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

Dr. Plussy Pounder said:
Not belonging, not mattering, not fitting in. Or, oddly enough, being far away.
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You aren't helping your case here, you're just prompting even more questions.

Why do people 'not belong', why do they 'not matter', why aren't they 'fitting in'?
What causes all this? Why is it happening right now to this humongous degree?
 
Homophobic white dog said:
You aren't helping your case here, you're just prompting even more questions.

Why do people 'not belong', why do they 'not matter', why aren't they 'fitting in'?
What causes all this? Why is it happening right now to this humongous degree?
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I don't have to figure out the causes of those things to say they're problems, nor do I have to state their causes to point out that mere crowding doesn't cause it and solarpunk won't fix it.
 
Dr. Plussy Pounder said:
I don't have to figure out the causes of those things to say they're problems, nor do I have to state their causes to point out that mere crowding doesn't cause it and solarpunk won't fix it.
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No, you have to. Barring arguments with self-evident reasons, every argument's foundations rests on its reasons and your argument's aren't self-evident.

Also who spoke of solarpunk?
 
ToroidalBoat said:
Hopefully there is somehow a way to balance the benefits of tech with freedom anyway.
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I'm all ears if anyone could explain a way. But nobody can, because freedom applies to bad actors too. Future computers, internet, AI, etc. could let terrorists (or hostile governments) kill millions and millions of people or completely shut down the world via basement bioweapons, hacking everyone's BCI interface or the self-driving car systems, etc. Hardcore atheist scientist Victor Stenger said "Science flies men to the moon, religion flies men into buildings" but he clearly ignored that science gave men the tools to fly into buildings. It will only get worse, since we're a bunch of monkey-brained cavemen who think we're so smart playing around with power than even 300 years ago would be considered godlike.
 
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Save the Loli said:
I'm all ears if anyone could explain a way. But nobody can, because freedom applies to bad actors too.
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"The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race."

- one of the entries in this site's random text thing

Save the Loli said:
atheist
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That atheist guy who wrote that book about God being a "failed hypothesis" predicted that the future of the species is becoming atheist robots that explore the universe.
 
ToroidalBoat said:
"The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race."

- one of the entries in this site's random text thing
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And there's one of your options. We have three.
1. Going full Uncle Ted (which includes nuclear war/pandemic destroying civilization)
2. Living under some form of techno-totalitarianism (WEF, a Russia/China-led UN world government, AI dictatorship, etc.)
3. Extinction

It's one of the worst blackpills out there that technology (in particular the internet) leads us down these three paths.
 
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Save the Loli said:
And there's one of your options. We have three.
1. Going full Uncle Ted (which includes nuclear war/pandemic destroying civilization)
2. Living under some form of techno-totalitarianism (WEF, a Russia/China-led UN world government, AI dictatorship, etc.)
3. Extinction

It's one of the worst blackpills out there that technology (in particular the internet) leads us down these three paths.
Click to expand...
Not that I entirely agree with him, but Guillaume Faye has a fairly interesting idea called archeofuturism. The idea is that technology would collapse on a large scale but small pockets of high technology will be preserved here and there, but with lack of quality infrastrcutre and a large scale support network, they will just fight to keep the pockets they have rather than try to conquer the rest of the world that ranges from iron age to early modern technologically. It does not matter that you can make a tank or a computer if you do not have any of the materials to make them
 
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I was thinking about all this again last night. I think we’ve relaxed the rules that kept us on the straight and narrow too quickly. We like to think we are enlightened but we aren’t. The slippery slope of the last decade shows me quite clearly that humanity needs a firm hand and rules or it degrades.
So my parents, early boomer gen grew up with strict rules in society, accountable to a smaller social circle of their own communities. Shame was a big thing, , but as they grew up those rules started to break down. By the time they had us, gen x, the rules of society as whole were much looser, but they as parents didn’t enforce similar rules as they’d had probably becasue that initial loosening was fun.
So my generation grew up a bit directionless. Now the generation below us had even fewer societal positive rules. You add technology in as well and you get people growing up who are not influenced by their immediate community and accountable to that community. They’re influenced by people geographically and culturally distant.
It’s been a rapid removal of shame based rules, of community based rules and of religion based rules. And nothing good filled the hole, only consumerism and wokeness and sexual degeneracy. We are like untrained dogs let loose. It’s not good.
What can bring us back? Hardship, maybe. A massive war, or some very bad happening to focus minds again. Otherwise we are fucked if we carry in like this.
 
