Freedom & Modern Systems of Control

[Sakkadelic]

It’s more likely that what we’re seeing isn’t the end, it’s just another messy iteration of a evolving system.

I tend to believe this too, even if collapse happens, some people will take advantage of it and drive us in a direction that serve their purposes and achieve another phase of temporary but necessary stability. collapse will happen in some places, and collapse in one particular place could bring benefits to the rest of the world, so I'm looking forward for that moment, there is a chance it might take us all down with it but I believe it's unlikely. the global system is failing, most glaringly on the moral level, and maybe an alternative would be there just in time.

just before the latest phase of violence began in my home region, I was reading 2 books both novel/history and I came to a realization that many have come to before, that wars are one of the constant things since civilization began so it didn't feel very shocking when the war began. the wars of the past were maybe more brutal and face to face but the killing now is much more humiliating. maybe that's one way of coping, knowing that it's been like that forever.

What’s actually happening is that change is happening faster than most people can integrate it, socially, psychologically, existentially.

that's also an important point. and it's shocking how much the world can absorb, so perhaps we are still a long way from collapse.
so many unimaginably cruel things happened and still happening in this war, every week something so extreme happens that it seems impossible for things to get worse let alone stay the same. and every week it passes like nothing and another more horrible thing happens and so on. I don't believe this can go on indefinitely but at this point we have become desensitized. is that another form of forced coping?

We have no realistic idea how hellish humanity would be if there were no consequences for any action. That state is so far in the past, we dont even have accurate history.

I think you're just not looking, it is happening now right in front of our eyes and it's so easy to see, states and people acting with complete impunity and doing the worst imaginable and unimaginable crimes and the world not moving a finger. people in the west have this idea that history ended and the bad things of the past are over, wars, colonization, slavery, imperialism... it's still all happening in different forms and in the same forms in less visible places.

I bring up the war because that is my current uncomfortable reality and that's the lens from which I see the world now, but I think it is one of the extreme manifestations of the topics we're discussing.

my ultimate way of coping is a thought many who've done dmt are familiar with. that the world is at best only half real. the movie is rolling and we just have to sit through it till the end. it's not the kind of thought that is helpful in the middle of the battle but rather at the end of the day to help you go to sleep.

 

[fink]

You're right my friend. Although these consequence free atrocities are not perpetrated directly by the average human. The average human still lives a life governed by consequence.

Thankfully.

Because I've witnessed some really awful arseholes that are beyond any rational reasoning in virtual, consequence free worlds.

It only takes one. The whole village of beautiful souls can be destroyed by just one.

 

[northape]

I think you're just not looking, it is happening now right in front of our eyes and it's so easy to see, states and people acting with complete impunity and doing the worst imaginable and unimaginable crimes and the world not moving a finger. people in the west have this idea that history ended and the bad things of the past are over, wars, colonization, slavery, imperialism... it's still all happening in different forms and in the same forms in less visible places.

I agree with you here. See what's happening in the Middle East or in Ukraine, and it's just the tip of an iceberg. I don't follow any of it for my own sanity.
The last time I checked, someone was openly selling organs from the Ukrainian war zone on the Darknet with home delivery in Germany. That's just sick.
You can see drone killings on Instagram if you want. There are more slaves now than ever before. As a civilization, we're in a rut

Anyone who prays for this world should be cherished. I doubt that we can fix it with human ingenuity; some higher intervention is needed.

 

[fink]

We cannot fix natural human behaviour. We can only eliminate threats to our personal way of life.

If the good are not capable of merciless action, the bad will forever dominate. The good are tainted by the need to compete with the bad.

The balance scales tip one way or another on a long wavelength. So perhaps we must simply endure to get to the brighter time rather than think we have any ability to influence the cycle.


Edit: as Varallo stated, this time now does seem like the best time to live as far back as anyone can remember. I agree with that completely.

So maybe we are just too entitled when we feel crushed by humanity. Maybe we have nothing so terrible as, for example, the Catholic Inquisition, to compare our current existence to?

 

[northape]

 

[Varallo]

Because it's not an empirical question to begin with. It can be approached empirically once you decide what you will consider good, bad and by what proportion. So yes, it won't hold up empirically if average material comfort and average health are the measure taken (at least for now). However, what kind of life and society should we aspire to is not an empirical question, and thus can't be empirically disproven.

I don’t agree with this, because I think empirical evidence does shape our values, often quite directly. In many cases, what we value is tied to the facts we know. We have indicators for what people need to live well, what contributes to human flourishing, and what kinds of systems tend to support those things. So to say that this can’t be approached empirically, or that it’s all just a matter of opinion, doesn’t really do it for me.

