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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

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
  Domesticated and undomesticated both sound terrible, does your paranoia not allow for an in between state?
  - WriterGuy2021 5y ago
    There's probably a "domestication gradient" or something like that. I can sense it when I talk to people. Some people are like little children. They haven't thought about their own safety ever. Others are literal wild men who believe every conspiracy theory out there because they are practically traumatized and are always seeking out potential threats. And yes, there are people in between that worry about their own safety, but also have enough faith in the system to function properly. I must admit... I have fallen in love with my own term because it really does seem to describe some of the human diversity I've encountered.
    - Subsentient 5y ago
      You're an interesting man, if a bit grandiose. I'm currently stoned, so I'll ask a weird question. What about us doomsayers who know in their hearts that it'll all fall apart in the end, but are cognizant that they themselves don't care enough about their safety to do anything differently?
- A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
  In a sense, I am just putting words together. Would you accept a variation of 1984 dystopia? I don't think I am wrong here, but I am willing to go over differences.
  - WriterGuy2021 5y ago
    Does it alarm you? That's what I really want to know.
    - A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
      No. I don't believe in neat model of the universe where you can assign vague tag, label, whatever you want to call it and apply it to every facet of reality. Its not sensible. Worse, it is not how the world works. You won't even get appropriate approximation of reality that way. If it was a simple 1 and 0, we would have better simulations by now. So.. no. It does not alarm me. It helps that I don't fit your model very well. But your thought process does interest me.

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
Domesticated and undomesticated both sound terrible, does your paranoia not allow for an in between state?
- WriterGuy2021 5y ago
  There's probably a "domestication gradient" or something like that. I can sense it when I talk to people. Some people are like little children. They haven't thought about their own safety ever. Others are literal wild men who believe every conspiracy theory out there because they are practically traumatized and are always seeking out potential threats. And yes, there are people in between that worry about their own safety, but also have enough faith in the system to function properly. I must admit... I have fallen in love with my own term because it really does seem to describe some of the human diversity I've encountered.
  - Subsentient 5y ago
    You're an interesting man, if a bit grandiose. I'm currently stoned, so I'll ask a weird question. What about us doomsayers who know in their hearts that it'll all fall apart in the end, but are cognizant that they themselves don't care enough about their safety to do anything differently?
A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
In a sense, I am just putting words together. Would you accept a variation of 1984 dystopia? I don't think I am wrong here, but I am willing to go over differences.
- WriterGuy2021 5y ago
  Does it alarm you? That's what I really want to know.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
    No. I don't believe in neat model of the universe where you can assign vague tag, label, whatever you want to call it and apply it to every facet of reality. Its not sensible. Worse, it is not how the world works. You won't even get appropriate approximation of reality that way. If it was a simple 1 and 0, we would have better simulations by now. So.. no. It does not alarm me. It helps that I don't fit your model very well. But your thought process does interest me.