sorry to be a debbie downer here, but humans are not the most amazing thing ever, particularly for the reason that you say that we are. the idea that 'we believe theat our potential must be pursued to it's fullest extent' would be great if our potential wasn't as an invasive species. have you seen what humans have done to earth and how each billionaire has their own fucking space pet project? we need a fucking amazon on every god damn planet, asteroid, or moon. every space ship will be called a tesla, and if we find life in the galaxy, they will be ourslaves if they don't have enough technology. we can't even get along on our own fucking planet.
humans fucking suck. human kind was a mistake that the earth will eventually repudiate, and rightfully fucking so.
i'm responding to someone literally claiming that "humans are the greatest thing ever." i didn't say we were the worst, but we definitely ain't the fucking greatest.
Uh yeah we probably are given the fact that we allow ourselves to even conceive of greatness. anything you think of as great you do so thru your capacity as a human. therefore all greatness is human greatness. there isn’t anything outside the human perspective
this is almost certainly not true. various corvids and apes absolutely have a capacity to learn language while dolphins are incredibly sophisticated in this regard, communicating with each other in ways we are only just beginning to piece together. but this is I guess the point about the hubris of this sentiment: we do not understand the capacities of animals nearly so well to make statements like these.
our lack of understanding them is precisely why we have the responsibility to advocate for them is my point. that lack of understanding comes from their lack of linguistic capabilities that would allow them to prove they have subjectivity. because they can’t prove it, just like we can’t prove each other has it; we should take the benefit of the doubt and protect all potential subjectivity
I have linguistic capabilities. put me in a strange place where no one speaks a language I share and I might well struggle to prove my own subjectivity, especially were that subjectivity doubted by my captors and the burden of proof placed upon me. in fact, we know this because experiments like these were used to "prove" the lack of subjectivity of Africans.
but again, this is my point about hubris: we regularly assume we know things that we do not, including the lack of subjectivity, or the lack of linguistic capabilities of animals - or, indeed, of other people.
I think the most unsettling thing about your posts in this thread is the way you've taken white supremacist arguments, changed the subjects to humans and the objects to animals, but left the fundamentally bad reasoning that led to such bullshit wholly intact. humans do not need to be supreme in order for the continuation of our species to be worthwhile - we merely need to be. but we must also extend the same courtesy to the other living things with which we share the globe.
it is factual that humans have superior capacity than the rest of the animals on the planet, it is not factual that white people have superior capacity than brown people.
much more important than the factual weakness of a statement like that is why you're so attached to the notion of superiority (whatever that actually means) in the first place.
it superiority of our technology and capacities to make technology. the concept of superiority isn’t bad in itself. communism is superior to capitalism no?
do you see the difference between a comparison of two economic systems - technologies we choose to employ - and the inherent superiority of one kind of life over another?
i said we possess superior capabilities and as su it is our responsibility to protect the planet as it’s so to speak vanguard species. not that absurd given no one is expecting dolphins to solve climate change
material conditions wouldn’t be able to provide proper protein sources. ideally we would just be mass producing artificial or lab grown meat using renewable energy
But... you're vegetarian? What does protein have to do with it? Like you get all your protein from eggs or something? A cup of beans is 16g of protein vs the 7 grams in an egg. I don't follow.
you’re probably right that i could find a way to be completely vegan, i live with my parents however and large changes to my diet would have to ge accessible thru the pantry we keep regularly
Okay, but you gotta see how the bit about lab meat is a non sequitur there, in that case. "I can't do it because my parents buy the food" is fine, but framing it as being about protein intake is sort of odd.
imagine waking up in a socialist country benefiting from the sacrifices of all your comrades before you, only to hear some american on chapochat say humans were a mistake
yeah that’s my point, imagine and have hope. don’t just take the black pill. humans have been bad, but we have the capacity for good too. it is a struggle and when you condemn us all as fucked you’re not helping to win
hope doesn't excuseh uman history mother fucker. the idea that we have the capacity for good, is long overshadowed by what we as a species has done. maybe the next incarnation of us will do better, but humans as a whole ain't there.
if you truly think that your own self has no capacity for good because the history of other selfs then i don’t know what to tell you. it’s true that human history is one of class domination, it’s also true that we can see that clearly now and articulate it in a way never before done. there is a potential for morally just human societies, we just have to construct it
it doesn't matter if 'my own self' has a capacity for good. there aint' enough of me. we got 30 years left dude. fucking deal with it dude. the earth will last. conditions to sustain humans will not. accept that shit.
You truly think climate change will wipe out every last human life? That’s not what’s gonna happen bruh im sorry.
The systems of power will fall certainly if things get bad enough, but that doesn’t imply mass and total extinction and neither does the science.
if anything what you’re referring to as the end of the world could actually be the beginning of a new, more equitable world built in the absence of the old power structures. again it just takes us doing it.
and you aren’t alone, there’s enough of us on this forum alone to go and start a productive city state absent other concerns.
well, i'm sure that last few million people will hopefully look past the idea of currency, but seeing as the tax man has existed long before us, i'm skeptical. but i do hope for their continued evolution. that said, we're talking about billions of people being reduced to millions now. so...
my point isn’t that we have to reinvent socialism after the collapse, we already have the texts and the knowledge; we just need to ensure it’s survival and it’s being put into action. socialism is inherently more efficient economically than capitalism, if given equal footing after a great restart event, i have full faith that the productive forces of socialism will win out in the end
yeah, dude, obviously. if humans can sustain it. (insert marxist crab, two capitalists stuck on a fucking island meme) taht doesn't change the fact that as we are, humans are shit.
this has been extremely enlightening. even most of chapo believes that "humans are the shit dude, fuck everybody else, we rock." fucking pathetic. further confirmation for me that when the earth finally wipes us out, it will be the fucking best for the entire universe. if we're the best we have to offer, wow.
dude if you hate humans then why don’t you make your politics about trying to get ride of as many as possible rather than socialism which is inherently against what you’re talking about
what i'm talking about goes beyond "human kind." if you think socialism is a huamn concept that's fucking pathetic. you're a fucking lib and you don't realize it.
i'm day to day psyched to be alive man. that doesn't mean that i'm pathetic enough to think that my species is "the shit." just fucking heinous. you don't even realize what you're saying. this is a sad point for me in that i realize who the fucking i am dealing with that i thought were my peers.
How about this, can we agree that there is a certain historical group of humans that throughout time have consistently been horrible and evil human beings. ie the ruling class of landowners and capital owners.
I’ll agree with you if you restrain your condemnation down to the groups of humans who actually perpetrated the crimes your speaking off. Because i do agree with your view of our history as a whole, i just think it reflects the views of some humans not all humans. It makes no sense to condemn all the humans in history who were slaves to the same fate as those who enslaved them.
basically can we agree that it’s just a majority of humans ie those who hold power and support the powers that be that are horrible? i see you’re point now that it’s meaningless to try and say humanity as a whole is either good or bad, we need to say this humanity as part of the whole is bad and that humanity as a part of the whole is good.
you're asking me to onstrain my view to those at the top and ignore the fact that people ain't doing shit about it, when we're talking about species as a whole. if you're on this site, you realize what the fuck a lib and a fucking chud are, and you want me to pretend that neither exist in order to "restrain my condmenation down toe hte groups of humans actually perpetuating the crimes i'm speaking of."
think about what the fuck you're asking of me towards the thing i'm arguing.
no that’s not what i’m asking you, i’m asking you to condemn the individuals you see fit for condemnation by your own standards. just don’t condemn the species as a whole, just those member of the species who are bad. I don’t care if that number ends up being 99% of humans as evil. at least that means you’ve identified the 1% who aren’t that you can thus work with
lol now we're getting down to 1% of humans when the original claim was that "humans are the most amazing thing ever." and i'm the one getting downvoted.
