"Humans are humans" isn't an argument, it's a tautology. It's one that we should carefully examine because it is riddled with (bad) assumptions. And that's the goal of talking about it, to examine our assumptions and make sure we understand the real reasons why it hasn't been possible, why it's not possible now, and how it could become possible and what's the closest to it that has worked and on what scale. Yes, humans as they think and organize themselves currently cannot achieve full-blown communism. With globalization, we should understand that if it can exist, it would have to be a planetary society. That sounds ridiculously impossible to us now, but we are biased by what we know (and think we know) and most of us are pretty unimaginative, so we shouldn't use that as an argument or think too highly of our predictive abilities.
You have to realize your thinking is backwards from the get go. The societies that you think are utopic have already existed. They consist of 99% of human history as hunter-gatherers. Apart from being generally egalitarian societies with no real dominance hierarchy, it has been well argued by anthropologists that this form of human organization had much less violence and no large-scale organized warfare. Even though these societies and our societies are very different now, and we cannot go back to that, it can inform us moving forward, first dismissing false notions of hardwired human instincts of domination. What defines humans is their adaptive capabilities, but they adapt due to pressures of necessity, not wishful thinking. Any utopic vision has to take that fact into account. Still, you realize how many people thought women's rights and black people's rights were utopic ideals at some point too? Hell, universal basic income was seen as utopic just a few decades ago, and now there has been a radical shift in perception, with increasing support on both the left and the right, so much so that it's now hard to conceive of a future without it for many educated people. That something is utopic is not an argument against pursing it, quite the contrary.
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
Last edit: 02/02/2019 01:19
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Stroggoz New Zealand. Jan 31 2019 20:49. Posts 5297
On January 31 2019 17:53 blackjacki2 wrote:
What's the motive of arguing for some utopian stateless communist society where everyone is willing to share, nobody is greedy, nobody wants to rise to power, etc. when you know full well that such a thing can never exist because humans are humans? I'm fully prepared to agree that your idealistic communist society is the best possible society if you're willing to concede that it's not practical.
Many before us said similar things, about women having the vote, slavery, ect. It's just not practical to not have slavery, how will our economy ever succeed? Similarly, if we let women have the vote all hell will break loose. The same with democracy, how can you let 90% of the population vote when they are illiterate. In many ways we have already reached utopia, when u compare the world to what it was 500-1000 years ago. It shouldn't be hard to see that society can go a step further, especially when it's been realized on a large scale before. This is all reliant on human decision making. Indeed 'humans are humans', i think by that comment you seem to think human nature is hardwired to act like capitalists, but i doubt this is the case, at least it isn't proven. Human's can manifest their cultures in a variety of ways, one has been to expand the level of human rights since the enlightenment, so it's not all greed, power, ect.
For billionaires a communist society would not be practical to them since the economy isn't designed around making them richer, but for most people it would be practical.
One of 3 non decent human beings on a site of 5 people with between 2-3 decent human beings
1
blackjacki2 United States. Jan 31 2019 21:58. Posts 2581
In my country it took constitutional amendments to end slavery, give women the right to vote. Laws backed by force. The slave owners didn't give up their slaves after buying into a new ideology. I don't see how your society works unless you can get nearly everyone to buy into it. There's still a shit ton of racists/sexists out there so clearly these things weren't done by people buying into it. It was done through the will of the majority coercing the minority.
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soberstone United States. Jan 31 2019 23:58. Posts 2662
On January 31 2019 17:53 blackjacki2 wrote:
What's the motive of arguing for some utopian stateless communist society where everyone is willing to share, nobody is greedy, nobody wants to rise to power, etc. when you know full well that such a thing can never exist because humans are humans? I'm fully prepared to agree that your idealistic communist society is the best possible society if you're willing to concede that it's not practical.
Many before us said similar things, about women having the vote, slavery, ect. It's just not practical to not have slavery, how will our economy ever succeed? Similarly, if we let women have the vote all hell will break loose. The same with democracy, how can you let 90% of the population vote when they are illiterate. In many ways we have already reached utopia, when u compare the world to what it was 500-1000 years ago. It shouldn't be hard to see that society can go a step further, especially when it's been realized on a large scale before. This is all reliant on human decision making. Indeed 'humans are humans', i think by that comment you seem to think human nature is hardwired to act like capitalists, but i doubt this is the case, at least it isn't proven. Human's can manifest their cultures in a variety of ways, one has been to expand the level of human rights since the enlightenment, so it's not all greed, power, ect.
