I know things are arguably better now than they ever have been before. That doesn't mean things can't be vastly better. "End of history" my ass. We've still got a long way to go. In some regards I think we've even regressed- the historian Yuval Noah Harari outlines in his book Sapiens that hunter-gatherers enjoyed many things modern humans don't: a more egalitarian structure, an abundance of leisure time, a tight-knit community with strong social ties. I'm no anarcho-primitivist, and I think technology and science have immense emancipatory potential for the human race. But for all our high-tech fancy gadgets and gizmos we sure operate under some primitive, even barbaric institutions. No civil society should have citizens struggling to meet their basic needs. No civil society should be predicated on the inherently coercive paradigm of "work or starve". What's the point of living in a society if not to harness the collective power of its citizens to uplift them all? We are squandering our potential.

  • VeganXenofeminist [comrade/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Right on. I think that one of the more important concepts that we can spread is that tech is simply an amplifier. It will make achieving our goals easier, but if our goals are shit, better tech will just make things shitty even faster.

    Absolutely. Technology is just a tool, it is our political organization that determines how it's used/distributed. Just look at the Texas power outage. People deprived of an essential utility when they didn't have to be, because the people who control the resources would rather power empty corporate offices than homes.

    Automation seems a useful way to reach people about this: “Hey everyone, I developed a robot to automate your jobs!”

    Indeed, under capitalism, technology doesn't exist to serve human need. Capitalism is a parasitic, morally repugnant system.

    Also, I guess he probably never actually said it but, a quote you may enjoy:

    Where's the lie? I raise you a quote from Dostoyevsky in return:

    The only gain of civilisation for mankind is the greater capacity for variety of sensations–and absolutely nothing more. And through the development of this many-sidedness man may come to finding enjoyment in bloodshed. In fact, this has already happened to him. Have you noticed that it is the most civilised gentlemen who have been the subtlest slaughterers, to whom the Attilas and Stenka Razins could not hold a candle, and if they are not so conspicuous as the Attilas and Stenka Razins it is simply because they are so often met with, are so ordinary and have become so familiar to us. In any case civilisation has made mankind if not more bloodthirsty, at least more vilely, more loathsomely bloodthirsty. In old days he saw justice in bloodshed and with his conscience at peace exterminated those he thought proper. Now we do think bloodshed abominable and yet we engage in this abomination, and with more energy than ever. Which is worse? Decide that for yourselves.