Yeah bc i realized my initial position was as groundless as your initial position. both of us were trying to say the humans race as a whole is either good or bad, but it’s just not valid to abstract out like that i’ve realized. we would need to say some humans are good and some are bad. and also i was trying to be optimistic and speak on the potential of humans to be great and the shit, rather than them being so now already.
you’ve made me drop my original claim as false and so i was seeing if maybe you would do the same given the reasons for me dropping my claim seem to apply to your claim too.
tl,dr; i’ve realized we can’t make a universal evaluation and i’m wondering if you’ve realized that too in the course of this conversation
i didn't say all, i said as a whole to the planet, which means at least 50%, and yes we are definitely bad as a whole to the planet. we do not fucking fit the definition of " the most amazing thing ever."
the fact that i've been down voted for a simple fucking fact is gross.
alright well i suppose we agree then. the reason i’ve been arguing is because it seems as through you were being a nihilist and arguing against the value of human life and it potential to be ethical.
if all you’re saying is that some humans fucked the planet up and as a result humankind collectively had a negative input on the earth, then yeah that’s just fact i agree with you.
can’t be letting them nihilists infiltrate the movement, it’s literally a death-knell for effective praxis
i am against the value of human life. we have not been valuable to the thing that sustains us. i am against our 'potential to be ethical.' we have not proven taht to be our nature.
i am saying that most humans fuck up the planet, ans the reuslt of humankind collectively has had a negative impact on the earth.
the idea that you 'can't let nihilists infiltrate the movement' is slurring me. i'm not a nihilist in that i believe only negativity prevails, what i believe is that humans, not life, as a whole, has definitely had a negative impact.
you on the otherhand have had nothing and will have nothign to present as far as evidence hat we as a species have had a positive impact on this planet. because you can't. because we don't. accept that shit mother fucker.
no it’s just i don’t have the patience to explain the critique of pure reason to you. however, if you read it you would understand that you’re answer to the question asked isn’t wrong, the question itself is nonsensical. and thus any answer yielded will be nonsense. you’re trying to evaluate human life from a perspective outside human perspective. that is literally impossible.
well i was operating on the sense of nihilism as Nietzsche defines it when he literally creates the term. the denial of life, specifically human life sense it is the only life of whose meaning it makes sense for humans to speak of (see wittgenstein russel and kant). you’re effectively saying all human efforts to create a better life are worthless because you see us as a whole as negatively contributing. what value do you ascribe to human life if not negative?
the entire concept. humans don't make concept, logic exists despite human beings. if you think a human made one log and one log make two logs you're part of the problem.
this just in, “humans don’t make concepts.”
so i guess the concepts are just out there floating in space waiting to be found, not created, by humans. you neo-platonist nerd
ideology =/= philosophic standpoint or even political standpoint
ideology is the lease through which you unconsciously view the world. it’s literally like integral to your experience that you experience things ideologically. read zizek when you’re done with kant
i did you just don’t agree with me and so i don’t want to have to give you a proof which would require much more length than me just giving you my idea as i’ve already done
if you already did, they didn't seem to provide any knowledge that contradicts the points i've voiced. so if you can't back them up then all you've got is some guys name.
no i said what i thought ideology to be and you disagreed, in order for me to convince you we would have to have a long dialogue that i don’t desire having with you because you don’t have the background knowledge to make it worthwhile. it would literally just be me explains the sublime object of ideology to you, and that’s not something i care to do
it’s not really a theoretically significant term to be honest. i’d imagine zizek is using it to convey the sense that ideology isn’t literally a direct object of our senses but is instead the way in which objects are configured within our senses. again it’s not really a technical term though.
okay so what is your defense of keeping them if it's a bad idea to present the fact that those who would down vote something/have been down voted have some kind of flawed ideology? why have a fucking currency here?
flawed ideologies lead to a fuckton of bad consequences. to me, that shit could be defined as pathetic. my ideology can definitely be gauged with fucking tangible numbers if the ideologies being compared are "humans suck" and "humans are the most amazing thing ever."
nah man i’m trying to point you in the right direction so you can have fruitful studies. you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. it would be useless for me to try to explain something to you given the state of our relations. you would just be contrarian bc the hostilities we’be already exchanged. therefore the only thing i can do is try and point in the right direction.
that would be a great counterpoint if all i told you to do was to read theory vaguely, i’ve actually pointed to specific works or watering holes so to speak.
you don't understand what you're fucking saying ory ou'd be able to say it. i don't have to depend on other peoples interpretations of shit to talk to you. to me all you're saying is that you have a vague idea of someone smarter than you's ideology, but can't put it into words for yourself because you don't understand it.
edit: they may not even be smarter than you, but you've already subscribed to it, so i'm not talking to you at all, now i'm talking to someone else who isn't even here to argue the fucking merits of the argument they put out a long time ago before you even decided to use their argument against this conversation.
no man i’m saying that it would be a waste of both of our time if i tried to explain zizek to you when you could just go to the primary source itself and not have to deal with me. secondary sources are always going to be worse.
i didn’t employ their argument i employed their definition and when you asked me to prove that that was the proper definition i said no go read it for yourself because i’m tired of discussing with someone as contrarian as yourself. i wasn’t even trying to prove kant or zizek to you, i just was using their concepts in my parlance and you disagreed with the definitions. it’s not my duty to explain the critique of pure reason to anyone who questions my usage of the term perspective.
i can say hey i’m operating off a definition that has a proof in this book if you care enough to look at it. i didn’t log on today to write three book reports for people too lazy to read themselves.
you've had no real evidence to contradict anything i've said and put the fucking blame on philosophers, whose fucking pivots you can't even properly elaborate on.
my point wasn’t that your evidence was wrong, my point was that your evidence was unrelated to the point that you’re making. you said humans did climate change, yeah i agree. then you said that is evidence for the fact that humans are net negative, that i disagree with.
we aren’t disagreeing based on evidence, we disagree on whether or not the evidence could even be linked to the claim you’re making.
yeah we disagree on what criteria by which to evaluate human worth. i don’t think that our causation of climate change is the end all be all determinate factor in our species worth-as-species.
yeah and i don’t think that our causing of thousands of thousands of other species to die off is the end all be all to our species worth-as-species. can you say anything that isn’t poised for shock value to get me to change my mind?
yeah and i don’t think that our causing of thousands of thousands of other species to die off is the end all be all to our species worth-as-species.
so if we kill them all and have to sustain ourselves on cannibalisms, but still survive that won't effect our species worth-as-species to you. okay, well i guess our criteria is just vastly different.
admittedly that is poised for shock value, maybe you should take the exact declaration that i'm making many steps before that as a take on our worth as a species, but you've already admitted to your apathy of our effect on other life forms...
okay i’ll concede it is related to our species worth-as-species but it isn’t the end all be all. there are other factors entirely unrelated to our caused extinction that contribute to the value of our species.
and in your shock value example i would still stand my point. this is because it would have likely been the capitalist elite’s mode of production which caused the extinction, not our species as whole. and as such it is the capitalist mode of production to be condemned not the human species. i mean think about it, we existed in semi-harmony with nature for quite sometime until the market forces of capitalism started raping the earth. Humans existed before capitalism and capitalism is causing climate change not just ‘human nature’ as some would say.
only in the sense that we allow capitalism to continue yeah, but not because we are humans.
it isn’t the simple fact that we are humans that makes us complicit in climate change; it is literally our active complacency in capitalism that makes us thus complicit in climate change too.
we are guilty by virtue of being in capitalism and not stopping it, but we are not guilty by virtue of simply being human.
can you explain the contradiction there? i don’t quite see it. also i don’t know what you mean by solely capitalism’s fault. i said that if we are guilty as a species it is because our species is active in capitalism. i’m denying that we are guilty by virtue of being human. we are guilty by virtue of being a capitalist species.
therefore all greatness is human greatness. there isn’t anything outside the human perspective
it is factual that humans have superior capacity than the rest of the animals on the planet
the simple fact that we are humans that makes us complicit in climate change; it is literally our active complacency in capitalism that makes us thus complicit in climate change too.
but we are not guilty by virtue of simply being human.
so what is guilt if there is nothing outside the human perspective?
we have demonstrated the potential to build socialism and destroy capitalism. if it comes to pass that the human species cannot defeat capitalism, then you’ll find me right next to you on your side in this debate.
are you literally doing the socialism in what country shtick? my god are you just straight up a reactionary? i didn’t think i would have to straight up prove to you that socialism was possible. i guess assumed since we were both on this forum we would at least agree that capitalism isn’t that last stage of human development.
here goes nothing i guess, the country of vietnam demonstrates the possibility of 1) defeating the martial forces of capitalism in battle, and 2) the various possiblities of managing an anti-capitalist economy. this isn’t to say that they are a model state to follow. it is only to say that they demonstrated the potential and still are.
