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 The Revolt Against Technology

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PostSubject: The Revolt Against Technology The Revolt Against Technology EmptySun Mar 23, 2014 9:26 pm

As a continuum of the Singularity thread. It's a dialectic of extreemes, an either or. Though interestingly enough the way the world is going that increasingly seems to be the case. Another framing of it could be that of Technological Optimists vs. Neo-Malthusians.

Here's some of the best content I've found on the topic. Feel free to add anything to do with it, it just recently interested me.


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Havn't read all of it yet. These sections were especially interesting though.

Quote :
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MODERN LEFTISM
 
 
 
  6. Almost everyone will agree that we live in a deeply troubled
  society. One of the most widespread manifestations of the craziness of
  our world is leftism, so a discussion of the psychology of leftism can
  serve as an introduction to the discussion of the problems of modern
  society in general.
 
  7. But what is leftism? During the first half of the 20th century
  leftism could have been practically identified with socialism. Today
  the movement is fragmented and it is not clear who can properly be
  called a leftist. When we speak of leftists in this article we have in
  mind mainly socialists, collectivists, "politically correct" types,
  feminists, gay and disability activists, animal rights activists and
  the like. But not everyone who is associated with one of these
  movements is a leftist. What we are trying to get at in discussing
  leftism is not so much a movement or an ideology as a psychological
  type, or rather a collection of related types. Thus, what we mean by
  "leftism" will emerge more clearly in the course of our discussion of
  leftist psychology (Also, see paragraphs 227-230.)
 
  8. Even so, our conception of leftism will remain a good deal less
  clear than we would wish, but there doesn't seem to be any remedy for
  this. All we are trying to do is indicate in a rough and approximate
  way the two psychological tendencies that we believe are the main
  driving force of modern leftism. We by no means claim to be telling
  the WHOLE truth about leftist psychology. Also, our discussion is
  meant to apply to modern leftism only. We leave open the question of
  the extent to which our discussion could be applied to the leftists of
  the 19th and early 20th century.
 
  9. The two psychological tendencies that underlie modern leftism we
  call "feelings of inferiority" and "oversocialization." Feelings of
  inferiority are characteristic of modern leftism as a whole, while
  oversocialization is characteristic only of a certain segment of
  modern leftism; but this segment is highly influential.
 
 FEELINGS OF INFERIORITY
 
 
 
  10. By "feelings of inferiority" we mean not only inferiority feelings
  in the strictest sense but a whole spectrum of related traits: low
  self-esteem, feelings of powerlessness, depressive tendencies,
  defeatism, guilt, self-hatred, etc. We argue that modern leftists tend
  to have such feelings (possibly more or less repressed) and that these
  feelings are decisive in determining the direction of modern leftism.
 
  11. When someone interprets as derogatory almost anything that is said
  about him (or about groups with whom he identifies) we conclude that
  he has inferiority feelings or low self-esteem. This tendency is
  pronounced among minority rights advocates, whether or not they belong
  to the minority groups whose rights they defend. They are
  hypersensitive about the words used to designate minorities. The terms
  "negro," "oriental," "handicapped" or "chick" for an African, an
  Asian, a disabled person or a woman originally had no derogatory
  connotation. "Broad" and "chick" were merely the feminine equivalents
  of "guy," "dude" or "fellow." The negative connotations have been
  attached to these terms by the activists themselves. Some animal
  rights advocates have gone so far as to reject the word "pet" and
  insist on its replacement by "animal companion." Leftist
  anthropologists go to great lengths to avoid saying anything about
  primitive peoples that could conceivably be interpreted as negative.
  They want to replace the word "primitive" by "nonliterate." They seem
  almost paranoid about anything that might suggest that any primitive
  culture is inferior to our own. (We do not mean to imply that
  primitive cultures ARE inferior to ours. We merely point out the
  hypersensitivity of leftish anthropologists.)
 
  12. Those who are most sensitive about "politically incorrect"
  terminology are not the average black ghetto-dweller, Asian immigrant,
  abused woman or disabled person, but a minority of activists, many of
  whom do not even belong to any "oppressed" group but come from
  privileged strata of society. Political correctness has its stronghold
  among university professors, who have secure employment with
  comfortable salaries, and the majority of whom are heterosexual, white
  males from middle-class families.
 
  13. Many leftists have an intense identification with the problems of
  groups that have an image of being weak (women), defeated (American
  Indians), repellent (homosexuals), or otherwise inferior. The leftists
  themselves feel that these groups are inferior. They would never admit
  it to themselves that they have such feelings, but it is precisely
  because they do see these groups as inferior that they identify with
  their problems. (We do not suggest that women, Indians, etc., ARE
  inferior; we are only making a point about leftist psychology).
 
  14. Feminists are desperately anxious to prove that women are as
  strong as capable as men. Clearly they are nagged by a fear that women
  may NOT be as strong and as capable as men.
 
  15. Leftists tend to hate anything that has an image of being strong,
  good and successful. They hate America, they hate Western
  civilization, they hate white males, they hate rationality. The
  reasons that leftists give for hating the West, etc. clearly do not
  correspond with their real motives. They SAY they hate the West
  because it is warlike, imperialistic, sexist, ethnocentric and so
  forth, but where these same faults appear in socialist countries or in
  primitive cultures, the leftist finds excuses for them, or at best he
  GRUDGINGLY admits that they exist; whereas he ENTHUSIASTICALLY points
  out (and often greatly exaggerates) these faults where they appear in
  Western civilization. Thus it is clear that these faults are not the
  leftist's real motive for hating America and the West. He hates
  America and the West because they are strong and successful.
 
  16. Words like "self-confidence," "self-reliance," "initiative",
  "enterprise," "optimism," etc. play little role in the liberal and
  leftist vocabulary. The leftist is anti-individualistic,
  pro-collectivist. He wants society to solve everyone's needs for them,
  take care of them. He is not the sort of person who has an inner sense
  of confidence in his own ability to solve his own problems and satisfy
  his own needs. The leftist is antagonistic to the concept of
  competition because, deep inside, he feels like a loser.
 
  17. Art forms that appeal to modern leftist intellectuals tend to
  focus on sordidness, defeat and despair, or else they take an
  orgiastic tone, throwing off rational control as if there were no hope
  of accomplishing anything through rational calculation and all that
  was left was to immerse oneself in the sensations of the moment.
 
