Anyone else agree? I mean look at us. There are over 6 billion people in this world, and we're all clones, just born into a world run by a handful of rich and powerful people.. You'd think that with 6 billion people, we would get up and do something about it, and put an end to this madness, but instead everyone feels weak and does nothing. I was having a conversation with someone earlier, I was saying how someone claiming benefits and living off the state doesn't make them a bad person as really we're born into a prison of sorts and if you're going to stay inside you should make the most of it. Her response was "Yeah I know it's shit but it's not like we have any choice", even though everyone does have a choice. How is it that more than half of the world's population justifies the war on drugs.. Aka locking people up for smoking a plant that has been used since the beginning of our time on earth. Then again, I guess "ignorance is bliss" for some. It really disgusts me how everyone feels 9-5 is their only option in life. It isn't. Do what you want in this life, you'd be surprised at how many different choices there are and how free you can really be if you try. [/rant]
I wouldn't say the whole human race is ignorant, I mean obviously those who are rich and powerful know something that you don't. There's alot of dumbasses out there JesusGreen, doesn't mean our whole race is ignorant. I understand where you're coming from though, I really don't understand people anymore; why they do some of the horrible and stupid shit they do, and what the fuck goes through people's heads these days! Every man for himself is the new trend, but I know I could NEVER step on others to benefit myself. Seems everyone is slightly retarded too, I think that some sort of impending doom is slowly creeping up on our race, and I'm hoping only those with some common sense and morals are those who will survive. I mean even if there was some sort of horrible disease that began spreading (swine flu but ACTUALLY dangerous and deadly), how many would be smart enough to quarantine themselves when they started getting ill? Not many... so then how many would be smart enough to get the hell outta dodge and avoid all those who were exposed to the illness? Probably the same amount. Those who were smart enough to get away from urban centers and avoid any chance of contamination are the ones who will survive. I feel this is what's coming to the human race soon enough. Something like the black plague. I believe natural selection needs some sort of jump start, and it'll probably get one in due time...
I'm not depressed, I love life, and I don't believe the whole world is ignorant, but I mean it's almost as if it's our nature to be ignorant, because all of us are ignorant for at least part of our lives. I too once thought everyone who smoked weed was scum, but it's ridiculous how so few of us actually realise that the world is just a giant pyramid scheme that makes the rich richer and makes the rest of us have to struggle. @NJ Denali: I agree, the world will do something about it, but I hope it does something about it soon. I don't want to grow up to see my children grow up believing the same things I see most people believing, working 9-5 just to put food on the table.. If you want to smoke what you like, smoke what you like. If you don't want to work, don't work. If you don't want to pay your taxes, then don't. We can do what we like in this world, so long as we are actually willing to say "I'm not a clone" and stand up for what we believe.
I find that the "human race" has gotten really bad after the rise of capitalism. Yay, capitalism! Our world is far too rationalized; quick, efficient, at the expense of ignoring imporant information just for the sake of saving time and profiting. I too, am going to lose my mind. I feel that I need to ditch technology for like, a year, and go live in the wilderness. Just me, a variety of psychaedelics, perhaps a tent, and yeah... it needs doing. Sometimes, I wish we could just escape this insane technocracy we've become trapped in. Can't we draw the line? No, because the view nowadays is such a binary... "the one best way"... technology = progress, etc. Well, I for one, have had enough of these new "innovations". Upgrades, variety, different colours, customizable... just fuck off! I'm annoyed that the technologically determinist way of thinking is "technology and science is progress and advancement! It is the only way! But we can't. We'll invent and "innovate" until it destroys our planet. We're doing a fantastic job already. I hate what we're becoming. And people wonder why I do drugs. To escape from this fucking beautiful planet that we're continuing to destroy every day. Just fuck it. At the same time, I love some of these wonderful technologies, such as many aspects of the Internet (GC being my main). I couldn't live like I'm used to living if one were to strip me of my laptop. It makes me want to die. Seriously, I'm bound to commit technological suicide if this keeps up. Like, what the fuck is the obsession with advancements? Give me an old tube amp, a vintage electric guitar, a pen, paper, and damn, I would've been good there. It's like there's no way out! And I want out! Even now, they're cracking down on the Internet. (By "they" I refer to corporations like Microsoft, etc) We are taught that everything is so easy, because technology is doing it all for us. Seriously, controlling the Internet? I see some need for control, but when that control is established, you're gonna need more new controls to control the previous methods of control! It's fucking mindblowing. Can You Trust Your Computer? - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF) - Good essay by Richard Stallman on "trusted" computing - give it a read if you feel inclined. Here's a good little overview of George Ritzer's view on "McDonaldization" and how it's fucked our society so badly in the ass. http://www.umsl.edu/~keelr/010/mcdonsoc.html I'll add more later if I feel inclined to. God damn, what a way to start the morning! (BTW, I'm a student in the Media, Information and Technoculture program at UWO; quite interesting, and being in it has likely strengthened my disdain for basically everything)
I completely agree Wet Horse Lips...Me and some friends are planning a 4 month ''break from tech."...We've got weed, food and shelter...some guitars, and my congas...it shall be one hell of a time...Just to get away from people for a while...We are so insignificant compared to the bigger picture but have such ego's...We're little shit stains in the universe yet its all about us..