socialism might be possible, but we ain't ther eyet and it ain't a defense for mankind. capitalism might be the fucking last stage of human development if climate change fucking kills us all.
there's tons of potential for socialism, but just because a couple people are fucking cool doesn't fucking absolve us as a species. you coulda said cuba too, or the ussr in it's prime, or china under mao too, but as a whole most countries ain't doing okay.
okay so do you understand why i still see path forward ethically for our species through the potential development of socialism, even if it is a path of redemption from innumerable sins as you say
I mean capitalism was once considered an underdog mode of production compared to the power of the church and the feudal nobility. we have changed modes of production before and can do it again. in fact every change in the mode of production that has ever happened could be framed as “an underdog story.” this is because the dominant mode must fall before the incipient one comes about.
so you don’t think capitalism is a mode of production that acutely grew out of the mercantile economies of the early colonial powers? i mean obviously the system of private property has been there “the entire fucking time” as you say, but capitalism has certainly not been.
so what’s the difference between capitalism and feudalism then? you’re literally doing a “capitalism realism” right now wherein all economic systems and possibilities outside of capitalism are either not considered or just considered a different capitalism.
okay there is definitely a tangible difference between fuedal modes of production and capitalist modes of production. namely, the advent of wage labor and destruction of the guilds. also the commercialization of agriculture. google the enclosure movement from england. basically the landlords kicked the peasants off the land and now they had to come back as wage laborers in order to work the same land they previously lived on. it literally caused a civil war which resulted in the institutional power of the bourgeoisie over the royal aristocracy in england. same thing happens in france and russia roughly prior to their revolutions. the transition from fuedalism to capitalism has unbounded scholarly works attributed to it. in this case the evidence is on my side unless you refuse to change your definition of capitalism as that system which has rulers and ruled.
if capitalism and feudalism were the same then why did capitalists start revolutions against feudal powers? if they were the same then that would be nonsensical.
feudalism and capitalism can both be hierarchal without them having no tangible difference. here is some evidence i found quite quickly. can find more too if you want. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-1-349-17745-5_2
also a tangible difference you seem to care about is that capitalism has caused mass extinction and feudalism didnt
the difference between feudalism and capitalism and the effect on mass extinction is negligible when you incorporate modern technology and fossil fuels, which would inarguably occur similarly provided that there was a lower class to exploit and an upper class in charge of resources.
the incorporation of fossil fuels and modern technology is literally a result of capitalism what are you talking about. you can’t just say what if the feudal lords had access to the same things. they didn’t because they were not capitalist and had not invested in developing such tech to generate profit.
not at all dude. maybe the speed at which it occured, but you're giving way too much credit to capitalism.
the advent of technology is not an invention of capitalism, but of eventual progress. i shouldn't have to argue this point to someone trying to speak up for the moral existence of human beings.
tesla and einstein were fucking socialists. the shit didn't happen because they wanted to make a profit, it may have created a motif to drive it, but it would have happened, probably under b etter circumstances, eventually anyway.
i’m not saying technological development under capitalism is only done be capitalists. i’m saying that the specific technologies you are referring to that killed the planet were technologies developed and funded by capitalist firms trying to increase profit. and to say what if the fuedal lords had the same tech, that’s just literally nonsense. it’s a historical argument based on development of the forces of production, you can’t just transport technologies throughout history independent of the modes of production that produce them to make a point.
I’m not disagreeing that when you frame it that broadly the system didn’t change, that’s why we need communism. Specifically because the aspect you are talking about didn’t change. but various other important aspects did change from feudalism to capitalism and that’s why they are different modes of production. just like how slavery is a different mode of production from both feudalism and capitalism. these changes are notable and much scholarship has been written about them, like the one i linked you.
also on an unrelated note, i genuinely apologize for insulting you. it was wrong and completely unrelated to the ideas we were discussing. and as you continue to put effort into this conversation i feel more and more bad about the way in which i acted when it began. i respect your insistence on your point of view and your will to argue for it.
capitalism and slavery didn't really have 'different' modes of production, just different ways by which they decided the working class.
people making 7 dollars an hour, many still people of color and illegal immigrants in the usa, working two jobs to maintain a living are on par with slaves.
the system didn't change much it just made it more pc. anything that pretends it's not the same is liberal revisionism.
have you actually read marx? not trying to be an ass but this is like marxism 101. there exists different modes of production sorry to break it to you. i honestly feel like you’re just trolling me at this point or you just literally don’t know.
(hint those different ways they decide the working class literally are the different modes of production)
you’re literally willfully ignoring substantial differences between slavery feudalism and capitalism just so you can paint all of them as capitalism. if you wanted to say they all were the same you could say they all were hierarchal, but no you say they are all just capitalism. your mind has been poisoned by capitalist ideology so throughly that you can’t even recognize a mode of production distinct from it. from within the cave of the the capitalist ideology, everything outside just looks like capitalism too. it’s meant to make you feel like there’s no other alternative and that capitalism is the natural progression of human economics rather than the specific ideology of a ruling class that siezed state power in the 17th century
I agree, the point of quantifying human thought is to control it from the top down. The fact that chapeaux dot cat has voting despite it reenforcing the kind of hierarchies socialists fight so hard against proves Marx's thesis that "the lower phase of communism ... [will be] stamped with the mark of the old."
I've seen what capitalism has done to the Earth. I've seen what billionaires do. Humans are not capitalism. Humans are not the handful of billionaires who control us. That you can't even grasp that shows how deeply entrenched you are in ideology. Either go read a book that isn't Harry Potter, or leave us the fuck alone while we do more than rot and die in obese bliss.
my point is that nature can’t possibly be conceived as communism bc it’s literally free market hunting with the apex predators taking all the surplus value of the producers of energy not bc carnivores exist
so we've gotten to thep point where you feel can you insult me over and over again and then delete it and repeat it again and again , when i'm pointing out fucking facts to you. go fuck yourself dude. literally eat shit.
Alright as much of an angry silly exchange this has been between you and paulwall it's been interesting to me.
He's being a smug dumbass about it but I still agree with the point that the entire framing of this seems nonsensical to me.
You can't apply purely human concept that are extremely contextual to those things. You can't say any of those things existed "before humans", it's not that nothing existed before humans, it's that our perception of things and the words and concepts we use are entirely limited to us and extrapolating them to other things in that way seems silly and ends up back into anthropo-centrism to me.
I'm not going into the "humans are special" because of language or whatever else because I don't know enough about it and it's a pointless argument because it doesn't matter to this. In fact the argument itself always ends up being anthropocentric to me, whether it's to say "other animals are not as smart/special as us" OR to say "other animals are as smart/special as us". It's applying our own extremely contextual words and concepts on things non-human, those other things don't give a fuck what words we use, no matter how smart they are. They exist outside of how we talk about them or how we think about them.
Whatever other animals can/do think and feel doesn't matter here, this kind of take still seems nihilistic and anthropo-centric. The whole idea of humans having a "good or bad" impact on earth is within a human context, the concept of earth is within a human context. If you end saying that "humanity" is "bad" and should end, then yea to me that's nihilistic, misanthropic (not that that makes it or you bad because of it that's just how I would define it), but more importantly it's pointless. It's an answer to a nonsensical question. It doesn't matter, it's not productive and it seems very self-centered.
This is kinda hard to talk about because it's not even a very tangible or materialistic topic, it's mostly philosophical, so sorry if my thoughts aren't very clear.
You can’t say any of those things existed “before humans”, it’s not that nothing existed before humans, it’s that our perception of things and the words and concepts we use are entirely limited to us and extrapolating them to other things in that way seems silly and ends up back into anthropo-centrism to me.
This is kinda hard to talk about because it’s not even a very tangible or materialistic topic, it’s mostly philosophical, so sorry if my thoughts aren’t very clear.
it's definitely hard to talk about, you will make no friends. but those things definitely exited 'before humans.'
i just don't even understand how any of this is debatable. you'd think that since we invented the fucking word 'language' that the idea is foreign throughout other species.
Whatever other animals can/do think and feel doesn’t matter here, this kind of take still seems nihilistis.
Whatever other animals can/do think and feel doesn’t matter here, this kind of take still seems nihilistic and anthropo-centric. The whole idea of humans having a “good or bad” impact on earth is within a human context, the concept of earth is within a human context.
this shit is on the level of 'animals can't feel pain' because they don't have the fucking words.
