Hmm, I ended up in the bottom right corner of authoritarian left.Labyrinth post=18.73351.793819 said:
Back on topic: I'm gonna stick with my earlier response. Progress is slow, but it happens.
What the hell has happened?
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Back on topic: I'm gonna stick with my earlier response. Progress is slow, but it happens.
Actually, we've made a lot of progress. The average human life span is far greater than it was 100 years ago, we can communicate nearly effortlessly (as long as you have some money). The development of Asia and Eastern Europe (in the past few decades) have pulled billions out of poverty, and that's a UN statistic you can check up.
Science knows more than ever before. We've made great progress. Especially in medical technology and science, with newer ways of treating cancer. Why, just a few months ago, English doctors tested a (primitive) bionic eye.
It's just that people got their hopes up. A flying car IS feasible. The economics and safety issues, are not. If people routinely kill themselves with ground cars (which move in 2 dimensions), giving them the ability to move in 3 dimensions (such as a flying car), would be at least 50% more difficult for them. Frankly, I'm GLAD we don't have flying cars. I would not appreciate a drunk driver crashing his car into my office on the 6th floor.
Automated cars (self-driving cars) are also becoming a reality - the US DARPA institute, with the co-operation of some of America's finest universities, has developed a vehicle that can navigate a complex and tricky course perfectly.
The people in the 80's and the 50's were too optimistic. Now, it's great to have optimism, but they should have tempered themselves a bit. The idea that in 50 years time, we'd all be having picnics on the moon was ludicrous. First of all, there was no interest - the moon is sterile and dead. We don't have the capacity to terraform it yet. And we still don't have the ability to build self-sustaining bases (although they are working on it).
As for general education - people are more literate than at any other time in human history. With the internet, people have greater access to information (as well as disinformation), than at any point in history. Yes, people act stupid, but people have ALWAYS acted stupid. 200 years ago, it was believed that bleeding you dry would be good for health and that witches and demons existed. Some still believe such nonsense to this day. There'll always be such people.
The problem is that human nature is determined by genes, which evolve and change on the scale of 1000s to 1,000,000s of years. Our technological evolution moves much faster. In other ways, our brains aren't catching up with our technology. Which is why, in an age of such technological achievement and knowledge, you'll still get racists, homophobes, sadists, and other such people.
But there is hope - our brains haven't reached the limits of knowledge. We are still learning. As our science grows, our power grows - eventually, we might obtain the power to rival the mythical/literary gods of human culture. Whether we destroy ourselves or preserve ourselves will determine what kind of species we really are.
Science knows more than ever before. We've made great progress. Especially in medical technology and science, with newer ways of treating cancer. Why, just a few months ago, English doctors tested a (primitive) bionic eye.
It's just that people got their hopes up. A flying car IS feasible. The economics and safety issues, are not. If people routinely kill themselves with ground cars (which move in 2 dimensions), giving them the ability to move in 3 dimensions (such as a flying car), would be at least 50% more difficult for them. Frankly, I'm GLAD we don't have flying cars. I would not appreciate a drunk driver crashing his car into my office on the 6th floor.
Automated cars (self-driving cars) are also becoming a reality - the US DARPA institute, with the co-operation of some of America's finest universities, has developed a vehicle that can navigate a complex and tricky course perfectly.
The people in the 80's and the 50's were too optimistic. Now, it's great to have optimism, but they should have tempered themselves a bit. The idea that in 50 years time, we'd all be having picnics on the moon was ludicrous. First of all, there was no interest - the moon is sterile and dead. We don't have the capacity to terraform it yet. And we still don't have the ability to build self-sustaining bases (although they are working on it).
As for general education - people are more literate than at any other time in human history. With the internet, people have greater access to information (as well as disinformation), than at any point in history. Yes, people act stupid, but people have ALWAYS acted stupid. 200 years ago, it was believed that bleeding you dry would be good for health and that witches and demons existed. Some still believe such nonsense to this day. There'll always be such people.
