Check out The Dawn of Everything, puts to rest a lot of the myths about prehistoric societies that we tell ourselves. Early societies were consciously experimenting with different social arrangements and they were far more peaceful and egalitarian than we usually give them credit for. Their ideas on property were vastly different than ours as well. There wasn’t really an “our hunting grounds” to speak of. If you’re interested I’ll leave this video by Andrewism about human history. It’s well sourced and pretty informative
I think it sort of depends on what time period we’re talking about. Jericho and other walled cities came about after a certain point. By then, there certainly were societies that lived off raiding the less nomadic agrarian societies, not very peaceful or egalitarian.
There was plenty for everyone since there were a lot fewer people, plus there were no real territories that people claimed over longer periods at all since we were nomads.
The only real solution is intentional population control. But I don’t have high hopes we ever get there though.
Everyone could have way more resources than we’d ever want to even use. But instead, we seem focused on maxing out the world population leaving the least amount possible for each person.
Oh, there probably is. All things being equal (and that’s the important factor) there is next-to-no chance of us ever reaching such a bizarre amount of people - you could triple the amount of people on earth, and, all things being equal, we still wouldn’t be “overpopulated.”
However, things are not equal - which means we are already existing way beyond that which our ecology can support. And it’s all thanks to capitalist parasites - a very small group of people sucking everything dry at the expense of everyone and everything else.
Whether Malthus himself was a right-winger or not isn’t really important… it doesn’t change how the trope of overpopulation has been used to protect power and privilege (ie, the whole point of right-wing ideology). For instance, there is a very good reason why white supremacists support the criminalization of women’s health care in (supposedly) “white” countries while demonizing 3rd world countries for their (supposedly) “explosive population growth.”
It’s a very old trope that flattens human consumption and therefore camouflages the reality that certain classes of people consume resources at astronomical rates in comparison with the rest. It’s utility in shielding class hierarchies from scrutiny should be perfectly obvious.
The first written evidence of slavery in the ancient world comes from ancient Mesopotamia. However, slavery was in practice much longer than that. Slavery most likely began when the first cities needed labor to keep food production up to feed growing populations.
I’m just answering the question. They ask what system rewards kindness, I say the lack of one does. I’m not implying that going back to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle is realistic in the modern age.
It’s not just about systems, It’s about conditions. Certain conditions make certain strategies more profitable - see game theory. I think low population density and hard life conditions cam lead to kindness being among the winning strategies.
Yeah well we dont have any of those conditions and it would make sense to make oue life conditions harder or to lower the population density so drastically so this meme doesnt make any sense
Because with capitalism, the greed is out in the open. Everyone understands it. It is clear and legal to push against the greed of those who have more.
In a system that incentivizes “virtues”, greed will hide behind those virtues. And when you then fight against that greed, you are accused of attacking those virtues instead.
I’m a leftist but I’m not much of a fan of the Soviet Union. I’m Finnish and middle-aged so I know a bunch of people who had to escape from there so I’ve heard first-hand stories about the shit that went on, and I’ve visited Soviet Estonia who got the short end of the stick with Russian imperialism compared to us. At least we stayed independent although had to grant a lot of power over eg. our foreign policy to the Russians – ie. Soviets, but it’s not like it wasn’t essentially a Russian project since they pretty quickly forgot about korenization and went for Russification instead – to keep them from invading (again…)
One of the biggest failures of alot of leftists spaces is failing to criticize the failures of the USSR. Yes they had alot of Ws but they also took their fair shares of Ls due to external and internal forces. That being said there arent many leftists that geninuinly want to recreate the USSR. We are merely trying to pierce through the veil of Capitalist propaganda to recontectuallize what they did right and incorporate it into the modern political discourse.
That was well said. Recontextualization is exactly the thing; it’s not that I think the Soviet Union was absolute evil with zero redeeming features. They got more right during the early years although I’m not necessarily a huge fan of that period either, and to a large extent it was Stalin who fucked them up pretty severely with the frankly sociopathic system that the Union turned into.
Russian political culture has been outright brutal for a long time. Eg. these KGB-like secret police organizations have been around for a while and have invariably had brutal methods of dealing with politically displeasing individuals or just who-the-hell-ever in many cases. This, coupled with the cultural ethos that Russia and Russians – and specifically meaning ethnic Russians – are superior to anyone outside their borders and a tendency for imperialism, means that Russian rule has nearly invariably been a shitty time, with Finland being one of the few exceptions as we mostly faced little repression or cultural erasure compared to other Russian “colonies” and this was done intentionally; most of the Russian Emperors during our time as a Grand Duchy in some ways thought of Finland as way to show the European powers that they can run things in a “western” way, and to work as a kind of window to the West. For the last 20 or so years they did try to Russify us, which we – being stubborn fucks – did not take well. We also kept our previous Parliament for the most part even though even starting from Alexander I the Emperors wanted to have autocratic rule, but – again in parts thanks to us being stubborn fucks – it took something like 4 emperors for it to happen. Their other historical or the currently existing colonies (nobody seems to think of Russia as a colonialist empire because their colonies are inside contiguous borders) weren’t quite so lucky, as Russification and “Russian supremacy” has been the standard.
