The End of Nature's Great Ape Experiment.

[konradv]

My premise isn't found in the title of this thread.
It is the same premise Hedges presented in his post, namely that human progress is largely a myth:

"'The experience of a relatively easy 500 years of expansion and colonization, the constant taking over of new lands, led to the modern capitalist myth that you can expand forever,' Wright said. 'It is an absurd myth...'

"This 500-year run made it not only seem easy but normal.

"We believe things will always get bigger and better. We have to understand that this long period of expansion and prosperity was an anomaly. It has rarely happened in history and will never happen again."

Chris Hedges: The Myth of Human Progress - Chris Hedges' Columns - Truthdig

Human progress will continue. It'll just look different.

All we're doing is going through a transition from an industrial society to an information society. Just as the change from the dark ages to the enlightenment and the change from an agrarian society to the industrial age resulted in turmoil, violence, fear, revolutions and chaos, so too will this sea-change.

It may take 100 years, but it will eventually settle out into something brand new and different, perhaps with different masters and for certain, a different form of government.

In less than twenty years we will have practically infinite enrgy, limitless resources and a better life style than ever before, in fact it will make the Utopian-frauds on the left quake with fear in their boots that humanity might grow to be completely independent of government programs and oversight.

Wasn't that Marx's plan? How did that work out?

 

[JimBowie1958]

Human progress will continue. It'll just look different.

All we're doing is going through a transition from an industrial society to an information society. Just as the change from the dark ages to the enlightenment and the change from an agrarian society to the industrial age resulted in turmoil, violence, fear, revolutions and chaos, so too will this sea-change.

It may take 100 years, but it will eventually settle out into something brand new and different, perhaps with different masters and for certain, a different form of government.

In less than twenty years we will have practically infinite enrgy, limitless resources and a better life style than ever before, in fact it will make the Utopian-frauds on the left quake with fear in their boots that humanity might grow to be completely independent of government programs and oversight.

Wasn't that Marx's plan? How did that work out?

Marx did not plan to attain this plentiful environment through technological progress and increased efficiency in production, instead he wanted to slow production and subsist on rationing what resources were produced, so no, this is not what Marx advocated or invisioned.

What I am describing is basically the technological utopianism portrayed in Star Trek the Next Generation.

 

[JimBowie1958]

Do you think the USA will survive the next 100 years, or go the way of the Romans, Mayans, and Sumerians? If I understand what Hedges and his sources are saying correctly, the very technology that's given us historic levels of luxury and comfort are the very same forces threatening our extinction.

"But even as our economic and environmental systems unravel, after the hottest year in the contiguous 48 states since record keeping began 107 years ago, we lack the emotional and intellectual creativity to shut down the engine of global capitalism.

"We have bound ourselves to a doomsday machine that grinds forward, as the draft report of the National Climate Assessment and Development Advisory Committee illustrates."

Chris Hedges: The Myth of Human Progress - Chris Hedges' Columns - Truthdig

Yes, I think it will survive, sort of on the order of Spain and Britain surviving the end of the age of absolute monarchs. They're still here, but different.

Spain and England survived their Empires and absolute monarchs partially by plundering Africa and the New World. The English, in particular, set in motion an industrial machine that demands expansion for its survival. Human population has tripled in my lifetime, yet a steadily widening gap between rich and poor ensures there will never be enough to go around.

"The number of people in dire poverty today-about 2 billion-is greater that the world's entire population in the early 1900s. That's not progress."

"We’re Ice Age hunters with a shave and a suit. We are not good long-term thinkers. We would much rather gorge ourselves on dead mammoths by driving a herd over a cliff than figure out how to conserve the herd so it can feed us and our children forever. That is the transition our civilization has to make. And we’re not doing that.”

Chris Hedges: The Myth of Human Progress - Chris Hedges' Columns - Truthdig

Plundered? Bullshit.

Allowing businesses to enter a territory (that they brought civilization to) and conduct business transactions is not plunder. The third world minorities that participated in that economy for what we think of as slave wages they took those jobs with that low pay VOLUNTARILY because they wanted more of those modern tech devices and had to find cash to acquire them.

Sometimes racial groups would try to drive foreign ethnic people out and bar them from entering the colonies from outside, so that they could more effectively control their colony with its native population, only to discover that the minorities they tried to fence out would get in anyway by any means necesary. THEY WANTED THOSE JOBS AND WERE GLAD TO HAVE THEM.

And resources taken out? That was through trade, the Westerners would give them manufactured goods and the locals would give them mineral rights/products in return.