The problem is that human nature is determined by genes, which evolve and change on the scale of 1000s to 1,000,000s of years. Our technological evolution moves much faster. In other ways, our brains aren't catching up with our technology. Which is why, in an age of such technological achievement and knowledge, you'll still get racists, homophobes, sadists, and other such people.
But there is hope - our brains haven't reached the limits of knowledge. We are still learning. As our science grows, our power grows - eventually, we might obtain the power to rival the mythical/literary gods of human culture. Whether we destroy ourselves or preserve ourselves will determine what kind of species we really are.
Im an ultra capitalist supporter, I like the idea that you can get out of poverty, or any condition of life, you can change the world, you matter more than anyone else. Capitalism does some very important things, it creates the advancement of new technology... with a communist, or socialist society, those advancements never start or drop like a rock.
Thier is nothing wrong with taking advantage of people in a fair system. If your boss is not paying overtime, then quit, even if you have to go to a job with lower pay. Income over 100,000 a year has been shown to NOT improve ones happiness anyway and the changes from 40,000-100,000 a year have almost no change in the happiness of the individual, though income does on average indicate the level of health of people.
I want survival of the fittest, with some rules of decency tacked on so no one gets really fucked too hard.
Thier is nothing wrong with taking advantage of people in a fair system. If your boss is not paying overtime, then quit, even if you have to go to a job with lower pay. Income over 100,000 a year has been shown to NOT improve ones happiness anyway and the changes from 40,000-100,000 a year have almost no change in the happiness of the individual, though income does on average indicate the level of health of people.
I want survival of the fittest, with some rules of decency tacked on so no one gets really fucked too hard.
I think calling it the 'end' of capitalism may be too optimistic, but hey. I remain a hopeful pessimist, severely tempered by huge amounts of cynicism. I've noticed that most people mellow out, which is part of why I'm being so active while I still have the inspiration. Balances out all the right-wing people around me.RAKtheUndead post=18.73351.794044 said:
I just have to take to these. The problem with Capitalism and poverty is that it restricts people to classes depending on their financial status. It's actually very hard to 'better' oneself class-wise in a system based around minimisation of costs. And as for the latter part, I'm calling bullshit right here. The advancement of technology is not something exclusive to a corporate world. With a larger public sector, universities would be better able to offer research and development opportunities to people, but in stead of these innovations being sold to the highest bidder then exploited for profit, the would be more likely to be widely available for the betterment of the society as a whole. In fact, I'd argue that a socialist basis would be more welcoming of innovation, as there would not be as much opposition from corporations who supply the previous inventions. For example if someone invented a washing machine that needed no detergent, it would be bought out by detergent companies because they don't want the product competition.Jazzyluv post=18.73351.795050 said:
If you look at research that's been going on recently, we are not far from this point. I read an article last year in Discover magazine about how we are trying to counteract the problem of moon dust in building colonies (the dust contains microparticles of glass that collect in joints and halt movement). Plus, look at how the time between technological advances has been decreasing exponentially as each new advance comes along. The time between PCs and the Internet, compared to the time between the Differential Engine and Punch-card machines, is barely a fraction of an instant. The depictions of the future may not be that far from reality in just a few short years.
I wanted a hover board by now! 
I don't think technology is doing too badly these days. I mean you only gotta look at the LHC and the ingenuity involved in that.
I don't think technology is doing too badly these days. I mean you only gotta look at the LHC and the ingenuity involved in that.
Interesting thought you have there.Jaythulhu post=18.73351.792804 said:
So what happened? It's my opinion that at least our society in the last decade (*note: I said 'our' society before someone jumps on me as accusing all of humanity) has become more 'me-centric'. Meaning, we are of a mindset today of taking less and less responsibility for our collective actions. I think a trend of 'slacking' has been afoot lately as evident in our education system of just passing people to the next grade because we don't want to hold them back. Or hurt their feelings. Or give them poor self-esteem. Or any other wacky explanation that takes the blames of of our individual seld, and lay blame and responsibilty at the foot of everyone else.
