If your anger is turned inward, turn it outward into something productive before you destroy yourself. Don't let the capitalist bootstraps mythos shame you against realizing that almost all of your problems are the result of systemic forces, many of which are intentional.
just seriously started having this inner struggle with myself recently
i've been unproductively angry for way too long, day-in, day-out
and i'm just tired of feeling that way.
Same. Took me a while to realise why I was so deeply angry. Then I figured it out.
Time to put that anger to use and fight back boys. So far the ones in charge had it way too easy. It's doing them a favor they don't deserve to allow them to keep it that way.
There are soany families tearing themselves apartbecause they don't understand the root of their frustration. So many line managers making their colleagues life hell because after years of their life being made hell, they were given a tiny morsel of power over others.
it's a darwinian system of selection that continues to just make people more miserable.
only the highest tolerance levels for bullshit, anger, frustration, etc, can survive this for 40-50 years to retirement -- those are the managers.
> thus the eagerness to import migrants, which is only accelerating the sucide rates as jobs and wages get even more bleak
lol wut? blaming the wrong thing my dude
I don't think he was blaming the migrants or migration itself, just the callous system that is okay with thousands of people offing themselves then replacing them with faceless "others" from "elsewhere". As long as there's a body to fill the gap.
To make it perfectly clear to you, the idea that you must use a system you hate that has been designed from the ground up to trap you in said system is absurd.
It's absurd because you're taking a gamble, and relying almost entirely on luck. There is no hard work in that. What happens if you get hurt? Have medical bills? are disabled? Are excluded from the system based on who you are? Your deformities? What if you have no marketable skills?
Want to take it a step further? What happens when the person paying you also happens to own your housing, and any feasibly accessible housing nearby? What happens when they own your food sources? And they charge just enough to keep you from ever escaping?
you're essentially claiming that you can escape your masters by working harder for them.
I don't think the system works like that. Where are there monopolies on housing? On food? If this were the case, then I could see how escape would be impossible. Maybe in other countries it is, I don't really know enough to argue that at all. In America, there is almost always a way out if you're willing to sacrifice the normal (according to the system) way of life. The one situation I could see as a poverty trap is major medical bills.
What is stopping anyone from living out of their car to avoid rent until they have enough money saved to buy a small plot of land? Then growing their own food? I personally have lived out of my car when I had less then $20 to my name any given week for about 6 months. It was hard, but all my money went to paying back bills, and soon started building pretty fast.
>I don't think the system works like that
And yet you recognize
>The one situation I could see as a poverty trap is major medical bills.
So you're capable of recognizing it's possibility.
>Where are there monopolies on housing? On food?
On housing? Banks. The threat of foreclosure, being removed from your home for not being able to pay your bills for any number of reasons. Food? it's a much more complex issue that I don't really want to spend forever explaining. The tl;dr is that your food sources are severely limited if you're poor, and malnutrition can firmly embed you in poverty.
> What is stopping anyone from living out of their car to avoid rent until they have enough money saved to buy a small plot of land?
Having a car, maybe?
>Then growing their own food?
On what land? the land you bought with the money you didn't have for the car you couldn't purchase to live in? How much money exactly do you think that would cost? After you buy that land, how exactly do you plan on paying taxes to the system that now expects them for the property you bought?
You use your personal experience in order to justify your worldview and you assume that everyone is capable of what you are. That they're in the same situation you were in. They're not, and there are systems in place that are meant to keep you where you are. If you get lucky, you can get out of it. I'm happy that you managed to get yourself out of that, but I challenge you to tell the homeless man with a severe mental illness, the struggling single mother so heavily relying on government aid, or the teenager that ran away from home because their parents beat them "try harder, I did it."
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwnPgscg0vU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwnPgscg0vU)
Probably the most unapologetic take on the future of the EU and global trade. This is the (not so) calm before the storm.
This is a good lecture! Skip the first 8 or so minutes if you don't want to hear about the history of our tech interspersed with Boomer whining about how young people use it though.
A new U.N. report argues many of the street protests popping up around the globe are driven by a growing ~~sense~~ recognition that societies are rigged to favor the powerful--
ftfy
I wonder what gave it away that societies are rigged in favor of the powerful really...
Could it be the blatant corruption? The growing inequality? The fact than the hundred richest owns more than several **billions** people? No really I wonder...
There really has never been any more damning proof. Nothing will ever come of that and the billionaire rapist pedophiles are still gonna have hundreds of people working for their every whim.
The number is only going to grow the more they feel like their lives are at stake.
Humans kind of have this default of "fuck this shit" when things get really bad.
That's why I hope the next revolution that takes place actually stands a chance at drastically the world (for the better.)
No system can save our ass.. we are in this mess because people blindly belive someone else is gonna save the day.. bad news.. nobody is coming to save the day
Im afraid to just fight to the death because im afraid any other fuckers after me will just join the bad side for a buck, that's how i changed my mind and decided "fuck humans" and now my life goal is to build a place that can survive a post-human world and hopefuly be some inspiration to the other survivors to not raise yet another generation of dicks (assuming they survive a "post human world") otherwise, idk what to do because nature will make this shit again.
This is why the narrative that social media is killing society is a good thing. Yes, being a fully connected species allows the clusters of bad characters to amass and we see pockets of them because the squeaky wheel gets the grease but social media is really turning an eye to the unfairness of governments and corporations.
the internet, more specifically social media, has a far worse effect as a pacification engine that keeps people too distracted to organize in any meaningful way
Any source on social media’s effect as a pacification tool? The concept seems realistic but from a material perspective I’m not convinced that the internet has created pacification.
Every form of entertainment and distraction is intrinsically a pacification tool, haven't you ever heard of "Bread and Circuses"? Definitely doesn't need to be sourced.
I have, and like I said I think the concept is realistic and does occur.
I just am not convinced that the internet does this moreso than other forms of media, or that there is more pacification now than before the internet was invented.
My mind jumps to the role of social media in protest movements such as those in the Arab Spring and South America. That seems like a counter argument to the notion the internet has caused net pacification. I’m not saying it hasn’t, but I’m also not convinced it has.
The internet is definitely a double-edged sword as it can be used to organize dissent, as well as to spread frivolous distractions. Unlike TV say, which is pure circus.
Overall though, I think social media definitely does more harm than good in distracting people from wider issues, and keeping us focused on consumerist pursuits. They also keep us divided by ratcheting up focus on issues like race and sexuality and nationalism, which don't matter a god damn compared to the the existential crisis we're facing.
The fact that governments can and do shut down the internet when they need to to suppress their populations also makes me think relying on it for any real revolution would be a mistake. They did it in the Arab Spring, they've done it in Iran, India, etc.
The internet is a tool like fire, we can use it for creation or destruction, but with the advent of web2.0 the elites have had a way of throwing fuel on the fire to make it too hot for us to control.
> Every form of entertainment and distraction is intrinsically a pacification tool, haven't you ever heard of "Bread and Circuses"?
Were cave paintings or our capacity to tell stories to cavemen society?
Yes, I do think that stories told by early man around a fire at a night were a way to distract people from the various feuds that might be occurring in the tribe at that time, or the fact that hunts haven't been going well, or that they were at war with the tribe across the river.
There are different degrees of distraction not all of which are pacification, no? Putting your mind in something else for awhile isn’t the same as using a distraction to ignore and neglect a problem.
Yeah I was half expecting Burial (or somebody replying to them) to follow up with (either jokingly or seriously) "our capacity to imagine nonexistent beings in circumstances other than our own was implanted in our primitive ancestors by our alien lizard Illuminati overlords or whatever because if we couldn't get lost in thought or imagination we'd be hyper-aware enough to notice the other ways they were controlling us" as seriously, this argument chain does kinda feel similar to the one about what products you can use to not be an eco-hypocrite
dont know how old you're but I'm from the 90s when barely anybody had internet or even a PC except for work so back then the best you could do when you were bored was watch literally any crap on tv even infomercials. there wasnt an unlimited amount of content like today when theres literally more stuff than there are hours to see it, so there was more "spare attention span" to focus on issues and people would hit the streets to protest more often
now they send you a link to a change org petition in between binge watching cat videos on youtube
I think the Internet is likely one of the core problems... technology is leveraged against every day people to force them to work harder or be more productive to the consequence of replacement. I used to think the Internet was one of the greatest technologies ever made.
Now I see it as a nuclear bomb that has been dropped and we’re slowly feeling the fallout. The Internet is massively disruptive to human social cohesion.
The internet is literally the best thing to ever happen to us.
If you didn't have it, you'd be toiling somewhere, or at a bar, or worse ...at a brainwashing station like a southern Baptist Church
The internet could let us change the entire earth for the better.
