archhn

Why aren't bonuses for bankers more popular with the hoi palloi?

Nothing. I love my fate--let it eternally recur!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UA-jOLF2T4c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg7pZi6peD4

I've been watching some geopolitical strategists on YouTube. They seem to be expecting a collapse of the global world order. This means they need to flood North America with fresh labor to compensate for the loss of global labor or inefficiency of doing business in a war-torn international climate. Also, the demographics are bad in the first world. Low birth rates and an aging population.

I would not be surprised if the present culture was engineered to quell any dissent over the new immigration policies.

I would call it a labor caste system.

You're the one speaking like we're living in another time. A time where people were freer and there was more economic opportunity. 40% of Americans don't even have $1000 in savings. It's a wildly dysfunctional and oppressive system and you're engaging in gaslighting because you benefit from it.

An investment?

Don't go to college and you'll be drowned in the flood of third world labor that has been allowed to invade the country. This is not the 1950's. You aren't going to graduate high school and support a family as a travelling shoe salesman. You're going to end up working next to Jorge in some dead end minimum wage job and spending most of your money on rent.

Saying that it's a choice is a form of gaslighting. For most people, not going means a life of brutal wage slavery and exploitation. I guess you would say it's a choice to live as well?

Billions of dollars in military aid given to a foreign country where Biden had shady interests.

Response: I stand with Ukraine <3.

Billions spent in failed foreign wars, which created seas of generational enemies.

Response: I support our troops <3.

A little bone thrown to debt slaves.

Response: This is outrageous! We will never recover from this recklessness spending!

This is a joke country.

This attitude is the product of an insanely competitive and violent environment. People have learned that this is how you have to be to make it to the top. Also, what's the fun of being rich if nobody else is poor? The lower the low, the higher the high. People enjoy feeling the power of crushing others. Putting your boot on the throat of the weak makes you feel intoxicatingly strong. I'm convinced this is why the rich turn to philanthropy. Instead of helping make a system where the poor and needy don't exist, they rather make charities that transmute their greed into benevolence. There's some truly sick psychological stuff going on in this country.

The game was rigged to begin with. Individuals can't make sound choices within this insanely dysfunctional system. You can work hard, be the greatest model citizen, and still end up in a horrible place due to circumstances beyond your control.

We've seen whole cities become apocalyptic wastelands due to unfathomable economic crises.

I firmly believe no one can make sense of this unprincipled chaos. We call ourselves a capitalist country, but goods produced by a communist country dominate our market. Wtf? Just one of the many naked paradoxes that people seem to ignore and continue on like everything is normal. We're beyond the point of making sense of this mess. None of it makes sense, none of it fair. It's organized anarchy.

I don't know what's going to happen in the future. No one does. I don't have all the facts. And even if I did, I would need a galaxy brain to integrate them all into an outlook. Not everything is publicized. There are many groups of people who work to further their own agendas. We aren't one globe, one humanity. It's a nice idea, but it doesn't reflect reality.

I base my pessimism on the childishness I see flourishing in adults who have lost contact with reality because they've never endured serious hardship. These people can be easily manipulated because they have little fear. They have never made life or death decisions. So they don't understand the significance of forming an accurate model of the world. The result is a nation full of dreamers. Such people are ill adapted to the real world and will naturally be ineffective in all that they do.

There are very strong incentives for forming an optimistic outlook. None of these are conditioned on data or serious consideration. I think people look for reasons to justify how they want to feel. In other words, optimism precedes the reasons one has for being optimistic.

Voltaire lampooned optimism very well in Candide. His ultimate conclusion was: don't waste your time on idealistic notions of a world in which terrible things are always happening; instead, tend to your garden--do your best to improve what you can and no more. This is a wise suggestion. Optimism and pessimism are both traps. They are pathological extensions of present conditions.

I wish I could heed this wisdom...

You choose homeostasis. Feeeling good about the future makes you feel good. This leads to immediate improvements in one's quality of life. People are attracted to those who have a "positive outlook." No one likes hanging around a doomsayer.

This author clearly lives in a place where he can afford such optimism. It's not so easy in the slums of Tanzania.

It's called "class warfare." America isn't one nation: it's a hierarchy of classes. The managerial/administrative class is superior to the proletarian educator class in the hierarchy. They don't want to listen to what teachers have to say just like a baron didn't want to listen to what his peasants think. They are seen as a highly redundant exploitable resource, thus they are disposable.

The author feels all these things, but she can't properly interpret them because she's still under the spell that there's good faith at the top, that we are one nation trying to work together the best we can. She would have to believe this to maintain her self-worth as a pillar of the system. If she didn't, she would lose faith in the significance of her job. She would see herself as a conditioner of slaves, not as one who enlightens the lives of others with knowledge. Once she loses this faith, she'll either become a dead, dispirited teacher, or she'll quit. Right now, she's in the twilight zone between idealism and jaded realism.