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Otterly said:
I was thinking about all this again last night. I think we’ve relaxed the rules that kept us on the straight and narrow too quickly. We like to think we are enlightened but we aren’t. The slippery slope of the last decade shows me quite clearly that humanity needs a firm hand and rules or it degrades.
So my parents, early boomer gen grew up with strict rules in society, accountable to a smaller social circle of their own communities. Shame was a big thing, , but as they grew up those rules started to break down. By the time they had us, gen x, the rules of society as whole were much looser, but they as parents didn’t enforce similar rules as they’d had probably becasue that initial loosening was fun.
So my generation grew up a bit directionless. Now the generation below us had even fewer societal positive rules. You add technology in as well and you get people growing up who are not influenced by their immediate community and accountable to that community. They’re influenced by people geographically and culturally distant.
It’s been a rapid removal of shame based rules, of community based rules and of religion based rules. And nothing good filled the hole, only consumerism and wokeness and sexual degeneracy. We are like untrained dogs let loose. It’s not good.
What can bring us back? Hardship, maybe. A massive war, or some very bad happening to focus minds again. Otherwise we are fucked if we carry in like this.
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Not that I disagree with you, but your terms are too broad. "Humanity" and "strict rules" what does that even mean? To bring up a counterexample, around the middle of the 20th century, Iran was the most liberal/secular country in the world, until the islamic revolution. And the subversion there came from up high, the authorities decided to shill western enlightened ideas *hard*. It is also a lot more complicated in China, that went through several periods of liberalisation and ...whatever is the opposite of that. Depends also a lot on the region.

Europeans need more religion in their life is the answer. When I say this people will always start to bicker with me about some petty details of XYZ religion, but those are the details, an impious irreligious society can at best maintain the momentum it had before and even then its just a question of time
 
hey @Save the Loli

What do you think about decentralizing technology, like how the internet was more decentralized in the '90s and '00s?

(with some kind of measure in place to keep it decentralized)
 
ToroidalBoat said:
(with some kind of measure in place to keep it decentralized)
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And there's your problem. Nations, corporations, etc. are naturally competitive, so the decentralized tech needs something keeping it decentralized and not "recentralized", which is what the free market demands (or for that matter a communist system if it's competing with capitalist nations). Whatever that measure is needs to be enforced somehow which leads straight back to option 2 I mentioned earlier. It can't be done without some sort of one world government.
 
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Chiliarch said:
Europeans need more religion in their life is the answer. When I say this people will always start to bicker with me about some petty details of XYZ religion, but those are the details, an impious irreligious society can at best maintain the momentum it had before and even then its just a question of time
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It's not religion in and of itself but the fact that you have an obligation to attend services on the weekends. In real life with normal people. Some of whom you like and some of whom you don't. And you figure out how to navigate it without being an asshole.

Kids these days are growing up without any institutions like that.
 
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Chiliarch said:
Not that I entirely agree with him, but Guillaume Faye has a fairly interesting idea called archeofuturism. The idea is that technology would collapse on a large scale but small pockets of high technology will be preserved here and there, but with lack of quality infrastrcutre and a large scale support network, they will just fight to keep the pockets they have rather than try to conquer the rest of the world that ranges from iron age to early modern technologically. It does not matter that you can make a tank or a computer if you do not have any of the materials to make them
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What kind of Warhammer 40,000 shit is this
 
I'd say we need to spread people out more, fewer massive cities, more smaller to medium cities instead. Alongside small towns, suburbia, rural areas etc.
 
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This is a really interesting question. TBH I’m not sure if humans can run a society with the pleasures of modern civilization and not end up going sterile and extinct in a few generations.

I think you need some sort of struggle that all of society can be ordered towards, whether that be space travel or something like that. Or you need to remove the human element entirely-have either super AI or some sort of benovolent post human elite guide society in such a way that humans are able to reproduce and e gage in the dance of life without sacrificing the benefits of modern technology.

One way to deal with it is to improve humanity. Most people when given nothing to do engage in pointless ephemera. Make everyone have a 200 level IQ, a genius artist, a peak body builder. Raise the intellectual and physical level of the population to what you might call the “peak” of human potential and let them then live freely.

It’s a useful question both from a sociological and theoretical perspective.
 
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Biden's Chosen said:
For a large part it's sacrifice that make life worth living. Everyone has access to immediate gratification. But it's the delayed ones that we treasure.
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You didn’t read the rest of that sentence. I outright said humanity needed some sort of shepherd or leadership that could direct our energies so we wouldn’t be lost in instant gratification.
 
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