America is in Decay -- How We Fix It

[Natural Citizen]

Everyone's political opinions, and indeed to a fair extent their opinions on everything, are determined by what they think they know about history.

Dang, helmuth. That's deep, brother. True, too.

 

[osan]

I don't necessarily agree, but for those of you who didn't read this whole thing, here is a summary:

With what do you find yourself in disagreement? It would be interesting to discuss different points of view... if you want to, that is.

Rousseau, the noble savage. Man is born free, yet everywhere he is in chains.

Never really read Rousseau, but only of him. Noble? Maybe. For me, more like a practically wise soul who treasures his own life, as well as his freedom. Because of this regard, plus his grasp of the equal standing of his fellows, all backed up ultimately by the potential for devastating force in response to trespass, he consciously chooses circumspection in his every word, thought, and deed. The savage is, on average, a true warrior; the mean civilian metering not so much as the palest reflection thereof.

 

[Okie RP fan]

The younger generations have been lost thanks to the indoctrination factories (public schools).

Kids need to be able to be free and explore and be just that: kids. BUT, they need some structure as well and it's up to the parents to provide that structure. They need to be properly educated and disciplined, not like the ways they do it now in public schools. But from a more personal level. That's why it's so important for the parents to be more active with their children.

I could add that we need a slightly more educated populace (ala what Tom Woods preaches - well roundedness and people need to explore tech schools and other trades instead of just college college college). On top of people not being so lazy. Sure, do whatever you want, but hard work and working hard is known to be good for humans and our minds. Of course what has happened is we are given crap "educations" through the public school system that prepares us to be good little slaves to corporations and we chase the bone by working ourselves to stressful levels and kissing asses. None of that is healthy.

Start there and the nation will begin to heal itself in other ways. Just my personal take, but despite what some reports may say about this country having more college graduates, etc. I truly feel deep down this country has become progressively more ignorant and slavish.

We need to be strong individuals who are engaged in our communities.

 

[LibForestPaul]

God died century ago. All of humanity is struggle with nihilism, and bringing back God will do nothing but bring back another Stalin or Mao. No thank you. Currently we have materialism and consumerism...but this is collapsing with the rise of the third world.

 

[osan]

The younger generations have been lost thanks to the indoctrination factories (public schools).

Ain't the schools' fault. It's ours for letting those things exist in the first place.

Kids need to be able to be free and explore and be just that: kids. BUT, they need some structure as well and it's up to the parents to provide that structure. They need to be properly educated and disciplined, not like the ways they do it now in public schools. But from a more personal level. That's why it's so important for the parents to be more active with their children.

Sure, but how do you expect that to happen when the parents are nothing better than textbook examples of arrested development - children themselves?

I hate being such a broken record, but nothing is going to change for the better without some monumental reason for doing so. One's children turning effectively brainless, *****, and disinterested in ever becoming independent adults is apparently insufficient a concern to get parents to do something. That's where my "reset event" comes in; something so all-consumingly disruptive of life that people are presented with the immediate choice to adapt or die.

If the average man knew how deep in the kimchee his life was, his mind would implode.

I could add that we need a slightly more educated populace (ala what Tom Woods preaches - well roundedness and people need to explore tech schools and other trades instead of just college college college).

Slightly? Is that sarcasm?

We need to be strong individuals who are engaged in our communities.

Good luck finding them both. As for the rest, it is from the likes of this from which you have to pick:

 

[Okie RP fan]

Ain't the schools' fault. It's ours for letting those things exist in the first place.



Sure, but how do you expect that to happen when the parents are nothing better than textbook examples of arrested development - children themselves?

I hate being such a broken record, but nothing is going to change for the better without some monumental reason for doing so. One's children turning effectively brainless, *****, and disinterested in ever becoming independent adults is apparently insufficient a concern to get parents to do something. That's where my "reset event" comes in; something so all-consumingly disruptive of life that people are presented with the immediate choice to adapt or die.

If the average man knew how deep in the kimchee his life was, his mind would implode.



Slightly? Is that sarcasm?



Good luck finding them both. As for the rest, it is from the likes of this from which you have to pick:

Ha, I didn't realize I put "slightly." Of course it's far more than slightly.
But yea, agreed on counter points.

