WriterGuy2021

The U.S. isn't an entity capable of consideration. There's some wizard of oz style trickery going on here. If you pull back the curtain, you'll find a gaggle of corrupt bureaucrats pulling levers that control the illusion of the state.

Who wants money with surveillance and control built into it? Imagine a future where you post some wrongthink on social media and your dollar crypto wallet is automatically disabled by a precrime AI.

No thanks.

More unqualified leisure time isn't what most people want. Most people want meaningful connections to others. Watching T.V. for eight hours isn't going to make people feel good. Feeling connected and maintaining a sense of belonging is what is lacking in the modern world.

There are many more things competing for people's time and attention. Also, nationalism is waning in many places due to globalism. The Olympics is inherently a nationalistic event. If you don't buy into these artificial divisions of mankind, the whole flag-draped charade is nauseating. Not to mention the outright absurdity of the idea that national representatives competing against eachother in sports has any significance whatsoever.

For me, the precariousness of our time has made me sober up. I'm sick of spectacles. I want real answers and substantive initiatives that work towards solving the problems of our age. Not sports, not bread and circuses, for goodness sakes!

Uh, what? How did making blacks sit at the back of the bus improve economic efficiency? It may be argued that many legal systems, far from being a boon to economic productivity, actually hindered growth in many nations due to their use in oppressing underclasses for the benefit of a ruling "elite," i.e., rapacious predator class.

Reality isn't so nice and theoretically pure. People want power and they develop various systems to gain and secure their power.

"An astrobiologist says non-fungible tokens do not bode well for our species’s future. " This is a historical subhead.

I don't know what's going on and I'm scared.

Freedom is slavery...

We're not all in the same boat. If you want to change the system, you're going to have to fight the people invested in the status quo. Most people aren't interested in the "greater good," even though they may maintain this position publicly because it is considered antisocial to openly say "f** the plebs," but actions speak louder than words--by their fruits you shall know them. When we see things like rampant homeless and crushing debt, we know such things are being said in private.

It's time to put aside our idealism and don a cynical outlook. Our rose colored glasses are holding us back. We just need to make sure we don't become evil in the process.

This is the kind of things that show how inviable is a market-led economy without proper regulation.

The medical industry is highly regulated. I can't just go open up a practice giving people stiches. I would need a whole slew of certifications in order to do so. That's why this situation in the US is so absurd. The market is regulated to limit the competition at the expense of the consumer.

In the U.S. the "free market" is mostly a myth.

Stop using YouTube. Support smaller services while you still can. We don't need to keep feeding these monolithic beasts.

It's a signal that people don't like what they are hearing. If the propaganda aligns with their interests, the majority will like it. It's not a good signal for gauging propaganda in my opinion.

Maybe I'm on the autistic spectrum or something. That's why I gravitated to programming.

What a nightmare. How could we let it get to this point? People that have no direct interest in our well being are informing our worldview.

I have a book recommendation for you: book of Ephesians in the bible.

"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." - Ephesians 6:12

Today we're calling it "mentally unstable" or "psychotic" or "sociopatic," but yesterday we simply called it "evil."

It's the eternal struggle.

I feel a very strong low tide in the general publics withdrawal of their support of many institutions. Where is all that energy previously occupied going to go?

Brave New World has become more than a novel now...it's a symbol in the cultural lexicon. Another example is the use of "orwellian" as an adjective by people that have never read 1984. I agree that his other works demonstrate his skills as an artist much better.

Despite all the insightful intellectual back and forth on this thread, this is my favorite comment.

That's a very good point... and are we really awake when we watch T.V.? Or are we in some type of suggestive state?

I wrote the above and then did some googling. Found this article: https://www.fastcompany.com/3060491/what-happened-to-my-brai.... I don't know how reputable it is, but here's a quote relevant to this discussion:

"There have been EEG studies that demonstrate that television watching converts the brain from beta wave activity to alpha waves, which are associated with a daydreaming state, and a reduced use of critical thinking skills."

If he had predicted that the primary means of conditioning the public would be T.V. instead of hypnopedia, there would be no doubt that we're living in something like BNW -- or at least one of its spiritual progeny.

dulltopain

Huxley ultimately believes, as all artists believe, that a creative life is the only life worth living. Suffering and conflict is the fuel of all higher pursuits. In Brave New World, people are drained of this fuel. Life is easy. People just go along with the flow. But this means they create nothing. This is a horrifying prospect to Huxley.

"One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star."

-- Nietzsche

In Huxley's dystopia, all friction is eliminated. Friction is what makes people wake up. These "unbearable limits," i.e., friction, would not exist in Brave New World.

Ultimately, I don't think it's a choice. If you fit well into your social role, then you aren't going to seek "the truth." Bernard is more aware of his surroundings because he is not suited to his role. Helmholtz is more aware because he exceeds his role. The way they are and what is expected of them preordained their awakening and its character.

