You are reading a single comment by @Kimmo and its replies. Click here to read the full conversation.
  • Most of us tend to agree with most of what you’ve said here.

    That's what I assumed.

    It's a reasonable assumption.

    What I don't understand is getting nothing but pushback.

    You're showing people nothing but contempt. You seem to start from the assumption that anybody discussing issues in terms anything less than your absolutist ones is being a "polyanna". The idea that they may share many of your concerns, but just a) be less absolute in their certainty, b) more practically concerned at that particular moment with things where they do have some confidence in their knowledge, and c) not "pretending nothing is wrong" while doing that, seems either not to occur or be something you despise. In fact, you've spend the last page doubling down on how much you despise it.

    I'd have thought finding a few like-minded folks to bounce ideas around with would be a start.

    Derisively derailing every non-trivial discussion isn't achieving that.

  • You're showing people nothing but contempt. You seem to start from the assumption that anybody discussing issues in terms anything less than your absolutist ones is being a "polyanna".

    That's a bit adversarial, innit? I have contempt for the notion that a bit of tinkering around the edges of capitalism can solve our long list of vast problems. I'm pretty sure it doesn't take a genius to realise there's not much road left for us unless we can leave money behind; it just takes some general knowledge and enough daring to think it.

    I guess it also takes a fair amount of daring to face the reality of our situation (because it's an obvious hazard to one's mental health), and to my mind, incrementalism betrays a point of view facing away from the awful truth, which demands a sharp discontinuity.

    I've thought long and hard about whether there could be a halfway feasible path to such a thing, and I think maybe I've glimpsed the shape of it. We don't try to change a system geared almost entirely to supporting an unaccountable elite, we ignore it as much as we can, and build a new one inside it which has the vast structural advantage of actually trying to maximise human potential instead of minimising it.

    Is the concept of the social contract too quaint to invoke? If not, that could be a pretty good hook. It's been thoroughly reneged on, if it was ever more than fictional window dressing. Consent of the governed revoked.

About

Avatar for Kimmo @Kimmo started