Has the system finally cracked? Have the wealthy and powerful simply taken so much leaving the rest of us grasping at our very survival, easily manipulated into turning against other groups and even each other in an attempt to make sense of it all? Is society destined to destroy itself or descend into eternal servitude to our masters? How do we get out of this spiral of madness?
The rich and powerful have been in control for a long time. Before capitalism, it was monarchies under feudalism, 10x worse than today. Back then, there weren’t much of medical knowledge and medicine that prolong lifespans; people had much shorter lives and died young. Think Human Rights are being infringed by your leaders? Human rights weren’t even a widespread concept back then. Police brutality and suppressing protests? Back then they’d just start killing on sight. You don’t get jail time, they cut your heads off. We have made so much progress overall in Human Rights (although some countries are still lacking behind, its overall much better these days)
To put things in perspective, Homo Sapiens were near extinctions for most of its history. We managed to survived this long. Maybe everyone worldwide will wake up tomorrow with an emergency alert on our phones (aka: Global Nuclear War), or maybe not. Only time will tell.
The great filter isn’t a one time thing, the universe will always be throwing challenges at living beings, but some will evolve and thrive. I mean, 50-70 years ago, people were like: “well this is it, everyone is gonna die in a nuclear blast”, well… here we are.
But don’t lose hope. Whatever happens, enjoy the time you have left. Don’t stress about it too much. Don’t let defeatism ruin your mood.
We’re humans. The end is always near, we’ve spent the last dozen eons or more basically failing upwards and constantly surviving the disasters we subject ourselves to. We’re the funniest act this side of the Milky Way, and it’s not going to stop just because we’re starting to notice what a mess we are.
So there’s no hope that we collectively decide that we need to get out of this together?
If you want the world to be some kind of way, your best hope is to be that kind of way and hope it catches on. Get yourself to a better place. If you’re keeping company with people who aren’t onboard with that, it will hold you back.
I don’t live in that world. I have too many issues for any of that to work, but even if that weren’t the case I probably couldn’t travel to wherever would be better for me.
Imma break out some tough love on ya.
I have too many issues
That’s learned helplessness, loser talk. “Losers always whine about their best. Winners go home and fuck the prom queen.” That quote is about an attitude, not intrinsic qualities or abilities.
couldn’t travel to wherever would be better
More failure talk. You make do with what’s in front of you. Dragging your body through space isn’t going to change you. Greener grass and whatnot.
I’m no psychologist, no idea how to break you out of this failure mode, but you really need help to cut that shit out. You got one shot at life, no more, go make shit happen for yourself. And if you’re already typing a reply full of excuses, you already lost.
Ah yes, walk it off. Very helpful. Do you think real issues don’t exist? Especially in the US now?
“If you feel like shit, just grind bro”. Doing what, exactly? Lots of options are oversaturated or having layoffs. Rent is a racket and there are people who work full-time “essential” jobs (like professors and nurses) living in their car. I cannot even afford nor do I want a car, and if I was living outside where I’m at I’d be at risk for heat stroke because my body cannot sweat enough for even mild heat. Also, I am nearly nowhere.
I can prepare and sauté vegetables, sweep, carry things, do various computer things. Is that enough to live off of? Even at my best, probably not! Could I maybe work something out with people? I’m a shut-in with the social skills of a rock, so that’s not likely either. EDIT: forgot to say bike riding, but again that’s also difficult with heat
Have I already lost? Yeah maybe, but the issues (both internal and external) are more than excuses. It if got me out of here I’d be a shitty cook on a boat (I also probably can’t swim, no ID/passport) but it doesn’t work like that anymore. Solo projects and crowd-funding are just as delusional.
You’ve been dealt a really rough hand. The way it should work is that your community would see that you mean well and want to contribute, and support an ongoing effort to make that happen.
We don’t live in the world of should, but imo you do need a community of any kind. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say it should be your top priority to make at least one IRL friend and making the absolute most of it. They don’t have to be perfect, but they do have to reciprocate the friendship.
Once you have one, it’s easier to make more. Everything is easier with a community. Keep a journal, write about your efforts, write about the people you might try to talk to. Try anything. There’s a loneliness epidemic out there, so chances are good there are people just like you who are waiting for someone to make the first move. I hope you find each other.
