One of the things that intelligent, well read, and maybe over-informed people need to do is selectively cut back on the data feeds that are plugged into their heads. — Bitter Crank

>:O (and where's the standing O emoji to follow?)

delete

I'm with you. — Noble Dust

I am with you...

It's true that is we consume less we will need to produce less, which is fine. The only one hurt will be the profiteers. — Rich

Our unprecedented prosperity is predicated upon, utterly dependent upon, consumerism and growth economy. So, the [profiteers will by no means be the only ones hurt; unless you count all those above the poverty line as 'profiteers'. And even then, it is arguable that those below the poverty line would also be hurt by declining consumption and growth.

Our unprecedented prosperity — Janus

Which world are we talking about? You must read the Economist. Concentration of wealth had never been greater nor has debt. It's quite a disaster in the real world unless you live in one of the 1% enclaves.

A contraction in output due to decreased consumer demand will likely result in unemployment, — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Absolutely not. The problem is wealth concentration not of production. Conventional thinking is making this world into one polluted mess. The top 1% had sure been successful in messing with everyone's thinking. So what is the point of the OP? You still are buying into all of the marketing junk pouring through the media. When it comes right down to it, you are still quite conventional.

Apparently I am not making myself clear.

I will try again.

All of this Marxism; liberalism; "progress"; conservatism; Enlightenment rationalism, autonomy of the individual, rule of law; empiricism/"science"; technology; transhumanism; postmodernism; feminism; queer theory; identity politics; neo-liberalism; "the logic of free markets"; globalization; populism; "democracy" vs. "tyranny"; dualism vs. non-dualism; overconsumption vs. prosperity; Malthus vs. Adam Smith; etc.; etc.; etc. needs to be stuffed in a box, bound with several layers of duct tape, and fired on a rocket as far out of our sight and memory as possible.

Garbage in, garbage out.

If we are tired of getting garbage then we need to grow up and throw away the garbage.

The garbage is gone, what do we do now?

How about listening.

Listening to each other.

Listening to non-human life

Listening to the Earth.

How about empathizing.

I said let's break the garage-in-garbage-out cycle, and you responded with more of the garage.

We don't need more politics, laws, philosophy, science, technology, etc. We need to get a grip.

We need to try, gasp, being nice. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

I can't help but laugh at this. You are saying that autonomy of the individual is garbage, as well as science. How does one express themselves for you to listen without autonomy? How do you listen to non-human life and the Earth without organizing that knowledge (science is organized knowledge) into something meaningful to even talk about for others to listen? You dictating what I can talk about is contradictory to your goal of listening, and thinking that such-and-such topic is "garbage" is subjective. Maybe others don't think that and you need to listen to that.

How do you expect to change people who aren't nice, into people who are without manipulating them? How do you expect self-centered people to listen to others without manipulating them - without giving them their right to express their self-centeredness and you listen and be nice? You are simply talking about how you'd like it to be and not everyone feels the same, which means that you'd have to limit what it is that they do or think that YOU don't like in favor of what YOU do like.

Also I like to listen to others except when they become nonsensical or hypocritical. After that, it becomes a waste of my time to listen to them. Once they insult my intelligence with what they say, being nice isn't part of my response.

The problem is wealth concentration not of production. — Rich

Exactly.

According to Oxfam (and they were using the same data sources that everybody else uses) a handful of people, a few dozen, have as much wealth as 1/3 to 1/2 of the world's people--depending how many super-rich one bunches together. If you take the richest 1% of the world's population, then they have more wealth than just about everybody else put together.

This concentration of wealth distorts, compounds, and aggravates both the routine and novel problems the world faces, making them all impossible to solve.

And, might I add, the fundamental mechanism for creating concentration of wealth are the central banks which were designed by bankers and controlled by bankers for the benefit of bankers and their cronies. Of course, there are plenty of goodies for the politicians that play along, which is just about all of them.

The middle classes and even the upper echelons of the working classes live unprecedentedly comfortable and 'material goods rich' lives. Many are leveraged up to the hilt, and thus on a knife's edge it is true, however.

