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SeanAU

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The Metacrisis
« on: January 16, 2024, 12:21:56 PM »
Please, STFU about CO2 sequestration and the Models because This Tree Is Worth a Trillion Dollars
 with Daniel Schmachtenberger





Fungibility: What It Means and Why It Matters
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/fungibility.asp
It's wealth, constantly seeking more wealth, to better seek still more wealth. Building wealth off of destruction. That's what's consuming the world. And is driving humans crazy at the same time.

Neven

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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #1 on: January 16, 2024, 01:38:43 PM »
This is one of the few people I've listened to recently who can talk about complex matters in a (relatively) simple way without getting lost in tangent upon tangent. I recently watched a video of Schmachtenberger with Iain McGilchrist (also a good speaker) and a guy called John Vervaeke, who made a complete mess of the conversation.



It reminded me of the talks between David Bohm and Jiddu Krishnamurti. The two of them of are great, but there is also a series with David Shainberg, who only adds chaos and vacuous talk.

Both Vervaeke and Shainberg are psychologists. Conclusion: Most of the time, psychologists are completely useless. Don't listen to them too much if you want to learn about the metacrisis.
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SeanAU

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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #2 on: January 17, 2024, 09:24:25 AM »
This is one of the few people I've listened to recently who can talk about complex matters in a (relatively) simple way without getting lost in tangent upon tangent. <snip>

Both Vervaeke and Shainberg are psychologists. Conclusion: Most of the time, psychologists are completely useless. Don't listen to them too much if you want to learn about the metacrisis.

That's funny, thanks for tip. I think that's right about psychologists most of the time. :)

I haven't got to watch that discussion as yet, but saw it popping up recently, so I will get to it. Thank you.

In the meantime what I wanted to share next was the video of this 'discussion' from 4 months ago, where Daniel has fairly free reign. He's the keynote speaker at the end of several other really good knowledgeable people with similar values @ Stockholm Impact/Week 2023 via Norrsken Foundation.

I think it might be another of those "can  talk about complex matters in a (relatively) simple way without getting lost in tangent upon tangent ..." moments you spoke about Neven.

I believe it's a really effective down to earth talk, and worth listening to how he builds all these various ideas / realities into a somewhat comprehensible whole of where we are at and why we are here and why it's being described as a Metacrisis.

And how and why so much of what is occurring now is essentially running on automatic. I'll provide an extract below as an example of how the discussion goes which shows how easy it is to follow Daniel's calibrated way of speaking about issues.

In the beginning of this video he outlines his personal history and how he found himself being involved in this area of interest and how he thinks about things generally, and what motivates him.

There are many others like him, maybe Kevin Anderson was a kind of elder wise forerunner to this type of interconnected systems thinking values orientated approach, and this 55 minutes talk does imo give a good introductory overview of the kind of thinking, values, and observations involved in what is now known as the Metacrisis.

An introduction to the Metacrisis
with Daniel Schmachtenberger
199,962 views  20 Sept 2023




My Subtitle:
It's the war silly, of course it's about war, war is directly plugged into the Metacrisis too.

It's all connected, everything is inter-connected just as Da Vinci said it was. No one can address the core issues about Climate Change without simultaneously talking about War. And no one is going solve wars without solving Climate Change and AGW at the very same time.

No one is going to fix the climate or the biosphere without stopping the drive for War at the very same time too. It is all Connected, all of it. And we humans have totally lost our way.

Quote

@ 20:20 mins

Quote
.......... when we look at the history of warfare we didn't have the ability,
and War, to destroy everything until World War II and World War II was a minute
ago in historical terms.

And at the end of World War II there were about two billion people on the planet
which was already a 4X jump from what there was for all of human history till the
Industrial Revolution began right.

Until the Industrial Revolution we didn't have the type of tech that could destroy
the biosphere because you can't overfish the oceans with fishing rods, right. To
overfish the oceans you have to have massive industrial fishing equipment and on
and on.

So all of human history [ 300K years, and 10,000 years of the Holocene period ]
only brought us to half a billion people until the Industrial Revolution and then we're
like, oh look how awesome the Haber-Bosch mechanism is [ Ammonia Nitrogen
fertilizers ], but corresponding to "we can feed a lot more people" is all of the
planetary boundary issues we're hitting now just a couple hundred years
later.

Because we basically went from half a billion to 8 billion overnight. We went from
500 million (pre-industrial) to World War II we were up to 2 billion, but only 2 billion.
That means we went from 2 billion in 1945 to 8 billion since then.

And that's because part of the solution to "don't use these nukes" was to radically
grow the economy via globalization - the globalization solution - which was key to
the post-World War II (Baby Boomer period of massive economic growth) - how do
we have the Superpowers "not war" because throughout all of history there have not
been long periods of Peace where the superpowers (of the day) "don't War"... why?

Because the superpowers are always run by power oriented people. Who want
more stuff and they get more stuff by taking other people's stuff. But now with nuclear
bombs we have "a new kind of war" that nobody can win so for the Superpowers to
"not war".

They will still have small proxy wars which we've had, they'll still have wars on the
Global South, they'll have wars on the environment, but they can't have a direct kinetic
war [ or the power orientated people will destroy the whole Earth. ]

And so the answer was "let's connect the whole global economic system", and there
were some brilliance to this, through Globalization - so that we don't want to bomb each
other because then "we're bombing our own Supply chains".

You have to think about this when you start thinking about localization btw, because if
you make things more local and we're not interdependent on each other, we have less
disincentive to bomb them right. So that was one of the reasons for the radical
globalization.

BUT it did of course create these radically complicated fragile Supply chains where if
anything happens and they go down everybody's fucked - and we saw that in Covid right.

We saw that to stop the travel of the pathogen, fertilizers and pesticides weren't able to
move anymore, and so you got locusts plagues in North Africa, in the Middle East and
you got crop failures in India and the like.

But we also said "let's radically financialize and deregulate and globalize the world" so
that everybody can have more stuff and the superpowers can have more stuff without
having to take each other's stuff
and that did produce 75 years of non-kinetic war
between Superpowers with only small proxy wars the whole time.

BUT it also 4x the population up to 8 billion, 100x to the resource consumption per capita,
of what it was in the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and we developed AI, and
synthetic Bio-tech, and Cyber Technologies and we extincted 13 species a day for 75
years or so.

So when we look at that picture, if we start to Degrowth now, there are a lot of people
who are like: "No, I would rather not have less. I'd rather there be less of other people's
people because I think that we can win the war!"


AND so one of the challenges to Degrowth is that. The economic Growth equation has
been the only thing, with these kinds of people (the power orientated people) and
the (economic globalization) patterns
, has been the only thing that's prevented World
War III kinetically (so far.)

So we have to factor that in, so I think the role of War violence is critical to add to the
story here. I think the role of (rapidly) advancing Tech is critical to add to the story because
when we're largely looking at the results of the Industrial Tech that has cumulative effects.
The new exponential Digital Tech allows us to have cumulative effects much faster but also
not just cumulative effects but radically rapid catastrophic effects.

AND then we have to look at the underlying drivers, why can we not stop this thing, why is
it that literally no country, no company in the world wants climate change, no nobody is like
"Climate change is the world that I want", but we're orienting to it so fast and we can't stop.

AND nobody can stop it because we all want stuff. That requires energy. That is driving that
thing. And nobody wants Species Extinction. And nobody really wants to live in a world with
automated AI Weapons but we're all racing to build them asap.

SO what the is actually driving the world to a world that literally nobody wants?

I think there's a deeper analysis of that (needing to be explained,) and The Market
is a part of it.



It's wealth, constantly seeking more wealth, to better seek still more wealth. Building wealth off of destruction. That's what's consuming the world. And is driving humans crazy at the same time.

Bruce Steele

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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #3 on: January 17, 2024, 06:22:07 PM »
Sean, And really a bummer , that we need war , disease , a high death rate of women giving birth, high infant mortality, and occasional famine to keep us in check.
 And that we can’t seem to make decisions that benefit the biosphere or another species at our own expense. And that want rules our decision matrix.
 There are other options of course and the question is why didn’t we take them?
 Which kinda gets back to the notion we are flawed at birth.
So can people accept we are kinda flawed and prone to bad decision making resulting in our current predicament?  And like an alcoholic who has hit bottom ,finally start to fix the problem . Or are we still deciding we need another drink ?

gerontocrat

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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #4 on: January 17, 2024, 06:41:21 PM »
Or are we still deciding we need another drink ?

"Set 'Em Up, Joe"
"Para a Causa do Povo a Luta Continua!"
"And that's all I'm going to say about that". Forrest Gump
"Damn, I wanted to see what happened next" (Epitaph)

SeanAU

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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #5 on: January 17, 2024, 08:16:03 PM »
Quote
Daniel mentioned just above in video quote:
" And nobody really wants to live in a world with
automated AI Weapons but we're all racing to build them asap. "



News just out:

ChatGPT creator joins forces with Pentagon
OpenAI has dropped its prohibition on providing its technology to military entities, according to an executive

ChatGPT creator OpenAI is working with the US military on several artificial intelligence projects after dropping a prohibition on the use of its technologies for “military and warfare” purposes, a company executive told Bloomberg on Tuesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

The AI pioneer is developing “open-source cybersecurity software” and discussing how to prevent suicides among military veterans with the US government, OpenAI vice president of global affairs Anna Makanju said.

