[Beren]

Dude, get *off* it, already -- the overall *point* is to increasingly *generalize* post-capitalist production, to effect greater and greater scales of efficiency.

This is basically an argument and position against anarchist *localism* over workers' collectivist production.

Fine, I still wouldn't put it in a political ad, though.

[ckaihatsu]

Fine, I still wouldn't put it in a political ad, though.

You're *not* going to get on a tour bus to go and *campaign* for it this election season?


= D

[ckaihatsu]

So you're talking advanced-/developed-Western-countries-versus-Third-Worldism, if I understand correctly.

I think Third-World-type countries felt too *beholden* to the workers in the advanced Western countries, to kick-things-off, and many in the Third-World-type countries wanted to be the ones to get the world revolution underway, despite *not* being so technologically / industrially advanced.

It's a tough call -- I think the workers in the advanced, developed Western countries have relatively more *leverage*, and could probably *liberate* more (infrastructure) upfront, but I certainly see no problem with Arab-Spring-type movements that can popularize struggle and overthrow dictators, military rulerships, etc. Hopefully such would *spark* and *spread* and also become more class conscious.

I recall that workers in the Sinai Pennisula started to take over their workplaces, so that was probably the most militant extent of politicization and struggle around that time in Egypt.

Wave of anti-government protests across Egypt

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/0 ... p-s29.html

[Beren]

You're *not* going to get on a tour bus to go and *campaign* for it this election season?


= D

My problem is that you commies just can't communicate with people effectively. Why is that? Why are you yourself, for example, into VR porn and robot sex so much? Is it because of a complete lack of empathy? I mean nobody understands, and doesn't even care to, your ideas, the only thing they get is that you can't get out of the Soviet box. And they may be right that you commies can only think in strict terms of hierarchy, bureaucracy, etc., which scares people off regardless of your intentions.

[ckaihatsu]

My problem is that you commies just can't communicate with people effectively. Why is that? Why are you yourself, for example, into VR porn and robot sex so much? Is it because of a complete lack of empathy? I mean nobody understands, and doesn't even care to, your ideas, the only thing they get is that you can't get out of the Soviet box. And they may be right that you commies can only think in strict terms of hierarchy, bureaucracy, etc., which scares people off regardless of your intentions.

Not a Stalinist, so your description is inaccurate. What are *you*, politically, Beren, besides a naysayer?

[Beren]

Not a Stalinist, so your description is inaccurate. What are *you*, politically, Beren, besides a naysayer?

Soviet doesn't necessarily mean Stalinist. You don't think in Stalinist terms, but it's still obvious from what school of thought you basically are.

I'm a Social-Democrat, basically.

[QatzelOk]

The 'kill the future' conclusion of yours is just a *scarcity* of grapes *prevailing* in the future, for whatever reason, in this scenario of yours.

The "grape monkey" video was not intended as a cautionary tale about grape scarcity. It was an experiment to demonstrate how other animals react instinctively to inequality. With extreme violence.

Most technology leads to greater inequality. And religions - which are the owner's manuals for technological societies - have been formulated to explain and enable inquality. "Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal" are only made "necessary" by conditions that are so unequal that only "killing" might bring back some sense of normalcy.

Imagine using technology for thousands of years in order to facilitate grape-eating monkeys capacity to feel superior to the cucumber-eating majority. What a terrible use of human (or monkey) lives and potential. Living in a death-race with violent "others" so that the few can eat more or better than the majority... ruins life FOR ALL.

You're just confusing means and ends. You're blaming and demonizing technology for not being perfectly utopian in every instance.

No. I am saying

1. That the complex and technolgical "means" of achieving "ends" have a way of making other even more complex and taxing means to other ends necessary.

2. And that these new means-to-ends were not previously necessary at all. Life was simpler and success was easier before all the "means to ends" were devised to deal with previous behavioral changes or environmental destructions.

3. And that all of this calculated and self-reinforcing "means to an end" will lead to the THE END because our planet isn't "technology proof."

4. Rather than fighting natural human death with invasive technology, it would be better to embrace natural life if we want to live good lives and not drive our species and many others to extinction.
...

Our actual condition is that our holy "ends" are things like "fighting pollution," "eradicating drug cartels," "keeping the Internet relatively free of spies and other parasites," "trying to ensure that the marginal don't die of starvation."

We no longer have "living a healthy and good life" as an end, because we're too busy fighting against all our previous technological poisionning of the earth and each other.

[ckaihatsu]

Soviet doesn't necessarily mean Stalinist. You don't think in Stalinist terms, but it's still obvious from what school of thought you basically are.