  18. Modern leftist philosophers tend to dismiss reason, science,
  objective reality and to insist that everything is culturally
  relative. It is true that one can ask serious questions about the
  foundations of scientific knowledge and about how, if at all, the
  concept of objective reality can be defined. But it is obvious that
  modern leftist philosophers are not simply cool-headed logicians
  systematically analyzing the foundations of knowledge. They are deeply
  involved emotionally in their attack on truth and reality. They attack
  these concepts because of their own psychological needs. For one
  thing, their attack is an outlet for hostility, and, to the extent
  that it is successful, it satisfies the drive for power. More
  importantly, the leftist hates science and rationality because they
  classify certain beliefs as true (i.e., successful, superior) and
  other beliefs as false (i.e. failed, inferior). The leftist's feelings
  of inferiority run so deep that he cannot tolerate any classification
  of some things as successful or superior and other things as failed or
  inferior. This also underlies the rejection by many leftists of the
  concept of mental illness and of the utility of IQ tests. Leftists are
  antagonistic to genetic explanations of human abilities or behavior
  because such explanations tend to make some persons appear superior or
  inferior to others. Leftists prefer to give society the credit or
  blame for an individual's ability or lack of it. Thus if a person is
  "inferior" it is not his fault, but society's, because he has not been
  brought up properly.
 
  19. The leftist is not typically the kind of person whose feelings of
  inferiority make him a braggart, an egotist, a bully, a self-promoter,
  a ruthless competitor. This kind of person has not wholly lost faith
  in himself. He has a deficit in his sense of power and self-worth, but
  he can still conceive of himself as having the capacity to be strong,
  and his efforts to make himself strong produce his unpleasant
  behavior. [1] But the leftist is too far gone for that. His feelings
  of inferiority are so ingrained that he cannot conceive of himself as
  individually strong and valuable. Hence the collectivism of the
  leftist. He can feel strong only as a member of a large organization
  or a mass movement with which he identifies himself.
 
  20. Notice the masochistic tendency of leftist tactics. Leftists
  protest by lying down in front of vehicles, they intentionally provoke
  police or racists to abuse them, etc. These tactics may often be
  effective, but many leftists use them not as a means to an end but
  because they PREFER masochistic tactics. Self-hatred is a leftist
  trait.
 
  21. Leftists may claim that their activism is motivated by compassion
  or by moral principle, and moral principle does play a role for the
  leftist of the oversocialized type. But compassion and moral principle
  cannot be the main motives for leftist activism. Hostility is too
  prominent a component of leftist behavior; so is the drive for power.
  Moreover, much leftist behavior is not rationally calculated to be of
  benefit to the people whom the leftists claim to be trying to help.
  For example, if one believes that affirmative action is good for black
  people, does it make sense to demand affirmative action in hostile or
  dogmatic terms? Obviously it would be more productive to take a
  diplomatic and conciliatory approach that would make at least verbal
  and symbolic concessions to white people who think that affirmative
  action discriminates against them. But leftist activists do not take
  such an approach because it would not satisfy their emotional needs.
  Helping black people is not their real goal. Instead, race problems
  serve as an excuse for them to express their own hostility and
  frustrated need for power. In doing so they actually harm black
  people, because the activists' hostile attitude toward the white
  majority tends to intensify race hatred.
 
  22. If our society had no social problems at all, the leftists would
  have to INVENT problems in order to provide themselves with an excuse
  for making a fuss.
 
  23. We emphasize that the foregoing does not pretend to be an accurate
  description of everyone who might be considered a leftist. It is only
  a rough indication of a general tendency of leftism.
 
 OVERSOCIALIZATION
 
 
 
  24. Psychologists use the term "socialization" to designate the
  process by which children are trained to think and act as society
  demands. A person is said to be well socialized if he believes in and
  obeys the moral code of his society and fits in well as a functioning
  part of that society. It may seem senseless to say that many leftists
  are over-socialized, since the leftist is perceived as a rebel.
  Nevertheless, the position can be defended. Many leftists are not such
  rebels as they seem.
 
  25. The moral code of our society is so demanding that no one can
  think, feel and act in a completely moral way. For example, we are not
  supposed to hate anyone, yet almost everyone hates somebody at some
  time or other, whether he admits it to himself or not. Some people are
  so highly socialized that the attempt to think, feel and act morally
  imposes a severe burden on them. In order to avoid feelings of guilt,
  they continually have to deceive themselves about their own motives
  and find moral explanations for feelings and actions that in reality
  have a non-moral origin. We use the term "oversocialized" to describe
  such people. [2]
 
  26. Oversocialization can lead to low self-esteem, a sense of
  powerlessness, defeatism, guilt, etc. One of the most important means
  by which our society socializes children is by making them feel
  ashamed of behavior or speech that is contrary to society's
  expectations. If this is overdone, or if a particular child is
  especially susceptible to such feelings, he ends by feeling ashamed of
  HIMSELF. Moreover the thought and the behavior of the oversocialized
  person are more restricted by society's expectations than are those of
  the lightly socialized person. The majority of people engage in a
  significant amount of naughty behavior. They lie, they commit petty
  thefts, they break traffic laws, they goof off at work, they hate
  someone, they say spiteful things or they use some underhanded trick
  to get ahead of the other guy. The oversocialized person cannot do
  these things, or if he does do them he generates in himself a sense of
  shame and self-hatred. The oversocialized person cannot even
  experience, without guilt, thoughts or feelings that are contrary to
  the accepted morality; he cannot think "unclean" thoughts. And
  socialization is not just a matter of morality; we are socialized to
  confirm to many norms of behavior that do not fall under the heading
  of morality. Thus the oversocialized person is kept on a psychological
  leash and spends his life running on rails that society has laid down
  for him. In many oversocialized people this results in a sense of
  constraint and powerlessness that can be a severe hardship. We suggest
  that oversocialization is among the more serious cruelties that human
  beings inflict on one another.
 
  27. We argue that a very important and influential segment of the
  modern left is oversocialized and that their oversocialization is of
  great importance in determining the direction of modern leftism.
  Leftists of the oversocialized type tend to be intellectuals or
  members of the upper-middle class. Notice that university
  intellectuals (3) constitute the most highly socialized segment of our
  society and also the most left-wing segment.
 
  28. The leftist of the oversocialized type tries to get off his
  psychological leash and assert his autonomy by rebelling. But usually
  he is not strong enough to rebel against the most basic values of
  society. Generally speaking, the goals of today's leftists are NOT in
  conflict with the accepted morality. On the contrary, the left takes
  an accepted moral principle, adopts it as its own, and then accuses
  mainstream society of violating that principle. Examples: racial
  equality, equality of the sexes, helping poor people, peace as opposed
  to war, nonviolence generally, freedom of expression, kindness to
  animals. More fundamentally, the duty of the individual to serve
  society and the duty of society to take care of the individual. All
  these have been deeply rooted values of our society (or at least of
  its middle and upper classes (4) for a long time. These values are
  explicitly or implicitly expressed or presupposed in most of the
  material presented to us by the mainstream communications media and
  the educational system. Leftists, especially those of the
  oversocialized type, usually do not rebel against these principles but
  justify their hostility to society by claiming (with some degree of
  truth) that society is not living up to these principles.
 