While Makanju did not elaborate on either project, she explained that OpenAI’s decision to remove a blanket prohibition on the use of its AI tech for “military and warfare” applications was in line with a broader policy update “to adjust to new uses of ChatGPT and its other tools,” according to Bloomberg.

“Because we previously had what was essentially a blanket prohibition on military, many people thought that would prohibit many of these use cases, which people think are very much aligned with what we want to see in the world,” she explained.

Despite the ban’s repeal, Makanju insisted OpenAI continues to prohibit the use of its technology to “develop weapons, destroy property, or harm people.”

However, Microsoft, which owns a large part of OpenAI and enjoys the unrestricted use of its advanced AI technologies, has long contracted with the US military and other branches of the government, and lacks any inbuilt prohibition on weapons development, according to Bloomberg.

via RT
It's wealth, constantly seeking more wealth, to better seek still more wealth. Building wealth off of destruction. That's what's consuming the world. And is driving humans crazy at the same time.

SeanAU

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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #6 on: January 18, 2024, 05:41:05 AM »


A new Online Resource website for the Metacrisis topic

https://metacrisis.org/META-CRISIS/00.+%F0%9F%91%8B+About/Start+Here


----------------------------------

“There is no hope for life on Earth until all people come to reject the corporatist agenda, and accept a belief system which re-integrates humans into the natural world. With the present greed-based social construct, all life is doomed, and under that construct no group, region, country or international body will be able to recognize the necessary course of action.”

Kathleen McCroskey from her 2006 environment web page.
« Last Edit: January 18, 2024, 08:19:24 AM by SeanAU »
It's wealth, constantly seeking more wealth, to better seek still more wealth. Building wealth off of destruction. That's what's consuming the world. And is driving humans crazy at the same time.

SeanAU

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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #7 on: January 19, 2024, 09:41:55 AM »
Capitalism, what's it to you?

On Distinctions, from Jerry Mander's (his real name) "Capitalism Papers" - the intro to which follows:
Quote
Quote
    question from the audience: Jerry, do you mean my grandfather's furniture store is killing the world? Is he one of those capitalists? It's a nice shop. He's been there forty years, giving work to eight employees, and he pays a nice wage. With benefits. It doesn't seem bad to me.

    jerry: No, stores like that are really not the problem. We need to make distinctions when we talk about capitalism. The word covers too many different things. One distinction is this: Size matters! Small-scale local or family businesses, or community enterprises that make some money, pay salaries, send kids to college, and save a little, are not the problem, and never have been.

    But let's say your granddad had somehow made gigantic profits from his store forty years ago, so he decided to partner with another store owner and invest in big real estate, converting small farms and open lands into shopping malls. And let's say they started franchising shopping centers around the world, and were borrowing from big banks to do it, and then started buying banks, and buying other companies doing unrelated stuff, like shipping or mining or biotech farming, and then started getting their financing from Goldman Sachs. Then they u went public" and were listed on the New York Stock Exchange as SHOP AMERICA! and they became friends with congressmen, spent 10 percent of their business income lobbying in Washington to overturn zoning, dumping, and other environmental laws that were getting in their way. And they had their eye on export trade subsidies, and maybe some military contracts, and were desperate to keep their stock prices high and to keep their taxes down.

    Well, then, you'd have to say your grandfather would be operating in a different world, with different values and drives, than he does now. At the beginning, it was all about furniture for local families and businesses, not the primary needs of nonstop capital expansion, growth, stock values, and distributions. That's the "capitalism" I worry about. That's what's consuming the world.

Now it's all about growth, not furniture, not sufficiency, not community welfare. It's wealth, constantly seeking more wealth, to better seek still more wealth. That local store and those global businesses really shouldn't share the same name. They are different creatures.

The meaning of words, every word, matters.

(edit typo/bold)
« Last Edit: January 19, 2024, 12:10:16 PM by SeanAU »
It's wealth, constantly seeking more wealth, to better seek still more wealth. Building wealth off of destruction. That's what's consuming the world. And is driving humans crazy at the same time.

Neven

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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #8 on: January 19, 2024, 11:26:32 AM »
This is the core of all of it, but it's couched in so many words and self-inflicted complexity/chaos that people no longer see it as being the core:

Quote
It's wealth, constantly seeking more wealth, to better seek still more wealth.

It's worded perfectly, because it posts wealth as some sort of entity or dynamic that drives things. Not the people owning the wealth, but wealth itself.

I keep running into these small pearls that cut straight to the heart, but get lost in the murky swirls of too much words, ideas and details. I'll try and post an example one of these days, made by Peter Turchin in this interview with Novara Media:

« Last Edit: January 19, 2024, 11:41:26 AM by Neven »
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SeanAU

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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #9 on: January 19, 2024, 12:28:30 PM »
This is the core of all of it, but it's couched in so many words and self-inflicted complexity/chaos that people no longer see it as being the core:

Quote
It's wealth, constantly seeking more wealth, to better seek still more wealth.

It's worded perfectly, because it posts wealth as some sort of entity or dynamic that drives things. Not the people owning the wealth, but wealth itself.


Well when I first heard you saying (was it) 'wealth accumulation' (?) is the main problem neven, I didn't totally agree because this seemed to me to only be 'part of the problem'.

But now, I understand what you meant, and can agree with you. It is kind of a disembodied energy, this strange powerful entity that has a life of it's own and influences anyone who comes close to it or intentionally seeks it out.

That's why they used to have a name for IT ... the new testament named it 'Mammon'. And that was represented as a kind of entity ... a god-like figure that people worshiped ... and one of those earlier  entities / manifestations was called 'Moloch' - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moloch

or

How to kill Moloch, the demon driving humanity to the brink of extinction
From Oppenheimer’s atom bomb to the AI arms race, the future of humanity might depend on overcoming the influence of an ancient, malevolent god

Meanwhile, he was reminded of a line from the Bhagavad Gita. He recalls: “Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds’. I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.”

Oppenheimer didn’t just quote the Gita because it sounded cool. He had learned Sanskrit in 1933, and developed a deep connection with the Hindu scripture, later naming it as one of the most important influences on his life philosophy.
https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/60416/1/kill-moloch-demon-driving-humanity-brink-extinction-ai-oppenheimer-nuclear-bomb

or

Dagon,Baal,Moloch,Ugaritic And The Indus Script
Profile image of vijaya bhaarativijaya bhaarati
https://www.academia.edu/19030993/Dagon_Baal_Moloch_Ugaritic_And_The_Indus_Script

The above items isn't about "religion" per se but rather about "ancient psychology" and "human wisdom" and "myths and philosophy" .... all useful human tools iow.
It's wealth, constantly seeking more wealth, to better seek still more wealth. Building wealth off of destruction. That's what's consuming the world. And is driving humans crazy at the same time.

SeanAU

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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #10 on: February 03, 2024, 02:16:10 AM »
via RT

PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel is among a handful of tech billionaires bankrolling the Enhanced Games, a privately-funded sporting contest that encourages doping and transhumanist-inspired upgrades, according to a post on X (formerly Twitter) by the official account for the Games on Tuesday.

Venture capitalist Christian Angermeyer and former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan were also named as contributors to the Games’ “investors’ circle.” The funding round yielded enough capital to pay for the first edition of the Games, founder and Australian venture capitalist Aron D’Souza told the New York Post on Thursday. However, D’Souza declined to reveal the absolute total raised, merely stating that it was in the “high single-digit millions.”

Thiel reportedly plans to provide more details regarding his investment in April and will promote the Games during the ‘real’ Olympics in Paris in July. The Palantir CEO is himself an avid doper, taking human growth hormone and metformin for muscle-building and anti-aging purposes, respectively, and hopes to be cryogenically frozen before death.


- Today sounds like a good time to do it.
It's wealth, constantly seeking more wealth, to better seek still more wealth. Building wealth off of destruction. That's what's consuming the world. And is driving humans crazy at the same time.

Neven

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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #11 on: February 03, 2024, 09:52:43 AM »

Limitarianism : The Case Against Extreme Wealth Hardback
by Ingrid Robeyns

We all notice when the poor get poorer: when there are more rough sleepers and food bank queues start to grow.

But if the rich become richer, there is nothing much to see in public and, for most of us, daily life doesn't change. Or at least, not immediately. In this astonishing, eye-opening intervention, world-leading philosopher and economist Ingrid Robeyns exposes the true extent of our wealth problem, which has spent the past fifty years silently spiralling out of control.

In moral, political, economic, social, environmental and psychological terms, she shows, extreme wealth is not only unjustifiable but harmful to us all - the rich included. In place of our current system, Robeyns offers a breathtakingly clear alternative: limitarianism.