It is, Stupidpol are utter idiots, like, honestly I’m not into “wokeness” so if anything I’m genuinely viscerally disgusted by how ignorant the stupidpol crowd are. The comparison wasn’t actually to stupidpol but to leftypol.
i'm sorry, humans are great. let's just keep this whole thing we've been doing going and pat ourselves on the back, because everything's just gonna be great. :D
Learn to love yourself and others; where there's pain there's also a possibility for healing. The world can be changed, our future will be difficult but the only reason it might be a horrible nightmare is because of Capitalism and the ruling by the oppressors. Your expression of self-defeat says more about you than about the future. Things can change, humans and society can change, old systems can be overthrown. This is a place for comrades, if you don't think the world can change for the better, then what the fuck are you even doing here?
the idea that "Human beings are the most amazing thing ever, and we do what we do because we believe that our potential must be pursued to its fullest extent" does not encourage a change in the system. if you encourage this mind set what the ufck are YOU doing here?
we do what we do because we believe that our potential must be pursued to its fullest extent
Actually from Marx who analyzes labor and declares it integral to the self-worth and innate drive by human beings, doing and working is as human as anything else. The question is what system do we operate under? If we do things for others and only a few people benefit then it is the system that's flawed.
I asked you a question. You are being a sourpuss and downright unlikeable person. The world sucks now, but it can change. If you think nothing will change, then you are a sectarian embracing the doom to put other people down. And it fucking sucks.
The rightist sectarian differs from his or her leftist counterpart in that the former attempts to domesticate the present so that (he or she hopes) the future will reproduce this domesticated present, while the latter considers the future pre-established—a kind of in-evitable fate, fortune, or destiny. For the rightist sectarian, "today," linked to the past, is something given and immutable; for the leftist sectarian, "tomorrow" is decreed beforehand, is inexorably preor-dained. This rightist and this leftist are both reactionary because, starting from their respectively false views of history, both develop forms of action that negate freedom. The fact that one person imag-ines a "well-behaved" present and the other a predetermined future does not mean that they therefore fold their arms and become spec-tators (the former expecting that the present will continue, the latter waiting for the already "known" future to come to pass)
Paolo Freire
You are extremely predictable and incredibly fucking boring. I hope you realize your shit-attitude does not make you unique, and you are amongst comrades who, somehow, want to make the world a better place. You can drop the hard-ass act.
me pointing out that humans ain't the most amazing thing in the world doesn't give you the right to lump me into some category worth of disdain and allow you the right to berate me.
you calling me 'predictable', 'fucking boring' and saying i have a 'shit -attitude' is fucking toxic, based on me taking issue with the statement "Human beings are the most amazing thing ever, and we do what we do because we believe that our potential must be pursued to its fullest extent"
sorry, that's completely bullshit. look up the definition of sectarian before you go throwing it around.
This is barely any different from the human nature argument people use against communism. You look at human behavior under current conditions, and conclude "humans fucking suck." Yeah, everyone on this site can plainly see the ways that humans have destroyed the earth, made it unlivable even for ourselves, and are often generally shitty. But to see that and conclude that it must be an essential characteristic of the human race is reactionary. You need to ask WHY people are this way. Think materially comrade. And sure, many people are irredeemable at this point. That's not something to be forgiven, but it is something to be understood. Humans aren't born shitty, humans are made to be shitty.
the odds are that we simply don't have the time or means or will as a whole to redeem ourselves. it's not an argument that we shouldn't or can't, it's that we as a whole haven't and likely won't.
Ok if you're arguing that we can't get out of our current situation, I'm not going to argue with you there. I mean, I don't really agree but I will agree that things do feel hopeless and it is not clear how we will actually get out of the current crisis. So like, maybe we won't escape our current crisis and carve out a future for the species. But whose fault is that? Saying humans suck, humans are a mistake, throwing the species as a whole under the bus, obscures the historical and sociological circumstances that cause humans to "suck," and obscures the fact that the current crisis was not brought upon equally by all humans, but by certain classes of humans. One must understand why and how we got into our current situation, and it's not because humanity essentially "sucks."
We confront the attitude that humanity is essentially evil and a virus on a daily basis. People do suck, but to end thought there instead of challenging these essentialist ideas props up the attitude many people have that nothing can be done nor could ever have been done about our situation, and that it was always inevitable.
the intent isn't to dissuade people from organization or to increase apathy. fault the negative nature if you must, but it's no less conducive to the possibility of changing a situation than claiming that people are the most amazing thing in the universe, especially considering how people have used that idea to justify a lot of the heinous shit that human beings do.
That statement of humans being the greatest thing ever is in the context of a thread complaining about people using essentialist arguments to portray humans as essentially evil and use that to support not trying to change our situation. By saying humans are the greatest thing ever, you know I don't the person's exact intentions above, but by saying that one is countering these essentialist ideas and saying that no a better world is possible, humans can be better if we can just change material conditions, humans do not necessarily need to act the way we do under capitalism. Maybe humans are not literally the greatest thing ever, but it is a statement portraying humans as Subjects who are able to shape history. By going the opposite way and concluding that, no, humans actually do suck, you are precluding even the possibility of a better world, and any possibility that humans could act in any way different from today. It is a fatalistic position which precludes any action. I mean, yeah, recognize that humans have the capacity for evil and to suck and we're not perfect, but don't condemn us as mistakes who can never do better.
sorry to be a debbie downer here, but humans are not the most amazing thing ever, particularly for the reason that you say that we are. the idea that 'we believe theat our potential must be pursued to it's fullest extent' would be great if our potential wasn't as an invasive species. have you seen what humans have done to earth and how each billionaire has their own fucking space pet project? we need a fucking amazon on every god damn planet, asteroid, or moon. every space ship will be called a tesla, and if we find life in the galaxy, they will be ourslaves if they don't have enough technology. we can't even get along on our own fucking planet.
humans fucking suck. human kind was a mistake that the earth will eventually repudiate, and rightfully fucking so.
Alright dude then go join a death cult im not interested in hearing people's justifications for misanthropy
dude fuck you. you excuse everything humans have done to our fucking planet with a fucking slur.
edit: if you have upvoted the above post, and and downvoted this one, you are fucking pathetic.
you’re the one saying the whole species is fucked. this kind of bourgeois pessimism is reactionary and fucking annoying
i'm responding to someone literally claiming that "humans are the greatest thing ever." i didn't say we were the worst, but we definitely ain't the fucking greatest.
Uh yeah we probably are given the fact that we allow ourselves to even conceive of greatness. anything you think of as great you do so thru your capacity as a human. therefore all greatness is human greatness. there isn’t anything outside the human perspective
wow. i'm not even a vegetarian, but this is a great argument for becoming one. fuck off.
dude i’m a fucking vegetarian haha bc it’s our responsibility as the only linguistically capable beings to advocate for those not
this is almost certainly not true. various corvids and apes absolutely have a capacity to learn language while dolphins are incredibly sophisticated in this regard, communicating with each other in ways we are only just beginning to piece together. but this is I guess the point about the hubris of this sentiment: we do not understand the capacities of animals nearly so well to make statements like these.
our lack of understanding them is precisely why we have the responsibility to advocate for them is my point. that lack of understanding comes from their lack of linguistic capabilities that would allow them to prove they have subjectivity. because they can’t prove it, just like we can’t prove each other has it; we should take the benefit of the doubt and protect all potential subjectivity
I have linguistic capabilities. put me in a strange place where no one speaks a language I share and I might well struggle to prove my own subjectivity, especially were that subjectivity doubted by my captors and the burden of proof placed upon me. in fact, we know this because experiments like these were used to "prove" the lack of subjectivity of Africans.
but again, this is my point about hubris: we regularly assume we know things that we do not, including the lack of subjectivity, or the lack of linguistic capabilities of animals - or, indeed, of other people.