I remember speaking to a young woman who told me that thanks to Obama she was able to move into the middle class. She had $155,000 in debt, a job that barely pays monthly living expenses, and a life of paying off her accumulated debt. In the old days they called this indentured servitude. Debt is not wealth. Wealth is freedom, debt is chains. And yes she can thank Obama.

Sure, there are many cases like this, but the point is that we in the prosperous west enjoy lifestyles that, in their levels of comfort, and health care, are beyond anything enjoyed even by kings and emperors in past times. Sure this may be thought of as a form of servitude, but so then would any lifestyle, even ascetic lifestyles, not to mention the lives of true slaves. It is estimated that there are 45.8 million true slaves in the world today. Given a current population of 7.5 billion that means that about one person in every 164 is living in slavery.

Anyone who lives the life of a consumer, even a modest consumer, lives at the expense of the unspeakable suffering of others. You have a computer and probably a smart phone, for example; do you know how much slavery and what intolerable working conditions exist in the supply chain that enables you to enjoy those luxuries?

So, who gives a shit about the poor women who lives a life of modern luxury, even if she can only just make ends meet? Her suffering is as nothing compared to those who live in genuine servitude. Who of us will give up our precious lifestyles? Very very few, and I'm not saying I could. But at least let us not be hypocrites, and be honest about the price others are paying so we can enjoy our incredible prosperity. It may well not last as long as we might hope in any case, and then we will be forced to really suffer too.

Unfortunately, most of America has been hollowed out. People are surviving on more and more debt and it is getting worse. First Trump. What's next?

Chinese process: If you don't change direction you'll end up where you are headed.

Creditable estimates of those in forced labor (unofficially, slaves) ranges between 21 million and 48 million. What countries have the highest percentage of their populations as slaves?

Pakistan 1.2%
India 1.1%
Haiti 2.1 %
Mauritania 4%

People at the top of the economic heap have a great deal of comfort at the expense of everyone else, true enough. But most people are nowhere close to the top of the economic heap. Working people who make up about 95% of the world's population, are all wage slaves. A wage slave is someone who is entirely dependent on a daily, weekly, or monthly wage to sustain themselves and their families. If they do not work, they and their family will suffer enormously

Wage slaves have to work, and companies (big or tiny) give their workers no more than what it takes to keep them from starving and still coming to work. Sure, an American or German auto plant worker expects more for an hour of their labor (in equivalent dollars) than a Bangladeshi worker in a Nike shoe factory. Because living costs are higher in Germany and North America, companies have to pay more. They pay much less in Bangladesh because they can pay less.

Wage slavery is the primary form of exploitation in capitalist economies. You work for a wage, or you die. And most of the value of the products workers produce goes to the owners of the company (who do not work) and not to to workers (who do it all).

Workers all over the world get the same bad deal. We should all stop cooperating with the owning class.

I spent about 15 years working in a socialist organization educating "the public" about Marx, De Leon, economic justice, the meaning of class, and so on and so forth. I donated to the cause. I wrote material. — Bitter Crank

I'm impressed by that BC. I would like to find a way to contribute in a like manner.

Anyone who lives the life of a consumer, even a modest consumer, lives at the expense of the unspeakable suffering of others. You have a computer and probably a smart phone, for example; do you know how much slavery and what intolerable working conditions exist in the supply chain that enables you to enjoy those luxuries? — Janus

Yet, my mobile telco provider has all its helpdesk in India, in the call centres of Hyderabad and Pune, which now provide middle-class (in Indian terms) employment opportunities for millions of people.

I think it's an unfortunate fact that 'Western liberalism' in the broadest sense - the combination of liberal democracies, scientific technology, and the belief in progress and growth - have provided a general prosperity which couldn't have been achieved by other models. I mean, soviet-style communism was never going to do that.

