From :
kunstler.com/blog/2011/03/an-odd-rumination.html
Right Wing Thug says the sentences in quotes:
I answer:
OK. On the serious side:
“People are selfish, what they do, they do for themselves.”
What they do, they do for some kind of imaginary goal anyways, all goals are always imaginary, denotations, something that is never really immediate. They are always some forms of abstractions: “bigger” car, “bigger” house because more comfortable, but mostly because of the status - social meaning given to these mostly symbols.
“If you kill individualism and meritocracy you will have a society in which nobody has any goal.”
As far as I can see, in most of the developed world, individualism and meritocracy are an abstraction, can be really applied in very few endeavors, most jobs have been standardized, automated, and most individualism and meritocracy is reduced to power struggles and personality challenges, who can convince more people, who is a better salesman, who sells their activity better, who can give a better “presentation” of their activity, who is more popular and has more personality, etc. And in a world where work is becoming obsolete, not needed, automated away, where a Technological Economy is eliminating all real productive work, very little is left for someone to show “what they are worth”: mostly what is left is fluff…
“If you are paid the same doing nothing or doing a lot, you just do nothing.”
Most jobs today do nothing from the outset, work is not needed, most jobs can be described as “much ado about nothing”, a lot of running in circles, a lot of fake activity, since the Technological Economy has and will increasingly eliminate most real productive labor.
“People do not work for collective ideals, they work for their own well being, they work to have a better life for themselves and for their families.”
All ideals are abstractions and therefore always denotations, and, in a way collective: only the group is much smaller, only their family. So this can easily be changed and people can switch the denotation of their family to the denotation of their nation or humanity or Progress, or MIND OVER MATTER. You simply have to reprogram people’s neural network.
“It is not that it couldn’t work the way you say, it just doesn’t.”
It doesn’t because the powers that be have brainwashed everyone that this can never work, but it works real well when there are wars, look at what huge collective action the Germans put forth during WWII, and imagine if they could apply that to rockets to Mars and similar. Even the US space program to the moon was a collective action that worked, and even the USA Military is a huge collective action. So it can work if it is desired, if there is a precise intentionality for it to work.
I just joke around about pretty, but the british lady started it … anyways I still would like to ease my mind…
“I am NOT young, if I was, I wouldn’t be here, I would have better things to do.”
No you wouldn’t because we only process information at all ages, there is no essential difference with what one does, it is all in the imagination.
“And I do not believe any woman can be an old piece of crap, you can still be beautiful and attractive, even if you are not young any more.”
The present dominating economic system with its culture of individualism and meritocracy and success considers everyone from age 0 to 100 years old an old piece of crap unless you become bill gates.
With a collective goal, we all become valuable and defined.