The inequality and unfairness is not a bug: it's a feature of the class system. In order for the high to live like demigods, we must be trodden under foot to level the field for their opulent lives. They can't live as they live if we aren't forced to live as we live. It we weren't constantly in fear of losing our jobs and ending up on the street, to openly die as passersby mock us, reaffirming the value of compliance in their minds, we wouldn't endure the hardships we suffer. We wouldn't work for minimum wage. We wouldn't consent to clearly unfair exploitation. But since utter ruin and death is the consequence of refusal, we keep running along and comfort ourselves with a whole host of delusions and distractions that make us feel better about our servitude.

There will be no empathy from those who build their dreams upon our nightmares.

There are drug addiction pipelines.

Get in a car accident -> hurt back -> prescribed opiates -> get addicted -> prescription stops -> seek street alternatives -> move up the food chain, from buying pills to fentanyl -> lose everything -> end up on the street

Loved one dies -> super depressed -> looking to numb the pain -> starts drinking heavily at bars -> exposed to the drug scene -> offered a bump of cocaine one day -> feels good -> start to do cocaine -> coke dealer has fentanyl to -> you try it -> on the street

Get out of the military -> racked with PTSD -> suicidal -> being around consumerist Americans who know nothing of danger or the dark side of life is alienating -> feeling all alone -> same as loved one dies pipeline -> on the street in a tent draped with the American flag.

There are also ones like:

Irresponsible teenager -> raised in single mother household -> no good role models -> raised by T.V. -> doesn't known how to navigate the world -> ends up in a minimum wage job -> everyone there is doing drugs because their life is so bleak (I've seen this personally)-> nothing to look forward to -> most of pay goes to rent -> feel trapped and abused -> confused, doesn't know how this happened -> does drugs like his coworkers because he feels disposable -> starts fucking up on the job -> no more willingness to keep working -> on the street, begging for his fix.

*Idealistic middle class college grad -> going to save the world -> faces the world -> crippling despair -> can't fix this mess -> hopeless -> give up and drop out -> ×_× drug scene to street.

There are many more pipelines.

It's not simply a "drug problem." There are a lot of pipelines that inevitably lead people there. Once people end up there, they are typically very hard to fix because they have been knocked out of the standard career pipeline. Who wants to hire an ex homeless person with a huge job gap? They feel hopeless, like there's not a place for them anymore in society. Once you've accepted this, you stare long into the abyss. With that comes a great deal of trauma. Making these people very unstable, unlike ordinary citizens who have never danced along the knife's edge. This gives them a bad reputation because you can give them a job and home, but they will often keep going back to their old ways. They are broken inside and a job and house won't fix what has happened to them.

Source: I binge watch documentaries on this issue and read about it.

I think the poster is interested in this case as an example of how delegating a task to technology leads to skill atrophy. We do it more and more every year. Technology may be making us stupid. It all leads to WALL-Eesque retardation and decadence.

Even if that's the case, corrupt politicians and institutions will use the disgruntled proletariat to gain power.

Also, many corporations are pushing for central government too. Walmart now is a private company. In the future it may be "The Glorious Walmart of the New People's American Union." In other words, large corporations have the potential of becoming a part of the government and retaining their status...plus the untouchability of being an arm of the government. I would say we've been set up for this.

So what may happen is this. Large institutions may use the proletariat to overthrow the middle class and institute oligarchic collectivism, like 1984. It happened in China, and clearly the elites have no qualms about their system--given our utter economic interconnectedness with them.

It's the best of times and the worst of times. Some are taking joyrides to space. Others are struggling to keep a roof over their heads. The inequality is real and tremendous. You may blame people for their lack of work ethic, etc, but there are many reasons for nihilism among the lower classes. Especially the industrial proletariat who has seen industry shipped overseas and suffered a dramatic decline in their quality of life. Many places that were once bustling with hard working Americans now look like warzones, or even worse: post-apocalyptic wastelands, replete with drugged out zombies. Generations of hard working Americans had the rug pulled out from underneath them. The myth of hard work = success and good life have been empirically proven to be false by their own experience. The same may be said of the American farmer who has been slowly strangled to death by big agriculture. Some of the hardest working people in this country have ended up with less than nothing--drowning in debt because larger economic forces sought to crush them.

I understand that from your position, things are great. But not everyone is living under the same material conditions as you. Desperate people, who feel crushed by the system, call for extreme measures--like complete government control a la communism.

Ultimately, you have a vested interest in maintaining your worldview because it secures your serenity. Unfortunately, this unwillingness to address the grievances of others and to ignore the material reality that proves that this is not the best of times for many people, will set you up to be blindsided by the furious subterranean forces building up under the guilded surface of this country.