This political culture played a large part in the problems with the Union. It was nominally multicultural (and korenization was briefly a thing until they went back to Russification as usual) but it wasn’t exactly unclear who were ultimately in charge.
And before some smartass barges in asking me why it’s OK if the US/UK/France/whoever does this stuff: I don’t like imperialism any more regardless of who’s doing it.
Jokes aside communism is just as bad because it does nothing to prevent power from congregating at the top. The only difference is the level of corruption.
Talk to anyone who grew up in the eastern block about bread lines. Communism is a failure in comparison to capitalism.
“These individuals and groups synthesise radical far-right politics with environmentalism,[5][6] and will typically argue that overpopulation is the primary threat to the environment and that the only solution is a complete halt to immigration or, at their most extreme, genocide against minority groups and ethnicities”
OK, I’ll bite: What systems reward kindness?
Swinger clubs.
How else do you play golf?
Care to explain?
Plot twist outside of America it’s not much
What?
For one, hunter-gatherer tribes before the rise of civilisation were most certainly built on kindness and cooperation
Except towards other tribes. Can’t have them clear our hunting grounds, now can we?
Check out The Dawn of Everything, puts to rest a lot of the myths about prehistoric societies that we tell ourselves. Early societies were consciously experimenting with different social arrangements and they were far more peaceful and egalitarian than we usually give them credit for. Their ideas on property were vastly different than ours as well. There wasn’t really an “our hunting grounds” to speak of. If you’re interested I’ll leave this video by Andrewism about human history. It’s well sourced and pretty informative
Turns out to have warring tribes you need to be organized enough to carry out a war.
Jericho had walls when most of the rest of humanity was nomadic hunter-gatherers.
City walls generally weren’t built because people feel safe and secure already.
I think it sort of depends on what time period we’re talking about. Jericho and other walled cities came about after a certain point. By then, there certainly were societies that lived off raiding the less nomadic agrarian societies, not very peaceful or egalitarian.
There was plenty for everyone since there were a lot fewer people, plus there were no real territories that people claimed over longer periods at all since we were nomads.
The only real solution is intentional population control. But I don’t have high hopes we ever get there though.
Everyone could have way more resources than we’d ever want to even use. But instead, we seem focused on maxing out the world population leaving the least amount possible for each person.
“Overpopulation” is a right-wing myth.
Are you suggesting that there’s no limit to how many people the resources we have available to us can support?
Oh, there probably is. All things being equal (and that’s the important factor) there is next-to-no chance of us ever reaching such a bizarre amount of people - you could triple the amount of people on earth, and, all things being equal, we still wouldn’t be “overpopulated.”
However, things are not equal - which means we are already existing way beyond that which our ecology can support. And it’s all thanks to capitalist parasites - a very small group of people sucking everything dry at the expense of everyone and everything else.
What standard of living do you consider “all things being equal”?
What?
You read that correctly.
Malthus and Erlich, right wingers?
I don’t see many right wing people on this list. Thoughts?
Whether Malthus himself was a right-winger or not isn’t really important… it doesn’t change how the trope of overpopulation has been used to protect power and privilege (ie, the whole point of right-wing ideology). For instance, there is a very good reason why white supremacists support the criminalization of women’s health care in (supposedly) “white” countries while demonizing 3rd world countries for their (supposedly) “explosive population growth.”
It’s a very old trope that flattens human consumption and therefore camouflages the reality that certain classes of people consume resources at astronomical rates in comparison with the rest. It’s utility in shielding class hierarchies from scrutiny should be perfectly obvious.
Thing is, we were so few and so mobile that conflicts were rarely necessary.
The Agrarian Revolution really was where humanity started going downhill.
This is true, but agriculture is a trap in the sense that once we adopted it, there was no turning back.
Remind me again of how farming ruined people
The first written evidence of slavery in the ancient world comes from ancient Mesopotamia. However, slavery was in practice much longer than that. Slavery most likely began when the first cities needed labor to keep food production up to feed growing populations.
And your point is?
Simply trotting that out as a truth tells us nothing about how you propose to build a modern system that respects how we’ve evolved as a species.