For billionaires a communist society would not be practical to them since the economy isn't designed around making them richer, but for most people it would be practical.
All of the societal achievements you list came about as a result of having a free society based on the premise that individuals have rights including that of private property. The entire premise of communism is that the right to private property is non-existent. In order to create the utopia the government forcibly takes from "haves" and re-distributes to the have-nots. This is ofcourse, as history has proven, bound to fail miserably because in such a system there is zero motivation for innovation and creation as any wealth an individual manifests and creates is not theirs to own and do with as they please.
Additionally, because humans are easily corrupted, and the government is nothing but a group of powerful humans, when power is centralized it is more easily corrupted and you get Venezuela. Or the Soviet Union. Or Cuba. Or Communist China. And millions of people die.
You have to be incredibly foolish, dismissive of your own life experience, and/or indoctrinated to believe that there is no human nature by which people are inherently driven by their own internal desire for a better life. The beauty of Capitalism is that it plays off of this human nature and allows individual desire to benefit society as a whole in a way which is compatible with egalitarianism and human rights, which is why the human race is infinitely better off in almost every tangible metric than it was hundred, 500, or a thousand years ago.
But ofcourse, you are free to disregard history and look at the rules (all communist societies) as exceptions ("they just didn't do it right!" and the exceptions (flaws in America, of which there are undoubtedly many) as rules (western capitalist democracies seem to be by comparison the best societies under which to live in the history of man).
Last edit: 01/02/2019 00:02
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soberstone United States. Feb 01 2019 00:06. Posts 2662
On January 31 2019 18:49 Loco wrote:
"Humans are humans" isn't an argument, it's a tautology. It's one that we should carefully examine because it is riddled with (bad) assumptions. And that's the goal of talking about it, to examine our assumptions and make sure we understand the real reasons why it hasn't been possible, why it's not possible now, and how it could become possible and what's the closest to it that has worked and on what scale. Yes, humans as they think and organize themselves currently cannot achieve full-blown communism. With globalization, we should understand that if it can exist, it would have to be a planetary society. That sounds ridiculously impossible to us now, but we are biased by what we know (and think we know) and most of us are pretty unimaginative, so we shouldn't use that as an argument or think too highly of our predictive abilities.
You have to realize your thinking is backwards from the get go. The societies that you think are utopic have already existed. They consist of 99% of human history as hunter-gatherers. Apart from being generally egalitarian societies with no real dominance hierarchy, it has been well argued by anthropologists that this form of human organization had much less violence and no large-scale organized warfare. Even though these societies and our societies are very different now, and we cannot go back to that, it can inform us moving forward, first dismissing false notions of hardwired human instincts of domination. What defines humans is their adaptive capabilities, but they adapt due to pressures of necessity, not wishful thinking. Any utopic vision has to take that fact into account. Still, you realize how many people thought women's rights and black people's rights were utopic ideals at some point too? Hell, universal basic income was seen as utopic just a few decades ago, and now there has been a radical shift in perception, with increasing support on both the left and the right, so much so that it's now hard to conceive of a future without it for educated many people. That something is utopic is not an argument against pursing it, quite the contrary.
The hunter-gatherer societies you are claiming were much less violent were actually violent to a degree that is nearly incomprehensible by today's standards. Your re-writing of history is literally batshit.
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Stroggoz New Zealand. Feb 01 2019 00:42. Posts 5297
On January 31 2019 17:53 blackjacki2 wrote:
What's the motive of arguing for some utopian stateless communist society where everyone is willing to share, nobody is greedy, nobody wants to rise to power, etc. when you know full well that such a thing can never exist because humans are humans? I'm fully prepared to agree that your idealistic communist society is the best possible society if you're willing to concede that it's not practical.
Many before us said similar things, about women having the vote, slavery, ect. It's just not practical to not have slavery, how will our economy ever succeed? Similarly, if we let women have the vote all hell will break loose. The same with democracy, how can you let 90% of the population vote when they are illiterate. In many ways we have already reached utopia, when u compare the world to what it was 500-1000 years ago. It shouldn't be hard to see that society can go a step further, especially when it's been realized on a large scale before. This is all reliant on human decision making. Indeed 'humans are humans', i think by that comment you seem to think human nature is hardwired to act like capitalists, but i doubt this is the case, at least it isn't proven. Human's can manifest their cultures in a variety of ways, one has been to expand the level of human rights since the enlightenment, so it's not all greed, power, ect.