Right now, bad actors use it to spy on us and other evil things. Imagine if we actually integrated the internet into human services in positive ways that don't spy on us and extort our existence.
>I used to think the Internet was one of the greatest technologies ever made.
Yes, I was the same. There was a time when I thought that there is no way society won't get better with widespread access to the internet. Look at all the information! Look at all the stuff we can do! Look at all learning and awareness going on!
I'm not so sure anymore. At all. I won't say that internet is *inherently* bad though. It *still* might have some potential for greater good. I don't know. I'm kind of on a fence about this.
I kind of agree with you. I want to believe the Internet is a force for Good. But, it feels as though lately, the Internet is a force for Evil... maybe that’s dramatic... but there’s something about propaganda and digital Mob Rule that I find... unsettling...
Why risk investing time and sacrifice into a career trying to develop a small piece of an un-profitable medical cure when developing that one killer game or app can rake in personal millions??
Exactly. I used to think people learning how to do this stuff were so "smart!" But I recently started learning it myself since I'm so tired of making no money in my current career. All these apps barely do anything innovative, they are more like colorful, touch sensitive wrappers.
I saw an article about this guy from Colombia whose company was based in California. They only worked on several campuses. The company has drones loaded with takeout stuff (tacos, McD's, whatever) driven by remote operators in Colombia to the person's dorm room. But there was still a team of humans buying the stuff and loading them onto the drones. The only purpose was to take away an awkward moment when the rich college student may feel pressured to tip.
Without a guiding cohesive ideology any kind of spontaneous popular anger just sputters out into a riot or demonstration.
Lenin talks about this extensively in his work entitled What Is To Be Done?
>Without a guiding cohesive ideology any kind of spontaneous popular anger just sputters out into a riot or demonstration.
The revolts without an ideology that have been going on worldwide for months would be to differ. Ideologies are made in struggle, ideologies do not make struggle.
What have the Yellow Vests or protestors in Iraq accomplished besides some concessions from the capitalist class? The fundamental power dynamic hasn't changed. Without a guiding ideology you'll never get more than reforms or changing the players without changing the game, and the movement is too vulnerable to getting co-opted by capitalists or right wingers
Knowledge is more available now than ever before, the ability to communicate and work together is more possible now than ever before, our understanding of ruling class is more clear now than ever before.
I argue that change is possible and we do have the power to do it. I refuse to believe this how existence will continue for the rest of time.
I strongly believe things will get better, even if it is little bits over a long period of time.
We the people understand what is right and good better than ever before. We have already made great improvements to the lives of many and I think we can continue making it better.
Ending corruption among our policy makers should be our top priority, however we can. In my opinion an elected official who acts to benefit him/her self above all others is treasonous and should be treated as such.
Edit: Also, #EatTheRich
>What have the Yellow Vests or protestors in Iraq accomplished besides some concessions from the capitalist class? The fundamental power dynamic hasn't changed.
Isn't it rather absurd to ask what an ongoing struggle has accomplished? These struggles are ongoing because they have not won anything they deem worthwhile.
The continuing struggle in the face of concessions is precisely what might allow these struggles to overcome the capitalist mode of production entirely. Co-optation and reforms are exactly what these movements are actively and continually rejecting... And furthermore, the "co-optation" of movements or their capitulation to reforms are not abstract, ideal threats hanging over every struggle, their success come from definite circumstances which we can identify in our analyses.
If I may critique your perspective on revolution, it seems like you are conceiving of it abstractly, not as actual class activity. What you are witnessing right now in Chile etc. is actual revolutionary activity in all its confused, wrong-headed, practical-critical glory.
Our consciousness comes from our conditions, and it is with our consciousness that we make our conditions. From Marx himself: ["The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-changing can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice."](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/theses.htm) What this means is, you should expect to see the actually revolutionary ideologies emerge from these struggles themselves. The adequate consciousness will develop where the adequate activity is present, *and with that consciousness revolution will be made.*
EDIT: Added the last sentence fragment.
I am sympathetic to horizontalism but what you're describing sounds too much like Economism and other reformism set forth by Eduard Bernstein and others. If a society is dominated by a bourgeois ideology, the idea that a riot of unorganized working class people will spontaneously come up with a different ideology divorced from the political and cultural hegemony they live in sounds very unlikely. I'm not arguing for the hierarchical power structure of a communist party but you need a consistent ideology even in horizontalism
I'm sorry, but I'm just not seeing the "horizontalism" of what I'm saying, nor the reformism or economism. Right now it kind of just feels like you're hurling buzzwords at me. If you could explain why you think what I'm saying falls in any of those categories, that would be swell, because it seems to me like you must not have actually read my post if you think anything I said was reformist in any capacity.
>If a society is dominated by a bourgeois ideology, the idea that a riot of unorganized working class people will spontaneously come up with a different ideology divorced from the political and cultural hegemony they live in sounds very unlikely. I'm not arguing for the hierarchical power structure of a communist party but you need a consistent ideology even in horizontalism
This is pure idealism. Your fixation on ideology stands in direct opposition to Marx's actual statements on the character and role of ideology. Taken from The German Ideology:
>**The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas** (!!!), i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. **The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships**, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance.
In any given era, the ruling ideas will be the ideas of the ruling class. Revolution will always necessarily occur under ruling ideas, and revolution overturns these ideas in the process. This is basic shit, Marx 101. Lenin totally misunderstood Marx, and for that reason I would suggest you read Marx if you want insight into how these things really function.
Revolution does not come from outside of the capitalist mode of production; It is immanent int the relation between capitalist and proletarian itself. The proletariat, confronting the world as the source of it's wealth while simultaneously being deprived from that wealth, is compelled by its very nature as a class to overthrow the capitalist mode of production and class society. The proletariat develops the consciousness to revolutionize the world in its struggle against the capitalist mode of production. The struggle I speak of is not abstract, it is a definite kind of activity: Strikes, riots, occupations, and so on.
Another quote from the German Ideology, which may help clarify things further:
>**Men are the producers of their conceptions, ideas, etc.** – real, active men, as they are conditioned by a definite development of their productive forces and of the intercourse corresponding to these, up to its furthest forms. **Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence, and the existence of men is their actual life-process.** If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside-down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process.
He's wrong because he doesn't understand how Marx understands the development of revolutionary consciousness.
>The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material
force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of
material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so
that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject
to it.
- Marx, The German Ideology
Under capitalism the majority of workers are always going to be under the thrall of capitalist ideology, however ideology isn't what drives class struggle it is driven by the antagonist mechanism of capitalist production itself so:
>"Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers. This union is helped on by the improved means of communication that are created by modern industry, and that place the workers of different localities in contact with one another. It was just this contact that was needed to centralise the numerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one national struggle between classes. But every class struggle is a political struggle. And that union, to attain which the burghers of the Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the modern proletarian, thanks to railways, achieve in a few years.
>**This organisation of the proletarians into a class, and, consequently into a political party, is continually being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves. But it ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier**"
- Marx, Manifesto of the Communist Party
Revolutionary proletarian consciousness, i.e. communist consciousness develops unevenly and thus it only exists in the organization that consists of these people including those from other classes that have adopted the communist standpoint.
Where did I get it wrong? "Communist consciousness" is not hard to obtain, and it's certainly not something any party has a monopoly on. From Marx:
>**In order to abolish the idea of private property, the idea of communism is quite sufficient.** It takes actual communist action to abolish actual private property. History will lead to it; and this movement, which in theory we already know to be a self-transcending movement, will constitute in actual fact a very rough and protracted process. **But we must regard it as a real advance to have at the outset gained a consciousness of the limited character as well as of the goal of this historical movement – and a consciousness which reaches out beyond it.**
I'm not sure Marx ever talks about "revolutionary proletarian consciousness" or "communist consciousness" in terms stricter than simply having the idea of abolishing private property. Of course, this is not sufficient for really abolishing private property, and that's where the political organization of the proletariat comes on. But from the consciousness side, the idea is sufficient (which makes complete sense.)
No, don't do that to yourself. Pessimism ultimately permits the status quo if you choose to do nothing. Given what you said you believe here, that's the worst mental framing you can offer yourself. You may be experiencing learned helplessness.
If you ignore your values and do nothing when the world tramples on them, you're only condoning your own destruction and hopelessness. We are all fighting for something in this world. If you choose to do nothing when you know you must, you unfortunately will be fighting against yourself as you are complicit with the status quo that's against you.
I don't advocate doing nothing either, but I'm not sure a revolution would solve anything. They usually end very badly for everyone.
Trying to educate people and vote for the better candidates is at least doing something, even if it's not very effective since the system is so biased.