I’m just answering the question. They ask what system rewards kindness, I say the lack of one does. I’m not implying that going back to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle is realistic in the modern age.
So you propose an anarchy? I dont think that would go well.
criminal diversion programs
It’s not just about systems, It’s about conditions. Certain conditions make certain strategies more profitable - see game theory. I think low population density and hard life conditions cam lead to kindness being among the winning strategies.
Yeah well we dont have any of those conditions and it would make sense to make oue life conditions harder or to lower the population density so drastically so this meme doesnt make any sense
Some veil of ignorance everyone is part of the ruling class for a week type stuff? Or maybe just anarcho syndicalism.
Me! Bow to me and you will be rewarded for kindness!
The one that is the best at mitigating greed.
Any sufficiently large system rewarding kindness will be taken advantage of by selfish people.
So why not have a system specifically designed to mitigate greed in lieu of one that incentivizes it?
Because with capitalism, the greed is out in the open. Everyone understands it. It is clear and legal to push against the greed of those who have more.
In a system that incentivizes “virtues”, greed will hide behind those virtues. And when you then fight against that greed, you are accused of attacking those virtues instead.
Sounds like the system shouldn’t be sufficiently large then. Decentralized networks are all the rage these days.
The cutoff is between 200 and 1000 people.
I’m a leftist but I’m not much of a fan of the Soviet Union. I’m Finnish and middle-aged so I know a bunch of people who had to escape from there so I’ve heard first-hand stories about the shit that went on, and I’ve visited Soviet Estonia who got the short end of the stick with Russian imperialism compared to us. At least we stayed independent although had to grant a lot of power over eg. our foreign policy to the Russians – ie. Soviets, but it’s not like it wasn’t essentially a Russian project since they pretty quickly forgot about korenization and went for Russification instead – to keep them from invading (again…)
One of the biggest failures of alot of leftists spaces is failing to criticize the failures of the USSR. Yes they had alot of Ws but they also took their fair shares of Ls due to external and internal forces. That being said there arent many leftists that geninuinly want to recreate the USSR. We are merely trying to pierce through the veil of Capitalist propaganda to recontectuallize what they did right and incorporate it into the modern political discourse.
That was well said. Recontextualization is exactly the thing; it’s not that I think the Soviet Union was absolute evil with zero redeeming features. They got more right during the early years although I’m not necessarily a huge fan of that period either, and to a large extent it was Stalin who fucked them up pretty severely with the frankly sociopathic system that the Union turned into.
Russian political culture has been outright brutal for a long time. Eg. these KGB-like secret police organizations have been around for a while and have invariably had brutal methods of dealing with politically displeasing individuals or just who-the-hell-ever in many cases. This, coupled with the cultural ethos that Russia and Russians – and specifically meaning ethnic Russians – are superior to anyone outside their borders and a tendency for imperialism, means that Russian rule has nearly invariably been a shitty time, with Finland being one of the few exceptions as we mostly faced little repression or cultural erasure compared to other Russian “colonies” and this was done intentionally; most of the Russian Emperors during our time as a Grand Duchy in some ways thought of Finland as way to show the European powers that they can run things in a “western” way, and to work as a kind of window to the West. For the last 20 or so years they did try to Russify us, which we – being stubborn fucks – did not take well. We also kept our previous Parliament for the most part even though even starting from Alexander I the Emperors wanted to have autocratic rule, but – again in parts thanks to us being stubborn fucks – it took something like 4 emperors for it to happen. Their other historical or the currently existing colonies (nobody seems to think of Russia as a colonialist empire because their colonies are inside contiguous borders) weren’t quite so lucky, as Russification and “Russian supremacy” has been the standard.
This political culture played a large part in the problems with the Union. It was nominally multicultural (and korenization was briefly a thing until they went back to Russification as usual) but it wasn’t exactly unclear who were ultimately in charge.
And before some smartass barges in asking me why it’s OK if the US/UK/France/whoever does this stuff: I don’t like imperialism any more regardless of who’s doing it.
Jokes aside communism is just as bad because it does nothing to prevent power from congregating at the top. The only difference is the level of corruption.
Talk to anyone who grew up in the eastern block about bread lines. Communism is a failure in comparison to capitalism.
The one that is the best at mitigating greed.
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Capitalism is much filthier lol
Thanks for the meme idea though.
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I like how you spelled fascism phonetically.
English is not my first language, cry
You’re welcome.
Interesting. Can you say more about what that is?
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“These individuals and groups synthesise radical far-right politics with environmentalism,[5][6] and will typically argue that overpopulation is the primary threat to the environment and that the only solution is a complete halt to immigration or, at their most extreme, genocide against minority groups and ethnicities”
You’re just a fascist…with a fancier label.