[a wide character looks smug with a wide smile]
Your ideology is wrong and can’t work because “human nature” is to exploit others
[a thought bubble is connected to their head]
I really really want to exploit others, exploiting or being exploited is the only way I can picture society please God I play that you let me become an exploiter I dream of it every day
That’s bullshit. Along with the seven deadly sins there are seven living virtues. You have free will and you decide what good or bad shit you get up to in life. Although there are exceptions to every rule. Sometimes we are shunted in specific directions towards the chute, just like cattle, and most choice goes out the window.
The one that gets me is “Without the profit motive, no one would innovate.”
Like, my dude, have you ever met an innovative person? You can’t pay them to stop. It’s a compulsion. Working for money is only impeding their innovative capacity.
Or “Who would go through the years of training to be a doctor or engineer?”. Uh, the good doctors and engineers who do it because it’s their passion. I don’t want to go to a doctor who only did it for the money.
I think it’s not that everyone wants to exploit, but if the opportunity exists and there are insufficient systems to discourage it, then some will. As demonstrated by [wide gesture at everything]
Like, even if that was human nature, shouldn’t we try to overcome it?
We should. And in an ideologically pure society we would. I honestly think people try.
But you don’t have to be a manipulative person to see the value of this argument, like the comic is suggesting. You simply need to look at the world you want to make through a defensive lens. The truth is, even if we built a society where it was not the norm to be manipulative and exploitative, there would still be manipulative and exploitative people - and in such a society they would quickly climb to the top of the social hierarchy and reclaim power. And the world would decline back to what it was.
This is not an argument for inaction, imo. Its an argument for vigilance. But it also means we cannot consider ourselves “above” or “beyond” the undesirable traits of humanity, because that would make us victims of the cruel and the selfish. It also means the acceptance of checks and balances on power, which sadly… don’t always stick around.
I mean. That’s exactly why all these systems fail. The shitty people get ahead by exploitation or breaking the rules.
Aka republicans
aka Democrats aka every career politician in existence They all serve capital in the end
Right, and imo most people just want to get along. We just need a way to defend the commons from the shitty people rather than make them trillionaires.
From the time of the Natufians, beginning around 13100 BC , up to the Early Bronze Age IIb around 3200 BC, there are only a handful of violent deaths indicated by skeletal remains:
Guess the Bronze Age Collapse never happened. The Sea Peoples never swept through coastal cities raiding and plundering in the Mediterranean. Egypt and Assyria never dominated their neighbors. All those books I read were wrong. Even in Egyptian tombs, the extensive records of wars are all wrong.
Listen up. New information. All reports of societies duking it out in ancient history didn’t happen. It’s time to realign our understanding of human nature. War is a modern concept. In fact, I’m gonna go even further and declare that until the USA and our genocidal partner attacked Iran this year, there had never been a war EVER. Tell your friends.
13100 BC , up to the Early Bronze Age IIb around 3200
Guess the Bronze Age Collapse never happened.
…And this, kids, is why “a little learning is a dangerous thing”.
If those books told you the bronze age collapse happened between 13 thousand and 3 thousand BC then they were absolutely 100% wrong.
Right, surely you must question your assumptions when there are no violent deaths at all.
The kinds of injuries they’re talking about cranial fractures, a blow to the head, multiple fractures, etc. surely are seen today in people who die on construction sites, or in car crashes or after falling off a building.
If you’re not finding those kinds of remains, something else must be happening. Maybe there was a taboo against burying people who didn’t have perfect bodies. Maybe anybody who died from violence or violent accident was given a “sky burial” or something.
I mean, put aside the idea that there was no war. Is it reasonable to think that in the bronze age, people aren’t getting mauled by wild animals? They’re not getting kicked in the head by their livestock? They’re not falling off buildings?
But I need to excuse my bad behavior and shitty ideas with an intellectual lacuna that brooks no argument. Do you have some better alternative?
It might not be that the person wants to exploit others but that exploitation is the norm in their experience in life.
We’ve said the word exploit so many fucking times they’ve lost all damn meaning!
I apologize for the exploitives.
And must be excused by intellectual lacunae?
You can think something is human nature, but also think that you’re above that nature
I am above drinking, eating, and defecating.
I will proceed to live the rest of my life without doing any of those things.
You sure will!
Just other people. Obviously I’m better than them. Maybe better than the gods.
The best reason to have children is for the free labor on your farm. Don’t live on a farm? Force them to make shit you can sell on Etsy. Gotta make a profit somehow.
Uh, NO, the best reason to have children is that the line must go up and the social security system is going to be partially unfunded within six years!
Bad@jlai.lu exploited me to comment
American leftists becoming addicted to extracting social capital this last decade kind of low-key has me thinking he might be right. Not that it’s impossible to live that way but the will to power is just too strong for egalitarian notions to ever become a significant thing again.
We’ve got like a dormant virus in our souls that was just waiting for the internet to exist and for money to get low
There’s no thing like an American leftist because there’s no left in the US.
And who thinks otherwise are just dumb mouth shitters who only had US propaganda for
mealspasture all their lives.Well, I thought you had an accurate take up until the tourettes goblin made you reply to yourself there. Something tells me your own ability to make anything good in the world might be a vestigial non-prority next to impotently talking shit on the internet. So at least we have that in common
Don’t ever compare your greedy cynicism with my accurate take on such brain dead society divided between bleach drinkers and those who expect voting out genociders (to make other genociders take place).
“☹️ I’m not like other internet snark idiots. I fight people on the internet for real”wait I think I just realized who you are. my bad, I enjoy reading you fight with other people but obviously couldn’t take the heat myself. Carry on.