You feel well connected through your family. That's all people really need. As you say, your children are your world.

Some people don't have this family structure. Many come from broken homes with no good role models to look up to. They mimic their parent's maladaptive behaviors and end up in bad relationships. The degenerative cycle repeats. Many of these broken homes were the result of economic devastation or cultural disruption. Instead of going to church, for example, many families stayed home and watched T.V., completely degrading their social skills.

Also, some people think about the bigger picture. It's great that your mind can rest within the bounds of your backyard. Less parochial types can be more apocalyptic because they are thinking where we are headed. If we look back, we see the most apocalyptic events ever endured by mankind--the great world wars. If we look forward, we may see the potential of even worse things happening.

What makes matters more difficult is that comments like yours can be interpreted as saying that you are well made, have good values, have a square head on your shoulders, and others have something wrong with them. They aren't "traditional," like you--that's their problem. If only they embraced traditional values, they would be set right--put on the straight and narrow, like you. This is really an oversimplification of what's happening to some people. Material and social conditions affect how people develop.

It's easy to look at a person from a ghetto and say, "If only they had good values, all this would clear itself up. It only they believed in working hard, they would pull themselves up by their bootstraps and seize the day." I wonder why we can't whisper these magic words to people and solve their problems.

Edit: Hyper-online types are clearly looking for a connection they don't have in real life. The internet is almost like a honey pot for these types. Their rejection of traditional values may simply reflect their lack of faith in it because they saw their parent's bad marriage, or it may reflect a rebellion against the old order which seems to have failed them. Liberalism in particular is a home for lost souls looking for forms to express their discontent. It too is a honey pot for these types.

Most of us feel it. It's real. Don't let anyone gaslight you. You aren't sick: our culture is sick. (For those alone and struggling).

Social alienation is the source of much mental illnesses. Poverty itself isn't the source of most people's misery. Our society is our preservation matrix. If we cannot reproduce or at least contribute to something beyond ourselves that bears the promise of persisting, we are left alone with death.

This lonely dance with death, which I have danced for years as a poor housebound reclusive, can cause a disintegration of mind. I suspect the brain tries to rewire itself so it can find a new interpretation of life...one in which it finds a way of surviving in isolation. Many delusions can arise as a result. Also, mystical and religious experiences are common under such conditions. I've experienced them. Many strange things happen to the mind when we feel like we are connected to nothing that will preserve us. It's an unnatural, or abnormal state, which humans cannot ordinarily adapt to. We are microrganisms part of the macroorganism of society. Being alone is utterly abnormal and the brain isn't equipped to deal with it.

American culture makes the poor feel like trash. That's why so many of us become crazy lunatics, drug addicts, or vengeful people. It's the social alienation and isolation that condemns most of us.

However, this condition is not limited to the poor. Even rich people feel alienated. In fact, wealth often turns every relation into a suspicious one--is she just using me for my money? Everyone craves the sense of belonging that comes from genuine love, but it's hard to find. So we see many wealthy people, famous people, the most connected, also feeling disconnected.

Rich or poor, what matters most is feeling connected. We have a connectivity problem. One that leaves many individuals left alone to dance with death. This is what is causing the modern malaise above all things...however, the material conditions discussed by the author ultimately contribute to this disconnection.

Love is the answer, but this solution is so profound that we can hardly comprehend it. In the absence of understanding, we spend billions on psychoactive drugs and label people as "mentally ill" instead.

It is for me in Connecticut.

There are whole regions of America that are almost post apocalyptic. People dying of drugs everywhere, rampant hopelessness, mass murder and gang violence, millions of people in prison, etc. Then there are other parts of America that look like paradise. America is a big place. It's like 50 countries lumped into one. In some places it's the best of times, in others it's the worst of times. We tend not to hear too much about the bad places. They are like a shit stain on America's underwear. We keep it hidden as best we can because no one respects a poopy pants.

I remember watching a documentary about a ghetto in some U.S. city. There was a lady who had just moved into a new appartment. She was thrilled that her new appartment was double the size of her old one, but there was some downsides... in particular, stray bullets from gang shootouts kept coming through her window. She showed the interviewer the bullet holes on the wall. Then she was like, "Yeah, but other than that it's a nice place."

It was a shocking reminder that people tend to just adapt to their environment and try to make the best of things. A lot of people have adapted to poor conditions in America, but they try to make the best of it and most people remain silent as they quietly try to eke their way through this world.

Nothing is more important for survival and thriving than belonging to a tribe. An isolated man is a dead man.

Also, we don't need neuroscience to condescend to us like this. Isn't it obvious? Surely, most people have engaged in team sports and have felt the exhilaration of working together to overcome an enemy tribe.

