The workings of the universe to prehistoric humans would have been mysterious, but there would have been a reverence to the mystery as well..............The modern world is mysterious, but in a mundane and/or perplexing way................Is it any wonder that people are so miserable?. — _db

Prehistoric humans may well have understood their simple tools and lived in reverence to a mysterious world. Modern humans may well not understand their complex tools, their computers, their Social Media, and live perplexed and disconnected in a mysterious world

Yet these two conditions are not mutually exclusive

The prehistoric human may have suffered misery from tools inadequate to mitigate their physical suffering, in growing crops in time of famine. The modern human may suffer misery from tools inadequate to mitigate their mental suffering, in gaining what they think they deserve.

The prehistoric human's misery did not come from having unachievable expectations, their misery came from what they knew to expect from life. The prehistoric human knew that they would never be treated like Royalty, they knew they were and would remain a low part of the hierarchy. They knew they would never be part of the decision making process, their opinion would never be respected and they knew their income would only be sufficient for basic survival. Their misery came from an acceptance of a hard and brutal life

The modern human may be miserable because they have expectations that are unachievable
The modern human expects to be treated like Royalty, regardless of birth. They expect to be an integral part of the decision making process, even if they have insufficient knowledge. They expect their opinion to be respected regardless of whether it has sense or not. They expect to have an income even if they haven't earned it. Their misery comes from unwarranted expectations of what they are due from life.

Modern humans look back to a Golden Age, a mysterious world where lives were lived in reverence to the great unknown. A Golden Age where the greatest of tasks were accomplished. A time as described by the early Greek and Roman poets as better and more pure. Hesiod described the Golden Age as a time where all humans were created directly by the Olympian Gods, living lives in peace and harmony. Oblivious to death, and dying peacefully in their sleep unmarked by sickness and old age. Ovid described it as a time before man learned the art of navigation, and as a pre-agricultural society.

Today, people look back with nostalgia to the Noble Savage who has not been corrupted by modern civilization and symbolizes humanity's innate goodness. The idealized picture of a human at one with nature, living in harmony with nature in a romantic primitivism .
As John Dryden wrote in The Conquest of Granada 1672:
I am as free as nature first made man,
Ere the base laws of servitude began,
When wild in woods the noble savage ran.

Is it true that misery is a modern phenomenon ? Consider The Great Famine of 1315–1317 and Black Death of 1347–1351 which reduced the population by more than a half. The Little Ice Age brought harsher winters with reduced harvest, resulting in malnutrition which increased susceptibility to infections due to a weakened immune system. The Great Famine struck much of North West Europe 1315 to 1317 reducing the population by more than 10%. Many of the larger countries were at war. England and France in the Hundred Years War, a time when when landowners and the Monarchy raised the rents of their tenants. In 1318, anthrax attacked the sheep and cattle of Europe, further reducing the food supply and income of the peasantry. As Europe moved into the Little Ice Age, floods disrupted harvests and caused mass famines. The Bovine Pestilence of 1319 to 1320 affected milk production, and as much of the peasant's protein was obtained from dairy resulted in nutritional deficiencies. Famine and pestilence, exacerbated with the prevalence of war during this time, led to the death of an estimated ten to fifteen percent of Europe's population. The Black Death was was fatal to an estimated thirty to sixty percent of the population where the disease was present. Before the 14th century, popular uprisings against overlords were common. During the 14th and 15th C there were mass movements and popular uprisings across Europe.

Hobbes described the state of nature as "war of all against all" in which men's lives are "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short"

I don't think misery is a modern phenomenon.

:sweat:

Mirrors are there for reflection, I'd suggest a good look at it.

Mirrors are there for reflection, I'd suggest a good look at it. — Seeker

Wasn't directed to you.. Mainly people like the person above your post.

