72 Comments
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Brian L's avatar

I don’t see any change in the cards. If they’ve managed to keep people this docile this long… it’s game over man. Even a lot of people I know personally are that way. They just don’t care. Perfectly programmed as their rulers would have them, all the while thinking they’re making their own decisions. Not enough people care. It’s truly tragic, whatever your belief about human history and origins are.

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Brian L's avatar

Which is why hierarchal systems should never have existed in the first place. Horizontal power structures ensure there isn’t any power to seize because it’s equally distributed.

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denise ward's avatar

Please read this architecture that is totally "horizontal" and a beautiful workable solution: https://deniseward.substack.com/p/architecture-for-the-new-epoch

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Feral Finster's avatar

Of course. Humans are as easily led as any dog.

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Brian L's avatar
3hEdited

Or misled, as the case may be. And I’m not absolving myself, but I have put in the effort to better understand and have the hope of better navigating bullshit out of some sense of custodianship, as misguided as that seems to be. I thought, if we let the best and the brightest act in good faith, we’d all be better off. But brightest doesn’t always mean best and best doesn’t always mean brightest. We’re in a negative feedback loop with no end in sight for the simple reason that psychopaths are willing to sacrifice more to gain their way than the average person, who has been brainwashed relentlessly from birth. Seems the death cult wins this one.

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Feral Finster's avatar

Power is sociopaths what catnip is to cats. In fact, all systems eventually become run by sociopaths, as sociopaths are the ones who will do whatever it takes to get power.

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denise ward's avatar

Change doesn't happen in the peripherals or by the masses. It comes slowly, with a few people, very spread apart, till it grows by word of mouth. This is our power. Mycelium grows this way and we are of the earth and have this feature in us too.

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Michael's avatar

If AI isn’t a fraud, then it’s the elimination of many, perhaps 25% of white collar shitlib office jobs. That also means less shitlibs hiring contractors to redo their kitchens or floors, etc. it means repetitive low intel jobs are gone and medium to high knowledge based work goes. Thats an economic catastrophe. If AI improves itself exponentially, the change will be forced because capitalism won’t work anymore (even the cheating kind)

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Brian L's avatar

It’ll just be technofedualism.

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Michael's avatar

Like the movie, Elysium

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Brian L's avatar

Yeah, something along those lines

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Michael's avatar

Yep, lookin’ forward to that!

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Susan T's avatar

A lot to think about in this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpTOB8FQOsQ

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denise ward's avatar

Well if you care you ought to be finding others. Of course it's not going to start by the sleeping hordes. If you care, you need to do something right away. You probably don't know what to do, but merely seeking will show you a path.

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DMarlene's avatar

Basically Elon Musk's idea of his own wet dream.No one will ever love him. Please...send him now to Mars together with Bezos and wife.

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Chang Chokaski's avatar

>>"Please...send him now to Mars together with Bezos and wife."

...and EVERY billionaire on the planet.

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Diana van Eyk's avatar

I was just thinking about this kind of thing earlier today. What is capitalism doing for us and the world? What's the point? Is there any room for authentic connection and any kind of real meaning?

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Aamir Razak's avatar

Well said Ms. Van Eyk. If anything, the system benefits the wealthy oligarchs by continuing to give them further wealth, influence and power. For the rest of us, it is an exploitative system that ties our self-worth to our careers and how much we our net worth is, tries to get us to believe that buying things we don't need beyond our budgets is a good thing, and that AI generated chatbots are a substitute for human interaction. It's frankly pretty grim, I'd have to say

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Diana van Eyk's avatar

Thanks Aamir. It's very sad. Maybe our search for meaning and connection in the western world is what will save us.

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Aamir Razak's avatar

No problem, and agreed. It's one of the saddest aspects of our current world. I hope you're right, and that search for meaningful relationships, connection and unity can help us through this in the end

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Ned B.'s avatar

"We’re not meaningfully any closer to knowing how to keep humans alive completely separate from Earth’s biosphere."

Heck, we're currently having trouble keeping humans alive even within Earth's biosphere.

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Tom's avatar

Elon Musk is a bald faced liar when he says he is constantly "working." He probably puts in an honest 2 hours max per day. This idiot leech wants us to believe that it's simultaneously possible to shitpost & play video games literally 24/7, be a father, the head of multiple businesses when literally all he does is shitpost and either play videogames or pay someone else to play video games after which Musk takes personal credit for the player's achievements. Which, come to think of it is exactly how he functions as the leader of his companies: He steals ideas/companies (Tesla), he gets bailed out by the USG on his failing space companies (their first attempt was using old Soviet rocketry), and otherwise relies on the vastly underappreciated (or denied) ideas, accomplishments, and ...... well, WORK of others so he can concurrently destroy the planet, get filthy rich, destroy democratic norms and help wreck the rule of law and frame up all of that as exactly 180 degrees opposite of what he's doing.

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Aamir Razak's avatar

Very well said Tom. He definitely has a lot of time to post on X for someone "working" almost every hour of everyday. And it's disappointing that many don't know how he came to be the Tesla CEO, it wasn't him that came up with the idea for the cars, not to mention the significant government assistance he's received to get to where he is.

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Tom's avatar

The Starlink contracts (no-bid, I'm sure) for Ukraine have been VERY profitable for him. And that leads me to "polluting near space with his junk satellites..."

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Michael's avatar

All these guys are government psyops. No geniuses here. Look back, they puffed him up as the real life Tony Stark (Iron Man)

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Tom's avatar
42mEdited

Oh yeah, for sure. A rich psyop but a definite psyop of some kind. Let's call it the Mogul Psyop - "Look kiddies you can be a trillionaire too if you work hard enough, and taking giant government "defense" (that's been fixed now at least) contracts is just a normal thing that free marketeer capitalists do!"

