I've never been able to get my head around the "riches of modern technology" argument.
Like yeah sure smartphones are fucking amazing, but that doesn't suddenly make a difference to the fact that there are people who work full time jobs that have to pick between paying rent and feeding their kids does it?
I just can't ever see it as anything other than a bad faith argument.
People who make that sort of argument are thinking something like:
Past - people work full time jobs just to feed and shelter themselves
Now - people work full time jobs just to feed and shelter themselves, but now they have smart phones, refrigerators, a wider variety of foods, etc
So the now is strictly better.
Now personally I think that if anyone is struggling to feed themselves then that is a full scale moral crisis that must be dealt with. But someone who's comfortable enough to have never experienced that might not understand the gravity of the situation. And even if they have, people as a whole are just loaded with ways to accept and gloss over huge bad things in our world.
...But also, while the person supporting the progress of the modern world might be talking about smartphones and trinkets, I want to point out that Kropotkin wrote before the Green Revolution and we still don't have the free bread he was talking about.
"Now is strictly better" is, I guess, TECHNICALLY true... But yeah man talk about totally missing the point...
Thanks for phrasing it like that though - I can definitely see how it could be someone who just is unaware of the situations of others instead of strictly being something used by trolls.
It’s such bullshit too. That’s just referring to people in imperial core countries. People in the GS still have it as shitty as we did over here in the 19th century.
I've never been able to get my head around the "riches of modern technology" argument.
Like yeah sure smartphones are fucking amazing, but that doesn't suddenly make a difference to the fact that there are people who work full time jobs that have to pick between paying rent and feeding their kids does it?
I just can't ever see it as anything other than a bad faith argument.
People who make that sort of argument are thinking something like:
Past - people work full time jobs just to feed and shelter themselves
Now - people work full time jobs just to feed and shelter themselves, but now they have smart phones, refrigerators, a wider variety of foods, etc
So the now is strictly better.
Now personally I think that if anyone is struggling to feed themselves then that is a full scale moral crisis that must be dealt with. But someone who's comfortable enough to have never experienced that might not understand the gravity of the situation. And even if they have, people as a whole are just loaded with ways to accept and gloss over huge bad things in our world.
...But also, while the person supporting the progress of the modern world might be talking about smartphones and trinkets, I want to point out that Kropotkin wrote before the Green Revolution and we still don't have the free bread he was talking about.
"Now is strictly better" is, I guess, TECHNICALLY true... But yeah man talk about totally missing the point...
Thanks for phrasing it like that though - I can definitely see how it could be someone who just is unaware of the situations of others instead of strictly being something used by trolls.
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It’s such bullshit too. That’s just referring to people in imperial core countries. People in the GS still have it as shitty as we did over here in the 19th century.