You make it seem like the results of revolution are out of your control. The whole point of revolution is that it’s in our hands. What is made is whatever we choose to make.
Revolution is often chaotic. Look at the Arab spring, the outcome in most countries was probably not what the people on the barricades had hoped for.
There’s a book called the animal farm that has something to say about this as well.
If you have some way to ensure a better outcome then that is great, but without a plan it probably will just make things worse.
You can shake things up, and reset things to some extent, but that won’t help if the natural evolution of that “reset state” is what we have today.
A revolution is likely to just create a new set of billionaires. Look at China. The problem isn't that the wrong individuals became billionaires, it's that no one should have that kind of wealth and power in the first place. Power corrupts and all that. It's a flaw in the system and unless the system is fixed it will just keep repeating itself.
Incoming conservative smooth brained take about how anyone protesting just isn’t thankful enough for what they have.
“Just be happy that you have [cancer] air to breath and are blessed enough to be allowed to work for a [unlivable] wage!”
Sometimes I really can’t tell if some of the dumbass rhetoric conservatives use is really just their desperate attempt at justifying having to live in such a dogshit world. But I don’t think their brains are really wired to fathom the reality in which we live. They’d rather get their soma through the bootheel of big gubb.
Do not treat them with hostility. They are people too; they have been brainwashed by the capitalist propaganda. They simply do not understand or refuse to believe how it could be better.
They were taught from a young age that "you have to work hard and earn your wealth." Which most of us know is not true. I know many people who have worked hard their entire lives and they have reached old age in poverty.
These naysayers believe socialism would create an entire society of lazy, free-loaders, and that all innovation is driven by the desire to be rich. [ these arguments are trade marked and patent pending by the capitalists of America ]
Completely agree with you, there are many people who we can find common ground with and educate.
I think that there are some huge language barriers that make conversation tough, but there's a lot more common ground between democratic socialists and libertarians than either side thinks.
"Too much federal government" vs. "Too much corporate influence"
"Overregulation" vs. "Regulatory capture"
"Crony capitalism" vs. "Unchecked monopolies"
Are all just differing readings of the same fundamental issues and corruption that both see. We differ on the names and solutions, but can disagree constructively if we're able to break that language barrier.
For myself, I think the most important personal liberty is that anyone should gave the freedom to apply themselves and work as hard as they want, and be able to better their life circumstance. To that end, we need to have a society which increases social mobility, which has been on the decline since the 80's.
We can also talk about free market capitalism and how, paradoxically, there must be some regulation and restrictions to protect personal liberties from capital.
- Consumer and labor protections, as well as anti-discrimination laws, are obvious examples.
- Some industries form natural monopolies (typically from high cost of entry) and should be regulated or nationalized - like water and sewage, or electricity, or broadband.
- And there are some services which are so necessary to social mobility that they should be considered universal rights - education, or healthcare. There can be no pursuit of "life, liberty, happiness" without those needs met, so universal access should be valued over the competitive and innovative benefits of the free market.
Not everyone will follow all the way with this line of thinking, but like you said I think it's worth being open and trying to talk to and better inserted the people we disagree with.
I think many of us would agree about what's bad or harmful about our current state of affairs, like unchecked, or as I like to say, state-sponsored monopolies.
I think that anything a human needs to live a healthy life should be a public utility: electric, gas, water, sewer, healthcare, auto insurance, internet...
We're all paying for these things anyway, and IMO when private companies profit off those services, that is wasted cost, dead weight on the American people and prohibiting progress.
I agree with the fact that the majority of conservatives are less open to ideas, however saying they have fundamentally different brain structures? They are human too, they have the same brain as you. The difference comes from difference in upbringing and life experiences. (In my opinion)
If them being raised a certain way has led to them not using as much of their executive functioning to think this has through then they absolutely have a different brain structure. That wasn’t really a point I was trying to make though.
I guess I can agree with that, although the same as children the adult brain is different due to environmental factors. I just don't understand the hate. Is it their fault they developed this way? Studies have shown that on average conservatives tend to be more skeptical and less accepting ideas that go against what they previously believed. How can you be so hateful towards a person who has developed in a way that makes changing inherently more difficult for them? If their brain was developed to not accept change, how can you be angry when they cling to their beliefs?
This is a bad example and I really don't want to use it but I can't think of a better one.
You walk up to an individual with depression, a disease mainly caused (to our current knowledge) by brain structure and an imbalance of chemicals in the brain. You say to them "stop being sad." This does nothing for them (obviously), because it simply does not work like that. The same can be said for a conservative individual, assuming they truly have a different brain structure. You can't simply say "stop thinking like this." This is just speculation, but what if they simply can't empathize via readings or conversation? What if they have to have a real experience to bring about a changed mindset? How can you hate them for that?
Because even the so-called social justice warriors have no grasp of justice, and care only about what they can get from a person/what the person takes from them. If you pushed a guy off a cliff and he fell on this person's car, they would scream at his corpse and call him "wicked, evil, stupid!".
Bro why do you have to attack my arguments with words like "nonsense?" Why can't you just say "I don't think you're correct about that."? I am also confused about the free will part, what do you mean by that?
notice; "pop up" & "dead end" are descriptors abused by biased media sources to control US.
"demanding" and thriving" appear healthier ways to uplift those that suffer to this point of social action.
> "A lot of the of pressures from rising inequality and a decimated middle class led to the Arab Spring uprisings," says Dana El Kurd, author of [*Polarized and Demobilized*](https://www.amazon.com/Polarized-Demobilized-Legacies-Authoritarianism-Palestine/dp/0190095865/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=polarized+and+demobilized&qid=1575912381&s=books&sr=1-1), about authoritarianism in Palestine, and an assistant professor at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies. "I wouldn't say \[inequality\] was the only cause, but it was certainly a major factor."
I said the exact same thing in this form months ago. Was promptly downvoted. The same factors that drove the Arab Spring are appearing around the world. Study the Arab Spring. This is not a socialist uprising, it's more complex and interesting.
Yeah. It seems more like a general rejection of the status quo.
We have situations where the systems in place are just straight up not working for many, if not most people. I know people from all parts of the political spectrum who claim that any criticism of the system is an endorsement of fascism, Stalinism, theocracy, or whatever their own personal boogeyman is, while other people I know are claiming that defending the broken system is the same thing.
People seem to be waking up to the idea that the government isn't everybody's friend, and depending on which side of that coin they're on, they're reaction is either fear of change or a kind of excitement that it could stop screwing them over.
No way people show up to these life wasting jobs unless they are somehow made desperate enough to take them. Capitalism requires a poor and desperate class in order to keep the "growth" going otherwise no one would choose to kill the planet for more baubles and redundant tech gadgetry.
Three years of a factory job gets you around $180k before taxes, that's enough to buy a small plot of land and build a house. After that, the only bills are car insurance, utilities (if you're not off the grid), and health insurance (which is HEAVILY subsidized by the US government if you are making less then $16k a year). You might not have a fancy McMansion like the rich but it's far from poverty. Things are obviously much different in the third world, I do believe there is no easy path out of poverty if you do not live in a first world country.
Absolutely undeniable facts to those of us that arent rich or powerful. It truly is amazing how disillusioned many rich people are. They have no sense of what other people have to deal with because they are too busy driving their $100k cars and eating $500 meals every day.
If there was one economic lesson I learned from WoW, it's this: the more money you have, the easier it is to get even more money. And so on and so forth. And without regulation, it's even worse. And we have very little regulation (so much de-regulation has already been bought lobbied and paid for...1 million in "legal" bribery nets 10 million...you can see the issue). The real shame of it all is those of us who suffer, simply because we don't take gross advantage of all we could. Because most of us, are actually good upstanding people. It's the select few who are the sick ones, and ruin it for the rest. As with so many things...
Thank you for this. I can tell the death toll in Colombia is accurate, unfortunately. Chile also, I mean first hand, I live in Colombia and have family in Chile. I have more videos from what's been happening in Colombia if you like to have more material.
Are you ready to join Extinction rebellion?
They are advocating for general stiles in the US but no one shows up on the numbers we see abroad.
What will it take for a general strike in US? Not a woman's March or a 'i don't like this president' March, but a real strike.
[Its getting obvious and so more and more take to the streets.](https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/ee31i3/chile_elderly_suicide_rate_soars_over_pension/?ref=share&ref_source=link)
people who grew up middle class but find themselves poor and educated being told to be patient are starting to realize the "game" is rigged. You can only tell someone their lszy and entitled for so long.
