Boomers: The Evil Generation!

[Lexicus]

I'm not sure I understand what you mean.

He's asking which part of the West isn't a colonialist pig-dog.

 

[inthesomeday]

You folks seem very confused about what the world is. The world is a lot bigger than human society, in fact it contains human society. I have conceded in the very message that the life experience for some people has improved. But the WORLD has become a worse place. We have extincted thousands and thousands of species. We have poisoned entire biomes and made them permanently unliveable for a majority of living creatures. The world has become WORSE.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I'm not sure I understand what you mean.

What I meant was, which part of "the west" are you suggesting isn't just a colonialist pig-dog?

EDIT: Awesome cross post there, @Lexicus!

 

[Timsup2nothin]

You folks seem very confused about what the world is. The world is a lot bigger than human society, in fact it contains human society. I have conceded in the very message that the life experience for some people has improved. But the WORLD has become a worse place. We have extincted thousands and thousands of species. We have poisoned entire biomes and made them permanently unliveable for a majority of living creatures. The world has become WORSE.

Extinctions happen. Always have. Biomes change. Always have. Space is made for new creatures, new biomes. "The world" goes on, and couldn't care less.

 

[Patine]

He's asking which part of the West isn't a colonialist pig-dog.

The Most Serene Republic of San Marino, the oldest nation on Earth to continuously call itself a "Republic" by national or government labelling (since 1282), and the oldest nation in the world to continuously hold it's current borders (since the 4th Century) also has no traceable Colonial endeavours, significant explorers, conquerors, missionaries, or exploiters who are commonly known by name who were born it's borders.

 

[Patine]

You folks seem very confused about what the world is. The world is a lot bigger than human society, in fact it contains human society. I have conceded in the very message that the life experience for some people has improved. But the WORLD has become a worse place. We have extincted thousands and thousands of species. We have poisoned entire biomes and made them permanently unliveable for a majority of living creatures. The world has become WORSE.

Extinctions happen. Always have. Biomes change. Always have. Space is made for new creatures, new biomes. "The world" goes on, and couldn't care less.

This is apparently how the world will likely look, by scientific extrapolation, in 2.25 billion years REGARDLESS of what humanity does with it.

 

[Birdjaguar]

You folks seem very confused about what the world is. The world is a lot bigger than human society, in fact it contains human society. I have conceded in the very message that the life experience for some people has improved. But the WORLD has become a worse place. We have extincted thousands and thousands of species. We have poisoned entire biomes and made them permanently unliveable for a majority of living creatures. The world has become WORSE.

If that is your perspective, then again you are wrong. As an entity, the world is neutral to life and its existence. The world is, what, 2 billion years old? And you want to look at a pretty random 8000 year period and say OMG! things are terrible. The things you complain about are only important to us. The Permian extinction wiped out 95% of all life. That was pretty bad for life, but the earth shook it off and moved on. And guess what, 250 million years later, life is thriving. You need to better define what you are talking about and how you are measuring things.

 

[Peuri]

He's asking which part of the West isn't a colonialist pig-dog.

Oh, I see. My bad. The part that has been fighting for democracy and human rights since the enlightenment? The part that has championed free thought and enquiry since the end of the Middle ages? The part that has criticized the poor treatment of colonialized peoples? The part that has just wanted to be left alone with their family? That is all a part of the west too. And indeed parts of that has been uniquely succesful in the west first.

 

[inthesomeday]

Dang y’all got me! So then how can we possibly assign a positive value to “progress”? Considering all things are totally meaningless. Surely then we ought to be critical of progress?

It’s frightening how you people operate.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Dang y’all got me! So then how can we possibly assign a positive value to “progress”? Considering all things are totally meaningless. Surely then we ought to be critical of progress?

It’s frightening how you people operate.

That's why I used life expectancy and leisure time activities. They are things we can measure about our lives.

EDIT: When you want to measure progress you have to pick a time frame and a measuring stick.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

The Most Serene Republic of San Marino, the oldest nation on Earth to continuously call itself a "Republic" by national or government labelling (since 1282), and the oldest nation in the world to continuously hold it's current borders (since the 4th Century) also has no traceable Colonial endeavours, significant explorers, conquerors, missionaries, or exploiters who are commonly known by name who were born it's borders.

While they did not perform their own colonizing, in the 19th century the Republic of San Marino dealt with their population pressures the same way every other European nation did...by exporting the citizenry into the "unused" parts of the world.

 

[inthesomeday]

BUT YOUVE JUST DONE IT AGAIN!!! Maddening. You can’t with one hand preach progress as the incremental increase of some silly numbers and with the other say “well all those figures about our environmental disaster is meaningless because the universe doesn’t actually care.”

 

[Birdjaguar]

BUT YOUVE JUST DONE IT AGAIN!!! Maddening. You can’t with one hand preach progress as the incremental increase of some silly numbers and with the other say “well all those figures about our environmental disaster is meaningless because the universe doesn’t actually care.”

Sure I can. Progress is only relevant to people. And by most measures we have had steady progress in improvements to people's lives over the past 200 or so years. You can also change the measuring stick and say that in the past 20 years we have not made progress in responding to an increasingly evident environmental crisis that looks like it is coming quickly.

With an extended time frame of 1 million years, nothing we do matters at all.

 

[Peuri]

BUT YOUVE JUST DONE IT AGAIN!!! Maddening. You can’t with one hand preach progress as the incremental increase of some silly numbers and with the other say “well all those figures about our environmental disaster is meaningless because the universe doesn’t actually care.”

