Hmmm I think a society with a lot automation would have a lot of anomie, and basically would be become a William Gibson, or Philip K. Dick dystopia where people slip into virtual dream worlds to escape the unbearable reality. Yet the virtual world will not satisfy, I write about that here:
What I would counter propose is something like mutualism, distributism, or a neo-medieval guild system of owner operators who own their own tools, and have self regulating guilds that set a fixed fair price, and encourage excellence in skill leading to becoming a master craftsman. If this system also had no usury I believe it would allow easy access to start up capital, and I am certainly open to access to that start up capital being distributed thorough credit unions to prevent labor free rent seeking in financialization.
I think if there were some flexibility in how communities were allowed to self organize I suspect this could be harmonized with a more an-com vision of the world with left collectives in the urban areas, and more individual, family, guild driven enterprises selling on a market in rural areas.
The only way forward is to open all the doors to joy that don't close others. Without reworking our brains as per David Pearce and his abolitionist project, there simply is no way to be happy without virtual worlds and or drugs, the kind Cain had planned in Robocop 2, control over "every aspect of their emotional lives, a nuke, for every mood."
The human brain did not evolve to happily carry a consciousness. We either correct that or simulate worlds fitted to that need. We're too mutually exclusive in our desires otherwise.
Your vision of a happily village is better than now sure, but it's just another rung. It's not possible to be truly happy with death and pain riding our backs. Consciousness is a fundamentally new kind of life, one not suited to carbon and Darwinian struggle.
See also "Firefall" by Peter Watts and his concept of "Heaven." (You have more sci-fi to read :) )
Indeed, if I had my way it would halt. I would have thought straight up genocide would inspire mass work stoppage, but apparently I had too much faith in humanity. It's not even about party, race, gender, religion, or even class. Not one demographic has downed tools, not even the Palestinian Americans. I'm stunned to silence and confused. Sometimes I wonder if I'm in a coma.
Plumbing is nice. Plumbers are not doing evil. I am not a plumber but I like working at my job and so do the people who want me to do it. It took a lot of support to get to a job like this.
But plumbers will absolutely tell you pluming is a necessary evil, and the industry is pretty exploitative. They grossly overcharge because the job is gross but indispensable. Plumbing is a solid target for automation.
I’ve always instinctively felt what you say about work to be true. It’s why the hunter gatherer lifestyle has always appealed to me (whether hunter gatherers actually have lots of free time or that’s just a recently popular myth promulgated by biased anthropologists isn’t my main point here; the perception alone is enough for me to make my point. For what it’s worth, I’ve read this observation written by enough recent anthropologists to believe with reasonable certainty that it’s true, but my mind is open to the possibility that it’s not). As far as whether automation can reduce workloads though, I think there are two problems with the theory.
Firstly, it’s a cognitive error to assume there’s an inherently limited amount of work to do. The point of work as conceived of in our “civilized” society, loosely encompassed by the concept of “progress,” is to solve problems, be they material or conceptual. There’s never been a time when that wasn’t used to explore more, to produce more. One could argue that that’s a choice, that we could choose to place a limit but we’ve chosen not to, but that brings me to my second point.
Hunting and gathering as I understand it works to limit people’s workload largely because there is no broad impetus toward “progress.” They’re perfectly content with where they are; there’s no need to “move forward.” There’s a zen to this that’s enormously appealing and admirable to me, but more to the point, it works very well with basic human psychology. By nature we’re not inclined to work our asses off for some theoretical “progress.” So it becomes necessary to create this notion of “progress” in order to keep people maintaining the cycle of working and innovating. Without a goal of more “progress,” people wouldn’t “work” as we understand it in the first place. Given that some amount of “work” will always need to be done in order to maintain a standard of living above that of hunting and gathering, it ends up sort of being an all or nothing proposition: either people work enough to “move forward” and increase *something*, be it knowledge or production, or it all falls apart and we go back to hunting and gathering. Countries like France have nodded to the concepts you get at with the 35 hour work week, and that is meaningful, but it’s still a lotta work when it comes right down to it. It’s still just going a little lower on what our “civilization” requires of us, which is the higher end of the “amount that people have to work” spectrum. You hear people talk about “work/life balance,” but it’s ultimately just putzing around at the margins of what is fundamentally a laborious way of life.
I think I understand why you say you’ve tried and failed so many times to articulate yourself on this, if I’ve understood you correctly. It’s a really hard thing to write about; the concepts are subtle and it takes a lot of explaining and precision. I don’t feel happy with this comment, but I have to get up and get to work. Touché.
Thank you for your comment. My reply is going to be low effort just because the points raised in my first paragraph still stand, even if this is my most popular post.
