I think want to change brains. Both with surgery and chemicals. To reduce the competitive instinct and create more ethical society that doesn’t require enforcement. Voluntary ethical consistency and no cognitive dissonance. The biology has to change.
Rawls says just make & correctly reinforce better choices. The chemicals & neural pathways will follow.
And who will makes those changes? It will be the competitive people, already in positions of power, who will dole out the changes. So, the biology of a powerful few will determine the biological changes.
When thinking of the effects of such an enterprise - used generally on humans - the usual hubris about controlling and even managing to track and predict changes will be a king over the process.
It’s be cane toads 25.
So reduce people to mindless ants or bees perpetuating a colony.
Better yet - rather than go to all that trouble of surgery - just replace the species entirely with robots - androids - cybernauts - all serving the Borg.
Is that life? Or the end of it?
We already were designed that way. Since it is impossible without choice… we … rewired/redesigned ourselves away from that.
So to speak.
History repeats.
Just make self=other, us=them choices to get back to the original settings.
repent = reset
This is going to be…
…business as expected.
Do we know our own capacity?
As Ichthus said,
if you engage in a behaviour,
it becomes easier and more fluid over time.
You may think it inevitable:
competition to dictate all aspects of our life -
but look at the world around us.
Does it reinforce competition?
What if our environments didn’t?
Have we ever lived in one of those?
Before we resort to crudely altering a structure refined over millions of years,
how about we try to understand ourselves and what influenced our present state.
Perhaps we’ll discover the adjustment we needed was not of our physiological structure,
but of our understandings and behaviour - to be wiser & kinder.
Must everything be viewed through the lens of competition?
Are there alternative approaches to our existence and interactions?
If we say there is no greater demand on us than our own goals,
that gives us a lot more space to direct our course.
We can exist in a symbiotic way,
where our presence can benefit others instead of hinder them.
Reality’s indifference and consistency,
provides a bedrock from which we can empower ourselves.
Reality does not resist utilization to our ends.
The demands that bred violence,
need not be preserved.
We may surpass them -
if there’s a will.
What do we want from our existence?
Can we find joy and meaning on humility’s path?
How much richness may be bestowed at our feet,
before we can say -
this is worthy of a life, my life.
That this is more than one could ever ask for.
To be.
In any case, it will be the end of human life as we have known it until now, and the pets that go with it, if this madness becomes a reality.
But first they have to create the preconditions for this.
Note:
Basically, humanity, at least the Western one, has been being different already since the West started the Industrial Revolution, because it gradually changed everything. The history of Western technology goes back much further, but the Industrial Revolution was truly a revolution, a brilliant renewal and improvement of all living conditions, from which at first only the West itself, and later the whole world, benefited (just think, for example, of the growth of the world’s population from 500 million to 8000 million in three centuries [1600%]). Today’s Digital Revolution is only a logical consequence of the Industrial Revolution, which in turn is only a logical consequence of Western genetics, Western culture, Western IQ, Western industriousness, etc…
A good historian could have predicted the consequences of the Industrial Revolution at the end of the 18th century, and many did, just not well enough, because no one took the Digital Revolution into account, because no one could imagine it.
And if one of the followers of today’s insane mainstream (= racism against the white race) does not want to accept the historical facts, then I can only hope that at least a little bit of sense is still available:
It is a historical fact that the Industrial Revolution owes itself to the West - and only to the West.
The much earlier and differently motivated Agrarian Revolution does not necessarily lead to the Industrial Revolution, but only if there is already before the Industrial Revolution the West with its prerequisites - i.e. its climate (not too warm and not too cold thanks to the North Atlantic Current), its people with the corresponding genetic DNA, the correspondingly high IQ, the correspondingly high culture, etc…
We can refer only to the facts, not to the wishful thinking of the followers of today’s insane mainstream.
Agriculture would simply have continued to run to its limits, if there had been no industrial revolution, thus no West (note historical facts!); agriculture would not have changed anything about it, so that humans would simply have become extinct (as has happened in many parts of the world). Whether any culture other than the West would have developed an industrial revolution is highly unlikely. These - all - other cultures would very likely have continued with agriculture until the end (see, for example, Easter Island, Australia, etc.), i.e. would not have developed an industrial revolution. Once again, they had exploited nature to the end. The latter may also happen thanks to the industrial revolution, but only maybe, because the industrial revolution also offers opportunities to get out of this misery without humans dying out. Whether this will succeed is another question, to which the answer will be revealed in the future. But this answer should come from people with real responsibility, and unfortunately they are becoming fewer and fewer right now. But in this of my posts, I am not concerned with solving specific problems, but with explaining the history of the Industrial Revolution (with all its consequences up to the present day), which could only come from the West.