@Agent Smith
I hope you weren't gleaning ANY of these themes of the Noble Savage in my OP. None of this was what I was getting at. I think this leads to a more fundamental truth about a self-aware human, yet cut off from fundamental understanding of his condition, but I am keeping it specifically at the level of how technology (and social arrangements surrounding them) keep us fundamentally alienated. And this is the pessimism I speak of. Being estranged from the tools which sustain us. Yet the irksome part is some people do hold these keys.. but they can only own a part of them.. But these people (scientists/engineers/technicians) arranged with their financial backers/entrepreneurs/owners have immense power over what we are estranged from.

We are estranged, but a small minority are less estranged.

I think _db had some of the pessimism here:

The modern world is mysterious, but in a mundane and/or perplexing way. Our goals are frequently not defined by us, and the tools we use are always disconnected from our own understanding entirely or nearly so. We use only a subset of our body's capabilities to live - which makes the body atrophy, unless one engages in a clownish routine of maintenance to give the illusion that one's body is being used for what it was meant to be used for. We survive not through our own autonomous efforts but because we satisfy some needed role in an artificial system.

Is it any wonder that people are so miserable? — _db

However, I would only disagree slightly with the wording of "artificial system" as I think any system, hunter-gatherer or this "artificial" economy will have us alienated. There is no going back (or forwards) here. It is fundamentally part of it. I am just looking at it for what it is, and not simply the descriptive "specialization/supply/demand/economic evolution".

I feel like Hannah Arendt would probably interest you. She's more optimistic than you when it comes to work, but her Human Condition has a ton of illuminating passages on how our ability to create things has almost gotten bigger than us. She says we no longer have the ability to even talk about these things; we've lost the "speech" so to speak about what is we rely on, and any form of understanding is gatekept by the scientists or the people making it. It's unsustainable. — Albero

I'll look into that. But 100% agree about the gatekeeping. I am even more terrified of the malaise of minutia that comes out of the science.. These people can accept and deal with enormous amounts of minutia. The tedium of the practical and necessary. But yet "Life is good".

The paradox is that we are alienated from that which sustains us, but if we are not alienated we simply become mired in the minutia of 100110101, materials, equations, and the like..

One major con is giving a romantic vision to science and technology. The Edisons/Teslas, Einsteins/Heidenbergs, etc. Monger the minutia is more the gist of science of the daily.. Your computer screen, your processor, your electronics, your plastics.. :yawn:

You become a 01001100101 to make 0010100110.. So alienation or minutia mongerer? It all doesn't lead anywhere good.

But at the same time, there is an "innovative" / inventive element that is there for a very small amount of time. The "breakthroughs" of a few that get pulled apart and mongered to become more minutia.

First off, congratulations for seeing what very few people do. Your committment to pessimism is worthy of a standing ovation. Did you notice, how some folks make such a big deal out of tool use - we consider it one of humanity's greatest achievements. For your information there are 6 simple machines viz. the ramp, the wheel, the pulley, the lever, the screw, and the wedge. Anyway, the asset has now become a liability, oui mon ami? We're now totally dependent on machines/tools even for the smallest of tasks i.e. they've become critical to our survival. This doesn't bode well for us and for this reason I second your Gloomy Gus attitude.

Mirrors are there for reflection, I'd suggest a good look at it. — Seeker


Wasn't directed to you.. Mainly people like the person above your post. — schopenhauer1

It renders my comment invalid as it did not concern me. Thank you.

I’ve been in this forum for a long time. I understand how many of the posters work. Asshole and dickish comments are the norm if you disagree. Can't just argue the arguments here. Nope.

First off, congratulations for seeing what very few people do. Your committment to pessimism is worthy of a standing ovation. Did you notice, how some folks make such a big deal out of tool use - we consider it one of humanity's greatest achievements. For your information there are 6 simple machines viz. the ramp, the wheel, the pulley, the lever, the screw, and the wedge. Anyway, the asset has now become a liability, oui mon ami? We're now totally dependent on machines/tools even for the smallest of tasks i.e. they've become critical to our survival. This doesn't bode well for us and for this reason I second your Gloomy Gus attitude. — Agent Smith

I think we have relied on tools from the very beginning. In fact, that, along with social and linguistic forces, were factors in the development of our cognition/brains/neocortex/etc. It is not just that we rely on these tools, but it is what these tools create.. estrangement.

