Yes but some systems push the bad side of human, but other the good sids
Comment on Capitalism is an unrealistic death cult.
schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
Meh. I’m no fan of capitalism, but I’d say the problem is humanity itself, or maybe an evolutionary system that favors short sighted local advantage at the expense of eventual extinction.
I already posted the great filter today, so…
mrdown@lemmy.world 6 days ago
schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
The systems that can feed the most bodies and enslave the most minds conquer, Borg-like, the ones the feed & enslave less. Wars grow bigger as their opponents grow bigger. Eventually we are all engulfed in a fragile system that has to fail but once.
uen3@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
Ackshuuully there’s no such thing as overpopulation or overconsumption or carrying capacity overshoot. Those are myths made up by ecofascists, a very real and very scary right-wing political movement. The obvious true solution is for the whole world to come together and agree to follow my preferred system of government (or absence thereof) and then there will be plenty of resources to go around for everybody and billions of humans can live sustainably ever after.
And if you say that’s unrealistic and won’t happen, it must be because you are a literal exterminist Nazi who hates life and wants to do eugenics by genociding everybody- especially the brown ones and the poor ones- even though you didn’t say that- but come on, we all know you were thinking it.
So be ashamed of yourself, you Nazi, and go away now so I can win this argument by default- before I’m forced to post the well supported counterargument which I totally have.
rambling_lunatic@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
COVID-19 has drawn much of this discussion into the public sphere. Whereas it’s generally seen as poor taste to refer to groups of people as infections, diseases, and plagues – for good reason – this seems to be forgiven when the group being referred to is non-specific. Hand waving at humanity in general, as if being vague is ethical bulletproofing, gets a pass. It is relatively common today to find another viral tweet with tens of thousands of likes gesturing towards the clearing waters of Venetian canals, or the wandering deer of Japan navigating neon-lit city centres and declaring that the Earth is healing itself; the smog-cleared skies of California receive a probing enquiry – perhaps we were the real virus all along?
Strange as though it may seem, musings of this kind have become more and more common as the weeks have gone by and the evidence of nature ‘reclaiming’ previously populated areas has begun to accumulate. Suffice it to say, there is more than a little of the eco-fascist ideology floating around in the assumptions of that question; when somebody asks if humanity is the ‘real virus’, they set up a system in which the Earth is a being and humanity a problem that needs to be solved. The solution being proposed is rarely stated outright, but it doesn’t have to be because it’s implicit in the question; you cure a virus by getting rid of it. Beneath the surface level wonder at seeing a wild boar shuffle across Italian cobblestones, there is a lurking belief that maybe the world would be better off without us. Or, more commonly, the world would be better off without some of us, with who that some is being left as a blank to be filled in by the subconscious of the questioner. Unquestionably, whoever that somebody is, will be someone else.
[…]
The language of the eco-fascist claims that human beings are the problem, and that with their self-isolation – that is, their removal from the system – has come ecological recovery. Such individualised and atomised analysis prevents the ever-important systematic approach; the real problem is capitalism, and it is with the interruptions and staggerings of capitalism that recovery has come along. Deeply embedded in the language of the right wing, the misattribution of the worst elements of capitalism to the mere existence of human beings exists as a dual weapon.
Firstly, it allows them to turn their vitriol upon individuals… Secondly, it allows them to imply a connection between the two; to link the existence of capitalism to the existence of individuals and bind them together ideologically; to present capitalism as human and therefore inevitable and inescapable.
Fraser, J. (2020). Eco-Fascism: The Rhetoric of the Virus. Organise Magazine. Archived at theanarchistlibrary.org/…/jay-fraser-eco-fascism-….
EggInDisguise@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 days ago
Humans have beenaaround a lot longer than capitalism, and we didn’t destroy the planet until recently.
The problem is not humans, as many small groups of people across the globe have proven they can live with the environment, and take care of it.
teslekova@lemmy.ml 6 days ago
Look up what happened to the Maya.
merc@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
Power not derived from the movement of animals is very new. The industrial revolution is what greatly changed the damage humans can do to the environment. The industrial revolution led to capitalism, not the other way around.
grrgyle@slrpnk.net 6 days ago
I think the seeds were there long before the industrial revolution, like for example when you’ve got large segments of the population devoted to being agricultural workers on land they don’t own.