We want the government to take care of us. We want this hand out or that hand out. We don't integrate our own culture anymore and there's no real emphasis to have a natonal language. This one whole large 'melting pot' isn't rally working anymore, because sub-cultures within it don't want to work together or 'try' as a whole. Why should they when everything gets handed to them and someone else's taxes may foot the bill.
Yes, that sounds over simplistic and a bit bizarre...but these are the Ozzy & Harriet days anymore where we had nationalistic pride and unity. There are so many political, social, humanistic factions anymore all fighting for trivial stuff and what they feel is 'entitled' to them, we forgot the big picture of moving forward together and developing the strides you speak of.
Bullshit. My family started with nothing. My maternal grandfather's father died when my grandfather was twelve, the eldest of twelve children. He went to work with no education and no money, helping to support his family while his mother washed other people's clothes in the creek. He worked every job he could find, eventually trading for an old shotgun which he used to bring in food. The shotgun he traded for a Model T which had died, which he towed in with a borrowed mule and learned to repair. He then earned extra money carrying people to town. My mother was born and spent her early years in a three-room house with a home-made fire place and no running water - they hauled water from a spring a quarter mile away. As a teenager they moved to a four-room house with a wood stove and a well. My grandfather built both of those houses and paid for the materials by working farm jobs after his normal fifty-five hours changing truck tires. My paternal grandfather convinced a rich man to front the money to start an auto parts store; it took over fifty years to save enough to buy out his share, but my father finally did it. My father was raised much the same, but in the same five-room house, and with running water, until he moved out (city boy.) I spent my first years in a house with no indoor toilet, walking to the outhouse, bathing in a galvanized washtub, potbelly coal stove for heat, unscreened windows for air conditioning (with a tin roof no less.) Through my parents' hard work and frugal living, they were able to eventually buy some acreage and build a house - only 1,100 square feet, but an all-brick rancher with honest-to-goodness central heat and air and TWO bathrooms. My parents, grandfather, and uncles built the house, except for the brick laying. (Okay, 1-1/2.) They also saved enough to fund my first three years in college, which meant in turn that with hard work I could develop marketable skills, work hard, buy (not build) a modest 1,670 square foot frame house with 2-1/2 bathrooms (could buy a better house if I wanted to go back into debt), even buy part ownership in my engineering company. In two generations, my family has gone from dirt poor to median income without my wife having to work by hard work and sacrifice. Several of my cousins have done even better.Labyrinth post=18.73351.795099 said:
This is what capitalism is. It's not greedy corporations, it's people working hard and sacrificing to achieve something. I have a fair amount of leisure time, good disposable income, no debt, because I was raised on the shoulders of my parents and grandparents AND THEN WORKED MY ASS OFF. I didn't take the easy classes like art, music, sociology - I took math and science. When I would rather have been out having fun with my friends, I was stringing fence or clearing brush or picking up rocks or baling hay or mucking out barnyards - the dirtier and harder the job, the more likely people are to pay you to do it for them. When I was establishing myself in the work world, I made to sure to take on - to ASK for - additional work and responsibility. I may not always be smarter than my competition, but I can damn sure out-work him; I only have to make the sacrifice.
None of this would have happened under a Marxist system. If my grandfathers were subsistence farmers, so too I would be a subsistence farmer. Only by rising in the Party would that ever change. There's a reason you don't see innovations in Marxist countries - there's no profit in it. Why bother? Good jobs will always go to the party faithful in any one-party system, at least until you can figure out how to re-engineer mankind. And the people stuck in the shit jobs will always do as little as possible, because to do otherwise just makes you more tired.
Until you can re-engineer mankind to care more about humanity as a whole than about his own family, Marxists will remain spoiled, selfish children demanding to be given what other people work and sacrifice to earn.
We've actually had flying cars. In the early eighties my then brother-in-law invested in a company that was developing flying cars. The first prototype used six lift engines, that second prototype used eight; a separate motor provided thrust. Both flew well and safely. Besides the obvious problem of keeping six plus one or eight plus one gasoline engines properly maintained and synchronized, your point was exactly why these things never caught on (and thank G-d for that!)mspencer82 post=18.73351.795378 said:
With energy becoming ever more expensive, terrorism on the rise, and the war on individualism, I'd say we're heading for no cars, not flying cars.
