Noam Chomsky — Can Civilisation Survive?

Civilization will not survive if we keep fighting. The old way of fighting was somewhat sustainable, but ever since we started hiring out ally armies with the help of the money lenders, it's escalated out of control. Tolstoy realized this half-way through his life, and ended up becoming a christian anarchist which keeps all the values of Christianity, but denounces all government as they have always used the religious theologies to justify continual war. Traditional religious theology has since been replaced the new world religion, that being the religion of money.

There seems to be an underline belief that what these guys do at the top is just human nature, and anybody in their position would act in similar way, but I am not so sure about this. A good ex is from the guy who wrote `why zebras don`t get ulcers`, where a community of chimps lost all their alpha leaders due to some contamination in the food the alphas were eating. Note the alphas didn't let regular chimps eat the extra sources of food. Once the community lost its alphas, it became a way less stressful environment for the regular chimps, something that was not happening when the alphas were running the show. Also the community started working together within a equality structure rather than what was taking place when the alphas were calling all the shots. Even now after much time has passed, the community continues to be less stressed out & more co-operative within its community compared to other traditional alpha dominated chimp communities in the area.

Such_Saturation said:

Waremu said:

Such_Saturation said:

Waremu said:

Such_Saturation said:

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/may/27/corporations-paid-us-senators-fast-track-tpp

I would think that a place where this is not allowed would not be very capitalistic.

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This is corporatism. In a republic, the politicians are representatives of the people. This is why you have two houses. The constitution clearly states that they are to vote on behalf of the people, not any conflicts of interest. People can say whatever they may, but this IS a conflict of interest. Lobbyists are a conflict of interest because it sways the politician from fulfilling his legal duty of voting on behalf of the people to voting on behalf of the corporation.

So again, this is the merger of corporations and government. This is corporatism, not capitalism. People only still call America a capitalistic society because either A) they are ignorant of the definitions (as many are) or because B) it started out that way, before it moved to socialized corporatism and mob rule.

Our government does not even follow it's own laws anymore. This would and should not be permissible under a strictly constitutions society. Anyone who calls this capitalism is resorting to emotions rather than factual definitions of things. Sadly, too many people run government who are going off of emotion and not facts or logic.

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It doesn't matter, it is a deranged scenario of a "capital"-run world and it is also born from the womb of the greed of man.

A definitive system is one that is not only bulletproof to derangement (by being born as a solution to a deranged environment, by being born in a distributed manner in every point of space and by not requiring "instructions"), it is one that is bulletproof to greed itself by RECOGNIZING the connection between each and every agent. It is thus one that comes into being through a desire of the people, a desire for complete and utter well-being.

Capitalism in its most basic tenets, or more generally the very notion of private and privacy, has failed each one of these requirements.

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Oh, so now people shouldn't have the right to privacy? You see, you're getting things mixed up. The government should never be secretive or have privacy. However, the people should have that right. It is those in power who need to be watched and do their work out in the open and not in the shadows of the night.

And for the record, there will be no utopian society. Human nature always does and always will prevail. Capitalism is the best system we have had and it has worked. But again, for those who go by the definition of actual words, America hasn't had capitalism in a long time. The desire of the people is simply to be free and left alone and to prosper. Government is always the threat to these desires of the people and is like medicine. In large amounts it is poison and therefore must be constrained to small amounts by the people. removing that power from the hands of the people and centralizing it in Government will always be a disaster and any system that does that will be overthrown after not too long by the same people because it never works.

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The people in "the government" should be every single person, so ideally everyone knows everything about everyone. Not that you should be best friends with someone, but concealment of information is the root of this kind of issues. The laws of thermodynamics state such a process for physical systems, and the moment you imply that human societies should have a working that is above this, you commit the prime mistake.

Unfortunately the fact that you see competition as a most basic and unchangeable nature of man makes it all to easy to predict that you would be a strong advocate for the capitalistic economy. As soon as you see that it is not, it is very easy to move on. Egocentrism dissolves when the basic requirements are met, and if multiple people coalesce, then they can accomplish more than the simple sum of what their individual potentials would suggest. It is an intrinsic property of space. You wouldn't be here if your cells had not long ago given up their ability to exist separately from one another.

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The people in the government being every single person so that everyone knows something about everyone else ---- that sounds like a Nazi Police State on steroids. See, and this is the radical alternative to those who hate capitalism: in order to get rid of the "evil corporations" who make those evil things called "profits", we must all live in a society where even our most basic fundamental rights are given away to the state. We have no privacy, no right to property. All is lost. Talk about deranged. But again, this is the authoritarian/totalitarian nature of Marxism.

Perhaps what you're just looking for is to give up your identity and freedom for safety. Many people don't want that, however, and it goes against mans natural desires to be free. And you can't use the human body to justify that. Two vastly different things altogether. The fact that you see competition as unnatural in of itself shows how out of reality your solutions are. Competition is part of human nature. Just look at history and nature. Communists loves to bash the act of making profits, but the fact is men are naturally selfish and will not strive to do great things unless he has something invested that benefits him. And the ability to make any kind of profit you want is nothing short of amazing.

