The "Humans are the Virus" line is one of the sneakiest moves you'll run into the New Age -> Alt Right pipeline
Well, economic system is flawed because mutated ape is flawed. It's all flawed everything is flawed.
That's not a particularly useful statement, that's more nihilism. That kind of rhetoric leads to conclusions like "if everything is flawed, why fix it?" Instead of "how are systems flawed, and how can we overcome them?"
I definitely never claim to be an optimist. But I didn't argue that either. I was just commenting on the inherent fallibility of anything created by humans, since we seem to have an annoying habit of thinking that whatever human-created systems we like are somehow endowed with divine purpose and will never fail us. The great invisible hand of the market, and all that.
Not really nihilistic if it is solely acknowledging the truth. That kind of conclusion is yours and not his. You're giving up on fixing things.
Either you are to believe man capable enough at fixing things or not even capable of processing a basic factoid.
However both can't be true, if you have to tell someone how to think - then your goal is not the absolute conclusion.
I feel people will wake up to it, not from the sirens but by the heat and smoke. Much too late, but folks learn from mistakes mainly.
It just saddens me they have co-opted the message of a great thinker into a simple guide of indentured servitude. While at the same time dismissing the cleansing needed and done.
This is just a thought terminating cliche that capitalists have developed now that the problems with the system are undeniable. It's the classic retort of the scum bag, after they've realized "I didn't do it" won't fly, to say "well, everyone does it!"
The bourgeoicene
Embrace the paradox, humans are arguably the greatest rights violators in all forms of violence, but they are also the only beings capable of granting rights through moral agency. The paradox is also true of anthropocentric climate change, it's creator, but also it's only possible resolver. The environment only has instrumental value to conscious beings so it would miss the mark to assume the absence of humans is in anyone's (including animals) best interest.
Guess we should just try to get through each others thick skulls instead of being edgy :/
Cats are a really close second. I don't think there have been too many humans that have driven entire species to extinction. There have been a few cats that were allowed to exterminate multiple entire species. Don't get me wrong. I love the furry little psychopaths, but they are furry little psychopaths.
I always felt capitalism was just humans at their most pure and Evil. At their worst. In their most unfettered state.
What causes, and conducts capitalism if not humans?
Capitalism is a system of class oppression where one class of humans that produces nothing exploits the other who produces everything. This also occurred under feudalism, which utilized religion to mediate all social relations and maintain social order, the subject of religion being God. The subject of capitalism is profit.
The struggle between classes will remain after the defeat of capitalism, but we must make sure to develop a society in which the many continue to struggle for the benefit of all over the domination of the few who struggle only for their own benefit. The rule of the few dehumanizes the many to varying degrees to justify their own dominance, and through that dominance influences the many to accept the imposed condition of their own diminished humanity. Through the dehumanization of others however, the ruling class makes its self less human.
So even though it is humans carrying out this oppression, it is necessary to diminish the humanity of others in order to rule, and their rule sets the standard for what is and is not human.
When we fail to see nature as a unity of opposing forces, then we fail to recognize that every object is defined not in itself but by the things that relate to it, and we can't understand some vital truths. Namely, that every social thing is defined not just by it's own existence but also by the existence of its opposite.
Which is to say, that while it appears that humanity is the problem, this belief is a condition of our own oppression. Humanity of the many is not the "virus," it is on fact the cure for the virus of class oppression and dehumanization. But to accomplish this, the masses must reassert our own humanity, unflinchingly in the face of violence that seeks to make us low and break our spirit.
As Paolo Friere said, "it is the historic mission of the oppressed to restore the humanity of the oppressor."
All capitalists are humans but not all humans are capitalists so it's a bit of an overgeneralisation.
machines, in the future
I think that the fundamental flaw of our economies, is that they weren't created with rules in the first place. We just took the vague notions of trade and coinage, then began to add the rules after the fact. What if we did a hard reboot, but with an economic Constitution to guide the economic system?
For such a system, I believe we would want three things at the most basic level:
1: Transparent and simple rules. Ordinary people should be able to easily identify and troubleshoot the excessively wealthy.
2: Universal but boring benefits that guarantees survival for everyone, with a basic income. Money is for buying upgrades to lifestyle, not survival. Jobs are for affording to buy more expensive luxuries, like vacations to a foreign land, attending the theatre regularly, and so forth.
3: Absolute floors and ceilings on income, assets, and wealth. Beyond a specific point, wealth is taken as tax.
Understand that reality doesn't run on computer code; you can't hard reboot history, and you can't just hard code in universal rules that people are compelled to follow. Coming up with good rules for a hypothetical society is the easy part, it's the political problems that come with trying to implement them that is hard.
Your approach is called "Utopianism," and was tried in the past already by people like the Owenites. The problem is that you can't change a system by simply convincing people to adopt a better one, systems evolve and change over time based on material conditions.
I think its just nature and nature is brutal.
We are animals, we need to destroy the environment to survive (ex cut down trees for shelter, kill living things to eat). We have the urge to reproduce, so there is more of us which leads to more destruction. If a person is threatened, they will be prepared to kill another for their survival. This is pretty much true for most living beings.
I wouldn't call us a virus, but it was probably our intelligence that will bring us to our downfall. Maybe an anthropologist can comment on what the tipping point was.
This is just a thought terminating cliche that capitalists have developed now that the problems with the system are undeniable. It’s the classic retort of the scum bag, after they’ve realized “I didn’t do it” won’t fly, to say “well, everyone does it!"
Note how I didnt even mention capitalism here, attacked or defended any system but tried to understand the "virus" argument in the most basic form. I've looked at humankind from the biological aspect far far removed from any social or economic constructs such as capitalism.
