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How much more weight is needed then to look around at the world; pointing everywhere as proof that the current system is 'A bad idea' and desperately needs refo

How much more weight is needed then to look around at the world; pointing everywhere as proof that the current system is 'A bad idea' and desperately needs reform? We have given these opposing views far too much credit and need to be treated with the same ridicule and vitriol as they deserve.

DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
"It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism." -- Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek below a quote from "Capitalist Realism, Is There No Alternative" by Mark Fisher - this is a devastating but interesting read on this subject. (I just finished this last week). pdf: https://libcom.org/files/Capitalist%20Realism_%20Is%20There%20No%20Alternat%20-%20Mark%20Fisher.pdf https://libcom.org/files/Capitalist%20Realism_%20Is%20There%... "> Watching Children of Men, we are inevitably reminded of the phrase attributed to Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek, that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism. That slogan captures precisely what I mean by ‘capitalist realism’: the widespread sense that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it. Once, dystopian films and novels were exercises in such acts of imagination – the disasters they depicted acting as narrative pretext for the emergence of different ways of living. Not so in Children of Men. The world that it projects seems more like an extrapolation or exacerbation of ours than an alternative to it." highly recommend.
historicalweave 6y ago
You can "look around everywhere" and see a lot of evidence that the world is better than it ever has been. That doesn't mean "perfect," but choose whatever indicator you like—life expectancy, average wealth—and it looks better than the past. People are quick to forget that for most of history, the vast majority of people lived as either hunter-gatherers or indentured servants to kings and emperors. Russia had laws at one point that literally bound its serfs to the land they were born on. They lived and died in the same place and were legally prevented from going anywhere. There are plenty of targets for reform, but it's hard to imagine anyone with the slightest knowledge of history looking around and going "this is all horrible, how did we let it get so bad?!"

DyslexicAtheist 6y ago

"It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism." -- Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek below a quote from "Capitalist Realism, Is There No Alternative" by Mark Fisher - this is a devastating but interesting read on this subject. (I just finished this last week). pdf: https://libcom.org/files/Capitalist%20Realism_%20Is%20There%20No%20Alternat%20-%20Mark%20Fisher.pdf https://libcom.org/files/Capitalist%20Realism_%20Is%20There%... "> Watching Children of Men, we are inevitably reminded of the phrase attributed to Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek, that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism. That slogan captures precisely what I mean by ‘capitalist realism’: the widespread sense that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it. Once, dystopian films and novels were exercises in such acts of imagination – the disasters they depicted acting as narrative pretext for the emergence of different ways of living. Not so in Children of Men. The world that it projects seems more like an extrapolation or exacerbation of ours than an alternative to it." highly recommend.

historicalweave 6y ago

You can "look around everywhere" and see a lot of evidence that the world is better than it ever has been. That doesn't mean "perfect," but choose whatever indicator you like—life expectancy, average wealth—and it looks better than the past. People are quick to forget that for most of history, the vast majority of people lived as either hunter-gatherers or indentured servants to kings and emperors. Russia had laws at one point that literally bound its serfs to the land they were born on. They lived and died in the same place and were legally prevented from going anywhere. There are plenty of targets for reform, but it's hard to imagine anyone with the slightest knowledge of history looking around and going "this is all horrible, how did we let it get so bad?!"