Forget your racism, especially your hostility to the West, try to have it treated away, or take a rope, but stop agitating against the West!
And this is where you veer off course.
It is all a logical progression, yes.
Before you have a technological or digital revolution, you first have an agricultural revolution.
You know the thing that enables us to feed a community, freeing labour?
The thing that enables the city state?
The thing that enables one to devote energy to outcomes other than base sustenance?
And who was it that pioneered this revolution, oh dear Alf?
Not the white man - not the west.
Have there not been great golden ages of past, ages of knowledge and wisdom gained?
Ones not attributed to the West and white people?
What do you say of this, oh wise Alf?
You think the West created all -
that the West did not inherit the wisdom of a world beyond white man’s narrow borders?
How freely you cherry pick history, oh great Alf.
And how willingly you’ll blind yourself to challenging realities.
You think the Chinese aren’t able to produce technology, oh white Alf?
Shall we inspect the history of Chinese innovation in the absence of the brilliant Western community?
You know mathematics, that pinnacle of language you hold in such high esteem, oh bright Alf?
A bedrock that our technological understandings are founded on?
Where’d this great innovation emerge - I seem to remember not the West…
Oh, but I must be mistaken.
As the omniscient Alf has revealed to us that only the West may create technological or digital revolutions,
and that in their absence, humanity was surely doomed to perpetual ignorance and rolling in the mud like pigs.
Thank you, thank you - oh declarative Alf.
Please continue to share your great Western wisdom with us.
You’re such a pillar of the community,
that all would be proud to hold above,
and allow to represent the voice of all those you shepherd under your transcendent wing.
[As you’re clearly so astute, allow me to needlessly note: this post contains sarcasm]
Historical Fact:
Islam
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age
China
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_C … inventions
World
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_ … iscoveries
And what are your assertions that only the West were able to create an industrial revolution based on?
As I look through the trajectory of innovations throughout the world,
the pattern of progress and improvement is evident.
Even the ‘great man’ theory, which the gang from KYS hold with such esteem counters your position.
As it is demonstrated that individuals from each community can have extreme IQ relative to all humanity -
Thus, these intelligent individuals (under this theory) would have the opportunity to make these innovations.
They all rest upon each other.
There is a logical order by which things are discovered, as need is the mother of invention.
Needs change and develop, as the environment changes and develops.
Once an issue emerges, and becomes relevant & of priority to solve -
this is when the opportunity for it to be solved flourishes.
The West were privileged at a critical moment,
(whether they ‘earned’ this privilege is besides the issue),
that they were in the right place at the right time to begin a powerful revolution.
The fruits of this only furthered their power.
===
[And why are you posting pictures of text?
Are you intentionally trying to make communication difficult?
I’m not going to type the drivel from your pictures in order to quote you.]
How about we agree that you’re wrong, conceited & racist, and call it there? 
Making a progress that makes life too easy too soon stalls the incentive for progress. Capitalism continuously ignites incentive to feed the flames of progress.
I think the real problem is defining what really constitutes [b]progress[/b].
Not all that glitters is gold - and not all that does more is better.
When you can’t decide on the goal - there is no such thing as progress.
MIJOT is the goal – but who ever heard of that? - who knows that? Which direction is “progress” to that?
None of you know. Keep disagreeing. Keep professing everything else. Stay lost - until just as those agrarians - the end just roles on over. Cyber/technical agrarianism is no different in the long run.
If you can’t tell up from down – you are headed down.
The inventions of Non-Western cultures are not relevant, because they have nothing whatsoever to do with the “Industrial Revolution”.
No, not none of us. I, for example, know what MIJOT is.
Read this, for example: An update on Universal Basic Income (UBI) - Philosophy Forums / Philosophy - I Love Philosophy.