As for myself, I've always felt like an alien on earth. As a kid, I truly did not understand why people did what they did. I saw people forming all these social connections, but I couldn't understand why they did it: what were they looking for in others? I've always lived in a world of my own. Patterns, structures, associations, have always interested me more than material things and socialization. If I did not have my inner creative world, then maybe I would have been like the others around me...but I was otherwise occupied and so I became an outsider -- an outworlder.

When you're naturally predisposed to be an outsider, the self-preservation matrix of the collective does not capture one's libido. One is freer psychically, but free like a starving man on the hunt for food as opposed to a sated man lounging on a couch. To not be hooked into some preservative frame induces great motion within...but is energetic motion superior to sated stillness? A question I've been trying to answer myself...

What motivation do people have to see the world as it is? Billions of people believe they will never die because Heaven is on the other side of this world. As Nietzsche wrote: "Too long, the earth has been a madhouse!" It's nothing new that humanity has a will-to-blindness. In fact, it is an evolutionary advantage. Perhaps the truth itself is hostile to life...

"The Genealogy of Morals" by Nietzsche with the reminder that I am using "violence" in the way he uses "power." Power is just the civilized word for violence.

And this is what I consider to be a cipher from his "Thus Spoke Zarathustra:"

“But it is the same with man as with the tree. The more he seeks to rise into the height and light, the more vigorously do his roots struggle earthword, downword, into the dark, the deep - into evil.”

Also "The Golden Bough" by Frazer if you can read between the lines.

So... just to remind ourselves how we got here. The parent comment was a poster talking about how his wife paid no mind to the potential threats posed by the big tech surveillance state. I then made a few comments explaining my thoughts on why she is like this. "She doesn't care because she's domesticated: she isn't used to thinking about violence and danger." That was my point. Then I went on further to talk about how people are more-or-less defined by this "domesticated" property and how there are others that seem to be "undomesticated" in the sense that they are more familiar with violence. And that this property dictates what thoughts are available to one's awareness. The domesticated being more limited in what they can think because they lack an understanding of violence.

I don't think anything I've said is particularly strange. If you parse "domesticated" into slave and "undomesticated" into master...then you'd end up with a very traditional worldview in which masters operate on a different level than slaves -- the latter subordinate to the former. The latent thesis in all this is that an intimate understanding of violence is what separates master from slave.

Now just imagine saying all these things as a mad man stands before you with a knife. Suddenly the world becomes more real than it ever has been and all these abstract things you say to your friends in cyberspace become utter nonsense as they offer you no assistance in navigating the mortal danger you find yourself in.

The mad mad has you by the throat, you feel his cold steel press up against your virgin neck. Your last words: "I don't believe in neat model of the universe where you can assign vague tag, label, whatever you want to call it and apply it to every facet of reality."

My ultimate point in this exchange with you is that violence has a real sobering effect on the mind. It's a great filter of sense and nonsense.

This is just so ridiculous because "rational argument" is notoriously difficult to define. Descartes believed logic itself was a form of rhetoric. I forget where he wrote this comment, but its context included a very interesting discussion about the relation of logic to philosophy.

We are all acquainted with logic here. We know that all logical deductions arise from a foundation of axioms. In the domain of human affairs, axioms are akin to belief. Therefore, each set of beliefs lends themselves to a different set of deductions. Who is to say which set of beliefs are the right ones?

If I believe in the Christian God, and I say that abortion should be illegal because it is the taking of a sacred life. Am I being irrational?

This "paradox" that is constantly brought up is just absurd. I must believe that Popper said this in passing and didn't take it too seriously, but perhaps someone can correct me.

Ever since I read Boorstin's book "The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America," everything looks like a pseudo-event to me. Clearly Facebook is being thrown under the bus. Any one of us could say the things she is saying, but congress and the press wouldn't have made any fuss.

I agree with what she's saying, but I'm tired of being manipulated by the media circus.

I tend to dress a bit sloppily and take public transit, so I end up talking to a fair number of homeless folks.

There's dressing sloppy and then there's dressing like a homeless person sloppy. Sorry for making light of your depressing observation, but that setup sentence made me laugh.

Non-linear career to me means working as a web developer and then working as a mobile developer. Working as a web developer and then working as a plumber is not a non-linear career to me, but two different careers. You are using "career" in the sense of work life and I'm using it in the sense of occupation/profession.

Most people do not benefit from a change in profession -- especially if you are a highly trained specialist.

Getting knocked out of your life-long profession is not something most people want to experience. My original post was about this and what happens to people when they find themselves in this situation.

It's harder on some than it is on other. You seem to be a highly resilient and optimistic fellow so I'm sure this issue is not as much a concern to you as it is to some other kinds of people.

He had a PhD in econometrics. He was a supreme nerd. He did not strike me as the management type. Some people just aren't able to climb that ladder and they fall off.