The state of the world.

Dual wrote:

Moggy wrote:

pjbetman wrote:

Tafdolphin wrote:

Dual wrote:

Denster wrote:I dont worry about any of it tbh

Quelle strawberry floating surprise.

I mean yeah. Obviously.

I can't not care. Disconnecting from reality is not the answer here, at least not for me. Dealing with something =/= ignoring it.

You're not dealing with it though, you're just being told stuff. Stop listening to the stuff. Most of it's war propaganda anyway.

The very last thing we need is for people to stop listening to the stuff. The only way we solve any of the issues that we are confronted with at the moment is by having an informed public.

What if the public are informed but very lazy?

How can they be simultaneously motivated enough to be informed and lazy enough not to do anything?

There will always be those that are too lazy to vote or protest. Burying your head in the sand because everyone else might be lazy is not a good solution to the world's problems.

LightWanderer wrote:

Karl_ wrote:

The floodgates won't hold forever you know. We're doomed. Doomed!

Why do you think we're headed for fascism and that we'll be in a hellscape within ten years? Donald J is getting so much hate from liberal America and the media, so he's not going to bring about change as big as that and no one else in American politics is currently strong enough to do that.

and yet there he sits, in elected office at the head of the largest economical and military machine in the world

makes u fink

Moggy wrote:

Dual wrote:

Moggy wrote:The very last thing we need is for people to stop listening to the stuff. The only way we solve any of the issues that we are confronted with at the moment is by having an informed public.

What if the public are informed but very lazy?

How can they be simultaneously motivated enough to be informed and lazy enough not to do anything?

Living proof right here

Preezy wrote:

Moggy wrote:

Dual wrote:

Moggy wrote:The very last thing we need is for people to stop listening to the stuff. The only way we solve any of the issues that we are confronted with at the moment is by having an informed public.

What if the public are informed but very lazy?

How can they be simultaneously motivated enough to be informed and lazy enough not to do anything?

Living proof right here

He said very lazy, not idiots.

Karl wrote:You want me to stop blaming "everyone"? Well I think that's a misreading of my ideology, I don't actually blame anyone in particular, I blame the system, society as a whole needs to be changed as much as we can to limit how bad things get.

You want me to stop being furious? No, I'm not going to pretend I'm not upset with the way the world's going, why should I?

Ah right, mainly I was just trying to be funny with an exaggerated rant back, realised it wasn't when I read it back, and deleted it. So, errr, sorry.

But, blame what system exactly, and turn it into what?

I also don't think the state of the world is too bad. People in general lead longer, happier, healthier lives than at any point in history. We understand more about the world than ever before and science will march ever onwards.

People do distrust politics now, but I don't remember a time that wasn't the case. Is it really much worse now, or us it that we're paying more attention at the moment because of Brexit? I suppose the collapse of governments and political gridlock is pretty unprecedented and it's no surprise that brings a general anxiety.

Pollution is the big one for me, but even over the last few years I've seen attitudes in general changng on that in ways I never thought would happen; I assumed people would continue to be selfish until the world died. And some will, but it feels to me like there has been a shift so that it had become a majority rather than a minority concern.

Abacus wrote:I was just trying to be funny with an exaggerated rant back, realised it wasn't when I read it back, and deleted it. So, errr, sorry.

My bad, I didn't notice you'd deleted it. I would have deleted my reply if I had. Sorry!

Abacus wrote:But, blame what system exactly

Capitalism

Abacus wrote:and turn it into what?

A society with communal ownership of the means of production, in which the world's excess of basic goods are distributed according to need, rather than consolidated in the hands of a small elite, removing therefore the profit motive and emphasis on economic growth that drives us to pollute and destroy

Abacus wrote:I assumed people would continue to be selfish until the world died. And some will, but it feels to me like there has been a shift so that it had become a majority rather than a minority concern.

I hope so, we are now in the runaway climate change feedback loop so things are definitely going to get worse, how much worse depends on how seriously ordinary people worldwide take the issue right now, over the next few years.

"Even those who thought they were attacking the system - the radicals, the artists, the musicians,
and our whole counterculture - actually became part of the trickery, because they, too, had retreated
into the make-believe world, which is why their opposition has no effect and nothing ever changes."

Hypernormalisation, people - we're living it.

Moggy wrote:

Preezy wrote:

Moggy wrote:

Dual wrote:

Moggy wrote:The very last thing we need is for people to stop listening to the stuff. The only way we solve any of the issues that we are confronted with at the moment is by having an informed public.

What if the public are informed but very lazy?

How can they be simultaneously motivated enough to be informed and lazy enough not to do anything?

