“You don’t need a formal conspiracy when interests converge. These people went to the same universities, they’re on the same boards of directors, they’re in the same country clubs. They have like interests, they don’t need to call a meeting. They know what’s good for them.”
-George Carlin, from an episode of Politically Incorrect
https://youtu.be/VAFd4FdbJxs?si=BZOXSSkui3_FbyCd
There are powerful classes of people that oppress you, but not because they go to secret meetings where they plan to, power/capital simply tends to corrupt.
And from our perspective it feels coordinated because the capitalist’s punches all come from the same direction: downward from above.
The truth is, they’ve bled us dry and have begun to turn on and eat one another having conquered the board with little room left to grow/metastasize. That’s why entire economic sectors are turning into TimeWarnerHBODiscoveryParamountSoonEtc…
I think the ruling class “controls/exploits some things” and they are “in control” is the difference? Like yes they have bled us dry with their grip but as WikiLeaks, Epstein, Panama papers etc suggests, they weren’t really “in control”. Right now, there’s a decent chance that Pakistan falls to the Taliban and their nukes will be in their hands - is actually anyone “in control” of this situation?
Did anything meaningful come from those leaks? People can try to do stuff to powerful people to reveal their misdeeds, but they’ve written the laws and are barely bound by the reach of nations in the first place. Few receive consequences for their crimes.
As for existential threats like nuclear weapons, that’s it’s own can of worms. So yeah, I guess in that respect they’re not really in control. But short of nuclear annihilation or the eventual collapse of the human-suitable environment, they seem pretty untouchable.
EDIT: Actually, we even have a great example of the ways they can fly above some world spamming catastrophes: COVID 19 happened. Many died, many more lost their livelihoods, homes, etc. Meanwhile many of the rich got to take private transportation to private places so they could wait out the pandemic in safety while their companies’ profits increased and they used that increased wealth to buy up even more capital.
I’d seriously doubt any claims that there’s some cabal that deliberately caused it, but they sure do have the means to escape the worst of disasters and even exploit them for profit.
Capitalists still have microplastics in their body and die of Covid. An individual can make up for bad luck by using capital as a buffer. However, capital can be lost directly or devalued all together.
Right now, there’s a decent chance that Pakistan falls to the Taliban and their nukes will be in their hands …
Source? The Pakistani military had enough control over the country to replace the former PM with the current guy. Now I’m not saying this is a good thing, but I don’t see the Taliban beating them in an open fight.
I’ll admit I saw it on Tiktok - https://www.tiktok.com/@philipdefranco/video/7322234507183164718
But I searched and found articles for example - https://www.voanews.com/a/pakistan-seeks-us-help-against-pakistani-taliban-in-afghanistan/7397076.html they talk about the attacks on the military.
The military could control the country but the Taliban can resort to much dirtier tactics than a proper military. So I think there’s some decent chance.
That’s the TTP, a small fundamentalist group in Pakistan. They do occassional terrorist attacks in rural northwest Pakistan, and those are of course horrible to those affected, but they aren’t challenging the power of the state. They’re also unrelated to the Afghan Taliban, with whom the Pakistan military has a neutral to good relationship.
Actually, it’s the Crows that are in control.
Don’t believe me? Look outside. There’s a crow out there, isn’t there? What do you think they’re doing, just chillin? Nah. Crows are always up to something.
a murder sheltered in the tree out back during the storms yesterday and shit all over my car
Birds aren’t real
Another win for the crows.
this is canon in paper mario: the thousand year door
Cops are just crow spy drones dressed as pigs.
You misspelled cats.
America stands for freedom, but if you think you’re free try walking into the deli and urinating on the cheese
- The Vandals, “Anarchy Burger”
I realize this is a joke/lyrics, but it’s interesting.
Actual freedom in this case might look like the deli owner whooping your ass before you get your zipper down. But we live in a state so the deli owner is not really allowed to defend themselves. So what happens depends in actuality depends on the various privilege levels of the deli owner and pisser. Is the deli owner a brown migrant and the pisser a white punk son of a CTO? Or is this a Subway and a black male pisser?
A privileged pisser learns no lessons within a state, they grow up to cause more bigger problems for more people. America is a state and that precludes freedom.
Anyone living with other people is less free than they would be alone, because their actions would only affect themselves. Nobody who lives somewhere that has a deli is totally and completely free, which is what the lyrics are poking fun at.
I guess it depends on definitions.
To me, what might be called “absolute freedom”, i.e. freedom from consequences isn’t a thing at all, no sense even talking about it. You can’t live alone, you are surrounded by microorganisms which will exact consequences on you if you feel you have the freedom to cut your own arm. You’re surrounded by animals that don’t think you have absolute freedom to kick them in the nuts. You don’t have the freedom to stop breathing.
Whether it’s a bacterium, a lion, or a “deli owner” doesn’t much matter.
Freedom as I see it is basically do whatever you want, but expect that others will too, and if you harm them, they might defend themselves and/or harm you back so it’s better not to. This basically equates to anarchism, and I don’t see why something one might call a “deli” couldn’t exist. It’s not the capitalist aspects that make a deli what it is, it’s the sandwiches, pickles, and environment.
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This describes religion pretty well too.
The universe doesn’t care about us. It will continue regardless of our actions.