1. Western work loads are objectively much worse than pre-agrarian, and "dark" ages equivalents.
2. There are two kinds of work in this context, arbitrary and necessary. I believe automating all the necessary work is possible. But yes the arbitrary kind is unlimited. Look into The Culture series by Ian Banks for a loose picture of the goal.
3. Yes, it's wildly difficult to articulate. I give up frankly. I'll toss out bottom lines maybe some summaries and emotive stuff but my mental budget for sweeping the tide is nearly zero now. I feel like establishing this missing link was the last substantive piece needed from me.
I've predicted what will happen with AI as well, so basically I'm done covering everything from hydrogen formation to the singularity. The only stuff past that is metaphysics, and I have no real opinion there beyond the problem of evil proving some things.
Thank you for proving citation for my claims. I've always been disabled but it always weighed heavy on me that if I wasn't I'd be having to do evil, and that thinking it through everyone I knew was doing evil. And that lead me places, like, is doing evil regularly the same as being evil? Does being evil justify you being exploited? How much good does it take to make up for one big evil? Can I pay for an evil in advance? How fractional can you make an evil?
And so on.
I'm going to add a see also section to my post and add yours as a link. I literally can't think of a chore or job that isn't at least somewhat evil.
Even charity serves to prevent motivation for lasting solutions because people think charity IS a solution. Why give the homeless homes when you can just cut a tiny guilt check to Homeless Charity Gigacorp Inc instead.
I’d ironically advise an absurdist carefree caution about using words like “foundational.” They’re a trap. (Other words in that ghoulish Addams family include “ultimate” and “all”). Then there are words like “evil.” Words like evil are a bit harder to avoid, and I appreciate that you never veered near to using “evil” to characterize any fellow human feeling being. (I don’t mind being called “evil” as long as it’s meant as a compliment… so chew on that if ya gotta mind to…) But words like “evil” are also “totalizing” words similar to words like “fundamental.” They “inappropriately” (yes, my opinion, but not original to me) attribute “unity” or “oneness” to entities that are unstable, composite, and derivative (as well as always somehow being “generative”).
Obviously, if you really hated “ALL” work, you wouldn’t be bothering to write on substack or even to have read this far in my word salad. Words are damn tricky. It’s clear that both you and your readers understand (in variant ways, no doubt) that when you write “work” you mean something like wage labor and (when it comes to self employment) work for profit. The political/economic system that currently dominates, shapes, and conjures up a certain (rather troublesome, soul crushing sometimes) specter of “world culture” is usually called “capitalism”. Sometimes I’m tempted (by various congregations from the legions of nasty little devils inside and around me) to call words and labels “evil”. They are such tricksters, such “stumbling blocks” (one of many biblical representations of “satan”), such deceivers. But we humans are always entangled in words and labels though that spiderous web is also a crucial support for us — and is also fairly open to allowing in OTHER ways of trying to grapple with the universe. Words like capitalism and profit are connected to words like exploitation, domination, empire etc. All of THOSE concepts (profit, exploitation, domination, empire, etc) predate the historical emergence of capitalism and modernity by AT LEAST a couple thousand years, and they will probably continue to haunt us long after we shake off capitalism — if we do (and if we don’t its only because it helped destroy this planets capacity to support the human species as a biological entity).
Profit and work (as words) CAN have non negative connotations, and the same goes for some of the processes and activities they might refer to. “WORK” and (LABOR) as words can be connected to “productivity” (which has so many horrible connotations) but also to words like “generativity”, “creation” and even “fertility” though I don’t want to veer into associations with procreation. Then there’s “usefulness” which you USEFULLY connected to “mutuality”Karl Marx really tried hard to get at some “fundamental” aspect of “labor” as creative HUMAN self expression in his expositions on “alienation”, but he was too much of a totalizer (probably more than he WANTED to be) but language and stories (theories are stories) are venues for such traps.
I like that you inform your thinking with science fiction. Imagining better worlds CAN seem like purely barren escapism. But “nothing” (another trick word) is “truly” (another one!) pure (not even electrons and protons). Everything breaks down or “decomposes” without necessarily requiring us to slump into any fatal despondency. If words are an unsteady and tricky helix supporting our amorphous and shifting thoughts (which would hardly be accessible or “useful” to us without language and other forms of art) then imagination is one of the components of a loom by which we might hope to build better futures in a (potentially) active process of bootstrapping us away from savagery to something less nightmarish than what we are so often “Forced” to perceive as reality. (I try to choose to believe stuff (crap?) that because John Lennon might have liked me to.)