I'm a Social-Democrat, basically.

Nope, I've expressed my workers-of-the-world-socialist politics, over and over here at PoFo -- Stalinism is Stalin's so-called 'socialism-in-one-country', or state bureaucratic elitism, which is *not* workers in control of society's social production.

The Left Opposition was a faction within the Bolshevik Party from 1923 to 1927[1] headed de facto by Leon Trotsky. The Left Opposition formed as part of the power struggle within the party leadership that began with the Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin's illness and intensified with his death in January 1924. Originally, the battle lines were drawn between Trotsky and his supporters who signed The Declaration of 46 in October 1923 on the one hand and a triumvirate (also known by its Russian name troika) of Comintern chairman Grigory Zinoviev, Communist Party General Secretary Joseph Stalin and Politburo chairman Lev Kamenev on the other hand.

The Left Opposition argued that the New Economic Policy had weakened the Soviet Union by allowing the private sector to achieve an increasingly important position in the Soviet economy while in their opinion, the centrally planned, socialised sector of the economy languished (including the mostly state-run heavy industries which were seen as essential not only for continued industrialisation but also defense). The platform called for the state to adopt a programme for mass industrialisation and to encourage the mechanization and collectivisation of agriculture, thereby developing the means of production and helping the Soviet Union move towards parity with Western capitalist countries, which would also increase the proportion of the economy which was part of the socialised sector of the economy and definitively shift the Soviet Union towards a socialist mode of production.[2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_Opposition

And:


Political Spectrum, Simplified

Spoiler: show

[ckaihatsu]

The "grape monkey" video was not intended as a cautionary tale about grape scarcity. It was an experiment to demonstrate how other animals react instinctively to inequality. With extreme violence.

Most technology leads to greater inequality. And religions - which are the owner's manuals for technological societies - have been formulated to explain and enable inquality. "Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal" are only made "necessary" by conditions that are so unequal that only "killing" might bring back some sense of normalcy.

Imagine using technology for thousands of years in order to facilitate grape-eating monkeys capacity to feel superior to the cucumber-eating majority. What a terrible use of human (or monkey) lives and potential. Living in a death-race with violent "others" so that the few can eat more or better than the majority... ruins life FOR ALL.

Okay, noted. No contention.

No. I am saying

1. That the complex and technolgical "means" of achieving "ends" have a way of making other even more complex and taxing means to other ends necessary.

Are you sure, though, that you can lay all the blame at the foot of *technological development itself*, and not at *class society's* implementations of technological development -- ?

As an example, I'll point to the incremental development of the personal computer, from the early '80s, up through the present, which I'm familiar with. Much of the 'complexity' of it has to do with competing standards due to private-sector competition, and the creation of baby-step / incremental *new markets* for every trivial advancement in the underlying technology.

(It's suggested that, with a workers-of-the-world centralized planning, technology could be *mass planned*, to provide *exactly* what uses people want from it, for subsequent production and availability, instead of constantly going through the market for new avenues of *profitability* as the prime motivator for advancing the technology.)(Also: Think mass thin-clients versus overkill-on-everyone's-desktop.)

2. And that these new means-to-ends were not previously necessary at all. Life was simpler and success was easier before all the "means to ends" were devised to deal with previous behavioral changes or environmental destructions.

Under capitalist social relations the manufacturers don't even *bother* with any rational-type rationalizations for what they produce, aside from their own *profit* motives, as from *any* market -- capitalism doesn't *require* them to have your social conscience, and so they *don't*.

3. And that all of this calculated and self-reinforcing "means to an end" will lead to the THE END because our planet isn't "technology proof."

Well, this is debatable -- I again counsel to *separate* the humanities and social reality, from available *means* to whatever political *ends*. Politics, or social decision-making, at the highest levels, has a logic all of its own, mostly separate from the *technology* to *implement* those ends.

If you want to be less vague and more focused in your critique, you may want to provide some specific *examples*, such as the U.S. military-industrial complex, the technology and social structure of which *lends* itself to the U.S. nationalist and imperialist power *hegemony* over the rest of the world.

4. Rather than fighting natural human death with invasive technology, it would be better to embrace natural life if we want to live good lives and not drive our species and many others to extinction.

Sure, I appreciate the humane counter-civilizational focus here, because it's *valid*. My own politics are for directing present-day technologies -- which are *more* than sufficient -- to *humane* ends, instead of constantly building skyward.

...

