/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.3751588]

Holy shit, why does this make so much sense? I ignored reading this for so long because I just pegged him as insane but it is amazingly lucid and well argued. I'm still kind of coming to terms with this myself but it is a perfectly reasonable position once you think about it. With the backdrop of all the warnings on climate change by leading scientists, his conclusion seems near inescapable.

Also, with all the nihilism threads recently, I thought it might be relevant. Nihilism isn't that hard to get once you realize a simple fact: we didn't evolve to live in this society, the human animal is like a caged animal in a zoo.

Has /lit/ read it? What did you think?

[Anonymous No.3751984]

nobody? No neo-luddites eh?

[Anonymous No.3752008]

What's his argument?

[Anonymous No.3752041]

>>3752008
http://partners.nytimes.com/library/national/unabom-manifesto-1.html

>1. The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in "advanced" countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The continued development of technology will worsen the situation. It will certainly subject human beings to greater indignities and inflict greater damage on the natural world, it will probably lead to greater social disruption and psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased physical suffering even in "advanced" countries.

>2. The industrial-technological system may survive or it may break down. If it survives, it MAY eventually achieve a low level of physical and psychological suffering, but only after passing through a long and very painful period of adjustment and only at the cost of permanently reducing human beings and many other living organisms to engineered products and mere cogs in the social machine. Furthermore, if the system survives, the consequences will be inevitable: There is no way of reforming or modifying the system so as to prevent it from depriving people of dignity and autonomy.

and it goes from there

[Anonymous No.3752057]

>>3752041
This stuff has been being said since the start of the Industrial Revolution. His ideas aren't really new, and ultimately, we're too deep and most aren't willing to crawl back up to anarcho-primitivism so it seems pointless to read this.

[Anonymous No.3752118]

>>3752057
>aren't really new

doesn't matter

>we're too deep

So just give up? I'm skeptical of a lot of this myself, but are you just taking a simply defeatist attitude or are you actually disagreeing with something he said?

[Anonymous No.3752152]

>>3752118
>doesn't matter
Of course it matters. Why read something I've already read?

>So just give up? I'm skeptical of a lot of this myself, but are you just taking a simply defeatist attitude or are you actually disagreeing with something he said?
It's not defeatist to admit that there is nothing to be done about this by the individual. For one country to regress technologically, they would need the mutual agreement amongst every other nation in the world to follow along with them. Good luck achieving that. You're better off just going full Walden, building a hut and a small far with your savings and sticking it out until you die, or until some company wants the land to build a factory.

[Anonymous No.3752158]

>>3751588
Because you secretely want to be a woman

[Anonymous No.3752210]

>>3752041
>>3752041
>The continued development of technology will worsen the situation

What complete and utter bollocks. Post-industrial revolution is deeply flawed, I will concede, but the fact that he sees it as the final stage of human society is short-sighted. Ultimately, technology (particularly the Internet) will deliver us from the present societal cage, just like the printing press brought us out of feudalism, just like food surpluses derived from new technology brought us out of complete primitivism.

[Anonymous No.3752218]

Brave New World for life, fuck Teddy K.

The solution is more technology, not less. Primitivism is a nonsensical position since even the primitivism know damn well they can't persuade humanity to go stone age again. Since it isn't a possibility, it's not even worth considering.

[Anonymous No.3752225]

Primitivism is one of those fix it all types of ideas that forget one important thing: Their own practical impossibility.

[Anonymous No.3752231]

>>3752210
I find total technophilia just as retarded as complete technophobia. Positivists have been saying that technological progress would bring about a utopia on earth since fucking Bacon's New Atlantis, but the truth is much more complex than that, we may have a bunch of very advanced medicine, but we also got the ability to completely destroy ourselves (and almost did on a several occasions). We COULD get a techno utopia, but we COULD also get a brave new world type dystopia or become slaves to advanced AIs - or more likely, our civilization will collapse due to environmental reasons ala Jared Diamond's collapse.

What makes you think tech will fix everything?

[Anonymous No.3752233]

>>3751588
>I thought it might be relevant. Nihilism isn't that hard to get once you realize a simple fact: we didn't evolve to live in this society, the human animal is like a caged animal in a zoo.

John Zerzan and others prefer the word domestication. But yes, that's basically it.

>>3752152
Personally, I'm a fan of the Evolian approach, where we ride the tiger until the collapse of civilization.

[Anonymous No.3752241]

>>3752041
This is obviously true but anarcho-primitivism is too extreme. There has to be a middle ground where we can keep some of our technological advances while protecting the environment and ensuring global wealth equality.

[Anonymous No.3752242]

>>3752210
>just like food surpluses derived from new technology brought us out of complete primitivism

The average individual in a hunter-gatherer band was taller, lived longer, and was more well-fed than the average individual living in an early civilization. So this idea that agriculture was developed to deal with scarcity is total bullshit.

[Anonymous No.3752243]

"Man is and remains an animal. Here a beast of prey, there a housepet, but always an animal." — Richard Dawkins

[Anonymous No.3752244]

>>3752225
>>3752218
Even if primitivism was practical, what would be the point? Technology has made life infinitely more satisfying for humanity. I can be a director, writer, an engineer, an astronaut, a surgeon, a painter. Humanity can and has learned so much about the world and itself through technology. How is being a hunter-gatherer more satisfying?

[PlatformistFag !!JuB1MCnwvsO No.3752246]

>>3752241
Check out Ivan Illich and EF Schumacher. Particularly Schumacher's essay "Technology with a Human Face."

[Anonymous No.3752249]

>>3752041
>consequences have been a disaster for the human race

As compared to what life was like before the Industrial Revolution? Or is it compared to some idealized utopic evolution of society? I think that his statement is based on the latter.

> destabilized society
Uh, no?
All one must do is consider the frequency with which warfare and famine effected everyday life before the Industrial Revolution as opposed to after it to see how this is utterly false.

>made life unfulfilling
This supposes that life was fulfilling beforehand.
Maybe he is referring to how an aristocrats life pre-IR was much better than how it is today? Which is completely facetious. For the vast majority of the population anywhere pre-IR, your life was spent either 1. farming the land or 2. being conscripted into a peasant army or 3. dying of some horrible disease where the best cure they could come up with was letting leeches suck all of your blood out.

> have subjected human beings to indignities
I think it is very easy to argue that as a whole the entire population of the world suffers fewer indignities than it used to. One example that comes immediately to mind is the cessation of widespread and systematic use of slave labor.


>widespread psychological suffering
This is a very dubious claim at best. Since we have no written records of the psychological well-being of a large sample of any society before the IR, this claim is completely unverifiable and thus it is spurious at best.

>inflicted severe damage on the natural world.
This is the only claim that can be granted.

>The continued development of technology will worsen the situation.
What is this guy, Nostradamus? How does he know this?


In the final analysis, I give this guy a 4/10. I am so generous only because this "apocalyptico" mindset seems to be extremely popular with the masses today

[Anonymous No.3752254]

>>3752242
[citation needed]

Take your pseudo-anthropology somewhere else. I bet >>>/pol/ will enjoy it

[Anonymous No.3752260]

>>3752246
I've read "Economics As If People Actually Mattered" already, so I'll definitely check out Schumaker's other stuff. Illich sounds like exactly what I'm looking for, if his Wikipedia page is anything to go by. Thanks.

Edward Abbey deals with the environmentalist perspective on this in a lot of his writings, so check him out if you haven't already.

[Anonymous No.3752261]

>The industrial-technological system may survive or it may break down. If it survives, it MAY eventually achieve a low level of physical and psychological suffering, but only after passing through a long and very painful period of adjustment and only at the cost of permanently reducing human beings and many other living organisms to engineered products and mere cogs in the social machine.

I don't even get why there's two thoughts needed for this, of course it'll work and progress will inevitably level out major issues.

He already says it here, even if he dismisses it and adds his bias

>it MAY eventually achieve a low level of physical and psychological suffering, but only after passing through a long and very painful period of adjustment

Wright brothers crashed and wasted equipment, but eventually had a prototype. We will have our global "finished product" when research produces cheap or free energy and robots and automation paves way for a an altered socialist system. It will take time, but we will eventually engineer true systems to match our greater needs.

I may have to read it myself, as I really can't see how someone can say "oh wow I have seen the light!"

There has to be something I'm missing here

[Anonymous No.3752268]

>>3752242
But agricultural societies had more free time, and were therefore able to produce art and technology.

>>3752231
I'm not arguing that technology will bring about a utopia, I'm saying that historically it has always been the source of human and social progress, so Ted's argument that it will only further tighten the chains of post-industrial society is stupid.

[Anonymous No.3752271]

>>3752218
>>3752225
OP here, I actually agree, though I accept most of K's criticism of modernity, I am skeptical that his project for "revolution" is possible or desirable for us at this point. There are just too many variables and it's too late in the game. At this point, either tech gets us out with some miracle geo engineering or we're fucked either way.

>>3752241
Perhaps Murray Bookchin's social ecology or some of the green socialist projects, though I doubt that they would be radical enough in time to keep the world away from 350 parts per million. All around, I just think we're fucked.

>>3752244
Kaczynski would counter that first of all, our civilization is unsustainable and is leading to disaster, so that will not last and also, those things are not exactly as satisfying as you would think and that a low tech life which our species evolved and adapted to for a millenia is ultimately superior. I'm not sure if I agree but he makes a good case for it, read the text.

[PlatformistFag !!JuB1MCnwvsO No.3752276]

>>3752249
>As compared to what life was like before the Industrial Revolution?

The industrial revolution, at least initially, made things a lot worse. The statistics provided by Engels in The Condition of the Working Class in England demonstrate a rise in preventable disease, a decline in lifespan, and an overall decline in the standard of living. The industrial revolution didn't improve things (and even, only to a bourgeois observer) until longer after it had began.

>All one must do is consider the frequency with which warfare and famine effected everyday life before the Industrial Revolution as opposed to after it to see how this is utterly false.

While there are hunter-gatherer bands which make war with each other often, others, like the Hadza and !kung, know practically nothing of it. Even rates of conspecific violence are lower in their societies than in ours.