I find it both terrifying and comforting.
A fellow human that welcomes the return of Cthulhu with open arms.
The only meaning is the meaning we forge for ourselves.
It will end regardless of us, too.
Even if we somehow survive all odds throughout the future, eventually everything will die when the universe slowly dies out. It cannot be reversed or avoided.
How would a universe care? A hug from a distant comet? 😊
Is the eqanimous silence really absence of caring?
Look closer into that comforting silence, you might be surprised.
“Alan… this is why no one comes to your parties anymore.”
“It’s not because they can’t get in my house because of the size of my beard?”
“That is a related, yet ancillary, issue.”
You can just say, “I don’t know.”
Oftentimes that’s the best answer.
We only have one rudder and it’s the capitalists at the helm.
The only direction that boat can go is “more profit!” even if the waters that leads us to are literally boiling. :/
there is no water, just people carrying other people… all the way on top are a couple few sitting on their machines sucking out the lives of those who are carrying them while throwing out trinkets in hope to direct the masses… or something… a nightmarish spike of steel and flesh, a spring fountain of value next to a smokestack of death, all the way down beneath the machinery: on all fours, crushed backs, hands desperately scratching up dirt to feed the machine in hopes for a smidgen of anything and the bottom of the machinery would be a boot…
No. Capitalists aren’t an individual. You can’t apply individual logic to them because they fundamentally behave differently. They go for “more profit” because of simple motivations and fundamental limits of perception.
Saying they’re at the rudder is like saying maggots purposefully decompose a carcass. They do decompose it, but little intelligence or coordination was involved, other organisms also contribute, and they’re all just living life. The actions that send us into boiling water weren’t done to move the ship.
It’s the plural of a capitalist, or “they.” They act as a collective and their singular drive of “more profit” collectively are what “hold the rudder” (lobbying, bribing, funding fraudulent scientific studies, etc…) like the collective action of the maggots decompose the body. Maybe one maggot isn’t trying to decay the whole thing, but it is the result of their collective action.
The result might look similar to steering, but not only is there no single steering rudder, capitalists don’t monopolize all of them. The result being the same might incentivize ignoring the truth, but it does matter. If the model has deficiencies, extrapolated inferences can lead you astray. In this situation it’s accurate, but in other situations it might not be.
The net effect of capitalist behavior moves us one way, but other forces are at play. With the move away from neoliberalism and the rise of nationalism, capitalism might not be the net force in the near future.
Fascism doesn’t primarily serve capitalist interests, but capitalists believe it serves them better than social democracy. However, capitalists are dead wrong because they are human, just like everyone else. Nationalism, religion, and culture are essential to the equation. Capitalists can exploit social phenomenon, but they don’t control them, no matter how much lobbying or propaganda they use.
They don’t hold the rudder. They push it, but don’t monopolize it.
I think that there are probably quite a large number of groups that are trying to control things.
The thing is, stochastic chaos and multiple groups working in concert, in the same general direction, and even at cross-purposes greatly affects their ability to create lasting change that matters (even if only for them).
As such, for any one issue that is “progressing”, there is likely one or more groups working successfully in that direction combined with other groups that are either inadvertently affecting the results, or succeeding or failing to oppose that direction to various degrees.
There are likely vanishingly few examples of a single group attempting to affect a significant issue unopposed.
Groups within groups and groups that overlap multiple different groups.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29081831/
In the present contribution, we examine the link between societal crisis situations and belief in conspiracy theories. Contrary to common assumptions, belief in conspiracy theories has been prevalent throughout human history. We first illustrate historical incidents suggesting that societal crisis situations-defined as impactful and rapid societal change that calls established power structures, norms of conduct, or even the existence of specific people or groups into question-have stimulated belief in conspiracy theories. We then review the psychological literature to explain why this is the case. Evidence suggests that the aversive feelings that people experience when in crisis-fear, uncertainty, and the feeling of being out of control-stimulate a motivation to make sense of the situation, increasing the likelihood of perceiving conspiracies in social situations. We then explain that after being formed, conspiracy theories can become historical narratives that may spread through cultural transmission. We conclude that conspiracy theories originate particularly in crisis situations and may form the basis for how people subsequently remember and mentally represent a historical event.
I’m lazy so asked ChatGPT to ELI5 TLDR:
The article says when big problems happen, some people believe in secret plans (conspiracy theories). This happens because they feel scared or unsure. These ideas can change how people remember things.
dare i say, this man sounds a bit unmoored
Yeah I had a similar epiphany that I find to be simultaneously comforting on an individual level and unsettling at a macro level.
Nobody knows what they are doing.
Everything is made up and nothing matters. This comforta me most sometimes
Everything is made up and
nothing mattersthe points don’t matter. This comforts me most sometimes“nothing matters” is the tool i use when it’s the weekend and i’m struggling to enjoy it because i’m busy worrying about my job come Monday. but then i walk anyone else through the logic and they tell me it’s depressing and that i shouldn’t tell anyone else what i just told them. so, cheers to the enlightened few 🥂
Source that Alan Moore actually said this?
It’s a direct quote from him, from the documentary “The Mindscapes of Alan Moore.” Slightly abridged, as he also mentions reptiloid conspiracies in the actual quote.
Thanks!
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