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I guess I've studied enough history to know what real dystopias look like and how they come about to realize that this just isn't it. Society is inherently adve

I guess I've studied enough history to know what real dystopias look like and how they come about to realize that this just isn't it. Society is inherently adversarial, but the amount of actual violence is going down. Violence doesn't just disappear, it just morphs into another form. As the internet has slowly spread, it's allowing a lot of people's inner turmoil to manifest, this is the cause of the current political environment. Since this turmoil is chaotic and undirected, it's being harnessed by people who do have agency to serve political ends. It's worrying until you realize that this is how politics has always been done. Democracies have always been mob rule with an aristocratic backbone to fall back on when things get too unruly. I'll take the current political climate over that which generated the French Revolution any day of the week. Spy networks also have a long long history. They used to be the tools of autocrats to enforce social order, and still are in political entities like ISIL. I'll take my computers spying on me for economic ends over people spying on me to actually literally control my behavior any day of the week and Sunday too.

TeMPOraL 8y ago
> I'll take the current political climate over that which generated the French Revolution any day of the week. The question is, are those two climates really that different? > people spying on me to actually literally control my behavior You've essentially defined advertising industry. It's a very insidious form of control, but just because it doesn't involve threats of violence, doesn't mean it isn't there and isn't working.
- vinceguidry 8y ago
  What made the French Revolution and today different is the sheer murderousness of the population and willingness to get whipped up into big mobs that then take people from their homes, kill them, put their heads up on pikes. This became normal. It got so bad that someone thought the guillotine was a humane invention. You just can't conflate today's RedPillers with that. If you look at the Civil War, this was a conflict that rent families apart. Brothers faced down brothers across a battlefield. Fathers fought sons. The Civil War was the culmination of a political quarrel that steadily rose in tenor since the inception of the nation. It was a hundred years in the making, enough time for the sides involved to get real passionate about it. The essence of fighting and violence are still there, the same deep inner chaos is driving these conflicts. But what's missing is the ridiculous amount of zeal that both sides possessed. If you have that kind of zeal, these days the only way to fulfill it is to go join ISIL. And people do that. But most people aren't getting that bad. They find an outlet. Trump is that outlet. Brexit is that outlet. Before it was mob violence. It's the same with advertising. The continuation and slow civilization of the new domain of the marketing of human attention. However bad it is now, it was worse before. Before machines did the dirty work, it was other humans acting in unbelievably shady manners to rip people off for as much as they could. And it was considered normal.

TeMPOraL 8y ago

> I'll take the current political climate over that which generated the French Revolution any day of the week. The question is, are those two climates really that different? > people spying on me to actually literally control my behavior You've essentially defined advertising industry. It's a very insidious form of control, but just because it doesn't involve threats of violence, doesn't mean it isn't there and isn't working.

vinceguidry 8y ago
What made the French Revolution and today different is the sheer murderousness of the population and willingness to get whipped up into big mobs that then take people from their homes, kill them, put their heads up on pikes. This became normal. It got so bad that someone thought the guillotine was a humane invention. You just can't conflate today's RedPillers with that. If you look at the Civil War, this was a conflict that rent families apart. Brothers faced down brothers across a battlefield. Fathers fought sons. The Civil War was the culmination of a political quarrel that steadily rose in tenor since the inception of the nation. It was a hundred years in the making, enough time for the sides involved to get real passionate about it. The essence of fighting and violence are still there, the same deep inner chaos is driving these conflicts. But what's missing is the ridiculous amount of zeal that both sides possessed. If you have that kind of zeal, these days the only way to fulfill it is to go join ISIL. And people do that. But most people aren't getting that bad. They find an outlet. Trump is that outlet. Brexit is that outlet. Before it was mob violence. It's the same with advertising. The continuation and slow civilization of the new domain of the marketing of human attention. However bad it is now, it was worse before. Before machines did the dirty work, it was other humans acting in unbelievably shady manners to rip people off for as much as they could. And it was considered normal.