A lot of your arguments assume that Ted just wants to go back to the time before the industrial revolution - which isn't true. He wants to abolish civilization, not just industry.

>One example that comes immediately to mind is the cessation of widespread and systematic use of slave labor.

Which is still widespread and systematic, especially once you realize that all labor in a capitalist society is coerced - comparable to slavery. Work in a capitalist society is an indignity, and a mostly unnecessary one at that.

>In the final analysis

"There is no final analysis" - Cornelius Castoriadis.

[Anonymous No.3752279]

>>3752271
I'll check it out tomorrow.

[Anonymous No.3752283]

>>3752231
>brave new world
>dystopia

top lel

[PlatformistFag !!JuB1MCnwvsO No.3752285]

>>3752260
I fucking love Edward Abbey. I'm applying to be a park ranger because of him.

>>3752268
>agricultural societies had more free time

Richard B. Lee and Marshal Sahlins definitively proved that this isn't the case. Hunter-gatherers work, at most, five hours a day, compared to the eight hour standard here in the first world.

>>3752271
The eco-socialists and social ecologists tend to be rationalists/humanists/liberals. I try to ignore them.

> I doubt that they would be radical enough in time to keep the world away from 350 parts per million

Didn't we just reach 400 ppm a couple days ago?

[Anonymous No.3752286]

>>3752276
>all labor in a capitalist society is coerced - comparable to slavery

lolwat.

[Public Service Announcement No.3752292]

>>3752276

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[Anonymous No.3752299]

>>3752285
I've considered working with the Parks service. I've worked as a fire lookout and Philmont guide, so I could probably get the job. Being a forester sounds more appealing though since I'd work more directly in conservation and wouldn't have to deal with tourists.

[Anonymous No.3752308]

>>3752249
I think you'll find that Ted does not have an idealized view of the pre-industrial age, he is very well aware of the issues of civilization before it's arrival. He still believes that all in all, it was better.

Warfare and famine continued to be a problem after the industrial revolution, warfare especially and more importantly, we got other new problems such as environmental degradation and urban sprawl. Ted mainly makes his case by comparing modern society not to medieval Europe but to pre-agricultural groups.

A few more points here:

Ted cites many studies of indigenous peoples like Mbuti pygmies and Eskimo that shows they have fulfilling lives.

Slavery and human trafficking are still widespread throughout the world.

Urbanization has been tied to greater cases of mental disorders, especially schizophrenia.

[Anonymous No.3752324]

>>3752285
OP here, actually, in another essay in this very same compilation, Teddy smashes the "original affluent society" myth. Like I said, he is not an idealist and willingly accepts the violence and difficulty of primitive life. The whole "hunter gatherers barely worked" thing is bullshit, it was based on one seriously deficient essay. Check out his essay on primitivism, it's meticulously cited.
http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ted-kaczynski-the-truth-about-primitive-life-a-critique-of-anarchoprimitivism

[Anonymous No.3752328]

>>3752285
you're right btw, we just hit 400ppm

well...fuck me

[Anonymous No.3752345]

>>3752276
>While there are hunter-gatherer bands which make war with each other often, others, like the Hadza and !kung, know practically nothing of it. Even rates of conspecific violence are lower in their societies than in ours.
The claim you are making is actually very prevalent, yet completely misinformed, among non-anthropologists. Although groups like the !Kung of the deserts of Namibia (where the population density is less that 0.1 people per square mile) do not show tendencies towards warfare within oral memory, numerous studies of more "mainstream" tribal groups in Indonesia, Polynesia, and sections of Central Africa show that as much as 50% of all male deaths are caused, directly or indirectly, by warfare. When you compare this to even the most deadly periods of recent memory, the time-span from 1914 to 1945, you will see that only 3% of male deaths during this time were directly or indirectly related to war. Whatever information you are reading you is totally misguiding you.

>Which is still widespread and systematic, especially once you realize that all labor in a capitalist society is coerced - comparable to slavery. Work in a capitalist society is an indignity, and a mostly unnecessary one at that.
No

>The industrial revolution, at least initially, made things a lot worse. The statistics provided by Engels in The Condition of the Working Class in England
Lol. No. Engels was neither an anthropologist nor an epidemiologist. He did not write in a time of accurate medical record-keeping nor of verifiable population studies. What he did do though, is write about politics. As long as the data agrees with one's political agenda, it is very easy for one to overlook the massive errors contained within such data.

[PlatformistFag !!JuB1MCnwvsO No.3752358]

>>3752345
I'm not saying there was no warfare in hunter-gatherer societies.

>No

Well, then.

>Engels was neither an anthropologist nor an epidemiologist

Engels used publicly available contemporary studies to back up his case. I don't know of any studies refuting Engels's claims, either. The general consensus among historians is that things got worse before they got better.

[Anonymous No.3752393]

He's right that technological societies suck to live in and are fundamentally doomed, but who gives a fuck? We've always been doomed and everyone's life has always sucked. Kaczynski's problem is that he thought that his ramblings were worth blowing people up for, but they're not even worth killing yourself over, no matter how true they are.

>we didn't evolve to live in this society, the human animal is like a caged animal in a zoo.

This on the other hand is just a silly oversimplification. Of course we did not "evolve" to live in society but that's not why everyone has a shit life. Life is shit compared to what we wish it was – that's the real problem, not some claimed inadequacies of evolution.

[Anonymous No.3752407]

>>3752041
A lot of claims there, not a lot of arguments.

[Anonymous No.3752411]

>>3752299
working at Sea Base this summer lol

[Anonymous No.3752413]

>>3752393
>We've always been doomed and everyone's life has always sucked

I'm not sure about that, mankind was just fine for thousands of years as hunter gatherers, it's only recently that "we're doomed" is even a possibility.

[Anonymous No.3752417]

>>3752413
>mankind was just fine for thousands of years as hunter gatherers
Lol

[Anonymous No.3752418]

>>3752407
that's the introduction to a 50 something page paper, he's just laying out what he is going to argue for

[Anonymous No.3752422]

>>3752417
amazing rhetorical skills you have there bud

[Anonymous No.3752434]

>>3752411
Nice. One of the smartest people I've ever met was my crew guide at Sea Base. He was super idealistic though. Dropped out of art school to live like Christopher McCandless. I wonder what happened to him.

[Anonymous No.3752441]

>>3752422
That's a claim which has absolutely zero grounding in reality. The very fact that men were hunter-gatherers before the invention of writing means that your assertion is simply idle fancy. Because we simply cannot "know" what life was like back then, we can only draw on inference from scant archaeological remains as well as ethnological studies of living conditions of tribal societies over 100 years ago (when contact was made with the last confirmed "totally isolated" tribal societies).

If increased risk of a violent death, or starving to death, or living to the extremely "old" age of 45, or dying from one of numerous varieties of bacterial or viral diseases, of having to cover as many as 30 miles of terrain by foot every single day sound appealing to you, then perhaps a case could be made that mankind was better off pre-Industrial Revolution. But you are not going to convince many people.

[Anonymous No.3752443]

Man is not only an animal.

[Anonymous No.3752449]

>>3752358
hahahah,

>no.

good reasoning.

[Anonymous No.3752453]

goddamn buddhism is better than anything Ted has come up with.

why not go past what we fucking evolved to be? fuck what we evolved for, it can be better than that. The world is even worse than Ted thought it was. He was a goddamn prof from like fucking harvard doing w/e he wanted - aka most privileged person on earth and even that he thought sucked b/c of his stream getting ruined or w/e. there are ppl whose cultures, identities, races. ethnicities were ruined, not just some stream.... ted didn't go far enough really.

[Anonymous No.3752455]

>>3752453
or forest or w/e they paved over that pissed him off and set him off.

[Anonymous No.3752458]

His views on modern leftism as a symptom of over socialisation have been completely prophtetic of the social justice movement recently.

[Anonymous No.3752481]

Transhumanism is humanity's destiny.

[Anonymous No.3752496]

>>3752453
>>3752455
buddha had no regrets about aging because he lived it up till 29, smoking the finest hindu kush and eating dat ass in his palace all day long.

if he was born into the lifestyle he chose to live after age 29 he'd take the opposite route and try to acquire the good things of life.
he was a pussy running away from responsibility, he enjoyed all the fruits of the ruling class but ducked out when he was getting old enough to actually do some ruling
let me fuck hot indian chicks for 30 years and i'll eliminate my consciousness with a shotgun to the face after i finish lel
jesus suffered and died for his beliefs, mohammed risked his life fighting for his beliefs...buddha sat around under some trees in a tropical paradise lecturing everyone to stop enjoying life. dude sounds like more of a nag than a spiritual leader if you ask me.
at least christianity has respect for the poor, meanwhile buddhism is just like "fuck they deserve to be poor they were probably bad in a past life or something, besides being poor isn't so bad as long as you stop wanting shit" lol sounds like some republican shit you'd hear at a tea party rally

tl;dr buddha was a rich cunt who got everything he wanted

[Anonymous No.3752497]

>>3752441
I wouldn't say they have zero grounding on reality, we have learned much about how primitive societies and modern indigenous societies work.

K. would agree that in the end, this is based on value judgements and that it is difficult to get modern urbanites to see merit in a more mobile, dangerous and shorter life. However he believes that it is the only way to save mankind from some kind of techno dystopia or extinction. I'm not sure how much of that I agree with myself.

[Anonymous No.3752507]

>>3752481
typical transhumanists

[Anonymous No.3752521]

>>3752507

Humans using smartphones is barely 'transhuman'.

Sadly there are a lot of complete nutjobs who besmirch the movements noble goals.

Here's an example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FM-2030

[Anonymous No.3752549]

>>3752521
So you see going from barely idiots to full blown retarded as a good thing?

[Anonymous No.3752557]

>>3752243
Dawkins didn't say that. Goebbels did

[Anonymous No.3752562]

>>3752557
Dawkins and Goebbels can say the same things, either through hereditary inheritance or convergent evolution.

[Anonymous No.3752575]

>>3752549
what.

The point is to move towards the level of post-human, not towards stupidity.

[Anonymous No.3752579]

>>3752562

[Anonymous No.3752672]

>ctrl+f 'Pentti Linkola'
>0 results

Uh, okay. Someone has goofed. Linkola is infinitely better than any scrub author mentioned in this thread.