The answer to so many of the problems posed by neoliberal capitalism - and the opportunity for a vastly better world - lies in placing a hard limit on the wealth that any one person can accumulate. Because nobody deserves to be a millionaire. Not even you.

https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/Ingrid-Robeyns/Limitarianism--The-Case-Against-Extreme-Wealth/28866492

I've read a book by this author (in Dutch) a couple of years ago, in which she argues for the moral/ethical need of a cap on wealth, whereas I believe the purely pragmatic argument is much stronger. I'll order the book to see whether Robeyns has expanded her ideas.
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SeanAU

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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #12 on: February 03, 2024, 10:50:23 AM »
I think this might fit in with the book neven .... at a personal psychological level, what the dynamics are and why some kind of external LIMIT is actually a rational solution -- because people cannot self-limit because they lose all sense of balance and insight and awareness of what is happening to them and why.

It is a Psychopathy, really it is.

This whole issue reminds me of what Chris Hedges said about his schooling and his college education. He came from  poor family but won some excellent scholarships to go to a wealthy private boys school, and then University as well. He didn't lose sight of his roots though. The people he ended up criticizing so heavily later in life, some were his class mates ... and others from that 'class' of wealthy priveldged students of his era.

The more someone is successful one is, as it is reflected in the levels of wealth increasing as a result -- the more they credit their own hard work, efforts and talents and better judgement in becoming successful, and become more and more dismissive about the privileged that got them where they are up the ladder. Meanwhile they become less compassionate and empathetic and ethical and this shows up in their behaviour. This also happens with people from humble backgrounds with fewer privileges as well. AS their sense of entitlement or deserving this success and focusing on their own self-interests increases exponentially. They totally forget about all the advantages they had that everyone else did not have.
 
Does money make you mean? Yes
The Wealth Game is Rigged Globally .... The Privledged Players Class always ends up Wealthier.
It's amazing what a rigged game of Monopoly can reveal and Harvard and the Skull n Bones. In this entertaining but sobering talk, social psychologist Paul Piff shares his research into how people behave when they feel wealthy. (Hint: badly.)
https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_piff_does_money_make_you_mean?language=en

A must watch imho

On Wealth and Wrongdoing: How Social Class Influences Unethical Behavior
2012 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/57x7n454
also
Wealth and the Inflated Self: Class, Entitlement, and Narcissism
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0146167213501699

INCOME AND WEALTH INEQUALITY: EVIDENCE AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS
https://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/SaezCEP2017.pdf

Plus the Rigged Monopoly Game again
On a human individual psychology level ....
'Pernicious' Effects of Economic Inequality Does money make people more likely to lie, cheat and steal? Yes it does. 9 mins video very good clear compelling

« Last Edit: February 03, 2024, 10:56:31 AM by SeanAU »
It's wealth, constantly seeking more wealth, to better seek still more wealth. Building wealth off of destruction. That's what's consuming the world. And is driving humans crazy at the same time.

SeanAU

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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #13 on: February 04, 2024, 06:58:49 AM »
The MetaCrisis (aka worshiping the God of Mammon Cult) has been coming for a long time, and now here it is in full technicolour.

The MetaCrisis Poster Child is the Hegemonic Empire of the United States of America

The Pathology of America: Dehumanization, Greed, and the Decline of Empire

............  you can look at the Native
Americans the indigenous inhabitants of
that land for centuries were
dehumanized for the richness beneath
their feet for the land they were pushed
to the margins their cultures were
erased the lands that they held sacred
were violated all for America's
insatiable ruthless Hunger for More for
expansion for dominance they don't
understand the idea of coexistence of
peace and Harmony they believe in the
philosophy of The Last Man Standing
that's their approach to the world first
within what's now the territorial United
States and then the entire Western
Hemisphere and then to the whole planet
this is what they applied Mexico Central
America South America you see the Latin
Americans their natural resources were
sought and so their sovereignty was
trampled upon America's pursuit of what
it desires has always been characterized
by exploitation domination and
subjugation for all their talk about
capitalism and the market you know free
exchange and so on for all their talk
about this it's not what they practice
and it's not what they fundamentally
believe for them uh capitalism means we
make the money we make the profit we
benefit everything is ours and nothing
is yours well that's not capitalism it's
barbarism it's piracy you can't go into
a business deal or a negotiation with
that mentality that's the mentality that
you have when you commit a bank
robbery not a business agreement
but you see they can't admit to
themselves uh that they're actually just
glorified Pirates glorified mafiosos
Marauders because they have a need to
believe about themselves that they're
good enlightened civilized people so the
only way that they can reconcile their
barbaric instincts with their need to believe
in their own goodness is by dehumanizing
everyone else dehumanizing everyone who
has what they want and they want
everything the United States is the only
country in the world uh who literally
and seriously believes that control over
the entire planet is vital to to their
national interests imagine and we've
gotten used to American dominance we
think the world actually has to operate
like this we imagine uh that there's no
other way for international relations to
be carried out except by means of he
hegemonic power but of course that's not
correct just because one country uh or
even a few countries have more power
than others that does not necessarily
mean or automatically mean that everyone
else just has to cowtow to them and be
exploited and be pushed around and do as
they're told it doesn't have to be like
that that's a western model and it
originates from the Western psyche
which developed uh through their own
peculiar history and their own peculiar
culture not everyone's like that
in fact
most people aren't like that, are you
like that? of course not it's abnormal
the truth is that even most average
westerners most average Americans are
not like that!

It's wealth, constantly seeking more wealth, to better seek still more wealth. Building wealth off of destruction. That's what's consuming the world. And is driving humans crazy at the same time.

Neven

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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #14 on: February 08, 2024, 12:35:48 AM »
Sorry for hijacking this thread with the wealth concentration/Mammon stuff. The Metacrisis, as proposed by Daniel Schmachtenberger, has a spiritual dimension, which is both more interesting and more difficult to use for activism.

I've read a book by this author (in Dutch) a couple of years ago, in which she argues for the moral/ethical need of a cap on wealth, whereas I believe the purely pragmatic argument is much stronger. I'll order the book to see whether Robeyns has expanded her ideas.

Here's a recent video with Robeyns:

Make money, not peace

SeanAU

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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #15 on: February 08, 2024, 08:15:36 AM »

Sorry for hijacking this thread with the wealth concentration/Mammon stuff.

No problem at all. It is precisely what it is here for Neven. Go right ahead.

I had plans to post more than have, but the wheels fell off. In fact I may not be able to proceed with what I hoped to lay out over several months ... for months into the future now, or even later this year. I just don;t know. My world was turned upside down in from Oct and then especially Dec by my own personal meta crisis ... so I don't know what lays ahead.

So everything is unsettled now. MetaCrisis thread Plans are on hold. The other alternative I had might end up being where I put my attention once I can get a handle on things ... but starting a MetaCrisis / Anti-CCSC exposure Substack ... we'll see.

Simply walking away and focusing solely on myself and family from here on may well be where the chips fall. Certainly a more sane rational option that's for sure.

So, this is my way of saying, hey, don't mind me. Do whatever feels right I have no problems or concerns  or feelings about what happens here on this forum or the thread.

Do as you wilt.
It's wealth, constantly seeking more wealth, to better seek still more wealth. Building wealth off of destruction. That's what's consuming the world. And is driving humans crazy at the same time.

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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #16 on: February 08, 2024, 09:12:09 AM »
So many things could fit in this thread topic .... here's one

On this episode, economist Steve Keen offers a deep forensic history of why modern economic theory has neglected the role of energy in productivity - and why this “Energy Blindness” is now a major blindspot in how our culture views the present - and the future

The massive, temporary carbon surplus we’ve extracted over the last few centuries has resulted in an exponential increase in the standard of living for many. This explosion of global economic growth also happened to coincide with the development of all modern economic theories and formulas, leading to a core misunderstanding in the way our economies are powered.

How have technology and innovation been used to cover up the role of a growing energy supply in the last century of rising prosperity?

 

here's another



and one more
The Global Financial Crisis Never Went Away
https://rogerboyd.substack.com/p/the-global-financial-crisis-never 

Da Vinci is still all these years later - everything is connected.
It's wealth, constantly seeking more wealth, to better seek still more wealth. Building wealth off of destruction. That's what's consuming the world. And is driving humans crazy at the same time.

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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #17 on: February 08, 2024, 03:10:17 PM »
i'm quite convinced the purpose of the united states, aside from other enlightenment values, was to launch globocorp.

sir francis bacon died in 1625, the first international companies had just been launched in his lifetime, the british east india company (1600) and the dutch east india company (1602).

  "Who rules Bensalem?
The Father of Salomon's House reveals that members of that institution decide on their own which of their discoveries to keep secret, even from the State:

"And this we do also: we have consultations, which of the inventions and experiences which we have discovered shall be published, and which not; and take all an oath of secrecy for the concealing of those which we think fit to keep secret; though some of those we do reveal sometime to the State, and some not."

