Yeah, but when I talk about things I like to talk about the real world.
In the real world people do not spontaneously change, all around the world. Obsessing or even talking about the fact that “if only every single person would change” is just stupid, honestly. It’s a path down the Utopian line of thought of the 19th century and that stuff was based in fantasy and totally impractical.
Real human improvement is gradual, and obsessing over that fact is actually counter productive. In the real world is actually probably immoral to do so because it can hinder the small progress that people do make.
monstro sort of exemplifies it, by pointing out her personal laziness and then justifying it because she recognizes she’s only a single person. If more people accepted that small, gradual changes are what actually brings about societal changes, you’d have less of that and more progress being made.
I don’t think you guys actually disagree with each other. The difference is just that you say the task is monumental and one person can’t make a difference; it has to be generations down the line and monstro is saying, doesn’t mean we can’t try to help.
I do not think capitalism is sustainable, socially or ecologically. I think it is an institution that runs on exploitation and greed.
You know the recession thingy? The big disaster that they say is over but still has millions of people praying on their knees at night? That wasn’t communism run amock. Or any other kind of -ism. That was capitalism. Usually it does not bite the majority of Americans in the ass so hard–only people who we do not care about usually feel its sting–but the pendulum always swings the other way eventually.
I do not think communism is the way, mind you. Communism sounds good on paper, but it always seems to turn out really really bad. But capitalism has only been good for a minority on the planet. And when it’s left to its own devices, it too turns out really really bad.
Now instead of saying “bullshit”, why not explain how capitalism is noble and good? I can think of some ways that it has improved the quality of life for some people. But for everyone? No. Almost by definition, it is powered by and thus perpetuates inequality.
Like I said before, I’m not a communist. I like the idea of everyone sharing and owning collectively…and I think it can work in the short-term, on small scales. But humans have a tendency to mess it all up, just like they’ve done with capitalism. Which also sounds good on paper.
The entirety of the 20th century showed the failures of communist governments, you’re correct. But we have centuries’ worth of examples showing the horrors of captalism. One of the main horrors has been discussed thoroughly in this thread. Capitalism allowed that horror to exist for three hundred years.
Colon cancer, diabetes, and obesity are great too!
So are pthalates and other endocrine disrupters in our drinking water, causing everything from intersexed fish to infertility rates in the human population. Not to mention all the other linkages that are awaiting discovery. Great!
Cheap meat is great too, even if it results in higher global grain prices, increased production of green house gases, streams teeming with so much fecal bacteria that they are unswimmable (unless you want to risk limb amputation), and bays that are graveyards to all forms of aquatic life. Yes, it’s great we’ll have all that wonderful beef and chicken, since we won’t have fish, oysters, lobsters, shrimp, or crab to substitute them with.
Oh yes, and it’s great that we’ll have to sell Ma and Pa’s farm–the one they’ve owned for generations–because there’s no way in hell we can keep up with Purdue or ConAgra anymore. And anyway, we just got sued by Monsanto because one of their genetically modified seeds happened to blow onto our field when we weren’t looking. Well, at least our little girls have mustaches and got their periods before they even learned how to ride their bikes due to all that estrogenic Monsanto milk they guzzle down. Maybe we can put our little girls on the circus circuit and recoup some of that money we’ve lost over the past several years. Why shouldn’t we do this? Instutitions have exploited the hell out of us for profit, so why shouldn’t we exploit our own children? I’m sure the Discovery Channel will give us a good dime for our story. How wonderful it is that we have such a blessed opportunity!
Oh, I don’t think me and monstro disagree about it either. I just used her as an example. I can use myself, too. There are lots of things I could do that I sometimes don’t. Sometimes I throw recyclable stuff into my trash can because I’m lazy, I try not to, though. I could give more money to charity, I could volunteer my free time, I could do lots of things I do not do, and the fact that I’m just one person is definitely part of what dissuades. Realistically though, it’s mostly that I’m selfish and lazy.
However, even the small bit I’m doing is more than my parents did. I didn’t have children, but the generations that will follow me will probably be a little better than I am, and I’m fine with that and comfortable with that. I think that real change is happening and will happen.
But saying everyone could change tomorrow is just dumb. They can’t, really. And not all of it is free will. I think humans are far too convinced of how smart they are and how free the choices of their lives have been. Even in America, with its long tradition of individualism, and even a decent tradition of children growing up to reject the ideals of their parents, a lot more is built so deep into you during your upbringing that you’re still much more a product of your environment than anything else.
It’s like saying “all fat people could get thin if they stopped overeating.” That’s technically true (even people with metabolic issues, the reduction might be unreasonable but no metabolic issue can cause a human body to violate fundamental laws of energy), but really, truly they can’t. Correcting an overeating problem is very hard, and I think some people for all intents and purposes can’t do it, even with immense amounts of effort. I think it’s honestly bullshit that someone will act as though it’s as easy as turning a switch from “On” to “Off” to alter your entire way of thinking.