[Anonymous No.3753221]

>>3752672
Mosty edgy senior award goes to Linkola. "Lets nuke all cities" - old man in his lakeside shack

[Anonymous No.3753308]

>>3752242
>>3752276
>>3752393


Well, I've hunted a lot, an gathered a little, and lived for a decade in conditions of primitive agriculture with no electricity, no running water, no telephone and cultivating and harvesting with animal and human labor. Then I went to college and entered a world of technology and mechanization.

I'd have to say that Kozynski is totally wrong: the compromises necessary to survive in a non-technological world visit enormous indignities on people. Technology is better. the world is better. I spent about ten years while studying Agriculture in undergraduate and graduate schools reasearching this.

There is a reason that people look back at the primitive world as a better time; I look back at my childhood the same way. It's a kind of naive nostalgia. A myopic rose colored ision of a beautiful past that was never real.

And I have no idea why this "world is getting worse and going to end soon" thing keeps cropping up. It's just about the oldest story in popular literature. One of the oldest documents we have from ancient egypt talks about how the world is getting worse and is going to end soon. I sort of like reading all that stuff from the last three centuries that predicted it, for political, social, economic or religious reasons. It's all nonsense of course: the world has gotten better in just about every way, and in every important way, in the last forty years. In the last century it's gotten immeasurably better. I have no idea how any one could think otherwise unless they're just predisposed towards doom and gloom.

[Anonymous No.3753325]

>>3752575
>post-human
My favorite musical genre.

[Anonymous No.3753331]

It's an interesting read, certainly, and far more coherent than I expected. I found myself agreeing with him from time to time, but found his luddite shit tedious and idiotic.

[Anonymous No.3753344]

>>3752393
>He's right that technological societies suck to live in
le ungrateful little shit face

contemporary life is best life.

[Anonymous No.3753351]

>>3752441

>he actually thinks famines were a problem for hunter-gatherers
>he isn't aware famine is purely a product of civilization'
>he actually thinks 45 was "old" for hunter-gatherers
>he doesn't even understand how averages work

The stupidity!

[Anonymous No.3753353]

>>3753344
Agreed. I don't know why this is not obvious. If you were scavenging in the streets of Berlin after the war, you might look back with longing to your days on the farm. (not that you'd go to the farm at the moment: you'd just starve faster, and have nowhere to hide from troops who were also starving and who wouldn't believe all the food was taken by tha last bunch through). But then you'd be longing for the pre-war days. Everybody forgets how awful it is on the farm when things go wrong. This is why everybody runs headlong to the ciies whenever they get the chance. And like hunter gatherers, who basically vary between living off the fat of the land and starving to the point of cannibalism (Esau, anyone?)

[Anonymous No.3753355]

>>3753344
And it will only get better. This period is a teething period. We have all these wonderful things, but we still retain a small part of the attitudes and ideas from the previous century, and they prevent us from fully making the most of this new potential.

Soon we will be past that phase, and everything will become better.

[Anonymous No.3753357]

>>3753351
yeah, we went from hunter-gatherer to farming society because we wanted more famin and lesser life span

[Anonymous No.3753360]

>>3753351
you're missing the averages problem too. Hunter-gatherers live much better on average than early agricultural groups. Then they starve to death en masse when the game or the wild harvests are uncertain. And everybody knows this, because we have hunter gatherer civs around today and its the main thing they fear and tell stories about.

[Anonymous No.3753362]

>>3753360
Also high child mortality pretty much means the numbers are always going to be skewed as shit.

[Anonymous No.3753363]

>>3753351
Hunter gatherers had 12 children per woman of two 2 survived to reproduce on average. muh wonderful noble savage idyll hurrr

[Anonymous No.3753366]

wtf is this shit? i'm literally offended.

have none of you read freud? have none of you read marx? do none of you understand the planet we are living in? your comfort comes at a very real price, and it's certainly not sustainable.

read Empire for fuck's sake. or at least The Shock Doctrine. or Planet of Slums.

read something, you fucking morons.

[Anonymous No.3753368]

>>3753360
not that agricutltural is a wonderful life either. I have small teeth and a bent back because the cow went dry at a time when I was going through a growth spurt and her milk was our only calcium and our biggest protein source. the margins are extremely slim at the edges.

[Anonymous No.3753369]

>>3753366
It doesn't need to be sustainable because we're in the process of moving beyond this clumsy transition face, silly. Just because there is some turbulence on the way doesn't mean that the plane will crash.

[Anonymous No.3753371]

>>3753366
woops, looks like somebody just hit puberty.

[Anonymous No.3753372]

>>3753363
w/e you say little kid.

if you're interested in seeing why you're an idiot, see: sahlins, stone age economics

[Anonymous No.3753374]

>>3753369
looks like somebody doesn't understand disaster capitalism or the history of neoliberalism more generally

[Anonymous No.3753376]

>implying any of the hunter gatherer propagandists herewound actually want to live in a homeless band of illiterate savages stalking deer all day until you step on the wrong snake

[Anonymous No.3753379]

>>3753374
I'm honestly not sure what point you're trying to make. You seem to be capable of speaking only in tangential references, saying "looks like you haven't read this" or "none of you have read this". Having read a lot of books is all well and good, but don't try and pretend that that fact alone is the basis of a coherent argument.

What are you actually trying to say?

[Anonymous No.3753380]

>>3753366
don't get upset: I've been reading that sort of stuff since the late fifties. It has all been far worng so far. 1985 was supposed to be cannibalism all over America as I recall, and India was doomed before seveny two. If you want to beat me on disaster scare literature, you have some catching up to do.

[Anonymous No.3753384]

>>3753379
It's an old but transparent defence mechanism.

[Anonymous No.3753386]

>>3753366
Just because you read books it doesn't mean they are true.

Rich people are in a transititional phase until we leave the planet and become the space race.

The remaining humans will die, but hey, thats the circle of life.

[Anonymous No.3753390]

These guys are not wrong: The disaster has been going on for the last fifty years. We could be growing and improving at least three times as fast as we are. We could have had sustainable agriculture that would feed three times the population we now have and colonies on the moon and mars. Kick out the jams, people! save the planet and make everybody rich, dammit!

[Anonymous No.3753392]

>>3753390
But you can't make everyone rich. That's not how economics works. The value of money is relative. If everyone was made rich, the price level would rise, and they wouldn't be rich.

[Anonymous No.3753394]

the retard bombed people over such shitty arguments it made me wonder if all this had been just a pretext for some old fashioned fun at others expense

[Anonymous No.3753395]

>>3753392
He probably means it in the "let's make everybody not lacking in things" sense.

[Anonymous No.3753396]

>>3753308
Just keep restating that "the world is better", I think that K.'s and other anti civilization critics make good points which you just didn't address. It is not at all obvious that things are better now, at least not if you look under the surface. What good is indoor plumbing and the internet if we are destroying the planet?

>>3753353
>Agreed. I don't know why this is not obvious

Because it isn't obvious if you look at the world with a critical eye you dolt. The famine thing has been addressed already, civs are not immune.

>>3753355
>Soon we will be past that phase, and everything will become better.

They've been saying that for ages now, since Bacon and the scientific rev. Tech improves, but lives don't necessarily improve, but they certainly change. Tech changes our lives in ways we cannot predict, read Ellul.

[Anonymous No.3753399]

>>3753396
>They've been saying that forever
And they've been right, that's what an upwards trend is. At any point on that trend someone could say "things are getting better" and they'd be completely accurate.

[Anonymous No.3753404]

>>3753380
except this time it's not just crazy hippies and conspiracy theorists clamoring about disaster, it's the Intergovernmental panel on climate change and the vast majority of world climate scientists. If you don't think shit is going to hit the fan, you're just ignoring the scientific evidence at this point.

[Anonymous No.3753408]

>>3753399
if by upward, you mean the trend in environmental destruction, urban sprawl and greenhouse gases, then yes, you are correct

[Anonymous No.3753409]

>>3753404
Nobody in this thread is denying climate change, you stupid fucking autist. Fuck.

>>3753408
You can shut the fuck up too.

[Anonymous No.3753412]

>>3753409
now now - no need to get mad, let's have a serious discussion, I admit that there have been many improvements in civilization, however, you can't deny that it has come at a cost. This means we have made progress in the discussion! Maybe we can move on now.

The real question is has it been worth it?

[Anonymous No.3753415]

>>3753395
exactly. I know plenty of poverty stricken people living on a hundred acres of meadow, pasture , farm and forest, with two working vehicles (and five non-working ones) and every modern convenience you can think of. They're fabulously wealthy compared to their farmer grandparents who lived on and worked the same land.

>>3753396

It really isn't obvious that things are better now, to some people I guess, until you look under the surface and see how much better every fundamental thing has gortten.

And if you think we were destroying the planet now, i invite you lo look waht we were doing in 1967, and 1928, and 1910, and 1888. things were far, far worse the farther you go back into the technological revolution. I personally have watched pollution drop dramatically, deforestation reverse like a film rewinding, and living conditions and general health improve at an insane rate in one of the most impoverished areas in America. And this is spreading to the third world.

[Anonymous No.3753419]

you're right, mister kaczynski
i bet a bunch of tree-hugging mankeys would be amazingly good at deflecting asteroids

fucking retard

[Anonymous No.3753422]

>>3753412
Nobody is mad, you're just a retard.
>People say things have got better
>LEL BUT CLIMATE CHANGE CANCELS THAT OUT XD AKGASGKJGLAGKLAGAGKJASGKLAGLKASGKAGLKAGKAGAGKAG

Climate change is hardly the end of the world, already we're seeing a huge focus on green technology and global awareness of the fact that climate change is a clear and present danger. At this point I'm pretty sure the only people holding out against the forces of common sense and reason are the population of that bastard bible belt commonly referred to as the USA, and I guess the Chinese too. But the Chinese are being deliberately obtuse because it serves their purpose, and the moment their growth slows down (a process which has already begun) they're going to start putting some of their ludicrously high profits into green tech, rather than just investing it in more polluting technology. I mean shit, I don't know if you've been to China recently, but the air there is toxic sludge, and hurts to breathe. It's got to a point where someone is going to have to do something about it.

