Push the button already

[tyrannosaurus vex]

As for your specific example, clean water and sanitation are better if we take it for granted that longer lifespans and higher population density are better.

They are.  Cities exist as a means to gather resources.  You have an objectively higher chance of living to be old if you live in a modern city.

Who says living to be old, cursing the traffic and hating your job and dodging stray cop bullets the whole time, is objectively preferable to living off the land with a few other people for a shorter time? If modern city living is objectively better, why don't all those tribes in Africa or Brazil give up and move into apartments? Why do we complain about the conquest of the American West? We brought Civilization after all, so why did the natives resist?

But more to the point, will what we have built lead inexorably to Fully Automated Gay Space Communism just because it's easier to live to 60 now than it used to be yo live to 40? And is that trajectory guaranteed by no more than the fact that "so far, so good"?

[altered]

Vex, you’ve taken “question everything” so far that you’ve stopped thinking with your brain and started thinking on four legs.

I follow and actively engage members of indigenous communities who are fully about “fuck the white man and everything he’s done in this world” and they absolutely fucking agree that longer lives in modern cities is better than short lives on rez lands. They just want the agency to make that decision on their terms in their tribal lands with their own authority.

You and primitivist fuckheads are literally the only people I’ve heard so much as flirt with this Luddite idiocy, and primitivist fuckheads are all drug addled middle class white kids. This is fucking damned near Lamanite level ridiculous fucking nonsense. Head out of your ass, NOW, please.

[altered]

Fuck, earlier today I had to watch a Salish acquaintance of mine have a minor breakdown on Twitter about her life expectancy being so fucking short due to how fucked up her life is by racist colonial bullshit.

Seriously go get a fucking grip.

[altered]

Fuck this noble savage “we were meant for the hunter gatherer life” LARP nonsense with a jackhammer. You want my fucking life expectancy PLEASE COME AND FUCKING HAVE IT. I want more. Everyone out here wants more. FUCK.

[altered]

Final word on this shit before I go hate-shriek to shitty nu metal till the poison is gone:

The best predictor of life expectancy after early childhood is STRESS. If you live in misery you will die faster. This holds true when you control for everything else. Period.

So fuck you.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

You're not hearing me at all. I will definitely grant you that's because I'm scatterbrained as fuck these days for my own reasons and bad at organizing anything I try to say, and that's why I put this here instead of shitting it out on Facebook or something. I am too apt to go off on some diatribe about anything.

That said, I'm not seeing anything from you that counters the actual thing I'm trying to say, which is the myth of the Long Arc of History being a crutch used by too many people to excuse their lack of activism, on the grounds that progress is somehow inevitable and therefore not incumbent upon them individually to put in any effort. Obviously this does not mean you or probably anyone on this board, it means [people]. Like, in general. I am only saying that history, contrary to popular conceit, has no inherent bias toward iustice.

[Cramulus]

the idea that history is going somewhere, that is has an arc, is an old idea

the consequence of this idea is a view that some cultures are evolving and other cultures are devolving

that some cultures are more advanced, and therefore have more right to steer civilization

They used to say that if your nation had colleges, and rule of law, and you had art that was full of heady symbols, and you treated women with the proper respect*... then you had civilization. And if not, then your culture is still stuck in the past, and we're actually doing you a favor by colonizing and bringing in a bunch of Nabobs to set up shop.

And everybody bought into this for hundreds and hundreds of years.

After World War II, much of the world was absolutely devastated. Philosophers everywhere asked "why did this happen?" and one common conclusion was that Nazis really bought into this myth of "progress". That modernist thought distilled their version of Nationalism. Their superior national identity (clearly superior because of good breeding and art and public works) is what they thought gave them the right to do everything they did.

And in the shocked wake of the holocaust, in the desolation of europe, postmodernism was born. It was, at its core, a rejection of this "history has a grand arc" idea.

Now that all the WWII vets are gone, we're seeing these ideas return. Nationalism isn't a scary word anymore, people are openly identifying as nationalists again. It is no coincidence that these "nationalists" are the same people opposed to Black Lives Matter, the same people running the Trump government. Trump always talks about how the people sneaking into the US are coming from "shithole countries"... at his core, he really believes this, that some countries are better than others.

None of this denies that certain forms of advancement exist. Computers get faster over time, right? nobody's saying an Apple ][ is the same thing as a modern laptop. What V3x is saying is that civilizations don't advance in the same way computer technology advances. You shouldn't think of cultures (especially our own) as having a "progress meter" which naturally fills up over time.

[Cramulus]

I think there's a chord here with the language of natural selection versus evolution. We used to talk about "how evolved" a species might be. That there are higher species and lower species. Humans are the "evolved" version of large primates.