Our actual condition is that our holy "ends" are things like "fighting pollution," "eradicating drug cartels," "keeping the Internet relatively free of spies and other parasites," "trying to ensure that the marginal don't die of starvation."

We no longer have "living a healthy and good life" as an end, because we're too busy fighting against all our previous technological poisionning of the earth and each other.

Okay, mostly agreed, but I think technologies have the potential to be *beneficial* and *constructive*, as well as *deleterious* and *destructive*. Hence politics.

[QatzelOk]

Are you sure, though, that you can lay all the blame at the foot of *technological development itself*

If we are looking for causes of environmental destruction and species extinction, our technological developments are definitely going to be "called to testify" at the very least. But you're correct in that there are many other possible perps responsible for the Postmodern condition's morbidity and detachment from human needs.

and not at *class society's* implementations of technological development -- ?
...
Politics, or social decision-making, at the highest levels, has a logic all of its own, mostly separate from the *technology* to *implement* those ends.

Class, or social hierarchy, is a technology itself, and it is "required" because of other technologies. The more complex a technological society is, the more insanely boring the specialization of employment is. China is currently the greatest producer of techno gadgets, and its citizens have the farthest thing from a natural life. It used to be Great Britain, and then the USA, that had the most polluted air, water, land, and brains because of... advanced technologies demands.

I think technologies have the potential to be *beneficial* and *constructive*, as well as *deleterious* and *destructive*. Hence politics.

Do you "think" this, or do you "feel" it. Because I need proof to think something is true.

BACK TO THE GRAPE MONKEYS

A great use of technology would be to sell the Grape monkeys chainsaws which they can use to:

1. Cut down all the natural forests and grow grape trees (have them grown by homeless cucumber monkey trash)

2. Use the chainsaws as weapons to defend themselves against bands of Cucumber Monky vigilantes.

[RhetoricThug]

I've observed many 'high-road' categories in a forest. Images lie, because they're frozen in time.

Take a look at the top-three, 'high-road' categories here:


philosophical abstractions

Spoiler: show

Value judgments determine the overall design of a hierarchical flowchart. Nature doesn't need philosophical abstractions or taxonomical categorization to unfold as one unified system. Deep ecology, and its expressed structures, evolve and happen simultaneously. Such a complex system cannot harmoniously act as isolated operations separated by what you're aware of. An individuated position and perspective of phenomena in any hierarchy you've abstracted is a sensate illusion, based in the way mind interfaces with the system that is ultimately responsible for all thought.

Sidenote: The natural-unnatural dilemma is a false dichotomy. Technology redistributes deep ecology. Any extension of the human mind is a natural side-effect of sensory immersion and evolves as one via proxy to the total structure of environmental forces. The idea that there's an unnatural way of thinking is a conflated sub domain of temporal cognitive association abstracted through the confusion of a present or living information bias. Alas, biology (as a subdivision and material expression of immaterial SOURCE) adapts to all shifts in its enfolded physical system.





@QatzelOk Technological infrastructure, not politics, reorganize society. Technological service environments become the hidden ground of social engineering. viewtopic.php?f=50&t=166025&start=80

[ckaihatsu]

If we are looking for causes of environmental destruction and species extinction, our technological developments are definitely going to be "called to testify" at the very least. But you're correct in that there are many other possible perps responsible for the Postmodern condition's morbidity and detachment from human needs.


Class, or social hierarchy, is a technology itself, and it is "required" because of other technologies.

Yes, I can agree to this, but formalistically social hierarchy is considered 'social relations', while the technology itself is considered to be 'means of production'.

Gordon Childe described the transformation which occurred in Mesopotamia between 5,000 and 6,000 years ago as people settled in the river valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates. They found land which was extremely fertile, but which could only be cultivated by ‘drainage and irrigation works’, which depended upon ‘cooperative effort’.48 More recently Maisels has suggested people discovered that by making small breaches in the banks between river channels they could irrigate wide areas of land and increase output considerably. But they could not afford to consume all the extra harvest immediately, so some was put aside to protect against harvest failure.49

Grain was stored in sizeable buildings which, standing out from the surrounding land, came to symbolise the continuity and preservation of social life. Those who supervised the granaries became the most prestigious group in society, overseeing the life of the rest of the population as they gathered in, stored and distributed the surplus. The storehouses and their controllers came to seem like powers over and above society, the key to its success, which demanded obedience and praise from the mass of people. They took on an almost supernatural aspect. The storehouses were the first temples, their superintendents the first priests.50 Other social groups congregated around the temples, concerned with building work, specialised handicrafts, cooking for and clothing the temple specialists, transporting food to the temples and organising the long distance exchange of products. Over the centuries the agricultural villages grew into towns and the towns into the first cities, such as Uruk, Lagash, Nippur, Kish and Ur (from which the biblical patriarch Abraham supposedly came).

