Rant on the modern condition of Mankind.

yo andrew,

You dont have to work 40 hours a week to be happy. You could not work at all and live on the streets. But living on the streets wouldnt make you happy would it? What do you need to be happy? Skiing probably? A house with heat? Good food? All of these things require peopel to work for them. You cant just expect to get these things for free. Even in the middle of the bush with no technology around I'm going to guess that you would have to work at least 40 hours a week just to stay alive and not die.

We're only human.

the oil problem would be solved with the use of hemp oil. easily cultivated in 10 weeks it is the onnly renewable resource of its kind. theres one thing solved if bud would jus be legal

People aren't happy on the streets largely because of the way that we've taken nature and turned it into streets in the first place.

Skiing does not have to stop in a socialist society. Guess what, if everyone interested would either spend an afternoon as a liftie or providing security at the nuclear plant that powers the resort, you could earn your ski season and earn your share of electricty from the plant to heat your home in just a few hours. The guy whose designed the nuclear plant gets priority on ski-in ski-out housing for a designated time.

But wait, oh shit! Theres no mega rich guy that owns the resort and everything around it. tragedy Theres no one to claim ownership over the people that built the nuclear power plant and reap the benefits of their labour. FUCK

I agree with this post to an extent.  I am truly outraged at what corporations are doing in today's society.  I seriously believe that the corporations will get stronger and have more say in the government.  They will have the best jobs with the highest pay, so people (in their own best interest)  will work for them for the largest capital gain.  Once the corporations control basically the "power of the citizens"  what's stopping them from changing laws in their favor.  Basically  the whole "vote for this, or you can find a new job" thing  They could make lobbyists for candidates legal, and they could basically rewrite the entire fucking constitution in their favor.  Once the corporations are fighting for control politically, what is stopping them from arming themselves and starting what could potentially turn out to be small wars between each other.  Some day, they may resemble gangs rather than business.   Really, really powerful gangs with really good weapons.  The world isn't always led by people who have the best interests of the country in mind.  Corrupt leaders have held power in almost every country and often only do what is best for their personal capital gain. It is human nature.  Not everyone cares about what is best for the working class.  I am not a redneck, I don't care to much for guns, and I am opposed to gang violence.  I still say that the first and second amendments are the most important in the Bill of Rights.  The purpose of the second amendment is to absolutely ensure that we can protect our first amendment rights.  If the country is being taken over by corrupt leaders who don't care for the rights of the people, the people need the power to fight back.  There is talk about taking the right to bear arms away from general citizens and giving it only to people in the military, but this is a horrible move.  If the possibly corrupt government of the future owns the military and the citizens have no way of raising a resistance, then what stands in their way?  This is why I have a rifle locked away in my attic in case that horrible day ever does come.  I think I've only shot it like twice.  Point to this:  Protect your rights for all they're worth, and don't give in to what you know is morally wrong even if it will make you richer.  Even if you may never need to fight back against a corrupt system, at least you have the power to do so.




Every great civilization in history has fallen, usually due to a corrupt government.  When is it our turn?  Think about it...

crimethinc, anyone?

pics or it didn't happen

Government shouldn't have priority over the individual.  Government should be here to serve the individual, this is seldom the case anymore

armageddon 2012...

get ready

Ismael?

props to the thread poster, for seeing with your eyes  open. join NS thinkers

Not to the extent of America. But yes, pretty much the same.

Honestly I don't think socialism is any more valid than capitalism by itself. What we need is moderation. A way to combine the best of both into a government of the people for the people, not over and exploiting the people. In both systems there is always risk of a few people ending up in control of it all if the people set it up and manage it badly.

I'm reading the excerpts from a book called Endgame,

http://www.endgamethebook.org/excerpts.html

which has the following premises. Looks like this guy has a good understanding of the problems we're facing but has given up on any alternative than a violent collapse. While I have hope for an alternative solution, obviously I don't really have any better idea, lol.

Premises of Endgame

Premise One: Civilization is not and can never be sustainable. This is especially true for industrial civilization.

Premise Two: Traditional communities do not often voluntarily give up or sell the resources on which their communities are based until their communities have been destroyed. They also do not willingly allow their landbases to be damaged so that other resources—gold, oil, and so on—can be extracted. It follows that those who want the resources will do what they can to destroy traditional communities.

Premise Three: Our way of living—industrial civilization—is based on, requires, and would collapse very quickly without persistent and widespread violence.

Premise Four: Civilization is based on a clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims.

Premise Five: The property of those higher on the hierarchy is more valuable than the lives of those below. It is acceptable for those above to increase the amount of property they control—in everyday language, to make money—by destroying or taking the lives of those below. This is called production. If those below damage the property of those above, those above may kill or otherwise destroy the lives of those below. This is called justice.

Premise Six: Civilization is not redeemable. This culture will not undergo any sort of voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of living. If we do not put a halt to it, civilization will continue to immiserate the vast majority of humans and to degrade the planet until it (civilization, and probably the planet) collapses. The effects of this degradation will continue to harm humans and nonhumans for a very long time.