Even when people frame something as a values disagreement, those values usually rest on assumptions that can be tested. If someone says “this system is better” or “this policy is more just,” there are often implicit claims in there, about outcomes, human behavior, long-term sustainability, that are empirically assessable. If the facts don’t support those assumptions, then the argument weakens.

So no, I wouldn’t accept the idea that it’s simply a difference of opinion, because a lot of our values are actually based on what we believe to be true about the world.

But one could say that human civilization will adapt to all the changes, that we cannot know the outcome of the current process, that this is just another messy iteration in the development of humanity. But that is a statement/view of faith. When it comes to predicting complex systems, we all operate from our worldviews, from faith.

I think that uncertainty about predicting outcomes of complex systems doesn’t reduce decisions to “faith”, there is still a difference between belief without evidence, and probabilistic reasoning under uncertainty.

So maybe we are just too entitled when we feel crushed by humanity. Maybe we have nothing so terrible as, for example, the Catholic Inquisition, to compare our current existence to?

According to my grandmother we are all spoiled kids that can’t decide what they want for their birthdays, while forgetting that the people who they invite make the party .

 

[fink]

Amendment: this is the best time to live for some of us. As Sakkadelic has stated there are horrors apparent right now in some parts of the world.

 

[dithyramb]

I think that uncertainty about predicting outcomes of complex systems doesn’t reduce decisions to “faith”, there is still a difference between belief without evidence, and probabilistic reasoning under uncertainty.


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Its rare for me to come across a person who believes humanity is doing fine. So let me understand your viewpoint. Are you saying that there is evidence that humanity will overcome climate change, mass extinction, ecological collapse etc? Or are you saying that there is evidence that humanity can do well despite global ecological collapse, and what matters is humanity alone? Besides that, from where did you get your evidence that poverty has reduced worldwide? I don't know about every country, but I know that my country and it's neighbors to the east have been going down the drain economically, as has been the daddy US, and Germany. Also we are at the pinnacle of unequal distribution of wealth as far as I know.

 

[CosmicRiver]

The problem with industrial agriculture is that it's based on mass fertilizer use and mechanization. The plants are mostly an intermediate step to convert energy in oil into energy in food. It's not possible to do that without the rest of the techno industrial system.

And world population is so high that even consuming less resources industrial agriculture would still be necessary to produce enough food.

With a much smaller population yes, it's perfectly possible to survive without industrial agriculture, and even with agriculture at all. Humans have done so for hundreds of thousands of years.

It seems that right now we use approximately twice the amount of the Earth's resources. I know this is a simplification and doesn't account for the fact that many of them are not renewable. Anyway picture all the energy that humanity produces and all the raw materials that it uses, to produce tonnes of things. I mean it's incredible to me that we're using only 2 Earths. What if everything that is not strictly necessary wouldn't be produced? I can't picture a society without the techno-industrial system. Most of us would not survive. What I'm asking myself lately is if that system can be keeped without the current negative implications if we'd keep only strictly necessary goods and services.

Reality is, we have lower global poverty, longer life expectancy, better access to healthcare, information, etc. These things don’t make some current negative trends good, but the the idea that we’re just sliding linearly into dystopia is simply wrong.

You raise valid points but I don't think that your conclusion is necessarily right.
We live in a world where most multinational corporations have economic growth as their only goal. Most of our material goods are produced with slave labor and damaging ecosystems. All of this is considered completely normal and justified and even endorsed by governments. There is even a parallel justice system for corporations as abstract entities that can only receive fines. I won't go into detail because every industry has its set of damaging practices.
I don't doubt that those things are improving in some countries but in the west they may even start to get worse if they haven't already because of emerging health issues and healthcare policies i won't get into because it would get into politics.

That state seems to only have existed in the imagination of 18th century philosophers and movie directors. In fact smaller communities are often criticized for constraining the individual too much.

I think reality is and has been much more in line with what @CosmicRiver pointed out: most people enjoy contributing to their community. The problem is that said communities have gone from a material and biological reality of daily life to an abstraction. When all your neighbors are strangers, fear appears.

I agree. I'm not saying that an anarchist society would work worldwide, but just by living in a small neighborhood or going to self-governed spaces it can be seen that laws aren't the main reason why people don't hurt each other.
What happens in war zones and similar situations IMO is not actually human nature. We all know how we act when we are stressed for example: our mental health deteriorates. I think that in those situations what happens is basically that but a thousand times more intense. In those situations often empathy, that is a natural human quality, shuts off as a psychological defense mechanism.

