How do we escape the Rat Utopia while keeping the good parts of modern life?

Lord of the Large Pants

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IB"what good parts?" Okay, but seriously.

I've seen it referenced by quite a few people, but this is the Rat Utopia in case you're not familiar with it. Basically, there was a set of experiments where a bunch of rats were given unlimited food and water. Two primary things happened as a result of this. First, the population exploded. Second, the rats went crazier than a shithouse rat. Sexual deviance such as homosexuality in some, lack of sexual desire in others, self-isolation, abandonment of children... any of this sound familiar?

Well, okay. There's a debate on whether this directly translates to humans. But it's hard to deny the parallels. We as a society have decided that human beings shouldn't be allowed to starve to death. The state should provide them with at least basic living standards. Despite the side effects, despite the costs, I think this is basically correct from a humanitarian standpoint. Plus, we in America just live in a rich country. As bad as the economy is right now, an ancient Greek or Roman would shit themselves in envy at the decadence of all but the poorest in the US. (Probably applies to other countries in the west to a lesser degree, but I won't speak for them.)

Then the Rat Utopia starts kicking in. We've become so prosperous that it's actually broken our brains. Mental illness is more prevalent than ever. Gender dysphoria is on the rise. People are voluntarily isolating themselves from others. Parents no longer know how to raise children. Based on the Rat Utopia, there's a strong argument that all this is happening because we simply have it too good.

On the other hand... there's something deeply disturbing about wanting people to suffer for the sake of character building. "We don't want TOO much peace. We don't want TOO much prosperity. We don't want medicine to get TOO advanced." Don't we? Aren't all these things good? I know a lot of people here are into faux-ironic anarcho-primitivist RETVRN stuff. But I personally rather like not having my teeth fall out by the age of 40 and dying in a ditch from a minor cut that got infected.

So... how do we get out of it? Is there any way we can be educated, virtuous citizens who are also rich and free? Or do we have to pick a lane?
 
I don't know if I would take the Rat Utopia experiment to the pulpit. I would like to see it repeated with more intelligent mammals (like monkeys), but I can't deny that it's saying some stuff we should pay attention to.

I think that a lot of problems have to do with capitalism, not technology. Capitalism has put women in the workplace, kids in daycares, and the elderly in nursing homes for the sake of profits. If there was some way to curtail capitalism's tendency to mess with family units for the sake of greater short-term economic efficiency then that would probably fix things to some degree.
Strong men make easy times. Easy times make weak men. Weak men make hard times.
The needle is right in the middle of weak men and hard times in my opinion.
That's an overly simplistic answer. Cyclical history is kind of stupid unless you put on the micro level. As long as you have some sort of hierarchy in society, there will always be struggle and some of the people born on the bottom will rise to the top as those who have become fat and lazy sink to the bottom.
 
Well, is it prosperity that's causing today's issues, rather than what we choose to do with it? And are we really prosperous in the ways that matter?
To put a fine point on it: does it matter if everyone has a supercomputer in their pocket, if nobody can afford a decent education for their child?
 
It wasn't just rat homosexuality (including the male rats who'd try to mate with the dominant rats); the fiend rats whose behavior was basically limited to being relentless deranged rapists would attack the female rats in their nests and generally harass them to the point they'd reabsorb their young, ween their young too early, or outright wind up abandoning them.
The fewer stronger male rats couldn't maintain constantly struggling to defend their territory and their lady rats from the fiend rats, so the female rats would be left to try to defend themselves which led to a complete breakdown in their little rat family cycles. Their young were so screwed up they couldn't properly rear their own young anymore, and the entire colony collapsed.

You'd also have the rats who'd basically show no interest in reproduction of any kind, they'd just preen and avoid conflict at any cost, basically becoming social non-entities.

Anyone who claims these behaviors don't apply to humans is being silly. These seem like more primitively ingrained, latent behavioral patterns that manifest in communal species once population controls are removed, but territorial limitations are not.

Edit: Fredrik Knudsen on YT did a great video on the rat/mouse utopia experiments back in 2017. Watch it, it has 7.5 mil views for a reason.

On the other hand... there's something deeply disturbing about wanting people to suffer for the sake of character building.
I mean, it wouldn't be about character building, it would be about culling.

Again, this is no different from the idea of controlled burns in forests:
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People started realizing that you need periodic fires, because that's how the weeds, insects, invasive species, etc. are controlled so they don't choke out the stronger species, especially since if that isn't accomplished eventually the hardier species will be choked out, all that will be left is the less hardy ones, and eventually a fire will happen and everything will die.

It's a bleak thing to accept, but death is just as vital to the maintenance of biological life as birth is. At some point you have to accept that not all life is made equal, there are lesser things that are built to die, and by not letting them do so you're defying nature and will pay the price.