I think the future (i.e Now) is quite alright technology wise. The big advancements over the past few decades have been more computer/communication based than living on the Moon. Human space exploration ran out of steam by the 70's because it's a lot easier to go to the Moon than Mars or Venus; also i think living on the Moon would be more trouble than it's worth (for average people living there not scientists etc)what with the lack of gravity, air, and things to do. That is not to say that the future(Now) is as it "should" be. There should be more general science knowledge in the population (especially in the US government), and more blimps/zeppelins (seriously...they rock).
P.S. As for the side topic of Capitalism/Socialism etc. The way i see it (from my high school political philosophy course) Socialism/Communism seem the best idea in theory, but people seem to be naturaly selfish, and so when put into practice a few people cheat the system for their own gain which screws it up. At least with capitalism the stated goal is selfish gain and so everyone's cheating everyone else.
P.S. As for the side topic of Capitalism/Socialism etc. The way i see it (from my high school political philosophy course) Socialism/Communism seem the best idea in theory, but people seem to be naturaly selfish, and so when put into practice a few people cheat the system for their own gain which screws it up. At least with capitalism the stated goal is selfish gain and so everyone's cheating everyone else.
Hmmm, I wasn't really so much thinking of technological development (tho yes, the 80s had thought of the internet, portable computers, music players etc. Check a shadowrun 1st ed book.) more the dramatic shift in human development from the 80s "A rising tide lifts all boats" to the 90s "Greed is Good" to the 00s "Fuck everyone who isn't me" mantras.
Thanks to all who've been posting though, I'm really enjoying the discussion. So many viewpoints are fascinating to read.
Thanks to all who've been posting though, I'm really enjoying the discussion. So many viewpoints are fascinating to read.
This is a theme that makes me scratch my head. Most of us can't imagine how miserable the average plebe was, even in 1808.
Look, I'll give you a simple illustration- when my grandparents were growing up, being fat meant you were rich and being poor meant you were skinny. Success=plenty of dosh for food=fat.
Not even eighty years later, everyone around here associates fat with low income. That's an odd sort of progress, but it's better than the way things were.
Look, I'll give you a simple illustration- when my grandparents were growing up, being fat meant you were rich and being poor meant you were skinny. Success=plenty of dosh for food=fat.
Not even eighty years later, everyone around here associates fat with low income. That's an odd sort of progress, but it's better than the way things were.
This is sort of at both Labyrinth and werepossum: The only alternative to our current variant of capitalism (in which I would argue that the transnational corporations are getting powerful enough to be effectively free of regulation and start lopping the fingers off the invisible hand of the marketplace) that I've seen is a combination of sustainability and self-sufficiency that is, I think, descended from the hippie "back to the land" movement, but better because the people doing it now aren't all dumb and stoned.
Sometimes it's simple--someone decides that they can't afford organic food, so they learn to garden, start ripping up their front yards and planting vegetables. Since this is a big gardening town, it's not too difficult to find someone who will help you figure out why your lettuce keeps bolting or what is eating your tomatoes and what to do about it. They swap with neighbors that are growing whatever they aren't, trade seeds and plant starts. Really, what they remind me of is my Grandmother who, for most of her life, grew all her own produce. This is a trend that has been progressing in my city for at least 10 years and has really boomed now that food, and everything else, is getting so expensive.
On a larger scale, there's a farm inside the city limits, 7 acres of land bought out from under a real estate developer that was going to build 23 McMansions it. About 20 people, if you include the little kids, live on the farm--they all have paying jobs and all pay rent, because they have to make payments on the 1.5 million dollar mortgage and that's the easiest way to work the payment situation. But the goal is self-sufficiency.
