What's your kind of revolution?

[DotCommunist]

This is the kind of thing I mean. No matter what set of beliefs an individual holds to, nothing but glib basesless optimism will suffice.

So 'we' will work 'it' out as 'we' always do. Could it get any more meaningless than that?

Thing is lletsa, history is littered with greybeards moaning that the sky will fall in in just a moments time, repent etc.

The fields that we know, that those who come after may have clean earth to till.

 

[LLETSA]

Human beings have never been as successful as a species as they are now. Numbers are perhaps reaching plague proportions. But, in contrast to the locust, we can see that such a plague can only end in one way. We are clever enough to have recognised many of the ways in which we are going wrong. You maintain that we are not clever enough to solve the problems we have made for ourselves. Others disagree, but your pessimism has no more basis in reality than others' optimism.

You're just trying to put words into my mouth. I haven't said, for instance, anything about us not being clever enough for anything. And yet you imply that it's this cleverness that offers a solution to our predicament when it's the very thing that multiplies the problems we face. We might well never have been as successful as a species as we are now (whatever this means in a world of unprecedented wealth but dominated by war and poverty), but this success produces biological weaponry as well as life saving vaccines, for instance, and specialist knowledge needed for manufacturing the means to mass destruction increasingly escapes its former boundaries.

Pessimism may have no more basis in reality than optimism, but history is on the side of the pessimists. Look at the way we maintain our enthusiasm for war even as other ideals come and go.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

history is on the side of the pessimists. .

Not true. That it an utterly baseless, utterly meaningless thing to say. Is the world worse now than it has ever been? I say no. I say that it is possible to make things better. And I say that history proves this.

Don't accuse others of meaningless, glib opinions then come out with shite like that. ffs.

 

[LLETSA]

Thing is lletsa, history is littered with greybeards moaning that the sky will fall in in just a moments time, repent etc.

The fields that we know, that those who come after may have clean earth to till.

I haven't said the sky will fall in or told anybody to repent. Stop talking like an imbecile fourteen year-old.

What I have said is that the insoluble problems we face are multiplying. If you don't believe that tell me why. Or if you've nothing to say on the matter, carry on fantasising about revolutionary bloodbaths you'll never see.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Stop talking like an imbecile fourteen year-old.
.

Oh the irony. You talk like a teenager who's just discovered philosophy for the first time.

 

[DotCommunist]

it's parody lletsa, and you are ripe for it.

If you don't believe that tell me why

Ask me a question of value and significance rather than one you'd like to think I was asking you miserable old bastard.

 

[The39thStep]

Thing is lletsa, history is littered with greybeards moaning that the sky will fall in in just a moments time, repent etc.

The fields that we know, that those who come after may have clean earth to till.

History is littered with just about everything you can think about

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I'll be honest with you, lletsa. I'm beginning to doubt that you even really understand what history is, the way that history is made, the dynamic process that is to be alive. If you did, you wouldn't think you had a crystal ball into the future like you do.

 

[LLETSA]

Not true. That it an utterly baseless, utterly meaningless thing to say. Is the world worse now than it has ever been? I say no. I say that it is possible to make things better. And I say that history proves this.

Don't accuse others of meaningless, glib opinions then come out with shite like that. ffs.

I also think it's possible to make things better, and that history does prove this. Yet there's the irony: the very process that has see conditions made better for an increasing number over a very short space of time-the ever more intensive exploitation of the planet's resources-undermines the very basis of our existence. And through the very same means that things are made materially better we create ever more efficient means of wiping ourselves off the face of the earth. Soon we face some kind of reckoning that will likely see material progress go into reverse at a time when the world's population has never been larger, more inter-connected and filled with expectation, in a world bristling with weapons of mass destruction, some of which will have escaped the limits placesd on them by states and military alliances (which will probably begin to crumble over large parts of the world.) You can give an optimistic narrative to all this if you want to.

 

[LLETSA]

Oh the irony. You talk like a teenager who's just discovered philosophy for the first time.

It's okay, LBJ, everybody can see how clever you are. Not everybody has had a private school education.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Eh?

 

[LLETSA]

it's parody lletsa, and you are ripe for it.



Ask me a question of value and significance rather than one you'd like to think I was asking you miserable old bastard.

Go ahead and parody. You have to offer more than the end is nigh or we're all doomed though.

As for the rest, I see no difference between the likes of you and the equally glib and superficial Ayn Randist crank onarchy over in the World Politics thread. Two sides of the same pie-in-the-sky coin.

 

[DotCommunist]

no, thought not.

 

[LLETSA]

I'll be honest with you, lletsa. I'm beginning to doubt that you even really understand what history is, the way that history is made, the dynamic process that is to be alive. If you did, you wouldn't think you had a crystal ball into the future like you do.

I don't say I'm looking into a crystal ball. I'm offering an opinion as to where I see things going. Take it or fucking leave it.

 

[LLETSA]

no, thought not.

I shouldn't have to ask you a question; you should be able to offer something more than, 'look at me, I'm an old-style communist.'

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I also think it's possible to make things better, and that history does prove this. Yet there's the irony: the very process that has see conditions made better for an increasing number over a very short space of time-the ever more intensive exploitation of the planet's resources-undermines the very basis of our existence. And through the very same means that things are made materially better we create ever more efficient means of wiping ourselves off the face of the earth. Soon we face some kind of reckoning that will likely see material progress go into reverse at a time when the world's population has never been larger, more inter-connected and filled with expectation, in a world bristling with weapons of mass destruction, some of which will have escaped the limits placesd on them by states and military alliances (which will probably begin to crumble over large parts of the world.) You can give an optimistic narrative to all this if you want to.

Credit where it is due. This is a good post. I'm not going to respond directly, except to say that it is possible to recognise what you say and also to have a degree of optimism about what it is possible to do about it, and how it is possible for the future to pan out. I'm not even saying that you're wrong. You might not be. I think most people recognise that. Yet you do often talk as if our impending doom were inevitable. I do not accept that. And I also agree with dotcom that there has been no point in history ever that similar arguments for our impending doom could not have been put forward.

 

[DotCommunist]

“‘What advantage did the Athenians gain from putting Socrates to death? Famine and plague came upon them as a judgment for their crime. What advantage did the men of Samos gain from burning Pythagoras? In a moment their land was covered with sand. What advantage did the Jews gain from executing their wise King? It was just after that that their kingdom was abolished. God justly avenged these three wise men: the Athenians died of hunger; the Samians were overwhelmed by the sea; the Jews, ruined and driven from their land, live in complete dispersion. But Socrates did not die for good; he lived on in the teaching of Plato. Pythagoras did not die for good; he lived on in the statue of Hera. Nor did the wise King die for good; He lived on in the teaching which He had given

and so on

 

[stuff_it]

Re OP: Definitely not 'armchair'