But I do recognise that the model is also running up against absolute limits in terms of what the Earth can sustain. Furthermore, I agree that the concentration of wealth flowing upwards is basically criminal. This is the consequence of Thatcher and Reagan's supply-side economics nonsense, and the idea that giving the capitalist kleptocracy free reign would somehow miraculously make everyone better off. (George Monbiot's criticism is worth reading.)

In the US, 'tax reform' means giving the 1% even more tax breaks. Health care reform likewise means giving the 1% even more breaks. Basically the whole political system has been gamed to that end. Trump is just a puppet (trum-pet?)

Capitalism, science, technology, etc. are sorry excuses for the sacred anyway. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Capitalism, science and technology can co-exist with the sacred if you can see through scientific materialism. Which basically amounts to adopting a spiritual philosophy and what that entails. I of the view that the mainstream of Western thought is actually religious, but that it has been hijacked by the materialist meme for complex historical reasons.


Anyone here familiar with John Michael Greer? I've been reading his blog for a couple of years. His writing appeals to me. One of his books is called Collapse Now and Avoid the Rush.

I probably would be in a position to sell up, downsize, and move to a fully-owned, off the grid house outside the main urban centres. Problem is, spouse has no interest in doing that, so I'm on the hamster wheel for another couple of years. I'm trying to find some remote work opportunities in technical writing and product documentation which can help me ease into (very late) retirement.

John Michael Greer — Wayfarer

Ah yes, the Arch Druid. He's not quite my cup of tea, but some of my best friends read him religiously.

A contraction in output due to decreased consumer demand will likely result in unemployment, — WISDOMfromPO-MO
Absolutely not. The problem is wealth concentration not of production... — Rich

Straw man.

Conventional thinking is making this world into one polluted mess. The top 1% had sure been successful in messing with everyone's thinking... — Rich

Red herring.

So what is the point of the OP?... — Rich

Collective psychotherapy.

We are trapped in destructive, self-defeating patterns of thinking, communicating, and relating.

We need to completely break out of those patterns.

Not hit "Reset" and start over. Find the biggest, sharpest knife we can, cut through the cord that tethers us to all the garbage (feminism, "progress", religious fundamentalism, trickle-down / supply-side economics, globalization, neoliberalism, queer theory, dualism vs. non-dualism, spiritual vs. material, free will vs. determinism, scientism, culture wars, the sexual revolution, marijuana anti-prohibition, ecological collapse, defense of traditional marriage, etc., etc., etc., etc.) and turn our backs and don't even watch as it drifts away out of sight and out of memory.

A good, but not perfect, analogy is the thesis of Grassroots Post-Modernism: Remaking the Soil of Cultures, by Gustavo Esteva and Madhu Suri-Prakash. While the West struggles over the messes that we have created with things like neoliberalism, the world's oppressed majority have put all of it in their rearview mirror and are moving beyond it.

If you still don't know what I mean, think of it this way: You can worry about ecological collapse, you can appeal to emotion or ideology to deny the threat or possibility of ecological collapse, you can write objective, scholarly material arguing that ecological collapse is a fiction/myth, or you can decide to no longer filter anything through the concept of ecological collapse. The latter is the kind of rupture and departure that I think we need.

Probably the biggest things we would be giving up is wanting to and feeling the need to manipulate and control everybody and everything, and our belief that we have the ability to manipulate and control everybody and everything.

You still are buying into all of the marketing junk pouring through the media. When it comes right down to it, you are still quite conventional. — Rich

Conventional--whether it is from academia, the mass media, business, government, or strangers on the internet--is wanting to and feeling the need to manipulate and control people and things and believing that by manipulating and controlling people and things we can eradicate problems.

If we'd just tax this, cut that, research that, legislate that, enforce that, self-improve that, etc., etc., etc., the problem would be solved, the thinking goes.

Of course, there's the other extreme: "I can't control it. I can't do anything about it. So I am going to ignore it. I am going to tune it out".

The latter is still seeing everything in terms of what can be manipulated, controlled and/or dominated.

