What hope for humanity given the experience of the past 10,000 years?

[Epimetheus]

I was actually thinking Gramsci:

While the view of the proletarian masses as avenging agents of social revolution is excessively optimistic, the pessimistic Frankfurt School view of the masses as docile Stepford workers is equally extreme. Gramsci rejects both determinism and fatalism and shows identification to be a historico-political matter without any final resolution.

Simplified: The future is unknown until it happens?
Temporal quantum uncertainty applied to human history?

[Kai]

I was actually thinking Gramsci:

While the view of the proletarian masses as avenging agents of social revolution is excessively optimistic, the pessimistic Frankfurt School view of the masses as docile Stepford workers is equally extreme. Gramsci rejects both determinism and fatalism and shows identification to be a historico-political matter without any final resolution.

Simplified: The future is unknown until it happens?
Temporal quantum uncertainty applied to human history?

More like: Humans are stuck in a perpetual loop. There doesn't seem to be any end to it, just peaks and valleys in a waveform without resolution.

[Elder Iptuous]

More like: Humans are stuck in a perpetual loop. There doesn't seem to be any end to it, just peaks and valleys in a waveform without resolution.

Only if we're lucky...

[Cain]

I was actually thinking Gramsci:

While the view of the proletarian masses as avenging agents of social revolution is excessively optimistic, the pessimistic Frankfurt School view of the masses as docile Stepford workers is equally extreme. Gramsci rejects both determinism and fatalism and shows identification to be a historico-political matter without any final resolution.

Simplified: The future is unknown until it happens?
Temporal quantum uncertainty applied to human history?

More like: Humans are stuck in a perpetual loop. There doesn't seem to be any end to it, just peaks and valleys in a waveform without resolution.

Well, not a loop.  Just that things are never resolved.  One problem is solved, another turns up.  A better system displaces a worse system only to lose out to a different kind of system, which maybe combines aspects of the two previous ones.  A lot relies on the socio-historical context, and since history never goes away - it is only built on - things will continue to change, and grow, and evolve.

Its a process, that continues to rumble on without any defined ending point.

[Kai]

Parallel: how a species is never "perfected", just undergoing transmutation in the changing environment. There is no "unrolling" to some goal, just adaptation and survival in all sorts of directions.

Both are directionless change to solve problems in a changing environment without any conclusion (except extinction).

[Cain]

Exactly.  I was just thinking that a few minutes ago, actually.

[Kai]

Exactly.  I was just thinking that a few minutes ago, actually.

So, the trick would be, not to be an idealist searching for utopic pathways or a fatalist waiting for it all to end, but to be a realist searching for the next direction that social evolution will take us. And exploit it.

[Jenne]

I was actually thinking Gramsci:

While the view of the proletarian masses as avenging agents of social revolution is excessively optimistic, the pessimistic Frankfurt School view of the masses as docile Stepford workers is equally extreme. Gramsci rejects both determinism and fatalism and shows identification to be a historico-political matter without any final resolution.

Simplified: The future is unknown until it happens?
Temporal quantum uncertainty applied to human history?

More like: Humans are stuck in a perpetual loop. There doesn't seem to be any end to it, just peaks and valleys in a waveform without resolution.

Well, not a loop.  Just that things are never resolved.  One problem is solved, another turns up.  A better system displaces a worse system only to lose out to a different kind of system, which maybe combines aspects of the two previous ones.  A lot relies on the socio-historical context, and since history never goes away - it is only built on - things will continue to change, and grow, and evolve.

Its a process, that continues to rumble on without any defined ending point.

That's actually more or less what I meant--I didn't mean that the issue of there being a set of problems ever goes away, just peoples' perception of those problems.  But the human condition, is in essence, still the same.

We just have a different (let's try for qualitative here:  better?  more complex?  deeper?) understanding of all the falderal that has come WITH the human condition, whereas limited resources and understanding 2K years ago meant people worried more about food and war worldwide than they do now (though admittedly, those are still current problems of a lot of people today even still).

[Jenne]

I disagree.

Ok.

[BADGE OF HONOR]

I was actually thinking Gramsci:

While the view of the proletarian masses as avenging agents of social revolution is excessively optimistic, the pessimistic Frankfurt School view of the masses as docile Stepford workers is equally extreme. Gramsci rejects both determinism and fatalism and shows identification to be a historico-political matter without any final resolution.

Simplified: The future is unknown until it happens?
Temporal quantum uncertainty applied to human history?

More like: Humans are stuck in a perpetual loop. There doesn't seem to be any end to it, just peaks and valleys in a waveform without resolution.

Well, not a loop.  Just that things are never resolved.  One problem is solved, another turns up.  A better system displaces a worse system only to lose out to a different kind of system, which maybe combines aspects of the two previous ones.  A lot relies on the socio-historical context, and since history never goes away - it is only built on - things will continue to change, and grow, and evolve.

Its a process, that continues to rumble on without any defined ending point.

Unless you happen to be a Christian trained from birth to believe that the world has a definite, impending end.

[Cain]

Yes.  Or a Communist.  Or Muslim.  Or a Neocon.

However, fortunately for us, it usually only takes 5-10 years for the brutal reality - the one that teleology fails to grasp - to set in.  And then Utopia starts to look a little shabby, and snarky political science professors can start writing booklets called "The Return of History" and the like.

[Epimetheus]

Parallel: how a species is never "perfected", just undergoing transmutation in the changing environment.
There is no "unrolling" to some goal, just adaptation and survival in all sorts of directions.

[Jenne]

White Ninja wears a burkha?