  29. Here is an illustration of the way in which the oversocialized
  leftist shows his real attachment to the conventional attitudes of our
  society while pretending to be in rebellion against it. Many leftists
  push for affirmative action, for moving black people into
  high-prestige jobs, for improved education in black schools and more
  money for such schools; the way of life of the black "underclass" they
  regard as a social disgrace. They want to integrate the black man into
  the system, make him a business executive, a lawyer, a scientist just
  like upper-middle-class white people. The leftists will reply that the
  last thing they want is to make the black man into a copy of the white
  man; instead, they want to preserve African American culture. But in
  what does this preservation of African American culture consist? It
  can hardly consist in anything more than eating black-style food,
  listening to black-style music, wearing black-style clothing and going
  to a black-style church or mosque. In other words, it can express
  itself only in superficial matters. In all ESSENTIAL respects more
  leftists of the oversocialized type want to make the black man conform
  to white, middle-class ideals. They want to make him study technical
  subjects, become an executive or a scientist, spend his life climbing
  the status ladder to prove that black people are as good as white.
  They want to make black fathers "responsible." they want black gangs
  to become nonviolent, etc. But these are exactly the values of the
  industrial-technological system. The system couldn't care less what
  kind of music a man listens to, what kind of clothes he wears or what
  religion he believes in as long as he studies in school, holds a
  respectable job, climbs the status ladder, is a "responsible" parent,
  is nonviolent and so forth. In effect, however much he may deny it,
  the oversocialized leftist wants to integrate the black man into the
  system and make him adopt its values.
 
  30. We certainly do not claim that leftists, even of the
  oversocialized type, NEVER rebel against the fundamental values of our
  society. Clearly they sometimes do. Some oversocialized leftists have
  gone so far as to rebel against one of modern society's most important
  principles by engaging in physical violence. By their own account,
  violence is for them a form of "liberation." In other words, by
  committing violence they break through the psychological restraints
  that have been trained into them. Because they are oversocialized
  these restraints have been more confining for them than for others;
  hence their need to break free of them. But they usually justify their
  rebellion in terms of mainstream values. If they engage in violence
  they claim to be fighting against racism or the like.
 
  31. We realize that many objections could be raised to the foregoing
  thumb-nail sketch of leftist psychology. The real situation is
  complex, and anything like a complete description of it would take
  several volumes even if the necessary data were available. We claim
  only to have indicated very roughly the two most important tendencies
  in the psychology of modern leftism.
 
  32. The problems of the leftist are indicative of the problems of our
  society as a whole. Low self-esteem, depressive tendencies and
  defeatism are not restricted to the left. Though they are especially
  noticeable in the left, they are widespread in our society. And
  today's society tries to socialize us to a greater extent than any
  previous society. We are even told by experts how to eat, how to
  exercise, how to make love, how to raise our kids and so forth.
 
 THE POWER PROCESS
 
 
 
  33. Human beings have a need (probably based in biology) for something
  that we will call the "power process." This is closely related to the
  need for power (which is widely recognized) but is not quite the same
  thing. The power process has four elements. The three most clear-cut
  of these we call goal, effort and attainment of goal. (Everyone needs
  to have goals whose attainment requires effort, and needs to succeed
  in attaining at least some of his goals.) The fourth element is more
  difficult to define and may not be necessary for everyone. We call it
  autonomy and will discuss it later (paragraphs 42-44).
 
  34. Consider the hypothetical case of a man who can have anything he
  wants just by wishing for it. Such a man has power, but he will
  develop serious psychological problems. At first he will have a lot of
  fun, but by and by he will become acutely bored and demoralized.
  Eventually he may become clinically depressed. History shows that
  leisured aristocracies tend to become decadent. This is not true of
  fighting aristocracies that have to struggle to maintain their power.
  But leisured, secure aristocracies that have no need to exert
  themselves usually become bored, hedonistic and demoralized, even
  though they have power. This shows that power is not enough. One must
  have goals toward which to exercise one's power.
 
  35. Everyone has goals; if nothing else, to obtain the physical
  necessities of life: food, water and whatever clothing and shelter are
  made necessary by the climate. But the leisured aristocrat obtains
  these things without effort. Hence his boredom and demoralization.
 
  36. Nonattainment of important goals results in death if the goals are
  physical necessities, and in frustration if nonattainment of the goals
  is compatible with survival. Consistent failure to attain goals
  throughout life results in defeatism, low self-esteem or depression.
 
  37. Thus, in order to avoid serious psychological problems, a human
  being needs goals whose attainment requires effort, and he must have a
  reasonable rate of success in attaining his goals.
 

Quote :
THE FUTURE
 
 
 
  171. But suppose now that industrial society does survive the next
  several decade and that the bugs do eventually get worked out of the
  system, so that it functions smoothly. What kind of system will it be?
  We will consider several possibilities.
 
  172. First let us postulate that the computer scientists succeed in
  developing intelligent machines that can do all things better that
  human beings can do them. In that case presumably all work will be
  done by vast, highly organized systems of machines and no human effort
  will be necessary. Either of two cases might occur. The machines might
  be permitted to make all of their own decisions without human
  oversight, or else human control over the machines might be retained.
 
  173. If the machines are permitted to make all their own decisions, we
  can't make any conjectures as to the results, because it is impossible
  to guess how such machines might behave. We only point out that the
  fate of the human race would be at the mercy of the machines. It might
  be argued that the human race would never be foolish enough to hand
  over all the power to the machines. But we are suggesting neither that
  the human race would voluntarily turn power over to the machines nor
  that the machines would willfully seize power. What we do suggest is
  that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a
  position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no
  practical choice but to accept all of the machines decisions. As
  society and the problems that face it become more and more complex and
  machines become more and more intelligent, people will let machines
  make more of their decision for them, simply because machine-made
  decisions will bring better result than man-made ones. Eventually a
  stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the
  system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable
  of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in
  effective control. People won't be able to just turn the machines off,
  because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would
  amount to suicide.
 
  174. On the other hand it is possible that human control over the
  machines may be retained. In that case the average man may have
  control over certain private machines of his own, such as his car of
  his personal computer, but control over large systems of machines will
  be in the hands of a tiny elite -- just as it is today, but with two
  difference. Due to improved techniques the elite will have greater
  control over the masses; and because human work will no longer be
  necessary the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the
  system. If the elite is ruthless the may simply decide to exterminate
  the mass of humanity. If they are humane they may use propaganda or
  other psychological or biological techniques to reduce the birth rate
  until the mass of humanity becomes extinct, leaving the world to the
  elite. Or, if the elite consist of soft-hearted liberals, they may
  decide to play the role of good shepherds to the rest of the human
  race. They will see to it that everyone's physical needs are
  satisfied, that all children are raised under psychologically hygienic
  conditions, that everyone has a wholesome hobby to keep him busy, and
  that anyone who may become dissatisfied undergoes "treatment" to cure
  his "problem." Of course, life will be so purposeless that people will
  have to be biologically or psychologically engineered either to remove
  their need for the power process or to make them "sublimate" their
  drive for power into some harmless hobby. These engineered human
  beings may be happy in such a society, but they most certainly will
  not be free. They will have been reduced to the status of domestic
  animals.
 