This would seem to imply that the State does not hold the monopoly on authority and that Salomon's House must in some sense be superior to the State."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Atlantis

the flag of the united states is merely a knock off of the british east india company flag.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_the_East_India_Company#:~:text=The%20flag%20of%20the%20East,of%20England%20in%20the%20canton.

the tune to the us anthem is an 18th century british drinking song, the words are about the war of 1812 when they invaded canada (but they sound like the victims/heroes in the song) and their white house/capital wound up burned down as they'd been burning canadian towns to the ground.
« Last Edit: February 08, 2024, 05:03:50 PM by zenith »
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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #18 on: February 08, 2024, 04:19:58 PM »
The MetaCrisis (aka worshiping the God of Mammon Cult) has been coming for a long time, and now here it is in full technicolour.


they've always taken what they want and then they rewrite history so they're the hero of the story, rather like the jewish bible.

it's strange to watch the cultural appropriation happen in real time even over trivial things, try living next to them in a country they view as inferior. tucker carlson just came to canada to 'liberate' canada when what canada needs to be liberated from is american influence and dominance!

every major north american sport had origins in britain/canada but you'd never know that the way they tell it. they've killed the nfl with over-commercialization and such slow game play it's like watching paint dry - it's only good for highlights. the cfl, which is older, is a much better game as it retains more of it's rugby roots and it's not too commercialized. they're taking over lacrosse these days and are actively rewriting that story like they've done with baseball and football.

they're currently in the business of killing the nhl, which was a canadian league until 1989 when the headquarters were moved from montreal to new york. the national in national hockey league is canada but most people wouldn't know that these days. lord stanley, the stanley cup, was governor general of canada. every award is named after a canadian. since gary bettman took over as commissioner of the league in 1993 he's vastly expanded the league throughout the united states and 1993 was the last time a canadian team won the stanley cup, which americans love to use as a club to beat on canadians.

if i write any of that as a response under a youtube video it will be deleted, that's how crazy it is.

it used to be more about the love of the game than money but now mammon has taken over. USA#1
(skip to 17 minutes for the meat of the matter)
The Americanization of the NHL and Its Relation to Future Expansion
« Last Edit: February 08, 2024, 04:41:20 PM by zenith »
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SeanAU

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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #19 on: February 09, 2024, 01:39:45 AM »
i'm quite convinced the purpose of the united states, aside from other enlightenment values, was to launch globocorp.

sir francis bacon died in 1625, the first international companies had just been launched in his lifetime, the british east india company (1600) and the dutch east india company (1602).

  "Who rules Bensalem?
The Father of Salomon's House reveals that members of that institution decide on their own which of their discoveries to keep secret, even from the State:

"And this we do also: we have consultations, which of the inventions and experiences which we have discovered shall be published, and which not; and take all an oath of secrecy for the concealing of those which we think fit to keep secret; though some of those we do reveal sometime to the State, and some not."

This would seem to imply that the State does not hold the monopoly on authority and that Salomon's House must in some sense be superior to the State."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Atlantis

the flag of the united states is merely a knock off of the british east india company flag.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_the_East_India_Company#:~:text=The%20flag%20of%20the%20East,of%20England%20in%20the%20canton.

the tune to the us anthem is an 18th century british drinking song, the words are about the war of 1812 when they invaded canada (but they sound like the victims/heroes in the song) and their white house/capital wound up burned down as they'd been burning canadian towns to the ground.

Bacon, I know him well, as about the US flag of the EIC, and the new atlantis and the lying corrupt "founding fathers" one and all bat shit crazy delusional but very practical lying manipualtive and extremely greedy controlling racist genocidal assholes.

By their "fruits" including their descendants, thou shalt know them.

Dr John Dee is another crazy elite with the ear of queen elizabeth from that era. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dee
shades of L Ron Hubbard ego of egos , Jack Parsons and Aliester Crowley   

Name one monarch from that period, and those that carved up north and south America, who wasn't a murderous psychopath.

The declaration of Independence is a lie as is the US Constitution a fraudulent "economic control" document that should be burnt to a crisp and replaced by something sane and rational and humanistic that honours people and their common good and long term futures.

You know they are all narcissistic delusional freaks now, the nation is Toxic and Pathological. It shall not stand.

Meanwhile your other post about Mammon is equally true and tells the same tales of history and today. It's a sickening dysfunctional culture from top to bottom now. 

It's future, their future is sealed. The MetaCrisis is going to take them out.

Cheers, and good luck living with it's demise so close to home.
It's wealth, constantly seeking more wealth, to better seek still more wealth. Building wealth off of destruction. That's what's consuming the world. And is driving humans crazy at the same time.

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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #20 on: February 09, 2024, 07:50:29 AM »
I'm not likely to be able to do anything about this, in the short term, if ever, but there is a very close mirroring of the recent shifts (post 2010) of the rhetoric from climate scientists and their supporters the CCSC and the in dept research I did about (gurus, plagiarism and religious cults) and religions in general historically and the behaviors denials cognitive dissonance and the excuses followers leaders institutions and people will push when their precious beliefs and saints are being confronted by real historical facts ....  there is nothing new under the sun as they say ... the patterns of human behavior are entrenched psychologically in ways the avg joe never imagines.

eg the way new 'papers' are being dismissed out of hand by celebrity climate scienists defaulting to the LORE of the IPCC and GCMs is equivalent to how people would respond when shown verbatim plagiairism of their own gurus text with a novel, a new age sect or some earlier obscure releions no one knew anything about in the 1920s or 60s ..... the rage this would entaul and the blanket denial ... oh well it's only one sentence, nah it's only one paragraph in one page, to then oh it's only one page out of dozens of books, to oh it's only one chapter in one book, to well it's only 35% of that book you have shown to be copied, what about the rest and all the other books - you have no evidence of those!!! But I did. They wouldn't look at that either. LOL

The level of denial and dismissal of new information is a PATTERN across the board in all walks of life. I had to go digging into neuroscience and psychology sociology papers to eventually get a grip on why this was so consistent across the board beyond cults, beyond religions and beyond plagiarism. Finding out about  the roots of propaganda advertising by Bernays (Freud's nephew)  helped a lot. And research about "lying and pathological issues like delusions and grandiosity" -- working out what's up with zionists and jews and americans then became easy.

Anyway, all this experience is one reason why I know for certain how good Nate Hagens is -- you do not need to know everything to be smart and wise and decent human being who knows what he's doing. and then there's his guests as well. Shahid Bolsen is another mega wise soul.

I have just seen it again today from a dozen well know scientists about another new paper -- they outright dismiss as irrelevant without even looking at it or speaking with the authors about their work. Frankly from their comments I can tell they didn't even read the fucking paper in full before dismissing it based on it's title alone.

I may never get to explain why but there is much more to my CCSC labeling than rage and disgust alone.
It's wealth, constantly seeking more wealth, to better seek still more wealth. Building wealth off of destruction. That's what's consuming the world. And is driving humans crazy at the same time.

zenith

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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #21 on: February 10, 2024, 05:40:16 AM »
“To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funnelled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet. To formulate and express the contents of this reduced awareness, man has invented and endlessly elaborated those symbol-systems and implicit philosophies which we call languages. Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he or she has been born -- the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to he accumulated records of other people's experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it be-devils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things.”
― Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception / Heaven and Hell
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zenith

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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #22 on: February 10, 2024, 05:49:12 AM »
the thing is that nobody, at their core, actually wants to be here - we're 'spirit' trapped in matter. we're not in control, death is a constant reminder. life is painful - it's a bitch and then you die, rich and poor alike. brain chemistry and ego are addictive though. it feels better to be a predator rather than prey.

https://ia601206.us.archive.org/12/items/SerpentInTheSky/Serpent-in-the-Sky_The-High-Wisdom-of-Ancient-Egypt_-_John-Anthony-West.pdf
« Last Edit: February 10, 2024, 05:58:35 AM by zenith »
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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #23 on: February 10, 2024, 09:38:07 PM »
So at it´s core the Metacrisis is just the result of the logic of concentrated wealth.

Then there are a bunch of esoteric explanations and more videos to watch but will that help solve your crisis? Probably not. Maybe the big metacrisis is that people waste so much time being angry at the screen that they forget to do something in real live?
Þetta minnismerki er til vitnis um að við vitum hvað er að gerast og hvað þarf að gera. Aðeins þú veist hvort við gerðum eitthvað.

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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #24 on: February 10, 2024, 11:28:07 PM »
So at it´s core the Metacrisis is just the result of the logic of concentrated wealth.

I think that what Schmachtenberger means (well worth watching IMO), is that the crisis is a reflection of some mistake in Homo sapiens. Krishnamurti discusses it a lot, how the way we think, creates all kinds of illusions, and thus misery. McGilchrist explains it by saying that left and right hemispheres of the brain aren't in balance, and so bad things happen.

I contend that wealth concentration is at the core of how the Metacrisis is expressed on the material plane. I don't know how to solve the Metacrisis, ie get a sufficient number of people enlightened. I'm just saying that if you want to implement solutions to problems in the material world, you won't be able to do so successfully, unless you put a stop to the dynamic of wealth concentration. Because it quite simply dominates everything, when left unchecked.