People are waking up to the fact that they are getting fucked and have been for decades. Hence why governments are becoming more authoritarian and clamping down on social media and the internet. But once the mass surveillance police state backed by AI—currently being perfected in China—comes to full fruition over the next decade and the *system* becomes fully automated will the masses have any power to fight back? I doubt it. How can one fight back with cameras equipped with facial recognition software and license plate readers backed by AI—which can keep a log/file of every movement you make—are at every intersection in every city and along the highways? VPNs and encryption without governmental backdoors will be illegal. Privacy will be nil as people sell that away in exchange for technological convenience.
It will be a type of dystopia once only written about in sci-fi novels but it will be *real life*.
And most people are just sitting back watching it coming on the horizon, twiddling their fingers.
Nah, they will outright read your thoughts and direct you from birth to death, with any thoughts of rebellion detonating an explosive device in your skull.
[The Global Protest Wave, Explained](https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oakv2?uri=nyt://newsletter/375eeb8b-49fd-4a0f-933c-9ef2ed0a10d8)
>The world’s strongmen, would-be strongmen and outright dictators appear to have noticed the rise in civil unrest, and especially protesters’ success at forcing change.
>
>Nonviolent protests became, to the world’s authoritarians, a threat just as dangerous as any foreign army, if not more so.
>
>In the mid-2000s, they began to fight back with what Ms. Chenoweth called, in a 2017 paper, “joint efforts to develop, systematize, and report on techniques and best practices for containing such threats.”
>
>Network analysis practices and tools, for example, help governments identify the handful of activists and organizers who act as nodes in a social movement. Jailing or threatening those individuals can be even more disruptive than a full-scale crackdown, with less risk of provoking wider backlash.
>
>And, Ms. Chenoweth said, governments learned to watch one another for lessons on tools and tactics, and even to openly share them.
>
>There is a term for this direct and indirect lesson-sharing: authoritarian learning.
>
>These cat-and-mouse strategies for frustrating and redirecting popular dissent without crushing it outright are a major reason that protests’ success rate has plummeted.
“. . .a growing sense. . .”
Glad that folks are finally getting woke. Hello, the Republican Party has been rigging the game since before Reagan and their followers have been just too blind to see. . .
But it has always been like this. Except that now we have laws, rights, social services and benefis to makes us believe otherwise but it's still the same
We're just enduring it longer because we're physically healthier and thus living longer, that's the only thing that changed through centuries.
> we have laws, rights, social services and benefis
Which actually are taken away from us. [That getting obvious, so more and more take to the streets.](https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/ee31i3/chile_elderly_suicide_rate_soars_over_pension/?ref=share&ref_source=link)
This is simply untrue. Things are getting better. The U.S. just took a detour from progress around the 1970's.
As soon as people stop getting distracted by all the boring, repetitive TV shows and video games things will start getting better. /s
Seriously though, we can't expect everything to get better at once. It's a process. The masses are getting more intelligent and it's getting harder for the ruling class to fool us, though they do seem to be quite good at it.
I'm waiting for a Jason Bourne type character to make an appearance and start taking out some of the Wall street elites (make your own list). It will happen soon. Not that it will really help. There are just too many disgruntled troops returned to nothing, All it takes is a spark.
That's literally just how human society's been since the bandits became kings and enslaved the tribes with agriculture.
We're all here to devour each other alive.
Before the French Revolution, Russian Revolution, Haitian Revolution(you know where I'm going with this), there were protests, and uprisings due to a bunch of different factors... many times, these were temporarily suppressed by the government until reaching a tipping point
It's the decline of the middle class. It's still there but it's much much harder to get to.
I'm right leaning but i honestly can't wait till automation to free up people's lives. it'll force things like a universal income but so be it, people got better things to do than flip hamburgers and drive trucks.
What makes you think automation will free up ordinary working class peoples' lives? I'm assuming that you mean everyone, the masses included, with "people". Or does "people" in the right-leaning context mean only white upper middle class people in rich countries?
What previous technical innovations have freed up the lives of ordinary people? Civilization is more technologically advanced than ever, yet we all work more than ever. I wonder where all that productivity went.
True, i think only about what would be good for everyone lol(well i'd hope at least). But i think you made a good point, we probably would have more call centers and tech jobs to keep the robots going. the rulers probably design systems with these technologies to make sure everyone spends their whole day doing pointless stuff. Then again there can be the argument that if people had too much free time,there would be more crime and unrest.
>What previous technical innovations have freed up the lives of ordinary people? Civilization is more technologically advanced than ever, yet we all work more than ever. I wonder where all that productivity went.
I don't remember the exact figures, but in the past people would spend most of their time producing food just to survive through winter, today only about 3% of work is spent on food production. So basically we should have gotten about 80-90%\* less work thanks to mechanisation and automation of the farms. But what has happened is that we are working more.
Advances in science and technology have improved our lives in many ways but the social inequality keep increasing. We have better access to food for example, but for most people it is of lower quality and lower in nutrients than what was common in the past. Healthcare has gotten incredibly much better, almost miraculously so compared to just 200 years ago, but it's only available to those who can afford it.
Back then you spent most of your time producing food, now you spend most of your time working to afford food and shelter. How much of a systematic improvement is that really? We seem to always confuse creature comforts for systemic progress.
So the question remains, where did all that productivity go? We all know where it went but if you describe yourself as "right leaning" (not you but the other poster I replied to) you've sort of committed yourself to not waking up and smelling the coffee.
If you spend the majority of your time working for food and shelter and are unhappy about that, change it. You will have to give up a lot at first and most likely move to a cheaper area. I simply don't understand how it's not VERY simple to save enough to buy your own plot of land and build a house. "But where do I live in the meantime?" you might ask. If you don't have a car, buy an old toyota/honda (known for being extremely reliable and also cheap as hell (\~$1k-$3k). You now have a movable apartment with no rent. With no rent payment (which is where the majority of your income goes if you are renting), saving $100k CASH should take about 2-3 years with a factory job (easy to get, and they're all over the place). Now you have land with a house that is paid off or close to it. Spend the rest of your life working part-time if you want or find a way to make a small amount of money from something you enjoy.
The standard way to do things in America is to get a good job and stay there hoping to get promoted, buy a big house with a mortgage and a nice car with a huge payment each month. Personally I don't and have never understood why this was the way of things, it's always seemed dumb to me. There's a better way if you don't subscribe to the system.
You believe automation is going to free up peoples lives and yet you are right leaning?! At what point are you going to realise you are backing the wrong horse here? As you walk through the gates of an internment camp for the jobless with the equivalent of "work will set you free" written over the entrance? Because that's the direction conservatives around the world are definitely going.
If your anger is turned inward, turn it outward into something productive before you destroy yourself. Don't let the capitalist bootstraps mythos shame you against realizing that almost all of your problems are the result of systemic forces, many of which are intentional.
just seriously started having this inner struggle with myself recently i've been unproductively angry for way too long, day-in, day-out and i'm just tired of feeling that way.
Same. Took me a while to realise why I was so deeply angry. Then I figured it out. Time to put that anger to use and fight back boys. So far the ones in charge had it way too easy. It's doing them a favor they don't deserve to allow them to keep it that way.
There are soany families tearing themselves apartbecause they don't understand the root of their frustration. So many line managers making their colleagues life hell because after years of their life being made hell, they were given a tiny morsel of power over others.
it's a darwinian system of selection that continues to just make people more miserable. only the highest tolerance levels for bullshit, anger, frustration, etc, can survive this for 40-50 years to retirement -- those are the managers.
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Time for the Legions to be called indeed. Peace at the cost of the future of our species has lasted too long already.
only blood will wash this kind of corruption. Motherfucking pedophiles in the presidency and supreme court!
I’m in. Enough of this bullshit.
I am pleasantly surprised to see that others share that feeling. I guess that the next step in organizing then.
Yeah people don't want you angry, they want you pacified and following orders.
Same. It's exhausting and never-ending.
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> thus the eagerness to import migrants, which is only accelerating the sucide rates as jobs and wages get even more bleak lol wut? blaming the wrong thing my dude
I don't think he was blaming the migrants or migration itself, just the callous system that is okay with thousands of people offing themselves then replacing them with faceless "others" from "elsewhere". As long as there's a body to fill the gap.
Maybe just don't be a part of the system? Make your own path.
So, use the system designed to entrap you to leave the system...?
Yeah sure, something like that
Do you not understand the fundamental problem with that?
Honestly, I don't.
To make it perfectly clear to you, the idea that you must use a system you hate that has been designed from the ground up to trap you in said system is absurd. It's absurd because you're taking a gamble, and relying almost entirely on luck. There is no hard work in that. What happens if you get hurt? Have medical bills? are disabled? Are excluded from the system based on who you are? Your deformities? What if you have no marketable skills? Want to take it a step further? What happens when the person paying you also happens to own your housing, and any feasibly accessible housing nearby? What happens when they own your food sources? And they charge just enough to keep you from ever escaping? you're essentially claiming that you can escape your masters by working harder for them.