A somewhat similar process occurred some two and a half millennia later in Meso-America. Irrigation does not seem to have played such a central role, at least initially, since maize was a bountiful enough crop to provide a surplus without it in good years.51 But vulnerability to crop failures encouraged the storage of surpluses and some form of co-ordination between localities with different climates. There was a great advantage for the population as a whole if a specialised group of people coordinated production, kept account of the seasons and looked after the storehouses. Here, too, storehouses turned, over time, into temples and supervisors into priests, giving rise to the successive cultures of the Olmecs, Teotihuacan, the Zapotecs and the Mayas, as is shown by their huge sculptures, magnificent pyramids, temples, ceremonial brick ball courts and elaborately planned cities (Teotihuacan’s population rose to perhaps 100,000 in the early centuries AD).

In both the Middle East and Meso-America something else of historic importance occurred. The groups of priestly administrators who collected and distributed the stockpiles belonging to the temples began to make marks on stone or clay to keep a record of incomings and outgoings. Over time pictorial images of particular things were standardised, sometimes coming to express the sound of the word for the object they portrayed, until a way was provided of giving permanent visual expression of people’s sentences and thoughts. In this way writing was invented. The temple guardians also had time and leisure to make detailed observations of the sky at night, correlating the movements of the moon, the planets and the stars with those of the sun. Their ability to predict future movements and events such as eclipses gave them a near magical status. But they also learnt to produce calendars based on the moon and the sun which enabled people to work out the best time of the year for planting crops. Such efforts led to mathematics and astronomy taking root in the temples, even if in the magical form of astrology. As Gordon Childe put it, ‘The accumulation of a substantial social surplus in the temple treasuries—or rather granaries—was actually the occasion of the cultural advance that we have taken as the criterion of civilisation’.52

Harman, _People's History of the World_, pp. 19-20

---

The more complex a technological society is, the more insanely boring the specialization of employment is. China is currently the greatest producer of techno gadgets, and its citizens have the farthest thing from a natural life. It used to be Great Britain, and then the USA, that had the most polluted air, water, land, and brains because of... advanced technologies demands.

Yup, which could also be called a 'failure of energy supply', which we're *still* wrestling with today. But, once solved, we could realistically have large quantities of clean energy so that we can do our human stuff without messing up the whole planet.


---

I think technologies have the potential to be *beneficial* and *constructive*, as well as *deleterious* and *destructive*. Hence politics.

Do you "think" this, or do you "feel" it. Because I need proof to think something is true.

Well, just 'do the math' -- you're still tending to be too glass-half-empty, regarding technology.

BACK TO THE GRAPE MONKEYS

A great use of technology would be to sell the Grape monkeys chainsaws which they can use to:

1. Cut down all the natural forests and grow grape trees (have them grown by homeless cucumber monkey trash)

2. Use the chainsaws as weapons to defend themselves against bands of Cucumber Monky vigilantes.

Yup. Point well-taken, though by leaving out any mention of the *benefits* of technology you're making all of class history sound like an utter *tragedy*, even though people have enjoyed profound *benefits* in their lives throughout, particularly in recent centuries, thanks to technological development. I wouldn't look to you as being a well-rounded *historian*, since you're looking at social relations / 'tribalism', to the detriment of *means of production*, meaning *technology*.

[QatzelOk]

@QatzelOk Technological infrastructure, not politics, reorganize society. Technological service environments become the hidden ground of social engineering. viewtopic.php?f=50&t=166025&start=80

Yes, but politics is a technology itself, loosely based on "the family" and "the band" structures, just like Tang is loosely based on orange juice.

Sidenote: The natural-unnatural dilemma is a false dichotomy. Technology redistributes deep ecology. Any extension of the human mind is a natural side-effect of sensory immersion and evolves as one via proxy to the total structure of environmental forces.

Yes, but at the same time, the ideology of deep ecology only became *needed* because of the side effects of accumulated technologies. That this field is a result of what Mcluhan calls "extensions" is not a surprise - nor a comfort - because the concomitant "amputations" that will always occur bring disproportionate levels of danger, instability and harm.

The idea that there's an unnatural way of thinking is a conflated sub domain of temporal cognitive association abstracted through the confusion of a present or living information bias.

Along with the formula for "wrongness" above, there's also confusion, distraction, and simply being mislead.