So, I hijacked the thread with my hobby horse. The Metacrisis is perhaps more of a psychological/spiritual thing, which is incredibly interesting, in my view. But as I believe Krishnamurti said, you're lucky if you can open the eyes of two persons in your lifetime.
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zenith

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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #25 on: February 11, 2024, 12:50:10 AM »
people really need to first recognize that humans are predators. when hunting mammoths psychopaths are useful/necessary, that changes and they become problematic. the average human knows there are birds of prey forever circling yet the majority chooses to behave like pigeons. if they ever learned to behave like geese the dynamics would change.
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SeanAU

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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #26 on: February 11, 2024, 02:47:35 AM »
So at it´s core the Metacrisis is just the result of the logic of concentrated wealth.

Then there are a bunch of esoteric explanations and more videos to watch but will that help solve your crisis? Probably not. Maybe the big metacrisis is that people waste so much time being angry at the screen that they forget to do something in real live?

these kinds of comments are insulting and an offense against everyone else who takes the subject seriously and genuinely. a completely unnecessary contribution which helps no one. and disrupts opportunities for positive dialogue. 
It's wealth, constantly seeking more wealth, to better seek still more wealth. Building wealth off of destruction. That's what's consuming the world. And is driving humans crazy at the same time.

SeanAU

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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #27 on: February 11, 2024, 05:05:39 AM »
people really need to first recognize that humans are predators. when hunting mammoths psychopaths are useful/necessary, that changes and they become problematic. the average human knows there are birds of prey forever circling yet the majority chooses to behave like pigeons. if they ever learned to behave like geese the dynamics would change.

YES!

The psychological personality type term Placater fits here.

placate
verb
1. make (someone) less angry or hostile
Example: they attempted to placate the students with promises

The complete opposite of activist protester or rebel.
If you placate someone, you do or say something to make them stop feeling angry.
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/placate

example - neven fails to placate me, because he incorrectly diagnoses me as being angry.  when I am actually a leveler! Speaks maturely the blunt truth as it is.  ;D

there's a continuum of possibilities - blamer placater computer distractor leveler

in communication styles high end human understanding goes like this -

5 Satir Categories for Understanding Communication Styles
Virginia Satir had four categories that were responsible for many family conflicts and one that can be used for resolving conflict and bringing people together.
https://sourcesofinsight.com/satir-categories/

Virginia Satir is one of my all time personal heroes. barely no one has ever heard of her. unfortunate, she was a Saint and 100% correct in her propositions. iirc research shows that more than 80% of people are placaters. Why? Because that is how most are brought up by their parents. To placate the parents, authorities, the church priests, and society.

To "placate" is instilled in us when children as the default position to adopt when under Stress

IF only internet moderators knew such things and could apply the principles and practices.  ::)

The world would not be in the disaster it currently is of these truths and practices were taught from primary school up in every nation. Constantly being a placater in problematic / traumatic relationships is the worst possible solution to try. It always fails long term.  Grown ups, and Satir Graduates know how to Level, and when to use these communication styles. They know how to stop a Blamer in their tracks.

Broadly speaking, the US empire Placates Israel. Why? Because Israel can get away with it. And the US is a cowardly dumb-assed nation.

Therefore MetaCrisis!

Da Vinci - everything is connected - including blamer placater computer distractor leveler

I can "play" all 5 roles effectively to suit the person / situation - for effect and with intent. And gain some success. Of course leveling is far more useful to solve problems (can disarm others, put them at ease) but this is less effective when not in a person to person real life situation, ala on forums that lack direct contact and genuine meaningful relationships. 
It's wealth, constantly seeking more wealth, to better seek still more wealth. Building wealth off of destruction. That's what's consuming the world. And is driving humans crazy at the same time.

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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #28 on: February 15, 2024, 12:51:40 PM »
It's wealth, constantly seeking more wealth, to better seek still more wealth. Building wealth off of destruction. That's what's consuming the world. And is driving humans crazy at the same time.

SeanAU

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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #29 on: February 19, 2024, 04:47:08 AM »
Humanity is facing multiple crises at once. If we tackle them one by one we're at risk of just playing whack-a-mole, plastering over the symptoms rather than addressing the meta level causes of the disease. In this video I argue that we need to seek solutions to the metacrisis.

The term "polycrisis" is sometimes used to refer to the many crises our societies are facing at the moment: from climate change, to demographic collapse and the rise in potentially dangerous AI. But "metacrisis" is the suggestion that these many crises might have common underlying causes such as the multipolar traps, or Molochian dynamics that are often talked about by the likes of Daniel Schmachtenberger and others; and the Embedded Growth Obligations (EGOs) talked about by Eric Weinstein.

These underlying dynamics are often the deeper reason why we find it so hard to solve the various problems our societies are confronting. The collapse in our collective sensemaking is not helping this either.

...firstly there's the problem of
multi-polar traps or Molochian
Dynamics these are the situations when
everyone agrees that there is a global
problem but the most rational local
decision for individual people or
companies is the one that actually
contributes to that Global problem even more
- the tragedies of the commons or runaway
Global arms races are classic examples
of this and and a contemporary example
is happening in the development of AI



It's wealth, constantly seeking more wealth, to better seek still more wealth. Building wealth off of destruction. That's what's consuming the world. And is driving humans crazy at the same time.

SeanAU

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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #30 on: February 19, 2024, 05:22:55 AM »
Who is Moloch and What is the MetaCrisis?

It's wealth, constantly seeking more wealth, to better seek still more wealth. Building wealth off of destruction. That's what's consuming the world. And is driving humans crazy at the same time.

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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #31 on: February 19, 2024, 10:13:03 AM »
Thanks for the videos. I'm converting them to mp3 as we speak.

In this latest conversation Nate Hagens has with Ashley Hodgson (professor in behavioural economics), she mentions Peter Turchin and his theory about the wealth pump and elite overproduction, which made me re-watch the Novara Media video I posted at the start of this thread. My gripe with Peter Turchin and this lady also is that they don't follow the line of thought to its logical conclusion and from there, offer ideas to stop the wealth pump from pumping.

Nevertheless, Peter Turchin's explanation is one of the best I have come across so far.

It's a reasonably interesting conversation, but with a lot of vague definitions of how things work and what 'we' need to do:

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zenith

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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #32 on: February 19, 2024, 10:48:10 AM »
the irony is that the european enlightenment and industrial revolution were meant to address the "meta crisis" of the human condition and look where that got us.

William Rees | Confronting Overshoot: Changing the Story of Human Exceptionalism


Capitalism is dead and so are we | Yanis Varoufakis interview
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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #33 on: February 19, 2024, 02:58:48 PM »
But there was no enlightenment. Look at how "they" viewed every "civilisation" they encountered and look where "they" viewed "them" from. About as delusional then as they/we/99.9% are now.

Sound bites are great just by their nature we must see they are bull crap. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

I've never spoken the Truth in my life 😘✌️🤘

Thank God for Pink Floyd though or it would have been a total waste 💝🙏🥳⛷️🍁❄️
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zenith

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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #34 on: February 19, 2024, 04:54:57 PM »
But there was no enlightenment.

Thank God for Pink Floyd though or it would have been a total waste

we're still trying to engineer it.
Topic: Robots and AI: Our Immortality or Extinction

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zenith

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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #35 on: February 19, 2024, 05:31:19 PM »
Who is Moloch and What is the MetaCrisis?

Talks With Sri Ramana Maharshi.


Luke 17:21
21 Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

first you have to slay the dragon (most that meet it choose to ride it).
the ninth circle of hell.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_(Dante)#/media/File:Gustave_Dore_Inferno_34_caption.jpg

the old testament bible puts it like this:
Genesis 3:24 KJV
So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

the egyptians depicted completion with the ankh, the key of life.
« Last Edit: February 19, 2024, 05:59:09 PM by zenith »
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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #36 on: February 19, 2024, 06:25:43 PM »
Aye, but not within you as a Homo Sapiens Sapiens. Within you as "consciousness". It's not really called that but you know what I mean 🥳. i.e. your dream character is within you; the dream universe is within you. Aint nothing "you" can do about it either ;-) No self is .......
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zenith

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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #37 on: February 19, 2024, 08:04:29 PM »
Within you as "consciousness".

when consciousness becomes conscious of itself the hero's journey begins...

when you go digging into self inquiry you never know what you'll find, it can be a shattering experience.


manly p. hall mentions something about a 'shattered crucible' (disaster) in a chapter on alchemy in "the secret teaching of all ages", so there's that cautionary tale. we'd call it ptsd.

“The most sacred part of the human body is the brain and spinal system, revered from all antiquity and symbolized again and again in all the religions of the world. While other parts of the body are of great interest to the student, the mysterious working of the spinal fires by means of which liberation is finally attained is so tremendous that many years must be spent in understanding even the fundamental principles. The spine is the rod which budded, the Yggdrasil Tree, the flaming sword, the staff of comfort, the wand of the Magi.”
― Manly P. Hall, Melchizedek and the Mystery of Fire
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/40220.Manly_P_Hall

most of that stuff is long winded and superfluous though it's informative as to the foundations that our circumstance is built on in the western tradition.

Where is reality? Can you show it to me? - Heinz von Foerster

zenith

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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #38 on: February 21, 2024, 01:12:01 AM »
nobody else can resolve it for you, that's just the way it is. there are no words.