  175. But suppose now that the computer scientists do not succeed in
  developing artificial intelligence, so that human work remains
  necessary. Even so, machines will take care of more and more of the
  simpler tasks so that there will be an increasing surplus of human
  workers at the lower levels of ability. (We see this happening
  already. There are many people who find it difficult or impossible to
  get work, because for intellectual or psychological reasons they
  cannot acquire the level of training necessary to make themselves
  useful in the present system.) On those who are employed,
  ever-increasing demands will be placed; They will need more and m ore
  training, more and more ability, and will have to be ever more
  reliable, conforming and docile, because they will be more and more
  like cells of a giant organism. Their tasks will be increasingly
  specialized so that their work will be, in a sense, out of touch with
  the real world, being concentrated on one tiny slice of reality. The
  system will have to use any means that I can, whether psychological or
  biological, to engineer people to be docile, to have the abilities
  that the system requires and to "sublimate" their drive for power into
  some specialized task. But the statement that the people of such a
  society will have to be docile may require qualification. The society
  may find competitiveness useful, provided that ways are found of
  directing competitiveness into channels that serve that needs of the
  system. We can imagine into channels that serve the needs of the
  system. We can imagine a future society in which there is endless
  competition for positions of prestige an power. But no more than a
  very few people will ever reach the top, where the only real power is
  (see end of paragraph 163). Very repellent is a society in which a
  person can satisfy his needs for power only by pushing large numbers
  of other people out of the way and depriving them of THEIR opportunity
  for power.
 
  176. Once can envision scenarios that incorporate aspects of more than
  one of the possibilities that we have just discussed. For instance, it
  may be that machines will take over most of the work that is of real,
  practical importance, but that human beings will be kept busy by being
  given relatively unimportant work. It has been suggested, for example,
  that a great development of the service of industries might provide
  work for human beings. Thus people will would spend their time
  shinning each others shoes, driving each other around inn taxicab,
  making handicrafts for one another, waiting on each other's tables,
  etc. This seems to us a thoroughly contemptible way for the human race
  to end up, and we doubt that many people would find fulfilling lives
  in such pointless busy-work. They would seek other, dangerous outlets
  (drugs, , crime, "cults," hate groups) unless they were biological or
  psychologically engineered to adapt them to such a way of life.
 
  177. Needless to day, the scenarios outlined above do not exhaust all
  the possibilities. They only indicate the kinds of outcomes that seem
  to us mots likely. But wee can envision no plausible scenarios that
  are any more palatable that the ones we've just described. It is
  overwhelmingly probable that if the industrial-technological system
  survives the next 40 to 100 years, it will by that time have developed
  certain general characteristics: Individuals (at least those of the
  "bourgeois" type, who are integrated into the system and make it run,
  and who therefore have all the power) will be more dependent than ever
  on large organizations; they will be more "socialized" that ever and
  their physical and mental qualities to a significant extent (possibly
  to a very great extent ) will be those that are engineered into them
  rather than being the results of chance (or of God's will, or
  whatever); and whatever may be left of wild nature will be reduced to
  remnants preserved for scientific study and kept under the supervision
  and management of scientists (hence it will no longer be truly wild).
  In the long run (say a few centuries from now) it is it is likely that
  neither the human race nor any other important organisms will exist as
  we know them today, because once you start modifying organisms through
  genetic engineering there is no reason to stop at any particular
  point, so that the modifications will probably continue until man and
  other organisms have been utterly transformed.
 
  178. Whatever else may be the case, it is certain that technology is
  creating for human begins a new physical and social environment
  radically different from the spectrum of environments to which natural
  selection has adapted the human race physically and psychological. If
  man is not adjust to this new environment by being artificially
  re-engineered, then he will be adapted to it through a long an painful
  process of natural selection. The former is far more likely that the
  latter.
 
  179. It would be better to dump the whole stinking system and take the
  consequences.





























Scandinavia, Canada & Russia as the most probable locations of future human development.
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PostSubject: Re: The Revolt Against Technology The Revolt Against Technology EmptySun Mar 23, 2014 10:49 pm
























Fresh water will be the big one. I personally know of three families who have/are moving back to Scandinavia from third-world countries. All bought farms, obvious sense of future unrest in various locations. Not living in this vacuum makes it easier to recognize.
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PostSubject: Re: The Revolt Against Technology The Revolt Against Technology EmptyMon Mar 24, 2014 5:32 am

Pentti Linkola

ECOFASCISM:

Quote :
Kaarlo Pentti Linkola (born 7 December 1932) is a radical Finnish deep ecologist,[1] polemicist and fisherman. He has written widely about his ideas and is a prominent thinker in Finland,[2][3] but, at the same time, is also an extremely controversial figure. He lives a simple and austere life. Linkola was a year-round fisherman from 1959 to 1995. He has fished on Keitele, Päijänne, Gulf of Finland and from 1978 he fishes on Vanajavesi. Nowadays Pentti Linkola receives an old-age government pension and fishes only during the winter.

Linkola blames humans for the continuous degradation of the environment. He promotes rapid population decline[4] in order to combat the problems commonly attributed to overpopulation. He is also strongly in favour of deindustrialization and opposes democracy, which he calls the "Religion of Death,"[5] believing it to be an agent of wasteful capitalism and consumerism. He considers the proponents of economic growth to be ignorant of the destructive effects which free market policies have had over the past two centuries.



In the essay collection Unelmat paremmasta maailmasta (Dreams about a Better World) (1971) he explained for the first time his ecological attitudes. He has continued to speak against the modern Western way of life and the overconsumption of natural resources. His latest books Johdatus 1990-luvun ajatteluun (Introduction to the Thinking of the 1990s) (1989) and Voisiko elämä voittaa? (Could Life Prevail?) (2004), translated in 2009 into English as Can Life Prevail? are collections of his writings that have been published in various Finnish newspapers and magazines.

As a philosopher Linkola can be described as a biocentric empiricist. He demands that man return to a smaller ecological niche and abandon modern technology and what he describes as the almost-religious pursuit of economic growth. Linkola considers human population growth the biggest threat to life on Earth.