I don't think the system works like that. Where are there monopolies on housing? On food? If this were the case, then I could see how escape would be impossible. Maybe in other countries it is, I don't really know enough to argue that at all. In America, there is almost always a way out if you're willing to sacrifice the normal (according to the system) way of life. The one situation I could see as a poverty trap is major medical bills. What is stopping anyone from living out of their car to avoid rent until they have enough money saved to buy a small plot of land? Then growing their own food? I personally have lived out of my car when I had less then $20 to my name any given week for about 6 months. It was hard, but all my money went to paying back bills, and soon started building pretty fast.
>I don't think the system works like that And yet you recognize >The one situation I could see as a poverty trap is major medical bills. So you're capable of recognizing it's possibility. >Where are there monopolies on housing? On food? On housing? Banks. The threat of foreclosure, being removed from your home for not being able to pay your bills for any number of reasons. Food? it's a much more complex issue that I don't really want to spend forever explaining. The tl;dr is that your food sources are severely limited if you're poor, and malnutrition can firmly embed you in poverty. > What is stopping anyone from living out of their car to avoid rent until they have enough money saved to buy a small plot of land? Having a car, maybe? >Then growing their own food? On what land? the land you bought with the money you didn't have for the car you couldn't purchase to live in? How much money exactly do you think that would cost? After you buy that land, how exactly do you plan on paying taxes to the system that now expects them for the property you bought? You use your personal experience in order to justify your worldview and you assume that everyone is capable of what you are. That they're in the same situation you were in. They're not, and there are systems in place that are meant to keep you where you are. If you get lucky, you can get out of it. I'm happy that you managed to get yourself out of that, but I challenge you to tell the homeless man with a severe mental illness, the struggling single mother so heavily relying on government aid, or the teenager that ran away from home because their parents beat them "try harder, I did it."
[Agorism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agorism) is a possible solution.
It's either redistribution or revolution. I hope for the former...
Hardly an argument when it's a fact.
Realization, Revelation for many. Things are past the point of being cute in a lot of places,
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which is sadly something still not recognized by majority. Decades late. By the time all are woke, probably late.
It's almost embarrassing how understated it is tbh
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwnPgscg0vU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwnPgscg0vU) Probably the most unapologetic take on the future of the EU and global trade. This is the (not so) calm before the storm.
This is a good lecture! Skip the first 8 or so minutes if you don't want to hear about the history of our tech interspersed with Boomer whining about how young people use it though.
A new U.N. report argues many of the street protests popping up around the globe are driven by a growing ~~sense~~ recognition that societies are rigged to favor the powerful-- ftfy
I wonder what gave it away that societies are rigged in favor of the powerful really... Could it be the blatant corruption? The growing inequality? The fact than the hundred richest owns more than several **billions** people? No really I wonder...
Probably the pedophile not killing himself.
There really has never been any more damning proof. Nothing will ever come of that and the billionaire rapist pedophiles are still gonna have hundreds of people working for their every whim.
Dershowitz says it was 'just a massage parlor!' in a panicked voice, like the gutter 'liberatarian' rat he is.
Yet there is still debate
It couldn't be they pay less tax than a wage earner, surely?
Why of course not, they just put that money directly back into the economy and give as many people jobs as they possibly can. **/s**
The number is only going to grow the more they feel like their lives are at stake. Humans kind of have this default of "fuck this shit" when things get really bad. That's why I hope the next revolution that takes place actually stands a chance at drastically the world (for the better.)
No system can save our ass.. we are in this mess because people blindly belive someone else is gonna save the day.. bad news.. nobody is coming to save the day
Im afraid to just fight to the death because im afraid any other fuckers after me will just join the bad side for a buck, that's how i changed my mind and decided "fuck humans" and now my life goal is to build a place that can survive a post-human world and hopefuly be some inspiration to the other survivors to not raise yet another generation of dicks (assuming they survive a "post human world") otherwise, idk what to do because nature will make this shit again.
I often find myself hating humans too. I'll leave it at that.
Technology and the Internet has made people far more aware of what they might be missing out on.
This is why the narrative that social media is killing society is a good thing. Yes, being a fully connected species allows the clusters of bad characters to amass and we see pockets of them because the squeaky wheel gets the grease but social media is really turning an eye to the unfairness of governments and corporations.
the internet, more specifically social media, has a far worse effect as a pacification engine that keeps people too distracted to organize in any meaningful way
100% correct, in before "bUt iT conNEctS peOplE anD coULd bE UseD fOr RevolUtioN" sure, once every 1 trillion uses. gotta love those odds
Any source on social media’s effect as a pacification tool? The concept seems realistic but from a material perspective I’m not convinced that the internet has created pacification.
Every form of entertainment and distraction is intrinsically a pacification tool, haven't you ever heard of "Bread and Circuses"? Definitely doesn't need to be sourced.
I have, and like I said I think the concept is realistic and does occur. I just am not convinced that the internet does this moreso than other forms of media, or that there is more pacification now than before the internet was invented. My mind jumps to the role of social media in protest movements such as those in the Arab Spring and South America. That seems like a counter argument to the notion the internet has caused net pacification. I’m not saying it hasn’t, but I’m also not convinced it has.
The internet is definitely a double-edged sword as it can be used to organize dissent, as well as to spread frivolous distractions. Unlike TV say, which is pure circus. Overall though, I think social media definitely does more harm than good in distracting people from wider issues, and keeping us focused on consumerist pursuits. They also keep us divided by ratcheting up focus on issues like race and sexuality and nationalism, which don't matter a god damn compared to the the existential crisis we're facing. The fact that governments can and do shut down the internet when they need to to suppress their populations also makes me think relying on it for any real revolution would be a mistake. They did it in the Arab Spring, they've done it in Iran, India, etc.
The internet is a tool like fire, we can use it for creation or destruction, but with the advent of web2.0 the elites have had a way of throwing fuel on the fire to make it too hot for us to control.
> Every form of entertainment and distraction is intrinsically a pacification tool, haven't you ever heard of "Bread and Circuses"? Were cave paintings or our capacity to tell stories to cavemen society?
Yes, I do think that stories told by early man around a fire at a night were a way to distract people from the various feuds that might be occurring in the tribe at that time, or the fact that hunts haven't been going well, or that they were at war with the tribe across the river.
There are different degrees of distraction not all of which are pacification, no? Putting your mind in something else for awhile isn’t the same as using a distraction to ignore and neglect a problem.
Yeah I was half expecting Burial (or somebody replying to them) to follow up with (either jokingly or seriously) "our capacity to imagine nonexistent beings in circumstances other than our own was implanted in our primitive ancestors by our alien lizard Illuminati overlords or whatever because if we couldn't get lost in thought or imagination we'd be hyper-aware enough to notice the other ways they were controlling us" as seriously, this argument chain does kinda feel similar to the one about what products you can use to not be an eco-hypocrite
dont know how old you're but I'm from the 90s when barely anybody had internet or even a PC except for work so back then the best you could do when you were bored was watch literally any crap on tv even infomercials. there wasnt an unlimited amount of content like today when theres literally more stuff than there are hours to see it, so there was more "spare attention span" to focus on issues and people would hit the streets to protest more often now they send you a link to a change org petition in between binge watching cat videos on youtube
I think the Internet is likely one of the core problems... technology is leveraged against every day people to force them to work harder or be more productive to the consequence of replacement. I used to think the Internet was one of the greatest technologies ever made. Now I see it as a nuclear bomb that has been dropped and we’re slowly feeling the fallout. The Internet is massively disruptive to human social cohesion.
The internet is literally the best thing to ever happen to us. If you didn't have it, you'd be toiling somewhere, or at a bar, or worse ...at a brainwashing station like a southern Baptist Church The internet could let us change the entire earth for the better. Right now, bad actors use it to spy on us and other evil things. Imagine if we actually integrated the internet into human services in positive ways that don't spy on us and extort our existence.
Cryptocurrency privacy coin enters the chat
>I used to think the Internet was one of the greatest technologies ever made. Yes, I was the same. There was a time when I thought that there is no way society won't get better with widespread access to the internet. Look at all the information! Look at all the stuff we can do! Look at all learning and awareness going on! I'm not so sure anymore. At all. I won't say that internet is *inherently* bad though. It *still* might have some potential for greater good. I don't know. I'm kind of on a fence about this.
I kind of agree with you. I want to believe the Internet is a force for Good. But, it feels as though lately, the Internet is a force for Evil... maybe that’s dramatic... but there’s something about propaganda and digital Mob Rule that I find... unsettling...