I think the most unsettling thing about your posts in this thread is the way you've taken white supremacist arguments, changed the subjects to humans and the objects to animals, but left the fundamentally bad reasoning that led to such bullshit wholly intact. humans do not need to be supreme in order for the continuation of our species to be worthwhile - we merely need to be. but we must also extend the same courtesy to the other living things with which we share the globe.
it is factual that humans have superior capacity than the rest of the animals on the planet, it is not factual that white people have superior capacity than brown people.
much more important than the factual weakness of a statement like that is why you're so attached to the notion of superiority (whatever that actually means) in the first place.
it superiority of our technology and capacities to make technology. the concept of superiority isn’t bad in itself. communism is superior to capitalism no?
do you see the difference between a comparison of two economic systems - technologies we choose to employ - and the inherent superiority of one kind of life over another?
i said we possess superior capabilities and as su it is our responsibility to protect the planet as it’s so to speak vanguard species. not that absurd given no one is expecting dolphins to solve climate change
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Why aren't you vegan?
material conditions wouldn’t be able to provide proper protein sources. ideally we would just be mass producing artificial or lab grown meat using renewable energy
I didn't ask "why isn't everyone vegan?", I asked "why aren't you vegan?"
that was my personal reason, i meant my material conditions
But... you're vegetarian? What does protein have to do with it? Like you get all your protein from eggs or something? A cup of beans is 16g of protein vs the 7 grams in an egg. I don't follow.
you’re probably right that i could find a way to be completely vegan, i live with my parents however and large changes to my diet would have to ge accessible thru the pantry we keep regularly
Okay, but you gotta see how the bit about lab meat is a non sequitur there, in that case. "I can't do it because my parents buy the food" is fine, but framing it as being about protein intake is sort of odd.
lab meat stuff was like utopian solution to problem
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i meant my local personal conditions
Why? It takes way fewer resources to grow plant proteins than animals.
i mean my own conditions personally
Lentils and beans are cheaper than meat. Check out Indian recipes they're delicious
well then you should research the word perspective.
you should read kant
fuck you.
lollllll you’re mad bc you hate humans, just leave then you don’t have to be around us other humans
i'm mad because you defend them.
“them” you mean us right?
yes.
so you’re mad because i defend you and your species
so do soldiers for americans. if you can't see the nuance you're a lost cause.
nah those defend the interests of us capitalist elite, im simply saying humanity itself isn’t a mistake
no, you're missing a lot of nuanced positions and speaking out of your fucking ass
imagine waking up in a socialist country benefiting from the sacrifices of all your comrades before you, only to hear some american on chapochat say humans were a mistake
socialism wouldn't be murdering our planet and trying to literally 'globalize' the fucking universe. this is capitalist propaganda asshole
yeah it wouldn’t be! that’s the fucking point. and imagine living in that system built by human sacrifice only to condemn the species as a whole
yeah, 'imagine' is all we can do right now bro.
yeah that’s my point, imagine and have hope. don’t just take the black pill. humans have been bad, but we have the capacity for good too. it is a struggle and when you condemn us all as fucked you’re not helping to win
hope doesn't excuseh uman history mother fucker. the idea that we have the capacity for good, is long overshadowed by what we as a species has done. maybe the next incarnation of us will do better, but humans as a whole ain't there.
if you truly think that your own self has no capacity for good because the history of other selfs then i don’t know what to tell you. it’s true that human history is one of class domination, it’s also true that we can see that clearly now and articulate it in a way never before done. there is a potential for morally just human societies, we just have to construct it
it doesn't matter if 'my own self' has a capacity for good. there aint' enough of me. we got 30 years left dude. fucking deal with it dude. the earth will last. conditions to sustain humans will not. accept that shit.
You truly think climate change will wipe out every last human life? That’s not what’s gonna happen bruh im sorry.
The systems of power will fall certainly if things get bad enough, but that doesn’t imply mass and total extinction and neither does the science.
if anything what you’re referring to as the end of the world could actually be the beginning of a new, more equitable world built in the absence of the old power structures. again it just takes us doing it.
and you aren’t alone, there’s enough of us on this forum alone to go and start a productive city state absent other concerns.
well, i'm sure that last few million people will hopefully look past the idea of currency, but seeing as the tax man has existed long before us, i'm skeptical. but i do hope for their continued evolution. that said, we're talking about billions of people being reduced to millions now. so...
my point isn’t that we have to reinvent socialism after the collapse, we already have the texts and the knowledge; we just need to ensure it’s survival and it’s being put into action. socialism is inherently more efficient economically than capitalism, if given equal footing after a great restart event, i have full faith that the productive forces of socialism will win out in the end
yeah, dude, obviously. if humans can sustain it. (insert marxist crab, two capitalists stuck on a fucking island meme) taht doesn't change the fact that as we are, humans are shit.
this has been extremely enlightening. even most of chapo believes that "humans are the shit dude, fuck everybody else, we rock." fucking pathetic. further confirmation for me that when the earth finally wipes us out, it will be the fucking best for the entire universe. if we're the best we have to offer, wow.
dude if you hate humans then why don’t you make your politics about trying to get ride of as many as possible rather than socialism which is inherently against what you’re talking about
what i'm talking about goes beyond "human kind." if you think socialism is a huamn concept that's fucking pathetic. you're a fucking lib and you don't realize it.
“if you think socialism is a human concept your a lib”
bruh read Wittgenstein, literally every concept is a human concept you fool
no. you're just pathetic.
projection from the person who spends his live depressed
i'm day to day psyched to be alive man. that doesn't mean that i'm pathetic enough to think that my species is "the shit." just fucking heinous. you don't even realize what you're saying. this is a sad point for me in that i realize who the fucking i am dealing with that i thought were my peers.
How about this, can we agree that there is a certain historical group of humans that throughout time have consistently been horrible and evil human beings. ie the ruling class of landowners and capital owners.
I’ll agree with you if you restrain your condemnation down to the groups of humans who actually perpetrated the crimes your speaking off. Because i do agree with your view of our history as a whole, i just think it reflects the views of some humans not all humans. It makes no sense to condemn all the humans in history who were slaves to the same fate as those who enslaved them.
basically can we agree that it’s just a majority of humans ie those who hold power and support the powers that be that are horrible? i see you’re point now that it’s meaningless to try and say humanity as a whole is either good or bad, we need to say this humanity as part of the whole is bad and that humanity as a part of the whole is good.
you're asking me to onstrain my view to those at the top and ignore the fact that people ain't doing shit about it, when we're talking about species as a whole. if you're on this site, you realize what the fuck a lib and a fucking chud are, and you want me to pretend that neither exist in order to "restrain my condmenation down toe hte groups of humans actually perpetuating the crimes i'm speaking of."
think about what the fuck you're asking of me towards the thing i'm arguing.
no that’s not what i’m asking you, i’m asking you to condemn the individuals you see fit for condemnation by your own standards. just don’t condemn the species as a whole, just those member of the species who are bad. I don’t care if that number ends up being 99% of humans as evil. at least that means you’ve identified the 1% who aren’t that you can thus work with
lol now we're getting down to 1% of humans when the original claim was that "humans are the most amazing thing ever." and i'm the one getting downvoted.
Yeah bc i realized my initial position was as groundless as your initial position. both of us were trying to say the humans race as a whole is either good or bad, but it’s just not valid to abstract out like that i’ve realized. we would need to say some humans are good and some are bad. and also i was trying to be optimistic and speak on the potential of humans to be great and the shit, rather than them being so now already.
you’ve made me drop my original claim as false and so i was seeing if maybe you would do the same given the reasons for me dropping my claim seem to apply to your claim too.
tl,dr; i’ve realized we can’t make a universal evaluation and i’m wondering if you’ve realized that too in the course of this conversation
my position has lots of information to back it up dude.
so you think you can say all humans are bad? that’s what you’re saying when you say humankind is bad right?
i didn't say all, i said as a whole to the planet, which means at least 50%, and yes we are definitely bad as a whole to the planet. we do not fucking fit the definition of " the most amazing thing ever."
the fact that i've been down voted for a simple fucking fact is gross.
alright well i suppose we agree then. the reason i’ve been arguing is because it seems as through you were being a nihilist and arguing against the value of human life and it potential to be ethical. if all you’re saying is that some humans fucked the planet up and as a result humankind collectively had a negative input on the earth, then yeah that’s just fact i agree with you. can’t be letting them nihilists infiltrate the movement, it’s literally a death-knell for effective praxis
i am against the value of human life. we have not been valuable to the thing that sustains us. i am against our 'potential to be ethical.' we have not proven taht to be our nature.
i am saying that most humans fuck up the planet, ans the reuslt of humankind collectively has had a negative impact on the earth.
the idea that you 'can't let nihilists infiltrate the movement' is slurring me. i'm not a nihilist in that i believe only negativity prevails, what i believe is that humans, not life, as a whole, has definitely had a negative impact.