Actually, now that I think about it, the Chinese are kind of a big problem when it comes to dealing with climate change. They've managed to gain a monopoly on some of the materials essential to creating solar panels, so that will prove an issue unless someone finds another way to create solar panels, which, knowing the state of technological progress these days, someone already has.

[Anonymous No.3753425]

>>3753415
see
>>3753404

Just because they seem better from your perspective (America), does not mean they are better overall in the world. That's a logical fallacy though I forget the name

[Anonymous No.3753427]

>>3753412
they have come at a cost: people have so much now that they're bginning to wonder why they should work to improve themselves at all. And theyre cut off from education by skyrocketing education costs.

[Anonymous No.3753428]

>>3753422
Addendum: my point is I think it is worth it, and that fact is obvious to anyone with any ability to look at things in the long run. In the short run yes, things are bad, but the only way to prevent them from getting worse is to push onwards.

The same people who claim we should become Amish (that's hyperbole, so don't get carried away with nitpicking that section of my argument) are likely the same people who claim austerity is a valid solution to the global recession, in the sense that they are incapable of viewing anything beyond the short term. The best way to get out of the recession is investment, in the same way that the best way to reduce climate change is to keep pushing on with technological advancement.

[Anonymous No.3753431]

"We often see the past through rose-tinted spectacles, and so while many hoped to return to the days of hardy, God-fearing pioneers, the reality of those times was very different from this image. In any case, even if this view of the past had been true, new conditions in society made such a return impossible."

[Anonymous No.3753434]

>>3753422
Despite constant effort to get countries to reduce emissions, it has failed, and it's not just the US and China.

And yes, I do consider climate change and environmental degradation as "getting worse", that is not silly, irrational or alarmist, it is a serious downside of modern industrial capitalism.

>>3753419
I actually agree, this was one of my major issues with primitivism, it only deals with one form of existential threat (albeit one which is the most salient at the moment). I don't think K. has addressed this question, but he might just answer that our current civilization is headed for ruin anyways and thus the issue is irrelevant.

[Anonymous No.3753435]

>>3753434
>Dat short-termism
It's not going to happen overnight.

[Anonymous No.3753444]

You would think with such a scheme of delusions K. would have spared the world a violent lashing out but I suppose if we learn anything from this case it is the inefficacy of ideology to prevent mental aberration from manifesting in anti-social behavior.

[Anonymous No.3753443]

>>3753428
>but the only way to prevent them from getting worse is to push onwards

Which is just based on faith on your part.

[Anonymous No.3753446]

>>3753435
or it might just not happen at all

[Anonymous No.3753448]

>>3753443
Not really. It's based on an understanding of history, of social development, and of the nature of technology and research and development at the moment.

[Anonymous No.3753450]

>>3753444
dem triples

[Anonymous No.3753451]

>>3753446
Yes, and equally the world might turn into a manatee in five minutes time and Uranus will turn into a dragon and eat Earth and then the entire universe will degenerate into celestial beastial shit-flinging.

Present evidence for your assertion, or fuck off. Because so far I'm the only person who has been actually presenting any arguments here, and the rest of you have just been going "hurr global warming is bad, hurr the world is ending".

[Anonymous No.3753452]

>>3752276
You're incredibly retarded. Labour in a capitalist society is as lax as can be, you don't work, you live off the means of others and steal and abuse the systems. In your nice little hunter-gatherer society, you don't work, you die.

[Anonymous No.3753453]

>>3753448
Are we studying the same history? Because I see extensive wars and environmental destruction

[Anonymous No.3753458]

>>3753451
>"hurr global warming is bad, hurr the world is ending".

That's a nice way to put the warnings of the IPCC, do you make a habit of mocking the world scientific community?

[Anonymous No.3753459]

>>3753404
Can someone give me a basic laymans definition of PPM and why it's bad?

[Anonymous No.3753461]

>>3753453
I don't think we are. I don't think you've ever actually studied history in your entire life.

And you've ignored my most important point, which is the way technology is heading at the moment. But I guess you've got your dogma and you're sticking to it, and I respect you for that, even if you are a moron.

[Anonymous No.3753462]

>>3753458
THAT GLOBAL WARMING IS BAD IS A GIVEN, AND THAT GLOBAL WARMING EXISTS IS ALSO A GIVEN. NOBODY IS DEBATING THAT. FUCK.

JUST PRESENT AN ACTUAL FUCKING RESPONSE TO MY ARGUMENT.

[Anonymous No.3753464]

>>3753453
If you see extensive wars and environmental destruction in the past, why would you want to do anything but push forward? You're sitting in a comfortable home talking to people across the world on your computer, probably while you're a fucking parasite on society. We have it pretty good at this stage.

You people who think humanity can regress and improve are fucking hilarious.

[Anonymous No.3753465]

>>3753461
Technology is heading in many different directions, it's not just solar panels, it's also fracking, mountaintop removal and processing of tar sands for oil. Oil subsidies are at an all time high and so called "green" technologies are a mere sideshow globally. I guess at this point, ad hominems are all you have?

[Anonymous No.3753472]

>>3753465
You're right, but that speaks to a need to curb lobbying and eliminate the stymie of green progress by petrol giants; that's pushing forward with reforms, not crying and wishing you could wear a loincloth again.

[Anonymous No.3753475]

The current late-capitalist path is taking us to the end days, but we don't need to go "primitive". We just need to abolish capital and switch to radically localized, community-based societies.

[Anonymous No.3753481]

>>3753475
Fantastic, but that's nearly as impossible to achieve as anarcho-primitivism. I hope you have enough supporters to go to the hundreds of public global conglomerates and tell them we've decided to go back to village life.

[Anonymous No.3753482]

>>3753465
This is true, but a great deal of R&D is going into green technology, and people who graduate from college this year have grown up accepting as a given the fact that pollutants and global warming are bad and need to be prevented.

There are problems, yes. But they won't be solved overnight, nor will they be solved in one or two or three or five or even ten years. They will be solved by gradual technological, social and economic progress.
Yet becoming some kind of retarded reactionary isn't the solution at all, and this is my point. The only solution is to push forward.

[Anonymous No.3753483]

I think all reactionaries just need to not ever speak about global warming or technology ever in their life.

I think that would make the issue of climate change much easier to solve.

[Anonymous No.3753492]

Sooo many wonderful things are in the pipe right now. so many of the problems of civilization have already been solved by tech we have had for ten years, and it's in the refractory phase while it spreads, and the refractory phase is getting shorter and shorter. When Lockheed rolls out its portable 100 megawatt fusion generators we'll already have a massive market for them.

[Anonymous No.3753497]

>>3753472
The possibility of green tech actually making things better is fantastically small. Electric vehicles still depend on coal or natural gas power plants, for instance, and on the construction and maintenance of a road system which disrupts local ecosystems. Solar technology, while less efficient than coal or natural gas, also needs a huge amount of REM mining to support it. I suggest Techno-Fix for reading on this subject. It's 10/10 bretty giud

You're saying that we can't decentralize production and reduce industry because we'd have to go through petrol giants - but then say that we have to oppose petrol giants in their stymieing of green tech progress.

[Anonymous No.3753498]

>>3753492
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_beta_fusion_reactor

[Anonymous No.3753502]

>>3753428

>in the same way that the best way to reduce climate change is to keep pushing on with technological advancement

The best way to reduce climate change is to do a lot of things, a minor one of them being technological advancement. Restricting our food supply to a set amount and changing people's attitudes towards nature are far more immediate and important ways to reduce climate change (climate change standing in here for all environmental destruction we cause)

[Anonymous No.3753507]

>>3753497
centralization is saving the environment though. Getting your hamburger at mcdonalds does a couple orders of magnitude less environmental damage, less waste and less pollution than taking the stuff home from the store and cooking it youyrself, let alone growing it yourself. That mulitiplies the wast another order. Take it from a farmer: Buying your bushel of potatoes at walmart is insanely cheaper than the work, land , time and waste involved in growing a bushel yourself.

[Anonymous No.3753509]

>>3753459
ppm = parts per million

it's a measurement of how much CO2 is in the atmosphere

400 PPM = 400 liters of CO2 for every million liters of air

[Anonymous No.3753511]

>>3753502
No, it isn't. Things like what you're endorsing slow the creation of new 'climate change' but don't do anything at all to existing damage. The pollutants in our atmosphere will remain there for the next 10,000 years unless we do something about it, and the only way to do something about it is to keep advancing technology.

In the short run, yes, technological advancement is only a small part of a broader solution. in the long run, however, it is the only solution.

[Anonymous No.3753514]

>>3753507
>centralization is saving the environment though

We just hit 400 ppm, topsoil erosion is continuing at a quickening pace, and deforestation shows no signs of ceasing.

>Getting your hamburger at mcdonalds does a couple orders of magnitude less environmental damage, less waste and less pollution than taking the stuff home from the store and cooking it youyrself, let alone growing it yourself.

The goal is to reduce consumption and production as a whole, not to decentralize it but keep it egregiously high.

[Anonymous No.3753516]

>>3753502
you're talking about altering human perceptions, and you're doing a terrible job at it just on this board. If you can't convince us, what hope do you have in convincing the billions whose own experiences have taught them differently? I teach environmental science and know about the effects of global warming. But the steps people keep bringing forward to deal with it seem horrifyingly inefficient, impractical, and/or coercive. Not to mention stupid and horribly unworkable. They seem to not just want to throw out the baby with the bath water, but shoot the baby and ban bathing.

[Anonymous No.3753519]

>>3753516
You're beginning to understand how reactionaries work.

[Anonymous No.3753522]

>>3753514
you're talking about altering human desire and basically human nature, which will take massive socail and probably even genetic engineering. And reforestation is happening at a fantastic rate in every developed nation, far outstripping the deforestation in the third world. don't know where youre getting your data.

[Anonymous No.3753527]

>>3753516

Never did I imply changing people's perspectives was going to happen, just that it would be the best way to combat climate change.

>But the steps people keep bringing forward to deal with it seem horrifyingly inefficient, impractical, and/or coercive.

Well of course because those 'steps' are treating the symptoms, not the disease.