For billionaires a communist society would not be practical to them since the economy isn't designed around making them richer, but for most people it would be practical.
All of the societal achievements you list came about as a result of having a free society based on the premise that individuals have rights including that of private property. The entire premise of communism is that the right to private property is non-existent. In order to create the utopia the government forcibly takes from "haves" and re-distributes to the have-nots. This is ofcourse, as history has proven, bound to fail miserably because in such a system there is zero motivation for innovation and creation as any wealth an individual manifests and creates is not theirs to own and do with as they please.
Additionally, because humans are easily corrupted, and the government is nothing but a group of powerful humans, when power is centralized it is more easily corrupted and you get Venezuela. Or the Soviet Union. Or Cuba. Or Communist China. And millions of people die.
You have to be incredibly foolish, dismissive of your own life experience, and/or indoctrinated to believe that there is no human nature by which people are inherently driven by their own internal desire for a better life. The beauty of Capitalism is that it plays off of this human nature and allows individual desire to benefit society as a whole in a way which is compatible with egalitarianism and human rights, which is why the human race is infinitely better off in almost every tangible metric than it was hundred, 500, or a thousand years ago.
But ofcourse, you are free to disregard history and look at the rules (all communist societies) as exceptions ("they just didn't do it right!" and the exceptions (flaws in America, of which there are undoubtedly many) as rules (western capitalist democracies seem to be by comparison the best societies under which to live in the history of man).
Since you know so much history, you will know that the last 500 years, In order to create a capitalist society, europe and it's offshoots have non stop forcibly taken from the have nots and giving to the haves, through war. All up to the present, of course, not like it's history when you think of the Iraq war or congo wars, and all the imperialistic adventures from potosi to baghdad. You don't have to use force to make a communist society, if all sweatshop workers simply stopped working, the rich would quickly find out that they are the parasites.
second paragraph your just twisting what 'greed' and 'power' meant to mean 'people wanting a better life'. What i mean by greed is the display of activity by the richest in the world right now.
I don't see much empirical evidence to see capitalism being based off human nature, it's a system that has been constantly resisted through history, which would actually lend support to the idea that is not a natural system for many human beings. Just take the zapitista rebellion and rojava stuff loco is linking, which you'll be so well versed in because of your claims to knowledge of history. Constantly resisted by humans through history, that's why capitalism needs such a massive military and public relations industry, it is as secretary of state John foster dulles said, they were having a very hard time convincing latin america that communism is a bad idea, because it involves plundering the rich, and not plundering the poor. So how to fix that problem? You just murder as many communists as you can, and spend huge amounts of money on public relations to try and change peoples minds, on top of that.
One of 3 non decent human beings on a site of 5 people with between 2-3 decent human beings
Because there are no poor areas in the rich Western world... lol. 30% of children live in poverty in this riding in Montreal. I lived in one of the poorest areas in Montreal for many years. People shooting up and prostitutes were at the corner of my street. Homeless shelter on the other side of my street literally 30 seconds away from my apartment, with mentally ill people walking outside like zombies not knowing what the fuck to do with their lives. I have a recording of my neighbor on the other side of the street who often went outside and yelled obscenities at everyone. She had someone come and pick her up -- no doubt for prostitution, nearly every day, and they would fight outside. She was like 50+. Resident buildings were all infested with bed bugs. But I have no idea what poverty is... never seen it before.
Your perception of poverty is laughable, those 30% "poor" children live way better than 99% of Cubans, a doctor in Cuba would have to work for one year to buy the sneakers that homeless man is wearing lol.
Its funny that you mention prostitution in Canada when you are defending Cuba that is the 2nd country with most prostitution per capita in the world (not counting africa obv), and only behind guess which country... yeah, Venezuela.
On January 31 2019 23:42 Stroggoz wrote:
Just take the zapitista rebellion and rojava stuff loco is linking,
lol you guys bringing up the EZLN is like when Loco mentioned Christiana and Drone had to shed some light into that lol.
The EZLN are very poor indigenous people that live isolated deep in the jungle that live of their farms and were given assaults rifles to fend off the government by a psychopatic megalomaniac, a group that is at the border of political oblibion.