 

[Son_of_Liberty90]

With what do you find yourself in disagreement? It would be interesting to discuss different points of view... if you want to, that is.



Never really read Rousseau, but only of him. Noble? Maybe. For me, more like a practically wise soul who treasures his own life, as well as his freedom. Because of this regard, plus his grasp of the equal standing of his fellows, all backed up ultimately by the potential for devastating force in response to trespass, he consciously chooses circumspection in his every word, thought, and deed. The savage is, on average, a true warrior; the mean civilian metering not so much as the palest reflection thereof.

To be honest, I really think you are making sweeping generalizations trashing civilization and everything it has produced.

Moreover, I feel you are strongly romanticizing the world of the "savage", even though I agree with you that civilization can be very 'herd' mentality sometimes. But the way you describe the "Savage' as some noble warrior sounds really romanticized not backed up by historical data.

In the world of the savage, you could die of a toothache. Technology allows you to post your comments to a forum that can be read by people all over the world. Yes, we have done cruel in the name of civilization, but we have done much good also, that cannot be discounted.

I think what you should be directing your anger towards is our over-reliance on technology turning us into drones. Wishing for some cataclysmic event to create this Darwinian fantasy where only the strong survive is not the solution either. Everytime a catastrophe occurs, the elite are right there to manipulate it and corrupt our minds.

Read up on the work of Nicholas Carr, I think you will really resonate with what he has to say about tech over-reliance depleting our abilities to concentrate, focus, and navigate. "The Glass Cage" and "What the Internet is doing to our brains" is a good start.

 

[osan]

To be honest, I really think you are making sweeping generalizations trashing civilization and everything it has produced.

That is not quite what I've done. I have asserted that the net result of civilization has, for me, proven a loss - a negative. There are all manner of cool things, but are they worth the price we pay? For me, they are not. For me, freedom is the only thing that matters. It matters to me more than health, family, love, etc. because without it all of the things that matter to me are diminished; tinted with the taint of evil that other men impose upon me, regardless of how innocuous it may seem in the eyes of others. I submit that those people, those civilians, are incapable of judging objectively because they have accepted the mastery of other men over them; they have sold themselves cheaply to their brethren as the lowest of whores, in exchange for mere trifles. They have sold their souls to men no better than themselves; no more suited to be master than they, and for no other reasons than that they are become timid, fearful, small beings not by any dint of the divine dice, but by their own choice.

They have chosen slavery for themselves out of their avarice for the illusion of something that exists nowhere in reality, save the confines of their stunted minds and their souls, which they have shriveled by the work of their own wills against themselves. They chose the gilt cage for the sake of the ignorance for which they wantonly demand for themselves in favor of the deeper truths because they refuse the full cost of those truths which demand acceptance of the ugly alongside the beautiful. They lie to themselves out of mere and petty convenience for the sake of justifying their indolence, fed by their fears of being active and the result of their choosing to view such action as a curse, rather than as the divine blessing which is part and parcel of one's life. It reminds me of the domestic products ads from the 1960s that portrayed woman's life in the home as drudgery, thereby enticing them to by this cleanser and that kitchen appliance.

Their Fear, Avarice, Ignorance, and Lassitude combine into a self-reinforcing juggernaut of personal corruption and debauchery in such a way as they come to crave the disease of spirit that cripples, consumes, and inevitably kills them, much as the heroin addict craves the fix he comes to worship as his raison d'être; his effective God. And just as with the addict, the poisons with which he bullheadedly imbues his life saps away his vigor and independence, reducing him to the most wretched habit imaginable, all the while lying to himself either about how wonderful or unavoidable his life is. He is a despicable coward and a parasite worthy of no regard or respect from anyone, which is largely why he gets none, save for that weak-tea lie that average men almost universally mistake for properly proportioned veneration of those around them. They talk a big talk about "respect" and yet fail to walk a single word of it beyond the metes and bounds of their narrowly delimited and paltry milquetoast-spirits.

Moreover, I feel you are strongly romanticizing the world of the "savage", even though I agree with you that civilization can be very 'herd' mentality sometimes. But the way you describe the "Savage' as some noble warrior sounds really romanticized not backed up by historical data.