We need a complete rupture and departure from that and everything (feminism, religious fundamentalism, "free markets", queer theory, "progress", Marxism, neoliberalism, economic justice, etc., etc., etc., etc.) that comes with it.

Robert Edgerton wrote Sick Societies: Challenging the Myth of Primitive Harmony. We need to give up the myth of modern harmony. We need to give up the delusion that if we would just tax this, ban that, redistribute that, stop believing in that, become more literate in that, tear down / remove that, enforce that, etc., etc. that everything will be restored to the right order.

President Ronald Reagan said "Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem." Well, maybe more capitalism, science, philosophy, etc., etc. is not the solution to our problem. Maybe it is the problem.

Specifically, maybe our reliance on and obsession with rationalism/reason, empiricism, individualism, argumentation/debate, persuasion, competition, innovation, change, "progress", etc., etc. is the problem.

There are plenty of alternatives. Listening. Empathy. Compassion. Cooperation. Contemplation. Quiet reflection. Self-control. One day at a time. The beat of one's own drum. Etc. Etc.

Ah yes, the Arch Druid. — Bitter Crank

He writes pretty well on philosophy, I have to say. Very impressed with his Gnosis, Doxa, and Episteme. And he has quite a lot to say on the theme of the OP.

People need to find the area in which they can make a difference, and go do it. Become informed, but don't keep listening to and reading the same old bad news every day. It's just too demoralizing. Keep abreast of what is happening, but that doesn't take a lot of time. Things, like the disasters, don't change that much from month to month... — Bitter Crank

An introductory course that I took in the Family Studies department in college was titled "Individual, Marriage and Family".

In other words, it takes healthy individuals to make healthy marriages, and it takes healthy marriages to make healthy families. In other words, we make mistakes when we think marriage will make an unhappy individual happy; when we neglect the relationship between husband and wife and make everything child-centered; etc.

I think that that parallels social life in general.

Work on your own self. Then work on your local community. Then work on your national community. Then work on the global community.

That means only trying to control what you can control: your own self. It means not trying to manipulate and control things and other people through science, business, government, etc.

And it means taking complete, personal responsibility for one's life, not living in constant victim status.

Tune in to one's own self a lot more. Tune in to the people one directly interacts with a little more. Tune in to the non-human elements in one's environment a little more. The remaining balance can then be spent on "news", "current events", etc.

Do I believe that 'the people' can change the direction away from certain disaster that we all seem to be heading for? Sure I do. Do I think 'the people' will rise up, smash the corporate dictatorship, take over the government, and usher in a period of progressive ecological, economic, educational, et cetera policy which will get us all collectively out of the shit hole we seem to be sliding into? No, I think that is fairly unlikely... — Bitter Crank

Is it not enough to withstand it and absorb it well enough to keep on ticking?

Attrition rather than revolution, for once?

Let the stone pass through the kidney, and save all of the resources you can for moving on afterwards, maybe?

So, I continue doing what I can do and recognizing that my power to effect change in the world is quite limited. It's more limited than I would like, but there's not much I can do about it. Got a magic ring or something you could give me to enhance my powers? — Bitter Crank

The important thing is that nobody allow any kind of inertia--even if it is something like our faith in and praise for Enlightenment ideals, values and institutions--to hold him/her in place.

Strength and courage, not a magic ring, are all that is needed.

Anyone here familiar with John Michael Greer? — Wayfarer

I believe it was him who I discovered a few months ago and him who inspired a moving blog that I then read, but I can't find it again.

He's relocated but if you google his name, you'll find it.

Workers all over the world get the same bad deal. We should all stop cooperating with the owning class. — Bitter Crank

I think there is a big difference between being a more or less oppressed and stressed out worker who can leave their job if they really are determined to, and someone who is imprisoned in a life of forced slavery with little or no chance of escaping it.

