kodos343: Sup broski
delphinus: not muchski
delphinus: had a debate with actor friend: apparently it's naive to believe the world can be any better than it currently is
kodos343: Simple thing to retort to that
kodos343: What reason is there to say that about today that could not have been said at any other point in human history? What has changed that makes further progress impossible.
kodos343: Like
kodos343: People say "oh every generation says it is the end of the world" when I mke apocalyptic predictions.
kodos343: But I point out something important
kodos343: That something significant has changed.
kodos343: That today, unlike in the past, humanity in fact has the means to effect global cataclysm.
kodos343: Nuclear weapons happened and that changed the game.
kodos343: And hell
kodos343: Te world did end before.
kodos343: At least localized.
kodos343: If the Fall of Rome isn't an apocalyptic scenario when you consider the state of affiars before and after, I dunno.
kodos343: After Rome fell Western Europe was plunged into endemic warfare. 'Civilization' consisted of villages bullied into protection rackets by armored thugs who had better weapons than anyone else. The most dominant social force was a doomsday cult known as Christianity.
kodos343: Change hte name of Christianity and you have the description of most post-apocalyptic settings. Endemic warfare, thug-dominated civilization, protection rackets, poor hygeine, and doomsday cults.
kodos343: WHO RUN BARTERTOWN
delphinus: Also
kodos343: But the point is if you are going to make a claim that today is somehow fundamentally different from the past, you have to back that up.
kodos343: What changed.
kodos343: Nuclear weapons changed things fundamentally since now humanity can end by its own hand. We have the means to do something we literally never ever could before.
kodos343: But no social force or technology exists that has rendered forward progress impossible.
kodos343: Improbable? Yeah. You know I think these are the end times.
kodos343: But I do not believe it is inherintly impossible to advance. And I think we will advance socially in some regards.
kodos343: I see gay rights improving.
kodos343: I see most minority rights improving in many ways. Although in cases of race I think this will have more to do with everyone being brought down rather than the low being elevated.
delphinus: There has been a degree of moral progress over time. Ending of the slave trade is a good example. While 'progress' as a meta-narrative has been dead since the holocaust at least, as a general rule people in our society are more moral than in the past, probably because they don't have to scrabble in the dirt to survive.
Also, it's in capitalism's interests to promote a true meritocracy, and as the numerous ideologies of the world are basically being replaced with CAPITALISM, this ought to drive equality
kodos343: There has been progress overall. Things like the holocaust are hiccups.
kodos343: As bad as gender rights are in america, or race rights
kodos343: It is no longer socially acceptable to outright say that blacks are not human, or that women ought to be literally stripped of all rights.
kodos343: In practice these things still happen
kodos343: And slavery never ended in America
kodos343: But the fact that they had to do things secretly and subtly rather htan overtly is a form of progress.
kodos343: And the same is true of most places.
delphinus: chattel slavery v wage slavery
kodos343: No.
kodos343: Chattel slavery is still a thing here.
kodos343: Prisons, remember?
delphinus: Oh yeah
kodos343: That's why you will never see drugs legalized in America.
kodos343: aLSO
delphinus: Apparently your police focus on prosecuting users rather than dealers
delphinus: wtf
kodos343: There are more black people rotting in American prisons than were ever (conventionally) enslaved.
kodos343: To stock prisons.
kodos343: Again
kodos343: The War on Drugs is not about drugs or even puritan morals.
kodos343: It's about slavery.
kodos343: It's about filling prisons with minorities.
delphinus: How do you feel about the slightly suspect view that the state actively allows certain organised crime groups to deal to minorities so they can arrest those minorities
kodos343: Never heard it before. And while I don't believe that it is a matter of official policy the way a lot of the other race stuff is, I do believe that certainly happens in some cases.
kodos343: Again
kodos343: Cops in America have made it clear that they would much rather arrest a non-white suspected of a crime than a white clearly guilty of one.
kodos343: We are dealing with a racist organization whos primary function is to serve the rich and oppress the masses, especially the non-whites.
delphinus: Well, I mostly hear that from black people so it's not like it's an unbiased view. But probably better than government's "we are totally equal" perspective
kodos343: I live in a nation where a black man who stole 200$ and then returned the money and turned himself in got over 10 years in prison while a white wall street person stole over a million and got less than a year.
kodos343: The inequality in America is so bare-face and extreme that there is literally nothing you can say that is absurd.
kodos343: Need I remind you that Nixon wanted to outlaw abortion for all people except blacks.
delphinus: o___o
kodos343: And think how much more insane Republicans are today.
kodos343: By modern American standards, Nixon and even God-Emperor Reagen were radical liberals.
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Originally Posted by Fenn
You forgot your F in Modesty.
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