There isn’t always a solution.

If the working class at large were willing to choose degrowth, as individuals have, then they could do something.

With a critical mass other types of action would also become more feasible, as I touched on.

I stand by the thesis that they won’t mobilize, but that if they were to do so then they would be able to make a difference. Even if they only destroyed infrastructure in a failed rebellion.

In the end it is a moot distinction, I guess.

I was a shitty musician but I’m always jealous of the joy pros get from playing. Their seat is the best seat in the house!

If you’re waiting around for someone with more power than it takes to stand in a road with a sign to do anything, you will be waiting until your dying day.

Which, to be clear, is exactly what I expect will happen. Impeding society is seen as worse than destroying society, so inaction will destroy society. Because on the other side of inaction by the working class, is the massive (and massively destructive) action that we currently facilitate. Which means we are the problem, and our only choice is whether to also be a part of the solution. The solution being the mobilization of the working class. Which naturally takes the form of small actions against system (like blocking traffic and doing PR stunts) when numbers are still small because that is exactly what the working class is capable of doing.

I’m sure I’ve already triggered enough lemmies so I’ll go ahead and add, that non-activists calling for activists to destroy infrastructure are not wrong - but they are harmful, not helpful. If they believe in the statement and if this is their true criticism of activists, then those individuals would become activists following their own ideas of what works. But people who are actually activists understand the enormous challenges in such a task while living in a modern security state, and more importantly that the culture is still too non-activist and anti-activist for these actions to catch on meaningfully. Society does not see itself as the problem here. The truth is that the people crying about traffic would be crying significantly more if their consumerism is in the slightest way impaired. They only want to be against the problem, without actually be against the problem.

I hope you all understand what this means mechanistically even if you disagree about where I place my values and judgment: Our families will all be coming to an untimely end. Those of us who are still alive when the cascades begin, will die. If you’re my age and nothing takes you out early, you will die due to climate change caused by our industrial society. If you’re rich you might live a few extra years and die in a bunker.

It’s a horribly inefficient way to structure networking and learning tradecrafts, though. Many of the most capable students will miss critical opportunities through no fault of their own - some people are taking care of parents who just happened to start dying during the short time they were enrolled, for example. Others have to work before and/or after classes.

Equally importantly it was built on top of a liberal arts foundation that was never supposed to produce engineers and the sort, and while it fails to enforce a liberal arts education on applied science majors, it also sacrifices its liberal arts programs to make it palatable for tradecraft. Liberal arts are certainly of benefit to tradespeople and everyone else, but it is no longer the reason people enroll - students often bemoan being forced to take even the most introductory courses. It is extremely beneficial for people who do want to pursue these studies and develop their systemic thinking, that they should be allowed to do so, for the benefit of any and every field. But a lit class or two during 4 years of career training and extracurriculars does not provide that.

I think the current system has found itself traveling down a dead-end path, and that it is now bound to be replaced as its haphazard construction will prevent it from overcoming its growing challenges.

I’m referring to the US system in particular here as I think that was the context. Even most of the top names have turned their undergrad programs in particular into exploitative diploma mills. I think the replication crisis is properly seen as a symptom of a fundamentally misbalanced system and that it won’t resolve itself by continuing business as usual.

I’m a very big fan of education and access to education. I think we’ve gone about this all wrong, and like I said, to all of our detriment except the administrators.

Universities shouldn’t even be offering those degrees, imo. Perhaps at a higher level for those who have already worked the field and can have meta conversations about it, but the undergrad programs teach far too little over far too many years. It’s a waste for everyone but the administrators.

It also used to be a liberal arts program for developing critical thinkers, not a new form of trade school with an infinitely more predatory profit model.

Go figure - capitalism killed higher education, too!

But where is the government in this context? The license is through a private board.

Of course I can’t read their mind, but Dessa’s direct statement on the matter was that .ml (Mali) was only picked because it was an entirely free domain name.

the board’s ruling was an infringement on his free speech, but since they’re a private board

Free speech applies to the private sphere in Canada? It seems like that would have implications on every social media platform, search engine, and so on.

You have to be willing to let yourself be programmed with a trigger to subscribe to transphobia. No wonder it is correlated with rapid brainrot.

Turns out, the way you learn to take care of others, is by learning to take care of yourself. Play, experimentation, and meaning are critical for well-being. When you’ve experienced the healthy state, it becomes much easier to recognize what would bring happiness to others. The individual is not antithetical to the community… the individual is the building block of community. And sick individuals, people who have lost sight of the bigger picture and their own happiness, create sick communities.

Or do it to a developed country that still believes in religious myths - then you get the infamous Project Blue Book!

But you can certainly prevent emotional needs (and probably more relevant: pathological anxieties) that are born from misunderstandings of reality, which are quite common among Peterson’s audience.

It’s been years since I listened to or read a word from him, but doesn’t he also love to use circular logic to rationalize that the Christian religion is the natural order, while failing to have any understanding of ecological systems or evolutionary biology?

Even at the time I thought he was one of the agents that manufactures the nostalgia for a fictional era that fuels fascist populism. I’m pretty tuned out now, but in retrospect I reckon I wasn’t far off the mark.

I largely worry about the lack of education that leads to people finding him persuasive. At least, that seems like a slightly simpler issue to resolve.

Oh, sure, I’m familiar with the logic; I’ve meditated for years. And this is one of Buddhism’s core revelations:

There’s no “you” in a sense that there’s someone behind the wheel.

It’s very true of course, regardless of who is saying it - Sam, the Buddha, or anyone else.

Not a complete failure. Belts are tricky. You learned how to replace an alternator, and you’ve done it. Your first alternator will forever be behind you. And if you can do that, there’s a lot more car maintenance that you are more than capable of if you’d like to build on the experience. We’re proud of you, fellow internet stranger!

It is the epitome of feels before reals.

The prosperity gospel teaches that you are given what you have as a blessing, and that it is meant for you to consume or amass power with as you please. Essentially, because you can, you are entitled to.

Conversely the disadvantaged in this worldview deserve punishment because their disadvantages make them sinners.