There is no “disagreeing” anymore:
It is not my fault if Ben J. S. does not know what the “Industrial Revolution” means. He is too stupid, too mentally ill (he himself once said he were mentally ill and owe James S. Saint tips on treatment), both, convenience, or all three combined. And he is a racist too, namely one who - in a directed or undirected way - turns racism against all whites, especially Western whites. Is he an Aborigine? Hardly. Because I think Aborigines are less racist against Whites than Whites themselves.
All his trolling responses to my two texts have been off-topic. Those texts have nothing to do with what I have said. He has also for trollish reasons accused me of racism with ad hominems, although it is not possible for him to know what he is talking about, because he does not know whether I am evaluating what I have written about the Industrial Revolution, which is exclusively a Western one, positively or negatively, or neither positively nor negatively, but neutrally, i.e. not at all. So I will not be having any more conversations with him, and I will no longer take part in any more left-right propaganda or any other kind of divisive propaganda that follows the age-old motto “divide et impera”. This is exactly what the powerful and their media, and therefore the comfortable herd in which he also cavorts, want.
One cannot associate “any” inventions with the Industrial Revolution, but only very specific ones, namely those of two Faustian periods, namely (1.) the Faustian prehistory of the Faustian Industrial Revolution and (2.) the Faustian Industrial Revolution itself; because both are only - exclusively (!) - Faustian periods, i.e.: periods of Faustian culture alone. The Industrial Revolution itself began in the middle of the 18th century and is - roughly speaking - not yet complete. For this reason, a distinction is made between four different sub-phases of the Industrial Revolution. These four sub-phases of the Industrial Revolution can be roughly categorised chronologically as follows: (A) around 1760-1900; (B) around 1900-1970; (C) around 1970-2000; (D) since 2000. However, there is also the theory that the Industrial Revolution had/has no sub-phases at all. However, the decisive factor is that it was, is and will be a Faustian (Occidental) phenomenon.
Isn’t the first stone throw - which, by the way, apes have already mastered - something of an emancipation from nature? The first use of fire certainly does.
The first use of fire is the reason why man has been able to perfect his attempts at liberation from nature more and more. The Agricultural Revolution, which meant farming, livestock breeding, farm animals, slaves, serfs, etc., prevented man from destroying all the animals on our planet so that they could recover in time (keyword: sustainability), although this was not (yet!) the intention of the farmers of the time. The Industrial Revolution has prevented agriculture from exhausting all the soils on this planet, but is now itself heading towards a state that can (and probably will, if there is no new revolution or other “solution”) cause even more disaster: a planet without fertile soils, without higher life, because it has been made impossible.
The negative consequences of man’s use of fire were - in certain regions - the disappearance of many large animals, so that one can say that the Agricultural Revolution was a blessing because it ensured that large animals did not disappear completely, although the farmers certainly did not do this intentionally, because their intention was already a consequence of the disappearance of many large animals, so it was out of necessity. The Industrial Revolution was different: it came about for purely rational, Faustian-intelligent reasons in conjunction with an equally Faustian striving for power, which led to a population explosion, much higher life expectancy, indeed to an exponential, seemingly infinitely increasing luxury. This only existed in the Faustian West. These reasons only existed in the West and had a long history here. Modern science and technology is Faustian science and technology. There are no others. The whole world is now affected by it. If Faustian science and technology had not existed, there would still only be around 600 million people living on Earth today.
Imagine that without Faustian - i.e. modern - science and technology there would still be 8.25 billion people (as of February 2024) living on our planet (!): that would not be possible: and if we imagine for a moment that it would be possible, then within a very short time all the soil would be depleted, all edible plants and animals eaten and therefore all 8.25 billion people would be dead. It would not work! Instead of rejoicing that it is precisely the Westerners who have made the population explosion possible who are prepared to give up the luxuries they are used to, to carry out deindustrialisation, to reverse the industrial revolution as far as possible ()the way “good” “postmodernists” do), all that “rains down in torrents” on the Westerners is criticism and hostility - that is true racism (!), born out of class ideology (envy, jealousy, revenge, hatred, resentment, etc.), the Westerners are additionally accused of what the Anti-Westerners would have to accuse themselves of with completely unreflective projection.