K.D. Lang sings Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah
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SeanAU

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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #39 on: February 23, 2024, 03:37:34 AM »
Hi, I appreciate the contributions by everyone above. Thanks.

Quote
Shahid Bolsen talks about critical thinking skills (applied to science or whatever the issue is)

.... okay you can get into what are the subjectivities (your intuitions / instincts) of that would be, which is that according to the various subjectivities, your life experience your upbringing your indoctrination your background (Ideologies and BIASES) and so on is,  BUT you're interpreting the information through that and then making conclusions that are beyond what the information is actually telling you.

Because you are interpreting it through your own experience and subjectivities so you are not restricting the relevance of the information to what is actually contained in the information!

The Scientific Method was specifically designed to get around Human Biases, entrenched Beliefs, logical Fallacies, and poor Thinking Skills.
https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/science-fair/steps-of-the-scientific-method
https://www.britannica.com/science/scientific-method
 
But it too has it's limitations .... human thought, analysis and higher wisdom can transcend such materialistic logical data analyses.

Critical thinking: Weighing information properly
(or what people do not tend to do - how we end up with deniers and fanatics and meta-crises)




« Last Edit: February 23, 2024, 03:53:21 AM by SeanAU »
It's wealth, constantly seeking more wealth, to better seek still more wealth. Building wealth off of destruction. That's what's consuming the world. And is driving humans crazy at the same time.

SeanAU

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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #40 on: February 24, 2024, 02:46:29 AM »
All past Civilisations terminated in self-destruction by exceeding their sustainable boundaries is the norm in human history. Today human civilisation is exponentially rapidly exceeding all Planetary Boundaries.

The Metacrisis: Making Sense in a Nonsensical World and
Extractable Industries - if I cut this tree down for it's wood I will be ahead of others tying to protect the Atmosphere - choices ahead and the AI Culture Wars ..... where to from here?
Being educated by AI Polymaths from the past
Daniel Schmachtenberger & Thomas Ermacora

https://youtu.be/6aKI2C61jVE?si=DjG-5Dy-dF_QNjdx&t=3624

I think this concluding part of the discussion @ 1 hr in is clear enough. Looking for positives in AI/AGI futures for society and for all individuals.

Though the whole thing is tough to follow, but worth it imo. The main point (for me) being, we do not have answers or solutions. The problems are not that clear either. AI-AGI will be a paradigm shift on steroids - will it be for good or ill?

Quote
  @ 59 mins Daniel Schmachtenberger
Quote
Daniel Schmachtenberger .... Imagining what must the future coordination systems and the distribution and allocation of resources and you start to get into things like doesn't 'Interest' (Banks/Borrowing) by itself even if we don't think about Central Bank policy or interest rates or fractional Reserve banking or anything doesn't Interest itself, compounding interest, force exponential growth of Finance?

Yeah it does, and then to not debase the currency doesn't that mean you have to have an exponential growth of goods and services?

Yeah it does. Doesn't that mean you basically have to have an exponential materials economy on a finite Planet? Yeah! So Interest has to go too!

Well that's really fundamental (to how our world operates globally) We don't know how to make that World.

And then as long as most access to resources is based on private property doesn't that mean rival Risk Interest where I can do better at the expense of the environment and others, based on private property?

Probably a lot of stuff has to be rethought around property law and then even like - I can appreciate the atmosphere in fact my life depends upon it, but I don't have to pay for it myself (it's free / held in common).

And so if I cut a tree down I get immediate benefit from the Timber and the little tiny damage it causes to the atmosphere I don't really notice that, but when everybody thinks that way it does have that effect (globally to the Commons.)

But locally I have way more incentive to cut it down than to leave it up because the extraction value that I get from turning it into Lumber gives me game theoretic value ($ in hand relative wealth) whereas if I put my resources towards planting more trees, that I don't have a direct economic interest in, I do less well in
the economic system - become relatively less wealthy.

This means that there is a fundamental rethinking of the value equation required because whoever ends up valuing extractable exchangeable wealth ends up doing game theoretically much better than those who don't.

Which means they influence the world and culture more than those who pay more attention to the Common Wealth, Society and the Culture who then have less influence over the whole thing (economically, socially, politically, and culturally).

So the (near term future) changes (to avoid a meta crisis / civilization destruction of planetary boundaries) that we're talking about at the level of Economics are things like: interest, private property, fungible currency, which are even deeper than whether we have nation states or not.
 
The discussion then moves onto the potential of positives from AI/AGI to individuals/society and culture.   
« Last Edit: February 24, 2024, 03:21:50 AM by SeanAU »
It's wealth, constantly seeking more wealth, to better seek still more wealth. Building wealth off of destruction. That's what's consuming the world. And is driving humans crazy at the same time.

SeanAU

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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #41 on: February 24, 2024, 03:57:52 AM »
Empty Institutions in Global Environmental Politics
R A D O S L AV S . D I M I T R O V
Western University
https://politicalscience.uwo.ca/people/faculty/full-time_faculty/Empty%20Institutions%20-%20ISR%20article.pdf

Society is stuck between the soft deniers (the IPCC highly-politicized and very conservative process) and the hard deniers. Dimitrov, who is an academic who took an active part in a number of IPCC COP meetings, wrote an excellent paper about the COP and other performative UN environment institutions; Empty Institutions in Global Environmental Politics

It seems that humanity, and the elite that rule humanity, will do anything but combat climate change and will instead use the gift of human intelligence to construct fairy stories (eco-modernism, climate change isn't happening/is only natural, not enough fossil fuels to drive the climate over the edge ...) and profiteering short-term stopgaps (solar radiation management, digging up, crushing and spreading of colossal amounts of igneous rocks to accelerate rock weathering, the carbon capture boondoggle etc.).

Cassandra may have been accurate about the future (which she was) but was fated not to ever be believed. A depressing place to be. Many people mistake the Cassandra as being a "doomer" or something when in fact she was an accurate prophet. 
It's wealth, constantly seeking more wealth, to better seek still more wealth. Building wealth off of destruction. That's what's consuming the world. And is driving humans crazy at the same time.

Neven

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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #42 on: February 24, 2024, 09:26:44 AM »
All past Civilisations terminated in self-destruction by exceeding their sustainable boundaries is the norm in human history. Today human civilisation is exponentially rapidly exceeding all Planetary Boundaries.

And this happens when bubbles of wealth, stewarded by 'elites', become so large that they start to drive and dominate society.

Quote
AI-AGI will be a paradigm shift on steroids - will it be for good or ill?

This will depend on whether - on the whole - AI supports those bubbles of wealth, or limits them.

Take for instance, (central bank) digital currencies and the risk they pose of keeping everybody in check, via social credit systems, etc. That's obviously what the elites want (because their job as servants is to protect, grow and further concentrate their wealth), and some form of AI will probably be used to run the whole scheme. But instead of keeping the masses in check via social credit systems, it could also keep the elites' wealth in check by not letting it go beyond a certain boundary (which is practically impossible at the moment because of all kinds of fiscal loopholes, money laundering etc).

If society can be convinced of the need to put a cap on individual wealth, some of AI can be used for good. I have a hard time believing that society can be convinced, however, given how hard it is to convince anybody of wealth concentration being at the root of the polycrisis.
« Last Edit: February 24, 2024, 04:05:46 PM by Neven »
Make money, not peace

zenith

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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #43 on: February 24, 2024, 02:37:07 PM »
this all reminds me of the early 1990's and deep ecology courses, the esalen institute before that and findhorn too. round and round we go... these days we have the WEF and yuuval noah harari explaining it all to us. when the rothschilds and rockefellers started showing up at environmental meetings that was the end of conservation and the co-opting into 'new' industrial technological solutions.

two things are true and have always been true: 1) we're trying to use our minds/intellect to achieve the godhead (through science and tech. these days) 2) we don't know what the hell we're talking about.

read the introduction (thank-you CIA for uploading it to your library) https://www.cia.gov/library/abbottabad-compound/E4/E4AAFF6DAF6863F459A8B4E52DFB9FF4_Manly.P.Hall_The.Secret.Teachings.of.All.Ages.pdf

Noam Chomsky - "The machine, the ghost, and the limits of understanding"


THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY: A.I Predicts 400 Years In 3 Minutes


Ted Kaczynski was more correct than anyone will ever give him credit for.
Where is reality? Can you show it to me? - Heinz von Foerster

gerontocrat

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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #44 on: February 25, 2024, 05:52:12 PM »
I didn't know where to put this article, but as it is all about "things fall apart, the centre cannot hold, mere anarchy is loosed upon the world", so here seems OK.

apropos of .....? It is certainly easier to destroy than build.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/25/billionaire-doomsday-bunkers-end-times
Quote
The latest billionaire trend? Doomsday bunkers with a flammable moat
Arwa Mahdawi
Is all this bunker-building a sign the 1% know something we don’t and are preparing for end times?

