dehumanization is the easy and wrong way out. it’s human to have the capacity for infinite cruelty. change the material circumstances and you too might be cruel.
I don’t. Politics is the greatest strength of the human species. Ants and wolves and elephants are pretty political compared to snakes or rats, but humans are the most political animal by several orders of magnitude. It’s their capacity for political organising that made the Pyramids, and Bioshock, and put a man on the moon, and created Avatar
Lol I feel like our greatest strength could be defined in a better way, particularly considering what “politics” has gotten us in pretty much every single civilization… Collapse
When a Cheeto gets people murdered in the streets, that’s politics
We can do this all day bro, I get what you are saying but I’m going to respectfully disagree. Yes politics are cool when you define them as “human cooperation” but that’s a really broad and wide definition that fails to capture a shitload of nuance. So yeah. If you just say “cooperation is cool” I guess you’re right. Not exactly deep though and one could argue that tools, ingenuity, love, the desire to explore and adventure, the thirst for knowledge, all off those other things drove the good parts of society… Not politics. So I am going to respectfully disagree.
I’m not saying politics is all good, but politics gives humans the power to make all those nice things you said mean something. Tools only get passed on to the next generation because of schools and apprenticeships; political organisation of knowledge. Ingenuity only has a lasting effect because of education politics, and the political organisation of philosophy and science. Climbing Mount Everest and landing on the moon would be difficult or impossible without politics to make supply chains and organise expedition parties. Knowledge would die in a generation if not for our politics, like it does with octopodes, an animal just as smart as humans, but apolitical.
And I think love is an inherently political emotion. Apolitical animals like octopodes or lizards don’t have an evolutionary reason to develop love, except perhaps sexual love for reproduction. Look at seahorses and how political and loving they are in comparison. Or penguins. So very political, so very loving. They care for their partners and children for a long time. Love is what binds them together and lets them do all those politics. Compare with eagles, whose most advanced political organisation is “get off my lawn”. Their lack of love makes them less political.
Man, I wish we lived in a world where being kind and treating everyone equally wasn’t somehow political.
He’s nice and not racist. Pfff woke.
In a normal democracy it isn’t, but fascists aren’t democratic people. By definition.
they’re also barely people
dehumanization is the easy and wrong way out. it’s human to have the capacity for infinite cruelty. change the material circumstances and you too might be cruel.
Right on. It’s so deeply human that no other animal has been observed to be as cruel as we are to each other and our environment.
You’ll lose that opinion real fast if you learn about chimps, dolphins, or even lions.
I don’t. Politics is the greatest strength of the human species. Ants and wolves and elephants are pretty political compared to snakes or rats, but humans are the most political animal by several orders of magnitude. It’s their capacity for political organising that made the Pyramids, and Bioshock, and put a man on the moon, and created Avatar
Lol I feel like our greatest strength could be defined in a better way, particularly considering what “politics” has gotten us in pretty much every single civilization… Collapse
Politics also made all those civilisations.
When a society all agrees not to eat all the potatoes now, but to plant some underground and wait for them to grow more potatoes, that’s politics.
When an artist and a programmer agree to divide responsibilities and make a video game together, that’s politics.
When a discord moderator decides to force everyone to agree to a no politics rule, that’s politics.
When a Cheeto gets people murdered in the streets, that’s politics
We can do this all day bro, I get what you are saying but I’m going to respectfully disagree. Yes politics are cool when you define them as “human cooperation” but that’s a really broad and wide definition that fails to capture a shitload of nuance. So yeah. If you just say “cooperation is cool” I guess you’re right. Not exactly deep though and one could argue that tools, ingenuity, love, the desire to explore and adventure, the thirst for knowledge, all off those other things drove the good parts of society… Not politics. So I am going to respectfully disagree.
I’m not saying politics is all good, but politics gives humans the power to make all those nice things you said mean something. Tools only get passed on to the next generation because of schools and apprenticeships; political organisation of knowledge. Ingenuity only has a lasting effect because of education politics, and the political organisation of philosophy and science. Climbing Mount Everest and landing on the moon would be difficult or impossible without politics to make supply chains and organise expedition parties. Knowledge would die in a generation if not for our politics, like it does with octopodes, an animal just as smart as humans, but apolitical.
And I think love is an inherently political emotion. Apolitical animals like octopodes or lizards don’t have an evolutionary reason to develop love, except perhaps sexual love for reproduction. Look at seahorses and how political and loving they are in comparison. Or penguins. So very political, so very loving. They care for their partners and children for a long time. Love is what binds them together and lets them do all those politics. Compare with eagles, whose most advanced political organisation is “get off my lawn”. Their lack of love makes them less political.
I get your point but Bioshock and Avatar seem pretty out of place in that list
The pyramids were a technological triumph that has made a farce of conspiracy theorists
Bioshock is an artistic triumph that has made a farce of fascism
The Moon missions were an anthropic triumph that made a farce out of the relentless hostility of space
Avatar was an artistic triumph that made a farce out of cinema.
That’s just a list of four random things I like