Sounds like someone who has had the privilege to not have to fight to control the things he creates. Get back to me if you ever have the things you create so chronically ripped from you with no recourse that you go mad, like the majority of Americans.
"Sounds like someone who has had the privilege to not have to fight to control the things he creates."
I apologize about that comment. I was in a bad mood, but there is never a justification for an evidence-free accusation.
That said, I have run into plenty of people who came from money/stability/etc and higher who lived in huts etc. for months, and from that slice of time (still possessing an upper-class or upper-middle-class brain along with unbroken relationship escape hatches) claim to know what being homeless is like. But I don't know you. May I ask how were you raised?
Getting back to the capitalism topic, if you care to:
"I disagree that having power over the things one creates is a primal human urge. / It's not about power over, it's about cooperation with. Striving for power over things is the basic problem with 'civilization' if that's what it is."
I still say maintaining "power over the things one creates", AND "cooperation with" other humans within one's social environment, AND (I'll add) conflict with other humans both inside (temporary) and outside (perpetual) one's social environment are, yes, natural human needs/instincts. I would say "Striving for power over" *other* peoples' creations is, instead, "the basic problem with 'civilization' " How else could Marx talk about "appropriation" of labor if he wasn't asserting that something the laborer created was being taken from him?
The problem with Marx, however, is from that, *then* he asserts a sweeping generalization of some kind of right to "common" ownership (in practice, always perpetually controlled by a vanguard!) -- a generalization plucked from his imagination that, IMO, quickly becomes far worse than that the capitalist version (which at least is "closer to the earth), and which has caused easily as much misery since 1917 as capitalism since the rise of heavy industrialization since early 19th century.
As a tangential note, I am *beyond skeptical* at this point in my life of all the things my "betters" (I don't mean you) have tried to tell me over the decades, from the religious to the government to the education establishments and beyond. Analogous to evangelical Christians' use of "WWJD" (What Would Jesus Do?) I have my own immediate, conscious reaction to EVERYTHING told to me that clashes with my experience: "WWIBT" (Why Would I Believe That?) Thus I have less-than-zero respect for authorities ipso facto, which is quite different from my younger stupid days several decades ago, and, apparently, *especially* quite different from most "normal" people today.
Sounds like someone who has had the privilege to not have to fight to control the things he creates. Get back to me if you ever have the things you create so chronically ripped from you with no recourse that you go mad, like the majority of Americans.
"Sounds like someone who has had the privilege to not have to fight to control the things he creates."
I apologize about that comment. I was in a bad mood, but there is never a justification for an evidence-free accusation.
That said, I have run into plenty of people who came from money/stability/etc and higher who lived in huts etc. for months, and from that slice of time (still possessing an upper-class or upper-middle-class brain along with unbroken relationship escape hatches) claim to know what being homeless is like. But I don't know you. May I ask how were you raised?
Getting back to the capitalism topic, if you care to:
"I disagree that having power over the things one creates is a primal human urge. / It's not about power over, it's about cooperation with. Striving for power over things is the basic problem with 'civilization' if that's what it is."
I still say maintaining "power over the things one creates", AND "cooperation with" other humans within one's social environment, AND (I'll add) conflict with other humans both inside (temporary) and outside (perpetual) one's social environment are, yes, natural human needs/instincts. I would say "Striving for power over" *other* peoples' creations is, instead, "the basic problem with 'civilization' " How else could Marx talk about "appropriation" of labor if he wasn't asserting that something the laborer created was being taken from him?
The problem with Marx, however, is from that, *then* he asserts a sweeping generalization of some kind of right to "common" ownership (in practice, always perpetually controlled by a vanguard!) -- a generalization plucked from his imagination that, IMO, quickly becomes far worse than that the capitalist version (which at least is "closer to the earth), and which has caused easily as much misery since 1917 as capitalism since the rise of heavy industrialization since early 19th century.
As a tangential note, I am *beyond skeptical* at this point in my life of all the things my "betters" (I don't mean you) have tried to tell me over the decades, from the religious to the government to the education establishments and beyond. Analogous to evangelical Christians' use of "WWJD" (What Would Jesus Do?) I have my own immediate, conscious reaction to EVERYTHING told to me that clashes with my experience: "WWIBT" (Why Would I Believe That?) Thus I have less-than-zero respect for authorities ipso facto, which is quite different from my younger stupid days several decades ago, and, apparently, *especially* quite different from most "normal" people today.