You mistake my tone, sir. It is no romanticization you catch, but my willingness to accept all that comes with being a savage, the bad as well as the good. You might argue that there is good with the bad in being civilized, just as there is with the savage life. To that I agree fully, and to which you might then ask "so why not choose civilization above savagery?", to which my response is "because with civilization, one's freedom wings away into the mists of eternity, never again to be seen nor felt."

In the world of the savage, you could die of a toothache.

Your implicit judgment of such a circumstance as a perhaps petty and unnecessary cause of presumably great evil is based on your referential frame as a civilian. Had you grown up a savage, you would perforce hold a different view because that which defines you as a human being would be fundamentally different from what it is now. Does that mean a savage would wish to die of a toothache? Decidedly not. What it does mean, however, is that he would rather die that way than trade his soul away just to avoid such a fate. But in the end, he would still face that possibility, the net result of such a choice being that he has only reduced the probability of such an outcome. But so far as I can see, the vast and overwhelming majority of men never allow their considerations to go that far into such matters. Rather, they choose to believe that because they sold their souls for the sake of modern dentistry that they are now immune from such ultimate results. That is the coward's mind at work and nothing better.

Technology allows you to post your comments to a forum that can be read by people all over the world. Yes, we have done cruel in the name of civilization, but we have done much good also, that cannot be discounted.

And we have done it all as slaves, regardless of how expansive and prettily appointed our cages may be in some cases. My friend Gene, may his good soul rest in peace, said something to me in front of his house in Williams AZ when he was dying of lung cancer, the simple words cutting through me like a scalpel when he said, "we all build our own prisons." To this day those words hit me like a ton of bricks for the sheer and irresistible force they carry. Few words have I ever heard or read that have stricken me as have those six simple utterances.

What you appear to be showing me is that these cheap and false miracles are price enough for your soul. Do I mistake your meaning?

I think what you should be directing your anger towards is our over-reliance on technology turning us into drones.

That is precisely what I am doing, at least in part. But my machinations run well beyond this.

Wishing for some cataclysmic event to create this Darwinian fantasy where only the strong survive is not the solution either.

You base this assertion upon what, precisely? I base mine on the clear and apparently obstinate trend toward ever deeper servitude and decay. I observe people very closely and with few exceptions they are now living in a perceptual environment that is highly detached from reality - a condition the psychologists call "psychosis". There is no indication to suggest people will choose to move away from this trend of going ever more deeply into deranged perception unless the general environment becomes such that they only choice is to adopt a more rational way or be consumed.

Why has it become possible for so many weak people to survive? Because the artifice of men has made it so. Remove the crutch and how well do you think your garden-variety tranny would fare? Progressives/liberals? Without substantial alteration of their basic thoughts and attitudes, they would die precisely because raw, hard reality makes no accommodation for stupidity beyond a very low threshold value. The stupidities of civilized living are now so vast and overwhelming that I feel we must be nearing a nexus. I could be wrong, of course, but this is what I see.

Consider the vast homosexualization [sic] of children today. Any parent who says they don't care if their child turns out gay is either a liar or a blithering idiot. It is one thing if one's child shoots out of mom's vagina on a jet of flame, scorching the paint from the walls. It is another issue entirely to have one's child directed into homosexuality through the influences of culture and the schools. If I found someone actively recruiting one of my children in such a matter, they would shortly join the ranks of others who have mysteriously vanished without trace. Perhaps little green men in a UFO carted them off the Mars.

Everytime a catastrophe occurs, the elite are right there to manipulate it and corrupt our minds.

Blaming the "elite" for this is like blaming a viper for biting. It is in their nature and one can reliably set their clocks by it. The fault is ours and ours alone. We are responsible for our thoughts, education, training, feelings, decisions, and the actions taken pursuant thereto. Yes, there is something to be said for those who commit fraud and one can indeed become the victim of such scheming, but let us not overstate that case. Let us be honest and admit that in the vast majority of cases we are manipulated because it serves some end of ours to allow it. Perhaps it is convenient to believe X. Perhaps we seek to be victims so we may play that card and avoid responsibility. After all, someone suggests something your higher self knows is bullshit, yet you accept it because another side of you might be curious about it, or perhaps the possibility of the promised result gets your avarice all lubed up, figuring you cannot lose because if things don't work out, you can always cry and claim that you have been the victim of deception. But in reality, you were in knowing collusion, hedging your bets all the while.