One side--- Estrangement of the minutia of the tools themselves
Other side--- Estrangement from the minutia of the tools themselves.

There is no win here. 011001010110 to you sir. Now I have to go back to mongering more minutia so we can all live and see the world turn.

I mean look at some of the other topics here that you are no doubt posting on.. Propositional Calculus. Enough said.

I’ve been in this forum for a long time. I understand how many of the posters works. Asshole and dickish comments are the norm if you disagree. Can't just argue the arguments here. Nope. — schopenhauer1

Perhaps it could suffice to simply ignore the comments of which you speak as by acknowledging those in any way is to give meaning and value to them.

Done that. I go back and forth. Sometimes ignore.. Sometimes call it out. 15 years on a forum (this and the previous version).. you gotta switch it up.

Format goes something like:
Dick comment.. Maybe some content... sarcastic comment... maybe some more content...asshole comment. I believe that was devised by Aristotle.

↪schopenhauer1 :roll: We do not even "understand" how we move our fingers and toes let alone what our brains are doing moment to moment or even why pessimists bother whinging on and on about "pessimism" ... Big whup. — 180 Proof

Asshole and dickish comments are the norm if you disagree. Can't just argue the arguments here. Nope. — schopenhauer1

And when you lack a non-trivial counterargument, more useless whinging. :yawn:

On topic
Perhaps somewhat of an example of the things you say concern dealings with the medical world.

From the time I got out of my parents house I had to become quite critical of the medical world. I did not start out that way ofcourse as I was raised to have a great amount of trust and confidence in the doctors and their treatments. It was only after they mis-diagnosed me several times that I started to do my own research, obtaining information from studies related to my medical condition. Evidently I did not understand most of it at first, being unschooled and unfamilair with any of the medical jargon, but after a time studying and doing translations I was really getting at the gist of things.

From there on I got really critical of the doctors involved, questioning their every move towards any treatment they offered me. During that entire process I changed general physicians, but also specialists, quite a few times as 'they' generally shoved my 'uneducated and opinionated views and bias' away with undisquised disdain and irritation. While I felt kind of embarrassed because of it and somewhat unsure when 'throwing away' doctors, and their "professionalism" at the time, the payoff however was the accumulation of knowledge, not even necessarily medical knowledge but the knowledge of food science and how it relates to health. Where the doctors would have liked to inject me with all sorts of nasty biologicals to slow down my immune system I refused their treatments and instead stabilized it choosing certain nutrients while avoiding other nutrients.

My medical condition is not to be cured as it is a chronical condition but I managed to status quo it via diet rather than going the doctor's route of immunosuppressive drugs, the latter which would have most certainly caused severe harm to my system as biologicals come with a hefty price. I actually did confront some of these 'specialists' along the way, about the success I was having via diet, but they did not acknowledge or appreciated my efforts as such, in fact they didnt say anything about it else than putting their aura of superiority on display by ignoring the things I offered them while I was trying to share what I had learned.

That was actually quite a bit more than I intended to share but relating it to the OP I'd say atleast a fair amount of pessimism on display is granted and which was also why I asked the question about a suggestion to the contrary (of blindly following and/or using tech and/or treatment offered/prescripted to us by third parties and/or peers).

As always, with your repeated despair, Hanrahan.

Said Hanrahan by John O'Brien

"We'll all be rooned," said Hanrahan,
In accents most forlorn,
Outside the church, ere Mass began,
One frosty Sunday morn.


The congregation stood about,
Coat-collars to the ears,
And talked of stock, and crops, and drought,
As it had done for years.


"It's looking crook," said Daniel Croke;
"Bedad, it's cruke, me lad,
For never since the banks went broke
Has seasons been so bad."