Linkola's first political publication was the pamphlet Isänmaan ja ihmisen puolesta (For Fatherland and Man) (1960), in which he spoke strongly for pacifism and encouraged conscientious objection. In contrast, in 2004 he derided those he considers to be "sanctimonious in their opposition to violence," when the earth is suffering from severe human overpopulation.[6]

He advocates eugenics, genocide, and abortion as possible means to combat overpopulation. He describes the Stalinist and Nazi massacres, as "massive thinning operations," but which have "not overturned our ethical norms".[7] He has suggested that big cities should be attacked by "some trans-national body like the UN", with nuclear weapons or with "bacteriological and chemical attacks".[8] Linkola has described humans as a cancer of the earth, and he desires that the human population "be reduced to about ten percent of what it is now."[9]

Linkola often expresses his admiration for forests and nature in general. He is known for his deep love of birds. He considers education to be the "most precious aspect of society," and advocates for universities to be maintained regardless of the cost.[10] In a 2004 interview given at the international bookfair at Turku[11] Linkola describes the origins of his bitterness towards humankind. In his essay, Women as Protectors of Life,[12] he opines that the "soul of a man, beneath its rough surface, is paradoxically more sensitive, fragile and weak than that of a woman."

In May 1994 Linkola was featured on the front page of The Wall Street Journal Europe.[13] He said he was for a radical reduction in the world population and was quoted as saying about a future world war, "If there were a button I could press, I would sacrifice myself without hesitating, if it meant millions of people would die."[14]

In 1995 Linkola founded the Finnish Nature Heritage Foundation (Luonnonperintösäätiö). It concentrates on preserving the few ancient forests still left in southern Finland and other nature conservation. The forests are donated to the foundation.

Quote :
"What to do, when a ship carrying a hundred passengers suddenly capsizes and there is only one lifeboat? When the lifeboat is full, those who hate life will try to load it with more people and sink the lot. Those who love and respect life will take the ship's axe and sever the extra hands that cling to the sides."

"The composition of the Greens seems to be the same as that of the population in general — mainly pieces of drifting wood, people who never think."

"A minority can never have any other effective means to influence the course of matters but through the use of violence."

"Any dictatorship would be better than modern democracy. There cannot be so incompetent dictator, that he would show more stupidity than a majority of the people. Best dictatorship would be one where lots of heads would roll and government would prevent any economical growth."

"The most central and irrational faith among people is the faith in technology and economical growth. Its priests believe until their death that material prosperity bring enjoyment and happiness - even though all the proofs in history have shown that only lack and attempt cause a life worth living, that the material prosperity doesn't bring anything else than despair. These priests believe in technology still when they choke in their gas masks."

"That there are billions of people over 60kg weight on this planet is recklessness."

"Alternative movements and groups are a welcome relief and a present for the society of economic growth."

"We will have to...learn from the history of revolutionary movements — the national socialists, the Finnish Stalinists, from the many stages of the Russian revolution, from the methods of the Red Brigades — and forget our narcissistic selves."

"Everything we have developed over the last 100 years should be destroyed."

"A fundamental, devastating error is to set up a political system based on desire. Society and life are been organized on basis of what an individual wants, not on what is good for him or her...Just as only one out of 100,000 has the talent to be an engineer or an acrobat, only a few are those truly capable of managing the matters of a nation or mankind as a whole...In this time and this part of the World we are headlessly hanging on democracy and parliamentary system, even though these are the most mindless and desperate experiments of the mankind...In democratic coutries the destruction of nature and sum of ecological disasters has accumulated most...Our only hope lies in strong central government and uncompromizing control of the individual citizen."

"If the present amount of Earths population is preserved and is reduced only by the means of birth control, then:

Birthgiving must be licenced. To enhance population quality, genetically or socially unfit homes will be denied offspring, so that several birth licences can be allowed to families of quality.
Energy production must be drastically reduced. Electricity is allowed only for the most necessary lighting and communications.
Food: Hunting must be made more efficient. Human diet will include rats and invertebrate animals. Agriculture moves to small un-mechanized units. All human manure is used as fertilizer.
Traffic is mostly done with bicycles and rowing boats. Private cars are confiscated. Long-distance travel is done with sparse mass transport. Trees will be planted on most roads.
Foreign affairs: All mass immigration and most of import-export trade must stop. Cross-border travel is allowed only for small numbers of diplomats and correspondents.
Business will mostly end. Manufacture is allowed only for well argumented needs. All major manufacturing capacity is state owned. Products will be durable and last for generations.
Science and schooling: Education will concentrate on practical skills. All competition is rooted out. Technological research is reduced to extreme minimum. But every child will learn how to clean a fish in a way that only the big shiny bones are left over."


I'm buying his [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].

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PostSubject: Re: The Revolt Against Technology The Revolt Against Technology EmptyTue Mar 25, 2014 12:58 am

That man John Ebert has an accurate grasp of Kaczynki's anarco-primitivist philosophy along with Heidegger. Kaczynski took the liberal psychology and connected it with the cultural technological environment of how one develops an aberrant nihilistic state of mind. I agree with him on many of his positions, however, in the end he ultimately was more involved into the rosy idealism of revolution.

I believe if his brother hadn't turned informant and exposed him to the FBI leading to his capture, he may have accomplished important ideological influence of awareness to modern decadence.


Here are some books worth reading on the subject you should check out if you haven't already:



Neil Postman in Technopoly:

Quote :
In a Technopoly, precise knowledge is preferred to truthful knowledge but that in any case Technopoly, wished to solve, once and for all, the dilemma of subjectivity. In a culture in which the machine, with its impersonal and endlessly repeatable operations, is controlling metaphor and considered to be the instrument of progress, subjectivity becomes profoundly unacceptable. Diversity, complexity and ambiguity of human judgment are enemies of technique. They mock statistics and polls and standardized tests and bureaucracies. In Technopoly, it is not enough for social research to rediscover ancient truths or to comment on and criticize the moral behavior of people. In Technopoly, it is an insult to call someone a "moralizer". Nor is it sufficient for social research to put forward metaphors, images and ideas that can help people live with some measure of understanding and dignity. Such a program lacks the aura of certain knowledge that only science can provide. It becomes necessary, then, to transform psychology, sociology, and anthropology into "sciences", in which humanity itself becomes an object, much like plants, planets or ice cubes.


David Noble in The Religion of Technology:

Quote :
The body reflected mankind's "epistemological fallenness" rather than its divinity, and stands "opposed to reason." Impediments to pure thought, the body's senses and passions deceive and disturb the intellect. "The body is always a hindrance to the mind in its thinking" Descartes argued, which is "contradicted by the many preconceptions of our senses". In the wake of Copernicus and Galileo, Descartes was keenly aware that mere sense-perception could not provide a true scientific understanding of the universe and might indeed retard such understanding. Likewise, the passions ignited by the Reformation had distorted discourse beyond reason and generated confusion and doubt about reliable sources or religious authority and conviction.