 

[blig-blug]

I don’t agree with this, because I think empirical evidence does shape our values, often quite directly. In many cases, what we value is tied to the facts we know. We have indicators for what people need to live well, what contributes to human flourishing, and what kinds of systems tend to support those things. So to say that this can’t be approached empirically, or that it’s all just a matter of opinion, doesn’t really do it for me.

Even when people frame something as a values disagreement, those values usually rest on assumptions that can be tested. If someone says “this system is better” or “this policy is more just,” there are often implicit claims in there, about outcomes, human behavior, long-term sustainability, that are empirically assessable. If the facts don’t support those assumptions, then the argument weakens.

Yes, that's why I said that "It can be approached empirically once you decide what you will consider good, bad and by what proportion". I don't think it's a mater of opinion, I think it's ultimately linked to human nature. But there are many distorting factors on human preferences and not a wide agreement. So it's necessary to clarify that question first before anything can be proven or disproven.

But that discussion has to be made explicit. If you think about it, your post stated a series of positive facts and considered that to disprove the notion that the situation overall is getting worse for human beings. That reasoning, as presented, implies that those factors (lifespan, health) are terminal values that override anything else, as if they weren't terminal it would have been necessary to talk about different factors too in order to disprove the notion that the situation is worsening. The right way to go about it IMO would be to explicitly argue for this instead, if that's what you think.

Do you believe that access to material goods, life expectancy, and healthcare are terminal goods? I don't. I think at a social scale they are important and something to be pursued, but only in a context where a meaningful life is possible, and where small human communities preserve their autonomy as they have for hundreds of millennia (in the line of the "to be governed" Proudhon quotation that was posted above). A long, healthy, life with riches is worthless if it's not meaningful. I think almost every spiritual tradition agrees on that, that's evidence too.

Given that we're talking about grandmothers, I will talk about what my grandmother has told me. She grew up in the aftermath of the Civil War here, in a country that was under a dictatorship, economically isolated, with a lot of poverty that was made much worse by the war. They had no running water, no electricity, no tractors or cars. The plow they used was the Roman plow, which had been obsolete since the Middle Ages. The "doctor" lived far away and was actually a veterinarian. However, she says that people were much happier because they were always together, helping each other. People used to sing and dance together as soon as they had no job to do. The door in every house was always open, if you wanted to visit or talk to someone there you just walked in. They didn't have much but were never hungry, as they were highly self-sufficient and had even a little surplus to sell.
So it sounds like even such harsh material living conditions (and social in some respects, there was a lot of fear about the dictatorship) were conductive to much more satisfying and meaningful lives than our current predicament.

 

[northape]

What's up with DMT-Nexus wiki? Why is it not being maintained?

Most pages are unaltered for 10 years. What the heck happened? Where did everyone go? Was it replaced or something? Please explain.

forum.dmt-nexus.me

The topic of negativity and its role in our lives has come up again, so I wanted to share some thoughts on it.
As many may know, I struggled with negativity for years, and several of @Skr9's ideas resonated deeply with me.

I believe we're on the threshold of a new world. Some Hindu scholars believe the Kali Yuga ended this past March, marking a transitional period that will bring about significant global changes. Even from a modern perspective, AI is set to transform our lives and what we consider normal, while ecological collapse seems imminent.
Our soil is depleted, the climate is changing, and species are dying out constantly.

However, it's crucial to understand that we are not nearing the end of Earth or life itself - that's not even on the agenda. The only end in sight is for ourselves. Civilizations, despite their apparent strength, are incredibly fragile and can easily collapse, and we are very close to our own.

The time has come for rapid innovation, the collapse of old beliefs, and a renewed faith in the future. We can subscribe to our old ways and watch everything crumble, living a depressing, end-of-days life. Or, we can choose an optimistic outlook with a wider perspective. The Earth is gracious and will provide for us until the end, like a loving mother. As any mother, all she wants is for her children to be happy, and we owe it to her and ourselves. Every single human being is part of both the problem and the solution. It doesn't matter how much you do for this brighter future; as long as you do at least something, maintain a positive attitude, and pass it forward, all will be well.

Living in the comfort and safety of Western societies, we struggle with self-created problems. While this world can be harsh and wild, we have control over our attitude toward it. What do you want to leave behind? What kind of life do you want to live now? Maybe it's time to step out of our little caves and embrace humanity.

Be wise, but also keep your Heart open.
What's the worst possible outcome? Death? We're all going to die anyway.
How you live is far more important

 

[doubledog]

Each generation has its own apocalypse, it seems that it's mainly mental phenomenon to believe in incoming doom. I would say that our minds play tricks on us with this feeling, most likely to allow us to feel important and possibly also to avoid dissapointment in the future.

