A review/industrial-society-and-its-future.html

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+Industrial Society And It's Future was very clearly written by an angry, lonely
+man.
+
+The book itself was interesting. I think the foundations on which it rests are
+flawed, but there was a lot of thought provoking content inside of the pages. I
+think that some of the ideals proposed are great, and are worth thinking about
+and considering (especially the sections on artificial intelligence and the
+incremental reduction of freedom)
+
+> pre-industrial people were happier
+
+If there is one lynchpin behind the whole philosophy of the book, it's that
+people in industrialized societies are more unhappy than people in
+pre-industrialized societies because they do not have the freedom to persue
+their own whims autonomously and thus satisfy "the power pyramid" or whatever
+Ted calls it. Ted implies that people who satisfy their own personal "power
+pyramids" are happy.
+
+Ted refers to the ability of satisfying ones own power pyramid as "freedom."
+
+> define freedom
+
+"Our freedom is being taken from us" is pretty classic rhetoric in any political
+circle. I think that for it to bear weight, one must define freedom. I think
+that the book does a decent job of that. To summarize:
+
+"Freedom means being in control of the life-and-death issues of one's existence."
+
+aka:
+"Freedom is when I can do whatever the fuck I want with the extent of my life
+and time with no oversight whatsoever. Also, it involves making decisions with
+complete _autonomy_"
+
+Opposition to elite forces & government are key to the arguments being laid out.
+Ted brings up things like spanking, affirmitive action, soul-less corporate
+jobs, etc as arguments that our lives are mostly pre-defined. He argues that a
+banker in moscow and a banker in the USA have more similar lives than two random
+people from pre-industrial times. And he would be correct.
+
+> surrogate activities
+
+A surrogate activity is any activity that satisfies the power pyramid (so
+basically, any activity) that does not involve life or death determination.
+Additionally, they're normally not completely autonomous.
+
+The book argues that surrogate activities (activities that satisfy the power
+pyramid but are not life or death / fully autonous) are unfulfilling because
+humans want full control (or at least actual influence) over their own destinies.
+
+I think that broadly speaking, he's right - at a micro scale, humans care about
+their destinies, or influencing people defining their destinies. I do not buy
+the argument that fulfilling this "power pyramid" naturally brings any greater
+level of happiness or satisfaction than fulfilling most surrogate activities.
+
+> writing this book itself was a "surrogate activity"
+
+The most clear-cut case of hypocrisy I can see between the pages of this book is
+that Ted was driven from life til death by a philosophy - one that he deeply
+identified with. I highlighted a portion of the book that stated:
+
+"It may be better to die fighting for for a cause [sic], than to live a long but
+empty and purposeless life"
+
+In this sentence, Ted implies that fighting for a cause (a surrogate activity)
+may be more fulfilling than living a "long but empty and purposeless life",
+which is hugely hypocritical since following a philosophy & writing a book are
+both surrogate activities.
+
+The most hypocritical thing about this is that Ted spent his life doing exactly
+this - fighting for something that he believed in. He tried to live a primitive
+life, but could not be satisfied by his attempts, and so committed himself to an
+idea.
+
+I would argue that it is no accident that humanity has progressed forwards as
+time has gone on. It is an innate characteristic of our race. We like to strive,
+struggle, and make progress. We find much satisfaction in that, even if it's not
+fully self determined.
+
+I think that the separation of "surrogate activities" from "activities that
+satisfy the power pyramid" is complete bullshit. I think that a person may be
+completely satisfied by surrogate activities (athletics, marriage, programming),
+in exactly the same way a pre-industrialist would be satisfied by chopping wood,
+or hunting animals for their group of people.
+
+Another innate characteristic of our race is suffering. I would argue that there
+is no escaping it.
+
+> suffering is bad, and being happy is good
+
+It is ironic to me that Ted is in favor of destroying the industrial system
+that our species has been building throughout our history. Doing so would cause
+untold suffering, and much death - he admits as much.
+
+Ted is in favor of de-industrialization for many reasons. One reason is because
+we would be happier without industrialization (with absolute freedom!).
+
+It's very clear to me that Ted does not aim to make people happy. He voids
+his own arguments - he wants to make people happy... by killing people. What
+his actions would actually do is bring about the greatest amount of human
+suffering the world has ever known.
+
+If Ted's goal is really to escape from suffering and return to monke, he needs
+to adopt a philosophy that doesn't kill people by necessity.