Why is it that you old Marxists cant imagine people freely trading without it being exploitation or plundering by someone against someone else?

 

[georgephillip]

Yes, I think it will survive, sort of on the order of Spain and Britain surviving the end of the age of absolute monarchs. They're still here, but different.

Spain and England survived their Empires and absolute monarchs partially by plundering Africa and the New World. The English, in particular, set in motion an industrial machine that demands expansion for its survival. Human population has tripled in my lifetime, yet a steadily widening gap between rich and poor ensures there will never be enough to go around.

"The number of people in dire poverty today-about 2 billion-is greater that the world's entire population in the early 1900s. That's not progress."

"We’re Ice Age hunters with a shave and a suit. We are not good long-term thinkers. We would much rather gorge ourselves on dead mammoths by driving a herd over a cliff than figure out how to conserve the herd so it can feed us and our children forever. That is the transition our civilization has to make. And we’re not doing that.”

Chris Hedges: The Myth of Human Progress - Chris Hedges' Columns - Truthdig

Plundered? Bullshit.

Allowing businesses to enter a territory (that they brought civilization to) and conduct business transactions is not plunder. The third world minorities that participated in that economy for what we think of as slave wages they took those jobs with that low pay VOLUNTARILY because they wanted more of those modern tech devices and had to find cash to acquire them.

Sometimes racial groups would try to drive foreign ethnic people out and bar them from entering the colonies from outside, so that they could more effectively control their colony with its native population, only to discover that the minorities they tried to fence out would get in anyway by any means necesary. THEY WANTED THOSE JOBS AND WERE GLAD TO HAVE THEM.

And resources taken out? That was through trade, the Westerners would give them manufactured goods and the locals would give them mineral rights/products in return.

Why is it that you old Marxists cant imagine people freely trading without it being exploitation or plundering by someone against someone else?

Because for the last 500 years old capitalists have plundered ( To take by force or wrongfully; to commit robbery or looting, to raid) indigenous cultures from Mali to Maine. After smallpox decimated the native populations of the Americas, old capitalists imported thousands of African slaves whose INVOLUNTARY labor drove the cotton/sugar economy. Currently two billion people live in dire poverty (no obesity, iphones, cable tv, computers, potable water, etc) more than the entire global population of the early 20th Century.

Plunder or Progress?

 

[Oldguy]

Yes, I think it will survive, sort of on the order of Spain and Britain surviving the end of the age of absolute monarchs. They're still here, but different.

Spain and England survived their Empires and absolute monarchs partially by plundering Africa and the New World. The English, in particular, set in motion an industrial machine that demands expansion for its survival. Human population has tripled in my lifetime, yet a steadily widening gap between rich and poor ensures there will never be enough to go around.

"The number of people in dire poverty today-about 2 billion-is greater that the world's entire population in the early 1900s. That's not progress."

"We’re Ice Age hunters with a shave and a suit. We are not good long-term thinkers. We would much rather gorge ourselves on dead mammoths by driving a herd over a cliff than figure out how to conserve the herd so it can feed us and our children forever. That is the transition our civilization has to make. And we’re not doing that.”

Chris Hedges: The Myth of Human Progress - Chris Hedges' Columns - Truthdig

Plundered? Bullshit.

Allowing businesses to enter a territory (that they brought civilization to) and conduct business transactions is not plunder. The third world minorities that participated in that economy for what we think of as slave wages they took those jobs with that low pay VOLUNTARILY because they wanted more of those modern tech devices and had to find cash to acquire them.

Sometimes racial groups would try to drive foreign ethnic people out and bar them from entering the colonies from outside, so that they could more effectively control their colony with its native population, only to discover that the minorities they tried to fence out would get in anyway by any means necesary. THEY WANTED THOSE JOBS AND WERE GLAD TO HAVE THEM.

And resources taken out? That was through trade, the Westerners would give them manufactured goods and the locals would give them mineral rights/products in return.

Why is it that you old Marxists cant imagine people freely trading without it being exploitation or plundering by someone against someone else?

Wow! You really don't know much about world history, do you?

Briefly study the history of the East India Company, which had it's own private, conquering army, complete with British Army officers, then get back to me about how the indigenous folks weren't subjugated against their will and how India wasn't plundered.

When you're through with that, take a look at what western countries did to China during the late 19th and early 20th century.