On January 31 2019 18:49 Loco wrote:
"Humans are humans" isn't an argument, it's a tautology. It's one that we should carefully examine because it is riddled with (bad) assumptions. And that's the goal of talking about it, to examine our assumptions and make sure we understand the real reasons why it hasn't been possible, why it's not possible now, and how it could become possible and what's the closest to it that has worked and on what scale. Yes, humans as they think and organize themselves currently cannot achieve full-blown communism. With globalization, we should understand that if it can exist, it would have to be a planetary society. That sounds ridiculously impossible to us now, but we are biased by what we know (and think we know) and most of us are pretty unimaginative, so we shouldn't use that as an argument or think too highly of our predictive abilities.
You have to realize your thinking is backwards from the get go. The societies that you think are utopic have already existed. They consist of 99% of human history as hunter-gatherers. Apart from being generally egalitarian societies with no real dominance hierarchy, it has been well argued by anthropologists that this form of human organization had much less violence and no large-scale organized warfare. Even though these societies and our societies are very different now, and we cannot go back to that, it can inform us moving forward, first dismissing false notions of hardwired human instincts of domination. What defines humans is their adaptive capabilities, but they adapt due to pressures of necessity, not wishful thinking. Any utopic vision has to take that fact into account. Still, you realize how many people thought women's rights and black people's rights were utopic ideals at some point too? Hell, universal basic income was seen as utopic just a few decades ago, and now there has been a radical shift in perception, with increasing support on both the left and the right, so much so that it's now hard to conceive of a future without it for educated many people. That something is utopic is not an argument against pursing it, quite the contrary.
The hunter-gatherer societies you are claiming were much less violent were actually violent to a degree that is nearly incomprehensible by today's standards. Your re-writing of history is literally batshit.
You don't have to quote a large post with 3 videos just for a one sentence airing of opinion. Please provide your source. Try to keep it to the relevant fields of anthropology and archeology please, I have no time to waste on debating people like Steven Pinker with you, but I'll gladly give you links that debunk his garbage if that's all you have.
bound to fail miserably because in such a system there is zero motivation for innovation and creation
Sorry, I'm blanking right now. Remind me who was the first person to journey in outer space? You can Wikipedia it. Oh wait, there can no such thing as Wikipedia, because there has to be a profit motive for everything. I also thought that the world's most notable philosophers and scientists did their work because they actually loved doing it, they were fueled by curiosity, and often it was corporate interests that was in their way (and still is), but I'm open to being proven otherwise if you have evidence for your claim.
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
Because there are no poor areas in the rich Western world... lol. 30% of children live in poverty in this riding in Montreal. I lived in one of the poorest areas in Montreal for many years. People shooting up and prostitutes were at the corner of my street. Homeless shelter on the other side of my street literally 30 seconds away from my apartment, with mentally ill people walking outside like zombies not knowing what the fuck to do with their lives. I have a recording of my neighbor on the other side of the street who often went outside and yelled obscenities at everyone. She had someone come and pick her up -- no doubt for prostitution, nearly every day, and they would fight outside. She was like 50+. Resident buildings were all infested with bed bugs. But I have no idea what poverty is... never seen it before.
Your perception of poverty is laughable, those 30% "poor" children live way better than 99% of Cubans, a doctor in Cuba would have to work for one year to buy the sneakers that homeless man is wearing lol.
Its funny that you mention prostitution in Canada when you are defending Cuba that is the 2nd country with most prostitution per capita in the world (not counting africa obv), and only behind guess which country... yeah, Venezuela.
My perception of poverty is laughable? You literally just stated your view of poverty as being the inability to buy useless fashion shit. You think Nike sneakers tops the list of human needs? Poverty is not just about purchase power. Someone who seriously reads on the topic of poverty for less than an hour knows this. There are other forms of poverty that affect well-being and life expectancy, like interpersonal poverty, existential poverty and cultural poverty. The funny thing is that we have actually talked about this before and you know it to be true but you're playing a game now. You compared the experience that you have had living in Mexico with the atomized existence of the people here when you talked about the homelessness crisis that you witnessed in one of your travels to the North. You understood the effect that social support and solidarity has in making material poverty less of a blight. This has been incredibly well studied. The negatives of poverty is more about the feeling of being poor rather than some absolute standard of low personal income. That's why I mentioned the Human Development Index in my first post and the fact that Cubans have a higher life expectancy than Americans is not something trivial that you can just ignore.