Every year, they have a little more land under cultivation. (It was entirely consumed by blackberry brambles when they got it.) They didn't tear down the old farm buildings. Instead, they used them to demonstrate how it is possible to retrofit existing wood-frame buildings with strawbale and cob construction. In fact, one of the main functions of the farm is to serve as a proof-of-concept operation. "Sure, this green technology looks cool, but can you actually live with it?" "Well, lets try it out."
The point is, it is a vision of the future that looks to the past, but instead of doing every possible thing yourself, reusing everything and never buying anything new if you can help it because you are poor, you do all these things because to become dependant on corporations for everything is to live at risk of...well, the kind of thing that's happening now. And you do it because we are killing the biosphere with our greed and our garbage. And they aren't a pack of self-indulgent hippies, they are where the far-left green-freaks on my wing of the political spectrum wrap back around to meet werepossum and his family.
Another friend of mine works in a poverty-stricken neighborhood outside of San Francisco specifically on "food justice", getting healthful food to people in the inner-city where there simply are no grocery stores, only convenience stores and fast-food joints. They have a big community gardening education program that is getting some traction, especially in some of the immigrant neighborhoods. Again, we've got people who are using hard work and community to get what they couldn't buy otherwise. They run a food kitchen for the poor and homeless and do you know where they get most of their food? A more refined version of dumpster diving. Grocery stores and restaurants throw out utterly disgraceful amounts of perfectly edible food every day because of small bruises, dents, box crushes, and other minor dings. If my friend's organization can make use of that, then everybody wins. Reduced garbage bills on one side, reduced malnutrition on the other.
And the interesting thing about this is, anti-corporate capitalism as it is, as a revolution it operates on a basic capitalist principle: If you want people to stop doing something, stop paying them to do it.
The other thing is, one of the major factors that makes this possible is the internet. It's hard to become self-sufficient if you don't know how to do stuff and no one that you know does either. But with the internet, you can find out, or you can find someone who knows and can tell/show you.
The main thing that the past never figured on was the fact that their future would not, in the end, be mechanical, it would be informational.
The revolution, you are typing on it.
Sometimes it's simple--someone decides that they can't afford organic food, so they learn to garden, start ripping up their front yards and planting vegetables. Since this is a big gardening town, it's not too difficult to find someone who will help you figure out why your lettuce keeps bolting or what is eating your tomatoes and what to do about it. They swap with neighbors that are growing whatever they aren't, trade seeds and plant starts. Really, what they remind me of is my Grandmother who, for most of her life, grew all her own produce. This is a trend that has been progressing in my city for at least 10 years and has really boomed now that food, and everything else, is getting so expensive.
On a larger scale, there's a farm inside the city limits, 7 acres of land bought out from under a real estate developer that was going to build 23 McMansions it. About 20 people, if you include the little kids, live on the farm--they all have paying jobs and all pay rent, because they have to make payments on the 1.5 million dollar mortgage and that's the easiest way to work the payment situation. But the goal is self-sufficiency.
Every year, they have a little more land under cultivation. (It was entirely consumed by blackberry brambles when they got it.) They didn't tear down the old farm buildings. Instead, they used them to demonstrate how it is possible to retrofit existing wood-frame buildings with strawbale and cob construction. In fact, one of the main functions of the farm is to serve as a proof-of-concept operation. "Sure, this green technology looks cool, but can you actually live with it?" "Well, lets try it out."
The point is, it is a vision of the future that looks to the past, but instead of doing every possible thing yourself, reusing everything and never buying anything new if you can help it because you are poor, you do all these things because to become dependant on corporations for everything is to live at risk of...well, the kind of thing that's happening now. And you do it because we are killing the biosphere with our greed and our garbage. And they aren't a pack of self-indulgent hippies, they are where the far-left green-freaks on my wing of the political spectrum wrap back around to meet werepossum and his family.
