weather leads to climate, climate leads to fear...
Fear... leads to sOcIaLiSm!
Zink
joined 2 years ago
So you're telling me that if we make the world hate us, they might send us less money?
Yeah. For some things it makes sense to look at the US as kind of rural/redneck Europe. The US has like half the population but pretty much all of the geographic diversity.
Consider, for instance, my state of Pennsylvania. It might be a big enough state that folks in civilized countries have heard of it. Being a swing state in our presidential elections probably helps too.
The thing is, this little state you may not have heard of is significantly bigger than countries like Seweden or Belgium, in both population and GDP. It's between the two as far as land area.
PA is shaped a bit like the US itself, too. You have Pittsburgh in the west "coast" and Philadelphia to the east. It's a 515 km drive between the two, or if you want to avoid tolls it's more like 565km at much slower speeds. The vast stretch of land in between is beautiful in places but is very correctly referred to as Pennsyltucky.
When it comes to driving laws, I don't go to the united states drivers services or whatever, I go to PennDOT! https://www.pa.gov/penndot
I think there's also a huge factor to consider where, at least in my experience, angry dummies that don't have empathy for others are also pretty bad at predicting how they themselves will act in a novel situation. It looks like this one has temporarily switched from "I am very badass" mode to "I am very christlike" mode.
From the Wikipedia page
a less obvious, though equally important theme is what Forster refers to as "the sin against the body." This occurs when people's intellectual refinement and spirituality advance to such a point that they become disconnected from their physical bodies and are unable to adapt to changing environments.
After reading the synopsis and then hitting that sentence... This Forster mofo understood something deep within us that most people today have no clue about. It's like we want to disconnect from the world we live in.
Maybe it's that our combination of self awareness and intelligence allow us to have an internal dialogue. It makes us feel like our mind a separate entity that's driving our physical body around, and isolating our minds from the messiness of the natural world lets us exist in our more pure evolved state or whatever.
I was admittedly way more into the metaverse (ala Snow Crash, not frickin facebook) and VR concepts decades ago. And I've had some great experiences in immersive games including VR. But to flip around the line from The Matrix, "the mind cannot live without the body." We need to engage all of our senses and live in our environment, and not try to pretend like we're just another computer on the network.
a little subroutine in your head will kick off titled but how do I monetize this?
Yep, that is exactly it.
I have finally been winning the battle against that subroutine, and I still stomp that shit into the ground any time it makes a peep.
I've given away some cool stuff to some excited people this summer!
A parallel to this issue that still irks the shit out of me is the "huh... smart!" reaction when somebody takes the most greedy path possible. It gets to the point where generosity is a character flaw because it makes you a sucker and not a winner.
Harambe was 2016!
Not my joke, but it fits, lol.
The internet has made us aware of how fucked up our kind is.
Haha, absolutely with the ADHD. I'm tempted to put a sign on all the shit I constructed this summer that says "the house that adderall built" or something like that, lol.
It also helps to have multiple projects going, as long as you keep it to a manageable number. Nothing like making progress on hobby project B to procrastinate on hobby project A because you aren't feeling that one today.
It was a rough time back then. But a simpler time...
An important parallel to this, especially for those of us who grew up in the US, is to remember that your hobbies and the things you build can be for your own enrichment. They do not need to be efficient or profitable. The effect of the process on your psyche is far more important than the new inanimate object you possess at the end. But that's not how our capitalist worker bee culture taught me to see it.
Even your descriptions of how samey the voters are reveals a huge difference though. The nature of each "side" came through in your choice of words.
The first paragraph is essentially holding your nose and voting for the lesser evil in order to oppose the party that openly wants to harm people all around you.
The second paragraph is essentially holding your nose and voting for the lesser evil in order to oppose the party that you happen to hate.
The discussion almost feels moot at this point though, because SO much of the american populace has jumped at the chance to support the greater evil over and over.
So I guess the stance I'm taking is kind of a "¿Por Qué No Los Dos?"
The system is horribly broken from down in the details of the voting system all the way to the hyper-capitalist type-A rat race culture that is incompatible with sustained human happiness. It needs to be replaced to "fix" things.
As long as we have our same busted culture and constitution in place, then if there continue to be regular elections that seem consistent with past ones, and no shady motherfuckers are trying to link identities to ballots, then I am probably still going to go out and vote for the lesser evil.
Granted, we might already be past the point of no return where that vote won't count or the election won't happen. That's why it's a conditional statement.
Capitalism and greed are not what make us our best selves. But you had better believe I voted for "maybe we should at least catch up to Europe with regulating capitalism and protecting the people" instead of "fuck everything and fuck all y'all! Let's try turning the world superpower into a death cult for a generation or two!"
The Harris administration is not where I REALLY want my country to be right now. Not if you're going to give me the magic to actually fix things. But given the fork in the road between whatever Harris was bringing us and (gestures in all directions), I don't see myself changing my mind.