You've spun a large comment on a misunderstanding. I'm well aware of the risk of generalization. I used foundational as intended. You may disagree but I meant what I said. Feel free to ask for clarification.
P.s. It annoys me that there is no way to actually shame cruelty. Every last word for it is as you imply also a fawning compliment to power in some other context. It's cliche teen edge to describe greatness in harmful terms. Think videogame competitor account names. Cruel and evil should not be aspirational, and yet serial killers get love letters because they are to so many.
Unfortunately, cruel and “evil” ARE aspirational (though cruel is a less dangerous word than “evil” — I think know what you’re getting at when you use the “e” word. And I realize that it’s not necessarily avoidable. It’s just a word that needs to be used with special caution.)
The unrestricted use of power (which does not simply ‘imply’ the exercise of cruelty) IS manifestly aspirational. Maybe I’d call this “fact” (or “TRUTH”even) “evil”.(?) Maybe I even “HATE” this “reality” about “us”humans. I think all of us are periodically (if not continuously) confronted with this horror which we can try to rationalize away, ignore, or repress. We can also let it crush us. Or (perhaps as part of the process of allowing it to destroy us) we can take the giddy leap of “unfaith” and throw ourselves into what seems the ONLY reality…
How can we avoid the self deceptions of psychological defenses or psychological collapse/surrender in the face of OUR beastly (and self destructive) tendency to aspire to wield “unrestricted power”?
The most honest answer is “I DON’T KNOW”!!!!
But to only say “I don’t know” and leave it at that is a cop out. It also doesn’t work very well. Something inside us or around us (or “within and without us” demands an answer. But there may be NO “answer” available to us… if “The Answer” is something FINAL. There are only zillions of responses to our question, and the best responses are (I want to argue) the ones that lead us to ask better questions. (For example: if “aspiration to wield an unrestricted use of power” IS a better term than “evil”, there still might be better terms than that…)
On the other hand, some religious traditions are largely built around putting a stop infinitely recursive questions, the way a good coder makes sure her code doesn’t crash by falling into an endless iterative loop that continues to demand ever more working memory.
Who created the Universe? God! Who created God? Shut up!
I’m not trying to insult religion or religious people. The religions I am thinking about here (Judaism and Christianity) also have ancient (“tried and true”?) traditions, teachings, and practices that are reserved for those who demand to experience them. Therefore, one can find in well-developed organized religions that… what MAY seem like pap are intended to be ways to protect people who are not ready to cope with anguishes that could actually lead them to harmful (and self destructive) behaviors.
The unrestricted use of power IS aspirational for all of us sometimes. But it is NOT the ONLY thing about us. We can know this by patiently and courageously reflecting on a wider range of our own works, thoughts, feelings, aspirations, and longings. We can know this by courageously and patiently reflecting on the works of others (whether those works be in how they treat and respond to others or, maybe sometimes, in the cultural artifacts they were able to create and transmit to us: music, painting, sculpture, dance, writing, software, institutions, ideas, “memes?” etc.) That’s MORE than a lifelong quest though. It’s probably MORE than a generational one—and even more than one that defines eras of cultural history. It’s a very demanding quest (not exactly the same as the mystical practices of meditation or vision seeking.) And there’s a shit-ton of TRAPS on that quest (maybe I should be using better “role playing game” terminology here…? “Puzzle” is not the right word, because in role playing games there are so many ways to lose a “life.”).
When I (ironically?) advised “caution”, I was thinking about how any of the words we use (and stories we tell) are GUARANTEED to sometimes twist back to stab at us as they inevitably reveal meanings (connotations and associations) that we hadn’t been much aware of… to ourselves — or to others who may sincerely misunderstand us OR who may deliberately twist our intended meanings into something disgusting, incriminating, contemptible, or damning. But the most dangerous trap of all is one I already referred to, but I’ll say a little bit more about it before I stop trying your patience.
When we “interrogate” (horrible word used intentionally) ourselves (or others—or history, culture, or “reality”) too harshly, we risk finding only corruption, emptiness, or a craven “aspiration to dominate and destroy” in ourselves and/or everyone else. And if this is our only reality, then WHY NOT hurl yourself into that gory frenzy to accumulate as much power, domineering satisfaction, and exhilarating thrills as we can before we die in a hail of bullets, a swarm of stab wounds, a blaze of “glory” that leaves a smoking greasy stain for someone else to clean up, or perhaps safe and warm in a luxurious bed as lackeys, pretenders, and thugs plot to be the first to pull off our ring, seize our treasury, and command the allegiance of our troops?
That's the tripe it gives me when I try to share things. Fuck that gets under my skin. I'll translate the real link later and edit the page from a real computer soon.