"It's dry, all right," said young O'Neil,
With which astute remark
He squatted down upon his heel
And chewed a piece of bark.


And so around the chorus ran
"It's keepin' dry, no doubt."
"We'll all be rooned," said Hanrahan,
"Before the year is out."


"The crops are done; ye'll have your work
To save one bag of grain;
From here way out to Back-o'-Bourke
They're singin' out for rain.


"They're singin' out for rain," he said,
"And all the tanks are dry."
The congregation scratched its head,
And gazed around the sky.


"There won't be grass, in any case,
Enough to feed an ass;
There's not a blade on Casey's place
As I came down to Mass."


"If rain don't come this month," said Dan,
And cleared his throat to speak -
"We'll all be rooned," said Hanrahan,
"If rain don't come this week."


A heavy silence seemed to steal
On all at this remark;
And each man squatted on his heel,
And chewed a piece of bark.


"We want an inch of rain, we do,"
O'Neil observed at last;
But Croke "maintained" we wanted two
To put the danger past.


"If we don't get three inches, man,
Or four to break this drought,
We'll all be rooned," said Hanrahan,
"Before the year is out."


In God's good time down came the rain;
And all the afternoon
On iron roof and window-pane
It drummed a homely tune.


And through the night it pattered still,
And lightsome, gladsome elves
On dripping spout and window-sill
Kept talking to themselves.


It pelted, pelted all day long,
A-singing at its work,
Till every heart took up the song
Way out to Back-o'-Bourke.


And every creek a banker ran,
And dams filled overtop;
"We'll all be rooned," said Hanrahan,
"If this rain doesn't stop."


And stop it did, in God's good time;
And spring came in to fold
A mantle o'er the hills sublime
Of green and pink and gold.


And days went by on dancing feet,
With harvest-hopes immense,
And laughing eyes beheld the wheat
Nid-nodding o'er the fence.


And, oh, the smiles on every face,
As happy lad and lass
Through grass knee-deep on Casey's place
Went riding down to Mass.


While round the church in clothes genteel
Discoursed the men of mark,
And each man squatted on his heel,
And chewed his piece of bark.


"There'll be bush-fires for sure, me man,
There will, without a doubt;
We'll all be rooned," said Hanrahan,
"Before the year is out."

But what are you going to do about it?

So what's to be done, man?!?

What might be the preferred response to this situation? Does your pessimism allow for action? Or is the disconnect permanent?

Do we return to a pre-industrial, cottage-industry, butcher-your-own-cows existence? Do we strive to put humanity into our tech? Do we look to a "return to nature"? (Most of us would need GPS to even find nature.)

It seems no good if the individual attempts to address the disconnect but society goes on embracing modernity.

Life has always been disconnected from what has sustained it. — RussellA

I don't think this is true. If life was disconnected from what sustains it then it would not be sustained. Perhaps you mean that the discursive intellect cannot fully understand life and what sustains it?

So what's to be done, man?!?

What might be the preferred response to this situation? Does your pessimism allow for action? Or is the disconnect permanent?

Do we return to a pre-industrial, cottage-industry, butcher-your-own-cows existence? Do we strive to put humanity into our tech? Do we look to a "return to nature"? (Most of us would need GPS to even find nature.)

It seems no good if the individual attempts to address the disconnect but society goes on embracing modernity. — Real Gone Cat

Perhaps we cant go back though we also dont have to take everything thrown at us at face value.

So what's to be done, man?!?:roll: :roll: :yawn:

What might be the preferred response to this situation? Does your pessimism allow for action? Or is the disconnect permanent?

Do we return to a pre-industrial, cottage-industry, butcher-your-own-cows existence? Do we strive to put humanity into our tech? Do we look to a "return to nature"? (Most of us would need GPS to even find nature.)

It seems no good if the individual attempts to address the disconnect but society goes on embracing modernity. — Real Gone Cat

I simply present the problem. If you want, we can try to carry out a dialectic about where this goes, but I don't think it would lead anywhere.

