presented than throw it away.

>>13315648
>without technology, it will eventually end here.
With technology, it will definitely end here and now.

>The antinatalism of "Better to collectively die stupid and happy than survive miserable with some hope of becoming something better", may not be a uniquely human conclusion at that point.
tfw it's impossible to study science without having a complex global supply chain ruled over by govs and corps whose lives depend on constant GDP growth

>it's nothing short of proof of divine providence that life on Earth has survived so long.
I do believe in divine providence, and I believe God will take more trouble to protect us if we take more responsibility for stewardship on Earth, rather than treating it as a disposable launchpad.

>>13315663
>without it, you don't leave the biosphere
A billion years is a long time to figure out a sustainable path to space flight.

>>13315661
Said nothing of the sort, said it dun matter if it's one or three, still toast.

But if ya want evidence that it's a billion, despite it not mattering, ya can pick your poison:
https://www.startpage.com/do/dsearch?query=sun%20to%20boil%20earth's%20oceans%20away%20in%20a%20billion%20years

>>13315674
>With technology, it will definitely end here and now.
prove it

>>13315680
Watch me

>>13315676
You said exactly that :)

>>13315674
>With technology, it will definitely end here and now.
No, just no. Ya might say that of this endlessly consumerist society, but technology isn't the source of that problem, mankind is. Technology can be used to free or imprison, for survival or destruction... and it can also be used to fundamentally change the nature of mankind.

>>13315686
>A billion years is the accepted timeline, but if it's instead three billion, just for shiggles...
Read that again.

>>13315697
That has nothing to do with what I said

>>13315703
I thought your "dude trust me" was in argument to how many billions of years we have left... So, if we're in agreement that I did not ask the poster to trust that, what did you think I was asking them to trust?

>>13315714
wow you're pretty slow

>>13315691
Technology's a part of mankind, and you're right we can use it for survival or destruction. The cavemen that drove herds of mammoths over cliffs ate very well for a few years. They used their power to help themselves in the near term at the expense of the long term, because if they didn't they would have got rolled by someone who did, and this pattern repeated again and again, until so much fertile soil washed down the Euphrates they built Basra on it, until the majority of sperm whales died for lamp oil, until the oceans began to fill with plastic.

Yes, maybe technology can change the fundamental nature of mankind, but unless it changes it for the worse this new mankind's going to get slaughtered by the old mankind because we've been bred by hardship and sorrow to be vicious, self-serving, and short-sighted.

>>13315732
take your meds grandpa

>>13315732
Well, maybe the Chinese will release an airborne CRISPR retro-virus and turn us all into slanty eyed folk who serve the collective rather than the individual. Who knows...

Just think tech is your best hope while also being your greatest threat, but ya either roll the dice or give up the game we call life.

>>13315784
>ya either roll the dice or give up the game we call life.
Yes, right now we're forced to roll the dice, but maybe with an almost-catastrophe we can put the dice back in the box.

>>13315799
hurrr
durrr

>>13315799
Would rather make an effort to weight them.

Not that a major city getting wiped out by a meteor impact wouldn't be the equivalent of widdling some edges, just, rather it not have to come to that, even if it's better than a lot of the alternatives.

Just seems, if you're trying to make political philosophies for the betterment of mankind, its perpetuation should be an axiom of concern, just as survival is when thinking upon ways to better one's self.

>>13312124
>Our biology agrees on this point too, hence why it pursued inventing and manufacturing the technology.

kek

>>13315817
A meteor impact would be devastating, sure. Pumping endocrine disruptors into our water supply is devastating right now. Hydrogen bombs are devastating right now. Climate change is devastating right now.

>>13315839
Hydrogen bombs aren't particularly devastating right now. I mean, they could be tomorrow - but so could the meteor.

But don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. The same tech that got ya stuck with those nukes, could just as well fix your climate change problem.

>>13315311
I'm pretty sure humanity being wiped out was considered a bad outcome even before the enlightenment (you could just as well have said christianity, it is also working under universalist assumptions - remember what catholic means in etymologically).

>>13315864
>they could be tomorrow - but so could the meteor.
What meteor? That's my point, the meteor is hypothetical, the nukes aren't.

>The same tech that got ya stuck with those nukes, could just as well fix your climate change problem.
That is exactly what Ted's worried about. Human systems aren't only near-sighted, they're short-lived, and are horrible at sustaining processes over a long period of time. He's worried we'll try to solve climate change by geoengineering, taking over the delicate balance of forces from nature and maybe solving things for a little while, then when that system fails like they all do we'll be much worse off than if we'd just left it alone.

>>13315884
As an aside, what's the earliest story anyone can think of where the stakes were "saving the world?" It's extremely common in modern genre fiction but I don't know how new it is.