Quote :
There is a powerful cultural affinity between technology and masculinity in Western society. For, if the religion of technology elevated the arts with spiritual significance and a distinctly transcendent meaning, the religion of technology provided a compelling and enduring mythological foundation for the cultural representation of technology as a uniquely masculine endeavor, evocative of masculinity and exclusively male. Insofar as the technological project was now aimed at the recovery of Adam's prelapsarian perfection, the image-likeness of man to God, it looked back to a primal masculine universe and forward to the renewal of the paradise in a masculine millennium.

Quote :
The biblical Judaic Adam signified the ideal of restored perfection, and that ideal was male. So too were the apostles of the religion of technology, the successive generations of monks, friars, explorers, magi, virtuosi, Masons and engineers. And so too are their ideological descendents who have designed the hallmark technologies of our own age and given the name "Adam" to the first manned spaceflight, the seed programs of Artificial Life and the composite human genome. Of course, women might participate, but only marginally at best, because, by definition, they never aspire to, much less hope to achieve, the ultimate transcendent goal.

Quote :
The ideological masculinization of the useful arts and the ideological elevation of the useful arts were two sides of the same coin, and both were the product of the belated association of the most humble and worldly of human activities with the other-worldly spirit of transcendence. For it was only when the arts came to be invested with spiritual significance that they became worthy of the attention of and identification with elite males, and the specific Adamic content of that spiritualization reinforced that identification.


Heisman's God hypothesis is based on the idea that technological progress intertwined with economic implosion, stimulates a gradual approach to the technological singularity. A long series of alterations combined with refinements means that the materialization of God is the only possible conclusion. This is why science and physics are becoming preoccupied with concepts like "dark matter".

Rene Guenon in Crisis of the Modern World:

Quote :
It is really an extraordinary epoch in which so many men can be made to believe
that a people is being given happiness by being reduced to subjection,
by being robbed of all that is most precious to it, that is to say
of its own civilization, by being forced to adopt manners and institutions
that were made for a different race, and by being constrained
to the most distasteful kinds of work, in order to make it acquire
things for which it has not the slightest use. For that is what is taking
place: the modern West cannot tolerate that men should prefer to
work less and be content to live on little; as it is only quantity that
counts, and as everything that escapes the senses is held to be nonexistent,
it is taken for granted that anyone who is not in a state of
agitation and who does not produce much in a material way must
be 'lazy'.


Quote :
let us consider things for a moment from the standpoint
of those whose ideal is material 'welfare', and who therefore
rejoice at all the improvements to life furnished by modern
'progress'; are they quite sure they are not being duped? Is it true
that, because they dispose of swifter means of communication and
other things of the kind, and because of their more agitated and
complicated manner of life, men are happier today than they were
formerly? The very opposite seems to us to be true: disequilibrium
cannot be a condition of real happiness. Moreover, the more needs
a man has, the greater the likelihood that he will lack something,
and thereby be unhappy; modern civilization aims at creating more
and more artificial needs, and as we have already said, it will always
create more needs than it can satisfy, for once one has started on
this path, it is very hard to stop, and, indeed, there is no reason for
stopping at any particular point. It was no hardship for men to do
without things that did not exist and of which they had never
dreamed; now, on the contrary, they are bound to suffer if they lack
these things, since they have become accustomed to consider them
as necessities, with the result that they have, in fact, really become
necessary to them. Therefore men struggle in every possible way to
obtain the means of procuring material satisfactions, the only ones
that they are capable of appreciating: they are interested only in
'making money', because it is money that enables them to obtain
these things, the more of which they have, the more they wish to
have, as they go on discovering fresh needs; and this passion becomes
for them the sole end in life. Hence the savage competition certain
evolutionists have raised to the dignity of a scientific law under the
name of 'the struggle for existence', whose logical consequence is
that only the strongest, in the narrowly material sense of the word,
have a right to exist. Hence also the envy and even hatred felt
toward those who possess wealth by those who do not; how could
men to whom egalitarian theories have been preached fail to revolt
when they see all around them inequality in the most material order
of things, the order to which they are bound to be the most sensitive?


Even physics takes on a divine ambition to account for--probably Einsteinian properties of gravity--undetected and unseen energies, similar to the singularity in black hole theory, which is one of the most fantastical.

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PostSubject: Re: The Revolt Against Technology The Revolt Against Technology EmptyTue Mar 25, 2014 1:47 am

I consider technology/techniques as a compensation for man's physical/mental limitations.
Because entropy is increasing man and his consciousness is falling behind, unable to make sense of the increasing randomness.
The mind interprets this as darkness.

Technology is supposed to increase man's performance in dealing with entropy.

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PostSubject: Re: The Revolt Against Technology The Revolt Against Technology EmptyTue Mar 25, 2014 8:41 pm

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PostSubject: Re: The Revolt Against Technology The Revolt Against Technology EmptyThu Apr 03, 2014 3:32 pm

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PostSubject: Flimflam(s) The Revolt Against Technology EmptyWed Aug 13, 2014 7:30 pm

Solar Roadways raised 2.2 million dollars in a crowd-funding campaign.




People believe in technology nowadays. You can con much more people with promising them a technological miracle than with supernatural phenomena. If it's not feasible today then it only takes a little more time for technology to advance. A little effort needs to be put into research, a little more money is going to make all wishes come true eventually. Progressivism and how to use that faith to make people believe anything.

Just as with supernatural phenomena, everything is possible no matter how improbable. To this is added the layer of the future which is used to obscure - 'If not today then tomorrow it will be so.'
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PostSubject: Re: The Revolt Against Technology The Revolt Against Technology EmptyThu Aug 14, 2014 12:05 am

Anfang wrote:
Solar Roadways raised 2.2 million dollars in a crowd-funding campaign.




People believe in technology nowadays. You can con much more people with promising them a technological miracle than with supernatural phenomena. If it's not feasible today then it only takes a little more time for technology to advance. A little effort needs to be put into research, a little more money is going to make all wishes come true eventually. Progressivism and how to use that faith to make people believe anything.

Just as with supernatural phenomena, everything is possible no matter how improbable. To this is added the layer of the future which is used to obscure - 'If not today then tomorrow it will be so.'

Salient ideas, man. You're right: secular humanism/materialism is a modern "enlightenment" faith.
The most recent I encountered was a bunch of egalitarians wallowing in how a few square miles of solar panels in North Africa would be suitable for providing the world with free energy.
In effect, it would then give deserving and meritocratic poor Africans who would otherwise "migrate" (no, not immigrate, invade and replace preexisting cultures) to our Nations work.
In other words, let's not only give them free shit there instead of free shit here, but also empower them with control over alternative energy sources.
Their corollary: "Peace, development and dignity." I can't make this up.
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PostSubject: Re: The Revolt Against Technology The Revolt Against Technology EmptyThu Aug 14, 2014 5:25 am

Frankenstein killed doctor Frankenstein.