[Anonymous No.3753530]

>>3753522
>you're talking about altering human desire

Maybe.

>basically human nature

Nah.

>which will take massive socail and probably even genetic engineering

It will take some convincing and practical application of our ideas in the mean time. I hardly think i will take genetic engineering, since anti-consumerist sentiments seem to be gaining in popularity (especially with the "Millennials").

The rate of deforestation has decreased, but reforestation has not yet outstripped it.

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=34195

[Anonymous No.3753532]

>>3753522
He's getting his data from sensationalist right-wing tabloids, who every now and again place a satellite photo on their front page of deforestation in Brazil and treat that as the be all and end all of climate change as if Brazil was the only place in the fucking world with trees of any kind.

Fuck the right, fuck reactionaries, and fuck the luddite fucking idiots who think that good will and peace to all men is the only way to fix climate change.

[Anonymous No.3753529]

>>3753481
>Fantastic, but that's nearly as impossible to achieve as anarcho-primitivism.
Except that neither of those are impossible to achieve? Capitalism did not always exist, you know.

> I hope you have enough supporters to go to the hundreds of public global conglomerates and tell them we've decided to go back to village life.
Why do you operate on this idea that these conglomerates are beyond reproach or are untouchable?

[Anonymous No.3753533]

>>3753529
Capitalism has always existed in some form or another.

[Anonymous No.3753537]

>>3753532
I got my data from the UN. Thanks for trying, though.

>>3753533
Literally the dumbest comment I've ever read.

[Anonymous No.3753536]

>>3753529
>Why do you operate on this idea that these conglomerates are beyond reproach or are untouchable?

He literally thinks decentralization is impossible because the conglomerates will oppose it but that emerging tech is the solution even though he admits the conglomerates will oppose it. Peak liberalism.

[Anonymous No.3753538]

>>3753533

lol

[Anonymous No.3753539]

>>3753537
Explain why I'm wrong then.

[Anonymous No.3753540]

>my face when all of these techno-fetishists think there are infinite resources for their technology
>B-B-B-B MUH SINGULARITY! MUH TRANSHUMANISM

[Anonymous No.3753543]

>>3753539

>Capitalism has always existed prove me wrong

No, that isn't how we have mature discussions.

[Anonymous No.3753544]

>>3753540
Oh fuck off, nobody thinks that you ludicrous fucking retard.

[Anonymous No.3753547]

>>3753543
Yes, it is. I've said something which I think is true. If this is a mature discussion explain to me why it isn't true, because I honestly believe that to be the case.

That is how a discussion works.

[Anonymous No.3753548]

>>3753533
wut

[Anonymous No.3753549]

>>3753536
I never said that faglord. I don't support nor oppose either side fully. But how is a radical position going to gain enough support and resources to oppose the majority position whose supporters have near unlimited resources in both money and influence.

[Anonymous No.3753553]

>>3753415
You are a beacon of hope in a cynical wasteland, optimistic oldfag anon.

[Anonymous No.3753554]

>>3753509
Thank you.

[Anonymous No.3753555]

>>3753547

I think it's not the case, now you prove me wrong.

>but I said it first

Does that sound mature?

[Anonymous No.3753557]

>>3753555
But that's not what we're doing. I don't know why you don't think its the case, I'm honestly confused. You're not arguing at all, you're just saying "lel u r wrong becoz but i'm not going to tell you". That's a really stupid way of having a fucking discussion.

[Anonymous No.3753560]

>>3753530
>It will take some convincing and practical application of our ideas in the mean time. I hardly think i will take genetic engineering, since anti-consumerist sentiments seem to be gaining in popularity (especially with the "Millennials").

Sentiments that are spread on the latest laptops through high speed internet. Most of these people are just as reactionary, half-assed neo-luddites who see a 12 year old with an iPhone and take to facebook ranting about the degradation of modern society.

[Anonymous No.3753561]

>>3753555
The burden of proof is on you, friendo. You disagree with him, now you have to say why.

[Anonymous No.3753558]

>>3753547
Define capitalism and explain how it existed in the Akkadian Empire, pre-Peloponnesian War Sparta, Feudal Japan c. 1732, and/or per-colonial Hawai'i.

[Anonymous No.3753559]

>>3753536
the trick with localized and decentralized stuff, especially if it involves "restricted" anything, is you're going to be selling it competition with people who are selling globally available, cheap, unrestricted everything. That's a very hard sell. Telling conglomerates you won't be buying their products anymore isn't going to make them change their ways unless there are a tremendous number of you. it's sort of supply and demand. if everybody wants it, the conglomerates will come up with a way of adapting to sell it to them, even if it's a localized, decentral lifestyle. It's what they do best. There's already a massive industry catering to "back to the land" and survivalist types.

[Anonymous No.3753564]

>>3753560
It's better than nothing.

[Anonymous No.3753566]

>>3753557

And you're just saying "lel i m right becoz i said". You haven't explained why you think it's the case. You haven't made any points at all. You've just said "I'm right prove me wrong".

It is indeed a really stupid way of having a discussion.

[Anonymous No.3753567]

>>3753544
So much for modern technology's soteriological promises!

[Anonymous No.3753571]

>>3753567
>!

>>>/facebook/

[Anonymous No.3753572]

>>3753561

This ain't debate club, ass. If he wants to talk, he has to make a fucking point.

[Anonymous No.3753573]

>>3753566
I've never said I'm right. I've said I thought that was the case, but I'm entirely prepared to admit that it might not be. But I can't be persuaded to any alternative way of thinking if nobody explains why I should think that way!

I'm not trying to persuade you of anything.

[Anonymous No.3753574]

>>3753572
>this isn't debate club
>that isn't how we have mature discussions.
You just keep going round in circles.

[Anonymous No.3753576]

>>3753549
>>3753559
I think you're ignoring that >>3753475 suggests abolishing capital, meaning providing no way in which to pay for things, period. Global corporations, which exist only to generate capital, could not exist in such a community on any level.

[Anonymous No.3753578]

>>3753564
Anything is better than nothing, but that doesn't mean that it will have any effect whatsoever. They'll still buy the next innovations in entertainment and convenience the minute they can afford it.

[Anonymous No.3753580]

>>3753561
That's not how burden of proof works. The burden of proof lies on the person making the original claim, not the person questioning it.

[Anonymous No.3753581]

>>3753574

When you talk philosophy with your friends, do you emulate the Lincoln/Douglas debate format?

[Anonymous No.3753582]

>>3753573
>I've said I thought that was the case

Why. Why do you think that. This is how we talk to people.

[Anonymous No.3753583]

>>3753581
Oh fuck off. I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything, I don't particularly care either way. You don't think I'm right, and that's fine. But you haven't explained why I'm not right, so how can I possibly defend myself.

[Anonymous No.3753587]

>>3753576
>abolishing capital
Equally impossible in a capitalist, investors-market world. The richest and most powerful country in the world right now is fundamentally based on the merits of capital. Good luck convincing the millions of people who support that unquestioningly, even when it works against them.

[Anonymous No.3753590]

>>3753580
No, it doesn't. The burden of proof always lies with the person questioning the existing claim.

[Anonymous No.3753591]

>>3753560
You realize that it's fallacious to claim that a statement is wrong ("consumerism is bad and we should do something about it") simply because of what the message is written in (text on the internet originating from a laptop).

[Anonymous No.3753605]

>>3753591
I didn't say it's wrong, I responded to the statement:
>since anti-consumerist sentiments seem to be gaining in popularity (especially with the "Millennials").

By saying that these same people don't even attempt to live the half-assed philosophy on society that they teach. I think consumerism, as it exists today, is generally damaging to society as well as well.

[Anonymous No.3753606]

>>3753587
>Equally impossible in a capitalist, investors-market world.
You keep saying that word, but that's not what it means. Systems change once people are convinced the systems in place don't support them. That's how capitalism, mercantilism, and every other system came about. The richest and most powerful country in the world right now is fundamentally based on the merits of capital, but that is going to change either through conscious change or complete social collapse, both of which are inevitable.

[Anonymous No.3753609]

>>3753583
>But you haven't explained why I'm not right

And you haven't explained why you think you are. Despite repeated requests for you to do so.

[Anonymous No.3753617]

>>3753576
what are you cgoing to offer people in exchange for their capital? and what's to prevent them from just using THAT as capital? Do you mean abolishing property, both on an individual and collective basis, so not only does no individual own anything, but no collection of individuals such as a corporation, community or state owns anything? how would you enforce that? And if you don't get rid of property, how do you keep talented individuals from increasing the value of their property, in essence using it as capital? ANd accumulating surplus property? And if you allow communities to own property, how do you 1) prevent them from engaging in trade and 2) define who in the commuinty controls the distribution of the property? so far I hear buzzwords, not ideas.

[Anonymous No.3753619]

>>3753606
expalin "social collapse" as opposed to economic or political for instance.

[Anonymous No.3753627]

>>3753606
Maybe so, but who do you think is going to be still standing with the power to achieve anything once social collapse happens? Even if you get 30% of the population to agree completely on something, to the point where they don't fall into the common's tragedy, you're still going to face an immense machine with a strong and stable intent on maintaining/re-instituting their individualistic money-making world. Sure we may manage a localized society in the immediate wake of a collapse, but ultimately it'll come full circle once people start realizing that money can be made by trading amongst as many of these localized establishments as possible.

[Anonymous No.3753656]

>>3753617
>what are you cgoing to offer people in exchange for their capital?
Life with access to food, shelter, and recreation without wage slavery.
>and what's to prevent them from just using THAT as capital?
Equal access
>Do you mean abolishing property
Yes
>how would you enforce that?
I imagine it would be efficient and realistic for neighborhoods to police themselves, uphold their own courts, much as it is now

[Anonymous No.3753693]

>>3753619
By social collapse I mean a significant to complete disruption in the way individuals function with each other in their local, state, and federal society. In the US, complete social collapse would begin with the disruption of policy and economy, which would inevitably make society dysfunctional since those two spheres (policy and economy) are intertwined so thoroughly in social interaction and stability.