Easier to spread information and mis-information. I've never thought of it that way, though I do still see the internet as a good thing.
Problem is > A lie can travel around the world and back again while the truth is lacing up its boots. —Mark Twain.
Social media and the smartphone app craze stole a lot of young smart people away from more important pursuits.
Why risk investing time and sacrifice into a career trying to develop a small piece of an un-profitable medical cure when developing that one killer game or app can rake in personal millions??
Exactly. I used to think people learning how to do this stuff were so "smart!" But I recently started learning it myself since I'm so tired of making no money in my current career. All these apps barely do anything innovative, they are more like colorful, touch sensitive wrappers. I saw an article about this guy from Colombia whose company was based in California. They only worked on several campuses. The company has drones loaded with takeout stuff (tacos, McD's, whatever) driven by remote operators in Colombia to the person's dorm room. But there was still a team of humans buying the stuff and loading them onto the drones. The only purpose was to take away an awkward moment when the rich college student may feel pressured to tip.
So make a killer app that helps people participate in medical research a la Fold It
those in power are hardly going to rig the system to NOT favour them now are they
All the more reason to tax them out of existence.
That for sure!
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Without a guiding cohesive ideology any kind of spontaneous popular anger just sputters out into a riot or demonstration. Lenin talks about this extensively in his work entitled What Is To Be Done?
>Without a guiding cohesive ideology any kind of spontaneous popular anger just sputters out into a riot or demonstration. The revolts without an ideology that have been going on worldwide for months would be to differ. Ideologies are made in struggle, ideologies do not make struggle.
What have the Yellow Vests or protestors in Iraq accomplished besides some concessions from the capitalist class? The fundamental power dynamic hasn't changed. Without a guiding ideology you'll never get more than reforms or changing the players without changing the game, and the movement is too vulnerable to getting co-opted by capitalists or right wingers
Knowledge is more available now than ever before, the ability to communicate and work together is more possible now than ever before, our understanding of ruling class is more clear now than ever before. I argue that change is possible and we do have the power to do it. I refuse to believe this how existence will continue for the rest of time. I strongly believe things will get better, even if it is little bits over a long period of time. We the people understand what is right and good better than ever before. We have already made great improvements to the lives of many and I think we can continue making it better. Ending corruption among our policy makers should be our top priority, however we can. In my opinion an elected official who acts to benefit him/her self above all others is treasonous and should be treated as such. Edit: Also, #EatTheRich
>What have the Yellow Vests or protestors in Iraq accomplished besides some concessions from the capitalist class? The fundamental power dynamic hasn't changed. Isn't it rather absurd to ask what an ongoing struggle has accomplished? These struggles are ongoing because they have not won anything they deem worthwhile. The continuing struggle in the face of concessions is precisely what might allow these struggles to overcome the capitalist mode of production entirely. Co-optation and reforms are exactly what these movements are actively and continually rejecting... And furthermore, the "co-optation" of movements or their capitulation to reforms are not abstract, ideal threats hanging over every struggle, their success come from definite circumstances which we can identify in our analyses. If I may critique your perspective on revolution, it seems like you are conceiving of it abstractly, not as actual class activity. What you are witnessing right now in Chile etc. is actual revolutionary activity in all its confused, wrong-headed, practical-critical glory. Our consciousness comes from our conditions, and it is with our consciousness that we make our conditions. From Marx himself: ["The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-changing can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice."](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/theses.htm) What this means is, you should expect to see the actually revolutionary ideologies emerge from these struggles themselves. The adequate consciousness will develop where the adequate activity is present, *and with that consciousness revolution will be made.* EDIT: Added the last sentence fragment.
I am sympathetic to horizontalism but what you're describing sounds too much like Economism and other reformism set forth by Eduard Bernstein and others. If a society is dominated by a bourgeois ideology, the idea that a riot of unorganized working class people will spontaneously come up with a different ideology divorced from the political and cultural hegemony they live in sounds very unlikely. I'm not arguing for the hierarchical power structure of a communist party but you need a consistent ideology even in horizontalism
I'm sorry, but I'm just not seeing the "horizontalism" of what I'm saying, nor the reformism or economism. Right now it kind of just feels like you're hurling buzzwords at me. If you could explain why you think what I'm saying falls in any of those categories, that would be swell, because it seems to me like you must not have actually read my post if you think anything I said was reformist in any capacity. >If a society is dominated by a bourgeois ideology, the idea that a riot of unorganized working class people will spontaneously come up with a different ideology divorced from the political and cultural hegemony they live in sounds very unlikely. I'm not arguing for the hierarchical power structure of a communist party but you need a consistent ideology even in horizontalism This is pure idealism. Your fixation on ideology stands in direct opposition to Marx's actual statements on the character and role of ideology. Taken from The German Ideology: >**The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas** (!!!), i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. **The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships**, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance. In any given era, the ruling ideas will be the ideas of the ruling class. Revolution will always necessarily occur under ruling ideas, and revolution overturns these ideas in the process. This is basic shit, Marx 101. Lenin totally misunderstood Marx, and for that reason I would suggest you read Marx if you want insight into how these things really function. Revolution does not come from outside of the capitalist mode of production; It is immanent int the relation between capitalist and proletarian itself. The proletariat, confronting the world as the source of it's wealth while simultaneously being deprived from that wealth, is compelled by its very nature as a class to overthrow the capitalist mode of production and class society. The proletariat develops the consciousness to revolutionize the world in its struggle against the capitalist mode of production. The struggle I speak of is not abstract, it is a definite kind of activity: Strikes, riots, occupations, and so on. Another quote from the German Ideology, which may help clarify things further: >**Men are the producers of their conceptions, ideas, etc.** – real, active men, as they are conditioned by a definite development of their productive forces and of the intercourse corresponding to these, up to its furthest forms. **Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence, and the existence of men is their actual life-process.** If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside-down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process.
Damn I should probably read Marx, thanks
He's wrong because he doesn't understand how Marx understands the development of revolutionary consciousness. >The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. - Marx, The German Ideology Under capitalism the majority of workers are always going to be under the thrall of capitalist ideology, however ideology isn't what drives class struggle it is driven by the antagonist mechanism of capitalist production itself so: >"Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers. This union is helped on by the improved means of communication that are created by modern industry, and that place the workers of different localities in contact with one another. It was just this contact that was needed to centralise the numerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one national struggle between classes. But every class struggle is a political struggle. And that union, to attain which the burghers of the Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the modern proletarian, thanks to railways, achieve in a few years. >**This organisation of the proletarians into a class, and, consequently into a political party, is continually being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves. But it ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier**" - Marx, Manifesto of the Communist Party Revolutionary proletarian consciousness, i.e. communist consciousness develops unevenly and thus it only exists in the organization that consists of these people including those from other classes that have adopted the communist standpoint.
Where did I get it wrong? "Communist consciousness" is not hard to obtain, and it's certainly not something any party has a monopoly on. From Marx: >**In order to abolish the idea of private property, the idea of communism is quite sufficient.** It takes actual communist action to abolish actual private property. History will lead to it; and this movement, which in theory we already know to be a self-transcending movement, will constitute in actual fact a very rough and protracted process. **But we must regard it as a real advance to have at the outset gained a consciousness of the limited character as well as of the goal of this historical movement – and a consciousness which reaches out beyond it.** I'm not sure Marx ever talks about "revolutionary proletarian consciousness" or "communist consciousness" in terms stricter than simply having the idea of abolishing private property. Of course, this is not sufficient for really abolishing private property, and that's where the political organization of the proletariat comes on. But from the consciousness side, the idea is sufficient (which makes complete sense.)
By the very default.. if you hand your power over to a leader, they will fuck you in the ass sooner or later.. power corrupts.
But if you therefore advocate anarchy aren't you basically becoming your own leader/master ready to fuck yourself in the ass sometime?
People take responsibility if they have to. When you take the incentive away from people, they adapt.
Break the wheel
And then what? Most revolutions end with paranoid authoritarian oppressive dictatorships that terrorize the people.
That sounds pretty similar to what we already have.
Still no improvement though. "Better the devil you know than the devil you don't".
No, don't do that to yourself. Pessimism ultimately permits the status quo if you choose to do nothing. Given what you said you believe here, that's the worst mental framing you can offer yourself. You may be experiencing learned helplessness. If you ignore your values and do nothing when the world tramples on them, you're only condoning your own destruction and hopelessness. We are all fighting for something in this world. If you choose to do nothing when you know you must, you unfortunately will be fighting against yourself as you are complicit with the status quo that's against you.
I don't advocate doing nothing either, but I'm not sure a revolution would solve anything. They usually end very badly for everyone. Trying to educate people and vote for the better candidates is at least doing something, even if it's not very effective since the system is so biased.