My point is that far more often than not, we aren't victims at all, but rather aversive children wanting what we want, but unwilling to pay for it out of our own pockets. So when the smiling stranger comes, promising that which you cravenly desire at no cost, well shoot... you'd have to be a sucker not to sign on the dotted line for that, eh? Never mind the pen filled with your own blood.

Read up on the work of Nicholas Carr, I think you will really resonate with what he has to say about tech over-reliance depleting our abilities to concentrate, focus, and navigate. "The Glass Cage" and "What the Internet is doing to our brains" is a good start.

I will look him up, thanks... that is, if I can concentrate long enough to read it.

I know I am a one-man freak show. I've been that way since I was a teenager. I am so averse to any restriction upon myself that I cannot wear even jewelry, which is ironic for a guy who used to be a pattern maker at casting houses on 47th St in NYC. The sensation of it irritates me endlessly - I can never put it out of my awareness that something is binding me, no matter how slightly. I once managed to wear a silver chain with a sterling straight razor on it for about six months when I was 20 years old. I finally could not stand it any longer and into a drawer it all went.

Freedom is everything to me. It is a presupposition, the absence of which reduces life to mere existence, even for those who zoot about in their Citation Xs for brunch in Paris. I do not claim to be right, or even sane. What I am is a wild animal living in a cage, pacing back and forth, biding my time until death takes me. Therefore, I really have nothing to lose in looking forward to events that might leave the gate ajar. I recognize no authority over me beyond myself and most people would hate me for it, calling my self-respect "arrogance" and "selfish"... as if the words and opinions of idiots held any sway with me.

 

[H. E. Panqui]

Everyone's political opinions, and indeed to a fair extent their opinions on everything, are determined by what they think they know about history.

And not only does the history need not be true, it need not even claim to be true! Fictional accounts can be just as persuasive, indeed are almost invariably more persuasive! Even though the author is totally upfront about the work being fictional, and the consumer supposedly "knows" it's fictional (in some irrelevant, higher-reasoning corner of his brain), nevertheless it is stored as reality.

Because the author need not let historical reality get in the way of his agenda, he is free to exaggerate, fabricate, and craft his story with the Platonic ideals of the concepts he's trying to bring out. No need for subtlety, ambiguity, countervailing facts, nor alternative explanations and ways of looking at the facts. No facts at all! Nothing to mudle up the picture or get in the way of the advancement of his hypothesis.

It's not hard to see why fiction is so much more powerful and persuasive a conveyor of history. Nor why it is that Charles Dickens, a novelist, is today the top historical authority on the 19th century for the vast majority of the English-speaking world.

...helmuth, unless you are over 120 years old, you too are relying on 'accounts' of 'the victorian era' for which you pine...[maybe helmuth caught a bronte sisters,' etc., pbs masterpiece theater series he fell in love with?...c'mon, admit it, helmuth!]

...btw, i believe you'll find dickens also wrote some 'non-fiction' about the deplorable conditions of those at the bottom of the victorian pyramid...but i imagine when you are dreaming of 'the victorian era' you picture yourself at the top of the victorian pyramid...i suspect you probably don't put yourself in the shoes of irish catholic farmers, the indians the british brutalized according to historian will durant, etc. subjects galore of the british empire...

[[helmuth, rumor has it that in the chains of history the bloody british empire made hitler look like an ineffective piker in the murder and forced-labor realm!!...]

 

[Son_of_Liberty90]

That is not quite what I've done. I have asserted that the net result of civilization has, for me, proven a loss - a negative. There are all manner of cool things, but are they worth the price we pay? For me, they are not. For me, freedom is the only thing that matters. It matters to me more than health, family, love, etc. because without it all of the things that matter to me are diminished; tinted with the taint of evil that other men impose upon me, regardless of how innocuous it may seem in the eyes of others. I submit that those people, those civilians, are incapable of judging objectively because they have accepted the mastery of other men over them; they have sold themselves cheaply to their brethren as the lowest of whores, in exchange for mere trifles. They have sold their souls to men no better than themselves; no more suited to be master than they, and for no other reasons than that they are become timid, fearful, small beings not by any dint of the divine dice, but by their own choice.