Interesting comments about Work. A speedy reply could be that WORK is a four letter word, although I'm not certain AI would understand the connotation. Incidentally, as an experiment, I asked AI the same exact question containing calculations four weeks apart, and got a different answer..... MMMmmm ?? All life in the natural world only does what it needs to survive. A well fed lion does not hunt. A bear needs one den, and sleeps through winters..... If animals could talk, you would not find 'WORK' in their dictionaries.
It's funny you say that. The draft material I mention but did not include contains a section on how work is not something an animal can do typically, except perhaps trained dogs and chimps. Which now typing this I realize makes work not only evil and objectively unintelligent but also a cross species contagion XD
Work is service to self and others. What defines work is not that we have to be constrained to do it: it’s that it benefits other people enough that they will give us something in return for it. My work is pleasant for me: I am constrained to do it in certain ways so that other people can gain the most benefit from what I do. That’s a good thing!
Your ethical presumption is that nature should provide people with all their needs and wants. We live in a fallen world where our needs and wants are not provided, they must be laboured for. That is what our ancestors did when they hunted mammoths and foraged acorns.
The enjoyable part of my job is explaining things to people. As I tell my students, I enjoy hearing myself talk. I do that for free all the time, so yes. The pay incentivizes me to do it in an organized and systematic way in a context where people can (I hope) benefit from what I have to say, rather than just for my own entertainment. I help them, they help me by paying me.
No, I’m not religious. I like the metaphor of the world as fallen because it conveys that failure is the default and the socio-economic structures that we take for granted are laboriously constructed and necessarily imperfect.
You're in denial. You didn't write your curriculum, and if you weren't ultimately teaching obedience to the banks you would be fired. Read John Taylor Gatto for a complete tear down of your profession.
I did write my curriculum - most of it anyway. There are plenty of criticisms that can be made of education. Everything has its flaws. I don’t know why you’re angry. Does it bother you that I like my job? It bothers me that you think you are owed a living by the world, that any constraint on your freedom to do exactly as you please is somehow a violation of your rights. Someday maybe the need for labour will be gone. Until then, our wealth is what we make, and work is how we make it. We live via the labour of thousands upon thousands of other people that feed us, clothe us and entertain us. Working ourselves is how we repay that. It would be great if we were wealthier and work sucked less. Hopefully that’s the way things will keep going.
It bothers me that you work at an indoctrination prison camp for children so they can be slaves like you and their accidental parents.
I'm angry because you're basically a child flesh trafficker. I hate you people. You're like police. You're the ground floor of the shit hole western civ has become.
Your entire system was imported (from Prussia) and purpose built to stack the assembly lines with compliant replacement fingers.
It's so sickeningly ironic. You ARE the automation. Generations of self programming self replicating work meat. That's literally what the industrialists that designed the "education" system saw you as.
Why build machines when you can grow slaves right? Of course you sing the praises of labor. Your entire job is to force it on others. How much homework do you assign? Thought so.
Please, fuck completely off. Your next comment will likely be deleted, as I said Gatto has your number. Your ethical nature is as solved as the problem of evil. I want to hear from people, not prison guards and slavers and banker puppets.
I wish I could stop you from brain raping children, but I can't. Stop reminding me how doomed this society is.
Work can be difficult and boring, but it can provide humanity with a comfortable standard of living in general and discretionary spending for extras. If work is eliminated through automation, then who decides what humanity’s standard of living should be? Answer: those who reduced employment to mindless tasks in the first place.
You mean we'll need an actual government? A group of legitimate leaders and thinkers to develop policy we can all agree ultimately serves everyone's best interest? I agree. But we have to stop being slaves before we can work out self rule. I think fear of that chore ironically is a big part of why most people don't really want to stop being slaves.
I am not holding out hope that any government would be that humane. The best that we can hope for is a system that is generally corrupt and beneficial to the few, but out of which some good things can be distributed to the many.
Hmmm I think a society with a lot automation would have a lot of anomie, and basically would be become a William Gibson, or Philip K. Dick dystopia where people slip into virtual dream worlds to escape the unbearable reality. Yet the virtual world will not satisfy, I write about that here:
https://substack.com/@whispertrees/p-142291281
What I would counter propose is something like mutualism, distributism, or a neo-medieval guild system of owner operators who own their own tools, and have self regulating guilds that set a fixed fair price, and encourage excellence in skill leading to becoming a master craftsman. If this system also had no usury I believe it would allow easy access to start up capital, and I am certainly open to access to that start up capital being distributed thorough credit unions to prevent labor free rent seeking in financialization.