>>3753627
>Maybe so, but who do you think is going to be still standing with the power to achieve anything once social collapse happens?
When the dust settles, people will either have started recreating something like the radical localized communities addressed earlier, or they're try to recreate the older capitalist order. No doubt examples of both would come about. The latter would have to try and resell the idea that their fetish of capital didn't cause the collapse to begin with, which might be a hard sell (or not >Americans). All speculation, of course.

[Anonymous No.3753700]

>>3753693
>The latter would have to try and resell the idea that their fetish of capital didn't cause the collapse to begin with, which might be a hard sell (or not >Americans). All speculation, of course.
It wouldn't be hard once the skeptics see the profit potential.

[Anonymous No.3753714]

>>3753656
you're talking about a horror of a dystopia here. And equal access isn't going to work when there are scarce resources. In a post-sacrcity environment, i guess you can make it work. and what you define as "wage slavery" is still going to be what most people choose, mostly because it gives them something they can make their own choices with. Most of the richest people in the world are working at least forty hours a week remember. And a lot of them are working galley-slave hours.

Unless you enforce these restrictions with a massive campaign of coercion, or you end up like the Amish where you just kick out the ones who don't agree with you, a whole lot of people are going to choose a different strategy. especially thise who believe their natural talents can be used to get them a better life. How would you prevent that?

[Anonymous No.3753718]

>>3753693
you run into the problem that capitalism is a great way to recover from a collapse quickly. It maximizes the benefit of resources and allows the multiplication of profit, which can really help in bad times.

[Anonymous No.3753729]

I suggest everyone in this thread watch the documentary End:Civ.
Should be on youtube.
The solution isnt going all the way back to fucking stone age tech, but reducing ourselves to a sustainable tech level. We can still advance, just using green methods and picking and choosing what tech we do need and dont need.

[Anonymous No.3753737]

>>3753729
i don't think we'll hit the diminishing returns point on sustainable tech for at leat another century though. the trend is still getting more with less: smaller physical size, less energy, less support infrastructure, less materials and longer life, and doing more and more with the same resources. we don't really hit a technological plateau until the new tech is really any better, or it uses more resources to do the same thing. as long as the benfit are increasing and the costs are dropping, it's going to keep going.

[Anonymous No.3753741]

>>3753714
>you're talking about a horror of a dystopia here.
No, it's fairly utopian, but not in the sense that I think it solves all problems ever.
>And equal access isn't going to work when there are scarce resources.
The only reason it wouldn't "work" is because of famine, contamination, genocide or some other kind of disaster. The presence of community farms and plentiful gardens, as well as preservation, would in all normal conditions provide adequate food.
>and what you define as "wage slavery" is still going to be what most people choose
In a system where people are not forced to work for money (that is to say, forced to work for food and shelter, which is what money is for) but are instead provided food and shelter by the community, they will never choose wage slavery if only because there are no wages to begin with. Instead they choose to work in cultivating themselves and their community members at non-compulsory time lengths because everyone provides for everyone else.

Yes, what I describe is akin to Amish, Quaker, and similar types of systems, except not necessarily religious. I also imagine these communities exist in multiples and are neighborly, allowing free movement for cross cultivation.

[Anonymous No.3753761]

>>3753741
Not everyone would subscribe to your desire for self-cultivation though. Over time, people become much more impressed by big accomplishments. Simply sustaining themselves may be the goal for some people, but many people do not share that thought. What you're describing is pretty naive, and if anything, smaller communities are more subject to the whims of individuals, meaning one greedy person with a half decent idea can easily set that community onto the irreversible path to capitalism. I'm not saying these types of communities are not possible, simply that they are not sustainable with human nature being that which it is.

[Anonymous No.3753782]

>>3753741
the reason i see it as a horror of a dystopia is you're going to have to have a tremendous amount of coercion. and your "abundant community garden" as I suspect you've realized if you've done any research on this at all, is only going to work if you can dump seventy percent of the population somewhere. are we expecting a zombie apocalyspse? And even then it will be catch-as-catch-can in a lot of places. are we going to abandon the cities? It's going to take one hell of a police state to keep this working. That's where most people would say the dystopia comes in.

[Anonymous No.3753799]

>>3753761
this is very much what Vance used to call a "coffee bar revolutionary" idea. It's sort of based on the idea that there's one right way and everybody will see it and endorse it. It's sort of like those people in Star Trek Insurrection. it's hard to even come up with a convincing system that works like this even in fiction.

[Anonymous No.3753806]

>>3751588
this topic has basically made me unable to cope with reality. in my mind, this stuff is so apparent but i can't do anything about it. i just feel helpless and depressed because this is one of the greatest issues of all time, and we are too lazy to deal with it effectively. it's also made me a hedonist cause what i think is basically "i'm gona get fucked over eventually, might as well live my life to the fullest before then"
but anyway, basically everyone in power is aiming for that time when we are finally able to make technology sustainable. by that time though, everyone else will be fucked

[Anonymous No.3753812]

>>3753806
my ramblings just made me look like an idiot

[Anonymous No.3753819]

>>3753812
don't worry. as you get older you'll notice that everything is getting better for everybody in a lot of fundamental ways. It stopped being a zero-sum game a long time ago. The world is becoming safer, cleaner, more efficient and more healthy and sustainable all the time. And alot more fun.

[Anonymous No.3753823]

>>3753308

did you grow up amish by chance?

[Anonymous No.3753829]

>>3753819
global warming, easy access to deadly weapons, threat of nuclear holocaust, etc.

[Anonymous No.3753830]

>>3753761
Perhaps I'm too Confucian in this regard but I see most evils (or whatever you want to call them) as rising from conditions more-so than "nature," which is hardly quantifiable anyway. And of course I don't think that this communal system is merely one of sustaining life, but one where life can flourish. What we have now is merely sustaining, unless you happen to fall into the upper class that controls capital. In general I'd think the principle of 8-8-8 for work would apply well, but with the added benefit that people can choose their work and hours. Some people love to work in the field, other don't. Some people are good with their hands, others aren't. Although I'd imagine that it's expected of people to tend to their gardens to provide the bumper crop for themselves and their neighbors, since food is obviously of most importance.

As far as people wanting big accomplishments, again, with the abolishment of capital, I think this kind of drive would be channeled in ways beneficial to all and with a system where they labor they provide is their contribution, genius can be cultivated in greater quantities than capitalism can provide.

[Anonymous No.3753832]

>>3753823
just hillbilly. but it was in the middle of the last century, in the deep backwoods. the amish had the support of their community. Your basic hill-farmer just had family in the same boat he was.

[Anonymous No.3753833]

>>3753560
We deal with the conditions we're given. There aren't many options, if we want to survive, other than to contribute to the system. This doesn't invalidate the anti-consumerist notions and feelings that we peddle, however.

[Anonymous No.3753836]

>>3753475
Yeah but I want out.

[Anonymous No.3753845]

>>3753836
Then assist in forming a self-managed and autonomous microcommunity based on sustainable and appropriate technology. The way out is through positive and constructive action. That's it.

[Anonymous No.3753859]

>>3753404
It only goes back to 800.000 years.
This chart, by itself, is as unscientific as can be, since there is no reference to what 400 ppm CO2 equals to.

We can analyze it and see that the CO2 levels at the moment are double of what the peaks have been at other times, but we cannot relate correlation to causation, neither can we say what the effect of this will be.

The dinosaurs went extinct 60.000.000 years ago.

Mammals, as we know them, came about in the cambrian explosion 500.000.000 million years ago.

The graph looks different if you take in the entire span of life. CO2 levels in jurassic times were as high as know, (source needed), which gave way to the enormous amount of plant material, which gave the land mammals are chance to get as big as they were.

Besides that, I still think global warming is a dangerous thing, ice is melting on Greenland in an alarming way, but the way people are dealing with it is complete irrational.

[Anonymous No.3753860]

>>3753830
This sounds good when written out, but as I said before, it's naive. Regardless of people's wants, there is some dirty work that has to be done, and not everyone is going to feel like the work they're doing is of the same worth as the work someone else is doing, and will either demand more compensation or simply stop doing the work. In which, case how can you solve this problem? You can either enforce through police, or give the person more compensation. And there you go, it's already started.

[Anonymous No.3753865]

>>3753404
Amount of CO2 in the atmosphere = Disaster?

You guys are worse than /sci/

[Anonymous No.3753866]

>>3751588
>we didn't evolve to live in this society

We certainly evolved to build this society, and we have evolved to live in this society. The development of lactose tolerance being the most striking and recent adaption, which is widely diffuse and known of. The society we have is indicative and somewhat inseparable from the sort of animals we are, just as a bee hive is for bees. Our collective hive has just been somewhat longer in the making, to stretch this analogy a bit, but the point remains.

[Anonymous No.3753883]

>>3753782
>the reason i see it as a horror of a dystopia is you're going to have to have a tremendous amount of coercion.
There's nothing wrong with coercion in and of itself. That being said, I don't imagine much coercion in this society, except where decisions are put to a vote in the neighborhood or the community. But that's what exists now, except on a small enough scale where people understand what it is they are being coerced into and where they can really agree to the terms of coercion.

>and your "abundant community garden" as I suspect you've realized if you've done any research on this at all, is only going to work if you can dump seventy percent of the population somewhere.
>are we going to abandon the cities?
Actually I would imagine that population would spread out rather than draw in. Cities bring in huge populations because they are centers of large amounts of capital that exchanges frequently. In a more communal setting cities would be more or less obsolete, perhaps, or else they'd become large scale communes. I've seen gardens (including hanging gardens) being made atop city buildings, which could give bumper food for residents of the building, though in smaller quantities. I don't think there'd be a huge transformation in how cities are lived in and planned. And community gardens work efficiently without huge populations as far as I know.
>It's going to take one hell of a police state to keep this working.
No it won't. It just requires that the people police themselves, and with the main motivators of crime that we experince in our current society (money, private property, inaccessible food and shelter) there wouldn't be as much need for policing..

>>3753799
But these are strawmen you've produced.

[Anonymous No.3753900]

>>3753830
>>3753829


global warming, with its longer growing seasons and more water in circulation in the atmosphere is one of the things you need to amke an agrarian society work. And you're going to need those weapons to protect your agrarian community too. I'm not sure why nukes and guns, which have had minimal impact on the developed world in centuries, unless you count army and police action, are seen as that big a threat. Though I think if i told people i was going to abolish porperty and take his into a community pool, i'd want him to have fewer deadly weapons.