Again, going on the trail was my idea of travel/meeting people… though even when I’m able* to ride I don’t see much around here. I suspect the people I’d fit with are not here, or even if they are they are at home (or just not on the trail).
* 300+ miles so far (over a few years), admittedly that’s mostly ~1-2mi trips to a bridge/bench area when I can’t plan anything better, and my most realistic trip besides that is just to a local grocery store to buy old bananas and maybe some produce to fry.
This happens every once in a while in history. The wealthy grow very wealthy and the poor realize they’re being used and chop off a few heads or descend into lots of wars or whatever and then the cycle starts again. Don’t worry it’s not the end of humanity itself but it very often signals the end of an empire.
See: the feudal ages/french revolution or the end of the roman empire
That’s not at all how Rome ended, though.
As far as I know, the only purely domestic peasant’s uprisings that succeeded were the French and Russian ones. They’re actually kind of exceptional events. Usually, it’s struggles between different factions of elites (like with the slow balkanisation of Rome).
Edit: Haiti was a slave revolt, but I should probably include it.
Hm that’s true. Rome had a lot going on towards the end and I can’t pretend to be an expert, but certainly the elite’s greed led to a financial crisis, and what I would consider to be a grave dehumanization of poor citizens (and the ongoing reliance on slaves) played a role. It didn’t end the same way with a revolution, but the factors that led to its fall were all quite similar.
Rome didn’t treat it’s lower classes and actual slaves very well from the start, though. Nor did the rulers before them or the feudal splinter states after them. I’ve had an actual historian of Rome tell me point blank nobody has any idea why it started to decline. Historically, scholars have pointed at too much generosity with the privileges of citizenship and senatorial appointments of those from humble backgrounds.
I think it’s fair to say that usually the peasants know they’re being screwed. Very rarely, the aristocracy has been complacent enough it develops into an actual movement, but before the French revolution it always ends like the English peasant’s revolt: it’s crushed, and everything goes back to normal. It’s kind of weird it’s worked better since then, really.
(There was also more than one financial crisis in the Rome, but that’s neither here nor there)
Society has gotten far, far more unequal and oppressive before without the system being threatened.
Reinterpreting this as “is there still hope for humanity”, it’s more complicated. Big history is kind of a wide-open mystery. It’s possible we’ve already won, already lost, or have any odds of getting a good ending in between.
Society has gotten far, far more unequal and oppressive
By what metrics?
Historically there simply wasn’t physical things with which to have the modern level of inequality. Historically the average lower end was was lower, but the modern high end is incomprehensible orders of magnitude higher.
Historical acts of oppression were often far more brutal and cruel but that’s because it wasn’t physically possible to maintain the constant, but relatively minor oppression that is characteristic of modernity.
I mean, the pyramids are huge, and they were built starting ~2500BC. There was stuff.
It’s true that in any discussion of today’s economics versus that in history (or in very different countries today) you run into the problems of an apples-to-oranges comparison. It’s most common for economic historians to default to hours of unskilled labour; early economists like Marx or Smith would be proud. Archeologists meanwhile tend to use house size in settlements as a proxy. That leads to ideas like the bronze age “palace economy” where all wealth would have flown through the ruler, although one wonders how that could possibly have been implemented in practice. When it comes to comparing modern global inequality, the best measurements are multidimensional indices, but that’s only possible because you can interact with people on the ground in real time. (No, two dollars a day isn’t the same everywhere)
Although there’s some dissent, the gist that pre-modern history included much higher levels of inequality than we see today holds. Here’s a recent example. Here’s an old AskHistorians reply about it, by alternate frontend.
There’s is some interesting comparisons out there. In certain periods and areas, medieval peasants were eating pretty well; much better than the modern global poorest, probably because of there was a lot of land relative to the local population. One the other hand, the poorest countries today have better infant mortality than the richest countries of the early 20th century.
Historical acts of oppression were often far more brutal and cruel but that’s because it wasn’t physically possible to maintain the constant, but relatively minor oppression that is characteristic of modernity.
Pragmatism might have had something to do with that, as did unfounded beliefs about the effectiveness of draconian punishments (the English bloody code being an infamous example). There’s no shortage of examples of historical suffering handed out on a consistent rather than occasional basis, though.