I writer about that here: https://substack.com/@whispertrees/p-144571152
I think if there were some flexibility in how communities were allowed to self organize I suspect this could be harmonized with a more an-com vision of the world with left collectives in the urban areas, and more individual, family, guild driven enterprises selling on a market in rural areas.
The only way forward is to open all the doors to joy that don't close others. Without reworking our brains as per David Pearce and his abolitionist project, there simply is no way to be happy without virtual worlds and or drugs, the kind Cain had planned in Robocop 2, control over "every aspect of their emotional lives, a nuke, for every mood."
The human brain did not evolve to happily carry a consciousness. We either correct that or simulate worlds fitted to that need. We're too mutually exclusive in our desires otherwise.
Your vision of a happily village is better than now sure, but it's just another rung. It's not possible to be truly happy with death and pain riding our backs. Consciousness is a fundamentally new kind of life, one not suited to carbon and Darwinian struggle.
See also "Firefall" by Peter Watts and his concept of "Heaven." (You have more sci-fi to read :) )
People used to have a business with their family. Those were the best times.
Now they have atomized us completely
Evil all around us
You remind me of the stat: In 1900 1% of people worked for corporations, in 2000, 1% didn't.
That’s horrible. This whole society is not working at all. Not happily anyway.
Indeed, if I had my way it would halt. I would have thought straight up genocide would inspire mass work stoppage, but apparently I had too much faith in humanity. It's not even about party, race, gender, religion, or even class. Not one demographic has downed tools, not even the Palestinian Americans. I'm stunned to silence and confused. Sometimes I wonder if I'm in a coma.
I care.
It's getting harder to, but... I still care.
Please keep punching.
Thanks man, I will, out of habit and insanity if nothing else. I feel like grandma death checking the mail over and over XD
Plumbing is nice. Plumbers are not doing evil. I am not a plumber but I like working at my job and so do the people who want me to do it. It took a lot of support to get to a job like this.
But plumbers will absolutely tell you pluming is a necessary evil, and the industry is pretty exploitative. They grossly overcharge because the job is gross but indispensable. Plumbing is a solid target for automation.
I love this post. Subscribed.
I’ve always instinctively felt what you say about work to be true. It’s why the hunter gatherer lifestyle has always appealed to me (whether hunter gatherers actually have lots of free time or that’s just a recently popular myth promulgated by biased anthropologists isn’t my main point here; the perception alone is enough for me to make my point. For what it’s worth, I’ve read this observation written by enough recent anthropologists to believe with reasonable certainty that it’s true, but my mind is open to the possibility that it’s not). As far as whether automation can reduce workloads though, I think there are two problems with the theory.
Firstly, it’s a cognitive error to assume there’s an inherently limited amount of work to do. The point of work as conceived of in our “civilized” society, loosely encompassed by the concept of “progress,” is to solve problems, be they material or conceptual. There’s never been a time when that wasn’t used to explore more, to produce more. One could argue that that’s a choice, that we could choose to place a limit but we’ve chosen not to, but that brings me to my second point.
Hunting and gathering as I understand it works to limit people’s workload largely because there is no broad impetus toward “progress.” They’re perfectly content with where they are; there’s no need to “move forward.” There’s a zen to this that’s enormously appealing and admirable to me, but more to the point, it works very well with basic human psychology. By nature we’re not inclined to work our asses off for some theoretical “progress.” So it becomes necessary to create this notion of “progress” in order to keep people maintaining the cycle of working and innovating. Without a goal of more “progress,” people wouldn’t “work” as we understand it in the first place. Given that some amount of “work” will always need to be done in order to maintain a standard of living above that of hunting and gathering, it ends up sort of being an all or nothing proposition: either people work enough to “move forward” and increase *something*, be it knowledge or production, or it all falls apart and we go back to hunting and gathering. Countries like France have nodded to the concepts you get at with the 35 hour work week, and that is meaningful, but it’s still a lotta work when it comes right down to it. It’s still just going a little lower on what our “civilization” requires of us, which is the higher end of the “amount that people have to work” spectrum. You hear people talk about “work/life balance,” but it’s ultimately just putzing around at the margins of what is fundamentally a laborious way of life.
I think I understand why you say you’ve tried and failed so many times to articulate yourself on this, if I’ve understood you correctly. It’s a really hard thing to write about; the concepts are subtle and it takes a lot of explaining and precision. I don’t feel happy with this comment, but I have to get up and get to work. Touché.
Thank you for your comment. My reply is going to be low effort just because the points raised in my first paragraph still stand, even if this is my most popular post.