To even begin, I hope there is the realization that some people, because of their upbringing, the culture they were raised in, do not in any way see their actions as bad. If you tried to tell them, they would just view your arguments as flawed or even offensive.
Finally, where I do disagree with the Utopian posters in this thread is that I think that people are working with the assumption that there is “one ideal world.” Everyone has a different conception of ideal, so from that angle I think it also makes it impossible for everyone to change tomorrow. What if someone’s ideal world is one in which no humans exist at all, because really, they are a blight on the Earth? What if someone else disagrees with that? You get into some really unresolvable issues when you start saying things like the whole world could be a better place if everyone just changed their behavior. Are we making the assumption everyone would change their behavior in the same way, to the same ends? That everyone desires the same thing? That there is a “correct” thing for every single person to desire?
I don’t think anyone is saying everyone should change overnight. Believe it or not, us starry eyed idealists don’t think there is one ideal world or that it is immediately achievable. But, I think your attitude makes it really easy to sit back and say, eh, too much problem, not enough solution.
“Why Judge The Past By Standards Of Today?” is the thread title. Is that really the place to defend capitalism? Honestly? Open another thread or just do a search on my name + capitalism, given the infectious amount of leftists that post here and the interactions I’ve had with them I suspect you’ll find the argument already typed by me in a previous thread.
What horror are you referring to?
All these problems are valid, but by and large we’re much better off today than we were 200 years ago. Food diversity is higher, amount of nutrition we get is higher, life expectancy is higher. Many of the negatives we have generated manifest in chronic illnesses or disease that may shorten life expectancy from 75-80 to 50-65, but even that is an immense gain compared to the past. And even then disease of affluence don’t hit everyone young.
French peasants used to take big hunks of bread and eat nothing but it all day as they worked. Irish farmers would sometimes eat nothing but potato bread for weeks on end.
I read an interesting book awhile back about the agricultural revolution, and lots of people have assumed that while the peasants of the past may not have had meat, they at least had a good amount of vegetables and et cetera. The truth is for some period of time a lot of them ate just huge hunks of bread, sometimes some porridge et cetera. They weren’t starving but they were chronically malnourished, and it manifested in shorter lives, poor immune systems, ill health et cetera.
Yeah, the healthiest diet humans ever had was pre-civilization, I don’t know that many people contest that. We ate only natural-fed animals (because farming of course did not exist) and foraged for what grew naturally. However, you can’t get from that to where we are today, because without the rise of agriculture you wouldn’t have modern society. Unfortunately modern society cannot be sustained on the eating patterns of hunter gatherers. Unfortunately for a time that lead to situations in which many people basically had to eat nothing but bread for weeks on end. We’re in a better place now, and in the First World we’re actually at a place where we’ve got such a huge variety of food and some of it so unhealthy that some people will just buy the unhealthy stuff. Without getting too deep into it, you also have the issue of the easiest to prepare food being some of the least healthy, and in some poor urban communities there are not serviceable supermarkets so people live out of convenience stores and other small stores that don’t have a good variety of quality staples. But still, even in the Third World life expectancy is higher right now than it was in Europe in the 18th century, at least in most places. (A few of the heavily AIDS ravaged countries are not able to claim this.)
Are you whooshing me? Or do I have to point out the obvious? You know, the thing you’re tired of talking about…that trivial mar on Jefferson’s otherwise glorious life. Yeah, that thing.
That was the showcase of New World capitalism for centuries, and man did it work wonders for American civilization.
But you presume only capitalism could have gotten us to where we are and that no other vehicle could have brought us so much progress or taken us even further. I just don’t agree with this.
I think we have turned economics into an unfortunate dichotomy–free-market capitalism versus communism. But western Europe has demonstrated that there does exist a stable middle-ground. And if we could get our heads out of the idiot box for just a few seconds, perhaps we could think of another way of running the economy that would not hinge on excess consumption and exploitation. But if you look at our history, you’ll see that whenever someone proposes a change, that person is swiftly and roundly villified as a communist–which is tantamount to being the devil. Even if their proposal is a small one, or overtly righteous, they will get that label. And man does that label carry an awful stigma! Gee, I wonder why the government and the media seems so het up about economic change that they would turn “communist” into such a slur. I wonder if it’s because they have a vested interest in keeping things the way they are. Mo’ money, mo’ MONEY, MO’ MONEY!!!
It may surprise you, but American peasants aren’t faring much better. If you’re too proud for food stamps and/or you can only get a job working minimum wage, chances are you’re going to be eating big hunks of bread, or rice, or noodles. That’s what poor people eat all around the world. So I don’t really get your point.
