Is human nature a barrier to socialism?

[test_recordings]

I prefer Baudrillard to Marx; capitalism is about consumption, not production.

You wouldn't have capitalism if people realised they're working their pants off for absolutely useless crap! Income is not correlated with subjective wellbeing: fact. Once someone has enough to live off they really don't need anymore it's just that advertising and marketing make people think that they are deficient without what's on offer.

Consumer psychology is the modern form of slavery but more sophisticated in that you get people to sell themselves...

[meer]

they're working their pants off for absolutely useless crap!

Yep. We're only kidding ourselves if we think all our modern technology has made us any better off. It's just adding links to a long, unnecessary chain.

[test_recordings]

they're working their pants off for absolutely useless crap!

Yep. We're only kidding ourselves if we think all our modern technology has made us any better off. It's just adding links to a long, unnecessary chain.

That's technology not household goods. TV, for example! I've given up watching it, the more channels they add the worse it gets lol obviously not PET scans, radiography, x-rays, trains (not so much cars though, bare other countries get by without them though they have some use) etc notice how they're all tools?

I do also think humanity is painting itself in to a corner with technology though, if a solar flare the size of the one that hit earth in the 1800s comes about again industrialised societies are screwed. Just think, all the people living off the land in jungles and stuff as tribes will be better off!

[hayze99]

they're working their pants off for absolutely useless crap!

Yep. We're only kidding ourselves if we think all our modern technology has made us any better off. It's just adding links to a long, unnecessary chain.

Fer fucks sake man. This is a such a terrible attitude to life. What are we supposed to do if we don't keep developing? The human race will stagnate. Everything in this world follows the laws of rising entropy/complexity. It even goes into the centre of Buddhist ideology of the importance of change. If this attitude was anywhere close to how the universe works we'd still be micro-organisms swimming around in primordial sludge. I think technology is the most beautiful thing there is. It's your job to sift out the useless, distracting bits, not the universes.

Eventually human technology is going to go deeper into unlocking the secrets of the universe, and we'll discover telepathy, teleportation, and eventually give rise to a new consciousness. Maybe it'll be a hivemind of all our consciousnesses (since it seems that through bureaucracy and links like the internet, we are all becoming neurons in one giant brain). Maybe our brains will develop to perceive the fourth dimension. Who the fuck knows? It's the equivalent of an animal trying to understand a human brain. Still, we've got to keep moving or we'll all get lazy and die off.

[test_recordings]

You must have missed the post after the quote

You too are also talking about tools. I don't know if anyone's noticed but nothing new has been invented for about 30 years, there's just been refinements of existing technology. A large proportion of this is attributed to the dumbing down of education that is orientated to filling up industries rather than being for the sake of education itself. Really, you thought standards would have improved in 100 years but they've got worse due to governments using relative measures of achievement rather than objective ones so they look better...

[-dubson-]

I don't know if anyone's noticed but nothing new has been invented for about 30 years, there's just been refinements of existing technology.

Ermmmm...