But obviously yeah I don’t think you can get capitalism of the form and scale as we recognize it today without the industrial revolution and then the financialization of most lifeways available to workers
merc@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
Evolution only cares about passing on genes. It’s rare in the animal kingdom for menopause to exist. For the most part there’s no point in an animal living if it’s unable to mate. Scientists have the “grandmother hypothesis” for why this happens in a few whales, humans and some chimps: in a species where the grandmother might help care for a baby that has some of her genes, the grandmother can be useful to the mechanism of passing on genes even if she’s no longer able to pass on her own.
That means that a creature might care about how the world looks maybe 25 years past the point where it can have offspring. Caring about environmental degradation that takes place on a multi-century scale is just not something that evolution prepared us for. Why would it? No creature in history has ever been able to modify its environment the way humans can.
Viruses are actually a good analogy. A virus depends on a living host. But, viruses often kill their hosts. Like humans, it can actually modify its environment in a way that that environment becomes toxic to the virus’s existence. That seems bad. For any individual virus though, its “life” is so short compared to the life of the host that any mechanism that made it try to avoid killing the host would just be a useless genetic trait that would not be optimal.
Humans have these immense brains, and they allow us to do things that aren’t simply the result of evolutionary drives. But, we’re still animals. Those drives really structure everything we do.
Markus29@lemmy.today 6 days ago
Altruism can actually be evolutionarily advantageous. For example, vampire bats share food with hungry individuals, and this can be reciprocated later. Insects like ants and bees have workers that give up their own reproduction to help raise relatives, thereby still passing on shared genes. Even among unrelated animals, repeated cooperation can favour altruistic behaviour.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 6 days ago
I don’t know why you need to go farther than humanity itself to clearly demonstrate the benefits of an altruistic survival model.
Modern human health care is predicated on individuals dedicating decades of their lives to education and research before dedicating decades more to the grueling physical labor of providing health care. And yet, our 8 billion person population size is wholely predicated on the massive bump in the human survival rate where professional medical services exist.
merc@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
Yes, there’s some advantage to the survival of the community, not just the genes. But, it’s sort of an expensive gamble. Not just sharing with an individual that might out-compete you later, but also the energy / effort / “programming” etc. required to act in an altruistic way. That’s why you sometimes see altruism in nature, but it’s not the rule.
SabinStargem@lemmy.today 5 days ago
Viruses eventually evolve to be less deadly to their host. It just takes many failed viruses to get there. In that context, the collapse of the US and the rise of the EU, and China, just means that we are seeing one breed dying out.
I think that humanity will do fine, it is just that some societies will not be around in the centuries to come.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 6 days ago
the great filter
The problem with “Great Filter” Theory is that we have yet to identify even non-intelligent life outside of Earth.
It’s one thing to say intelligence is self-terminating. Or, at least, incapable of sustained extra-terrestrial expansion. It’s quite another to say every other observable planet in the galaxy must have already experienced intelligent life and wiped itself out before we started looking.
Far more likely that we’re in a Dark Forest than a Great Filter. Or, at a minimum, that we are unable to identify extraterrestrial life because we haven’t figured out how to spot it at such a large distance.
schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
I don’t think there’s a conclusion that’s “far more likely” than other; multiple explanations explain the data equally well.
My preference for the great filter is just based on my pessimism on how not only power works, but how the human mind works. Since life is everywhere and always competitive, short-term survival is what life will always be programmed for; and beyond biology, we have systems. Greedy systems–systems that seek power at the expense of everything else–will be advantaged over systems that seek equilibrium.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 5 days ago
My preference for the great filter is just based on my pessimism on how not only power works, but how the human mind works.
Humans, in small enough numbers (ie, Dunbar’s Number), play reasonably well together for extended periods of time. Environmental limitations and other social resource limits can cause conflicts. But humans have presented a fairly advanced skillset for mitigating violence between larger communities, equitably sharing resources across areas as large as continents, and both budgeting limited resources over time as well as expanding the accessible volume with advances in technology.
The human mind takes a lot of undeserved shit. But I’m in a room with dozens of other people right now. None of them are trying to crack my head open with a rock and feast on the delicious goo inside.
Greedy systems–systems that seek power at the expense of everything else–will be advantaged over systems that seek equilibrium.
I don’t know how you look at a modern day metropolis and see a system that has failed to achieve some high level of equilibrium.
schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
I didn’t get into my problems with the way the mind works, but the root of it is the mind prefers comfort to truth. That’s how we get the just world fallacy. And you’ll also see how people oppressed by systems are often the ones who defend it the most fiercely.