But here's a start. Follow the chain of technology. Where does it lead back to in terms of resources, manufacturing, mining, engineering, such? Who, where, when, why, how?

Besides consumer and laborer, how close do you get to the understanding and actual resources that create the technology? Who has more agency and less agency? Hint, it isn't just the ones with the most money. Holding the money and spending it, isn't quite it. You have to have access to the finance but also the technology itself.. to some understanding and to groups of those who have understanding. To the mining, the manufacturing, the resources, the formulas, the engineering principles, etc.

You have to mine minutia.. It's minutia all the way down... to the sub-atomic level. It's so very tedious.. Don't let the romantics full you. In that, @apokrisis is right, but in so replacing the tedium of the scientific formulas, he replaces it with the principle of triadic meta-formulas.



It's just so beautiful in its tedium and grandeur :cry: :cry: :roll: :roll: :yawn: :yawn:

I think we have relied on tools from the very beginning. In fact, that, along with social and linguistic forces, were factors in the development of our cognition/brains/neocortex/etc. It is not just that we rely on these tools, but it is what these tools create.. estrangement.

One side--- Estrangement of the minutia of the tools themselves
Other side--- Estrangement from the minutia of the tools themselves.

There is no win here. 011001010110 to you sir. Now I have to go back to mongering more minutia so we can all live and see the world turn.

I mean look at some of the other topics here that you are no doubt posting on.. Propositional Calculus. Enough said. — schopenhauer1

Estrangement, yep, tools, although they make life easier for us also distance us from reality and living. Without 'em we become aliens in our own home planet, barely able to survive, on the path to fanā (annihilation). This, as I hinted, is an evil omen. :snicker:

P. S. What about my posts on Propositional Calculus?

Yes, I also wondered about the reference to Propositional Calculus. Prop Calc would appear to be a purely intellectual pursuit. One might dabble in it entirely sans technology. What better way to while away those boring hours after the fields have all been plowed and the cows milked?

You mean to say philosophy is a luxury item? Some would argue that it's an esssential item.

With despair, true optimism begins: the optimism of the man who expects nothing, who knows he has no rights and nothing coming to him, who rejoices in counting on himself alone and in acting alone for the good of all. — Jean-Paul Sartre

There are no whinging "pessimists" in foxholes.

:death: :flower:

With despair, true optimism begins: the optimism of the man who expects nothing, who knows he has no rights and nothing coming to him, who rejoices in counting on himself alone and in acting alone for the good of all — 180 Proof

:up: :100: :sparkle:

I don't think this is true. If life was disconnected from what sustains it then it would not be sustained. Perhaps you mean that the discursive intellect cannot fully understand life and what sustains it? — Janus

I wrote "Life has always been disconnected from what has sustained it"

Consider the OP "We are disconnected from that which sustains us"

The Merriam Webster dictionary illustrates the complexity of the words "life" and "sustain"

The word "life" as a noun may be used in a physical context, as in 1a "the quality that distinguishes a vital and functional being from a dead body, or may be used in an emotional and intellectual sense, as in 2a "the sequence of physical and mental experiences that make up the existence of an individual - children are the joy of our lives".

Similarly, the word "sustain" as a verb may be used in a physical context, as in 2 "to supply with sustenance : NOURISH, or may be used in an emotional and intellectual sense, as in 5 "to buoy up - sustained by hope".

The title of the thread is "Series in pessimism: We can never know what sustains us". The thread is about our being emotionally and intellectually disconnected from what sustains us, where what sustains us is technology. Pessimism is the emotional part. Knowing is the intellectual part.

There are four possible meanings to the statement "we are disconnected from that which sustains us":
1) We are physically disconnected from technology which sustains us in a physical sense.
2) We are physically disconnected from technology which sustains us in an emotionally and intellectually sense.
3) We are emotionally and intellectually disconnected from technology which sustains us in a physical sense.
4) We are emotionally and intellectually disconnected from technology which sustains us in an emotionally and intellectual sense.