Premise Seven: The longer we wait for civilization to crash—or the longer we wait before we ourselves bring it down—the messier will be the crash, and the worse things will be for those humans and nonhumans who live during it, and for those who come after.

Premise Eight: The needs of the natural world are more important than the needs of the economic system.

Another way to put premise Eight: Any economic or social system that does not benefit the natural communities on which it is based is unsustainable, immoral, and stupid. Sustainability, morality, and intelligence (as well as justice) requires the dismantling of any such economic or social system, or at the very least disallowing it from damaging your landbase.

Premise Nine: Although there will clearly some day be far fewer humans than there are at present, there are many ways this reduction in population could occur (or be achieved, depending on the passivity or activity with which we choose to approach this transformation). Some of these ways would be characterized by extreme violence and privation: nuclear armageddon, for example, would reduce both population and consumption, yet do so horrifically; the same would be true for a continuation of overshoot, followed by crash. Other ways could be characterized by less violence. Given the current levels of violence by this culture against both humans and the natural world, however, it’s not possible to speak of reductions in population and consumption that do not involve violence and privation, not because the reductions themselves would necessarily involve violence, but because violence and privation have become the default. Yet some ways of reducing population and consumption, while still violent, would consist of decreasing the current levels of violence required, and caused by, the (often forced) movement of resources from the poor to the rich, and would of course be marked by a reduction in current violence against the natural world. Personally and collectively we may be able to both reduce the amount and soften the character of violence that occurs during this ongoing and perhaps longterm shift. Or we may not. But this much is certain: if we do not approach it actively—if we do not talk about our predicament and what we are going to do about it—the violence will almost undoubtedly be far more severe, the privation more extreme.

Premise Ten: The culture as a whole and most of its members are insane. The culture is driven by a death urge, an urge to destroy life.

Premise Eleven: From the beginning, this culture—civilization—has been a culture of occupation.

Premise Twelve: There are no rich people in the world, and there are no poor people. There are just people. The rich may have lots of pieces of green paper that many pretend are worth something—or their presumed riches may be even more abstract: numbers on hard drives at banks—and the poor may not. These “rich” claim they own land, and the “poor” are often denied the right to make that same claim. A primary purpose of the police is to enforce the delusions of those with lots of pieces of green paper. Those without the green papers generally buy into these delusions almost as quickly and completely as those with. These delusions carry with them extreme consequences in the real world.

Premise Thirteen: Those in power rule by force, and the sooner we break ourselves of illusions to the contrary, the sooner we can at least begin to make reasonable decisions about whether, when, and how we are going to resist.

Premise Fourteen: From birth on—and probably from conception, but I’m not sure how I’d make the case—we are individually and collectively enculturated to hate life, hate the natural world, hate the wild, hate wild animals, hate women, hate children, hate our bodies, hate and fear our emotions, hate ourselves. If we did not hate the world, we could not allow it to be destroyed before our eyes. If we did not hate ourselves, we could not allow our homes—and our bodies—to be poisoned.

Premise Fifteen: Love does not imply pacifism.

Premise Sixteen: The material world is primary. This does not mean that the spirit does not exist, nor that the material world is all there is. It means that spirit mixes with flesh. It means also that real world actions have real world consequences. It means we cannot rely on Jesus, Santa Claus, the Great Mother, or even the Easter Bunny to get us out of this mess. It means this mess really is a mess, and not just the movement of God’s eyebrows. It means we have to face this mess ourselves. It means that for the time we are here on Earth—whether or not we end up somewhere else after we die, and whether we are condemned or privileged to live here—the Earth is the point. It is primary. It is our home. It is everything. It is silly to think or act or be as though this world is not real and primary. It is silly and pathetic to not live our lives as though our lives are real.

Premise Seventeen: It is a mistake (or more likely, denial) to base our decisions on whether actions arising from these will or won’t frighten fence-sitters, or the mass of Americans.

Premise Eighteen: Our current sense of self is no more sustainable than our current use of energy or technology.

Premise Nineteen: The culture’s problem lies above all in the belief that controlling and abusing the natural world is justifiable.

Premise Twenty: Within this culture, economics—not community well-being, not morals, not ethics, not justice, not life itself—drives social decisions.

Modification of Premise Twenty: Social decisions are determined primarily (and often exclusively) on the basis of whether these decisions will increase the monetary fortunes of the decision-makers and those they serve.

Re-modification of Premise Twenty: Social decisions are determined primarily (and often exclusively) on the basis of whether these decisions will increase the power of the decision-makers and those they serve.

Re-modification of Premise Twenty: Social decisions are founded primarily (and often exclusively) on the almost entirely unexamined belief that the decision-makers and those they serve are entitled to magnify their power and/or financial fortunes at the expense of those below.

Re-modification of Premise Twenty: If you dig to the heart of it—if there were any heart left—you would find that social decisions are determined primarily on the basis of how well these decisions serve the ends of controlling or destroying wild nature.

These are very good points, and I'm acctually wondering what people are gonna try and come up with to prove them wrong