1. Western work loads are objectively much worse than pre-agrarian, and "dark" ages equivalents.
2. There are two kinds of work in this context, arbitrary and necessary. I believe automating all the necessary work is possible. But yes the arbitrary kind is unlimited. Look into The Culture series by Ian Banks for a loose picture of the goal.
3. Yes, it's wildly difficult to articulate. I give up frankly. I'll toss out bottom lines maybe some summaries and emotive stuff but my mental budget for sweeping the tide is nearly zero now. I feel like establishing this missing link was the last substantive piece needed from me.
I've predicted what will happen with AI as well, so basically I'm done covering everything from hydrogen formation to the singularity. The only stuff past that is metaphysics, and I have no real opinion there beyond the problem of evil proving some things.
YES thank you for that, it's what I was trying to get at awkwardly in this post:
https://adamwhybray.substack.com/p/review-20142017-as-a-horror-comedy
Thank you for proving citation for my claims. I've always been disabled but it always weighed heavy on me that if I wasn't I'd be having to do evil, and that thinking it through everyone I knew was doing evil. And that lead me places, like, is doing evil regularly the same as being evil? Does being evil justify you being exploited? How much good does it take to make up for one big evil? Can I pay for an evil in advance? How fractional can you make an evil?
And so on.
I'm going to add a see also section to my post and add yours as a link. I literally can't think of a chore or job that isn't at least somewhat evil.
Even charity serves to prevent motivation for lasting solutions because people think charity IS a solution. Why give the homeless homes when you can just cut a tiny guilt check to Homeless Charity Gigacorp Inc instead.
I’d ironically advise an absurdist carefree caution about using words like “foundational.” They’re a trap. (Other words in that ghoulish Addams family include “ultimate” and “all”). Then there are words like “evil.” Words like evil are a bit harder to avoid, and I appreciate that you never veered near to using “evil” to characterize any fellow human feeling being. (I don’t mind being called “evil” as long as it’s meant as a compliment… so chew on that if ya gotta mind to…) But words like “evil” are also “totalizing” words similar to words like “fundamental.” They “inappropriately” (yes, my opinion, but not original to me) attribute “unity” or “oneness” to entities that are unstable, composite, and derivative (as well as always somehow being “generative”).
Obviously, if you really hated “ALL” work, you wouldn’t be bothering to write on substack or even to have read this far in my word salad. Words are damn tricky. It’s clear that both you and your readers understand (in variant ways, no doubt) that when you write “work” you mean something like wage labor and (when it comes to self employment) work for profit. The political/economic system that currently dominates, shapes, and conjures up a certain (rather troublesome, soul crushing sometimes) specter of “world culture” is usually called “capitalism”. Sometimes I’m tempted (by various congregations from the legions of nasty little devils inside and around me) to call words and labels “evil”. They are such tricksters, such “stumbling blocks” (one of many biblical representations of “satan”), such deceivers. But we humans are always entangled in words and labels though that spiderous web is also a crucial support for us — and is also fairly open to allowing in OTHER ways of trying to grapple with the universe. Words like capitalism and profit are connected to words like exploitation, domination, empire etc. All of THOSE concepts (profit, exploitation, domination, empire, etc) predate the historical emergence of capitalism and modernity by AT LEAST a couple thousand years, and they will probably continue to haunt us long after we shake off capitalism — if we do (and if we don’t its only because it helped destroy this planets capacity to support the human species as a biological entity).
Profit and work (as words) CAN have non negative connotations, and the same goes for some of the processes and activities they might refer to. “WORK” and (LABOR) as words can be connected to “productivity” (which has so many horrible connotations) but also to words like “generativity”, “creation” and even “fertility” though I don’t want to veer into associations with procreation. Then there’s “usefulness” which you USEFULLY connected to “mutuality”Karl Marx really tried hard to get at some “fundamental” aspect of “labor” as creative HUMAN self expression in his expositions on “alienation”, but he was too much of a totalizer (probably more than he WANTED to be) but language and stories (theories are stories) are venues for such traps.
I like that you inform your thinking with science fiction. Imagining better worlds CAN seem like purely barren escapism. But “nothing” (another trick word) is “truly” (another one!) pure (not even electrons and protons). Everything breaks down or “decomposes” without necessarily requiring us to slump into any fatal despondency. If words are an unsteady and tricky helix supporting our amorphous and shifting thoughts (which would hardly be accessible or “useful” to us without language and other forms of art) then imagination is one of the components of a loom by which we might hope to build better futures in a (potentially) active process of bootstrapping us away from savagery to something less nightmarish than what we are so often “Forced” to perceive as reality. (I try to choose to believe stuff (crap?) that because John Lennon might have liked me to.)