They have chosen slavery for themselves out of their avarice for the illusion of something that exists nowhere in reality, save the confines of their stunted minds and their souls, which they have shriveled by the work of their own wills against themselves. They chose the gilt cage for the sake of the ignorance for which they wantonly demand for themselves in favor of the deeper truths because they refuse the full cost of those truths which demand acceptance of the ugly alongside the beautiful. They lie to themselves out of mere and petty convenience for the sake of justifying their indolence, fed by their fears of being active and the result of their choosing to view such action as a curse, rather than as the divine blessing which is part and parcel of one's life. It reminds me of the domestic products ads from the 1960s that portrayed woman's life in the home as drudgery, thereby enticing them to by this cleanser and that kitchen appliance.

Their Fear, Avarice, Ignorance, and Lassitude combine into a self-reinforcing juggernaut of personal corruption and debauchery in such a way as they come to crave the disease of spirit that cripples, consumes, and inevitably kills them, much as the heroin addict craves the fix he comes to worship as his raison d'être; his effective God. And just as with the addict, the poisons with which he bullheadedly imbues his life saps away his vigor and independence, reducing him to the most wretched habit imaginable, all the while lying to himself either about how wonderful or unavoidable his life is. He is a despicable coward and a parasite worthy of no regard or respect from anyone, which is largely why he gets none, save for that weak-tea lie that average men almost universally mistake for properly proportioned veneration of those around them. They talk a big talk about "respect" and yet fail to walk a single word of it beyond the metes and bounds of their narrowly delimited and paltry milquetoast-spirits.



You mistake my tone, sir. It is no romanticization you catch, but my willingness to accept all that comes with being a savage, the bad as well as the good. You might argue that there is good with the bad in being civilized, just as there is with the savage life. To that I agree fully, and to which you might then ask "so why not choose civilization above savagery?", to which my response is "because with civilization, one's freedom wings away into the mists of eternity, never again to be seen nor felt."



Your implicit judgment of such a circumstance as a perhaps petty and unnecessary cause of presumably great evil is based on your referential frame as a civilian. Had you grown up a savage, you would perforce hold a different view because that which defines you as a human being would be fundamentally different from what it is now. Does that mean a savage would wish to die of a toothache? Decidedly not. What it does mean, however, is that he would rather die that way than trade his soul away just to avoid such a fate. But in the end, he would still face that possibility, the net result of such a choice being that he has only reduced the probability of such an outcome. But so far as I can see, the vast and overwhelming majority of men never allow their considerations to go that far into such matters. Rather, they choose to believe that because they sold their souls for the sake of modern dentistry that they are now immune from such ultimate results. That is the coward's mind at work and nothing better.



And we have done it all as slaves, regardless of how expansive and prettily appointed our cages may be in some cases. My friend Gene, may his good soul rest in peace, said something to me in front of his house in Williams AZ when he was dying of lung cancer, the simple words cutting through me like a scalpel when he said, "we all build our own prisons." To this day those words hit me like a ton of bricks for the sheer and irresistible force they carry. Few words have I ever heard or read that have stricken me as have those six simple utterances.

What you appear to be showing me is that these cheap and false miracles are price enough for your soul. Do I mistake your meaning?



That is precisely what I am doing, at least in part. But my machinations run well beyond this.



You base this assertion upon what, precisely? I base mine on the clear and apparently obstinate trend toward ever deeper servitude and decay. I observe people very closely and with few exceptions they are now living in a perceptual environment that is highly detached from reality - a condition the psychologists call "psychosis". There is no indication to suggest people will choose to move away from this trend of going ever more deeply into deranged perception unless the general environment becomes such that they only choice is to adopt a more rational way or be consumed.