The problem with abolishing capital is just that: how do you do it without force, and how do you make sure people work to sustain the community instead of freeloading and expecting their community to support their "art"? If I'm a good shoemaker, and a terrible farmer, I might be tempted to take advantage of Ricardo's law and trade my excellent shoes for something somebody else has too much of. There are so many types of capital and trade that I think you'd have at least "black market" capitalism almost immediately. If i'm a better builder, I'll have a better house, and if I'm a better cook i'll eat better, sure. But if my skills make me better at something the community needs, how do they get me to do it for the community when I'll do better just growing my own garden?

also, I think it's time we heard your definition of "capital"

[Anonymous No.3753913]

>>3753883
Everything you've said has been addressed in previous posts. You can't stop people from becoming dissatisfied with their current situation, this is a fundamental law regarding human nature, and as long as it exists, systems will need to keep evolving along the endless cycle. Anarcho-communism would at best, be a short transition between two different, easier-to-sustain systems.

[Anonymous No.3753915]

>>3753860
>This sounds good when written out, but as I said before, it's naive.
Well I'm not an expert, but then I don't think anyone can be an expert on this. And again, I don't assume that this kind of society solves all problems: violence will always exist, there will be natural occurrences or disasters that compromise food, health, or home, there will be social issues that divide the community, etc. It is clear, however, that what we have right now does not 'work', not for the majority of people, and that we need to think of something else and in my time thinking about it this kind of society makes sense.

To answer your questions though, since the compensation of this hypothetical society is food, shelter, and whatever praise and satisfaction comes with accomplishments, I'm not sure what more they would want. People now take more food and more shelter than they will ever need because of narcissistic psychosis. Unless they can build their own additional homes I don' think they'd get help from the community and unless they get their extra food from their own labor I don't imagine where they'd get it. And why ask for more than what you need in a society where everyone's needs are met and one reaps the fruits of one's own labor as well as their immediate neighbors?

[Anonymous No.3753917]

>>3753883
no, the reason we have market agriculture is that when we were spread all over the country at the beginning of the twentieth century, we were using all the marginal land to grow food and we were still starving, at the population levels we had then. Thats why we have so many more square miles of forests now than then: we abandoned all those farms and let them grow up because they were horrible farm land. We could support about thirty percent of the currnt population at current marginal levels on the arable land that was available and in use at the turn of the twentieth century, which is like twenty times what we use now, for the current population. And what strawmen? You're saying that if everybody agrees to do this, we can do it. I'm saying you're going to have to put a gun to the heads of most people to get them to even consider it, mostly becasue it will seem to them, as it does to me , a suicidally bad idea.

[Anonymous No.3753921]

>>3753913
>this is a fundamental law regarding human nature

But that's factually wrong.

[Anonymous No.3753937]

You guys ever think we'll overcome our natural position and eventually (in the evolutionary sense) come to grow into society, so to speak?

We know that information can diffuse strongly (memes are like this) and can also have strong effects on longevity; E.O. Wilson writes: "Religious practices that consistently enhance survival and procreation of the practitioners will propagate the physiological controls that favor the acquisition of the practices during single lifetimes."

However, we know that the evolution of species can take many generations... thousands, hundreds of thousands. Homo sapiens have been around for 20 000 years (I think) and 1000 generations have elapsed since then. It took 1000 generations to go from being CAVEMEN to being where we are right now. Over that time, changes have occurred in how people behave;my stance is that if you just trace the development of language you won't see change but evolution.

I don't see a reason to believe that we're out of our depth living in the 21st century; the same adaptivity that resulted in us creating civilization will, in time, let us dwell in it more efficiently.

[Anonymous No.3753949]

>>3753915
>To answer your questions though, since the compensation of this hypothetical society is food, shelter, and whatever praise and satisfaction comes with accomplishments, I'm not sure what more they would want. People now take more food and more shelter than they will ever need because of narcissistic psychosis.

None of those things will keep someone satisfied for long. Wanting more than you need isn't some capitalist created attitude, it has existed for as long as humanity has existed. If I was wrong on this, then society would not have progressed to where it is.

>It is clear, however, that what we have right now does not 'work', not for the majority of people, and that we need to think of something else and in my time thinking about it this kind of society makes sense.
Of course, and system of society has long-term flaws. Which is why I'm saying that even though a communal society is possible, it would only be, at most, a transitional period between two more sustainable periods.

>>3753921
Where's your facts? Sure the progression of society is largely due to problems with sustainability of previous modes of living, but most of these problems only resulted from previous desire for more. Give people enough resources and they'll begin to enrich their lives. In the past, it came in the form of increased reproduction, leading to either famine, or the increased production of food. It's a continuous cycle that has repeated itself throughout history.

[Anonymous No.3753974]

>>3753917
But you're talking about feeding an entire nation, whereas I'm talking about people feeding themselves. As far as population, we need to simply drop our numbers. This also takes large scales of cooperation, yes, but it's also possible. The strawmen are statements like "It's sort of based on the idea that there's one right way and everybody will see it and endorse it." Such a thing was never implied nor stated.

>>3753949
>Where's your facts?
Where are yours? When have psychologists ever discovered a "human nature" encoded into our minds? Just because there are and will be -individuals- that want to be greedy, etc., doesn't mean that we need to create our societies around them, as we basically do now. The imbalances in societies are clearly the main motivators in these persons, who create further imbalances.

[Anonymous No.3753981]

>>3753949
Consumerism in our society comes through emotional manipulation and fear of being shut out of our communities. It isn't innate, and it's ahistorical to say so.

Nor is it true that, and this, it seems, is your laden assumption, greater material wealth will necessarily mean greater happiness. The opposite is true in our society.

http://www.apa.org/monitor/jun04/discontents.aspx

[Anonymous No.3753984]

>>3753949
>Of course, and system of society has long-term flaws. Which is why I'm saying that even though a communal society is possible, it would only be, at most, a transitional period between two more sustainable periods.
I'm not convinced that communal society isn't sustainable in itself, but I also don't assume it isn't transitional. All things in flux and all that.

[Anonymous No.3754000]

>>3753974
I'm saying that, as long as there are resources to be gotten, these imbalances will always exist. Saying that there will be no private property means nothing in realistic terms. There's no way to enforce that and the individualism of even a small group of people is enough to break this.

Also, to suggest that everyone would somehow agree to do all the work to maintain a society without proportional compensation is ludicrous. People's perception of their own needs differ vastly.

>>3753981
>Nor is it true that, and this, it seems, is your laden assumption, greater material wealth will necessarily mean greater happiness
Whoa, where did I say that? I'm pretty sure most people now realize that greater wealth doesn't equal happiness, as it's usually provided in platitude form everywhere you look. People aren't trying to achieve happiness with wealth in and of itself, they believe that wealth will provide opportunities for them to achieve their happiness. It's a means, not an end, and that is nothing new.

[Anonymous No.3754003]

>>3753974
you're talking about feeding an entire nation too. just in small groups where economies of scale can't be brought to bear, and trade is discouraged. and all it takes to strart it breaking is for one community to pick a better spot, get a better start, etc. or for a supremely talented individual to go into business for himself. To reduce the population people are going to either have to die or not be born. Thats going to require some work in one direction or the other. I like the phrase "Narcissistic Psychosis." if everybody has this condition, and you "cure" it, aren't you talking about altering human nature?

[Anonymous No.3754014]

>>3753974
>Just because there are and will be -individuals- that want to be greedy, etc., doesn't mean that we need to create our societies around them, as we basically do now.
You say that like we deliberately do this. It's not a matter of choice, it's an automatic response when someone gains power and influence and is offering resources in exchange for assistance (labor). People didn't just move into the cities to make factory owners rich, they moved there for the factory jobs.

[Anonymous No.3754048]

>>3754014
good points. and don't forget that natural disaters also contribute heavily to migrations and invasions. without a national network, what keeps a hundred starving communities who lost their harvests from converging on the ten that didn't? or from scarcity creating value enough that the hundred have to "sell" all their personal property to survive.

[Anonymous No.3754072]

>>3754003
>just in small groups where economies of scale can't be brought to bear
Unless they can

>and trade is discouraged.
Not necessarily.

>and all it takes to strart it breaking is for one community to pick a better spot, get a better start, etc. or for a supremely talented individual to go into business for himself.
What exactly does this "supremely talented individual" do that disrupts self-sustaining communities? Why does the community need him, especially when he doesn't want them except, apparently, to manipulate them?

>To reduce the population people are going to either have to die or not be born. Thats going to require some work in one direction or the other.
Right.

> I like the phrase "Narcissistic Psychosis." if everybody has this condition
Thanks, but not everyone has such a "condition".

>>3754014
>You say that like we deliberately do this.
I didn't say we deliberately do it. Workers move to the city to work in factories because they can make their labor into a commodity, but it does inadvertently make the owners rich, which makes the owners more controlling, more demanding, more abusive. But this wouldn't happen if workers owned the product of their labor. The point is that conditions and society account for this more than an unquantifiable "human nature".

[Anonymous No.3754103]

>>3754072
>>3754072
if you can have economies of scale and trade relationships, you're not talking small self sustaining communities anymore. unless they're just part of a much larger, more integrated society.

and a supremely talented individual isn't going to need to manipulate anybody, and the community can always utilize him if they can think of a way to motivate him to work for them, but without property and trade, how do they do that? They're going to be competing for his talents with everybody who wants to utilize it and has a surplus of something to offer him. "Build a better mousetrap..." after all

and to reduce the population you'll have to use a lot of coercion, regardless of which direction you choose, like stalin and mao. and if a soceity is being sustained by people who have this narcissisitic psychosis, then it must be pretty widespread. would you say it's in the majority?

[Anonymous No.3754104]

>>3753376
This.