You've spun a large comment on a misunderstanding. I'm well aware of the risk of generalization. I used foundational as intended. You may disagree but I meant what I said. Feel free to ask for clarification.
P.s. It annoys me that there is no way to actually shame cruelty. Every last word for it is as you imply also a fawning compliment to power in some other context. It's cliche teen edge to describe greatness in harmful terms. Think videogame competitor account names. Cruel and evil should not be aspirational, and yet serial killers get love letters because they are to so many.
Unfortunately, cruel and “evil” ARE aspirational (though cruel is a less dangerous word than “evil” — I think know what you’re getting at when you use the “e” word. And I realize that it’s not necessarily avoidable. It’s just a word that needs to be used with special caution.)
The unrestricted use of power (which does not simply ‘imply’ the exercise of cruelty) IS manifestly aspirational. Maybe I’d call this “fact” (or “TRUTH”even) “evil”.(?) Maybe I even “HATE” this “reality” about “us”humans. I think all of us are periodically (if not continuously) confronted with this horror which we can try to rationalize away, ignore, or repress. We can also let it crush us. Or (perhaps as part of the process of allowing it to destroy us) we can take the giddy leap of “unfaith” and throw ourselves into what seems the ONLY reality…
How can we avoid the self deceptions of psychological defenses or psychological collapse/surrender in the face of OUR beastly (and self destructive) tendency to aspire to wield “unrestricted power”?
The most honest answer is “I DON’T KNOW”!!!!
But to only say “I don’t know” and leave it at that is a cop out. It also doesn’t work very well. Something inside us or around us (or “within and without us” demands an answer. But there may be NO “answer” available to us… if “The Answer” is something FINAL. There are only zillions of responses to our question, and the best responses are (I want to argue) the ones that lead us to ask better questions. (For example: if “aspiration to wield an unrestricted use of power” IS a better term than “evil”, there still might be better terms than that…)
On the other hand, some religious traditions are largely built around putting a stop infinitely recursive questions, the way a good coder makes sure her code doesn’t crash by falling into an endless iterative loop that continues to demand ever more working memory.
Who created the Universe? God! Who created God? Shut up!
I’m not trying to insult religion or religious people. The religions I am thinking about here (Judaism and Christianity) also have ancient (“tried and true”?) traditions, teachings, and practices that are reserved for those who demand to experience them. Therefore, one can find in well-developed organized religions that… what MAY seem like pap are intended to be ways to protect people who are not ready to cope with anguishes that could actually lead them to harmful (and self destructive) behaviors.
The unrestricted use of power IS aspirational for all of us sometimes. But it is NOT the ONLY thing about us. We can know this by patiently and courageously reflecting on a wider range of our own works, thoughts, feelings, aspirations, and longings. We can know this by courageously and patiently reflecting on the works of others (whether those works be in how they treat and respond to others or, maybe sometimes, in the cultural artifacts they were able to create and transmit to us: music, painting, sculpture, dance, writing, software, institutions, ideas, “memes?” etc.) That’s MORE than a lifelong quest though. It’s probably MORE than a generational one—and even more than one that defines eras of cultural history. It’s a very demanding quest (not exactly the same as the mystical practices of meditation or vision seeking.) And there’s a shit-ton of TRAPS on that quest (maybe I should be using better “role playing game” terminology here…? “Puzzle” is not the right word, because in role playing games there are so many ways to lose a “life.”).
When I (ironically?) advised “caution”, I was thinking about how any of the words we use (and stories we tell) are GUARANTEED to sometimes twist back to stab at us as they inevitably reveal meanings (connotations and associations) that we hadn’t been much aware of… to ourselves — or to others who may sincerely misunderstand us OR who may deliberately twist our intended meanings into something disgusting, incriminating, contemptible, or damning. But the most dangerous trap of all is one I already referred to, but I’ll say a little bit more about it before I stop trying your patience.
When we “interrogate” (horrible word used intentionally) ourselves (or others—or history, culture, or “reality”) too harshly, we risk finding only corruption, emptiness, or a craven “aspiration to dominate and destroy” in ourselves and/or everyone else. And if this is our only reality, then WHY NOT hurl yourself into that gory frenzy to accumulate as much power, domineering satisfaction, and exhilarating thrills as we can before we die in a hail of bullets, a swarm of stab wounds, a blaze of “glory” that leaves a smoking greasy stain for someone else to clean up, or perhaps safe and warm in a luxurious bed as lackeys, pretenders, and thugs plot to be the first to pull off our ring, seize our treasury, and command the allegiance of our troops?
I was not referring to any “generalization”.
