Ironicwarcriminal posted:

it's rather telling that nobody has posted 'none'

I can't believe i used to look down my nose at people who refused to engage with or study politics and current affairs. What good does it do knowing of the constant lies, betrayal and conflict? So you can be outraged? depressed? cynical? sarcastic? So you can spend your life participating in mass delusional fantasies like 'History' or 'the Workers of the World' or any other God-substitute for people who think they're too smart to go to church.

It's so incredibly narcissistic, this pretension that the affairs of men have more nobility or legitimacy than a lion killing a zebra, or that the beauty of the Library of Alexandria was 1/10th that of a single lick of the flames that consumed it.

The happiest people i've ever met in my life have one thing in common: they couldn't give two figs about the nerd-death-cult that is politics.

I understand where you're coming from with this, but I think it's a dangerous abstraction. We (particularly in the US I might add) tend to abstract and compartmentalize "politics" and "ideology" into these words and theories which eventually bear little resemblance or relevance to our immediate livelihood. But I think this is wrong. We must never lose sight of the fact that "political ideology" is rooted in real personal values and worldviews.

I might identify as a "liberal" because I think "hey, I appreciate nature and I think we should do something to preserve it and lets help out poor people because I feel sorry for them." This real, immediate feeling and subjective value then gets abstracted out in the discourse between ideologies and theorizing (especially more so when we begin to lump groups of similarly minded adherents together as a single "ideology"), but taken back to a more concrete conceptualization, my feelings and personal values are ultimately what dives my "political ideology."

Likewise, I think it's fair to say that a lot of political ideology comes about as real reactions or conceptualizations of things happening around people in a concrete context. Like, sure, plenty of stuff is just open thought exploration and philosophizing, but plenty of other ideological worldviews are rooted in legitimate concerns and direct personal experience. The yard worker who is losing work to immigrants might formulate a more anti-immigratory ideology. Growing up in a family with a strong bond to mom and dad and a strong sense of work ethic and individualism and a sense of contributing purpose to society might make one a conservative. But see, it's not identifying as a "conservative" that makes this person believe in a goodness of the nuclear family or individualism; they already believed in all that, and the categorization of "conservative" comes after. It's an abstraction made to easily encapsulate their values for generalization and ease of discourse.

Additionally, "none" isn't so easily obtained as even that approach could be categorized as apolitical or moderate or primitivist or something, depending on how you intend it. And then you're aligned with a whole new political ideology despite your aims of disassociating with any. So, basically, political ideologies reflect personal/cultural values and shouldn't be understood solely as abstract concepts. Likewise, the people who "couldn't give two figs about" politics sound like passive participatory capitalists to me. You can't escape the game, and turning a blind eye and "just living your life," while structured around the current capitalist system, is going to be an endorsement or the system more than anything else. It's cute to think that maybe if you just don't care then it'll go away (because after all, "political ideology" are only useless words found in old books and used in bitter arguments), but sorry, your being complacent with buying sweat shop clothes and consuming gasoline like there's no tomorrow doesn't change the fact that these are real concerns and have very real consequences to real people in the physical world.

But hey, you know, I'm never gonna meet a Bangladeshi citizen, so why do I care how/if they live? screw them. I'm gonna go pick up some cheap Ts at TJ Maxx.

c.wilson.

ps I think I mostly agree with your rejection of anthropocentrism. It does seem silly, especially post-Darwin, to maintain some worldview wherein humans are the most important or noble creatures in existence. I think more people should have an understanding of the entirely interdependent structure of the whole of existence. But then, seeing how humans have or are in the process of parasitically breaking much of the global systems, it sort of gives weight to an anthropocentric worldview.

codywilson posted:

c.wilson.

hi cody, i know it's a funny joke when people say don't sign your posts, but actually don't sign your posts

deadken posted:

tpaine posted:

deadken posted:

misanthropy is goony as hell tpaine

it's correct though

no its not its dUmb. there can be no moral standard outside of humanity. to say all people are bad because they hurt other people is meaningless & contradictory, if all people are bad, so What if they get hurt? its lazy teenager shit + bad. and also epic crotchspawn meatship manbabies

If ppl r so bad, why do they support my drug habit by growing cocaine and distilling wine?

babyfinland posted:

*Licks a furry Balkan man toads pot belly*

Don't be a prude dude, i need this job

i don't even need a job to do that

tpaine posted:

the idea that human civilization can potentially be saved or should potentially be saved is a product of social isolation, a wddp-like belief in the goodness of people which is a shot in a dark of one's own habitually habitated room and inevitably the product of a lack of familiarity with exactly what kind of unspeakable garbage constitutes the majority of the homo sapien biomass. be out among the people everyday and understand their failures

if you actually read wddp tho its full of resentment against everyone around them irl

roseweird posted:

maybe humans can be saved or at least ultimately develop into something good but i am so horrified by the amount of suffering that has occurred, is occurring, will occur on the way there that i wonder if the process itself is morally acceptable

no cmon

this is like your thing about exterminating the male gender. sure yeah it sucks but annihilation is not an option you should waste your brain cells considering. this is like an iwc post but wrapped in nicer words