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it might be a start to actually archieve "comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense" for all. Then we can see i

by xg15 4y ago

it might be a start to actually archieve "comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense" for all. Then we can see if they still want struggle and self-sacrifice. There may be some dispositions of the human mind that are susceptible to this sort of thing, but for now, I find it somewhat remarkable that this supposed need for struggle and self sacrifice is almost always employed by classes in power to keep lower classes at bay. Hitler is no exception: > He had crushed the German labour movement, and for that the property-owning classes were willing to forgive him almost anything. This stuff seems less like a "science of discontent" and more like a "science of distraction" to me. As in: let them argue about race, gender, religion, patriotism and whatever else as long as they don't argue about classes.

pessimizer 4y ago
Yes - comfortable people saying that comfort isn't enough for people; they'll still just complain, kill each other and die. Without ever having tried giving people comfort, that will always sound like a rationalization. It's an excuse comfortable people use to excuse everything from the wealth and income gap between US blacks and whites to silencing complaints about UI changes on software projects. It's a statement that people don't actually want what they say they want, all they want is attention and drama. The logical way to respond is by not acknowledging anything they say, and enforcing the behavior that you want to see, by force if necessary. The real problem is that improvements in general comfort are difficult, and require lots of force to be organized and applied in a rational way. It's easier just to insure that you and your friends stay comfortable, and to silence or redirect elements that may intrude on that comfort. Ultimately, though, the failure mode on that is catastrophic. Once discontent overwhelms the institutions created to suppress it, the institutions shrink or convert while the discontent grows. Very soon, the discontent becomes the new, young establishment, and if you haven't joined yet, you're now the problem that the new institutions are intended to eliminate.

by xg15 4y ago

pessimizer 4y ago

Yes - comfortable people saying that comfort isn't enough for people; they'll still just complain, kill each other and die. Without ever having tried giving people comfort, that will always sound like a rationalization. It's an excuse comfortable people use to excuse everything from the wealth and income gap between US blacks and whites to silencing complaints about UI changes on software projects. It's a statement that people don't actually want what they say they want, all they want is attention and drama. The logical way to respond is by not acknowledging anything they say, and enforcing the behavior that you want to see, by force if necessary. The real problem is that improvements in general comfort are difficult, and require lots of force to be organized and applied in a rational way. It's easier just to insure that you and your friends stay comfortable, and to silence or redirect elements that may intrude on that comfort. Ultimately, though, the failure mode on that is catastrophic. Once discontent overwhelms the institutions created to suppress it, the institutions shrink or convert while the discontent grows. Very soon, the discontent becomes the new, young establishment, and if you haven't joined yet, you're now the problem that the new institutions are intended to eliminate.