And if one imagines - in reverse to the example just described - that there would soon be only 600 million people living on our planet (as was the case not very long before the Industrial Revolution) (!): this is what certain powerful people have wanted for decades (or centuries?): this would be possible under two conditions: (1. ) previously greatly reduced or even disappeared consumption of fossil energy (coal, oil, natural gas); (2.) previously greatly reduced human reproduction (as has been practised by Westerners since around 1970 and now also by some Easterners since around 1990, but not by everyone, certainly not by Southerners and Central and West Asians): Birth rate at replacement level!
But do we need transhumanism for this? No!
But how will things then most likely continue? Even more people than today; continued fossil energy because its owners do not want to give up profit and therefore power; transhumanism despite all the dangers (and as I said: the Industrial Revolution was initiated by the rationalism of the Faustian Westerners, whose roots go back a long way) and which will now be continued by transhuman machines and will cause all remaining humans (real humans) to disappear, as its name already promises: transhumanism. The end of humanity! What is “good” about that?
There is one more thing: because the so-called “elite” is becoming ever richer and therefore ever more powerful, the subversives, complainers, indignants and reevaluators from below are becoming ever more “equal”, i.e. more ascendant. And this extremely disastrous combination brings all high achievers (Middle Class People) and those who have remained at the bottom (Lower Class People) further and further down!
There was not a single mass movement, mass media, etc., indeed no masses at all (in the properly understood sense) in pre-industrial history. They could not even have existed. The bourgeois age (properly understood) is also unthinkable without the Industrial Revolution, not to mention emancipation movements of any kind. It is therefore no coincidence that almost all these revolutionary movements were conceived in England, and mostly in order to establish them in other countries, because their governments and peoples would be weakened as a result. Today this matter has already got so far out of hand that almost all Western governments and peoples are so weakened that one can have the impression that even the inhabitants of the Amazon region are more powerful than they are. And it is in England, of all places, that the weakness is apparently most successful.
So if you belong to the Western masses (around 80%), then you can be quite sure that you are on the side of those who preach and practise tolerance towards all intolerant people from Non-western cultures, and that means that for reasons of convenience and/or stupidity you are on the side of the racists who lead and live out their racism against Whites and by “Whites” only mean Westerners and among these Westerners only the high achievers (Middle Class) whom they want to dispossess (exploit). Such racism is therefore linked to classism (class struggle) and goes hand in hand with extreme left-wing terrorism (as we know it from history, first in France, later in Russia/Soviet Union, China, Cambodia and elsewhere); it is led and carried out by Whites and Non-whites against Western middle-class Whites - just as Spengler predicted more than a century ago - and this Western White Middle Class is called “the Whites” or “the Westerners” or “the fascists” or “the racists” etc., but the Western high achievers (Middle Class) are only a part of the Westerners and only a part of the Whites and only a small part of the humans. Anyone who defends this minority, this Western White Middle Class (WWMC) - the high achievers - is certainly no fascist, no racist.
Some people seem to be toying with the idea of leaving this planet for the reasons mentioned above. Fleeing from responsibility? Yes. But they also know that the probability of solving the problem is rather low. Moreover, the number of Westerners who at least show responsibility for the mistakes of their past - after all, they brought about the Industrial Revolution (!) - is decreasing, while such responsibility does not exist among Non-Westerners, but quite the opposite: they claim the right to destroy our planet precisely because they point to the Westerners to whom we owe the Industrial Revolution.
It could all have turned out very differently!
2 Likes
James was a wise man and @Mithus sent me the book she wrote in German containing the conversations she had with him, which unfortunately go well over my head. The depth at which his “Rational Metaphysics: Affectance Ontology” went is amazing. Affectance means the ultra-tiny influences or changes in the affective potential.
I just meant reduce the action of the vm pfc and increase the dl pfc. humans have been altering our brains forever. Not just thru the fire together wire together plasticity, but also with wine and meditation, prayer, exercise, song. More recently with all manner of drugs. Adderall and Zoloft change your brain. So do weed, mushrooms and ecstasy, not always for the worse. My point is that whether thru pharmacological or technical means, it would be cool to modify our brains to be less assholish. We don’t need to be so competitive anymore. We can end a lot of the suffering but we don’t. Innovation need not be fueled by pain anymore.
Do not take my claim as a totalitarian mandate, that’s your own bias. My prediction is people will opt to do this because it will feel good.
All the world’s remaining problems are a function of brain parts we no longer need to be so dominant.