It's so repetitive in the history that it's quite amazing how it still could have such strenght and relevance.

What is much more interesting is what happens "when prophecy fails". There is no sobering moment, nobody publicly apologize for fearmongering, nobody is embarassed, simply old apocalypse is immediately replaced with new one.
Do anybody remember "peak oil theory" from 20 years ago?

Imo in 2050, there will be totally different belief in some other apocalypse and everybody will be totally serious about that.

Nobody knows what future will bring to us.

 

[rkba]

Nobody knows what future will bring to us.

Except more stories, that's surely almost 99.6481% guaranteed.

 

[TheGreenPhantom]

I think it's easy to feel like life is getting away from you if you're a city dweller, and all you have around you are buildings, ads, cars and the internet. This man-made bubble shields you from the earth; city dwellers might as well live on the moon or a space station. Even the Bible has its tales of doom and gloom; this is just a projection of how the writer feels about the people they inhabit space with.

When you live in the countryside, the sky is blue and the trees are green. The the ground below you is brown and fertile. You have your rhythm and purpose between them. The sun rises and the moon has its cycles. I look out my window and see the woods and train tracks, hi-rise apartment buildings and ancient blue mountains in the distance. All is well.

Life is like a Corona Beer commercial: change your latitude.

 

[dithyramb]

A lot of it is the subconscious feeling that this way of life is not "the way it should be" (honoring connection and unity with earth and the web of life) and (therefore) not sustainable, cannot continue like this for generations. And not knowing that there are better, healthier possibilities for living or human existence, an unconscious projection is made from the individual reality onto the entire world that the world will end soon.

I have been living away from cities for many years now. Being hyper sensitive, I feel the "koyaanisqatsi" energy stirring in me very easily, for example I have to practice earthing twice a day - in the morning and evening - not just with my feet but also with my hands, to feel "right"

I wonder how much the apocalypse concept in abrahamic religions is related to this phenomenon. It could very well be that even two to three thousand years ago, for those who were involved in creating these mythologies, their lives were in dissonance from the blueprint of life held in our souls or genetics. There is an abundance of suggestion in the science arena today that we are still carrying the hunter gatherer genome, that let alone living post smartphone/ai age or industrial age, even post agricultural revolution, the life we created has been in conflict with our genes.

 

[fink]

That is very thought provoking dithy. I'm willing to throw into the mix of the last few posts. The reason we feel that apocalyptic subconscious genetically calling us is because our distant ancestors have seen the world end more than once.

We are born with the knowledge that it can all end in an instant. We have all seen it before.

 

[northape]

I wonder how much the apocalypse concept in abrahamic religions is related to this phenomenon. It could very well be that even two to three thousand years ago, for those who were involved in creating these mythologies, their lives were in dissonance from the blueprint of life held in our souls or genetics. There is an abundance of suggestion in the science arena today that we are still carrying the hunter gatherer genome, that let alone living post smartphone/ai age or industrial age, even post agricultural revolution, the life we created has been in conflict with our genes.

I have been playing with this idea for a while, and it feels more and more reasonable. I also think that the spiritual traditions of our ancestors were meant to make sense of the world, but when we parted ways with the nomadic lifestyle, they were used more and more to connect with what was lost. It seems that many techniques are there just to develop our dormant capacity and connect back to the Spirit and Nature. Our nomadic ancestors seem to have had far fewer psychological problems and a closer connection to the world. Perhaps most of the spiritual quest is just to get back to that innocence and grace. Maybe it's just my rosy picture of it, but it feels like a possibility.

That is very thought provoking dithy. I'm willing to throw into the mix of the last few posts. The reason we feel that apocalyptic subconscious genetically calling us is because our distant ancestors have seen the world end more than once.
We are born with the knowledge that it can all end in an instant. We have all seen it before.

I think so too. This information lies in our genes and karma. Just like many people have an innate fear of snakes, we have this inherited knowledge about an apocalypse.

 

[Jamie01]

I think humans would benefit if they just ditched religion for a mindfulness practice, and just stayed open to ideas and exploration.

What’s going on now is insane. The world doesn’t need any more crazy holy wars. Religion is like the bastard child of true personal revelation.

 

[northape]

I think humans would benefit if they just ditched religion for a mindfulness practice, and just stayed open to ideas and exploration.

I feel like all religions start like that before they even have a name. People won't embody the Truth because it is deadly for their individual selves.
So, they create a structure around it with its own mythos, and a new religion is born. The rest is history.

 

[TheGreenPhantom]

Religion at its worst is a tool for control; at its best, religion is a codification of the idea of the unity of all things. I've seen it practiced both ways.