That doesn't mean anyone should "do" anything about it, don't go shoot people or w/e, but it does mean you need to be able to steel yourself against the plight of other people who can't or won't help themselves.
 
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What did Leery used to say?
"Tune in, drop out" something like that. Or maybe it was Mckenna. Find like minded people, get out in the sunlight, try not to eat like shit.
 
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It's ironically similar to what the World Economic Forum wants, just in many cases inverted. Like for instance the WEF wants schools to be (even more) globohomo indoctrination centers, but we'd want our schools to be indoctrination centers for how to live a healthy, virtuous lifestyle. We'd need mass manipulation of the culture and media and make it acceptable to call for violence and censorship against those advocating alternative lifestyles (like it's acceptable to bash white people, "Nazis", men, or anything symbolic of traditional society). Education would reinforce children's connection to their region, the nation, and the planet (in that order), teach why things are, and glorify exemplary figures while cultivating a new leadership class from the ordinary plebs (who will always exist).

Culture would heavily emphasize sports (actually playing them, not just worshipping basketball players), physical education (making you actually work your ass off), self-improvement, and activities like farming, hunting, hiking, etc. For those living in cities, there would be programs (possibly mandatory) to get people to experience the land around them. There would be mandatory national service which could include the military, farm labor, public works, etc. Welfare checks would come with this requirement, assuming one was too physically unfit or of course mentally unfit (in which case they'd be thrown in an asylum). Eugenics would be a major part of life where people with bad genes would be sterilized or otherwise limited in how many children they might have.

Basically it's about improving the quality of society to make people lead more meaningful lives.
I think that a lot of problems have to do with capitalism, not technology. Capitalism has put women in the workplace, kids in daycares, and the elderly in nursing homes for the sake of profits. If there was some way to curtail capitalism's tendency to mess with family units for the sake of greater short-term economic efficiency then that would probably fix things to some degree.
This too. Unchecked capitalism destroying culture and the fabric of society for profit has been noted for over a century. Doesn't mean capitalism is inherently bad, but it does need to be checked and restrained for the sake of people.
 
I don't know if I would take the Rat Utopia experiment to the pulpit. I would like to see it repeated with more intelligent mammals (like monkeys), but I can't deny that it's saying some stuff we should pay attention to.

I think that a lot of problems have to do with capitalism, not technology. Capitalism has put women in the workplace, kids in daycares, and the elderly in nursing homes for the sake of profits. If there was some way to curtail capitalism's tendency to mess with family units for the sake of greater short-term economic efficiency then that would probably fix things to some degree.
Suffering against nature is altogether different than suffering against kin and their negligence. Learning one lesson slowly for a century makes for a society which then rots for one and a half that length. 1787-1887 to rise, and then 1887-2037 to bloat under ego and then fall. Every empire must gets its day to rise, and then it fails after 250 years thereabouts.
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Humanity never changes, once we succeed we lock ourselves in a room with only each other and no nature to judge. Every year we march toward a sort of slow suffocation of soul. What once came easily as men lived according to natures limits, now it mortgages joy from its own children for them to pay. We are not the generation who got the joy, and we either submit and nastily steal from others cannibalistically or we riot against a system which hates us as much as our parents did. For who put national debt and the taxes to pay it with onto our shoulders for whose benefit but the Boomer? Imagine going to a restaurant only to have to pay a tab your parents left. Money lost most of its value, and we're so used to public collapse that two recessions hardly surprises us. We know we're being raped financially, we have only the ability to tell ourselves someone else will take it today rather than I. But look to all the Redditors and their Antiwork subreddits, who is being bent over a table to make the math work out? Its a MLM pyramid scheme. All societies turn into this, or they transform against their ruin and forestall their fate for another 250 years like the Eastern Romans or the British whose constitution barely uses its crown anymore where once the crown ruled in every way.

Capitalism ruined things because it lent one generation what the next had to pay, it ruined things because it made one corporation (or its lender) win where many hands used to be made heavier, and its ruined things because it can shift payment through a vast system to make everything just a little grayer and sadder generations after the next. Who would speak for the dead from that, who today speaks for the suicides to come? Let that be America's epitaph. I hope we let justice be done as the heavens fall, and those thereafter chose something new.
tombstone.jpg

People started realizing that you need periodic fires, because that's how the weeds, insects, invasive species, etc. are controlled so they don't choke out the stronger species, especially since if that isn't accomplished eventually the hardier species will be choked out, all that will be left is the less hardy ones, and eventually a fire will happen and everything will die.

It's a bleak thing to accept, but death is just as vital to the maintenance of biological life as birth is. At some point you have to accept that not all life is made equal, there are lesser things that are built to die, and by not letting them do so you're defying nature and will pay the price.