 

[jwoodie]

The Politically Correct BS is getting a little deep around here: Apparently, White Europeans and their descendants are responsible for all of the world's ills despite the fact that, by adopting their values and institutions, the world's population is statistically better off than at any other time in human history. Please spare me the virtues of Stone Age peoples whose populations were limited by starvation and constant warfare with neighboring tribes. Why do you think Native Americans flocked to the Spanish Missions? How about India, which would never have become a functioning democracy without British rule? Try taking off your racially tinted glasses and viewing the world objectively.

 

[georgephillip]

Two billion people live in dire poverty today, which is more people than existed on this planet 100 years ago. How's that for objectivity? Indians "flocked to Spanish missions" because they were exterminated or enslaved if they did not. Capitalism doesn't exist without the virtues of total war and endless debt.

 

[jwoodie]

Two billion people live in dire poverty today, which is more people than existed on this planet 100 years ago. How's that for objectivity? Indians "flocked to Spanish missions" because they were exterminated or enslaved if they did not. Capitalism doesn't exist without the virtues of total war and endless debt.

Never took a statistics class, eh? Even if your two billion estimate was correct, that would mean that only 40% live in poverty, a much lower percentage than in previous times. Or do you just deal in gross numbers? In that case, poverty could only be reduced by mass extinction. Brilliant.

 

[Meathead]

The internet has certainly become a forum for the weirdest of the weird to be heard.

 

[JimBowie1958]

Two billion people live in dire poverty today, which is more people than existed on this planet 100 years ago. How's that for objectivity? Indians "flocked to Spanish missions" because they were exterminated or enslaved if they did not. Capitalism doesn't exist without the virtues of total war and endless debt.

That is complete and total bullshit and you fucking know it.

All you people can do is hate, because that is all you are.

 

[JimBowie1958]

Two billion people live in dire poverty today, which is more people than existed on this planet 100 years ago. How's that for objectivity? Indians "flocked to Spanish missions" because they were exterminated or enslaved if they did not. Capitalism doesn't exist without the virtues of total war and endless debt.

Never took a statistics class, eh? Even if your two billion estimate was correct, that would mean that only 40% live in poverty, a much lower percentage than in previous times. Or do you just deal in gross numbers? In that case, poverty could only be reduced by mass extinction. Brilliant.

True. Untill modern times, 98% of the worlds population was held in peasantry, slavery or indentured servitude.

Things are much better for the entire worlds population than ever before.

People like Commie George are just pissed off cause they cant buy a wife any more so they bitch all day about everything.

 

[JimBowie1958]

Spain and England survived their Empires and absolute monarchs partially by plundering Africa and the New World. The English, in particular, set in motion an industrial machine that demands expansion for its survival. Human population has tripled in my lifetime, yet a steadily widening gap between rich and poor ensures there will never be enough to go around.

"The number of people in dire poverty today-about 2 billion-is greater that the world's entire population in the early 1900s. That's not progress."

"We’re Ice Age hunters with a shave and a suit. We are not good long-term thinkers. We would much rather gorge ourselves on dead mammoths by driving a herd over a cliff than figure out how to conserve the herd so it can feed us and our children forever. That is the transition our civilization has to make. And we’re not doing that.”

Chris Hedges: The Myth of Human Progress - Chris Hedges' Columns - Truthdig

Plundered? Bullshit.

Allowing businesses to enter a territory (that they brought civilization to) and conduct business transactions is not plunder. The third world minorities that participated in that economy for what we think of as slave wages they took those jobs with that low pay VOLUNTARILY because they wanted more of those modern tech devices and had to find cash to acquire them.

Sometimes racial groups would try to drive foreign ethnic people out and bar them from entering the colonies from outside, so that they could more effectively control their colony with its native population, only to discover that the minorities they tried to fence out would get in anyway by any means necesary. THEY WANTED THOSE JOBS AND WERE GLAD TO HAVE THEM.

And resources taken out? That was through trade, the Westerners would give them manufactured goods and the locals would give them mineral rights/products in return.

Why is it that you old Marxists cant imagine people freely trading without it being exploitation or plundering by someone against someone else?

Because for the last 500 years old capitalists have plundered ( To take by force or wrongfully; to commit robbery or looting, to raid) indigenous cultures from Mali to Maine. After smallpox decimated the native populations of the Americas, old capitalists imported thousands of African slaves whose INVOLUNTARY labor drove the cotton/sugar economy. Currently two billion people live in dire poverty (no obesity, iphones, cable tv, computers, potable water, etc) more than the entire global population of the early 20th Century.

Plunder or Progress?

Dear Lord, its like you are quoting from your personal copy of Mao's Little Red Book or something.