Living proof right here

He said very lazy, not idiots.

I think you're giving people too much credit. Just because someone knows something is wrong it doesn't mean that they're going to do anything about it. I think people are mostly apathetic until the issue is kicking down their front door.

Preezy wrote:"Even those who thought they were attacking the system - the radicals, the artists, the musicians,
and our whole counterculture - actually became part of the trickery, because they, too, had retreated
into the make-believe world, which is why their opposition has no effect and nothing ever changes."

Hypernormalisation, people - we're living it.

Hypernormalisation is great, but my view is that Adam Curtis doesn't think the world can be fundamentally changed, so it would be a mistake to take that critique to heart. Even if it's unrealistic to expect any genuine success, I would rather have an idea of what changes are necessary and start arguing for them, than just give up.

Dual wrote:

Moggy wrote:

Preezy wrote:

Moggy wrote:

Dual wrote:

Moggy wrote:The very last thing we need is for people to stop listening to the stuff. The only way we solve any of the issues that we are confronted with at the moment is by having an informed public.

What if the public are informed but very lazy?

How can they be simultaneously motivated enough to be informed and lazy enough not to do anything?

Living proof right here

He said very lazy, not idiots.

I think you're giving people too much credit. Just because someone knows something is wrong it doesn't mean that they're going to do anything about it. I think people are mostly apathetic until the issue is kicking down their front door.

I don’t think I gave people any credit.

If people decide to ignore everything and become completely ignorant of all political/environmental/international matters then you have zero chance of improving anything.

If people decide to keep themselves relatively up to date on those issues then there is a chance they will vote differently and/or protest. That doesn’t mean things will change, but it is far more likely to lead to change than the alternative.

Would the UK have voted for Brexit if the population had actually taken the time to look at how the EU works and what it does for us?

If the general public stops taking any notice of the politicians, then things are only going to get worse.

Moggy wrote:

Dual wrote:

Moggy wrote:

Preezy wrote:

Moggy wrote:

Dual wrote:

Moggy wrote:The very last thing we need is for people to stop listening to the stuff. The only way we solve any of the issues that we are confronted with at the moment is by having an informed public.

What if the public are informed but very lazy?

How can they be simultaneously motivated enough to be informed and lazy enough not to do anything?

Living proof right here

He said very lazy, not idiots.

I think you're giving people too much credit. Just because someone knows something is wrong it doesn't mean that they're going to do anything about it. I think people are mostly apathetic until the issue is kicking down their front door.

I don’t think I gave people any credit.

If people decide to ignore everything and become completely ignorant of all political/environmental/international matters then you have zero chance of improving anything.

If people decide to keep themselves relatively up to date on those issues then there is a chance they will vote differently and/or protest. That doesn’t mean things will change, but it is far more likely to lead to change than the alternative.

Would the UK have voted for Brexit if the population had actually taken the time to look at how the EU works and what it does for us?

If the general public stops taking any notice of the politicians, then things are only going to get worse.

I agree with all of that. But from what you have described above, what do you think is the more likely scenario?

Karl_ wrote:

Preezy wrote:"Even those who thought they were attacking the system - the radicals, the artists, the musicians,
and our whole counterculture - actually became part of the trickery, because they, too, had retreated
into the make-believe world, which is why their opposition has no effect and nothing ever changes."

Hypernormalisation, people - we're living it.

Hypernormalisation is great, but my view is that Adam Curtis doesn't think the world can be fundamentally changed, so it would be a mistake to take that critique to heart. Even if it's unrealistic to expect any genuine success, I would rather have an idea of what changes are necessary and start arguing for them, than just give up.

To expand on this, Adam Curtis isn't trying to be a philosopher so it's hard to extend his views into a political theory from which praxis would arise. It would take a better Hegelian than me to complete this analysis, but I remark that his dichotomy of the real vs. the imaginary world is clearly dialectical. The imaginary world is created by and exists to service the real world, and he argues the real world's form is actualised by the existence of the imaginary narrative. This makes the world as-real the Hegelian thesis and the world as-narrative its antithesis. "Curtisian" praxis in the framework of dialectical materialism would therefore involve identifying the material mechanisms and effects of this tension (e.g. alienation as described by Curtis) and bringing about a revolutionary resolution of those tensions, collapsing the dialectic into its synthesis, which would I suppose have to at least (amongst other considerations) have the property of ending our state of hypernormalisation.

Dual wrote:

Moggy wrote:

Dual wrote:

Moggy wrote:

Preezy wrote:

Moggy wrote:

Dual wrote:

Moggy wrote:The very last thing we need is for people to stop listening to the stuff. The only way we solve any of the issues that we are confronted with at the moment is by having an informed public.