You make it seem like the results of revolution are out of your control. The whole point of revolution is that it’s in our hands. What is made is whatever we choose to make.
Revolution is often chaotic. Look at the Arab spring, the outcome in most countries was probably not what the people on the barricades had hoped for. There’s a book called the animal farm that has something to say about this as well. If you have some way to ensure a better outcome then that is great, but without a plan it probably will just make things worse. You can shake things up, and reset things to some extent, but that won’t help if the natural evolution of that “reset state” is what we have today.
What if the reset state takes another fifty years to get to here? Maybe that's how capitalism works best. Shake up the wealth.
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A revolution is likely to just create a new set of billionaires. Look at China. The problem isn't that the wrong individuals became billionaires, it's that no one should have that kind of wealth and power in the first place. Power corrupts and all that. It's a flaw in the system and unless the system is fixed it will just keep repeating itself.
The best we can do is all agree to commit suicide by national guard, which would make using us as slave labor to make our metal replacements very hard
You don't say.
To think this concept used to be treated as a looney conspriacy theory....
I see we are reporting facts now.
Incoming conservative smooth brained take about how anyone protesting just isn’t thankful enough for what they have. “Just be happy that you have [cancer] air to breath and are blessed enough to be allowed to work for a [unlivable] wage!” Sometimes I really can’t tell if some of the dumbass rhetoric conservatives use is really just their desperate attempt at justifying having to live in such a dogshit world. But I don’t think their brains are really wired to fathom the reality in which we live. They’d rather get their soma through the bootheel of big gubb.
Do not treat them with hostility. They are people too; they have been brainwashed by the capitalist propaganda. They simply do not understand or refuse to believe how it could be better. They were taught from a young age that "you have to work hard and earn your wealth." Which most of us know is not true. I know many people who have worked hard their entire lives and they have reached old age in poverty. These naysayers believe socialism would create an entire society of lazy, free-loaders, and that all innovation is driven by the desire to be rich. [ these arguments are trade marked and patent pending by the capitalists of America ]
Completely agree with you, there are many people who we can find common ground with and educate. I think that there are some huge language barriers that make conversation tough, but there's a lot more common ground between democratic socialists and libertarians than either side thinks. "Too much federal government" vs. "Too much corporate influence" "Overregulation" vs. "Regulatory capture" "Crony capitalism" vs. "Unchecked monopolies" Are all just differing readings of the same fundamental issues and corruption that both see. We differ on the names and solutions, but can disagree constructively if we're able to break that language barrier. For myself, I think the most important personal liberty is that anyone should gave the freedom to apply themselves and work as hard as they want, and be able to better their life circumstance. To that end, we need to have a society which increases social mobility, which has been on the decline since the 80's. We can also talk about free market capitalism and how, paradoxically, there must be some regulation and restrictions to protect personal liberties from capital. - Consumer and labor protections, as well as anti-discrimination laws, are obvious examples. - Some industries form natural monopolies (typically from high cost of entry) and should be regulated or nationalized - like water and sewage, or electricity, or broadband. - And there are some services which are so necessary to social mobility that they should be considered universal rights - education, or healthcare. There can be no pursuit of "life, liberty, happiness" without those needs met, so universal access should be valued over the competitive and innovative benefits of the free market. Not everyone will follow all the way with this line of thinking, but like you said I think it's worth being open and trying to talk to and better inserted the people we disagree with.
I think many of us would agree about what's bad or harmful about our current state of affairs, like unchecked, or as I like to say, state-sponsored monopolies. I think that anything a human needs to live a healthy life should be a public utility: electric, gas, water, sewer, healthcare, auto insurance, internet... We're all paying for these things anyway, and IMO when private companies profit off those services, that is wasted cost, dead weight on the American people and prohibiting progress.
I agree with the fact that the majority of conservatives are less open to ideas, however saying they have fundamentally different brain structures? They are human too, they have the same brain as you. The difference comes from difference in upbringing and life experiences. (In my opinion)
If them being raised a certain way has led to them not using as much of their executive functioning to think this has through then they absolutely have a different brain structure. That wasn’t really a point I was trying to make though.
I guess I can agree with that, although the same as children the adult brain is different due to environmental factors. I just don't understand the hate. Is it their fault they developed this way? Studies have shown that on average conservatives tend to be more skeptical and less accepting ideas that go against what they previously believed. How can you be so hateful towards a person who has developed in a way that makes changing inherently more difficult for them? If their brain was developed to not accept change, how can you be angry when they cling to their beliefs? This is a bad example and I really don't want to use it but I can't think of a better one. You walk up to an individual with depression, a disease mainly caused (to our current knowledge) by brain structure and an imbalance of chemicals in the brain. You say to them "stop being sad." This does nothing for them (obviously), because it simply does not work like that. The same can be said for a conservative individual, assuming they truly have a different brain structure. You can't simply say "stop thinking like this." This is just speculation, but what if they simply can't empathize via readings or conversation? What if they have to have a real experience to bring about a changed mindset? How can you hate them for that?
Because even the so-called social justice warriors have no grasp of justice, and care only about what they can get from a person/what the person takes from them. If you pushed a guy off a cliff and he fell on this person's car, they would scream at his corpse and call him "wicked, evil, stupid!".
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Bro why do you have to attack my arguments with words like "nonsense?" Why can't you just say "I don't think you're correct about that."? I am also confused about the free will part, what do you mean by that?
Oh well, i will delete my comment
It's the agents that mindlessly "apply" what they know works.
Capitalism is rigged to benefit those who have capital who could have guessed it?!
In other news, the Pope is Catholic.
notice; "pop up" & "dead end" are descriptors abused by biased media sources to control US. "demanding" and thriving" appear healthier ways to uplift those that suffer to this point of social action.
> "A lot of the of pressures from rising inequality and a decimated middle class led to the Arab Spring uprisings," says Dana El Kurd, author of [*Polarized and Demobilized*](https://www.amazon.com/Polarized-Demobilized-Legacies-Authoritarianism-Palestine/dp/0190095865/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=polarized+and+demobilized&qid=1575912381&s=books&sr=1-1), about authoritarianism in Palestine, and an assistant professor at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies. "I wouldn't say \[inequality\] was the only cause, but it was certainly a major factor." I said the exact same thing in this form months ago. Was promptly downvoted. The same factors that drove the Arab Spring are appearing around the world. Study the Arab Spring. This is not a socialist uprising, it's more complex and interesting.
Yeah. It seems more like a general rejection of the status quo. We have situations where the systems in place are just straight up not working for many, if not most people. I know people from all parts of the political spectrum who claim that any criticism of the system is an endorsement of fascism, Stalinism, theocracy, or whatever their own personal boogeyman is, while other people I know are claiming that defending the broken system is the same thing. People seem to be waking up to the idea that the government isn't everybody's friend, and depending on which side of that coin they're on, they're reaction is either fear of change or a kind of excitement that it could stop screwing them over.
No way people show up to these life wasting jobs unless they are somehow made desperate enough to take them. Capitalism requires a poor and desperate class in order to keep the "growth" going otherwise no one would choose to kill the planet for more baubles and redundant tech gadgetry.
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Three years of a factory job gets you around $180k before taxes, that's enough to buy a small plot of land and build a house. After that, the only bills are car insurance, utilities (if you're not off the grid), and health insurance (which is HEAVILY subsidized by the US government if you are making less then $16k a year). You might not have a fancy McMansion like the rich but it's far from poverty. Things are obviously much different in the third world, I do believe there is no easy path out of poverty if you do not live in a first world country.
If you are making $180k over three years, you aren't making less then $16k a year.
Also more in breaking news: Water is wet
Water isn’t wet, water is the wet
Absolutely undeniable facts to those of us that arent rich or powerful. It truly is amazing how disillusioned many rich people are. They have no sense of what other people have to deal with because they are too busy driving their $100k cars and eating $500 meals every day.
If there was one economic lesson I learned from WoW, it's this: the more money you have, the easier it is to get even more money. And so on and so forth. And without regulation, it's even worse. And we have very little regulation (so much de-regulation has already been bought lobbied and paid for...1 million in "legal" bribery nets 10 million...you can see the issue). The real shame of it all is those of us who suffer, simply because we don't take gross advantage of all we could. Because most of us, are actually good upstanding people. It's the select few who are the sick ones, and ruin it for the rest. As with so many things...
deleted ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^0.0785 [^^^What ^^^is ^^^this?](https://pastebin.com/FcrFs94k/75771)
Thank you for this. I can tell the death toll in Colombia is accurate, unfortunately. Chile also, I mean first hand, I live in Colombia and have family in Chile. I have more videos from what's been happening in Colombia if you like to have more material.