So you are not advocating primitivism, but you lament that human expansion causes extinction? We have been killing off species since the stone age. The only reasonable solution to this seems to be primitivism, if progress is to be calculated in terms of biodiversity.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

BUT YOUVE JUST DONE IT AGAIN!!! Maddening. You can’t with one hand preach progress as the incremental increase of some silly numbers and with the other say “well all those figures about our environmental disaster is meaningless because the universe doesn’t actually care.”

Where does the madness begin though? Wasn't it you who stated categorically that the world had become a "worse place"? The "silly numbers" of life expectancy and leisure time per capita seem to be pointing to the exact opposite, and in the absence of any numbers, silly or not, to support your contra position who is it that is mad here? You cited extinctions and lost biomes, but those do in fact 'just happen' in the course of "the world" moving along. Even the inevitable "loss" of Homo Sapiens is really not going to be catastrophic to "the world."

Now, if we get away from that nihilistic perspective and start focusing on "the human lot" then we get to those silly numbers again, and have to acknowledge that the human lot has gotten better, not worse.

 

[inthesomeday]

And this is the flaw in the narrative of progress. It’s so extensively cherry-picked and relies on so many fallacies that it collapses on any critical analysis.

What you’re saying is “things have gotten better for people over x arbitrary timeline.” This is demonstrably false, if we use the most obvious metric, which is the sheer volume of fatality and destruction of life wrought by colonialism and imperialism. How many indigenous people really saw a meaningful improvement to their lives as a result of colonialism? How long did that take? Today native Americans in the US lead the country, and quite possibly the world, in obesity rates, alcoholism, suicide, victimization by state and corporate forces, and plenty of other “important metrics”. I guess they have TVs though, and some of them have been saved by medicine. How many? More than the hundreds of millions whose lives were taken or irreparably damaged by the progress machine? I doubt it.

And beyond that it relies on a deranged separation between humanity and nature. You say, well we don’t have to think about the environmental effects of “progress” because progress is a solely human concept. But in doing so you implicitly— or really quite explicitly— ignore the obviously inseparable relationship between the natural world and human life and wellbeing!!! Industrialism produced a great deal of wealth for a slim minority of people at the expense of the lives of billions of others, for a very short period of time. And you call this a positive? Then you are nothing but a fool.

 

[Hygro]

...reinforce notions of scarcity?

Yeah, if there's enough to go around but nobody sees it because it's been kept from them by their own mass-austerity then they will witness scarcity and then believe the scarcity to be real limits rather than policy-inflicted limits.

 

[inthesomeday]

Where does the madness begin though? Wasn't it you who stated categorically that the world had become a "worse place"? The "silly numbers" of life expectancy and leisure time per capita seem to be pointing to the exact opposite, and in the absence of any numbers, silly or not, to support your contra position who is it that is mad here? You cited extinctions and lost biomes, but those do in fact 'just happen' in the course of "the world" moving along. Even the inevitable "loss" of Homo Sapiens is really not going to be catastrophic to "the world."

Now, if we get away from that nihilistic perspective and start focusing on "the human lot" then we get to those silly numbers again, and have to acknowledge that the human lot has gotten better, not worse.

I didn’t steer us towards nihilism. I recognized the reality that human “progress” has destroyed the planet. Ignoring that in favor of some impossibly isolated analysis of the vague and elusive “human lot” isn’t even nihilism, just stupidity.

 

[Hygro]

BUT YOUVE JUST DONE IT AGAIN!!! Maddening. You can’t with one hand preach progress as the incremental increase of some silly numbers and with the other say “well all those figures about our environmental disaster is meaningless because the universe doesn’t actually care.”

The observer matters too. Someone on this forum criticized big scale space expansion as "polluting other worlds". An absurd complaint absent other life. Pollution, as real as the material we label it, is a social construct that is bad because an observer deems it bad. Otherwise what's the difference between pollution and any other chemical phenomenon?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

And this is the flaw in the narrative of progress. It’s so extensively cherry-picked and relies on so many fallacies that it collapses on any critical analysis.

What you’re saying is “things have gotten better for people over x arbitrary timeline.” This is demonstrably false, if we use the most obvious metric, which is the sheer volume of fatality and destruction of life wrought by colonialism and imperialism. How many indigenous people really saw a meaningful improvement to their lives as a result of colonialism? How long did that take? Today native Americans in the US lead the country, and quite possibly the world, in obesity rates, alcoholism, suicide, victimization by state and corporate forces, and plenty of other “important metrics”. I guess they have TVs though, and some of them have been saved by medicine. How many? More than the hundreds of millions whose lives were taken or irreparably damaged by the progress machine? I doubt it.

And beyond that it relies on a deranged separation between humanity and nature. You say, well we don’t have to think about the environmental effects of “progress” because progress is a solely human concept. But in doing so you implicitly— or really quite explicitly— ignore the obviously inseparable relationship between the natural world and human life and wellbeing!!! Industrialism produced a great deal of wealth for a slim minority of people at the expense of the lives of billions of others, for a very short period of time. And you call this a positive? Then you are nothing but a fool.

More people are dying every day, right now, than ever before in human history!!!! Woe is us!!!

Oh.

Wait.

Yeah, that is the inevitable corollary to having grown a truly staggering population. However, the flip side, that there will be more humans who lay their heads down to sleep tonight after spending the day not dying is also true. The sheer volume of living and life is "the most obvious metric" to use.