But any biologist will tell you that it doesn't work like that - in any given environment, certain traits give you advantages that help you breed. Mating selects for these traits, so they become better represented & developed in successive generations.

Evolution doesn't naturally produce more intelligence over time, intelligence is just OUR special tool. Maybe other species didn't need it. But the idea that we're "more evolved" has led to all sorts of terrible conclusions - it's the go-to intellectual
apology for all sorts of animal abuse and exploitation.



and hey, as an aside, I know this is "or kill me", but it really discourages me from posting topics when Vex posts something he's interested in discussing and gets a bunch of "fuck you idiot" type responses. His post isn't that controversial, it's basically the exact premise of postmodernism.. I don't think he deserved to get yelled at like this.

[minuspace]

Yes, and clearly, “me thinks she...”


In support of Vex’s point, something about technology lends itself to simulation and alienation; of production, labor and overall direct interaction with the world. It is a marvelous interface of power and convenience AND be that as it may, it can ALSO be misused, intentionally or not. For me the problem is how it’s so compelling that I sometimes lose touch with what matters, for example, a sunset becomes something I picture before and against simply enjoying the moment because it is the flat, abstract and infinitely reproducible representation of reality occasioned by technology that has taken the place of what it used to stand for. Because yes, the real permits a distinction that your filthy simulation does not.

[Doktor Howl]

As for your specific example, clean water and sanitation are better if we take it for granted that longer lifespans and higher population density are better.

They are.  Cities exist as a means to gather resources.  You have an objectively higher chance of living to be old if you live in a modern city.

Who says living to be old, cursing the traffic and hating your job and dodging stray cop bullets the whole time, is objectively preferable to living off the land with a few other people for a shorter time? If modern city living is objectively better, why don't all those tribes in Africa or Brazil give up and move into apartments? Why do we complain about the conquest of the American West? We brought Civilization after all, so why did the natives resist?

But more to the point, will what we have built lead inexorably to Fully Automated Gay Space Communism just because it's easier to live to 60 now than it used to be yo live to 40? And is that trajectory guaranteed by no more than the fact that "so far, so good"?

The great thing is people can opt out whenever they feel like it.  They have 6 diving boards on every bridge, no waiting.

[Doktor Howl]

and hey, as an aside, I know this is "or kill me", but it really discourages me from posting topics when Vex posts something he's interested in discussing and gets a bunch of "fuck you idiot" type responses. His post isn't that controversial, it's basically the exact premise of postmodernism.. I don't think he deserved to get yelled at like this.

This has always been Or Kill Me.  Back in the day, I posted here and motherfuckers lined up down the block to give me shit.  It's part of the reason I don't post in here so often.

The other is that I'm out of rants.  Nothing I can holler is as strange as the actual world right now.

[Doktor Howl]

Fuck this noble savage “we were meant for the hunter gatherer life” LARP nonsense with a jackhammer. You want my fucking life expectancy PLEASE COME AND FUCKING HAVE IT. I want more. Everyone out here wants more. FUCK.

Very much this.

Once upon a time, there was a member of PD named Bhodi.  He was of course white, so we was allowed to hijack like that.

Anyway, he advocated going back to the hunter/gatherer nomadic lifestyle.  It was pointed out to him that 11 out of every 12 humans would have to die within a very short lifetime to make that possible, as no amount of hunting and gathering could provide for 7+ billion people.  He agreed with the numbers and said it was worth it.  He was then hounded into oblivion by the rest of the board.  That is where the "11/12ths deserved it" line came from.

Anarcho-primitivism is bollocks, and always has been.  We are a tool-using species and we will constantly build better tools.  Which we will then drop on each other's cities.

[Nibor the Priest]

The great thing is people can opt out whenever they feel like it.  They have 6 diving boards on every bridge, no waiting.

I wrote an angrier reply to this, then deleted it. Sorry, bad day. Here's a calmer expression of the same thing. I know you're old and I'm new and it's your rules, but I can't not say it.

I don't think it's OK to write stuff like that in a thread with a participant who has been expressing suicidal ideation today.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

As much as I respect everyone in this thread, I'm going to cordially invite every person who feels like it's their job to put words in my mouth to go fuck themselves. At no point did I advocate for returning to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, nor did I ever dismiss the entire notion of technological progress as a myth or the tangible benefits to modern Western humans of modern Western civilization as a fantasy. I apologize if my implication that hunter-gatherers are not missing out on some fundamental aspect of human existence just because they don't have Skype seemed like a personal attack. It was not one.

[minuspace]

Yeah, sometimes bulldozers lack actual temporal parallax but, uh, they are good at moving things from here to there.