I do like cities, and they are, on the whole, remarkably stable. I will consider this.
snowdriftissue@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Cringe ecofash r/im14andthisisdeep take.
schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
I remember learning that the sun would go out in 3rd grade earth science and it really fucked me up. It wasn’t until 30 years later that I realized I’d had a childhood existential crisis, and now I had the capacity to read, well, if not existentialist philosophers, at least comic books about existential philosophy.
You seem willing to quickly discredit ideas that make you uncomfortable, which, congratulations, is a very mature and adult take.
snowdriftissue@lemmy.world 5 days ago
seem willing to quickly discredit ideas that make you uncomfortable
No just tired of ecofascists repeating the same tired trope. Maybe educate yourself.
schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
I think the entire human race is cursed, so I don´t know how I could be accused of racism or eugenicism? But I’ll listen to the podcast, though, I suspect they are rejecting a premise based on not liking its conclusion.
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 days ago
I wouldn’t say human beings are a virus, but parasitism is a survival strategy for about 65% of life. In the case of human beings, we have complex social structures which allows for parasitism of ourselves.
The owner class behaves like a parasite, and we’ve seen this in feudal ages, in which the warrior castes dominate agricultural castes.
In capitalism, the ownership class behaves very much like a cancer. Resources consolidate at the very top with those who are in the owner class getting smaller and smaller. Currently, in the US, the difference of wealth between the 0.1%, the 0.01% and the 0.001% are stark, not to mention between them and the rest of us.
Multiple economists, including Nobel laureates are saying the ultra-wealthy are too rich, and have more wealth (total or percentage of the whole) than any other time in history, and the only way out of this mess is to redistribute it all. If we don’t then the oligarchs dominating the US will soon turn their eyes and power to the rest of the developed world.
schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
Yes, 100% agree with on the inherent dangers of the current economic system. But I also can’t ignore that parasitic wealth concentration was not invented by capitalism and has been a feature of human societies since forever. Look at any empire in history and you’ll find a class of parasites sitting at the top; therefore there is likely no permanent solution to this problem, just a constant struggle away from it (or, more realistically speaking, revolutions that happen cyclically or cyclical societal collapse).
Rothe@piefed.social 6 days ago
You have been lost to right wing propaganda. That is exactly what they want you to believe, so you stop believing in a way out. So why not just keep the status quo with oligarchs using all of our resources and destroying our planet?
schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
Meh. So you’re choosing to evaluate a claim not based on whether or not it is true, but whether or not it supports political change. Fine.
What I’m directly attacking is the “Myth of Progress”, a hangover from Christianity, the idea that we are inexorably progressing to a materially perfect future. When Obama quotes MLK, “The arc history is long, but it bends towards justice,” that is what he is talking about. If he just wait it out, all our problems will be solved. So believing in progress can potentially be as debilitating as not believing in progress.
For my part, I think change is possible, but I do not need the motivation of heaven on earth to motivate me. There will always be a struggle to share power and resources in a society, no matter what the system.
partofthevoice@lemmy.zip 6 days ago
I mean, I guess in theory that’s how it’s supposed to work. Imagine something just outside our grasp, like a structuralists geometry of social dynamics. Or rather, something processed by our learned ability to comprehend the world in ever deeper ways over generations — a quality that inherently merits certain risks which we’ve never had the wisdom to take a discerning look at. One where you could say, such intelligence risks self annihilation more greatly so when structured as individual carbon-based agents. Such a roadblock would hit you like a train, would it not? Boom…
SabinStargem@lemmy.today 5 days ago
What probably lead to the ultimate destruction of the neanderthals was a lack of calories. They are like a SUV: Big, and powerful, but takes a lot of energy to keep going. Odds are that they are just as smart as us, but the human brain is very expensive. Combine that with an ice age, and an economical competitor, it is pretty likely for the more efficient critter to become numerous.
Also, their raw power might have disincentivized the adoption of technology. They were just better than us at surviving trauma and in athletics, so things like bows, spears, and so forth, likely weren’t a big priority. Why bother with fancy sticks, when you can walk up to a giant sloth and cave in its brain with a heavy log?
Malyca@lemmy.zip 6 days ago
That scene has always haunted me with how accurate it was
Hackworth@piefed.ca 6 days ago
Yeah, the AI are the bad guys in that movie. But it’s the humans that blot out the sun.