4 ms·

The general population is highly domesticated. The defining aspect of domestication is the surrender of one's capacity to do violence in exchange for peaceful s

by WriterGuy2021 5y ago

The general population is highly domesticated. The defining aspect of domestication is the surrender of one's capacity to do violence in exchange for peaceful symbiosis. The domesticated are accustomed to filling rigid roles in society -- a society they believe to be benevolent and infinitely stable. Those of us that are not so domesticated, we wild ones, we who intimately comprehend history because we understand the nature of violence and power, are dying with anxiety as centralized powers gain more and more power over us every year. Your wife has no understanding of violence and power, i.e., she is domesticated. That's why she has "nothing to hide." The funny thing is, people have been aware of this property of human nature for thousands of years, but every generation that lives through hard times is shocked when they are forced to rediscover these principles -- as you seem to be discovering. If you continue to investigate why your wife thinks as she does, you'll come to the points I've made above and the behavior of the compliant masses will make much more sense -- and will leave you with quite a terrible feeling if you truly come to understand how most people will pretty much blindly comply with any prevailing authority that has seized the capacity to commit violence.

A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
I think I disagree in several different ways. I am personally highly domesticated. I accept that without society there are a lot of things I would not be able to do ( engaging with random strangers on HN come to mind -- in a lot of ways, it is pleasure and a privilege to have time to engage in an intellectual discussion ). But I disagree with your definition that the defining aspect of domestication is surrendering one's capacity to do violence. You may be applying the meaning of the word as that referring to a farm animal, but, if you permit the pun, we are not on animal farm. We live in an odd 1984 dystopia, where we hashtag about room 101, but we are not on animal farm yet. In that sense, we are not domesticated. You could argue, a lot of us have been lulled by the comforts of the lazy life, but meaning is somewhat different from the one proposed by you. To your point about violence, I want to note that no one really surrenders it. If US news are any indication, it is, at best, temporarily suspended.
- hoseja 5y ago
  The pesky big-brained system substrate is much more efficient when it thinks it's free. No individual human has any actual agency.
- WriterGuy2021 5y ago
  My point is: your wife doesn't feel responsible for your personal safety. Here's the difference between a domesticated person who expects someone else to protect them, i.e., do their violence for them, and someone that feels responsible for their own safety. Domesticated: works for a major corporation in a big city. Has no guns, no means of personally protecting himself, lives in close proximity to strangers, and if the food stores went down, he would starve to death within a few weeks. Undomesticated: made very anxious by every conspiracy theory because he knows the world is dangerous and no one is ultimately his buddy, lives in a bunker in some undisclosed location, has at least a year of food rations, has more guns and ammunition than a small Latin American nation, makes a plan to kill everyone he meets. The domesticated believe the undomesticated to be insane because they don't think about their own safety and violence as the undomesticated do. How many people look at the doomsday bunker crowd as a bunch of lunatics? They aren't lunatics: they have no trust in the system and they have taken it upon themselves to secure their safety to the best of their ability. The fact that you blithely say "we live in an odd 1984 dystopia" tells me, no offense, that you aren't aware of what that means. Perhaps intellectually you do, but because you aren't used to protecting yourself, such a statement doesn't rain down anxiety and paranoia upon your emotional register. This is the strange thing about the domesticated condition: it's a type of blindness. I'd compare the blindness of the domesticated to the difference between an old person at a funeral versus a child at a funeral. What is death to youth? What can youth possibly know of death? On the contrary, what is death to age? Death is profound and moving to those who have enough experience to know what it is, but it is nothing -- absolutely nothing -- to those that have not developed the depth of experience that allows one to register the significance of the grim reminder of our own mortality. The same thing goes for violence and its fruits and our ability to intimately know them. In any case, good luck out there Winston #room101.
  - amcoastal 5y ago
hoseja 5y ago
Make no mistake, we are domesticated too. Gallows used to be much busier, running the system's traditional quaint breeding program, except instead of better wool or bigger tubers it was selecting for ingrained compliance and wetware compatibility.
- WriterGuy2021 5y ago
  Amusingly said. I agree that the most docile tend to have the greatest fitness in society, but I don't think it is all a matter of genes. I once had a near death experience and it really woke me up. I think anyone that has been close to death realizes that most people never think twice about their mortality till the very end...and this creates two very different types of psychological species: those who carry the weight of their mortality and those who fly around like little birds who think they will never die...tweet tweet...I will live for ever. The former we may call the "undomesticated" and the latter we may call the "domesticated." At least this is how I've come to understand things.