Yet, my mobile telco provider has all its helpdesk in India, in the call centres of Hyderabad and Pune, which now provide middle-class (in Indian terms) employment opportunities for millions of people. — Wayfarer

Yes, I am certainly not arguing that no one benefits from the smart phone industry, but the fact that many are helped does not justify the inhuman exploitation of many others. If just one person has to suffer unspeakably, so that everyone else may live happy lives; that is unacceptable (unless you are a Consequentialist). Have you read the Ursula Le Guin story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” ?

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/13/opinion/david-brooks-the-child-in-the-basement.html?mcubz=1

Of course there is a difference -- it's a matter of severity. But the wager worker is no more free to stop working than the slave is, because in both cases the consequences are very negative.

Granted: a wage worker can choose the site of his wage slavery; a chattel slave can not.

Life is full of inequity: the point of social democrat politics is to try and address them through labor laws, public education, tax policy and so forth. But neoliberalist politics try and do it through so-called 'supply side' policies i.e. Enable business to create opportunity through innovation and endless growth. The problem is that the growth curves are hitting a ceiling and with it neoliberalism is failing.

Everyone is a slave in the sense that they have to somehow earn or otherwise acquire a living or die, BC. Life itself makes 'slaves' of us all in that kind of sense. Some people are smart or lucky enough to accumulate enough wealth to get beyond that necessity. The question is, are they smart enough to manage their lives well enough to keep their wealth or control their addiction to accumulating wealth, power and the notoriety that goes with it?

I think the difference between the conditions of those who are slaves only in this general sense, and those who are forced into slave labour by criminal exploiters is not merely one of degree.

To be enslaved by force is more than merely a matter of "equity". If our slaves are on the other side of the world then no amount of "labor laws, public education, tax policy and so forth" will make any difference to their plight. The only hope for the slaves is via sufficient boycott of the products that are made cheap by exploiting them. The problem of diminishing resources is a separate, but no less real, issue.

Of course, slavery is never OK under any circumstances, but I thought we were talking more about poorly-paid workers in the emerging industries.

The lines are somewhat blurred sometimes between egregious exploitation where workers, including children, are paid a pittance for inhumanly long working hours in horrendous and dangerous conditions, and labour which is actually enforced.

https://news.vice.com/article/smartphones-child-labor-cobalt-mines-africa-congo-amnesty-international

The kind of extreme situation described in the above link, as opposed to merely poorly paid workers (which is itself also obviously an important issue), is the kind of thing I wanted to highlight.

Everyone is a slave in the sense that they have to somehow earn or otherwise acquire a living or die, BC. Life itself makes 'slaves' of us all in that kind of sense. — Janus

Having to earn your living in and of itself doesn't make you a slave, but having a wage under an employer generally does. I've always hated working under someone else, which is why I didn't last long >:O .

The reason for this is that slavery involves control over someone's time first and foremost. Time is the most valuable resource. It's not that an employer doesn't pay me enough, it's that he gets to control what I do with my time, he gets to dictate when I'm in, when I'm out, how I'm dressed, and on and on. Not to mention that he also wields complete control over the results of my work. My labor is essentially stolen. It's much better to accept even a lower pay and be self-employed than to work under another and get a slightly higher pay.

The main problem for the younger generations is that universities typically only train people how to be good (and proud!) slaves. You cannot find training regarding how not to be a slave. That kind of training doesn't exist. It's too subversive. You have to learn it yourself. Which is why I feel that the younger generations are getting poorer and poorer. Most parents haven't understood this either, at least in this part of the world, so too much emphasis is given to school, but people don't actually learn how to be financially independent in school. People have to be taught - outside of school - about it, including how to manage wealth and private property. Many families end up poor when wealth transfers from the parents to the children because the children - out of no fault of their own - don't have a clue how to guard the private property they were given.

One advantage in this day and age though is the internet, since it's much easier to learn to do some useful work by yourself online (like programming) than it is to - say - learn to become a carpenter by yourself. I mean it's not impossible to learn to be a carpenter by yourself, but you'd need a supportive family while you learn, as well as the tools and practice space necessary. I imagine when the internet didn't exist, you were pretty much stuck slaving away for someone for at least the first - say - 5-6 years of your adult life.