Sun 25 Feb 2024 11.12 GMT

‘A famous quote in tech circles is often attributed to William Gibson: the future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed. That’s true of disaster as well.’ Photograph: Mark J Terrill/AP

What’s your plan for the apocalypse? I’ll tell you what mine is: death.

I am not really built for battle – I need five cups of coffee just to function and I have terrible allergies. My body can’t even handle pollen, it’s not going to do well with nuclear war. Plus, even if I was hardier – who wants to live a few extra months in a completely destroyed world?

Billionaires. Billionaires do. As you have probably noticed bunkers have become the ultimate status symbol among the 1%. The bunker craze, accelerated by the pandemic, has been going on for a while now. However I’m starting to think that bunker-fever is getting out of hand. The rich are no longer content with run-of-the-mill $500,000 survival shelters, they’re taking things to the next level: a development which should probably worry us all.

Look, for example, at Mark Zuckerberg. In December Wired published an in-depth report detailing how the Meta CEO has been constructing a 5,000-sq-ft underground shelter on his 1,400-acre compound in Hawaii. Very normal! Very cool! According to planning documents reviewed by Wired, the compound will be completely self-sufficient with its own food and water supplies. The price tag for the entire project is over $270m. It’s also shrouded in secrecy and people involved with the project are bound by non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). “The only other time you see that is when you’re doing secure military installations,” one local construction industry official affiliated with the site told Wired. “For a private project to have an NDA attached to it is very rare.”

Because of all the secrecy around Zuckerberg’s shelter it’s not clear exactly what sort of dystopian mechanisms are in place to ensure that plebs can’t break in. However, Al Corbi, president of Strategically Armored & Fortified Environments (Safe), a Virginia-based bunker company, recently told The Hollywood Reporter (THR) that his clients have been coming up with cunning ways to ensure their luxury apocalypse retreats can’t be breached by the great unwashed. One of the projects Corbi is working on (for an unnamed business mogul) is an island fortress with a flammable moat. Try and breach it and it bursts into flames.

“We wound up literally building a 30-ft-deep lake [around the compound] skimmed with a lighter-than-water flammable liquid that can transform into a ring of fire,” Corbi explained to THR. “The only access to the island is a swing bridge.” And, of course, there are also backup water cannons to keep the poors out. Corbi enthusiastically noted that the cannons can also be used for recreation as well as water-boarding invaders: they can generate waves for a fun game of flag football on jet skis.

Is all this bunker-building a sign the 1% know something we don’t and are preparing for end times? Podcaster Christina Randall, who has over 1.58 million subscribers, thinks so. Randall recently observed that Zuckerberg’s reported bunker is one of approximately 15 end-of-days projects being undertaken by billionaires worldwide and said the Biblical Book of Revelation, which predicts the end of the world, is being fulfilled. “Revelation 6:15 says that the kings of the Earth, the princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty and every slave and every free man hid in caves and among the rocks of the mountains,” Randall said.

I’m not sure the Book of Revelation is a particularly authoritative source. But, even disregarding that, there are lots of prophets of doom out there and plenty of reasons to be pessimistic about the state of the world. There’s a famous quote in tech circles, often attributed to William Gibson: the future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed. That’s true of disaster as well. While billionaires worry about an upcoming dystopia, people in Gaza are living it. “Gaza has become a death zone,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director-general, recently said at a press briefing in Geneva. The children starving to death in Gaza don’t have underground bunkers to run to. As the 1% create full-scale hospitals in their just-in-case bunkers, people in Gaza are dying of malnutrition and easily-treated diseases. While the rich stockpile food in luxurious shelters, more than half a million in Gaza are at a high risk of mass starvation. And the US government, which could stop all this suffering very quickly, is shrugging its shoulders.

Watching the collective punishment being wrought on Gaza should horrify every one of us. Not just because innocent people are dying terrible deaths that are being funded with US taxpayer money, but because we are watching the destruction of international law. “Although there were rehearsals for events in Gaza that showed extreme disregard of international law, the war there may well signal a curtain call,” Agnès Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty International recently wrote in Foreign Affairs. “The rules-based order that has governed international affairs since the end of World War II is on its way out, and there may be no turning back. The consequences of this abandonment are all too apparent: more instability, more aggression, more conflict and more suffering.” The war in Gaza may not affect you personally but the destruction of the rules-based order and international humanitarian law affects all of us. It makes all of us less safe. Add in the climate crisis to the erosion of the rules-based order and things start to look even more dire – even if you’ve got a survival bunker with a flammable moat at your disposal.

But I didn’t mean for this column to be a downer for everyone. There is some good news: robots may take us all out before world war three or the climate crisis does. Eliezer Yudkowsky, an artificial intelligence researcher, recently told the Guardian that we should start laying out the red carpet for our machine-based overloads very soon. “If you put me to a wall,” Yudkowsky mused, “and forced me to put probabilities on things, I have a sense that our current remaining timeline looks more like five years than 50 years. Could be two years, could be 10.” While that seems a tad alarmist, you don’t have to be a doomer to worry that the rise of AI is going to trigger even more instability in an already fragile world. It seems beyond debate that we should all be taking the meteoric rise of AI very seriously. I’ll tell you what is up for debate though: the very serious question of whether sentient robots are capable of breaching flammable moats.
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zenith

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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #45 on: February 25, 2024, 06:41:54 PM »
The Turning Point: Science, Society, and the Rising Culture by Fritjof Capra - First published March 1, 1982
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/150999.The_Turning_Point

in my younger more hopeful and naïve years this is the sort of thing that gripped me.

it was made into (inspired) a movie in 1990.

Mindwalk - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100151/

this is the concluding scene to the movie, which is apt.

Mindwalk (1990 ) - Pablo Neruda
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etienne

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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #46 on: February 25, 2024, 08:34:45 PM »
@Gero
Rich people will have to learn the hard way that they are not better than the rest. They can buy few months, maybe a year of comfort,  but more is not possible. No human alone can manage all the required technologies to produce all the needed spare parts on the long run. That's why a horse is more sustainable than a car. The end of the world isn't going to be fun for anyone.

There is a good book by Octavia E. Butler about this :Parable of the Sower
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Sower_(novel)
« Last Edit: February 25, 2024, 08:44:46 PM by etienne »

SeanAU

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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #47 on: February 26, 2024, 05:21:30 AM »
The End Times.
immiseration
noun
1. economic impoverishment


Step One is: Stop the Wealth Pump

Understanding Societal Collapse and Donald Trump, with Complexity Scientist Peter Turchin

A Poly Crisis aka Multiple Crises laying one upon another compounding their impact.

What leads to political turbulence and social breakdown? Is there any way to stop history repeating itself today? Peter Turchin has mined 10,000 years of data to find the answer.

Peter Turchin has pioneered a new science of making history predictable - by applying methods that had already succeeded in other complex fields. You'll want to know what he sees lying ahead, and what we can do about it.

In this live event, he will present a ground-breaking account of how human societies work, explaining how, when the shifting balance of power between the ruling class and the majority tips too far in favour of elites, elite overproduction leads to state breakdown. It happened in imperial China, in medieval France, in the American Civil War - and it is happening now.




Quote

@6:45 mins https://www.youtube.com/live/XGhBTKzrJEY?si=YjKUpR7n7IeGWUPG&t=406

Quote
in 2010 you called the beginning of a disintegrated phase so let's go
through the four warning signs of that Disintegration phase and the first one is
what you call popular immiseration so talk us through what that is ...

sure so the four warning signs just to give a preview is
1 ) declining living standards for the general population, the technical term is Immiseration, or economic impoverishment.
2) even more important is Elite Overproduction
3) the State Weakness is the third one and
4) depending on how large and powerful the country is External Influences can also play a role

With  Immiseration here the concept that I use I call it the wealth pump. It's the perverse Wealth Pump that at some points it gets turned on and it starts pumping income and wealth from
the general population workers or even peasants for example in medieval societies and delivers this wealth to the Elites.

The generic thing that's that tends to happen is that when you are in the middle of an integrative phase the elites get relaxed they think that life is going to be good for everybody and then as they start reconfiguring the economy in such a ways that they direct more and more of the fruits of the economy to themselves they become selfish Elites

Why? Because they can right, it's known there is a term for it the Iron Law of Oligarchy

People are tempted to translate their power into good things for themselves. 

So what that does then it leads to especially in societies where there is no economic growth like
in medieval times or the modern times this leads to Absolute Immiseration of the population

In more modern societies actually once this wealth pump gets working very
hard what happens like in the United States for example the pump was turned
on during 1970s  .................. and then I was shocked when in 2017 suddenly
the life expectancy of Americans not only stopped growling it actually declined
and that kept declining even before Covid19 hit.

you may be familiar with the idea of Death of Despair all right so that hit
about 20 years ago it became noticeable and these are the Deaths of Despair are:
Suicide, deaths from alcohol abuse and drug abuse and also it is often by other
lethal fatalities because people just don't care about their lives anymore.

So this is what Immiseration is like at the individual level .