Speaking of health, do you think capitalists have a vested interest in making us, the consumers, healthier or sicker? Seems to me, at best, they are interested in treating us for disorders that may or may not be real. You can’t turn on the TV nowadays without seeing a drug commercial (see your doctor if you have an erection lasting more than 4 hours…side effects include death). When was the last cure that was mass produced, do you recall? Penicillin? The polio vaccine? I read an interesting book too. Did you know that Jonas Salk, who invented the polio vaccine, did not want to patent it and basically gave away his discovery for the benefit of everyone? Imagine a scientist doing that today. He’d be sued by whatever research institution he was working for in a New York minute.
In an economy run by exploitation, there is no motivation to cure anything. But there is plenty of motivation to hype fears, drum up a million half-assed treatments (with side effects that you can also buy pills for), and even cause disease knowingly, unapologetically. Another way our society sucks: people will spend money to buy a pink, yellow, purple, whatever-color-of-the-week ribbon/bracelet/decal to support the fight against whatever disease is fashionable at the time, but they won’t donate blood because they’re afraid of needles, or give up their organs for donation because it’s “creepy”, or even take preventative measures for the sake of their own health because “cheap meat is gooood”. What kind of kind up fuck-upness is that?
I still don’t know what this has to do with the virtues of capitalism. Especially since much of the Third World is communist or socialistic. All you seem to be saying is that “things are better”. What doesn’t follow is that capitalism is behind this progress, or that another way of life couldn’t do it better.
Somehow I suspect you have not spent too much time in Islamic societies or met too many Muslims or else you wouldn’t so foolishly claim that “most practitioners of Islam… treat their wives and daughters abominably” or practice female genital mutilation, honor killing or any of the other barbarities you allude to.
Also, you would recognize that the vast majority of Muslims DON’T live in “radical Islamic societies”. Most live in secular dictatorships that were propped up by the West and largely have taken their cues from Europe.
As it is, off the top of my head, I think the only government of a Muslim government that can be classified as a “radical Islamic government” would be Iran and possibly Sudan, though, ironically enough, Iran’s government is probably less odious than Saudi Arabia non-radical, though obviously heavily Islamic government.
Furthermore, you’d probably recognize that(if you’re an American) you live in a country where women are far more likely to be murdered by their husbands or boyfriends then women in most Muslim countries, and according to numerous studies, 20-30% or more of all women have been raped and yet you probably would not think much of someone who claimed they thought “most American men are monsters who treat their wives and daughters abominably”.
Yeah, this was the other part of the post I made about Martin’s Muslim myopia. But as he said, he’s not gonna be convinced; he’s pretty happy thinking the things he thinks, so discussing it with him further is probably futile.
I have a tendency to downplay just how substantially our society has changed over the last sixty years. Perhaps it’s because gradualism is easier to conceptualize when it comes to paradigm shifts, rather than punctuated, step-wise changes.
But you know, this thread has got me thinking that the last sixty years–which represents my parents’ life times (and they’re still alive)–did not see gradual change. Society changed quite abruptly.
Yesterday, I was working at my vending table on the street in the artsy/posh part of town. Lots of people were out because of the fabu weather, so I got to see a nice snapshot of humanity. When I replay the day in my head, one thing that strikes me is the diversity of people who streamed by. Not just ethnic/racial diversity–which was pretty high too. But cultural diversity. Punksters, clad in ammo belts and spiked mohawks. Gender-bending people. Suburban housewives and nuclear families. Urban hipsters and rainbow families–like white parents towing around black or biracial kids. There was actually a lot of racial co-mingling. Interracial couples–same sex and heterosexual. White and black skater dudes, white and black little girls in their sun dresses, skipping in unison. Even me, a black woman, inviting white people to take a look at my wares and being respected as an artist. Not as a servant.
None of that would have existed sixty years ago. Not in central VA, capital of the Confederacy. I probably wouldn’t have been allowed to set up my table–not in that neighborhood. I probably wouldn’t even be in this state because I moved here to be a professional scientist. Chances are I would have been discouraged to pursue this career as a young kid; I would have gone along with the lowered expectation levels set for me because I wouldn’t have known any better.
It’s funny. The makers of the Jetson’s predicted that we would be flying cars and living in floating highrises by now–a kind of world that no one would seriously think about ever existing nowadays. But our society is nonetheless very “futuristic”…so beyond comprehension for a person of the 1950s that no one except a few visionaries could really “see” it. The heads of the old folks of the 1950s would spin to see a black man in the White House, and women running things in almost every profession. They would also find our lifestyles garish and excessive (a six-bedroom, three-bathroom McMansion for a family of four? With a ginormous SUV and a pickup truck in the driveway? For reals?) But they would be absolutely amazed by what we have accomplished in terms of individual equality in just a short amount of time.