A system which inspires people to create great things for their interest of profit is natural and noting is wrong with it. It is only bad when it is done at the expense of people. Yet communists will say making profits is bad. Well, in their egalitarian society you are not rewarded based on your work and how well you do it and your talent, but rather for being a living breathing organism. Such a notion is nonsensical beyond measure.

Such_Saturation said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEFL8ElXHaU

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Once again, this is not capitalism. This is corporatism. What we have is a neofeudalistic society under corporatism. Making profits and writing laws at the expense of people's lives and on behalf of corproations and not people should be against human law. Furthermore, corporations do not own all government land under Capitalsim (they only own government land when they merge with government, which again is corporatism). In order for a corporation to own all of the water, for example, they would have to buy up all government Federal land, etc. This has absolutely nothing to do with Capitalism. Same silly arguments the occupy communists make. Corporations should not be able to have control over the worlds natural resources and these kinds of laws can be put in place alongside capitalism.

The main fundamental flaw to systems such as communism is "equality." This is one of the biggest falsehoods in science and every other area of life. People are mainly who they are based on what they do and how good they do it. Not everyone does everything the same, nor does everyone do the same things. Everyone has different levels of intellect, different talent, and these things all effect how well they can make money in life.

The cultural Marxist totalitarians like to use "equality" as their method of control, but there is no such thing and such concepts are dangerous to the ability and freedom of individuality and choice. It goes against human nature to be rewarded for doing a better job than someone else or being better at something than someone else is but being rewarded the same. The vast majority of people will not work in such a system. Such a system kills incentive that drives people to invent, create, and move forward. Capitalism uses and rewards you for how good you are and this in of itself creates the incentive needed to move society forward. It is no coincidence that those who do not understand the fundamentals of capitalism and economics really have no grasp on how things work in the finance world and, as a result, come up with all kinds of systems or ideas which don't benefit or reward the average person for their fruit and talent, but rather punishes them for the shortcomings of others. Usually these same people do not like self-accountability and ownership and this is also usually why they are for things like trading in their freedom for false security and to be a slave to the state, which is essentially what communism does. Of course, in our day, the state is owned by the corporate/central bankers, so they give up all the good things that Captalism gives as they throw Capitalism out for extreme systems such as communism, not knowing that they are essentially still slaves to the bankers because it is usually they who run the state. The founders of America knew this, which is why many of them wereso dead set against anyone else regulating and coining money aside from congress itself. Just look at what Andrew Jackson went through to get rid of the central banking system of his day. He understood the threat that it would pose to actual true free market capitalism.

The central bankers have created a monetary system of debt that has swallowed much of Europe and America and, ironically, because of this, quasi-communist countries such as Russia and China have been able to go against such a system and in this sense communism has worked for them, but only because there is a bigger enemy who actually uses fundamentals from their own communist playbook (cultural Marxism/"equality") through the implementation of things like "multiculturalism", flooding countries with so much immigration that they cannot financially sustain it and lose thief own cultural identity, getting them to take out loans they can never pay back, etc. Because these quasi-communist countries have more of a grip over private and public property/banking institutions, in conjunction with all their important assets (because the state owns or runs them directly and therefore international influence in culture/globalization cannot cause a change strong enough to have those assets bought out by their foreign entities which these bankers own), they are able to withstand the flood of globalization which is being used on behalf of the IMF and their NATO/US puppets to destabilize them financially/eonomically, and culturally.

mt_dreams said:

Civilization will not survive if we keep fighting. The old way of fighting was somewhat sustainable, but ever since we started hiring out ally armies with the help of the money lenders, it's escalated out of control. Tolstoy realized this half-way through his life, and ended up becoming a christian anarchist which keeps all the values of Christianity, but denounces all government as they have always used the religious theologies to justify continual war. Traditional religious theology has since been replaced the new world religion, that being the religion of money.

There seems to be an underline belief that what these guys do at the top is just human nature, and anybody in their position would act in similar way, but I am not so sure about this. A good ex is from the guy who wrote `why zebras don`t get ulcers`, where a community of chimps lost all their alpha leaders due to some contamination in the food the alphas were eating. Note the alphas didn't let regular chimps eat the extra sources of food. Once the community lost its alphas, it became a way less stressful environment for the regular chimps, something that was not happening when the alphas were running the show. Also the community started working together within a equality structure rather than what was taking place when the alphas were calling all the shots. Even now after much time has passed, the community continues to be less stressed out & more co-operative within its community compared to other traditional alpha dominated chimp communities in the area.

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You make some good points. I do believe that much of it is human nature, but that mostly comes into play at the lower end where people are compartmentalized and don't see the big picture of things. But at the very top, with the financial elite, I do believe it is more than just human nature. I do believe they have a specific motive and an agenda and that they see themselves as being higher than everyone else and the "lower class" folk as subspecies (many of them have written books saying such things). For example, many of the people behind the eugenics movement many decades ago (and even evolution itself) had such ideas.

