New Social Thread

[skeptik]

Money and oil are imperative to our survival because we made it so. We could just as easily use diamonds as currency as we did with gold or chickens or paper. Diamonds are valued for their aesthetic beauty, and have been for centuries, as have many 'precious stones'. I'm sure there are also some other latent, vestigial religious/occult/ritual reasons that we as a society not only diamonds, but other precious stones as well.

 

[Vimana]

It's pretty much shiny shit. Pretty much all societies have used metals and stones that are shiny but of no practical use as currency because they are pretty to humans. The Chinese used silver but used paper money as the currency, the Incas adorned their temple of the moon with silver, the pyramids were white and shiny, etc.

I mean, obsidian is shiny as fuck and pretty but the Aztecs and Mayans only used it to make mirrors and awesome slicing sword/axe kinda things. Bronze can be shiny, but the Incas used it for surgical tools. People like shiny stuff.

 

[Jimmy... Dead.]

Money and oil are imperative to our survival because we made it so. We could just as easily use diamonds as currency as we did with gold or chickens or paper. Diamonds are valued for their aesthetic beauty, and have been for centuries, as have many 'precious stones'. I'm sure there are also some other latent, vestigial religious/occult/ritual reasons that we as a society not only diamonds, but other precious stones as well.

NO! lol Of course we made it that way! Paper money is by far more efficient than carrying & exchanging metal, crystal, chickens etc. and the consumption of oil in everything from automobiles, house heating, airplane travel, plastics, etc... that sustains our affluent way of life.

 

[zabu of nΩd]

@Dodens I'm pretty sure money and oil are imperative to our survival as a result of drastic population growth and urbanization more than "because we made it so". Without some kind of new social structure catching on to plug the valve of human greed the same way money does, there's not really a conceivable alternative.

 

[Zephyrus]

Indeed. We live in a civilization now locked into teleological progress rather than a narrative reflection on the present and eternal, and that requires increasing levels of energy to fuel the linear progression of technology forward toward its confused goal of human betterment. On the on hand it increasingly benefits more the few who can afford it yet at the same time dilutes itself to serve the needs of an ever expanding majority. An identity crisis that is losing its ability to reflect, I'd say.

 

[zabu of nΩd]

Which makes it convenient for the "owners of the means of production" if you will to keep everyone under control. Well that and the police institution of course, haha

 

[Jimmy... Dead.]

Indeed. We live in a civilization now locked into teleological progress rather than a narrative reflection on the present and eternal, and that requires increasing levels of energy to fuel the linear progression of technology forward toward its confused goal of human betterment. On the on hand it increasingly benefits more the few who can afford it yet at the same time dilutes itself to serve the needs of an ever expanding majority. An identity crisis that is losing its ability to reflect, I'd say.

Confused goal of human betterment..... Can you please elaborate?

 

[Vimana]

I think he means we have this idea of "better" or "more advanced" but we haven't exactly defined it.

 

[Jimmy... Dead.]

Sounds a bit defeatist to me.

I'd say the proper starting point is sustaining life by reason. Life as the essential root of value and values gained and kept by a constant process of action.

 

[Jimmy... Dead.]

is he joking?

 

[Zephyrus]

Confused goal of human betterment..... Can you please elaborate?

Aristotle and Nietzsche would have agreed that civilization is for the betterment of the few at the expense of the many....modern populists and idealists think it should be for the betterment of all.

 

[Der Morgenstern]

I disagree with his use of 'we' in that it was a collective choice made with equal contribution by all.

 

[Jimmy... Dead.]

Aristotle and Nietzsche would have agreed that civilization is for the betterment of the few at the expense of the many....modern populists and idealists think it should be for the betterment of all.

I would define them more as altruist.

 

[Zephyrus]

Altruism taken to an unnatural extreme. Genetically it is limited to tribes.

 

[Der Morgenstern]

Is he saying Nietzsche was an altruist? Nietzsche specifically stated that altruism was fluff.

 

[Zephyrus]

That is the complete opposite of what I said.

 

[Der Morgenstern]

I'm talking about what Jimmy just said. Nothing to do with you.

 

[Zephyrus]

He was referring to the 'populists and idealists' in my post.

 

[Der Morgenstern]

Christ.

 

[Jimmy... Dead.]

Yea the essence of the savages existence is public, governed by the laws of his tribe and in a progressive civilization the rule for the few is setting man free from other men. Individuality and civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy.

@ Der Mor No. I was talking about men today.