you on the otherhand have had nothing and will have nothign to present as far as evidence hat we as a species have had a positive impact on this planet. because you can't. because we don't. accept that shit mother fucker.
okay nevermind i guess you still need to just go read kant. it would fix your brainworms
'kant absolves humanity. everything is okay now.'
no it’s just i don’t have the patience to explain the critique of pure reason to you. however, if you read it you would understand that you’re answer to the question asked isn’t wrong, the question itself is nonsensical. and thus any answer yielded will be nonsense. you’re trying to evaluate human life from a perspective outside human perspective. that is literally impossible.
i know philosphy, i just don't accept some dude's thoughts as a frame work for my own. maybe you should question why you do.
have you read kant?
yeah i've taken a philosophy class or two. it doesn't effect my view on morality.
well you’d know then that your saying that the value of human life is negative is literally nihilism
no, nihilism is the belief that all life is meaningless. i didn't say anything like that. in fact what i said was in contradiction to that.
well i was operating on the sense of nihilism as Nietzsche defines it when he literally creates the term. the denial of life, specifically human life sense it is the only life of whose meaning it makes sense for humans to speak of (see wittgenstein russel and kant). you’re effectively saying all human efforts to create a better life are worthless because you see us as a whole as negatively contributing. what value do you ascribe to human life if not negative?
human life is negative. this is mathematically provable. human life is a negative value on everything isn't a human.
before you attack this with words, do you have any mathematics to back up what your claim is? because i do.
LOLLLLLLLLL im wasting my time conversing with such an inferior being
Well this was still a sort of interesting exchange until you literally called them an "inferior being", christ.
i’ve been around my dad too much jesus christ
and you claim that you're a fucking vegetarian. i eat chicken wings all day mother fucker, but i don't pretend that it's morally cohesive.
you are a fucking pathetic human being.
everyone in this thread who you called pathetic said that you’re projecting. maybe you’re right, this might not be the place for you
maybe, fuck you
you really just need to read more man, haha book makes intelligence go brrrr
i don't think you understand the concept of the 'go brrr' meme
the human concept of go brrr or the non-human concept go brrr?
the entire concept. humans don't make concept, logic exists despite human beings. if you think a human made one log and one log make two logs you're part of the problem.
this just in, “humans don’t make concepts.” so i guess the concepts are just out there floating in space waiting to be found, not created, by humans. you neo-platonist nerd
yes... they are. i'm sorry you can't understand that and have to resort to throwing out insults over it.
how are you a marxist if you’re not a materialist lmfao. are you literally an idealist
i don't resort to others making up an ideology for me. i just think things through.
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ideology =/= philosophic standpoint or even political standpoint
ideology is the lease through which you unconsciously view the world. it’s literally like integral to your experience that you experience things ideologically. read zizek when you’re done with kant
you first statement is entirely wrong. an ideology is a philosophic standpoint that should not contradict a political standpoint that you hold.
nah just read zizek then you’ll understand what i mean
nah, i'll just inform you of real world concepts and not have to resort to saying "read ____"
it would take too long an too much effort to understand. if you want to know the work i’m referencing it’s “the sublime object of ideology”
jesus christ, learn to put your fucking ideas into words or you obviously don't understand them mother fucker.
i did you just don’t agree with me and so i don’t want to have to give you a proof which would require much more length than me just giving you my idea as i’ve already done
if you already did, they didn't seem to provide any knowledge that contradicts the points i've voiced. so if you can't back them up then all you've got is some guys name.
no i said what i thought ideology to be and you disagreed, in order for me to convince you we would have to have a long dialogue that i don’t desire having with you because you don’t have the background knowledge to make it worthwhile. it would literally just be me explains the sublime object of ideology to you, and that’s not something i care to do
lol define the word sublime.
it’s not really a theoretically significant term to be honest. i’d imagine zizek is using it to convey the sense that ideology isn’t literally a direct object of our senses but is instead the way in which objects are configured within our senses. again it’s not really a technical term though.
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then get rid of the fucking numbers all together.
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okay so what is your defense of keeping them if it's a bad idea to present the fact that those who would down vote something/have been down voted have some kind of flawed ideology? why have a fucking currency here?
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flawed ideologies lead to a fuckton of bad consequences. to me, that shit could be defined as pathetic. my ideology can definitely be gauged with fucking tangible numbers if the ideologies being compared are "humans suck" and "humans are the most amazing thing ever."
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i'm mad that people pretend that by participating in capitalism that they are exempt because they know it's horrible.
Now make peace with that somewhere else because you're not going to be changing anything about your complaint the way things are going.
for sure, that doesn't make any of these fuckers any less hypocritical and i'll not be faulted for pointing it out
fwiw I think it's your fault things are going poorly.
eat shit
upvotes arent currency they are non-exchangeable and hold no monetary value bro
it's not about monetary value, value in itself is assigned by humans. what the fuck is the point of the fucking number then?
definitely not to exchange as a currency that’s for sure
oh wait does that make value a human concept then wink wink, maybe you do know some kant and wittgenstein
value as a fucking number.
you should research metaphysical materialism, you might find it more coherent than what ever your “ideology,” as you say, is now
"you should research" / "i can't put it into words."
nah man i’m trying to point you in the right direction so you can have fruitful studies. you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. it would be useless for me to try to explain something to you given the state of our relations. you would just be contrarian bc the hostilities we’be already exchanged. therefore the only thing i can do is try and point in the right direction.
you can't even lead a fucking horse to water if you all you've got is a sign that says " go to water. "
that would be a great counterpoint if all i told you to do was to read theory vaguely, i’ve actually pointed to specific works or watering holes so to speak.
you don't understand what you're fucking saying ory ou'd be able to say it. i don't have to depend on other peoples interpretations of shit to talk to you. to me all you're saying is that you have a vague idea of someone smarter than you's ideology, but can't put it into words for yourself because you don't understand it.
edit: they may not even be smarter than you, but you've already subscribed to it, so i'm not talking to you at all, now i'm talking to someone else who isn't even here to argue the fucking merits of the argument they put out a long time ago before you even decided to use their argument against this conversation.
no man i’m saying that it would be a waste of both of our time if i tried to explain zizek to you when you could just go to the primary source itself and not have to deal with me. secondary sources are always going to be worse.
secondary sources aren't equivalent to your implementation of an argument in a conversation.
i didn’t employ their argument i employed their definition and when you asked me to prove that that was the proper definition i said no go read it for yourself because i’m tired of discussing with someone as contrarian as yourself. i wasn’t even trying to prove kant or zizek to you, i just was using their concepts in my parlance and you disagreed with the definitions. it’s not my duty to explain the critique of pure reason to anyone who questions my usage of the term perspective.
i can say hey i’m operating off a definition that has a proof in this book if you care enough to look at it. i didn’t log on today to write three book reports for people too lazy to read themselves.
you've had no real evidence to contradict anything i've said and put the fucking blame on philosophers, whose fucking pivots you can't even properly elaborate on.
my point wasn’t that your evidence was wrong, my point was that your evidence was unrelated to the point that you’re making. you said humans did climate change, yeah i agree. then you said that is evidence for the fact that humans are net negative, that i disagree with.
we aren’t disagreeing based on evidence, we disagree on whether or not the evidence could even be linked to the claim you’re making.
mass extinction is somehow unrelated to "humans being the greatest thing ever" how exactly?
yeah we disagree on what criteria by which to evaluate human worth. i don’t think that our causation of climate change is the end all be all determinate factor in our species worth-as-species.