When these erroneous thought processes are a RESULT of technologies like civilization, rapid technological change, and over-specialization of daily routine, you can label these incorrect patterns of thought "unnatural" because they only happen when *natural* (Garden of Eden) conditions are removed.

[ckaihatsu]

Take a look at the top-three, 'high-road' categories here:


philosophical abstractions

Spoiler: show

I've observed many 'high-road' categories in a forest. Images lie, because they're frozen in time.

Well, what you're looking at *isn't* 'frozen in time' -- you can use that high-road-to-low-road taxonomy as a *framework*, and throw any real-world *details* into that framework, for usage.

Here's another one, similarly, that is congruent with the scientific method:


universal paradigm SLIDES TEMPLATE

Spoiler: show

---

Value judgments determine the overall design of a hierarchical flowchart.

No, this isn't correct -- 'value judgments' implies *subjectivity*, and the taxonomy framework I developed and created ('philosophical abstractions') uses a vertical axis of 'high road' (top), to 'low road' (bottom).

Nature doesn't need philosophical abstractions or taxonomical categorization to unfold as one unified system.

Well, no, *nature* doesn't need it, but we're *not nature* -- we're self-aware, conscious, highly social beings who change nature *around* us, due to our social organization.

Deep ecology, and its expressed structures, evolve and happen simultaneously. Such a complex system cannot harmoniously act as isolated operations separated by what you're aware of. An individuated position and perspective of phenomena in any hierarchy you've abstracted is a sensate illusion, based in the way mind interfaces with the system that is ultimately responsible for all thought.

Actually it's the individual *brain* that's the basis for all consciousness and thought -- you're misconceiving thought / memory / etc. as existing *outside* of the individual body and brain.

Sidenote: The natural-unnatural dilemma is a false dichotomy. Technology redistributes deep ecology.

No, natural-unnatural is *not* a false dichotomy -- it's a *real* dichotomy. You're effectively ignoring *human existence* and history altogether, which has *produced* technology.

Any extension of the human mind is a natural side-effect of sensory immersion and evolves as one via proxy to the total structure of environmental forces.

Here you're refuting self-consciousness altogether, and trying to posit that thought results from the *senses*, instead of from *individual reflection*, or *cognition*.

The idea that there's an unnatural way of thinking is a conflated sub domain of temporal cognitive association abstracted through the confusion of a present or living information bias. Alas, biology (as a subdivision and material expression of immaterial SOURCE) adapts to all shifts in its enfolded physical system.

According to *this* framework of yours, no one could ever be 'wrong* because there's no 'unnatural' way of thinking that could get someone into trouble, as through having misconceptions and/or bad habits.

It sounds like you subscribe to a runaway-*positivism*.

@QatzelOk Technological infrastructure, not politics, reorganize society. Technological service environments become the hidden ground of social engineering. viewtopic.php?f=50&t=166025&start=80

[Sivad]

the scientific method:

the method of Science!

[Beren]

Yes, but politics is a technology itself, loosely based on "the family" and "the band" structures, just like Tang is loosely based on orange juice.

But politics exists among monkeys as well, I thought we'd be allowed to be monkeys at least.

[QatzelOk]

But politics exists among monkeys as well, I thought we'd be allowed to be monkeys at least.

Within monkey communities, it is the family and the band structure.

This structure has remained the same for their entire existence of a species.

Likewise, the social structure of cats, wolves, whales, daffodils, mosquitoes, earthworms, algae... unchanged throughout their existence as a species.

I wonder why they didn't jump on the "Pepsi Generation" bandwagon like our species.

[Beren]

Within monkey communities, it is the family and the band structure.

So we just shouldn't have evolved to humans, basically. We probably did so to avoid extinction, however.

[QatzelOk]

So we just shouldn't have evolved to humans, basically.

Our genes haven't changed. We've always been homo sapiens throughout.

What changed was the way we organized ourselves into fake families and fake bands.

It took a lot of propaganda technology to get us to where we are in terms of our extremely weak social connections to one another.

Destroying natural communities helped techno-change advance more quickly (new tech, after new tech, after new tech) as it eliminated the natural defenses against technological change - tradition - which is a product of those old-fashioned monkey-like social systems that we used to have for hundreds of thousands of years.

The extirmination of traditional religions in Europe to introduce Abrahamic ReligionTM technology, the destruction of the First Nations communities to introduce railways or European-style agriculture... are 2 examples out of thousands.

[Beren]

Our genes haven't changed. We've always been homo sapiens throughout.

Genes are changing from generation to generation and we just don't fully know what's in them.