Then note the facilitator after this section who is naturally extremely biased in defense of oligarchs and social imbalances while totally ignoring the harms done to the majority of the population ... "which are slightly different from the slap on the wrist don't be a mean employer approach to things"

The entrenched distortions of today's cultural values run deep .... if your on the elites side of the discussion you'll double down to defend your advantages and elite privileges all the time. It's psychologically and morally sick. It's a default ideological and selfish self-serving position from the get go.

@18 mins

Quote
What is an Elite first of all? Who are the elites?

I use neutral sociological definition simply a small proportion of the population who
concentrate Social Power in their hands.  So these are like military nobility, let's say
in medieval England (Baron's Bishops Knights) or the Mandarin class in Imperial China
or the the proverbial one percent in the United States today, (and the IT millionaires
from Silicon Valley, Hedge Fund managers, high paid News media personalities, to
Elon Musk.)

All right so this Elite concentrate four sources of Social Power which is: coercive
economic, political, or administrative, and ideological power.
Don't forget
ideological very important soft but very powerful kind of power.

Anyway the next question becomes is how are Elites recruited and related so to
speak? Essentially this requires a pool of people who want [are ambitious egotistical
and desire] to occupy [powerful / leadership] Elite positions in business and politics.

Now, there is always more Elite aspirants than positions and while some degree of
competition is good because it weeds out the bad ones and more less energetic, but
excessive competition is destructive because it's like a game of musical chairs.

If there's only 10 chairs, when you have 12 players you know things are fairly
manageable when you get 20 things start to break down, but when you get 30 or 40
aspirants competing for 10 chairs you can imagine the chaos right

and so that's precisely What's Happening Now. how is that connected to the wealth
pump? Well we can think about most Elites in Western Democratic societies are a 
combination of Economic and Political Elites

there are two pipelines leading to Elite positions one of them is wealth you're either
inherit wealth or you acquire it; the second one is holding the right degree
credentials essentially -- so both of these pipelines are operating the wealth
pump now
I think it's obvious how the wealth pump affects the wealth route,
the more millionaires you have the more people want to transform into Donald Trump!
He is the best example to translate their wealth into political position and what we
see in United States when the wealth pump got turned on during the 1970s ....

over the 40 period year of time the numbers of these millionaires increased tenfold
10 fold right and so now not all of them are going to seek office but the more of them
you have the smaller proportion is going to grow and we say that very clearly, so that
leads to this game of musical chairs and  as the numbers of elites trying to get in
increases the number of frustrated Elites who don't get the positions grows even
faster and they are being tempted to start breaking the rules of the game --
becoming more extreme more immoral more desperate to claim what they believe
is RIGHTFULLY THEIR LEGACY as a wealthy Elite member of society.
 

METAPHORICALLY there will be one individual who will do something sneaky like
stand by a chair and while everybody's moving and then people will figure it out
and so then now they will crowd and start you know pushing each other, then fist
fights and so on it will quickly escalate fast to chaos.

And that's essentially why you see the degradation of the social norms and
institutions governing elections in the United States ... and everything else too.


@ 24 mins approx.

What produces conflict because of inter-league conflict between Elites is one of the
leading causes of disintegration and an example of how conflict between Elites then
cause Elites to mobilize people lower in the economic pyramid to fight on their behalf
and is the classic example of being possessive of your chosen Billionaire or supposed
billionaire, it's now a Billionaire Counter-Elite fighting against another Billionaire
Counter-Elite who mobilizes the Grievances of the Masses who are left out the system
in order to fight Elite Games or preserve their established positions of power
rather
than to reconfigure the nature of a society for the good of everyone involved!! 

You have lots of very ambitious people all right and if the majority of them get
frustrated then they typically, it is natural to perceive the problem IS NOT THEM
(oh no, they're perfect as they are) it's not their problem right, it's the society!

The society has become unjust, and therefore the motivations may not be very
savory or noble but vile psychopathic nefarious paranoid and morally degenerate. 

To the frustrated self-centered privileged Elites now it is the society (and the swamp)
that has become unjust.

It's about Class. It's still always about Class. What is so stunning is how little people
know what is going on. Then again, we humans are generally an ignorant distracted lot.

Lately the 'masses' rally to the side of Elites instead. Some to Trump, others to
Hillary, or Obama. To Elon or Alex Jones or to Tucker Carlson. Some to climate
scientist celebrities, others to 'freedom loving' Fossil fuel companies, or a Lyndsay
Graham, and to Zelensky or Boris Johnson and to outspoken science deniers -
elitist celebrity tribalism on steroids?

Quote
"Still, we need the elites, the well educated skillful and capable. We need managers,
we need intelligent and wise thought leaders. We need all those people who are good at organizing things and who can occupy the important positions of power and influence. But we need and want Pro-Social leaders who are working for the benefit of the whole of the population rather than for the narrow benefit of the ruling class only!

We need the elites, but somehow you have to constrain them to act for the benefit of all, and in the past that has been done successfully and societies have thrived.

We need to worry about the health of societies and how do we get better health or societies? By getting much better science. "


Quote

Quote

America Is Headed Toward Collapse
History suggests how to stave it off.
By Peter Turchin

We examined dozens of variables, including population numbers, measures of well-being, forms of governance, and the frequency with which rulers are overthrown. We found that the precise mix of events that leads to crisis varies, but two drivers of instability loom large. The first is popular immiseration—when the economic fortunes of broad swaths of a population decline. The second, and more significant, is elite overproduction—when a society produces too many superrich and ultra-educated people, and not enough elite positions to satisfy their ambitions.

These forces have played a key role in our current crisis. In the past 50 years, despite overall economic growth, the quality of life for most Americans has declined. The wealthy have become wealthier, while the incomes and wages of the median American family have stagnated. As a result, our social pyramid has become top-heavy. At the same time, the U.S. began overproducing graduates with advanced degrees. More and more people aspiring to positions of power began fighting over a relatively fixed number of spots. The competition among them has corroded the social norms and institutions that govern society.  [...]

By 2010, the relative wage (wage divided by GDP per capita) of an unskilled worker had nearly halved compared with mid-century. For the 64 percent of Americans who didn’t have a four-year college degree, real wages shrank in the 40 years before 2016.

As wages diminished, the costs of owning a home and going to college soared. To afford an average house, a worker earning the median wage in 2016 had to log 40 percent more hours than she would have in 1976. And parents without a college degree had to work four times longer to pay for their children’s college. [...]

Unlike the post–Civil War period, real wages steadily grew in the mid-20th century. And high taxes on the richest Americans helped reverse the wealth pump. The tax rate on top incomes, which peaked during World War II at 94 percent, stayed above 90 percent all the way until the mid-1960s. Height increased by a whopping 3 inches in roughly the first half of the 20th century. Life expectancy at age 10 increased by nearly a decade. By the 1960s, America had achieved a broad-based prosperity that was virtually unprecedented in human history.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/06/us-societal-trends-institutional-trust-economy/674260/


"The Elites start reconfiguring the economy in such ways that they direct more and more of the fruits of the economy to themselves they become Selfish Elites!"

It's a manifestation of human psychology in the Western world today. What happens when the Rules of the Game are Biased towards the already Wealthy.

 SEE 'Pernicious' Effects of Economic Inequality 

 

He also mentions, rightly, that Tucker Carlson, Matt Taibbi and the other Muckraking new kind of independent journalists who are taking on the Ruling Classes and the Elites is a very very good thing at this time.

"..... they have created their own platforms and they are more influential that is the great thing you know, they actually get more views and everything else you know CBS whatever MSNBC and so CNN and so on and so forth. So that is actually a good way in which technology is changing the landscape as ideological power is very important because it's much more subtle - it's soft but um you know one social media influencer can reach millions of people and change their minds and that could push the pressure from Grassroots on our politicians something that we really need. " 

Mmmm, that was quite long.
« Last Edit: February 26, 2024, 02:27:40 PM by SeanAU »
It's wealth, constantly seeking more wealth, to better seek still more wealth. Building wealth off of destruction. That's what's consuming the world. And is driving humans crazy at the same time.

zenith

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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #48 on: February 27, 2024, 07:45:30 PM »
another waste of resources, science has gone off the rails which sabine has covered before.

The Controversial Quantum Drive was put to Test. It Didn't go as Planned.


couldn't they test small versions in a vacuum on earth? more money than brains but money is just made up while the wasted resources are real enough. more space junk.
Where is reality? Can you show it to me? - Heinz von Foerster

SeanAU

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Re: The Metacrisis
« Reply #49 on: March 04, 2024, 03:39:49 AM »
H/T zenith

America's Super-Elite Disconnect
Last month came a fascinating new report from the institute of Scott Rasmussen, founder of the famed Rasmussen Reports polling center. Its aim was to, for the first time, quantitatively define the true ‘elite’ of society, which control most of our social narratives, politics, and general ‘orthodoxy’.
 
https://darkfutura.substack.com/p/americas-super-elite-disconnect

Report
The first-ever survey research defining the characteristics and beliefs of an Elite 1% who are the root cause of political dysfunction in America today.
https://www.rmgresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Elite-One-Percent.pdf
It's wealth, constantly seeking more wealth, to better seek still more wealth. Building wealth off of destruction. That's what's consuming the world. And is driving humans crazy at the same time.