Ignorance stems from stupidity. Which stems from lack of knowledge. I loath stupid people. Fill yourselves with knowledge , or you'll just be spreading the stupidity.
@Wet Horse Lips: I agree completely. People often say to me "Capitalism works, communism doesn't", and in return I ask them "Why is that?", because the answer is simple. Every person on this earth wants to seek leverage for themselves that'll make them better than at least one other person. Everyone wants to be better than someone else. Communism and socialism are a nice concept and would maybe help preserve society if done without a central government, but for it to truly work, every single citizen has to agree with it, and that won't happen for a long time if ever. The same goes for technology, we've become too dependant on it to live without it. I'm a bit of a techie myself and I've lost track of how many hours I've wasted away in front of my computer. Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman have thankfully done their best to help lead people away from money hungry companies like Microsoft and Apple. It's a weird concept that when someone buys a Microsoft operating system they are only really "renting" the right to use it, and do not have the right to modify the OS in any way, and they do not truly own the OS. It's the same in life, we think we have rights and we think we are free when in fact these are just the beliefs reinforced by the people who are taking away our rights day by day and slowly forcing us to be less and less free, until one day we'll all be sitting in cages on computers from the day we turn 3, working our entire life just for food rations, and never seeing anything outside our cages. (Maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but to be honest, it wouldn't surprise me if it did happen)
But what's your basis for stupidity? What's your basis for knowledge? What is knowledge? What is information? Is information in turn,knowledge? Does knowledge mean intelligence? WHO THE FUCK KNOWS ANYMORE. This is a serious problem. Information isn't even conceivable anymore - it's a thing - an object. How would one go about filling themselves with knowledge? If we were smart, we would know that we know nothing at all. I don't believe ignorance stems from stupidity. There's so much more than that. It's all having to do with control, with censorship, with the politics of language. Listen to a political speech of some type - listen to the words they use, how they use them... An example... read this first, and you'll see what I mean, okay? George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language," 1946 Try and follow that. It may change how you write. It did for me. It's sad because people are putting limits on knowledge; knowledge and information wants to be free! But alas, we don't allow for it! We consider the Internet a knowledge database, right? You can look up whatever you want, and claim that you have the knowledge of knowing about a certain topic or field... but people control this shit, man. I almost wish we could go back to a simpler time. Technology will be our downfall, even though it seems that new innovations will save us... we have an undesirable craving, as a species, to one up each other. You can't deny this. You can't. Even when we don't intend or mean to, we feel great when we see we've excelled at something in comparison to someone else. Here, one sec... If you have a .PDF reader, give this a read as well... http://www.law.duke.edu/pd/papers/boyle.pdf It's long and I don't expect you to read it all, but it's James Boyle's insight on the enclosure of the public domain... basically, control... Also, read this... again, long, but there are unique ideas... It's on a PDF on my school's BlackBoard Learning page, so I'll just C+P it into here... it's long as hell, so I imagine no one will even read this... again, a fault of the Internet and our declining ability to focus - we just skim, now... looking for tags and keywords to get the jist of it. Yeah, we do. Maybe not all of us, but I definitely have noticed a change in how I read. The Control Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information Society James R. Beniger Harvard University Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England Each new technological innovation extends the processes that sustain life, thereby increasing the need for control and hence for improved control technology. This explains why technology appears autonomously to beget technology in general (Winner 1977), and why, as argued here, innovations in matter and energy processing create the need for further innovation in information-processing and communication technologies. Because technological innovation is increasingly a collective, cumulative effort, one whose results must be taught and diffused, it also generates an increased need for technologies of information storage and retrieval-as well as for their elaboration in systems of technical education and communication-quite independently of the particular need for control. As in the earlier revolutions in matter and energy technologies, the nineteenth-century revolution in information technology was predicated oni if not directly caused by, social changes associated with earlier innovations. Just as the Commercial Revolution depended on capital and labor freed by advanced agriculture, for example, and the Industrial Revolution presupposed a commercial system for capital allocations and the distribution of goods, the most recent technological revolution developed in response to problems arising out of advanced industrialization-an ever-mounting crisis of control. Crisis of Control The later Industrial Revolution constituted, in effect, a consolidation of earlier technological revolutions and the resulting transformations of' societ:y. Especially during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries industrialization extended to progressively earlier technological revolutions: manufacturing, energy production, transportation, agriculture-the last a transformation of what had once been seen as the extreme opposite of industrial production. In each area industrialization meant heavy infusions of capital for the exploitation of fossil fuels, wage labor, and machine technology and resulted in larger and more complex systems-systems characterized by increasing differentiation and interdependence at all levels. One of the earliest and most astute observers of this phenomenon was Emile Durkheim (18Q8-1917), the great French sociologist who examined many of its social ramifications in his Division of Labor in Society (1893). As Durkheim noted, industrialization tends to break down the barriers to transportation and communication that isolate local markets (what he called the "segmental" type), thereby extending distribution of goods and services to national and even global markets (the "organized" type). This, in turn, disrupts the market equilibrium under which production is regulated by means of direct communication between producer and consumer: Insofar as the segmental type is strongly marked, there are nearly as many economic markets as there are different segments. Consequently, each of them is very limited. Producers, being near consumers, can easily reckon the extent of the needs to be satisfied. Equilibrium is established without any trouble and production regulates itself. On the contrary, as the organized type develops, the fusion of different segments draws the markets together into one which embraces almost all society ... The result is that each industry produces for consumers spread over the whole surface of the country or even of the entire world. Contact is then no longer sufficient. The producer can no longer embrace the market in a glance, nor even in thought. He can no longer see limits, since it is, so to speak, limitless. Accordingly, production becomes unbridled and unregulated. It can only trust to chance ... From this come the crises which periodically disturb economic functions. (1893, pp. 369-370) BLAH, this is way too long and I gotta go to class. If I have time I'll C+P the rest... it's like 18 pages long. EDIT: LOL, sorry for having to take this from a PDF. I don't know where to get it in html so I can just paste it and be on my way.