This also relates to the pleasure of harming others, even those not identified as members of an 'outgroup.' It is frowned upon by society, but most people like to hurt people. Why? Because the power to harm others is the power to defend yourself against them or knock them down in the struggle for hierarchical dominance. Those who are powerless often pose as saints, but if you give them power over others, they will become monsters--like the lowly wage worker who becomes a tyrant as soon as he's placed in management. We all have a devil inside us...and it's not from us being fallen creatures, but because life must take life in order to live. Life is an endless cycle of self-consumption, life consuming life...an ouroboros eating its tail--forever.

Neitzche said the worst complement someone can receive is that they never hurt anyone. If you aren't somehow dangerous, who will care about you? What is your value in the struggle for life?

This thread offers us an opportunity to understand why it does. Look at how many comments ordain the practice out of a callous disregard for those who incur the unfortunate label of "criminal." A criminal can be anything from a man who kills a child to a homeless man who was caught sleeping in the wrong place too many times, but this nuance doesn't seem to factor into the thinking of supporters of modern day slavery.

I've also noticed that people carry with them a suppressed anger that comes from being forced to follow the law and perform all the duties of a functional citizen. Anyone who breaks the law is not enduring the burdens of citizenship as they are, and so the "criminal" becomes a virtuous outlet for their suppressed rage. The criminal thus becomes a kind of scapegoat.

That high cost is bureaucratic bloat which ultimately gets funneled into the pockets of the wealthy and powerful who make decisions against the wellbeing of the poor, contributing to the perrenial cycle of incarceration.

Some people definitely deserve to be forced to pay for what they've done. But if a man is born into a decaying and violent environment, and he commits crimes, keeping with the norm of his peers, why should all the guilt be put upon him? I say state corruption, or mismanagement, is guilty for much crime.

It's a complicated system. The label "criminal" tends to be a thought-terminating classification that prevents further analysis and assessment of what causes criminality.

Let me guess, middle class upbringing with little to no contact with the living conditions of the poors?

Slavery is legal as a punishment in the home of the free.

If you don't already understand and can't see plainly what is happening all around you, nothing I can say will enlighten you...but I'll say a few words anyway.

Life is a dream lived over an abyss. We invent all sorts of distractions and systems of order to seal the gates of hell, to keep the dream alive, but the truth cannot be ennchained forever. Like children, we go about our days unaware of the unfathomable darkness lying in the heart of the human soul. We look at men who do great evil, killers, tyrants, etc., and think evil begins and ends with their kind, but this is a comforting lie. It's in us all: the face of the most abominable monster is our face, yet we deftly conceal it with our many illusions that keep the darkness from rising within us.

We will all die and be forgotten. Humanity will be superceded and humiliated by its own progeny. Life, as we wish it to be, as a think that can be conserved, is futile. What happens when then the illusions fall, making life aware of it's own futility? Life can only be kept innocent as long as it believes in itself--that it has a future, that it can be preserved. Once life becomes aware of its own futility, it becomes self-destructive and hostile to life...demonic--if you will.

Our civilization has turned its back on this spiritual struggle against death(satan). Like children who ignore the wisdom of their fathers, we have chosen to pretend that it's not real. That material abundance will solve all of our problems. But no material abundance will compensate for the poverty of the soul of man.

As long as we ignore the eternal struggle, all that we build will fail and we will be utterly unable to know what causes our downfall because it fundamentally takes place in regions we refuse to acknowledge. Like an attack from some higher dimenson beyond our understanding, it will appear as if we were undone by some unaccountable magical force.

The west is in the midst of a spiritual crisis. No economic policy will fix the prevailing nihilism.

Incidentally, I remember young Kirkegaard writing that he didn't want to pursue science because each scientist is like a corpse that just fecundates the soil of science for the next generation--paraphrasing. That's why he went into the study of eternal things.

Why do so many scientists tend to be utterly dogmatic when new research challenges their fundamental assumptions?

Their close mindedness terrifies me because they are increasingly relied on in decision making -- like vaccines, for example. I thought science is centered around an admission of infinite ignorance? At any moment we can be made aware of new information that completely changes our understanding of the world because the truth is not hardwired into us. They are more and more looking like a clergy caste for the post-God state.

For free speech to serve its function, certain conditions must be met. One such condition is that the population must be educated. If this condition is not satisfied, demagogues can easily abuse free speech by playing on people's weaknesses and lack of understanding. Another condition is that the people must be moral. If they are purely self-serving and not interested in pursuing truth and moral judgments, then free speech will just be used for vicious partisan wars.

We may still "have free speech," but the conditions that make it functional aren't being met.

It's like a marriage where one spouse is secretly unfaithful. Sure, they are "married," but the foundational condition of fidelity has been violated. It's a marriage in name only, an empty formalism.

We have free speech in name only. The conditions which allow free speech to be an effective regulatory mechanism of public tensions are unsatisfied--just like a wife or husband that cheats.