Why has it become possible for so many weak people to survive? Because the artifice of men has made it so. Remove the crutch and how well do you think your garden-variety tranny would fare? Progressives/liberals? Without substantial alteration of their basic thoughts and attitudes, they would die precisely because raw, hard reality makes no accommodation for stupidity beyond a very low threshold value. The stupidities of civilized living are now so vast and overwhelming that I feel we must be nearing a nexus. I could be wrong, of course, but this is what I see.

Consider the vast homosexualization [sic] of children today. Any parent who says they don't care if their child turns out gay is either a liar or a blithering idiot. It is one thing if one's child shoots out of mom's vagina on a jet of flame, scorching the paint from the walls. It is another issue entirely to have one's child directed into homosexuality through the influences of culture and the schools. If I found someone actively recruiting one of my children in such a matter, they would shortly join the ranks of others who have mysteriously vanished without trace. Perhaps little green men in a UFO carted them off the Mars.





Blaming the "elite" for this is like blaming a viper for biting. It is in their nature and one can reliably set their clocks by it. The fault is ours and ours alone. We are responsible for our thoughts, education, training, feelings, decisions, and the actions taken pursuant thereto. Yes, there is something to be said for those who commit fraud and one can indeed become the victim of such scheming, but let us not overstate that case. Let us be honest and admit that in the vast majority of cases we are manipulated because it serves some end of ours to allow it. Perhaps it is convenient to believe X. Perhaps we seek to be victims so we may play that card and avoid responsibility. After all, someone suggests something your higher self knows is bull$#@!, yet you accept it because another side of you might be curious about it, or perhaps the possibility of the promised result gets your avarice all lubed up, figuring you cannot lose because if things don't work out, you can always cry and claim that you have been the victim of deception. But in reality, you were in knowing collusion, hedging your bets all the while.

My point is that far more often than not, we aren't victims at all, but rather aversive children wanting what we want, but unwilling to pay for it out of our own pockets. So when the smiling stranger comes, promising that which you cravenly desire at no cost, well shoot... you'd have to be a sucker not to sign on the dotted line for that, eh? Never mind the pen filled with your own blood.



I will look him up, thanks... that is, if I can concentrate long enough to read it.

I know I am a one-man freak show. I've been that way since I was a teenager. I am so averse to any restriction upon myself that I cannot wear even jewelry, which is ironic for a guy who used to be a pattern maker at casting houses on 47th St in NYC. The sensation of it irritates me endlessly - I can never put it out of my awareness that something is binding me, no matter how slightly. I once managed to wear a silver chain with a sterling straight razor on it for about six months when I was 20 years old. I finally could not stand it any longer and into a drawer it all went.

Freedom is everything to me. It is a presupposition, the absence of which reduces life to mere existence, even for those who zoot about in their Citation Xs for brunch in Paris. I do not claim to be right, or even sane. What I am is a wild animal living in a cage, pacing back and forth, biding my time until death takes me. Therefore, I really have nothing to lose in looking forward to events that might leave the gate ajar. I recognize no authority over me beyond myself and most people would hate me for it, calling my self-respect "arrogance" and "selfish"... as if the words and opinions of idiots held any sway with me.

Osan, I don't have time to respond to all of your points but I can tell you a lot of what you say speaks to me.

However, once again I believe you are only looking at one side of the picture. If you just look through the lens of the media, then sure, you will see a corrupt world full of weaklings.

But what about the other side we're not being shown? The other side of Americans still with the good work ethic and willingness to stand up and fight.

You said it yourself, ultimately we are responsible, so that would conclude civilization itself is not evil, but our sloth, and avarice (and over-reliance on technology). If we got to this point, then we still have the capacity to change, even if it appears we do not.

 

[helmuth_hubener]

[There are still] Americans still with the good work ethic and willingness to stand up and fight.

You said it yourself, ultimately we are responsible, so that would conclude civilization itself is not evil, but our sloth

Indeed, humans are naturally slothful. Very slothful. That's our natural state.

Civilization is, essentially, the end result of thousands of years of build-up using certain types of child-rearing (high control, highly demanding) and cultural technologies (mostly religion) to break human behavior out of its natural rut and yank it, kicking and screaming, up to a higher plane of existence.