What if the public are informed but very lazy?

How can they be simultaneously motivated enough to be informed and lazy enough not to do anything?

Living proof right here

He said very lazy, not idiots.

I think you're giving people too much credit. Just because someone knows something is wrong it doesn't mean that they're going to do anything about it. I think people are mostly apathetic until the issue is kicking down their front door.

I don’t think I gave people any credit.

If people decide to ignore everything and become completely ignorant of all political/environmental/international matters then you have zero chance of improving anything.

If people decide to keep themselves relatively up to date on those issues then there is a chance they will vote differently and/or protest. That doesn’t mean things will change, but it is far more likely to lead to change than the alternative.

Would the UK have voted for Brexit if the population had actually taken the time to look at how the EU works and what it does for us?

If the general public stops taking any notice of the politicians, then things are only going to get worse.

I agree with all of that. But from what you have described above, what do you think is the more likely scenario?

The first line of my post gives it away.

People should take more interest. But I know that (overall) they won’t.

Karl_ wrote:To expand on this, Adam Curtis isn't trying to be a philosopher so it's hard to extend his views into a political theory from which praxis would arise. It would take a better Hegelian than me to complete this analysis, but I remark that his dichotomy of the real vs. the imaginary world is clearly dialectical. The imaginary world is created by and exists to service the real world, and he argues the real world's form is actualised by the existence of the imaginary narrative. This makes the world as-real the Hegelian thesis and the world as-narrative its antithesis. "Curtisian" praxis in the framework of dialectical materialism would therefore involve identifying the material mechanisms and effects of this tension (e.g. alienation as described by Curtis) and bringing about a revolutionary resolution of those tensions, collapsing the dialectic into its synthesis, which would I suppose have to at least (amongst other considerations) have the property of ending our state of hypernormalisation.

Preezy wrote:

Karl_ wrote:To expand on this, Adam Curtis isn't trying to be a philosopher so it's hard to extend his views into a political theory from which praxis would arise. It would take a better Hegelian than me to complete this analysis, but I remark that his dichotomy of the real vs. the imaginary world is clearly dialectical. The imaginary world is created by and exists to service the real world, and he argues the real world's form is actualised by the existence of the imaginary narrative. This makes the world as-real the Hegelian thesis and the world as-narrative its antithesis. "Curtisian" praxis in the framework of dialectical materialism would therefore involve identifying the material mechanisms and effects of this tension (e.g. alienation as described by Curtis) and bringing about a revolutionary resolution of those tensions, collapsing the dialectic into its synthesis, which would I suppose have to at least (amongst other considerations) have the property of ending our state of hypernormalisation.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that if you want to enact change in Curtis' model of the world, starting a blog or YouTube channel that actually reports the full complexities of the world and genuinely educates people would be a good way to deconstruct hypernormalisation. That's the equivalent of educating the proletariat but for Curtis instead of Marx.

Or we could imprison tabloid media moguls and nationalise their outlets, either forcing them to publish the truth for the good of the people or outright destroying them. That's the equivalent of seizing the means of production from the bourgeoisie.

You can connect the two philosophies because they both identify a kind of master/slave power struggle in society. Hegel studied how those systems develop, evolve, and can collapse or be collapsed.

Adam Curtis is basically recycling Guy Debord, Theodore Adorno and others over library/stock footage to a Brian Eno soundtrack.

Trelliz wrote:Adam Curtis is basically recycling Guy Debord, Theodore Adorno and others over library/stock footage to a Brian Eno soundtrack.

Mm, agreed. The main and perhaps only difference is that Adorno wasn't a nihilist so Curtis' interpretation and conclusions would have really annoyed him.

Between my dad killing himself last month, my depression + anxiety getting worse, my feeling of having accomplished nothing in my adult life, having become more aware of the marginilisation disadvantaged groups face, seeing so much injustice in the world, the shocking lack of empathy people can have (both online and even in local meet up groups), the rise of awful figures of power and the lack of consequences they face, my difficulty in going offline and ignoring every bit of bad news or injustice...

...yeah my outlook has never been so bleak

Jazzem, that's awful to hear; I'm sorry about your Dad. I obviously know nothing about the relationship you had with him, but I'm sure that whether you were or weren't close, that must be a incredibly difficult thing to go through and I can't possibly imagine how it must feel.

I hope you're OK and that you've got somebody to talk to if you want to do so. Remember GR is here if you ever want to vent.

Yeah, I'm really sorry Jazzem that sounds like an atrocious thing to have gone through. If you ever need to unload the mental health thread is really helpful for such things.