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Vin LoPresti's avatar

Sociopaths will do what they do, I fear. And armed with the enormous power of enormous money, nothing short of complete societal upheaval will do any good. Energize the masses from below? Skepticism. Sorry.

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denise ward's avatar

But we use their money and seem quite happy to keep on doing so. Therefore we are feeding them. When do we hear of someone speaking about getting off their money? I talk about it ceaselessly but everyone just wants to stay the same. We can change right now, those of us who recognize the darkness.

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Aamir Razak's avatar

agreed or some way to stop the further flow of wealth to these already insanely rich oligarchs, but I am not sure how to do so

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denise ward's avatar

Have you sought to find out how you could be using a local currency or starting one up?

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Feral Finster's avatar

They get the sugar. We get the shit.

What does anyone propose to do about it?

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Tom's avatar
3hEdited

Mass action is probably the only solution, but that has been rendered virtually impossible in the United States. I suppose if enough people in other countries could mobilize and wrest control away from billionaires and unelected bureacrat puppets of the billionaires, we might have a chance. But it's looking bleak and they're always building new systems of torture and control (battle tested on Palestinians and Slavs for the time being - coming home soon in earnest via the Capitalist-Imperialist boomerang).

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denise ward's avatar

Once you take away their power what's the plan to do next? Forget about stripping anyone of power, forget about taking anything down because that only feeds the dark energies. Instead be creative - what can we start doing? Don't let anything stop you from doing it even if the rest of the world doesn't move. Because if everyone said there's nothing we can do, then nothing will be done. Whereas there are a few people around who want to change the world and will do anything to see it through. Find them.

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The Revolution Continues's avatar

If only we could transform people like Musk into an AI so he can live out his happy life with his AI "love" in a nanosecond, and then we pull the plug on him. Forever.

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Chang Chokaski's avatar

Love the idea! Now, who's going to step up and make this a reality?

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Aamir Razak's avatar

A great idea CA, maybe his neuralink system can reach that level eventually and he can become an AI and leave the rest of us alone?

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The Revolution Continues's avatar

One could only hope!

Any AI experts out there know how we can do this?

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Rodolfo Marusi Guareschi's avatar

To change the world, we must change the human species, and to change the human species, we must transition from its competitive hierarchical structure to a cooperative conarchical structure, in which each person must give and do according to their abilities and receive according to their needs, without excess. To do this, we must create a "break" in the chain of events and replace the broken link with a new link. This new link replaces the initial conditions that gave rise to the current structure with new initial conditions that give rise to a new process, in which production meets the vital needs of all through free associations of workers and entrepreneurs equipped with the necessary means of production, within the limits of nature's sustainability. It is not a question of bringing about a revolution, which would only change the dominant forces, but rather a phase transition that radically alters all human relationships and behaviors. It is possible and will be done.

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denise ward's avatar

This is so easy to do now that we have digital tech. We don't need banks, we don't need chaperones (government) Money is only a transference of numbers and we can do that directly from one account to the other.

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A.Dean Skidgell's avatar

This Cyberpunk Dystopia really is THAT pathetic, y'all.

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Mike Rube's avatar

Yes. The danger is the distraction. This is probably a good time to continue with vigor the work of creating an alternative World that we can love, or at least be proud of.

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Laurie Z's avatar

"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye, but pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?".

We have the world we have the consciousness for so the solution I think is to evolve our own individual consciousness, and help others to do the same.

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denise ward's avatar

Yes! We need to talk about good things, about our powers, our ability to choose. And find like-minded others. We also need to log our transactions without banks.

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jamenta's avatar
3hEdited

There is plenty of resources (and energy) to be harvested from our own solar system, and it does not require human transportation capabilities. What is required is advances in robotics and remote explorer/gathering tools that can leave earth and return with an almost unlimited amount of resources and energy. For example, the sun itself generates 386 billion million gigawatts - compared to a nuclear reactor of 1 gigawatt.

So - I wouldn't write off space exploration and technology completely.

The real problem we are facing right now is a psychological one, and is self-created by the species. We currently have a Social system where power and resources are being pooled and controlled by a relatively few individuals - and then directed toward their own personal ends (or personal fantasies like Elon Musk) - which clearly do not coincide with a healthy future for the rest of the human race, or the planet. This is the real obstacle the human race is facing right now - it isn't AI, and it isn't technology - it's the Social construction and Capitalistic system that is being imposed upon us all that is the problem. And it's becoming a very dire one indeed. There really is nothing wrong with a *loving* (well regulated) technology, however. A lot of good can come from technology and has come from technology.

Is there any hope? I think there is. With every force there comes an equal and opposite reaction. There seems to be an odd balance of forces throughout human history, that leads to an admittedly donkey slow growth to human knowledge and enlightenment, but growth nevertheless. There will be opposition to the Elon Musks of the world, there will be resistance - and with that resistance there will come hope and new opportunities.

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Tom's avatar

It's really kind of fucked up when you think about the fact that virtually every negative thing ever concocted by authors of sci-fi dating back to the 19th century is becoming or has become material and devolutionary fact.

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denise ward's avatar

That's because they pictured dystopia and not a beautiful world. What movies can you think of that paints the world in a beautiful way? La Belle Verde is one of the only movies I can think of that came close.

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Bazzio101's avatar

Penny Arcade + Shyster =

Circus

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David Baird's avatar

If Musk's trillion bucks isn't buying him happiness, that's great. I hope he's the most miserable fucker on the planet. He's certainly made millions of others miserable. Pathetic individual.

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Michael's avatar

Paper wealth. There’s nothing real behind it

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