For fucks sake, open your godam mind and look at the data with fresh eyes. Europeans did not deliberately introduce smallpox, they didnt udnerstand the biology of plagues, so you cant hold them responsible for a natural process taking its toll. And show me descendants of a slaves that are here that wish that they were not. Who? If true, there is nothing stopping them from buying a ticket and getting the fuck out if things are so bad for them here.

Shit, stop whining and do somthing to fix your shit if that is what you want to do or else just shut the fuck up.

 

[georgephillip]

Two billion people live in dire poverty today, which is more people than existed on this planet 100 years ago. How's that for objectivity? Indians "flocked to Spanish missions" because they were exterminated or enslaved if they did not. Capitalism doesn't exist without the virtues of total war and endless debt.

Never took a statistics class, eh? Even if your two billion estimate was correct, that would mean that only 40% live in poverty, a much lower percentage than in previous times. Or do you just deal in gross numbers? In that case, poverty could only be reduced by mass extinction. Brilliant.

You're right about that Statistics course; I'm starting my first this month. (https://www.edx.org/courses/BerkeleyX/Stat2.1x/2013_Spring/about)

Can you explain your claim of a much lower percentage of humans living in poverty today compared with past times? People may have had much less money hundreds of years ago, but that doesn't necessarily mean their deprivation of basic human needs was any greater.

 

[JimBowie1958]

Spain and England survived their Empires and absolute monarchs partially by plundering Africa and the New World. The English, in particular, set in motion an industrial machine that demands expansion for its survival. Human population has tripled in my lifetime, yet a steadily widening gap between rich and poor ensures there will never be enough to go around.

"The number of people in dire poverty today-about 2 billion-is greater that the world's entire population in the early 1900s. That's not progress."

"We’re Ice Age hunters with a shave and a suit. We are not good long-term thinkers. We would much rather gorge ourselves on dead mammoths by driving a herd over a cliff than figure out how to conserve the herd so it can feed us and our children forever. That is the transition our civilization has to make. And we’re not doing that.”

Chris Hedges: The Myth of Human Progress - Chris Hedges' Columns - Truthdig

Plundered? Bullshit.

Allowing businesses to enter a territory (that they brought civilization to) and conduct business transactions is not plunder. The third world minorities that participated in that economy for what we think of as slave wages they took those jobs with that low pay VOLUNTARILY because they wanted more of those modern tech devices and had to find cash to acquire them.

Sometimes racial groups would try to drive foreign ethnic people out and bar them from entering the colonies from outside, so that they could more effectively control their colony with its native population, only to discover that the minorities they tried to fence out would get in anyway by any means necesary. THEY WANTED THOSE JOBS AND WERE GLAD TO HAVE THEM.

And resources taken out? That was through trade, the Westerners would give them manufactured goods and the locals would give them mineral rights/products in return.

Why is it that you old Marxists cant imagine people freely trading without it being exploitation or plundering by someone against someone else?

Wow! You really don't know much about world history, do you?

Apparently I know a hell of a lot more than you two do. AND my understanding of it isnt based on fad Marxist agit-prop from the 60s either, dude.

Briefly study the history of the East India Company, which had it's own private, conquering army, complete with British Army officers, then get back to me about how the indigenous folks weren't subjugated against their will and how India wasn't plundered.

Yeah, bringing telegraphs, telephone systems, radio, railroads, santization standards, medicine that almost completely wiped out historical diseases that were a constant blight, and moderen government was all so fucking exploitative. Get the fuck out of here, you fucking communist. lol

When you're through with that, take a look at what western countries did to China during the late 19th and early 20th century.

Well, that is true. The Opium Wars were one of the most disgraceful things that the West has ever done. I dont blame China for distrusting Westerners. But I do blame them for lumping the US in with the rest as we tried to stop that stuff early on, mostly. We joined in some of the rescue efforts but we did not control a sphere of influence there like the Germans, Brits, Japanese, and French did.

Still, yeah, the Opium Wars and that drug pushing there were totally fucked up.

 

[konradv]

Two billion people live in dire poverty today, which is more people than existed on this planet 100 years ago. How's that for objectivity? Indians "flocked to Spanish missions" because they were exterminated or enslaved if they did not. Capitalism doesn't exist without the virtues of total war and endless debt.

Never took a statistics class, eh? Even if your two billion estimate was correct, that would mean that only 40% live in poverty, a much lower percentage than in previous times. Or do you just deal in gross numbers? In that case, poverty could only be reduced by mass extinction. Brilliant.

