Duo wrote: ↑Tue Sep 21, 2021 1:46 amPeople tend to conflate Capitalism with Corporatism. It's a real shame in terms of effective communication regarding those subjects.
Honestly, at this point (and by "this point" I mean "basically my entire life now") I'm noticing more and more that there are WAY too many people in society - and not just billionaire or millionaire corporate executives, but even like... average, everyday, ordinary schmucks who don't really have a pot to piss in - for whom capitalism is far, FAR more than just some abstract idea or societal system or academic concept to be picked apart and debated nalytically: rather they seem to have a SUPREMELY unhealthy emotional attachment to it and obsessive fixation on it, to the point that even merely SUGGESTING we can do better than it as a society, no matter how good the evidence or context to that point, is tantamount to ripping their childhood security blanket away from them.
I could make a very good, and very cogent analogy to this exact mentality with Morpheus' whole speech about how bluepills still hardwired to the Matrix are "so inured, so hopelessly dependent upon the system, that they will fight with their very lives to protect it"... but a gaggle of neckbearded losers and shit-for-brains online over the past 7 years has totally toxified and polluted THAT sort of analogy, sooooo...
(Note again, the immense irony and hallmark of human stupidity of the fact that The Matrix was a story created by a couple of trans women as, among other things, a transgender allegory that was co-opted and corrupted by a bunch of knuckle-dragging, socially-inept, emotionally-stunted moron cis white men on the internet to mean... everything that is the exact diametric opposite and antithesis to any of its original intended meaning, up to and including violently anti-trans and anti-women sentiment... purely as an emotional coping mechanism for the fact that they can't get laid and don't have any IRL friends, and don't want to place the blame for any bit of that on themselves and their own obvious flaws and failings. But I digress...)
Again though, we're talking about even people who have fucking NOTHING in the way of financial wealth or social standing within this system, and indeed for whom the current system has largely screwed them over the way it has most everyone else other than a relative, select handful of people... and yet, to even DARE question the slightest hint of capitalism as even just
a base concept triggers and sets them off as if you sexually hit on their mom right in front of them.
Lets not lose sight of what capitalism even is (or is supposed to be theoretically) just definitionally: its an economic concept and social framework that is, at absolute BEST and in the most ideal and charitable of interpretations (and there's certainly plenty of far less charitable views of it that certainly hold more than their share of weight in credibility a this point), a purely utilitarian tool for basic societal functionality: and like most tools, is one that can ostensibly be improved upon, redesigned, and yes even made outright
obsolete and no longer needed. And like most tools, it can also be fashioned into a weapon that can be used to harm people, to the point where it can become
counter-productive and damaging to society instead of helping it.
What capitalism
isn't supposed to be is an emotional ideal that is clung to with seemingly religious fervor the way that one clings to a loved one. And yet, to hear it from an awful LOT of folks out there, even those whom are
in no way whatsoever benefitting from this system and are actively being made to suffer needlessly from it....
Point blank to anyone here to whom this in any which way applies: if you find that you have a genuine emotional investment in capitalism as anything more than a purely utilitarian tool - that can be changed and even discarded entirely as the need and situation arises - to the point where anything that remotely questions its use of effectiveness elicits a strong emotional reaction out of you that causes you to contort yourself into ridiculous knots to try and justify... then I genuinely EMPLORE you to do some INCREDIBLY deep, deep soul searching on why this is the case for you, and even to maybe consider going and seek actual mental help/counseling about it.
Cause one even cursory and honest objective look out there into the world and into society should make it very plain that... even under the most charitable interpretation of capitalism's use, it just ISN'T working and moreover that its actively
the root cause (greed, selfishness, and the continued acquisition of money and riches even at the cost of the lives and safety of others, and the absolute power that that brings you in a capitalist society) behind a LOT of the societal decay and completely needless and cruel human suffering, misery, and death that's afflicting an ever-increasing BILLIONS of people throughout the world.
Simply put, which matters more you you when push comes to shove: the protection and proliferation of capitalism, an (again,
at best) ENTIRELY abstract concept which is ostensibly and theoretically there
to serve humanity and not vice versa... or the material betterment, safety, and care for actual, living, breathing, flesh, blood, and bone human beings like yourself that surround you every single day? And who encompass not just total faceless strangers, but also your own friends, family, and loved ones?
And yes,
these two things are in direct conflict with one another and to deny that at this point is to deny basic and glaringly observable reality. Given where things have BEEN heading for quite some decades now, this is the clear and unmistakable moral, ethical, philosophical, and perhaps even spiritual choice that ALL OF US are going to HAVE to make at this point.
What matters more to you in the end: money/capital or people's lives? Riches and greed (be it for yourself, or some asshole looking down from a corporate skyscraper high above you whom you'll never meet and who clearly in no way gives a flying FUCK about you or your loved ones), or caring for and protecting your fellow man/woman/whatever?
Peel away ALL the other ridiculous, convoluted bullshit... this is the fundamental choice that all of humanity is currently being forced to face, whether we like it or not, by the current situation and paradigm. Money or humanity?
You can only pick one.
To me at least personally, the choice is beyond obvious and easy... but the closer and closer to obvious doom that we're all getting, the more and more clear its becoming that this choice is WAY more
disturbingly difficult for a LOT of people to make.
And end of the day, how many of us there are for whom this is a painstakingly tough choice vs how many of us for whom the (morally and objectively correct, even just in terms of sheer survival necessity) answer is easy and obvious is what's going to fundamentally make or break whether or not we come out the other side of this mess still intact as a species or become the next dinosaurs that future civilizations will be digging up fossils for and crafting theories for "what happened that wiped them all out?"
Or to put it another way, as I see it personally: when your own personal hangups and neurosis over largely abstract and theoretical nonsense is literally helping and contributing (in whatever way, big or small) to getting gobs and gobs of other people needlessly killed and/or made to live in pointless and easily preventable suffering and squalor... then at that point your personal baggage over abstract nonsense (whether it be about capitalism, your oh-so-fragile "masculinity" or what have you: and to be sure for no small number of men out there, those two things are often interconnected together in incredibly warped and basically psychopathic ways)
should no longer fucking matter and should be ENTIRELY swept the fuck aside to prioritize what ACTUALLY matters more: saving people's lives.
I've said it before and will continue to say it: the only hierarchy that is real or that matters is the hierarchy of need. The rest of hierarchical thought (which much of capitalism itself is definitionally and intrinsically hinged upon) is largely pure bullshit that only exists to justify and rationalize unjust centers of power: power which is almost entirely contingent more on sheer, clueless-ass luck and historical inertia than anything else in terms of how it (sometimes almost arbitrarily) pools and coalesces in society.