Another friend of mine works in a poverty-stricken neighborhood outside of San Francisco specifically on "food justice", getting healthful food to people in the inner-city where there simply are no grocery stores, only convenience stores and fast-food joints. They have a big community gardening education program that is getting some traction, especially in some of the immigrant neighborhoods. Again, we've got people who are using hard work and community to get what they couldn't buy otherwise. They run a food kitchen for the poor and homeless and do you know where they get most of their food? A more refined version of dumpster diving. Grocery stores and restaurants throw out utterly disgraceful amounts of perfectly edible food every day because of small bruises, dents, box crushes, and other minor dings. If my friend's organization can make use of that, then everybody wins. Reduced garbage bills on one side, reduced malnutrition on the other.
And the interesting thing about this is, anti-corporate capitalism as it is, as a revolution it operates on a basic capitalist principle: If you want people to stop doing something, stop paying them to do it.
The other thing is, one of the major factors that makes this possible is the internet. It's hard to become self-sufficient if you don't know how to do stuff and no one that you know does either. But with the internet, you can find out, or you can find someone who knows and can tell/show you.
The main thing that the past never figured on was the fact that their future would not, in the end, be mechanical, it would be informational.
The revolution, you are typing on it.
Yes, it will. Either extinct & stupid, or alive & just barely smart enough to save us from ourselves.Korolev post=18.73351.793851 said:
My thanks for that debate on the previous page, there's some enlightening words there.
There was an interview on Dutch radio during the previous elections that stated a line I always like to quote: "Maybe the rest of the world would stop making fun of American elections if they amounted to more than picking between Right and Extreme Right". That was said by an American political analyst by the way, don't know who. It's true though, America's elections are Europe's real-life (black) comedies.
mshcherbatskaya:
And welcome to the revolution to you too.
I really hate anti-globalist sentiments, certainly on the internet. That's like arguing against Bush after paying 10.000$ to get into his fundraiser party.
Labyrinth:
That test leaks American pus from all its pores. Most questions are extremely polarised, a common trait in 2 party systems. There's also a load severly duplicitous questions in there that imply all kinds of stuff that can't be caught in a yes or no. Personally I don't have much faith in these kinds of things as definitions of left/right and auth/lib vary a lot across different political systems (as was the intended implication of the quote above). In Holland I tend to end up dead centre in most of these tests, America is much more Authoritarian and Right wing so I shift downward and to the left.
In the end I came out almost dead in the middle of the liberal left (a little to the right and below Ghandi according to them), as I thought I would.
I can definately sympathise with your glee at the current economic fall by the way. I can't wait to see the oil crisis coming to a head and everybody finally getting forced off their fat arses into actually implementing all the technology I have no doubt they're sitting on but fear to implement because of the current establishment (wow, that's one sentence?). At the same time I dread for these developments as well though so I can't really share the feeling.
There was an interview on Dutch radio during the previous elections that stated a line I always like to quote: "Maybe the rest of the world would stop making fun of American elections if they amounted to more than picking between Right and Extreme Right". That was said by an American political analyst by the way, don't know who. It's true though, America's elections are Europe's real-life (black) comedies.
mshcherbatskaya:
And welcome to the revolution to you too.
I really hate anti-globalist sentiments, certainly on the internet. That's like arguing against Bush after paying 10.000$ to get into his fundraiser party.
Labyrinth:
That test leaks American pus from all its pores. Most questions are extremely polarised, a common trait in 2 party systems. There's also a load severly duplicitous questions in there that imply all kinds of stuff that can't be caught in a yes or no. Personally I don't have much faith in these kinds of things as definitions of left/right and auth/lib vary a lot across different political systems (as was the intended implication of the quote above). In Holland I tend to end up dead centre in most of these tests, America is much more Authoritarian and Right wing so I shift downward and to the left.
In the end I came out almost dead in the middle of the liberal left (a little to the right and below Ghandi according to them), as I thought I would.
I can definately sympathise with your glee at the current economic fall by the way. I can't wait to see the oil crisis coming to a head and everybody finally getting forced off their fat arses into actually implementing all the technology I have no doubt they're sitting on but fear to implement because of the current establishment (wow, that's one sentence?). At the same time I dread for these developments as well though so I can't really share the feeling.
