this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2024
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Most people are like you.
Which is precisely why humanity will be just another of many dead end evolutionary cul-de-sacs in Earth's natural history.
I've come to peace with that, but this is a nice microcosm of the core reason. We can do better, we know better, but at the end of the day, almost all of us will just take the animalistic dopamine rush of winning.
Live together or die alone. We choose the second one like breathing.
If most humans were like Kempf (we're not), we'd actually have a chance.
I don't think this hypothetical is about winning so much as never having to worry about your needs being met again. The calculus changes completely for a lot of people (not optimistic enough to say most) if that's not part of the equation.
Which is exactly why Capitalism keeps us barely holding on, by design.
What are you talking about? Capitalism is the system that focused on (in some countries even created) the "middle class", because it's beneficiary to have a whole group of people that have all their needs met and have disposable income to keep the machine running.
If you don't have money for iPads, cars, vacations, avocado toast and fancy lattes, capitalism grinds to a halt and crumbles.
The biggest companies and richest people of the world and not selling bread, water and shelter. They are selling fashion electronics, electric cars and ads on entertainment websites.
Did you just unironically say Avocado Toast?
No, I wrote it.
The middle class was created by the economic rights and protections provided by The New Deal and decades of unionization efforts. Crediting capitalism is not only disingenuous but also downright insulting to those who fought capitalists tooth and nail for what you're crediting those capitalists for.
The middle class existed long before the new deal or unions. Like a century before.
Actually the term was coined at the 1939 Worlds Fair and popularized in '44 with Roosevelt's signing of the GI Bill, but if you have even the smallest shred of evidence for your claims, go ahead, I'm humoring.
Go check the Wikipedia sources
That's not a source, that's a number. You have to link the sources, you can't just paste Wikipedia. In any case this is a discussion about specifically the American middle class.
Edit': Also I found the Wikipedia article you're citing and it directly contradicts your point: "The modern usage of the term "middle-class", however, dates to the 1913 UK Registrar-General's report, in which the statistician T.H.C. Stevenson identified the middle class as those falling between the upper-class and the working-class.[14] The middle class includes: professionals, managers, and senior civil servants. The chief defining characteristic of membership in the middle-class is control of significant human capital while still being under the dominion of the elite upper class, who control much of the financial and legal capital in the world."
See, you went to Wikipedia like a big boy and checked the sources yourself! Good job!
You also found, that it was not related to the new deal, nor to unions and it was defined in terms of capitalism. It must have been exhausting!
Right, but at cost to others, and attempting to minimize the cost to others trying to rationalize it. That's the point. Call it winning, call it succeeding, call it whatever you like, its me over us. The idea of accepting your benefit at the loss of numerous others tears people en masse down. Maybe another branch would become as popular, maybe not, but such choices are presented frequently in our civilization, and the choice is usually to take the win at other's expense.
Regardless, we are what we are and on a long enough time scale what we are will destroy us. That's not as sad to me as all the other creatures we'll take with us, but even we won't be able to sterilize all terran life, so the Earth will recover from us. Life will go on after we successfully fuck ourselves trying to fuck one another. I find solace in that.
There's virtually nothing that is not, at some scale, at a cost to others while benefitting oneself. Someone is always hungrier, sicker, whatever. However, the magnitude is what matters. Not every cost is equal. The creator of some free software putting in ads is a shame, but not a tragedy. Life will go on. We are not entitled to the fruit of their labor for free if they don't want to provide it any more.
It's all a symptom. We can't revolve our expectations around people giving us all free labor out of the kindness of their hearts with how our society is structured. It's great so many do, and extremely admirable, but I'd never fault any of them for going another way.
Here's another viewpoint supporting yours: if we all had Universal Basic Income, we might not even be having this conversation. If JBK had all his needs met financially, and everyone knew that, and everyone else had their needs met too, what he did would be the norm and not so exceptional that this picture keeps getting reposted for years and years. (He'd still be exceptional for making an astonishingly reliable player app, but not for forgoing the payday.)
If it was the norm, lots of people would donate their labor for free, because their needs are met and they are able to do what they love without a huge payout. Most people don't need the huge payout, the 8 figure bank account. They need guaranteed food and shelter and a little fun and a few nice things.
Agreed. UBI is probably the method to solve that issue we should be most aggressively pursuing right now.
Or you can see it the other way around. You and I are enjoying such a great piece of software at the expense of the developers who gave us their expertise, time and effort for free.
If you use Linux, vlc, Firefox, lemmy, gimp, etc without donating to the authors/maintainers, you are putting you over them, "winning" at the cost of others. You are getting a personal benefit at the loss of numerous others...
Well put.
That is a very western, independent cultural paradigm you have there. Western culture and values are not shared by everyone in the west let alone all humanity.
Only a few of us have strong narcissistic and anti-social personality traits, but they are vocal and usually end up in positions of power.
I would argue the vast majority of humanity throughout history is more selfless and willing to sacrifice and work towards a goal than you give us credit for. Look at the big picture and think about how much innovation has come from a place not driven by profit potential but for THE potential to go further.