For me, I prefer that higher plane. I think lounging about like baboons -- which is what savages do -- is unbearably boring and what a waste of human potential. I do not aspire to get in tune with my "nature" as a primate and live like the other primates, scratching in the dirt, occasionally screeching or biting at my fellows when I don't immediately get what I want. There's nothing noble about that to me.

I, instead, aspire to be godly. Indeed, I aspire! To aspire at all, to have ambition, to have drive, to have discipline, to create on a grand and beautiful scale, these are not biologically natural behaviors for humans.

Constitutionally, we're a lot like baboons. We just want to lay around and scratch ourselves.

Civilization wrenches us out of that and allows us to make ourselves something more.

 

[Son_of_Liberty90]

Indeed, humans are naturally slothful. Very slothful. That's our natural state.

Civilization is, essentially, the end result of thousands of years of build-up using certain types of child-rearing (high control, highly demanding) and cultural technologies (mostly religion) to break human behavior out of its natural rut and yank it, kicking and screaming, up to a higher plane of existence.

For me, I prefer that higher plane. I think lounging about like baboons -- which is what savages do -- is unbearably boring and what a waste of human potential. I do not aspire to get in tune with my "nature" as a primate and live like the other primates, scratching in the dirt, occasionally screeching or biting at my fellows when I don't immediately get what I want. There's nothing noble about that to me.

I, instead, aspire to be godly. Indeed, I aspire! To aspire at all, to have ambition, to have drive, to have discipline, to create on a grand and beautiful scale, these are not biologically natural behaviors for humans.

Constitutionally, we're a lot like baboons. We just want to lay around and scratch ourselves.

Civilization wrenches us out of that and allows us to make ourselves something more.

Ah, laziness may be our natural state, but let's not forget that human civilization started out as hunter-gatherers banding together against predators and the elements.

We knew that it was a harsh world and had to cooperate in order to survive.

But we HAD to be tough in order to survive.

What's interesting about the past 2 centuries of technological innovation is that it has encouraged automated behavior, and hence or proclivities to be slothful.

Since technological innovation is inevitable, where our destiny lies is harnessing technology to
encourage hard work and diligence, so we don't become Wall-E blob people. That, to me, is the prime challenge of our age.

 

[helmuth_hubener]

But we HAD to be tough in order to survive.

What's interesting about the past 2 centuries of technological innovation is that it has encouraged automated behavior, and hence or proclivities to be slothful.

Since technological innovation is inevitable, where our destiny lies is harnessing technology to
encourage hard work and diligence, so we don't become Wall-E blob people. That, to me, is the prime challenge of our age.

It is the prime challenge of *every* civilization, one at which they have all failed.

The toughness builds the civ. The people are getting tougher and tougher, more and more disciplined, every generation, rising to greater and greater heights.

The great thing is, it works. A new culture and a new temperament is forged, over many generations, which achieves tremendous success and prosperity.

The problem is, it works. The extreme prosperity that results undermines all the cultural technology that built the civ in the first place. The people revert back to their natural tendencies. They get soft and lazy. And so it all collapses, or is conquered by barbarians.

This is not new. It happened with Rome, too. High technology. High living. Extreme decadence. Extreme prosperity. They had it all. And then collapse. It has happened with every civilization. Their success is their doom.

It will happen to us, too, if we let it. It is already happening.


Oh, and I can't let this go: technological innovation is NOT inevitable. Indeed, it is the exception, not the rule.

 

[Son_of_Liberty90]

It is the prime challenge of *every* civilization, one at which they have all failed.

The toughness builds the civ. The people are getting tougher and tougher, more and more disciplined, every generation, rising to greater and greater heights.

The great thing is, it works. A new culture and a new temperament is forged, over many generations, which achieves tremendous success and prosperity.

The problem is, it works. The extreme prosperity that results undermines all the cultural technology that built the civ in the first place. The people revert back to their natural tendencies. They get soft and lazy. And so it all collapses, or is conquered by barbarians.

This is not new. It happened with Rome, too. High technology. High living. Extreme decadence. Extreme prosperity. They had it all. And then collapse. It has happened with every civilization. Their success is their doom.

It will happen to us, too, if we let it. It is already happening.


