[Rancid]

I do wonder if there will be a new Amish movement. The Amish have basically frozen the tech they use to like 1800s tech. With the addition of some more modern stuff like wired telephone (which there is only like 1 phone in a central location in each village). I wonder if we are going to see communities pop up around only using tech from say pre-2000. So computers yes, but perhaps with limited internet access, limited bandwidth, and no social media.

[Unthinking Majority]

I do wonder if there will be a new Amish movement. The Amish have basically frozen the tech they use to like 1800s tech. With the addition of some more modern stuff like wired telephone (which there is only like 1 phone in a central location in each village). I wonder if we are going to see communities pop up around only using tech from say pre-2000. So computers yes, but perhaps with limited internet access, limited bandwidth, and no social media.

Why not just not look at your phone instead of building a village with no phones? Or not go on social media?

The hard part of not looking at social media is your friends might be on social media. I didn't want data on my phone, i didn't want to be connected 24/7, but social circles made it so i needed it in order to communicate with people how the rest liked to communicate. So @QatzelOk is right about the social construction. But you still have control, but you have to make a conscious effort. The sheep will just go along with things.

I know a friend with a son who is around 14 years old. All his friends play videogames online. Every time i go to my friend's house the son is up in his room socializing online while playing those games with friends. I used to talk on the phone with friends in the evenings after school. But in junior high and high school i definitely didn't hang out with my school friends online after school in the evenings. I guess i hung out with my parents and siblings, watched TV, played games alone etc, read magazines/books etc.

I think this 15 minute city thing might catch on. Maybe people will interact with their neighbours again?

[QatzelOk]

Why not just not look at your phone instead of building a village with no phones? Or not go on social media?
...
I think this 15 minute city thing might catch on. Maybe people will interact with their neighbours again?

The reverting back to vocal cultures, sharing, and 15-minute cities... will be made by a society, and not by an individual.

If we lack communities, we can't "go back" to anything collectively, and are thus at the mercy of the 1%.

Being at their mercy... is exactly what they want. So we collectively will have to fight the elite to get back the social capital that has been taken away from us and lead us to pathetic addictions to social construction tools.

Incidentally, even before cellphones and internet, most of the people I grew up with were erased from human existence by TV viewing, telephone addiction, and driving-for-fun. So the means of social construction addiction have been made available to many of the last few generations.

In fact, it was the inefficiency of these things (you needed to be beside the phone to receive a call, television is not always interesting, driving a car costs money) that lead to people maintaining a certain quantity of high-quality interpersonal relations.

The child who is raised with a cellphone in his bib... has no chance.

[Rancid]

I like the idea of the 15min city. However, that's simply not going to happen so long as we continue to prioritize auto companies.

[late]

I like the idea of the 15min city. However, that's simply not going to happen so long as we continue to prioritize auto companies.

[Unthinking Majority]

The reverting back to vocal cultures, sharing, and 15-minute cities... will be made by a society, and not by an individual.

If we lack communities, we can't "go back" to anything collectively, and are thus at the mercy of the 1%.

Being at their mercy... is exactly what they want. So we collectively will have to fight the elite to get back the social capital that has been taken away from us and lead us to pathetic addictions to social construction tools.

Incidentally, even before cellphones and internet, most of the people I grew up with were erased from human existence by TV viewing, telephone addiction, and driving-for-fun. So the means of social construction addiction have been made available to many of the last few generations.

In fact, it was the inefficiency of these things (you needed to be beside the phone to receive a call, television is not always interesting, driving a car costs money) that lead to people maintaining a certain quantity of high-quality interpersonal relations.

The child who is raised with a cellphone in his bib... has no chance.

The 1% are addicted to acquiring material possessions (greed) and want us to be too in order to get what they want but will never be satisfied with.

I'm not religious/superstitious but the 7 deadly sins are a real thing (but missing some): pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony and sloth

[QatzelOk]

The 1% are addicted to acquiring material possessions (greed) and want us to be too in order to get what they want but will never be satisfied with.