+
+Ted heavily implies throughout the book that suffering is bad, and being happy is
+good. These are two things that I don't necessarily believe in.
+
+> the banker argument
+
+Ted argues that two people with the same job who live in different areas
+probably have very similar lives, and implies that that's bad because two random
+people (from some undefined time period) would have much different lives. Having
+different lives in this context is good, because their lives would be
+self-determined.
+
+I think that this rhetoric is mostly bullshit. There's no way to quantify what
+Ted is claiming, and I don't buy that having different lives is an indication of
+any sort.
+
+Also, Ted compares random people to two people performing a similar trade. What
+if he instead compared the bankers to two prehistoric wood-gatherers? I would
+imagine their lives wouldn't differ significantly either.
+
+Argument bad. Rip.
+
+> revolution must be intentional and worldwide, must come from outsiders and not
+> from within
+
+The argument here is that the average citizen will be so against
+de-industrialization that they will vote against any party that tries to
+implement it as a policy. this implies that the same group of people would be
+actively opposed to the implementation of de-industrialization as a matter of
+revolution. The problem is the same either way - you cannot claim to need common
+consent but admit that the process would be so destructive that common consent
+would be destroyed.
+
+The de-industrialize-everything revolution is doomed to fail, because the
+results would be disastrously harmful to the way common people live their lives.
+
+> people can sit for hours with nothing to do
+
+Ted argues that in pre-industrial societies, people might sit for hours with
+nothing to do. He argues that we would find this insane because we see boredom
+as an issue, and I think that Ted is correct in his line of thinking here. Our
+desire to be constructive and conform to society, and to drive boredom from our
+lives is absolutely shaped by the system we grew up inside of.
+
+I think there's some romanticism in this. But if people really did just sit idly
+for hours after their dumb power pyramid meters filled up, we wouldn't be where
+we are in history. This argument invalidates itself.
+
+People don't sit idle when they satisfy themselves - they look for ways to improve
+life for other humans. It's in our blood.
+
+> the revolution will kill people, and that's fine
+
+because nature will be happy, and we will be happy. ok.
+
+"It would be better to dump the whole stinking system and take the consequences"
+
+yea okay Ted "the joker" Kaczynski
+
+> some select quotes
+
+"so it may be that revolutionaries, by hastening the onset of the breakdown, will be reducing the extent of
+the disaster"
+
+ok so he's a primitive accelerationist lmao
+
+"It (suffering [sic]) is not the result of capitalism and it is not the fault of
+socialism. It is the fault of tecehnology, because the system is guided not by
+ideology but by technical necessity."
+
+I think that Ted misses the mark here - the system isn't guided by technology. The
+technology is built in accordance with the desires of the system.
+
+"We sneer at people are ARE content with servitude"
+
+I found this quote to be a great illustration of Ted's condescending & angry attitude.
+
+"It is not the primitive man who has used his body daily for practical purposes,
+who fears the deterioration of age, but the modern man who has never had a
+practical use for his body beyond walking from his car to his house."
+
+lmaooooo okay. so no modern men use their bodies beyond walking ten feet? got it.
+
+Show this quote to electricians who fuck up their knees and lungs kneeling in shitty
+attics for 40 hours a week. Ask them not to fear the deterioration of age.
+
+"Self-hatred is a leftist trait"
+
+agreed tbh
+
+"We can do anything we like as long as it is UNIMPORTANT. But in all IMPORTANT
+matters the system tends increasingly to regulate our behavior"
+
+idk, too smooth brained to comment on this. I just thought it was a powerful quote.
+
+"[Feminists] are nagged by a fear that women may NOT be as strong and capable as men"
+
+This quote assumes a lot about feminists and is soaked in hateful undertones.
+
+
+
+
+TLDR:
+
+ted was a damaged man who based his life on a romanticized and impossible philosophy.
+
+ted could have tried to be realistic and come up with something workable. instead, he
+nurtered obvious resentment in isolation.
+
+he killed and injured men and women, and changed nothing.
+
+the book was very interesting and fun, but not convincing. i was hoping for more.
+
+
+3/10

M templates/reviews.html → templates/reviews.html

@@ -2,6 +2,7 @@ {{define "title"}}jes reviews arbitrary garbage{{end}}
 {{define "body"}}
 <p><i>this is where i review movies, tech stuff, lotion, etc</p></i>
 <h4>2022</h4>
+<li><a href="/review/industrial-society-and-its-future.html">industrial society and its future</a></li>
 <li><a href="/review/fresh.html">fresh</a></li>
 <li><a href="/review/michael-clayton.html">michael clayton</a></li>
 <li><a href="/review/the-lorax.html">the lorax</a></li>