I think Peat touches upon this in some ways which really hit the nail on the head. But essentially, it would have to get to the point where people stop fighting and make a system that does not require the same system the elites use. But be prepared to be invaded by them with another country if you're a country doing this. This is why change would have to come from the inside of all countries and work its way outward.

You make some interesting points about Toltsoy and Chrsitianity.
I think it will take things to get much worse before societies realize that there has to be some kind of moral structure to things. This new wave of "new atheism" which is now kind of popular is pretty much just another form of cultural Marxism, as they operate off the same talking points. They are so good at bashing anyone who believes in any kind of moral system or Christianity, but yet they fail to realize that their own "anything goes" mentality will ultimately be proven to have flaws too. I think we are beginning to see this with the breakdown in society of Western Europe and America. If there is no moral commonground, then the bar will continually be raised until the most craziest and destructive acts are legal and this will cause society to decay at such a fast pace that it will just eat itself alive. It will get to the point where ultimately utter depravity is reached and we see things like pedophiles having rights to do what they want to do with kids, etc., and the population collapses because the family collapsed with it (and we are beginning to see this now). When there is no moral structure and people no longer believe in doing good things to help others is when society cannot uphold itself. People become apathetic and feel helpless and this then allows all kinds of radicals to rule over the people and gain ground in government. I don't expect everyone to agree with me on all that, but just how I see things going in this world. It seems like there is an apathy and coldness among people today that wasn't there decades ago and it will lead for the allowance of all kinds of horrible things which do not benefit society or people in long run.

Waremu said:

You make some good points. I do believe that much of it is human nature, but that mostly comes into play at the lower end where people are compartmentalized and don't see the big picture of things. But at the very top, with the financial elite, I do believe it is more than just human nature. I do believe they have a specific motive and an agenda and that they see themselves as being higher than everyone else and the "lower class" folk as subspecies (many of them have written books saying such things). For example, many of the people behind the eugenics movement many decades ago (and even evolution itself) had such ideas.

I think Peat touches upon this in some ways which really hit the nail on the head. But essentially, it would have to get to the point where people stop fighting and make a system that does not require the same system the elites use. But be prepared to be invaded by them with another country if you're a country doing this. This is why change would have to come from the inside of all countries and work its way outward.

You make some interesting points about Toltsoy and Chrsitianity.
I think it will take things to get much worse before societies realize that there has to be some kind of moral structure to things. This new wave of "new atheism" which is now kind of popular is pretty much just another form of cultural Marxism, as they operate off the same talking points. They are so good at bashing anyone who believes in any kind of moral system or Christianity, but yet they fail to realize that their own "anything goes" mentality will ultimately be proven to have flaws too. I think we are beginning to see this with the breakdown in society of Western Europe and America. If there is no moral commonground, then the bar will continually be raised until the most craziest and destructive acts are legal and this will cause society to decay at such a fast pace that it will just eat itself alive. It will get to the point where ultimately utter depravity is reached and we see things like pedophiles having rights to do what they want to do with kids, etc., and the population collapses because the family collapsed with it (and we are beginning to see this now). When there is no moral structure and people no longer believe in doing good things to help others is when society cannot uphold itself. People become apathetic and feel helpless and this then allows all kinds of radicals to rule over the people and gain ground in government. I don't expect everyone to agree with me on all that, but just how I see things going in this world. It seems like there is an apathy and coldness among people today that wasn't there decades ago and it will lead for the allowance of all kinds of horrible things which do not benefit society or people in long run.

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Yeah the whole eugenics craze before WW2 was kind of crazy. I just read that Alexander Graham Bell, who is considered royalty in my country Canada, was pushing for deaf people to not be allowed to get married b/c he did not want the deaf population to increase. It's pretty scary that so many intelligent men thought these kinds of ideas were ethically righteous, and still do.

The attack on family you mentioned also seems to apply to the attack on community. It's like they are conditioning people to not trust their neighbors, turning the people who in the past would help you, into your enemies.

When over half of the world is born into slum-like conditions, & we see no movement from the rich to fix this negative effect of capitalism, & likewise no push from the middle class either, it shows that if you're in the system, you're only looking out for those that are close to you.

Life has improved too much (though most of this is just technology,) for the majority of people to fight back at the system. So it's more likely that this will continue until it ends up collapsing on itself. I'm really hoping that Greece ditches their debt. Other countries will have to take notice and it will at least get people talking about this. Whenever politics comes up, this should be the first thing to get people's gears going. Should we continue to be taxes +-10% by the money rulers, or should we look for better alternatives.

View: https://youtu.be/XOUuYfrtqIk

Wow thanks for bumping this thread - that was a trip down memory lane. Such, narouz, Waremu, Saltgirl and pboy all in the same thread. the ghosts of so many posters that are sorely missed.