I agree with you that item 1) can be removed as illogical. Items 2) and 4) can also be removed as illogical. This leaves item 3).

Meaning depends on context. Sentences cannot be taken out of context.

Therefore, in the context of the Thread - "we are disconnected from that which sustains us" can only mean "we are emotionally and intellectually disconnected from technology which sustains us in a physical sense."

However, although the misuse of technology may be one contributor to alienation within society, it is not the only cause, as alienation existed in societies pre-modern technology.

Nice analysis. The OP was referencing 3.

However, although the misuse of technology may be one contributor to alienation within society, it is not the only cause, as alienation existed in societies pre-modern technology. — RussellA

:up: Thus, the incoherent triviality of the OP.

I don't think this is true. If life was disconnected from what sustains it then it would not be sustained. Perhaps you mean that the discursive intellect cannot fully understand life and what sustains it? — Janus


I wrote "Life has always been disconnected from what has sustained it" — RussellA

There are four possible meanings to the statement "we are disconnected from that which sustains us":
1) We are physically disconnected from technology which sustains us in a physical sense.
2) We are physically disconnected from technology which sustains us in an emotionally and intellectually sense.
3) We are emotionally and intellectually disconnected from technology which sustains us in a physical sense.
4) We are emotionally and intellectually disconnected from technology which sustains us in an emotionally and intellectual sense.

I agree with you that item 1) can be removed as illogical. Items 2) and 4) can also be removed as illogical. This leaves item 3). — RussellA

It's not technology which sustains life in the biological sense but air, food and water. Technology may sustain our lifestyles, but that is something else.

The point of (3) which, on a charitably nuanced reading, seems to be that our sense of aliveness may be eroded by technology in various ways through the alienation it can contribute to is something I agree with. It's true that technology has disconnected many people from the sources of the food and water that sustain them.

That is to say, the closest many get to the sources of food and water is, respectively, the supermarket and the tap or the bottle (the supermarket). So, humanity is increasingly alienated from the rest of life by modern technology. Obviously this doesn't apply to those who, for example, grow their own food, or even those who don't, but live in communities where the food is grown locally and they are familiar with those sources. So it remains an over-generalization, just as 'life is suffering', while expressing some truth, is an over-simplification.

It's not technology which sustains life in the biological sense but air, food and water. Technology may sustain our lifestyles, but that is something else. — Janus

:up:

The point of (3) which, on a charitably nuanced reading, seems to be that our sense of aliveness may be eroded by technology in various ways through the alienation it can contribute to is something I agree with. It's true that technology has disconnected many people from the sources of the food and water that sustain them. — Janus

@RussellA @Agent Smith @Real Gone Cat

So it's a bit different even than that. Rather, it's not the pretty common trope of using modern technology which causes alienation, but not being able to be "really" apart of the core members who actually created and fully understand the technology. That can be said on two levels:

1) Those who understand a very specialized field of technology really well (like someone on R&D for X chemicals, circuit board design, machine code, materials science, electronic engineering, etc. Not everyone gets to be a part of this.. only a select few and their entrepreneurial/financial backers. Everyone else just uses the final products passively, or labors in some auxilliary fields tangential to the true inventors and creators.

OR

2) Even the specialized experts only know their technology well and thus can't know ALL the technology that is used, and so even they are passive users who can never really know that which creates the technology they rely on.

it is an obfuscation.. Others were alluding to a more fundamental estrangement from existence, but this one is interesting because there are degrees where at least a few people get a bit closer to some of the core technology that "sustains" our (modern) existence.. and since we only live out modern existences in 90% of the world (I'll argue even third world countries), that is indeed what matters.

The engineers at places like IBM, Samsung, Apple, Huawei, Intel, Dow Chemicals, General Electric, Texas Instruments, Canon, and so on.