>>13315493
*illettrés

T'as mis deux fois plus de temps à écrire ton éructation qu'il ne t'aurait fallu pour citer ne serait-ce qu'un bouquin. Donc en termes de perte de temps je pense que ta méthode laisse encore à désirer. Mais continue à essayer, t'arrivera peut-être à truc viable avant la prochaine extinction de masse.
Et le message que tu viens de citer n'existait pas au moment où je t'ai répondu. Visiblement t'es du genre nerveux et pas trop réfléchi, quitte 4chan ça te fait pas du bien.

Au passage, prétendre que tout le monde doive connaître telle observation anthropologique au prétexte qu'elle serait 'basique" relève de l'étroitesse d'esprit la plus pure. La moitié des personnes sur /lit/ en savent plus que toi sur des domaines des sciences bien plus fondamentaux et "basiques" que l'anthropologie, et pourtant ils passent pas leur temps à renifler que personne n'est au niveau et que les attardés dans ton genre connaissent pas leur bases. Faut vraiment que tu soit un ermite complet ou autiste avancé pour imaginer que dans un discussion où (paraît-il) tu es la personne la plus informée, ton rôle se réduit à hurler que les gens n'en savent pas autant que toi. Même si t'étais Marcel Mauss ça serait abusif, et t'es qui en réalité ? Personne.
Franchement regarde-toi un peu dans un glace, tu fais pitié.

Bon a lire ton autre post, je vois que c'était un troll depuis le début. Assez bien amené sauf la fin Bien joué de m'avoir fait écrire autant, mais je regrette pas, on a rarement l'occasion d'écrire français dans cet égout.

Dommage que les autres débiles dans ce fil ne lisent pas le français, parce que toute ma tirade s'applique à une proportion assez considérable de leurs pareils.

>>13315501
This bit is where the troll shows his hand.

>>13311714
You are missing the point. Suppose i have great talent for playing piano.However, since i have never had the chance to play it or i came never close to seeing one even. Now i lead a life without playing piano but deep down i have a talent. Am i depressed because of not playing piano ? No of course because how could i feel depressed if i do not know anything about my talent. If you follow this through most people do not have talent and those few who have would not be deprived of their surrogate activities since they wouldn't even know about them in the first place

>>13315886
I give the meteor and the nukes about even odds. Upside is that a stray meteor won't involve a massive counter attack, though I suppose either would shake things up.

In terms as to how tech solves climate change, actually was thinking of nuclear reactors specifically, though I don't really advocate it myself. But solar, fusion, etc. etc. Up until the last forty years or so, when somehow pollution became a good thing (in the US, at least), it's all only been getting cleaner and more efficient, and even that new trend has only slowed things up a bit, in addition to not exactly being irreversible.

The real problems are cultural, not technological. It's how technology is used, not that it simply exists. Sure, there's temptations involved, but giving up isn't a real viable option, especially with so many others to choose from.

>>13316225
170. “Oh!” say the technophiles, “Science is going to fix all that! We will conquer famine, eliminate psychological suffering, make everybody healthy and happy!” Yeah, sure. That’s what they said 200 years ago. The Industrial Revolution was supposed to eliminate poverty, make everybody happy, etc. The actual result has been quite different. The technophiles are hopelessly naive (or self-deceiving) in their understanding of social problems. They are unaware of (or choose to ignore) the fact that when large changes, even seemingly beneficial ones, are introduced into a society, they lead to a long sequence of other changes, most of which are impossible to predict (paragraph 103). The result is disruption of the society. So it is very probable that in their attempts to end poverty and disease, engineer docile, happy personalities and so forth, the technophiles will create social systems that are terribly troubled, even more so than the present once. For example, the scientists boast that they will end famine by creating new, genetically engineered food plants. But this will allow the human population to keep expanding indefinitely, and it is well known that crowding leads to increased stress and aggression. This is merely one example of the PREDICTABLE problems that will arise. We emphasize that, as past experience has shown, technical progress will lead to other new problems that CANNOT be predicted in advance (paragraph 103). In fact, ever since the Industrial Revolution, technology has been creating new problems for society far more rapidly than it has been solving old ones. Thus it will take a long and difficult period of trial and error for the technophiles to work the bugs out of their Brave New World (if they every do). In the meantime there will be great suffering. So it is not at all clear that the survival of industrial society would involve less suffering than the breakdown of that society would. Technology has gotten the human race into a fix from which there is not likely to be any easy escape.

>>13316286
>Thus it will take a long and difficult period of trial and error
Such is the history of humanity. Some shit does get better, some shit gets worse. New problems crop up, and ya adapt or ya don't. It might all end in extinction, but it beats giving up and waiting to die.

>>13313438
>min maxing life towards the retention of Capital
This is really the problem with industrial society. Everything as we know it is dependent on mix maxing the economy like a fucking autist playing Disgaea and everyone accepting the unfathomable abundance as the norm. If there are fluctuations in that abundance, even the tiniest bit, the ripples it sends are huge.