When I look at the world and to the East, I see just as many people in suits lording over people slaving for very little. I see Asian factory owners and managers getting bonuses for inflicting draconian conditions on their factory workers to the point of suicides. I see eastern governments sending their citizens to brainwashing camps to make governing them a little easier. I see the rare society that does find homeostasis with its environment being decimated by societies of people with a selfish interest in the land they sit on time and time again. Taiwan isn't at war with anyone, but China wants their shit because they want their shit. No cowboys or rugged individuals required.
I can very much so see your point and have shared similar sentiments but I have to disagree with you. If you look at trends in humanity I honestly feel we collaborate and work together much more than we destroy, even if destruction and looking out for self gets more attention.
There would be no one to take advantage of if we weren't more often than not working together for common goals and interests. Those that take advantage of the rest of us are the minority, but again, they are vocal and usually in positions of power.
You have excellent points and are speaking truth, but I just see it differently.
I partially agree. I have come to the conclusion that we humans have amazing potential, for good and bad. There are terrible injustices and crimes committed, but humanity also creates art and science. I just don't think we can compare the suffering and good we create - how can you compare the pain of the victims of the World Wars with the paintings of Da Vinci, yk? So in the end, one of the core points of social psychology is that situations have an enormous power of us. People can do terrible things when situations call for it (see the Milgram experiment or, on a big scale, the Holocaust), but also create enormous good (international aid organisations). We aren't good or bad, it just really depends on the situations.
Sometimes we act a certain way, no matter the situation. These act are rare, but they are there - and they're often the ones who change the world, for better or worse.
Okay but why would we all take the money? Because we want to be rich? Or because we need to be rich in order to live a comfortable life?
Because it makes us feel safe, and it makes us feel like we'll be happy.
I have a Master's in Psychology, and I will always remember the disheartening feeling when I learned the most prevalent and accepted theory of what defines human happiness. Know what it is?
Comparison to others.
Very literally, the person in the tribe with the biggest mud hut is probably happier than you in your Chevrolet when your neighbor pulls up in a Cadillac.
Yes, we really are that small as a rule.
Comparison to others is the killer of all joy.
Is that what makes us the most happy, or is it where we most often seek happiness? I don't think they are the same thing. You aren't going to find the happiest people in the world living in poverty, but I don't think they are billionaires either.
and hence billionaires' obsession in having more money and bigger yachts than other billionaires.
What do you mean by the person in the tribe? Are you talking about a hypothetical tribal society and their happiness when removed from the civilized world as opposed to people in more modern communities?
Yes. A hypothetical tribe. I'm saying happiness is completely relative, but based on comparison to immediate peers.
And what can we do with this information, in psychology? Is there a way to shift focus away from it? Or is there something else to learn?
Usually, in therapy, one is encouraged to mindfully focus on celebrating their own achievements. Without comparison to others, and to develop positive self-talk about one's own value. These are copng strategies that can help someone depressed or hateful about fixating on others and comparing themselves.
But that takes training, receptivity, and dedication to the practice, because our default state and default mechanism for ascertaining satisfaction in life is that comparison we must take active measures to avoid.
Practicing mindfulness is the best first step if you're interested. It is a means to recognize your own negative self-talk. Once recognition is there, it opens more doors. It falls under Cognitive behavioral therapy or CBT, and it is a means to take control of your own thought processes, but requires patience and continued practice.
Thank you. It reminds me of something I used to do but stopped. I want to start over.
Because everyone thinks they need to live lavishly.
Everyone thinks they need a mansion or twelve cars to be happy.
If everyone would be content with simply living a modest life we could exist harmoniously with the environment.
But nope gotta have that big house with all that empty land for aesthetics so fuck everyone else ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This view only makes sense if the basic necessities for life were actually affordable for most people, which is completely untrue
Which is only true because of the greed that most people feel towards their own.
Essentially shits only expensive because enough people just go "fuck you I've got mine" despite having more than they'll ever need let alone use in their lifetime.
The phrase "enough people" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. "Enough" is a very small percentage of the population, only given outsized power due to our political and economic systems - systems which can be changed to disincentivise that behaviour and dissolve that power.
Not at all. I'll be happy if I have my own house, one car and if I can afford to travel now and then.
Not really. I feel like for instance if you are living in the US, you may easily need to pay the price of twelve cars if you need state of the art medical treatment for something like cancer. Hard to say no to a couple million bucks just even from this perspective.
This is what happens when you let an arbitrary system of resource management based on strife and competition govern your society top-down.
Making everyone compete for resources against one another in an abstract version of Hunger Games is not going to lead to good results.
If you decree a global law that says that everyone is to compete against one another in a zero sum game for resources, in perpetuity, and that law remains in full effect for generations upon generations, people will go insane. The algorithm programs us as well as we program it- "amass, forever" is not a great command to issue just in general with no other conditions or parameters, especially without a goal state. You don't just "program", you create a program that is to achieve some result.
If the only game in the world was soccer, and everyone in the world had to play, at all times, at the risk of dying if they don't, they will start conceptualizing their whole reality around soccer, and soccer will at some point supersede reality- it will become reality.
I like to ask people- "in a thousand years, if humanity is still around, do you think we will still be living under a capitalist system?". By far the most common response is more or less yes, and furrowed eyebrows. I find that most people are incapable of entertaining even the thought of an alternative. Not because they're stupid or ignorant, but because the thought would never occur to them, like if one were asking a fish to imagine a replacement for water, it's just beyond the scope of imagination bordering on the purely metaphysical.
Definitely team Hurley here