Bernie Sanders
In reply to the discussion: Did we see this one? I thought it was good. [View all]hunter
(38,840 posts)A dog on a leash.
I'm a dumpster diving Luddite.
I bought a new car once in the mid 'eighties. Won't do that again. I drive a different car now, as little as possible. Fill the gas tank once every couple months, whether I need to or not. This $800 car is older than the car I bought new when I was young and too full of myself. For some sick reason I live in a culture that refuses to treat non-drivers as fully functional adults. Otherwise I wouldn't have a car.
The last new computer I bought was a Raspberry Pi for $35.00. Beyond that, in spite of my fascination with computers, I haven't ever thought to buy a new computer. I can usually find or make what I need in someone else's discards. I first signed onto the internet in 1979, haven't been away since. 90% of the internet is crap and always has been.
90% of work is crap, which is Sturgeon's Law
Or, "Fourfifths of everybody's work must be bad. But the remnant is worth the trouble for its own sake," if you'd prefer Rudyard Kipling's framing in terms of 1890's levels of automation. My Neanderthal Ancestors no doubt worked just as hard as they had to, life was very much easier at times and much more difficult at times than any internet voyager experiences today.
But there are now maybe a billion people living today suffering lives that suck compared to the life of any Neanderthal.
Technology, what of it? We're apes, always will be. Maybe if we humans are lucky our intellectual descendants will be something more, but they won't be human. More likely we end up as a curious layer of trash in the geologic record of earth.
I'm trained as an evolutionary biologist. What's the world going to look like in 100,000 years? We're all equal on those time scales.
I don't respect wealth. The wealthier someone is, the more likely they are to be some kind of sociopath.
90% of the uber-wealthy are very clearly sociopaths, some more harmful to their fellow humans and the earth's natural environment than others.
I'm a hypocrite in many ways, not a hermit living in a cave, but there's a shortage of caves lately, or even places to plant a small garden and otherwise live a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
In my opinion the world would be a much better place if more people used birth control and avoided unnecessary work.
If a person must be busy, than they ought to teach, practice medicine, create art (science is an art too), help those who need help, plant a big garden, but otherwise participate as little as possible in this global economy that is destroying the natural environment and turning people into tools and slaves.
I may yet die a homeless person on a park bench, My current "net-worth" is sub-zero, I've been a sick homeless off-my-meds person at times, but it's the thankfully rare experiences I've had "selling out" that always grind more on my conscience than all the other crap I've experienced in this life.