It's also fucking disgusting to put the word poor in quotation marks and say that the poorest children in Canada are really just fine and they don't know it because they don't have a standard of comparison.... there is nothing to answer to that.... you have astoundingly low levels of empathy.
Its funny that you mention prostitution in Canada when you are defending Cuba that is the 2nd country with most prostitution per capita in the world (not counting africa obv), and only behind guess which country... yeah, Venezuela.
It actually isn't.. It is quite high though but there are important things to mention with regards to these statistics:
"In countries where prostitution is illegal, the use of arrest data to create general prostitution statistics can be misleading. The majority of prostitutes are never arrested. Class bias may be introduced into the statistics as a result of police officers being more likely to arrest street prostitutes than high-class call girls. In comparing one area with another there may be differences in the definition of a crime, the police enforcement rate, and the possibility of the inflation of arrest figures or the under-reporting of crime.[3]
Due to the unregulated and often illegal nature of the work, only estimates are available for the number of prostitutes in a country. The numbers for a country can vary considerably dependent on the source. Some countries' numbers may suffer from poor methodology. "
In other words no single set of data is authoritative and it is highly biased against the Cubans (and Venezuelans) since it is a legal profession for them. It is also quite unlike the type there is in illegal/neo-abolitionist countries. Sex tourism is no doubt a big part of why. So why do so many have to resort to this? Socialism! It couldn't be affected by US sanctions that Baal proudly supports. Oh wait...
"The first UN rapporteur to visit Venezuela for 21 years has told The Independent the US sanctions on the country are illegal and could amount to “crimes against humanity” under international law"
"Sanctions kill,” he told The Independent, adding that they fall most heavily on the poorest people in society, demonstrably cause death through food and medicine shortages, lead to violations of human rights and are aimed at coercing economic change in a “sister democracy”.
"Modern-day economic sanctions and blockades are comparable with medieval sieges of towns."
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
On January 31 2019 23:42 Stroggoz wrote:
Just take the zapitista rebellion and rojava stuff loco is linking,
lol you guys bringing up the EZLN is like when Loco mentioned Christiana and Drone had to shed some light into that lol.
The EZLN are very poor indigenous people that live isolated deep in the jungle that live of their farms and were given assaults rifles to fend off the government by a psychopatic megalomaniac, a group that is at the border of political oblibion.
Yeah, I definitely needed Drone to "shed some light" on the fact that non-conformists have had a lot of trouble throughout their whole life in an insane dehumanizing capitalist society and that the drugs are a big part of how they have learned to cope. I couldn't have thought about this without him, it's not like I ever studied this stuff because I'm one of those people. Minus the drugs though because I found solace in knowledge, literature and art.
“The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does.They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted.” - Aldous Huxley
Also there's been a ban on hard-drugs for like four decades in Christiania because many people died in the 70s, so I don't know what drug abuse he was referencing. There's lots of potheads there, is that a big deal? This is another "Christiania" type of environment but in BC Canada. There are ex-junkies and hippies and we can all have a good laugh at them for being poor and having problems but I'm pretty sure the majority of these people are happier or have the potential to be happier than the vast majority of rich people. Just think how alienated you have to be in order to judge people who are trying their best to be truly free, not just free to consume, but concretely free to live full lives.
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
You guys seem to be trying to figure out some fundamental truths about the meaning of life here and turn it into a political talk somehow. It's kind of funny on a weird level.
Loco your whole argument is based on the fact that you believe human nature is good and that statement is true for everyone, while in fact, if you were correct, you wouldn't even have to defend that point. Aiming at that utopia, while disregarding how easily humans get corrupted is plainly naive.
Vice article on that commune says that the townsfolk actually complain of petty thefts from people of Pooles Land (e.g. missing bikes)....
A much better solution for the overall, general happiness of people would be investments in mental health, rather than living in communes, that look to be ignoring any technological advancement the past 400 years... they even lack sewage system.... do you realize how big of a health risk that is?
I agree that people are generally unhappy in the west and thats due to shittons of factors e.g. from not actually having any freedom since a child in terms of anything (thats why Scandinavian kids are the healthies, their educational system offers highest opportunity of freedom), to being bombarded with information 24/7 (all because of technological advancement). We've just developed so quickly that our bodies and mind simply can't keep up, which chronically stresses us out...