[Anonymous No.3754126]

>>3754072
>I didn't say we deliberately do it. Workers move to the city to work in factories because they can make their labor into a commodity, but it does inadvertently make the owners rich, which makes the owners more controlling, more demanding, more abusive. But this wouldn't happen if workers owned the product of their labor. The point is that conditions and society account for this more than an unquantifiable "human nature".
Then it doesn't really matter whether or not it's conditioned or innate. How is the sanitation worker going to survive off the fruits of his own labor? He needs to rely on the fruits of the labor of others. Unless you're suggesting we need no sanitation workers, in which case, we're going to need more health workers, unless you're alright with disease spreading throughout communities, which I suspect most people living in these idylls won't be.

[Anonymous No.3754168]

>>3753915
> It is clear, however, that what we have right now does not 'work', not for the majority of people

How do you know this?
Have you gone around and asked the majority of people how they feel?
Even if you did this, would you know how to design the study so as to control all of the variables besides the one which you are looking to describe?
And if you could do all this, wouldn't that make you an expert?
But you said:
>Well I'm not an expert, but then I don't think anyone can be an expert on this.

You make claims that are not supported by evidence. You may "see" evidence for your views throughout society today. But other people, some of them experts in this exact field, look at the same "evidence" and draw completely different truths from it. So who is to decide which view is "better" or "more persuasive"?

[Anonymous No.3754196]

>>3754168
>How do you know this?
Are you implying income inequality, poverty, class immobility aren't perennial domineering problems?

[Anonymous No.3754206]

oh those wily and charismatic neo-luddites...

[Anonymous No.3754215]

>>3754168
I'm technically an expert on economic matters affecting agriculture and the environment (that's what my degrees are in and where I've done most of my work). I can say that there's no way that you could have small, self sustaining agrarian communities in the U.S. or any developed country wihtout massive deforestation and agricultural development and environmental degradation, and without cutting the population by about seventy percent, and leaving them all at the mercy of environmental disasters.

On the other hand, I can't see why you couldn't do all the other stuff like the "communities" poster wants, as long as the advanced technological and centrailzed, global economy exists to support it. Groups of people could get together and give up property, make their own clothes and raise food to supplement their diets, share resources, etc. The Amish do it and lots of other groups. that way if people do decide en masse to abandon the cities and live off the land, there'll be models and people to show them how.

[Anonymous No.3754301]

I used to think about his rambling manifesto a lot(I read it when he was caught). In the end, it seems clear that in order to choose between advancement/technology and simplistic pre-industrial living you have to experience both. There are plenty of Amish who leave the fold forever after a taste of modern convenience, and there are plenty of post-industrialists who retire to communes and Ashrams.

The bottom line is that freedom to pursue happiness allows each individual to make their own choices about when how and how much our endemic technology is incorporated into our lives. It's not easy to achieve the exact kind of life you want, but it is simple; it takes time, dedication, persistence, and a little luck.

The thing to remember about Ted is what happened to him when he was 17; I strongly suggest checking out his story; the best narrative of it is here at radiolab:
http://www.radiolab.org/2010/jun/28/

He is a deeply damaged smart person; this means not that he has insight the rest of us lack, it means he has incredibly good rationalizations for what he views as his fight against evil in the world.

All the intelligence in the world doesn't add up to being any more perceptive or wise.

[Anonymous No.3754328]

>>3754196
I am not implying anything. I am simply trying to provide a foil to your claims and assumptions. Many times I have found myself questioning beliefs after someone has done me the kindness of showing the baselessness of my assertions. Sometimes those questioned beliefs stand and sometimes I am forced to give them up. No matter what the particular outcome, I have profited by going through the process of questioning myself and thereby learning something about myself.

[Anonymous No.3754338]

>>3754215
>I can say that
I think you mean to say something like, "Based on my extensive knowledge and experience in the field, I confidently assert the following . . ."

An expert in the field wouldn't be so coy as to use soft language like you used.

[Anonymous No.3754420]

>>3754338
well, im sort of an expert in an allied field. This is something that deals with why people choose to live a certain way, which isn't something i know that much about. I can tell you which solutions are viable, or even what you'd have to do to make them work, or what effects they might have with a lot of confidence, but why anybody would pursue them, or get others to, is beyond me.

[Anonymous No.3754628]

>>3754420
He's just arguing arbitrary bullshit, don't bother responding.

[Anonymous No.3754717]

>>3751588
>caged animal in a zoo
This barely has anything to do with the thread but does anyone realize how fucking dumb this analogy is?
A caged animal in a zoo, of course assuming it's a decent zoo and not some backwater zoo run by immigrants, is perfectly happy. Animals do not need as much space as they have in the wild, and are perfectly happy with much less as long as their basic needs are taken care of.

[Anonymous No.3754786]

>>3752243
What is an animal that knows it's an animal?

[Anonymous No.3754792]

>>3754717
also, they live longer, healthier lives, they get to reproduce and their offspring's chances of survival and reproduction are far higher than in the wild. If they knew the options, they'd be lining up at the door.

[Anonymous No.3755021]

>>3754717
le pi face

[Anonymous No.3755036]

>>3752041
>They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in "advanced" countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering
I feel perfectly fine living in the first world. Also, third world countries were shit before technology was even used, how is that even an argument?

[Anonymous No.3755053]

>>3752276
>all labor in a capitalist society is coerced - comparable to slavery
Thank you for that laugh.

[Anonymous No.3755105]

>>3755053
>You must work or you'll not be able to feed yourself
>You shan't be seen as an equal amongst workers or, indeed, by many workers
>Work will be more difficult find due to your little experience - punishment for what will be branded as years spent idly.
>Not coercion.
Good little chuckle thx fer that m8

[Anonymous No.3755121]

>>3755053
>being this naive

It's always awkward when a nigga thinks he knows the ocean before his first scubaduba.

[Anonymous No.3755317]

Nobody said the path towards Homo Cosmicus wouldn't be paved with hardships and trials. We have to endure to survive. A colony on mars would start it all off.

[Anonymous No.3755320]

>>3755053
>Never read the criticizing works of Marx on capitalism
>Thinks he understands how industries and economies are run.

[Anonymous No.3755389]

>>3751588
Oh I do like neo-primitives. Just think that you may be looking up into the sky cursing at the technological gods above you. Perhaps, you might be lucky and it'll be decided that it may not be a good idea to strip-mine Earth or perhaps that carbon comprising you could be put to better use.

[Anonymous No.3755460]

>>3752057
>>3752218
>>3752225
>>3752241
>>3752244
>>3752268

> primitivism / anarcho-primitivism

I don't agree with K. on a number of things -- especially his use of violence -- but people need to stop associating his position with primitivism or anarcho-primitivism. It's a popular and stubborn misattribution.

While K. lived a primitive life, he didn't advocate for a complete break from all technology (like Zirzan, for example). K. wasn't opposed to farming or animal husbandry. He wasn't opposed to trade, metal-working, or skill specialization. He wasn't even opposed to the crafting of hand- or wind- or water-powered mechanisms, like gristmills or pumps. In fact, he cited medieval China -- with all its technological capacity -- as a positive example of a sustainable society.

What K. opposed was the explosion of humanism and science that occurred during the Renaissance. For him, European society peaked around the 15th century. (Interestingly, this is also the opinion of historian Jacob Burckhardt, who frequently corresponded with Nietzsche and influenced Herman Hesse. The retro-futuristic utopian society depicted in The Glass Bead Game is distinctly pre-industrial.)

What K.’s advocating, as far as I can tell, is a regression to pre-modern times. Not primitive times. Just pre-modern.

Quote:

>211. (fr) In the late Middle Ages there were four main civilizations that were about equally “advanced”: Europe, the Islamic world, India, and the Far East (China, Japan, Korea). Three of those civilizations remained more or less stable, and only Europe became dynamic. No one knows why Europe became dynamic at that time; historians have their theories but these are only speculation. At any rate, it is clear that rapid development toward a technological form of society occurs only under special conditions. So there is no reason to assume that a long-lasting technolo- gical regression cannot be brought about.

[Anonymous No.3755506]

>>3755460

(Cont.)

/lit/ might enjoy this catalog the 250+ books in K.'s library:

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/Kaczynski_Library

He was evidently a fan of Joseph Conrad. Also had a decent collection of classical Roman works.

[Anonymous No.3755533]

>>3754215

Have you read anything written by or about Sepp Holzer, the Austrian permaculture farmer?

He took poor land at a high altitude and used largely forgotten farming techniques to create a lush, efficient, productive farm. Most of the techniques he uses had been abandoned at the turn of the last century. They were nudged out after the introduction of chemical fertilizers / herbicides / pesticides / etc.

He's successfully replicated the process in various spots around the globe: southeast Asia, Scotland, and Montana, among other spots.

If you're interested in this stuff, it's well worth looking into....

[Anonymous No.3755684]

>>3755460
I would say that K. is for any society as long as it is pre industrial. He cites both medieval/ancient cultures AND hunter gatherer/indigenous groups. He doesn't care what happens after his proposed revolution, as long as industrial society is smashed beyond repair.

[Anonymous No.3755777]

>>3755684

>>3755684

I think that's a fair statement.

Unfortunately, labeling him as an "anarcho-primitivist" lumps him in with romantic, dippy eco-zealots like Zirzan. It also makes it much easier to dismiss K. as a wacky luddite. You can see this at work in the comments above.

Like this one: >>3752057

[Anonymous No.3755821]

>>3753221
>implying Linkola isn't leagues better than Kaczynski and Zerzan.

He's actually a biologist and a reputable one, at that.

[Anonymous No.3755970]

>>3755777
As if it matter what you call him. Whether or not he's anarcho-primitivist, what he's proposing is far too radical and regressive to ever be taken seriously by the public.

[Anonymous No.3756584]

>>3755970
>tfw when picturing manhattanites going "well, it's been a decent run but it's time to count our losses" and throw their briefcase in the river and walk out of the city towards the fields, retreating calmly into feudalism and living their lives as peasants

[Anonymous No.3756586]

>>3755821
I like him a lot, but I do think he's very edgy for an 80 year old.

[Anonymous No.3756590]

i wikisurfed kaczyinskis page to the tune of the culture club the other day
it was fun :)

[Anonymous No.3756953]

>>3754328
>assuming I was that guy
>trying to obfuscate facts to merely appear reasonable

Capitalism is broken bro.