The only way to enjoy a life of hyper-consumption with lots of free time to enjoy your stuff, is to enslave the majority of the population into work routines that are so tedious and time-stealing that they ruin you and your ability to have a normal social life, family, and community.

Enter Suburbia, Car Dependence, Social Distancing, and War Culture.


"Is everyone alone now? Good. Now do what we tell you, or die!"

[Unthinking Majority]

The only way to enjoy a life of hyper-consumption with lots of free time to enjoy your stuff, is to enslave the majority of the population into work routines that are so tedious and time-stealing that they ruin you and your ability to have a normal social life, family, and community.

Enter Suburbia, Car Dependence, Social Distancing, and War Culture.


"Is everyone alone now? Good. Now do what we tell you, or die!"

If people were content with the standard of living people had 120 years ago they could retire at 40.

This is their choice. People like stuff.

[QatzelOk]

People like stuff.

People who are *glued to screens all day* certainly do have a tendency to *like particular stuff.*

I remember growing up in suburbia, where children watched on average 7 hours of commercial television per day. Among kids, it was *understood* that the families on TV were real, while our own family and our neighbors were *a poor imitation of real families.*

This reversal of the real and the fake... are the result of social construction addiction. It lead to very unsatisfying lives for most people because - in the absence of real - all you can do is get faker and faker.



I had hoped, in the 90s, that the screen was getting less important in people's lives (as they lost interest in TV). But then along came cellphones and streaming services... and people became more anti-social fake then ever.

One of the hideous side-effects of social construction addiction (media, in particular) is outlined in the work of Jean Baudrillard, particularly his concern with Simulacra and Simulations (addiction to fake things, and inability to distinguish between real and fake).

[QatzelOk]

It's possible that the first fake 'reality' that was, in fact, socially constructed, was **PATRIARCHY**.

This emerged around the end of the neo-lithic, about 10,000 years ago, for the first time.

for most of human history, while the males hunted, the women created the world

Once hunting was eliminated from male lives, these now useless males then decided that *males create the world*.
And of course, if you don't believe the males when they tell you this, they kill you. Blood ceremonies by males were then created (socially constructed) to distract from the **real** blood-connection that women have to creation.

Males started killing humans for simply denying their earth-creation capacities. Political debate was displaced by proof by eliminating opposition voices. With hunter-levels of violene - on other humans.

The religious texts that followed contained lots of **male earth-creators.**

In reality, women create the world through childbirth and education. But we drowned out this reality with our first act of social construction... about 10,000 years ago.

And it's been downhill for our species ever since.

[Unthinking Majority]

@QatzelOk its easy to criticize things we don't like. Why don't you start coming up with solutions for society instead of complaining. You literally want billions of people to die because you don't think any of us should be using technology. That's kind of a big deal. Maybe you're the next Ted Kaczynski: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski

How are we going to get rid of technology even if we wanted to? How will we stop all people in all countries from picking up a stick and making a spear and terrorizing the rest of us? How will we suppress our human brains and opposable thumbs from functioning? Maybe all humans should have their fingers and toes cut off at birth? And maybe a lobotomy?

Marx and Hitler had criticisms about society too. Their solutions were shit, they killed tens of millions. Oops.

[Unthinking Majority]

@QatzelOk what do you think of Ted Kaczynski's manifesto?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/n ... o.text.htm

[QatzelOk]

@QatzelOk what do you think of Ted Kaczynski's manifesto?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/n ... o.text.htm

It reminds me of Pol Pot's ideas from 20 years earlier.

The Unabomber is kind of like the Elvis Presley of **Techology will drive us to extinction** music, having stolen his ideas from much more talented artists from non-hegemonic cultures.

Elvis got rich playing black music (which was banned from white radio) and the Unabomber got famous by regurgitating the philosophy of much earlier Asian thinkers (who were smeared in the West because they weren't Western).

YEAR ZERO

The first day of "year Zero" was declared by the Khmer Rouge on 17 April 1975 upon their takeover of Cambodia in order to signify a rebirth of Cambodian history.[2] Adopting the term as an analogy to the "Year One" of the French Revolutionary Calendar,[3] Year Zero was effectually an attempt by the Khmer Rouge to erase history and reset Cambodian society to a zeroth year, removing any vestiges of the past.