That doesn't mean anyone should "do" anything about it, don't go shoot people or w/e, but it does mean you need to be able to steel yourself against the plight of other people who can't or won't help themselves.
We're not actually helping, we're just feeling guilt for something that cannot be stopped. Somethings are not in humanity's control, and Mother Nature truly has a mother's patience with us. It is a sign of nobility to cry out against fate, rather than to bow one's head. It is human nature to seek out culpability in a time of tragedy, and to take the responsibility when blame cannot be found. However their doom was fixed by their nature, and it is to nature that we must ultimately submit however long it takes our pride.

Welfare is a safety net when its sold, a lifestyle when its in place. You withheld their fate, you never changed it. Some people you cannot help, the sub-80 IQ populations after three generations of Welfare are not suddenly better off.

The sooner people realize that sometimes its better that you had never helped at all, the better for society. Iron, out of Calvary, is master of men all.
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we'd want our schools to be indoctrination centers for how to live a healthy, virtuous lifestyle. We'd need mass manipulation of the culture and media and make it acceptable to call for violence and censorship against those advocating alternative lifestyles (like it's acceptable to bash white people, "Nazis", men, or anything symbolic of traditional society). Education would reinforce children's connection to their region, the nation, and the planet (in that order), teach why things are, and glorify exemplary figures while cultivating a new leadership class from the ordinary plebs (who will always exist).

Culture would heavily emphasize sports (actually playing them, not just worshipping basketball players), physical education (making you actually work your ass off), self-improvement, and activities like farming, hunting, hiking, etc. For those living in cities, there would be programs (possibly mandatory) to get people to experience the land around them. There would be mandatory national service which could include the military, farm labor, public works, etc. Welfare checks would come with this requirement, assuming one was too physically unfit or of course mentally unfit (in which case they'd be thrown in an asylum). Eugenics would be a major part of life where people with bad genes would be sterilized or otherwise limited in how many children they might have.

Basically it's about improving the quality of society to make people lead more meaningful lives.
This is why I think Germany should have won WWI. National Service was a much deeper system in Germany with their Pflichtfeuerwehr (Compulsory fire service) or Gemeindedienste (mandatory community service). The idea that people are happier when they are capable and disciplined is just destroyed by admittedly good arguments today about governments abusing any power you give them. That Europe would have looked remarkably like modern Europe, maybe the EU would be the European Empire instead.

Proper Civic Culture about giving people the worldview that the family is the smallest unit of the nation and that achievements alone make life worth living. Government Dating Apps should exist to promote endless questionnaires to women to sort them at men who are suggested by AI for their compatibility. PUA-like communities should be declared Child-Corruptors, although not only them. Men should be taught how to not be creepy, and additionally how to be romantic, by government psychologists through Dating App recommendations. Women would happily select men for it, and the results would be better for everyone. Hobbies groups should be merged with dating Apps to ensure safe locations for people to meet and bond enough to see if they should grab a drink later. People should have to preform certain group exercises like 10 mile runs in order to vote, every week. There should be times when the economy is closed every week to ensure people have time to get together as family or friends in order to socialize. I would restrict store hours to 10am-6pm weekdays, 8am-8pm on Saturdays, and close stores on Sundays. Government Offices should be open Sun-Thurs.

People should be offered money to sterilize themselves, anyone who doesn't feel the need to continue their line isn't going to be a good citizen anyway. What's in it for them? Admittedly again, modern society and its multiculturalism telling good people they're evil for thinking about nationalism and the public welfare is going to make citizens not want to put their children through a hell of compulsion which is coming before multiculturalism collapses due to the host population hating the parasitism and the parasite population not stepping up because hard work is for the host population alone. Its their country again once there's work to be done, then its right back to multiculturalism. So maybe good people will be sterilized too, but the answer is to instill proper national values first not let society run mad.

Society should guarantee free housing and food, just not good housing or food. But if people cannot afford better, then let them work and bank it all without taxing them. Let them get free of their predicament. Municipalities which cannot house its working classes, and invest in upper class housing only should have their population recover by National Housing and flee from such hostile lands. Fuck capitalistic winner-take-all urban conditions today.