Also a truly happy human/commune of people wouldn't need to use drugs.. why would it?
My perception of poverty is laughable? You literally just stated your view of poverty as being the inability to buy useless fashion shit. You think Nike sneakers tops the list of human needs?`
obviously not, but that a guy with a medical degree would need to require to save for a year to buy something an item that isn't even luxurious for a junkie homeless in your country paints a good picture of the sea between 1st and 3rd world poverty.
You compared the experience that you have had living in Mexico with the atomized existence of the people here when you talked about the homelessness crisis that you witnessed in one of your travels to the North. You understood the effect that social support and solidarity has in making material poverty less of a blight.
Yes latinamerica has a much stronger family structure than the US/Canada, thats despise being much more poor you dont see that many crazies or junkies roaming in the streets, it is not the state or redistribution of wealth, but voluntary shelter by family members and friends that do this.
I find it strange that you mention this since the whole "family cohesion" thing is a conservative value, do you agree with them on that?
This has been incredibly well studied. The negatives of poverty is more about the feeling of being poor rather than some absolute standard of low personal income. That's why I mentioned the Human Development Index in my first post and the fact that Cubans have a higher life expectancy than Americans is not something trivial that you can just ignore.
Yes relative poverty matters, so I suppose under socialism they will all feel equally rich while they starve.
Cuba fares fine healthcare wise but will defintelly lag behind the more technologically advanced medicine becomes.
It's also fucking disgusting to put the word poor in quotation marks and say that the poorest children in Canada are really just fine and they don't know it because they don't have a standard of comparison.... there is nothing to answer to that.... you have astoundingly low levels of empathy.
As I said before my sister qualifies for aid in California, so yeah I laugh at the parameters used to qualify 30% of canadian children as poor, I am astounded how out of touch you are as I've said now many times, have you ever traveled outside of Canada?
In other words no single set of data is authoritative and it is highly biased against the Cubans (and Venezuelans) since it is a legal profession for them.
There isn't much to say besides, just go to Cuba and see it for yourself since you believe stats are skewed
I remember my dad telling me that he won't visit Cuba ever again because prostitutes pester you all day and can't walk a single block without having at least one aggressivly approach you.
"The first UN rapporteur to visit Venezuela for 21 years has told The Independent the US sanctions on the country are illegal and could amount to “crimes against humanity” under international law"
"Modern-day economic sanctions and blockades are comparable with medieval sieges of towns."
Thats a retarded analogy, a siege is taking the means of production of a region by force, sanctions are limiting trade.
So are you conceding that socialism can't work unless they export specifically to the US? because if you make the US responsible for Venezuela's economic colapse that is what you are implying.
I think not trading is perfectly aligned with non-intervention foreign policy, you won't attack a foreign country but you sure aren't gonna exchange goods with murderous dictators and tyrants around the world
lol you start a sentence and end it with lol.... such eloquence, erudition and integrity. Cleary the Zappatistas are less poor than you in every other way than the material. Not something I'd boast about. Bordering on political oblivion huh? They went from a few thousands in 1994 to over 300,000 in the past 24 years. "[url=https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/feb/17/mexico-zapatistas-rebels-24-years-mountain-strongholds]The peasant rebels took up arms in 1994, and now number 300,000 in centres with their own doctors, teachers and currency."
I overdone the lulz, it just hard to convey how hillarious it is when you try to use the EZLN to argue your point to a Mexican.
Political oblivion, the EZLN relevance in Mexico has severely dwingled in the last decades, most of indigenous people in Mexico live semi-isolated lives, they police their own towns (lynch criminals) and have their own doctors etc, the only difference is that the EZLN has assault rifles.
Yeah, I definitely needed Drone to "shed some light" on the fact that non-conformists have had a lot of trouble throughout their whole life in an insane dehumanizing capitalist society and that the drugs are a big part of how they have learned to cope. I couldn't have thought about this without him, it's not like I ever studied this stuff because I'm one of those people. Minus the drugs though because I found solace in knowledge, literature and art.
I'm curious if you aren't a champaigne socialist and you truly believe this why not just take a planet to Mexico and go into EZLN territory, and live with them?
About that POOL commune I agree with the guy that it would be good if every major city had satellites like that as a social safety net.
That way people who are overwhelmed by the city for any reason they can move there temporarily or permanently and sustain themselves and heal.