***

Of course, social construction addicts were unable to compute *the end of technology* as anything other than *the end of the world.* This is because the "world" that moderns live in, is entirely constructed by mythology and propaganda.

Meanwhile, the real "end of the world" will be caused by technologies.

[ckaihatsu]

viewtopic.php?p=15260500#p15260500

That's a purely *pathological* / glass-half-empty treatment, Qatzel.

And then came cellphones, the Internet, and electronic feeds of every kind. People have never been further from reality. The Social Construction Addiction has never been more endemic.

And this is probably where things went haywire and *diverged* -- it's the 'Information Overload' complaint, essentially that 'My cup overfloweth.'


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_overload


---

Or do you need to constantly come back to your phone, texting, mass media, discussion groups, classes, church, etc... just to avoid facing the reality that is sitting there behind all those socially-constructed lies?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink


---

Norms have a history and not only is it impossible to understand a norm independently of its history, it is actually impossible to understand norms in general, without studying the historical process which fashions norms.

History, Macro-Micro -- politics-logistics-lifestyle

Spoiler: show

---

While I can agree that people in our modern society are manipulated by the media to be dutiful consumers, regardless of the environmental costs, I don’t see social structures that have endured for hundreds of years to be part of that process.

How about the *class divide* (income-inequality) social structure.

(Also populism vs. nationalist militarism.)


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:2010s_protests

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:2020s_protests


History, Macro-Micro -- simplified

Spoiler: show

---

Its not unnatural for women to want to find a longterm stable mate to protect and provide for her family.

That's *class*, though -- ultimately the material issue there is *inheritance* / passing-down of *private property*:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origi ... _the_State


---

In fact, it was the inefficiency of these things (you needed to be beside the phone to receive a call, television is not always interesting, driving a car costs money) that lead to people maintaining a certain quantity of high-quality interpersonal relations.

The child who is raised with a cellphone in his bib... has no chance.

Isn't this really a matter of *taste*, though -- ?

You're letting your own *personality*-based likes and biases enter-into your discussion of lifestyle modalities *in general*.

You're definitely showing yourself to be a devotee of *McLuhan*, Qatzel, whether you know it or not -- conflating the 'medium' / modality, with the 'message' / content itself.

And here's the results -- your habitual *blanket dismissal* of anything modern, just because various options now exist over communication *modalities*.

Instead of getting swept-up by the 'new-fangled' technologies now in the hands of consumers, you've studiously *avoided* interaction and content, *all* because of your dogmatic 'The-medium-is-the-message' McLuhanism.


---

Marx and Hitler had criticisms about society too. Their solutions were shit, they killed tens of millions. Oops.

Poor conflation there....

Karl Heinrich Marx FRSA (German: [maʁks]; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 pamphlet The Communist Manifesto and the four-volume Das Kapital (1867–1883). Marx's political and philosophical thought had enormous influence on subsequent intellectual, economic, and political history. His name has been used as an adjective, a noun, and a school of social theory.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx

Adolf Hitler (German: [ˈadɔlf ˈhɪtlɐ] (listen); 20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Germany from 1933 until his death in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party,[a] becoming the chancellor in 1933 and then taking the title of Führer und Reichskanzler in 1934.[b] During his dictatorship, he initiated World War II in Europe by invading Poland on 1 September 1939. He was closely involved in military operations throughout the war and was central to the perpetration of the Holocaust: the genocide of about six million Jews and millions of other victims.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler

And, UM, please stop conflating leftist aims with rightist aims. Thank you.


3-Dimensional Axes of Social Reality

Spoiler: show

[QatzelOk]

You're definitely showing yourself to be a devotee of *McLuhan*, Qatzel, whether you know it or not -- conflating the 'medium' / modality, with the 'message' / content itself.

Before speech and words were invented, "social construction" of a fake reality was impossible.