Oh, and I can't let this go: technological innovation is NOT inevitable. Indeed, it is the exception, not the rule.

I'm in agreement with most of what you say. As we've said, civilization itself is not bad. The problem is figuring out how the break the cycle of prosperity > sloth > destruction.

Like the kid from rich parents who stays rich and diligent because he maintains the principles he was brought up with. Some rich kids become spoiled and lazy then crash & burn, but others are raised right and do not become lazy and spoiled. The outcome is not inevitable.

Oh, and I can't let this go: technological innovation is NOT inevitable. Indeed, it is the exception, not the rule.

This is tricky. I don't like saying inevitable, but if you look at recent history, in most circumstances we've always embraced new tech in the name of progress.

Look at the transhumanist movement - they are drooling at the prospect of AI taking over (or infusing machine parts into our organic bodies).

Scary stuff

 

[jllundqu]

Ah, laziness may be our natural state, but let's not forget that human civilization started out as hunter-gatherers banding together against predators and the elements.

We knew that it was a harsh world and had to cooperate in order to survive.

But we HAD to be tough in order to survive.

What's interesting about the past 2 centuries of technological innovation is that it has encouraged automated behavior, and hence or proclivities to be slothful.

Since technological innovation is inevitable, where our destiny lies is harnessing technology to
encourage hard work and diligence, so we don't become Wall-E blob people. That, to me, is the prime challenge of our age.

The noose is already tightening. With advances in AI, VR, the internet-of-things, etc.... it will only be a matter of time before most of the population will be hooked into the matrix in a very real sense, getting every desire and impulse immediately fulfilled. There will be a holdout of the population, myself included... us Luddites who will consciously eschew such chains.... but it will get to the point where there will be two classes of people... those who are plugged in and are a part of the new cyber-tech world, where your literal brain is connected to the web and can absorb mass amounts of data as well as communicate instantaneously to any place on the globe and beyond... and the meek... those simple folk who see the wisdom in not pissing away their humanity for the promise of techno-immortality.

We've got 15-20 years, tops. I'll be on my hobby farm in the middle of nowhere living in peace... what the rest of the world chooses is not my concern.

 

[Son_of_Liberty90]

The noose is already tightening. With advances in AI, VR, the internet-of-things, etc.... it will only be a matter of time before most of the population will be hooked into the matrix in a very real sense, getting every desire and impulse immediately fulfilled. There will be a holdout of the population, myself included... us Luddites who will consciously eschew such chains.... but it will get to the point where there will be two classes of people... those who are plugged in and are a part of the new cyber-tech world, where your literal brain is connected to the web and can absorb mass amounts of data as well as communicate instantaneously to any place on the globe and beyond... and the meek... those simple folk who see the wisdom in not pissing away their humanity for the promise of techno-immortality.

We've got 15-20 years, tops. I'll be on my hobby farm in the middle of nowhere living in peace... what the rest of the world chooses is not my concern.

It's the transhumanist agenda. See the above video.

Again referencing Nick Carr and his work, "What the Internet is doing to our Brains" and "The Glass Cage."

 

[jllundqu]

It's the transhumanist agenda. See the above video.

Again referencing Nick Carr and his work, "What the Internet is doing to our Brains" and "The Glass Cage."

Oh I know all about Transhumanism, Singulatarians, and the like.... Watch the show Black Mirror for some very cool sci-fi visions of our future

 

[Son_of_Liberty90]

Oh I know all about Transhumanism, Singulatarians, and the like.... Watch the show Black Mirror for some very cool sci-fi visions of our future

By "Cool" visions do you mean depressing ones?

 

[jllundqu]

By "Cool" visions do you mean depressing ones?

Among the most disturbing and depressing things I've seen on TV.... but cool to watch

 

[Son_of_Liberty90]

Among the most disturbing and depressing things I've seen on TV.... but cool to watch

Damn I was hoping you would be telling me it's an optimistic take where humans reign in control of technology.

I've seen my share of depressing future visions. It got to a point where it began to mess with my psyche and day to day living so I cut it out of my viewing diet. I honestly think big budget productions like these are being put out their to 'condition' us into acceptance.

AMC "Humans" I view in a similar vein.