What changed in society to allow for such radical changes between 1951 and 2011? And what other things can be accomplished between 2011 and 2071? Why shouldn’t I imagine that we will have a society where clean renewable energy has overshadowed fossil fuels, where Walmarts and other global corporate monsters have been executed by the exploited masses and we realize that everyone deserves a quality of life that does not require working 60-72 hours a week, six days a week, for pennies, and where everyone is guaranteed health care and housing…all within my lifetime? How are any of those things any more insurmontable than fighting back centuries’ worth racial fear-mongering and institutionalized discrimination?
Civil Rights were not won by the Baby Boomers, but by their parents. What are the “grown ups” today doing for their children today? Creating wonderful things like credit default swaps, that’s what. If we wait for the next generation to solve our problems, they’ll do the same.
Like I said, if you want a big discussion about capitalism versus other things, I’m happy to talk about it, but not in this thread. Doesn’t it seem almost insanely off topic? The thread is about judging people of the past by the standards of today; since capitalism is ongoing it definitely would fall outside the scope in my mind.
I’ve also explicitly said I do not think Jefferson had a glorious record. I’ve always disliked Jefferson on both a philosophical level and a personal level. While we actively rebelled against the United Kingdom, I think their society had far better lessons for us than the messed up shit Jefferson imported from his love of France and various fucked up ideas about the relationship between government and its citizens.
That’s without even getting into the BS comment Clinton made when he hosted a bunch of nobel laureates, that there was as much intellect in the White House at that moment as when Jefferson dined alone 200 years before. Jefferson grew up in a time in which the wealthy were expected to be educated with a classical education which meant learning Greek and Latin, and the study of languages was also more emphasized. People point to the various languages Jefferson could write in as though that made him a genius. In reality Jefferson was just a well read man who wrote the Declaration but outside of that there was no no evidence of genius in the man. He was mostly considered a failure as Governor of Virginia and as President I think a fair assessment of his record would be luke warm.
Since the only point I was trying to make with my comment on Islam is that I’m more than happy to judge other cultures, I don’t see the reason to debate it. It wasn’t mentioned as a point of debate but simply to frame a larger argument. I don’t see a reason for us to debate a personal judgment I’ve made.
I have started this thread as a place to discuss the merits of a post-capitalist society. I will be happy to debate that issue there, but will not address things about our current economic system in this thread.
You’re right. It is a sidetrack. But not a huge one. I’ve pointed out how capitalism is evil–or how it at least has had ugly results. I think most of us recognize its evilness and yet continue to use it, just as the people of the past carried on with their systems despite knowing the failures of those system. Will it be fair for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren to judge us as monsters? Why not? We’re doing things that we know are wrong and that we have the mental capacity to change, but we refuse to do. I don’t see why we shouldn’t be judged for our selfishness and laziness. There will no doubt be a tipping point when it will be easier for society to shift towards the “ideal”, but there’s nothing stopping us from making that moment happen now. We don’t have to wait for a charismatic leader to do the thinking for us. So what the hell are we waiting for?
I’m on the edge of my set waiting for Martin Hyde to answer my question.
These exactly. Every moment we continue to put off making these changes is a moment we choose for the world to continue with the hells it contains, and another moment we assume responsibility for our choices. We can’t make them over night but if we had a mind to we could do so much good in such a short amount of time.
True, having debates with people who make bigoted comments is pretty dumb.
Having a debate with someone who insists that most Muslims are monsters is really like having a debate with someone who thinks most blacks are monsters who fantasize about raping white women, most gays are monsters who want to molest boys, or that most white men have extremely small penises which makes them monsters who are jealous and resentful towards black men.
I small part of my job is to talk to people about Roger Williams, and the role he played in setting up the notion of separation of church and state. As you might imagine, this has led to some interesting chats over the years. Anyway, Roger was pretty liberal for the 17th Century, but we are constantly asked about his opinion of current hot topics that never would have even been discussed back then.
A great example of how thinking changes over the years is the Verin case. Very short version: an early woman settler of Providence, Jane Verin, wanted to go to religious services. Her husband Joshua didn’t want her to go, so he beat her. Joshua Verin was cast out of the settlement, not for spousal abuse, but for violating Jane’s freedom of conscience, one of the founding tenets of the community. He left for Salem, and he “hale(d) his wife with ropes to Salem”, where I am sure she continued to live in an abusive relationship.
A true WTF moment for our modern minds, and yet the case is also celebrated as being the first time that a woman’s right to worship as she chooses, independent of her husband, was legally defined. Do you celebrate this event? Do you condemn it?