A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago

I think I disagree in several different ways. I am personally highly domesticated. I accept that without society there are a lot of things I would not be able to do ( engaging with random strangers on HN come to mind -- in a lot of ways, it is pleasure and a privilege to have time to engage in an intellectual discussion ). But I disagree with your definition that the defining aspect of domestication is surrendering one's capacity to do violence. You may be applying the meaning of the word as that referring to a farm animal, but, if you permit the pun, we are not on animal farm. We live in an odd 1984 dystopia, where we hashtag about room 101, but we are not on animal farm yet. In that sense, we are not domesticated. You could argue, a lot of us have been lulled by the comforts of the lazy life, but meaning is somewhat different from the one proposed by you. To your point about violence, I want to note that no one really surrenders it. If US news are any indication, it is, at best, temporarily suspended.

hoseja 5y ago
The pesky big-brained system substrate is much more efficient when it thinks it's free. No individual human has any actual agency.
WriterGuy2021 5y ago
My point is: your wife doesn't feel responsible for your personal safety. Here's the difference between a domesticated person who expects someone else to protect them, i.e., do their violence for them, and someone that feels responsible for their own safety. Domesticated: works for a major corporation in a big city. Has no guns, no means of personally protecting himself, lives in close proximity to strangers, and if the food stores went down, he would starve to death within a few weeks. Undomesticated: made very anxious by every conspiracy theory because he knows the world is dangerous and no one is ultimately his buddy, lives in a bunker in some undisclosed location, has at least a year of food rations, has more guns and ammunition than a small Latin American nation, makes a plan to kill everyone he meets. The domesticated believe the undomesticated to be insane because they don't think about their own safety and violence as the undomesticated do. How many people look at the doomsday bunker crowd as a bunch of lunatics? They aren't lunatics: they have no trust in the system and they have taken it upon themselves to secure their safety to the best of their ability. The fact that you blithely say "we live in an odd 1984 dystopia" tells me, no offense, that you aren't aware of what that means. Perhaps intellectually you do, but because you aren't used to protecting yourself, such a statement doesn't rain down anxiety and paranoia upon your emotional register. This is the strange thing about the domesticated condition: it's a type of blindness. I'd compare the blindness of the domesticated to the difference between an old person at a funeral versus a child at a funeral. What is death to youth? What can youth possibly know of death? On the contrary, what is death to age? Death is profound and moving to those who have enough experience to know what it is, but it is nothing -- absolutely nothing -- to those that have not developed the depth of experience that allows one to register the significance of the grim reminder of our own mortality. The same thing goes for violence and its fruits and our ability to intimately know them. In any case, good luck out there Winston #room101.
- amcoastal 5y ago

hoseja 5y ago

Make no mistake, we are domesticated too. Gallows used to be much busier, running the system's traditional quaint breeding program, except instead of better wool or bigger tubers it was selecting for ingrained compliance and wetware compatibility.

WriterGuy2021 5y ago
Amusingly said. I agree that the most docile tend to have the greatest fitness in society, but I don't think it is all a matter of genes. I once had a near death experience and it really woke me up. I think anyone that has been close to death realizes that most people never think twice about their mortality till the very end...and this creates two very different types of psychological species: those who carry the weight of their mortality and those who fly around like little birds who think they will never die...tweet tweet...I will live for ever. The former we may call the "undomesticated" and the latter we may call the "domesticated." At least this is how I've come to understand things.