It's not science and technology that're the problem, it's scientism and technocracy, that're the problem.
Furthermore, it's not scientism and technocracy that're the problem, it's idealism, that's the problem.
What is idealism?
Idealism is the idea that ideas ought to comfort us, rather than aid us in our quest to know and understand reality.

Let's extrapolate idealism, for a moment, let's take idealism as far as we can.
If comfort is our prime directive, as opposed to truth, what would be the supreme idea?
It would go something like this - I am God, or God created me in its image, and has compassion for me, and when I die, it's going to take me to a place devoid of pain, suffering, death or decay.
Now, people have different conceptions of heaven, the Vikings had theirs, which was like the Christian hell, and the Christians had theirs, which was like the Viking hell, but they all involve immortality, because we, many of us, don't want to die, especially people who don't understand how interwoven death is with life, how death defines life.
Now, we have monotheism in the west and pantheism in the east.

Now, for whatever reasons, we in the west have gradually dispensed with such lies, we now no longer take the idea of God as seriously.
Has this made us less idealistic?
A little, but not much.
We've merely transferred the hopes and dreams we once had in God, to ourselves, and thus, humanisms were born... but even in monotheism and pantheism, there's elements of humanism, in that we, among Gods creatures, were created in Gods image, or that we, among God, are more conscious of the fact that we, as in everyone and even everything in some schools of eastern thought, are one, divine, and that egoism is a sort of hallucination.

So we stopped believing in such fictions, which is not to say they, particularly the latter, don't contain crenels of truth, like any good story.
We said to ourselves, if God doesn't exist, it's necessary to invent him, and that's what we've been doing for the previous 3-5 centuries.
It's not just the left, the right have their delusions as well, elitism and elites can be just as delusional as egalitarians and common people, look at all the preposterous things Mussolini and Hitler believed about Atlantis, and race, and vril, fantastic things, about blonde haired, blue eyed folk, which is not to go the other extreme and say we're all one, either, neither Nazi science, nor liberal science is without bias.
Pluralism, whether it be metaphysical or social, is just as relative and just as liable to error when taken at face value, as monism.

So that's what we've been up to for previous several centuries, we've been inventing God, or becoming God, at least in our heads, and the various socio-economic and political enterprises have, by and large, been ways of bringing heaven, the ideal, down to earth, the real, and scientism, and technocracy, particularly mainstream science, is merely the physical branch of this enterprise, where as communism, capitalism, fascism and Nazism, among others, are the social branches.
It's another form of idealism, if the cosmos isn't already good, or if the good doesn't lie beyond the grave, then we'll build heaven here on earth.
So people have jumped on the bandwagon, consciously or not, and where as before, there was many competing idealisms, now there's only two or three sanctioned by the powers that be, it's narrowing down, but they're all merely variants of humanism and of progress, rather than offering something wholly differing.

So that's why, among others reasons, like conformism, people immediately purchase the latest gadget, because they have faith in science and technology, and that while nonlife may be descending, life, particularly homosapien, is ascending as a sort of counterbalance, growing in complexity and dynamism (see novelty theory), so they don't ask questions like, what're the costs, besides the monetary, of adopting such technologies, they just assume the benefits will outweigh the detriments, equating the latest with the greatest as if they were synonymous.
Are these calculated decision individuals and humanity itself are making?
No, they're not, it's faith, faith that the universe makes sense, faith that the universe isn't too complicated for the best and brightest to comprehend, and convert more of nature into artifice, something beneficial for humanity to use, so their religion has become the worship of technology, as if technology itself, was good, and could never be bad, or more trouble than it's worth, in the long run.
The current elites, have grown wealthy off this paradigm, and so those who challenge it are branded as luddites, heretics, or conspiracy theorists, or whatever, and they're ostracized by them and their media.

If humanity adopted a more realistic, balanced narrative, where we were open to technology, but didn't worship it, and were more cynical and skeptical about it, then maybe we could avert catastrophe, because in many ways, our technology is destroying us and everything that we're dependent on.
But, the vast majority are idealistic, as human emotion is more powerful than that of any other animal.
That's right, not only is our reason more complex, but so too is our emotions, the latter often overwhelming the former.
Our system runs on promoting particular and peculiar variant of humanistic idealism.

What we need is more cynicism and skepticism, and pragmatism.
But some individuals are more adept at being pragmatic than others.
Perhaps one day, if humanity doesn't annihilate itself, we'll wise up, after X messiah not returning for the thousandth time, or this product causing X, Y or Z detriment for the millionth time, but at this rate, things appear bleak.
Can humanity learn to accept death, pain and suffering, as inevitable and even necessary parts of life on earth, and make do with what is?
Or are we the supreme flaw in natures design?
Perhaps thinking of ourselves as the supreme flaw is making to much of ourselves, a sort of reverse humanism, as life on planet earth will almost certainly outlast whatever humanity, in spite of what we get up to.
Just as individuals can be diagnosed with bipolar, MPD/DID, narcissism and schizophrenia, societies should be diagnosed too.
Clearly, our society is suffering from something like mass mental illness.
Some individuals and races may be more susceptible than others.
It might be good for the species if these individuals bred less.
In time, maybe our species will change, culturally and even biologically.
In many ways, we could still be in our early stages of development, a sort of haughty adolescence after the innocence of savagery.

Thing about realism, is you can make it into a sort of idealism too.
Acknowledging our limitations may even mean, acknowledging we, some more than others, aren't prepared to acknowledge our limitations.
Sometimes I wonder what the government gets up to, do we have colonies on the moon and mars?
Given what they've revealed about cloning and genetic engineering, imagine what they could be keeping from us.
Island of doctor Monroe, anyone?
At some point, pride becomes arrogance, if left unchecked.
We're suffering from a sort of collective narcissism.
Paganism, particularly prior to the axial age, had a more acentric view of humanities place within the cosmos, as opposed to the solipsistic view we have.
I think it's to this view, that we should return, where humanity was just another animal, where we didn't have a special role to play in anything.
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PostSubject: Re: The Revolt Against Technology The Revolt Against Technology EmptyFri Aug 15, 2014 2:20 am

Divergense wrote:
Frankenstein killed doctor Frankenstein.

It's not science and technology that're the problem, it's scientism and technocracy, that're the problem.
Furthermore, it's not scientism and technocracy that're the problem, it's idealism, that's the problem.
What is idealism?
Idealism is the idea that ideas ought to comfort us, rather than aid us in our quest to know and understand reality.

Let's extrapolate idealism, for a moment, let's take idealism as far as we can.
If comfort is our prime directive, as opposed to truth, what would be the supreme idea?
It would go something like this - I am God, or God created me in its image, and has compassion for me, and when I die, it's going to take me to a place devoid of pain, suffering, death or decay.
Now, people have different conceptions of heaven, the Vikings had theirs, which was like the Christian hell, and the Christians had theirs, which was like the Viking hell, but they all involve immortality, because we, many of us, don't want to die, especially people who don't understand how interwoven death is with life, how death defines life.
Now, we have monotheism in the west and pantheism in the east.