'climate change' is a nice umbrella term for global extinction of thousands and thousands of species. you could be a fucking political strategist.
yeah and i don’t think that our causing of thousands of thousands of other species to die off is the end all be all to our species worth-as-species. can you say anything that isn’t poised for shock value to get me to change my mind?
thanks btw im trying
so if we kill them all and have to sustain ourselves on cannibalisms, but still survive that won't effect our species worth-as-species to you. okay, well i guess our criteria is just vastly different.
admittedly that is poised for shock value, maybe you should take the exact declaration that i'm making many steps before that as a take on our worth as a species, but you've already admitted to your apathy of our effect on other life forms...
okay i’ll concede it is related to our species worth-as-species but it isn’t the end all be all. there are other factors entirely unrelated to our caused extinction that contribute to the value of our species.
and in your shock value example i would still stand my point. this is because it would have likely been the capitalist elite’s mode of production which caused the extinction, not our species as whole. and as such it is the capitalist mode of production to be condemned not the human species. i mean think about it, we existed in semi-harmony with nature for quite sometime until the market forces of capitalism started raping the earth. Humans existed before capitalism and capitalism is causing climate change not just ‘human nature’ as some would say.
we have a non zero percentage of fault despite the fact that capitalism is garbage.
only in the sense that we allow capitalism to continue yeah, but not because we are humans.
it isn’t the simple fact that we are humans that makes us complicit in climate change; it is literally our active complacency in capitalism that makes us thus complicit in climate change too.
we are guilty by virtue of being in capitalism and not stopping it, but we are not guilty by virtue of simply being human.
you just argued that concepts dont' exist without us becaust kant but now all of a sudden it's solely capitalisms fault... cmon mother fucker.
can you explain the contradiction there? i don’t quite see it. also i don’t know what you mean by solely capitalism’s fault. i said that if we are guilty as a species it is because our species is active in capitalism. i’m denying that we are guilty by virtue of being human. we are guilty by virtue of being a capitalist species.
so what is guilt if there is nothing outside the human perspective?
it’s a human emotion often abstracted out to mean responsible for an action.
well, we as a species are fucking absolutely responsible for it.
yeah i agree, i’m just saying that i don’t think that justifies the leap to saying that in general human species worth-as-species is negative.
okay, well... and you're gonna get a kick out of this, since you've been defending it the whole time... what have we done that's positive then?
we have demonstrated the potential to build socialism and destroy capitalism. if it comes to pass that the human species cannot defeat capitalism, then you’ll find me right next to you on your side in this debate.
oh really? and what socialist country do we have that demonstrates this?
are you literally doing the socialism in what country shtick? my god are you just straight up a reactionary? i didn’t think i would have to straight up prove to you that socialism was possible. i guess assumed since we were both on this forum we would at least agree that capitalism isn’t that last stage of human development.
here goes nothing i guess, the country of vietnam demonstrates the possibility of 1) defeating the martial forces of capitalism in battle, and 2) the various possiblities of managing an anti-capitalist economy. this isn’t to say that they are a model state to follow. it is only to say that they demonstrated the potential and still are.
socialism might be possible, but we ain't ther eyet and it ain't a defense for mankind. capitalism might be the fucking last stage of human development if climate change fucking kills us all.
there's tons of potential for socialism, but just because a couple people are fucking cool doesn't fucking absolve us as a species. you coulda said cuba too, or the ussr in it's prime, or china under mao too, but as a whole most countries ain't doing okay.
okay so do you understand why i still see path forward ethically for our species through the potential development of socialism, even if it is a path of redemption from innumerable sins as you say
yeah, because you've watched a lotta under dog stories.
I mean capitalism was once considered an underdog mode of production compared to the power of the church and the feudal nobility. we have changed modes of production before and can do it again. in fact every change in the mode of production that has ever happened could be framed as “an underdog story.” this is because the dominant mode must fall before the incipient one comes about.
dude capitalism is just an extension of a system of cruelty that has been there the entire fucking time.
so you don’t think capitalism is a mode of production that acutely grew out of the mercantile economies of the early colonial powers? i mean obviously the system of private property has been there “the entire fucking time” as you say, but capitalism has certainly not been.
no, as i said capitalism has been there the entire time. they change the name but it means a ruling class exploiting the poor.
so what’s the difference between capitalism and feudalism then? you’re literally doing a “capitalism realism” right now wherein all economic systems and possibilities outside of capitalism are either not considered or just considered a different capitalism.
there is no tangible difference. it's have nots being oppressed by a ruling class.
marxism, socialism, autonomy, and anarchy are theonly systems that sustain the people.
okay there is definitely a tangible difference between fuedal modes of production and capitalist modes of production. namely, the advent of wage labor and destruction of the guilds. also the commercialization of agriculture. google the enclosure movement from england. basically the landlords kicked the peasants off the land and now they had to come back as wage laborers in order to work the same land they previously lived on. it literally caused a civil war which resulted in the institutional power of the bourgeoisie over the royal aristocracy in england. same thing happens in france and russia roughly prior to their revolutions. the transition from fuedalism to capitalism has unbounded scholarly works attributed to it. in this case the evidence is on my side unless you refuse to change your definition of capitalism as that system which has rulers and ruled.
if capitalism and feudalism were the same then why did capitalists start revolutions against feudal powers? if they were the same then that would be nonsensical.
because they weren't the ruling class. if the 'revolution' still ends up with different classes of people it is fundamentally the same.
feudalism and capitalism can both be hierarchal without them having no tangible difference. here is some evidence i found quite quickly. can find more too if you want. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-1-349-17745-5_2
also a tangible difference you seem to care about is that capitalism has caused mass extinction and feudalism didnt
the difference between feudalism and capitalism and the effect on mass extinction is negligible when you incorporate modern technology and fossil fuels, which would inarguably occur similarly provided that there was a lower class to exploit and an upper class in charge of resources.
the incorporation of fossil fuels and modern technology is literally a result of capitalism what are you talking about. you can’t just say what if the feudal lords had access to the same things. they didn’t because they were not capitalist and had not invested in developing such tech to generate profit.
not at all dude. maybe the speed at which it occured, but you're giving way too much credit to capitalism.
the advent of technology is not an invention of capitalism, but of eventual progress. i shouldn't have to argue this point to someone trying to speak up for the moral existence of human beings.
tesla and einstein were fucking socialists. the shit didn't happen because they wanted to make a profit, it may have created a motif to drive it, but it would have happened, probably under b etter circumstances, eventually anyway.
i’m not saying technological development under capitalism is only done be capitalists. i’m saying that the specific technologies you are referring to that killed the planet were technologies developed and funded by capitalist firms trying to increase profit. and to say what if the fuedal lords had the same tech, that’s just literally nonsense. it’s a historical argument based on development of the forces of production, you can’t just transport technologies throughout history independent of the modes of production that produce them to make a point.
the systems remain the same. a small ruling class that exploits a larger class of workers to maintain their standard of living.
you've not presented anything that presents an argument against this.
I’m not disagreeing that when you frame it that broadly the system didn’t change, that’s why we need communism. Specifically because the aspect you are talking about didn’t change. but various other important aspects did change from feudalism to capitalism and that’s why they are different modes of production. just like how slavery is a different mode of production from both feudalism and capitalism. these changes are notable and much scholarship has been written about them, like the one i linked you.
also on an unrelated note, i genuinely apologize for insulting you. it was wrong and completely unrelated to the ideas we were discussing. and as you continue to put effort into this conversation i feel more and more bad about the way in which i acted when it began. i respect your insistence on your point of view and your will to argue for it.
capitalism and slavery didn't really have 'different' modes of production, just different ways by which they decided the working class.
people making 7 dollars an hour, many still people of color and illegal immigrants in the usa, working two jobs to maintain a living are on par with slaves.
the system didn't change much it just made it more pc. anything that pretends it's not the same is liberal revisionism.
have you actually read marx? not trying to be an ass but this is like marxism 101. there exists different modes of production sorry to break it to you. i honestly feel like you’re just trolling me at this point or you just literally don’t know.
(hint those different ways they decide the working class literally are the different modes of production)
functionally they're the same.
you’re literally willfully ignoring substantial differences between slavery feudalism and capitalism just so you can paint all of them as capitalism. if you wanted to say they all were the same you could say they all were hierarchal, but no you say they are all just capitalism. your mind has been poisoned by capitalist ideology so throughly that you can’t even recognize a mode of production distinct from it. from within the cave of the the capitalist ideology, everything outside just looks like capitalism too. it’s meant to make you feel like there’s no other alternative and that capitalism is the natural progression of human economics rather than the specific ideology of a ruling class that siezed state power in the 17th century
it's not a progression. it's a routine.
okay so you’re just a troll, noted.
your'e just a dumb stupid mother fucker.
the crowd disagrees
lol dfending majority rules haha. point proven.
Praise be, the spirit of Kirbyoto lives on.
I agree, the point of quantifying human thought is to control it from the top down. The fact that chapeaux dot cat has voting despite it reenforcing the kind of hierarchies socialists fight so hard against proves Marx's thesis that "the lower phase of communism ... [will be] stamped with the mark of the old."