True. Untill modern times, 98% of the worlds population was held in peasantry, slavery or indentured servitude.

Things are much better for the entire worlds population than ever before.

A change for which we can thank the triumph of liberal progressivism over a conservatism that distrusts improvement, clings to traditional institutions and prefers the past to the future.

Whig history - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[JimBowie1958]

Never took a statistics class, eh? Even if your two billion estimate was correct, that would mean that only 40% live in poverty, a much lower percentage than in previous times. Or do you just deal in gross numbers? In that case, poverty could only be reduced by mass extinction. Brilliant.

True. Untill modern times, 98% of the worlds population was held in peasantry, slavery or indentured servitude.

Things are much better for the entire worlds population than ever before.

A change for which we can thank the triumph of liberal progressivism over a conservatism that distrusts improvement, clings to traditional institutions and prefers the past to the future.

Whig history - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

True, but most of what the 19th century progressives stood for is now embraced by conservatives, not the left.

Conservativism has served the purpose of consolidating the valid advances while removing the invalid and keeping the progress to a velocity of change that the general public can accept.

The problem is that demographics have made the liberating progressive meme out of date because the few groups left unattended are radicals, misfits and perverts. And those guys cant get shit done at all.

 

[konradv]

True. Untill modern times, 98% of the worlds population was held in peasantry, slavery or indentured servitude.

Things are much better for the entire worlds population than ever before.

A change for which we can thank the triumph of liberal progressivism over a conservatism that distrusts improvement, clings to traditional institutions and prefers the past to the future.

Whig history - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

True, but most of what the 19th century progressives stood for is now embraced by conservatives, not the left.

Conservativism has served the purpose of consolidating the valid advances while removing the invalid and keeping the progress to a velocity of change that the general public can accept.

The problem is that demographics have made the liberating progressive meme out of date because the few groups left unattended are radicals, misfits and perverts. And those guys cant get shit done at all.

I don't see any difference between today's conservatives and those of the 19th century. They still want to control the people by telling us what we can do with our bodies and by preserving class structure and income inequality to reduce the rest to serfdom. They tell a nice story about equal opportunity, but balk every time measures are suggested to ensure it.

 

[Katzndogz]

A change for which we can thank the triumph of liberal progressivism over a conservatism that distrusts improvement, clings to traditional institutions and prefers the past to the future.

Whig history - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

True, but most of what the 19th century progressives stood for is now embraced by conservatives, not the left.

Conservativism has served the purpose of consolidating the valid advances while removing the invalid and keeping the progress to a velocity of change that the general public can accept.

The problem is that demographics have made the liberating progressive meme out of date because the few groups left unattended are radicals, misfits and perverts. And those guys cant get shit done at all.

I don't see any difference between today's conservatives and those of the 19th century. They still want to control the people by telling us what we can do with our bodies and by preserving class structure and income inequality to reduce the rest to serfdom. They tell a nice story about equal opportunity, but balk every time measures are suggested to ensure it.

That's because you don't understand the difference between equal opportunity and equal outcome.

 

[konradv]

True, but most of what the 19th century progressives stood for is now embraced by conservatives, not the left.

Conservativism has served the purpose of consolidating the valid advances while removing the invalid and keeping the progress to a velocity of change that the general public can accept.

The problem is that demographics have made the liberating progressive meme out of date because the few groups left unattended are radicals, misfits and perverts. And those guys cant get shit done at all.

I don't see any difference between today's conservatives and those of the 19th century. They still want to control the people by telling us what we can do with our bodies and by preserving class structure and income inequality to reduce the rest to serfdom. They tell a nice story about equal opportunity, but balk every time measures are suggested to ensure it.

That's because you don't understand the difference between equal opportunity and equal outcome.

Being reduced to serfdom is an outcome you favor?

 

[Katzndogz]

I don't see any difference between today's conservatives and those of the 19th century. They still want to control the people by telling us what we can do with our bodies and by preserving class structure and income inequality to reduce the rest to serfdom. They tell a nice story about equal opportunity, but balk every time measures are suggested to ensure it.

That's because you don't understand the difference between equal opportunity and equal outcome.

Being reduced to serfdom is an outcome you favor?

I do not support the kind of slavery obama envisions. Serfs perform services without pay, for the glory of the royal ruler. What ended serfdom was the rise of the skilled craftsman. Anyone could become a skilled craftsman. Some did, some remained serfs or went to work for the skilled. That's equal opportunity. Equal outcome is to decree that all are as skilled as everyone else.