ThenElection
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User ID: 622
ThenElection
1d ago
Spectacular wealth and corrupt hedonism. The masses of people in their state-provided goonboxes, with a small elite caste engaging in their own particular kind of debasement except with spectacular wealth, with an AI zookeeper watching over us all. And, in an accelerationist sense, I think it's inevitable, unless the AI decides to put us out of our misery.
ThenElection
2d ago
I agree that those communities are kind of counterexamples. The reason for "kind of" is that they didn't emerge through any intentional action or planning, and attempts to replicate them through a plan have all failed AFAICT. Any attempt in contemporary times to recreate their success will end up co-opted and corrupted. They're more historic relics that occupy niches that so far have been resilient to capitalism.
Though, perhaps they'll survive and out reproduce us all, and capitalism can be retried on a more resilient culture.
ThenElection
2d ago
I am not at all a socialist or any other -ist, btw; my comment was meant as descriptive, not polemical.
to what extent you think culture and local community degeneration are responsible?
Entirely responsible; all of capitalisms' ill-effects are mediated through how it hollows out culture and local communities. Capitalism delivers massive material improvements to society through whatever ways its able to find to deliver those improvements. One way that's been very effective is by mining and hollowing out local communities, customs, traditions; turning the sacred profane. Socialism and various other -isms have their own issues: capitalism's genius is in allowing its participants to make that trade (of community for self-interest) in the most effective way possible.
My solution, or, the idea for it, has always been that local first communities work to support the stragglers and that things like family formation and, especially, extended family mutual reinforcement would do a good job of evening out the rough edges of capitalism for all who aren't repetitively highly anti-social (i.e. criminals and drug abusers).
It's a romantic vision, and probably the best option we have on an individual basis. But I don't believe it can amount to much, collectively; capitalism is too good at harnessing our energies to its own ends.
I'm not sure Dinergoth is a useful category, outside of designating an aesthetic. There's a broader issue--the listlessness and demoralization of youth--and the Dinergoth is a good example of affliction by it. But it's shared across pretty much every youth subculture. Hustler, incel, NEET, based tradcath, femcel, influencers. To the extent any of them are political, it's an identity-defining gesture. Even antifa is just a bunch of young men wanting to break shit for an adrenaline rush.
A more provocative take: what is the cause? "Capitalism." Or, more precisely, capitalism as implemented on actual humans. Humans are wildy disparate in their capabilities and intelligences, and capitalism, by flattening the world in its relentless pursuit of legibility and information, has identified the weak and dumb and deterritorialized them from the structures that once protected them. When they previously would have found refuge in burrows or bramble, now they're easy prey on the open savannah. And a caste of strivers are the predators here, who bloodlessly condemn millions to a debased state with new, maladaptive structures that are more easy to exploit and are delivered over technology that was supposed to liberate us.
Gen Z and, to an extent, millennials are just the leading edge of it. They won't ever snap out of it, because they don't even know of any other way to live.
ThenElection
3d ago
us new world peasants won't pay the King's Tax
We do, though. In 2024, US tech companies paid more in fines alone (€3.8 billion) than the income tax revenue of the entire European tech sector (€3.2 billion).
The stakes are low, actually: inevitability means that your individual choices aren't going to do anything to shift the arc of history. This is liberating, in a way, as you can focus on protecting your own humanity (and, with much more difficulty, your children's) instead of having moral responsibility to try to save the world.
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