The technology of words, speech, and later writing and movies and animation.... allowed (forced?) humans to create fake realities in order to gain power over other humans. If these fake realities (that were constructed through technologies) lead to human extinction (in the same way that long-spears lead to so many extinctions)... then this means that humans never really controlled the side-effects of Language and Speech technology.



I think Mcluhan may have been correct about technologies *having their own agendas* which humans haplessly fall into ("the medium is the message").

[ckaihatsu]

Before speech and words were invented, "social construction" of a fake reality was impossible.

The technology of words, speech, and later writing and movies and animation.... allowed (forced?) humans to create fake realities in order to gain power over other humans. If these fake realities (that were constructed through technologies) lead to human extinction (in the same way that long-spears lead to so many extinctions)... then this means that humans never really controlled the side-effects of Language and Speech technology.

Image

I think Mcluhan may have been correct about technologies *having their own agendas* which humans haplessly fall into ("the medium is the message").

You're a *technological determinist*, Qatzel, but on the 'pathology' side -- it's *idealism*, thinking that *words* / language is where-it-all-went-wrong, like an ideal 'genie' that's been let out of the bottle, to catastrophic results.

No, it's not *language* that empowered certain people into elitist positions in society -- it was society's gradual, emergent production of a *surplus* that created a *caste* / class system, all the way up through the present.

The increasing economic division of labour is closely associated with the growth of trade and goes together with an increasing a social division of labour. As Ashley Montagu puts it, "barter, trade, and commerce largely depend on a society's exchangeable surpluses."[24] One group in society utilizes its position in society (e.g. the management of reserves, military leadership, religious authority, etc.) to gain control over the social surplus product; as the people in this elite group assert their social power, everyone else is forced to leave the control over the surplus product to them.[25] Although there is considerable controversy and speculation among archaeologists about how exactly these early rulers came to power[26] (often because of a lack of written records), there is good evidence to suggest that the process does occur, particularly in tribal communities or clans which grow in size beyond 1,500 or so people.[27]

From that point on, the surplus product is formed within a class relationship, in which the exploitation of surplus labour combines with active or passive resistance to that exploitation.

https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Surplus_ ... cal_origin

---


[1] History, Macro Micro -- Precision

Spoiler: show

[QatzelOk]

No, it's not *language* that empowered certain people into elitist positions in society -- it was society's gradual, emergent production of a *surplus* that created a *caste* / class system, all the way up through the present.

All of the things you list (caste, surplus production, etc.) are dependent on speech and words to produce.

"Words and speech" were like the AI of their time. Or brain implants.

That we can't live without speech or words today... is like how we won't be able to live without AI or brain implants in the future that we might not have.

As the speech-enabled lies get deeper and deeper over time, it becomes more and more difficult to climb out of the hole that is created. Mankind finds itself with broken legs... in a deeper and deeper hole.

[ckaihatsu]

All of the things you list (caste, surplus production, etc.) are dependent on speech and words to produce.

"Words and speech" were like the AI of their time. Or brain implants.

That we can't live without speech or words today... is like how we won't be able to live without AI or brain implants in the future that we might not have.

As the speech-enabled lies get deeper and deeper over time, it becomes more and more difficult to climb out of the hole that is created. Mankind finds itself with broken legs... in a deeper and deeper hole.

It's not a 'mankind' / humanity *thing*, though -- since you're a self-admitted *language*-determinist, we can now resolutely push *past* that theory, to arrive at *material* conditions being determining, *not* the institution / culture / practice of *language* -- as seen in group *warfare* among chimpanzees for territory, for example:

During the four-year conflict, all males of the Kahama community were killed, effectively disbanding the community. The victorious Kasakela then expanded into further territory but were later repelled by another community of chimpanzees.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War

[Rancid]

Why don't you start coming up with solutions for society instead of complaining.

This is why people like @QatzelOk are basically failure. They never offer a way out of whatever they perceive as bad.

[ckaihatsu]

solutions for society

---


Emergent Central Planning

Spoiler: show

https://web.archive.org/web/20201211050 ... ?p=2889338


labor credits framework for 'communist supply & demand'

Spoiler: show

https://web.archive.org/web/20201211050 ... ?p=2889338