At its core, I don't believe humans can live with zero impact on their environment and that we all have self preservation built in, just like any animal. I did not draw a conclusion that capitalism is therefore inevitable - or that our nature is solely responsible.
Capitalism arises from social and economic conditions, it is a historic phase - one which we came to due to wealth accumulation, commodification of land and labor and technological advancement (industrialization). According to Marx, it was inevitable.
Will the "virus" argument go away in a post capitalist society? I don't know, you tell me. The biological traits I mentioned will still be there. The social and economic conditions won't. Will we still be killing each other and impacting the environment?
So y'all just gonna ignore all of human history showing that it's not a modern thing?
Humans have been dog shit from the beginning. Always at war, multiple genocides, constant ethnic cleansings, torture en masse, all of these things have been prevalent in all of recorded history.
As bad as capitalism is it's just another example of humanities inability to just be fucking decent to each other.
This is just a thought terminating cliche that capitalists have developed now that the problems with the system are undeniable. It’s the classic retort of the scum bag, after they’ve realized “I didn’t do it” won’t fly, to say “well, everyone does it!"
Yeah it wasn't capitalists that gave me this mindset. It was researching human history. And it's completely filled with slavery, racism, unnecessary wars, torture, religious persecution, the list is damn near endless.
If humans are so easily swayed to abhorrent violence then at a certain point you have to realize it's our nature. Peace is just something wishful people dream of.
Yes 'humans' do this but I still think it doesn't have to be this way and a majority is not bad.
It is unfortunately easier to do something bad than good.
It's the sociopaths/psychopaths or simply greedy aggressive people who don't think twice about being ruthless and not playing by the rules that acquire power. The rest simply is put in a position to follow orders.
None of the people fighting wars want this, the people far away from the front who send them there do.
A lot of folks in the replies don't like imagining they might be problematic... Sorry folks; we're all to blame.
a single flight on a private jet smashes any amount of carbon I could output in my entire lifetime. it is not all of us equally, it is a handful of ultrawealthy people destroying the planet.
That's off by several orders of magnitude! The number I found from Nature is an estimated average of 3.6 tons of CO2 emitted per private jet flight in 2023. By contrast, a person in the United States averages about 16 tons per year. That's still nuts to think that one private jet flight has roughly the same CO2 output as about three months of living for the average person, but I for one, have a lifetime that's a bit longer than 3 months.
This is just a thought terminating cliche that capitalists have developed now that the problems with the system are undeniable. It’s the classic retort of the scum bag, after they’ve realized “I didn’t do it” won’t fly, to say “well, everyone does it!"
No. I'm not minimizing the role capitalism has, I'm reminding people that as long as they participate in any capacity in capitalism that they are causing harm. Look at the replies to my post. They verify what I said. People will go to great lengths to separate themselves from fault.
millions of Africans live and eat close to our human nature and in balance with their surroundings
Easy answers are never right. So capitalism is not >the< problem. For example: Look at the the history of the Soviet Union. Its way more complex
It's inevitable to think capitalism is wrong, but it's easier to fix than Communism or any other system.
I stopped to shout against capitalism simply cause we do not have a better solution yet. Also when capitalism gets wrong, it's mostly because a lack of regulations. A balanced system, like socialdemocracies in Scandinavia are a good example.
Unfortunately it seems we are going towards autocracies everywhere, and that's not capitalism's fault but just human greediness. So in other word, we're the problem, otherwise Socialism would reign all over the world.
Capitalism erases its own foundations, Imperialist countries like the Nordics you use as good examples depend on hyper-exploitation of the Global South. The answer is Socialism, which is an inevitable process because over time Capitalism erases the foundations it stands on and no system is static, it always moves towards the next stages or it dies. Look at businesses, they never maintain static sizes, they either grow or die, or stay small enough to be irrelevant, in aggregate.
There's frankly so many false assumptions here that it would take many well-developed comments to answer them all.
Well, the largest expeditor of the problem.
We still made huge impact to the ecosystems in the past too, it's just that we now no longer destroy only local ecosystems.
Without capitalism, would we still be an infection?
Yeah probably if we took the immediate means of production and just tried to socialise them. Idk if doing what Lenin did back in the day would work now (just copying capitalist production and socialising it.)
Yes, we consume & change the environment for millennia on a scale and rate (especially rate!) that could be considered an infection as it is absolutely unsustainable, and it permanently changes environments.
We've ended great forests, drained entire bogs, even species millennia ago, under all systems so far.
We never had the mentality of 'don't leave a mark' and and always had the concept of 'trash'.
We've also never had a predator to keep us in check, in fact it is only other humans that keep our numbers in check.
The quantity of humans alone is bound to require so much natural resources that we have a global impact regardless of how we use the current tech we would use (this means enormous areas and natural species subjugated to sustain our needs).
And the same argument about quantity also marks the unmistakable sign of an (unsustainable) infestation - that usually leads to the death of the host.
We needed some 4 million years to get to a billion, and only two centuries to get from a billon to 9 billion.
Humans invented and seem to naturally gravitate to capitalism, it's not some cosmic evil imposed on them. They're still a virus.
Humans invented and seem to naturally gravitate to capitalism
Do we naturally gravitate towards capitalism? I'd say we gravitate towards communism on family to tribal scales. Seems like capitalism or its precursor takes hold after one group conquers another and exploitation begins.
Closer, Capitalism is just another development in class society that arose alongside industrialization. Tribal communism is different from post-Socialist communism, in that tribes are small units and Communism would be one massive unit. Just like tribal communism, feudalism, and socialism, capitalism arises alongside material development and will fade with it as well, through revolution.
It would be nice if communism was an emergent behavior of humanity. It's got to be forced from the top down with a vanguard.