We've arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces. And, soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation...tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his ego. His anxiety subsides. His inhuman void spreads monstrously like a gray vegetation.
I used to think like all of this to a tee. "people are stupid and ignorant." Alll society does is wake up every morning and drive to work, like cattle, like cows, moo moo. I think it's stupid but there's not a lot I can do about it. All I know now is one day there will be reveloution between the people that have everything and the people that have nothing. Basically after that a new system will be written. I've kinda realized now you shouldn't really dwell on it for too long, you lose your faith in humanity. I'd personally rather live off the grid somewhere on top of mountain.
OP, I get what you're saying. It really pisses me off that wages stay the same and the cost of living continues to rise. Does nobody else see that we are becoming one large company? That we now Live to work because without working, there is no living? There is only stress? And with working all the time, we lose our zest for life? We become lazy and unimaginative? We would rather sit and relax on our days off because we now 'appreciate' time to relax? As opposed to what?? Working 40+ hours a week and still barely paying the bills? The rise in the cost of living is really no different than if our wages had been decreased. We just accept it because we, apparently, have no choice. Apparently, we accept this as "natural". I'd call it anything but. There are so many of us that are struggling.. I'm sure there has to be a way for us to make a change. I think that in thinking that we are the most intelligent race on the planet, we have become the least. We are easily controlled and manipulated. To the point where we don't even see it anymore. It's an ego trip that just wont quit.
I find it funny the only people that think the same as me on this subject are generally drug users. The world is a garbage dumb right now. America is dead. Materialistic goals are only normal. Music influences it, Mainstream music is it. Like W.H.L. said technology is a big problem aswell. However I want the zune HD, I also feel like throwing away my cell phone, my t.v., my computer!!!, and just living without electronics. Seriously though WetHorseLips, lets start our own utopia in a mountain somewhere. All GC members who are serious are invited to come live with us and leave as they please. Then perhaps we can buy an old school bus, paint it with day-glo and travel America...?
Although generalizing quite heavily, as a rule you are right. There are exceptions to every rule, of course.
This promise of a utopia is just... insanity. There is no utopia... only an impending dystopia, and those who can't see what the future is holding for us are... well, they need to seriously re-evaluate everything about their lives - every single aspect, they have to question. Then again, lots of people are binary thinkers - one way only, and that way is technology. Generally, I hold a very different concept of what "utopia" is. Here's a hint: no electronical technology... I mean, it's hard to limit it to that, since there are a good deal of uses for refrigerators, and toasters and what have you... Sadly, this won't ever occur because there are over 6 billion people in the world... and you're not gonna get through to them, because you aren't the mass media. I want to cry out "You fucking stupid, ignorant people! Can't you see?!" but I stop myself because I too, am unclear whether or not I even understand what's going on. I think what I need is some R+R coupled with a few blotters and a completely serene environment away from society - away from these increasingly Americanized civilizations (no hate to my US friends intended, since it's becoming a more common term...), away from a frenzied culture existing only to consume, to buy, to purchase and to love doing so! Fuck, technology hurts my head, and makes my life miserable. My natural instincts tell me it would be good to take everything I own and to drop it in the river, or smash it. I hate my cellphone, I hate my laptop, I hate it all. But yet, my life would be hell without it. Oh, the fucking paradoxes of the modern day and age. It's a god damn disease, people. This is just my rant... I don't mean to preach and say "Yo this is how it is and is going to be" because clearly, I have no idea myself. I just wish I could go nowhere - and while Saul generates a laugh from that absurd statement, sometimes I wish I could go nowhere, but maintain a conscious state... aka, I wish I could live inside the realm of death or purgatory for a while, to just meditate and free myself. ... I smoke way too much weed. This probably sounds like the pipe dreams of a maniac or something...