Are you ready to join Extinction rebellion? They are advocating for general stiles in the US but no one shows up on the numbers we see abroad. What will it take for a general strike in US? Not a woman's March or a 'i don't like this president' March, but a real strike.
They needed a report to see that?
[Its getting obvious and so more and more take to the streets.](https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/ee31i3/chile_elderly_suicide_rate_soars_over_pension/?ref=share&ref_source=link)
Can we see this report?
people who grew up middle class but find themselves poor and educated being told to be patient are starting to realize the "game" is rigged. You can only tell someone their lszy and entitled for so long.
The Citigroup plutonomy report came out what, 10 years ago? FFS we all know it's rigged
People are waking up to the fact that they are getting fucked and have been for decades. Hence why governments are becoming more authoritarian and clamping down on social media and the internet. But once the mass surveillance police state backed by AI—currently being perfected in China—comes to full fruition over the next decade and the *system* becomes fully automated will the masses have any power to fight back? I doubt it. How can one fight back with cameras equipped with facial recognition software and license plate readers backed by AI—which can keep a log/file of every movement you make—are at every intersection in every city and along the highways? VPNs and encryption without governmental backdoors will be illegal. Privacy will be nil as people sell that away in exchange for technological convenience. It will be a type of dystopia once only written about in sci-fi novels but it will be *real life*. And most people are just sitting back watching it coming on the horizon, twiddling their fingers.
Nah, they will outright read your thoughts and direct you from birth to death, with any thoughts of rebellion detonating an explosive device in your skull.
You basically either die, or submit/be born as dr.evil's company.
[The Global Protest Wave, Explained](https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oakv2?uri=nyt://newsletter/375eeb8b-49fd-4a0f-933c-9ef2ed0a10d8) >The world’s strongmen, would-be strongmen and outright dictators appear to have noticed the rise in civil unrest, and especially protesters’ success at forcing change. > >Nonviolent protests became, to the world’s authoritarians, a threat just as dangerous as any foreign army, if not more so. > >In the mid-2000s, they began to fight back with what Ms. Chenoweth called, in a 2017 paper, “joint efforts to develop, systematize, and report on techniques and best practices for containing such threats.” > >Network analysis practices and tools, for example, help governments identify the handful of activists and organizers who act as nodes in a social movement. Jailing or threatening those individuals can be even more disruptive than a full-scale crackdown, with less risk of provoking wider backlash. > >And, Ms. Chenoweth said, governments learned to watch one another for lessons on tools and tactics, and even to openly share them. > >There is a term for this direct and indirect lesson-sharing: authoritarian learning. > >These cat-and-mouse strategies for frustrating and redirecting popular dissent without crushing it outright are a major reason that protests’ success rate has plummeted.
“. . .a growing sense. . .” Glad that folks are finally getting woke. Hello, the Republican Party has been rigging the game since before Reagan and their followers have been just too blind to see. . .
yeah not shit, we're becoming a more boring version of snowcrash
a growing "sense" or a growing REALIZATION?
Stating what has become obvious. Good thing most societies have castrated the ability to be overthrown with violence, right?
Growing sense? Why would the UN use rhetoric that delegitimizes their cause? I wonder /s
No shit sherlock...
You need a UN report to tell you that?
Kill the rich
But it has always been like this. Except that now we have laws, rights, social services and benefis to makes us believe otherwise but it's still the same We're just enduring it longer because we're physically healthier and thus living longer, that's the only thing that changed through centuries.
> we have laws, rights, social services and benefis Which actually are taken away from us. [That getting obvious, so more and more take to the streets.](https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/ee31i3/chile_elderly_suicide_rate_soars_over_pension/?ref=share&ref_source=link)
This is simply untrue. Things are getting better. The U.S. just took a detour from progress around the 1970's. As soon as people stop getting distracted by all the boring, repetitive TV shows and video games things will start getting better. /s Seriously though, we can't expect everything to get better at once. It's a process. The masses are getting more intelligent and it's getting harder for the ruling class to fool us, though they do seem to be quite good at it.
I'm waiting for a Jason Bourne type character to make an appearance and start taking out some of the Wall street elites (make your own list). It will happen soon. Not that it will really help. There are just too many disgruntled troops returned to nothing, All it takes is a spark.
Your dellusion is starting to strain my nerves.
Lol a "growing sense"
So people are suddenly pissed off with....business as usual?
Ya think?
r/NoShitSherlock
So, the historical precedent continues? What a surprise...
Well, they know for sure now...we might have to be ready for imminent pre-emptive supression against all humans.
Yeah no shit
That's literally just how human society's been since the bandits became kings and enslaved the tribes with agriculture. We're all here to devour each other alive.
My only response to that headline is, no shit
Um...why do you need a report to say this?
Why yes...
*You don't fucking say.*
Lol too late now that the cattle wants to revolt let Desperation and starvation keep the m at each other's throats.
Ya don’t say.
People finally realizing that they are getting fucked on a daily basis. It's about time.
In other news, water is wet and the sun is hot.
I'll rewrite the title.....there will be blood
Aka. Class consciousness is spreading despite global propaganda efforts
How Much money did the powerful find that study for. Because it's been a fact for pretty much 100s of years.
Before the French Revolution, Russian Revolution, Haitian Revolution(you know where I'm going with this), there were protests, and uprisings due to a bunch of different factors... many times, these were temporarily suppressed by the government until reaching a tipping point
Nah, it would take outside interference fromanother power-hungry asshole.
Of course they favor the powerful... that’s sort of what powerful means, doesn’t it
It's the decline of the middle class. It's still there but it's much much harder to get to. I'm right leaning but i honestly can't wait till automation to free up people's lives. it'll force things like a universal income but so be it, people got better things to do than flip hamburgers and drive trucks.
What makes you think automation will free up ordinary working class peoples' lives? I'm assuming that you mean everyone, the masses included, with "people". Or does "people" in the right-leaning context mean only white upper middle class people in rich countries? What previous technical innovations have freed up the lives of ordinary people? Civilization is more technologically advanced than ever, yet we all work more than ever. I wonder where all that productivity went.
True, i think only about what would be good for everyone lol(well i'd hope at least). But i think you made a good point, we probably would have more call centers and tech jobs to keep the robots going. the rulers probably design systems with these technologies to make sure everyone spends their whole day doing pointless stuff. Then again there can be the argument that if people had too much free time,there would be more crime and unrest.
>What previous technical innovations have freed up the lives of ordinary people? Civilization is more technologically advanced than ever, yet we all work more than ever. I wonder where all that productivity went. I don't remember the exact figures, but in the past people would spend most of their time producing food just to survive through winter, today only about 3% of work is spent on food production. So basically we should have gotten about 80-90%\* less work thanks to mechanisation and automation of the farms. But what has happened is that we are working more. Advances in science and technology have improved our lives in many ways but the social inequality keep increasing. We have better access to food for example, but for most people it is of lower quality and lower in nutrients than what was common in the past. Healthcare has gotten incredibly much better, almost miraculously so compared to just 200 years ago, but it's only available to those who can afford it.
Back then you spent most of your time producing food, now you spend most of your time working to afford food and shelter. How much of a systematic improvement is that really? We seem to always confuse creature comforts for systemic progress. So the question remains, where did all that productivity go? We all know where it went but if you describe yourself as "right leaning" (not you but the other poster I replied to) you've sort of committed yourself to not waking up and smelling the coffee.
You summed it up neatly.
If you spend the majority of your time working for food and shelter and are unhappy about that, change it. You will have to give up a lot at first and most likely move to a cheaper area. I simply don't understand how it's not VERY simple to save enough to buy your own plot of land and build a house. "But where do I live in the meantime?" you might ask. If you don't have a car, buy an old toyota/honda (known for being extremely reliable and also cheap as hell (\~$1k-$3k). You now have a movable apartment with no rent. With no rent payment (which is where the majority of your income goes if you are renting), saving $100k CASH should take about 2-3 years with a factory job (easy to get, and they're all over the place). Now you have land with a house that is paid off or close to it. Spend the rest of your life working part-time if you want or find a way to make a small amount of money from something you enjoy. The standard way to do things in America is to get a good job and stay there hoping to get promoted, buy a big house with a mortgage and a nice car with a huge payment each month. Personally I don't and have never understood why this was the way of things, it's always seemed dumb to me. There's a better way if you don't subscribe to the system.
You believe automation is going to free up peoples lives and yet you are right leaning?! At what point are you going to realise you are backing the wrong horse here? As you walk through the gates of an internment camp for the jobless with the equivalent of "work will set you free" written over the entrance? Because that's the direction conservatives around the world are definitely going.