Now, for whatever reasons, we in the west have gradually dispensed with such lies, we now no longer take the idea of God as seriously.
Has this made us less idealistic?
A little, but not much.
We've merely transferred the hopes and dreams we once had in God, to ourselves, and thus, humanisms were born... but even in monotheism and pantheism, there's elements of humanism, in that we, among Gods creatures, were created in Gods image, or that we, among God, are more conscious of the fact that we, as in everyone and even everything in some schools of eastern thought, are one, divine, and that egoism is a sort of hallucination.

So we stopped believing in such fictions, which is not to say they, particularly the latter, don't contain crenels of truth, like any good story.
We said to ourselves, if God doesn't exist, it's necessary to invent him, and that's what we've been doing for the previous 3-5 centuries.
It's not just the left, the right have their delusions as well, elitism and elites can be just as delusional as egalitarians and common people, look at all the preposterous things Mussolini and Hitler believed about Atlantis, and race, and vril, fantastic things, about blonde haired, blue eyed folk, which is not to go the other extreme and say we're all one, either, neither Nazi science, nor liberal science is without bias.
Pluralism, whether it be metaphysical or social, is just as relative and just as liable to error when taken at face value, as monism.

So that's what we've been up to for previous several centuries, we've been inventing God, or becoming God, at least in our heads, and the various socio-economic and political enterprises have, by and large, been ways of bringing heaven, the ideal, down to earth, the real, and scientism, and technocracy, particularly mainstream science, is merely the physical branch of this enterprise, where as communism, capitalism, fascism and Nazism, among others, are the social branches.
It's another form of idealism, if the cosmos isn't already good, or if the good doesn't lie beyond the grave, then we'll build heaven here on earth.
So people have jumped on the bandwagon, consciously or not, and where as before, there was many competing idealisms, now there's only two or three sanctioned by the powers that be, it's narrowing down, but they're all merely variants of humanism and of progress, rather than offering something wholly differing.

So that's why, among others reasons, like conformism, people immediately purchase the latest gadget, because they have faith in science and technology, and that while nonlife may be descending, life, particularly homosapien, is ascending as a sort of counterbalance, growing in complexity and dynamism (see novelty theory), so they don't ask questions like, what're the costs, besides the monetary, of adopting such technologies, they just assume the benefits will outweigh the detriments, equating the latest with the greatest as if they were synonymous.
Are these calculated decision individuals and humanity itself are making?
No, they're not, it's faith, faith that the universe makes sense, faith that the universe isn't too complicated for the best and brightest to comprehend, and convert more of nature into artifice, something beneficial for humanity to use, so their religion has become the worship of technology, as if technology itself, was good, and could never be bad, or more trouble than it's worth, in the long run.
The current elites, have grown wealthy off this paradigm, and so those who challenge it are branded as luddites, heretics, or conspiracy theorists, or whatever, and they're ostracized by them and their media.

If humanity adopted a more realistic, balanced narrative, where we were open to technology, but didn't worship it, and were more cynical and skeptical about it, then maybe we could avert catastrophe, because in many ways, our technology is destroying us and everything that we're dependent on.
But, the vast majority are idealistic, as human emotion is more powerful than that of any other animal.
That's right, not only is our reason more complex, but so too is our emotions, the latter often overwhelming the former.
Our system runs on promoting particular and peculiar variant of humanistic idealism.

What we need is more cynicism and skepticism, and pragmatism.
But some individuals are more adept at being pragmatic than others.
Perhaps one day, if humanity doesn't annihilate itself, we'll wise up, after X messiah not returning for the thousandth time, or this product causing X, Y or Z detriment for the millionth time, but at this rate, things appear bleak.
Can humanity learn to accept death, pain and suffering, as inevitable and even necessary parts of life on earth, and make do with what is?
Or are we the supreme flaw in natures design?
Perhaps thinking of ourselves as the supreme flaw is making to much of ourselves, a sort of reverse humanism, as life on planet earth will almost certainly outlast whatever humanity, in spite of what we get up to.
Just as individuals can be diagnosed with bipolar, MPD/DID, narcissism and schizophrenia, societies should be diagnosed too.
Clearly, our society is suffering from something like mass mental illness.
Some individuals and races may be more susceptible than others.
It might be good for the species if these individuals bred less.
In time, maybe our species will change, culturally and even biologically.
In many ways, we could still be in our early stages of development, a sort of haughty adolescence after the innocence of savagery.

Thing about realism, is you can make it into a sort of idealism too.
Acknowledging our limitations may even mean, acknowledging we, some more than others, aren't prepared to acknowledge our limitations.
Sometimes I wonder what the government gets up to, do we have colonies on the moon and mars?
Given what they've revealed about cloning and genetic engineering, imagine what they could be keeping from us.
Island of doctor Monroe, anyone?
At some point, pride becomes arrogance, if left unchecked.
We're suffering from a sort of collective narcissism.
Paganism, particularly prior to the axial age, had a more acentric view of humanities place within the cosmos, as opposed to the solipsistic view we have.
I think it's to this view, that we should return, where humanity was just another animal, where we didn't have a special role to play in anything.

Idealism is anything but comfort as it constantly strives for reaching a goal/truth. Suffering occurs through the unattainment of fulfilling such an ideal. When ideal is met, for instance, when understanding the preconditions of an event or phenomenon in Nature, then nothing more can be conferred.
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Divergense



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PostSubject: Re: The Revolt Against Technology The Revolt Against Technology EmptyFri Aug 15, 2014 4:46 am

Yeah, I'm talking idealism in a more, philosophical/metaphysical sense.
I defined what I mean by idealism in the beginning of my post.
I mean something approaching or equivalent to mass schizophrenia. When one begins to, idolize, ideas and ideals, as opposed to utilizing them pragmatically.
Fantasizing, as opposed to setting realistic objectives and then attempting to attain them.
We do this with science and technology as well as religion, we just assume, more is more, more sophisticated, newer is better, that change = progress, intrinsically, that sort of stupidity.
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PostSubject: Re: The Revolt Against Technology The Revolt Against Technology EmptyFri Aug 15, 2014 5:14 am

Idealism as opposed to empiricism.

Ideas and ideals having little or no reference to reality/sensation.

A sort of, egocentrism, or anthropocentrism.
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PostSubject: Re: The Revolt Against Technology The Revolt Against Technology EmptySat Apr 09, 2016 10:49 pm

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"ἐδιζησάμην ἐμεωυτόν." [Heraclitus]

"All that exists is just and unjust and equally justified in both." [Aeschylus, Prometheus]

"The history of everyday is constituted by our habits. ... How have you lived today?" [N.]

*Become clean, my friends.*
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