I foresee some issues with its size because I think that style of life gets very difficult the bigger the commune gets
Ex-PokerStars Team Pro Online
1
Stroggoz New Zealand. Feb 02 2019 04:39. Posts 5297
Don't think that 'champaigne socialist' argument works, you see Somalia as being an improvement under it's anarcho capitalism experiment yet i doubt you would want to live there. There is nothing wrong with being in a privledged position and critiqing a political system you benefit from. I welcome the dissenters in stalinist russia who held priveledged positions, for example. I welcome bertrand russell for advocating womens vote even tho he was in a priveledged position (white, male, rich, aristocratic). Same for Chomsky, he worked at the heart of the military research system his whole life, there is nothing hypocritcal in criticizing military if you work for it. Imo it is the responsibility of those with priviledge to critic their own socities, and offer improvements or alternatives, they have the easiest job in doing so.
I cited Zapitista as resistance to capitalism, I don't see how anyone can disagree with it. There are many other examples to choose from.
One of 3 non decent human beings on a site of 5 people with between 2-3 decent human beings
On February 02 2019 03:39 Stroggoz wrote:
Don't think that 'champaigne socialist' argument works, you see Somalia as being an improvement under it's anarcho capitalism experiment yet i doubt you would want to live there. There is nothing wrong with being in a privledged position and critiqing a political system you benefit from. I welcome the dissenters in stalinist russia who held priveledged positions, for example. I welcome bertrand russell for advocating womens vote even tho he was in a priveledged position (white, male, rich, aristocratic). Same for Chomsky, he worked at the heart of the military research system his whole life, there is nothing hypocritcal in criticizing military if you work for it. Imo it is the responsibility of those with priviledge to critic their own socities, and offer improvements or alternatives, they have the easiest job in doing so.
I cited Zapitista as resistance to capitalism, I don't see how anyone can disagree with it. There are many other examples to choose from.
I know its a shitty argument but I used it only because Loco said that he is suffering in the capitalist model and that he lived among bums and hookers and the only reason he hasn't gone into drugs is because he shelters in knowledge and art
I'm legitimately asking, actually more than that, I'm encouraging it because I think its quite likely he is happier there or learns a lot.
Well tbh he probably wouldn't last with the EZLN these are impovered very uneducated people who have worked long hours of hard labor since they were kids so I dont think many of us could switch to that with ease, but I can see him living in a hippie commune.
I've mentioned it before but its funny that most of my friends think like you guys, I have many friends who seriously consider buying land and opening a hippie commune, some friends own a business that sells healing mushrooms, other teaches women to weave in a empowering spiritual way etc, others go to peyote retreats in the desert, get high on frog poison etc, I'm just the cynic of the group and they hold back some of their hippiest stuff because I pounce right away and they aren't as good as you guys at arguing back :D. So what I'm saying is that most of my friens are "locos" but less angsty lol.
It is "the" question of course, and it is one that I ask myself all the time, even though I can't do anything about it right now. I have a chronic illness that when is active absolutely requires a specific medication (and it is right now) and it basically prevents me from having a social life. (This is an illness that is virtually non-existent in so-called poor countries, so again, rich countries have their own problems). I also have obligations that I "signed up for" before I radicalized and can't abandon. WIth the Zapatistas, I would have to find a way to contribute, because like you said, I probably can't adjust to that labor intensive lifestyle (though I would like to learn more about ecology hands-on). It would have been more suitable for me to go to Rojava for a while. Although I dislike war, Edgar Morin said that his war experience was a form of psychoanalysis, and I think it could do me some good as a one time experience. I know there are two anarchists who went there from Montreal and they said they met "the best human beings on the planet" during their stay. It's something I'm still in the process of learning about. I would probably want to go to a place like Poole's first. It's in the back of my mind to take a road trip there probably next year. I have little experience with drugs, only did mushrooms once in a bad environment, so I think there could be something in it for me. I'm definitely not a hippie and I'm resolutely against New Age thought so I wouldn't fit in into a purely hippie commune. It's the ecological sustainability aspect and the solidarity aspect that inspires me. "We all suffer a little so that no one has to suffer a lot". But I'm more of an individualist than these guys and I need a lot of quiet time to myself. I would not do well in an environment that is always noisy.
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
and the exceptions (flaws in America, of which there are undoubtedly many) as rules (western capitalist democracies seem to be by comparison the best societies under which to live in the history of man). 
, welcome to ancap
