Quote from Scarecrow

to me, the system is broken beyond repair.

This view is essentially the definition of pessimism, regardless of how you try to present it as "realism".

Humanity has done nothing but move forward by any metric you can imagine. It's never perfect, there are plenty of problems, but your response was nothing but assumptions and sweeping generalizations about a few of those problems, framed in the most negative tone possible. That isn't realistic.

okay then! label it what you like. maybe i'm "pessimistic towards society". that doesn't change my attitude towards everything else.

i don't want to spend hours relating all of my personal experiences and observations here, so i figured my sweeping generalizations would suffice to clarify my viewpoint. even those took too long to write.

It just sucks seeing someone place so much weight on humanity's flaws while dismissing all of the good that arose from chaos. Problems are to be expected, but the fact that we've advanced to the point we're at is a fucking miracle.

But, yeah, I thought about it and I'm not sure why I'm being confrontational about that. I don't know your perspective and I shouldn't dismiss it like that. Sorry.

don't get me wrong, i have great faith in individuals. i love everyone i meet and always give the benefit of the doubt, and can understand that some people act as dicks or go a bit crazy... but it isn't really their fault, so i forgive them.

society as a whole though, i have no interest in and don't believe can be improved as a "system". it has done nothing but cause varying degrees of neurosis in the entire population, suffering for many, wealth for a few, and damage for the planet. technological advancements are great, but i don't think a society as we have now is necessary for that.

for me, the only society that can possibly work flawlessly is one in which everybody is alert and simply working together out of compassion, and that's only possible if individuals start focusing on meditation.

Quote from Scarecrow

it has done nothing but cause varying degrees of neurosis in the entire population, suffering for many, wealth for a few, and damage for the planet.

So you'd actually say that the human baseline level of happiness and satisfaction is lower now than it was in prehistoric times?

Our minds are hardwired to look for problems. In the absence of any, it creates them out of trivial and meaningless bullshit. But is that a fault of society? Hasn't it solved more problems than its created? Even if it hasn't, aren't we living a better life than someone born 50,000 years ago?

Quote from Exilement

So you'd actually say that the human baseline level of happiness and satisfaction is lower now than it was in prehistoric times?

Our minds are hardwired to look for problems. In the absence of any, it creates them out of trivial and meaningless bullshit. But is that a fault of society? Hasn't it solved more problems than its created? Even if it hasn't, aren't we living a better life than someone born 50,000 years ago?

i don't know, i never lived in prehistoric times and i'm not suggesting we go back to them either. my best guess is that we would have been more blissfully ignorant back then, like animals. but we've obviously evolved since then, we developed self-awareness. with that, the ego developed, and then we eventually made everything unnecessarily complicated.

i can't presume that society wasn't necessary, either. surely a set of rules, with currency and education and so on has been useful in allowing us to progress. but that idea has been twisted to the will of a few, and instead of being there simply to maintain order while we progress, it's been made to become like a prison preventing us from evolving further, just so a bunch of select people who are greedy and ambitious enough can stay rich and in power.

my point is that we are getting to the point where we are capable of evolving further (i'm obviously talking about enlightenment), and, incidentally, society is one of the biggest barriers preventing us from doing so.



[edit] i'm going to acknowledge that i am contradicting myself by saying that society has been useful in some ways in advance. i may have been working with hyperboles earlier, or i may have just reconsidered my position. who knows!

i'd also like to mention that our minds aren't hardwired to look for problems. we are conditioned to look for problems because it helps us survive in our society. really, there aren't any problems except the ones we make for ourselves