See also: https://substack.com/@innomen/note/c-70831744?r=1u632j
Still can't fucking edit posts from the worthless app. Android sucks so bad. Can I put Linux on this thing?
God Damn the substack app is hot garbage. You can't edit your posts from this thought forsaken thing. And just look at this spammy encoded maggot farm of a link: https://open.substack.com/pub/adamwhybray/p/review-20142017-as-a-horror-comedy?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1u632j
That's the tripe it gives me when I try to share things. Fuck that gets under my skin. I'll translate the real link later and edit the page from a real computer soon.
Interesting comments about Work. A speedy reply could be that WORK is a four letter word, although I'm not certain AI would understand the connotation. Incidentally, as an experiment, I asked AI the same exact question containing calculations four weeks apart, and got a different answer..... MMMmmm ?? All life in the natural world only does what it needs to survive. A well fed lion does not hunt. A bear needs one den, and sleeps through winters..... If animals could talk, you would not find 'WORK' in their dictionaries.
It's funny you say that. The draft material I mention but did not include contains a section on how work is not something an animal can do typically, except perhaps trained dogs and chimps. Which now typing this I realize makes work not only evil and objectively unintelligent but also a cross species contagion XD
Work is service to self and others. What defines work is not that we have to be constrained to do it: it’s that it benefits other people enough that they will give us something in return for it. My work is pleasant for me: I am constrained to do it in certain ways so that other people can gain the most benefit from what I do. That’s a good thing!
Your ethical presumption is that nature should provide people with all their needs and wants. We live in a fallen world where our needs and wants are not provided, they must be laboured for. That is what our ancestors did when they hunted mammoths and foraged acorns.
I do not share your vision of the world.
Then you'd do your job free of compensation? If so that's not a job that's a hobby.
"Fallen." Religious?
The enjoyable part of my job is explaining things to people. As I tell my students, I enjoy hearing myself talk. I do that for free all the time, so yes. The pay incentivizes me to do it in an organized and systematic way in a context where people can (I hope) benefit from what I have to say, rather than just for my own entertainment. I help them, they help me by paying me.
No, I’m not religious. I like the metaphor of the world as fallen because it conveys that failure is the default and the socio-economic structures that we take for granted are laboriously constructed and necessarily imperfect.
You're in denial. You didn't write your curriculum, and if you weren't ultimately teaching obedience to the banks you would be fired. Read John Taylor Gatto for a complete tear down of your profession.
I did write my curriculum - most of it anyway. There are plenty of criticisms that can be made of education. Everything has its flaws. I don’t know why you’re angry. Does it bother you that I like my job? It bothers me that you think you are owed a living by the world, that any constraint on your freedom to do exactly as you please is somehow a violation of your rights. Someday maybe the need for labour will be gone. Until then, our wealth is what we make, and work is how we make it. We live via the labour of thousands upon thousands of other people that feed us, clothe us and entertain us. Working ourselves is how we repay that. It would be great if we were wealthier and work sucked less. Hopefully that’s the way things will keep going.
It bothers me that you work at an indoctrination prison camp for children so they can be slaves like you and their accidental parents.
I'm angry because you're basically a child flesh trafficker. I hate you people. You're like police. You're the ground floor of the shit hole western civ has become.
Your entire system was imported (from Prussia) and purpose built to stack the assembly lines with compliant replacement fingers.
It's so sickeningly ironic. You ARE the automation. Generations of self programming self replicating work meat. That's literally what the industrialists that designed the "education" system saw you as.
Why build machines when you can grow slaves right? Of course you sing the praises of labor. Your entire job is to force it on others. How much homework do you assign? Thought so.
Please, fuck completely off. Your next comment will likely be deleted, as I said Gatto has your number. Your ethical nature is as solved as the problem of evil. I want to hear from people, not prison guards and slavers and banker puppets.
I wish I could stop you from brain raping children, but I can't. Stop reminding me how doomed this society is.
Work can be difficult and boring, but it can provide humanity with a comfortable standard of living in general and discretionary spending for extras. If work is eliminated through automation, then who decides what humanity’s standard of living should be? Answer: those who reduced employment to mindless tasks in the first place.
You mean we'll need an actual government? A group of legitimate leaders and thinkers to develop policy we can all agree ultimately serves everyone's best interest? I agree. But we have to stop being slaves before we can work out self rule. I think fear of that chore ironically is a big part of why most people don't really want to stop being slaves.
I am not holding out hope that any government would be that humane. The best that we can hope for is a system that is generally corrupt and beneficial to the few, but out of which some good things can be distributed to the many.
Concur. That would certainly be an improvement over the literal, objective, farce we have now.