No, no buddy, fuck you
No. fuck you and everyone who thinks like you.
What slur
he's calling me a misanthropist for merely saying that humans aren't the 'most amazing thing on the fucking planet.'
First of all the word is misanthrope, not misanthropist.
Secondly that isn't a slur dipshit
they're using it as a slur asshole
Insult and slur are not interchangeable
Shut the fuck up you dumb piece of shit
eat shit mother fucker
u mad
u fucking stupid
Lmao
Reminds me of /r/anarchism circa 2015
I've seen what capitalism has done to the Earth. I've seen what billionaires do. Humans are not capitalism. Humans are not the handful of billionaires who control us. That you can't even grasp that shows how deeply entrenched you are in ideology. Either go read a book that isn't Harry Potter, or leave us the fuck alone while we do more than rot and die in obese bliss.
well... capitalism didn't exist before humans. guess what did? communism.
communism didn’t exist before humans what the fuck haha, predators totally be taking the surplus value of producers and prey
communism still has carnivores bro.
my point is that nature can’t possibly be conceived as communism bc it’s literally free market hunting with the apex predators taking all the surplus value of the producers of energy not bc carnivores exist
never heard of a pack huh
never heard of a pack of bourgeoisie? the state? you’re referring to a pack of predators or herbivores which still steal surplus value from plants
that's not how pack mentality works.
you must be a special kind of “something not ableist”
so we've gotten to thep point where you feel can you insult me over and over again and then delete it and repeat it again and again , when i'm pointing out fucking facts to you. go fuck yourself dude. literally eat shit.
why would i eat shit when i can eat steak, live is good you should enjoy it kid slides boomer glasses on
Alright as much of an angry silly exchange this has been between you and paulwall it's been interesting to me. He's being a smug dumbass about it but I still agree with the point that the entire framing of this seems nonsensical to me. You can't apply purely human concept that are extremely contextual to those things. You can't say any of those things existed "before humans", it's not that nothing existed before humans, it's that our perception of things and the words and concepts we use are entirely limited to us and extrapolating them to other things in that way seems silly and ends up back into anthropo-centrism to me.
I'm not going into the "humans are special" because of language or whatever else because I don't know enough about it and it's a pointless argument because it doesn't matter to this. In fact the argument itself always ends up being anthropocentric to me, whether it's to say "other animals are not as smart/special as us" OR to say "other animals are as smart/special as us". It's applying our own extremely contextual words and concepts on things non-human, those other things don't give a fuck what words we use, no matter how smart they are. They exist outside of how we talk about them or how we think about them.
Whatever other animals can/do think and feel doesn't matter here, this kind of take still seems nihilistic and anthropo-centric. The whole idea of humans having a "good or bad" impact on earth is within a human context, the concept of earth is within a human context. If you end saying that "humanity" is "bad" and should end, then yea to me that's nihilistic, misanthropic (not that that makes it or you bad because of it that's just how I would define it), but more importantly it's pointless. It's an answer to a nonsensical question. It doesn't matter, it's not productive and it seems very self-centered.
This is kinda hard to talk about because it's not even a very tangible or materialistic topic, it's mostly philosophical, so sorry if my thoughts aren't very clear.
it's definitely hard to talk about, you will make no friends. but those things definitely exited 'before humans.'
i just don't even understand how any of this is debatable. you'd think that since we invented the fucking word 'language' that the idea is foreign throughout other species.
Missed my point, but I don't really know where to go from there, so I don't think I'll keep the convo going. It was interesting though!
this shit is on the level of 'animals can't feel pain' because they don't have the fucking words.
There can be dumb takes on here sometimes like anywhere else, but comparing us to stupidpol is false equivalency.
It is, Stupidpol are utter idiots, like, honestly I’m not into “wokeness” so if anything I’m genuinely viscerally disgusted by how ignorant the stupidpol crowd are. The comparison wasn’t actually to stupidpol but to leftypol.
Sorry, misunderstood.
fuuuuucking stoooooop for god sake's.
i'm sorry, humans are great. let's just keep this whole thing we've been doing going and pat ourselves on the back, because everything's just gonna be great. :D
Learn to love yourself and others; where there's pain there's also a possibility for healing. The world can be changed, our future will be difficult but the only reason it might be a horrible nightmare is because of Capitalism and the ruling by the oppressors. Your expression of self-defeat says more about you than about the future. Things can change, humans and society can change, old systems can be overthrown. This is a place for comrades, if you don't think the world can change for the better, then what the fuck are you even doing here?
the idea that "Human beings are the most amazing thing ever, and we do what we do because we believe that our potential must be pursued to its fullest extent" does not encourage a change in the system. if you encourage this mind set what the ufck are YOU doing here?
Actually from Marx who analyzes labor and declares it integral to the self-worth and innate drive by human beings, doing and working is as human as anything else. The question is what system do we operate under? If we do things for others and only a few people benefit then it is the system that's flawed.
I asked you a question. You are being a sourpuss and downright unlikeable person. The world sucks now, but it can change. If you think nothing will change, then you are a sectarian embracing the doom to put other people down. And it fucking sucks.
you think sectarian means anything that contradicts your fucking bubble. it doesn't.
You are extremely predictable and incredibly fucking boring. I hope you realize your shit-attitude does not make you unique, and you are amongst comrades who, somehow, want to make the world a better place. You can drop the hard-ass act.
there is nothing inevitable, fortune, or fate.
me pointing out that humans ain't the most amazing thing in the world doesn't give you the right to lump me into some category worth of disdain and allow you the right to berate me.
you calling me 'predictable', 'fucking boring' and saying i have a 'shit -attitude' is fucking toxic, based on me taking issue with the statement "Human beings are the most amazing thing ever, and we do what we do because we believe that our potential must be pursued to its fullest extent"
sorry, that's completely bullshit. look up the definition of sectarian before you go throwing it around.
This is barely any different from the human nature argument people use against communism. You look at human behavior under current conditions, and conclude "humans fucking suck." Yeah, everyone on this site can plainly see the ways that humans have destroyed the earth, made it unlivable even for ourselves, and are often generally shitty. But to see that and conclude that it must be an essential characteristic of the human race is reactionary. You need to ask WHY people are this way. Think materially comrade. And sure, many people are irredeemable at this point. That's not something to be forgiven, but it is something to be understood. Humans aren't born shitty, humans are made to be shitty.
the odds are that we simply don't have the time or means or will as a whole to redeem ourselves. it's not an argument that we shouldn't or can't, it's that we as a whole haven't and likely won't.
Ok if you're arguing that we can't get out of our current situation, I'm not going to argue with you there. I mean, I don't really agree but I will agree that things do feel hopeless and it is not clear how we will actually get out of the current crisis. So like, maybe we won't escape our current crisis and carve out a future for the species. But whose fault is that? Saying humans suck, humans are a mistake, throwing the species as a whole under the bus, obscures the historical and sociological circumstances that cause humans to "suck," and obscures the fact that the current crisis was not brought upon equally by all humans, but by certain classes of humans. One must understand why and how we got into our current situation, and it's not because humanity essentially "sucks."
We confront the attitude that humanity is essentially evil and a virus on a daily basis. People do suck, but to end thought there instead of challenging these essentialist ideas props up the attitude many people have that nothing can be done nor could ever have been done about our situation, and that it was always inevitable.
the intent isn't to dissuade people from organization or to increase apathy. fault the negative nature if you must, but it's no less conducive to the possibility of changing a situation than claiming that people are the most amazing thing in the universe, especially considering how people have used that idea to justify a lot of the heinous shit that human beings do.
That statement of humans being the greatest thing ever is in the context of a thread complaining about people using essentialist arguments to portray humans as essentially evil and use that to support not trying to change our situation. By saying humans are the greatest thing ever, you know I don't the person's exact intentions above, but by saying that one is countering these essentialist ideas and saying that no a better world is possible, humans can be better if we can just change material conditions, humans do not necessarily need to act the way we do under capitalism. Maybe humans are not literally the greatest thing ever, but it is a statement portraying humans as Subjects who are able to shape history. By going the opposite way and concluding that, no, humans actually do suck, you are precluding even the possibility of a better world, and any possibility that humans could act in any way different from today. It is a fatalistic position which precludes any action. I mean, yeah, recognize that humans have the capacity for evil and to suck and we're not perfect, but don't condemn us as mistakes who can never do better.