We need a new frontier to explore.
First, I thought we were fighting for a dream of a future amongst the stars. Then I realized we were fighting for wealth and the pride of wealthy men. I was ashamed. I hope one day humanity finds another frontier to conquer, humanity needs the wilds to house those who can still dream.
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We peaked either in 1885 culturally or 1969 with the cancellation of the Manned Venus flyby because the only point of going to space was anti-Soviet propaganda. The space race was just one part of America dunking on the Soviet Union like a jock bully. Capitalism had better abilities, whatever Communism's better goals of putting permanent life on other worlds and moons. Once Communism was humiliated, Capitalism lost interest because it never cared about space. It only cared about showing up Communism dreams. America wasn't the good guy in the lunar race, and if America lost then it would have raced for the next goal and we might have gotten a better civilization out of it. Instead we peaked when Communism admitted their dreams didn't make for a better economy in general.
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Having the realization we aren't going to go to space again was the moment that killed my sense of Whig Historiography.
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My dude, what is this doomer drivel? No one wants to go back to hunter-gathering society were you might as well have your skin peel off by smallpox. Same way no one wants to live in a pod, unless you're the definition stereotype soy loser. One way or another, the dystopian shit would rebound. If Anerica falls, some other civilization would carry her torch just as it carried Rome's. As for space? I'm sorry, but the truth is, space travel is still an inevitability! Curiosity, the Artemis Program, the James-Webb Telescope, the gradual cheapening of space travel to make it more accessible in the coming next generations and we are witnessing it! Maybe it feels better to feel helpless by doomscrolling and hope your low expectations could be subverted, but that doesn't add any other color to your own life.

Don't think too much about what the shitheels do in the world my dudes. They can have their share of the pie, but you can make your own.
 
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First of all you could focus on yourself and stop bothering fags and people who don't bother you.
Second, escape to where? The only real utopia is inside your mind
Strong men make easy times. Easy times make weak men. Weak men make hard times.
The needle is right in the middle of weak men and hard times in my opinion.
It's way more complicated than that, you don't know anyone else's life but your own
 
The problem with mouse utopia is they didn't put mouse wheels in it so the mice were bored to the point of insanity. If the mice had been able to exercise and explore some tunnels for food there would have been no problems.
I think we should install human sized wheels on the side of everyone's house. Every notice that not one single school shooter had a giant mouse wheel? It's not a coincidence. It would save lives
 
As for space? I'm sorry, but the truth is, space travel is still an inevitability! Curiosity, the Artemis Program, the James-Webb Telescope, the gradual cheapening of space travel to make it more accessible in the coming next generations and we are witnessing it! Maybe it feels better to feel helpless by doomscrolling and hope your low expectations could be subverted, but that doesn't add any other color to your own life.
Unmanned space exploration =/= space travel. I used to be a huge fan of it, but I think outside of getting to the point we can mine an asteroid instead of some remote hill in the Arctic/the Outback, there's no real reason we should be doing that. It's too dangerous if corporations/billionaires could easily build a lab to brew up ebolAIDS or turn themselves into the Borg and destroy all the normal people back on Earth. And the risk exponentially rises the further away from Earth people can go to the point where interstellar travel is tantamount to destroying the human race. The space colonies people would live in, be it free-floating O'Neill cylinders or domes on Mars/the Moon, would be nothing but giant bugpods, disgusting societies that are totally controlled by the elite and suppress the human spirit--they don't have to be, but I'm just saying that's what they inevitably will be since cramming 2 million people into an insanely expensive space colony is orders of magnitude more economically efficient (thank you capitalism) than cramming 200K people.

Oh, and don't forget how they'll eventually take away the night sky and replace it with satellite constellations that will light up and be giant billboards. They could also do the same on the moon. The reality is space colonization is a nightmare scenario for everyone involved.
First realistic step is to leave the big city? Soys really love the hustle and bustle of the big city, like they're in a TV show.
There's almost no rural jobs. The ones that exist are often taken by illegals or are just pure awful shit like "prison guard at the county jail full of methheads." Even jobs which SHOULD be rural like remote programming work demand you be in the office at least a few days a week. Enjoy your hour-plus commute each way.
 
There's almost no rural jobs.
I didn't say it had to be rural. There are smaller more conservative towns. Or maybe even smaller cities that aren't so dystopian.

Also about space travel, it's ridiculously hard IRL. That's because...

getting to space in "soft SF":

Just get in a flying saucer and float away?

getting to space in real life:

Δv = Ve * ln ( M / Me )

Δv = Ve * ln ( R )

Δv = ship's total deltaV capability (m/s)
Ve = exhaust velocity of propulsion system (m/s). Remember if you only have specific impulse (Isp), you can calculate Ve with Ve = Isp * 9.81
M = mass of rocket with full propellant tanks (kg)
Me = mass of rocket with empty propellant tanks (kg)
R = ship's mass ratio
ln[x] = natural logarithm of x, the "ln" key on your calculator
(source: Engine - Atomic Rockets)
Traveling to the stars, by contrast, suffers from no such ambiguities or uncertainty. Indeed, it is a special case of manned spaceflight, more daunting than near-Earth spaceflight by many orders of magnitude. Star travel in fact occupies a special niche in the long career of human aspiration and desire. But although one of the most commonly expressed motivations for "going to the stars" is to perpetuate the human race, it is far more likely that an interstellar voyage would mean not the survival but rather the death of its crew.
(Interstellar Travel as Delusional Fantasy [Excerpt] - Scientific American)
(and FTL looks impossible now)
 
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