Well, I guess we should be happy we're fucking up the world to such an extent, in pursuit of shareholder value, that such municipal scale societies will be all that's left in 200 years or so.

:cool: :up: Ah, the good old Dialectic strikes again!

The implication of calling it "the information age" is that it should have value. — Pantagruel

Why? Did the stone and iron and dark ages have particular values? It's a description; as such it's either accurate or inaccurate.

Just because we have a bad track record, doesn't me we couldn't succeed. — Pantagruel

And my point was that "we", as is often used for all of humanity, don't have such a bad track record as the historical records of civilization would indicate.

Left to our own state-capitalist (plutocratic) devices, IMO, "global governance / unity" is thereby manifestly improbable — 180 Proof

I agree.
We can, and we have, formed quite reasonable, well-functioning societies, and we'll do it again,after the collapse of this civilization. We'll also form some crazy, dysfunctional ones, just as we have before. None of them can be global again, unless and until one very successful predator society eats up all the rest.

Hardly humanist instruction. Transcendental reverie. It doesn't fit the case.

The next time the woke tell me they are going to set rolling the wheel of Dhamma, I'll give them a pass...

If a majority agrees with me and I with them, then we can make such happen. — universeness

And pigs might fly. :grin:

How much credence do you personally give to the possibility that we will destroy ourselves via such as nuclear war? — universeness

It is not just nuclear war that we should worry about. As civilizations create increasingly powerful technologies self-destruction becomes more possible and probable. Some people believe that all civilizations destroy themselves before they achieve interstellar travel. This might explain why we have never detected extraterrestrial life.

And pigs might fly. :grin: — Agree-to-Disagree

I cannot comment on what you see or personally imagineer.

Some people believe that all civilizations destroy themselves before they achieve interstellar travel. This might explain why we have never detected extraterrestrial life. — Agree-to-Disagree

Yes some people do believe such, some people is not who we were discussing, we were discussing the majority.

I cannot comment on what you see or personally imagineer. — universeness

I am a cynical and skeptical old man. :sad:

I was an idealist when I was young, but life turned me into a realist.

:up:

I was an idealist when I was young, but life turned me into a realist — Agree-to-Disagree

It's called "maturity", no? Having become wiser.

:up:

Ay-yup!

I applaud your skepticism and encourage you not to take your cynicism too far, so that your notion of personal 'realism' becomes too dark and nihilistic.

Good OP.

Given that nihilistic greed and wealth inequality that rivals the pharaohs is the status quo, under the cover of “capitalism,” it’s safe to say we’ve gone the way of irrationality/unreasonableness.

I don’t think we chose it though.

I don't understand how enlightened self-interest can not yet have reared its head though. If we settled on an income gap where the wealthiest were allowed to make just 1000x more than the poorest, we could establish a more sustainable system with a better quality of living at the bottom and more room at the top. If one-hundred million dollars can be you anything you want many times over, what is the point of having a billion? Or ten billion? Presumably, there is at least some correlation between wealth and intellect and knowledge. It's almost like money makes you stupid too.

It's almost like money makes you stupid too. — Pantagruel

Money makes the system stupid - or at least, irrational. Money-as-profit has a logic of its own, which has no connection to human logic, or fulfillment or satisfaction. When money is made the driving force of a society, everything else yields to its logic; all other faculties serve its interest.

Money makes the system stupid - or at least, irrational. Money-as-profit has a logic of its own, which has no connection to human logic, or fulfillment or satisfaction. When money is made the driving force of a society, everything else yields to its logic; all other faculties serve its interest. — Vera Mont

It certainly might look that way, but people have to accede to that authority on a continuing basis.

As I see it, money has become a resource. Resources must be regulated, the more stringently the more essential they are to life. So if money has become "the resource of resources," then by all practical reason, it should be subject to the maximum regulation benefitting the general good of human life.

Collective and cooperative efforts on a global scale are impossible. One cannot coordinate and cooperate with 100 people at once, let alone 9 billion. So I’m not sure about the reasonableness of that.

Given this, we can discover the practical implications hidden beneath the rhetoric. So by “collective” we mean some vanguard in charge of vast populations of human beings, and by “cooperative” we mean involuntary cooperation, governing by force.

At any rate, reasonable and optimum futures on such a scale and with such methods are invariably immoral futures. The amount of force and theft and meddling involved to coordinate such activity, let alone to execute it, would become worse than the initial problems themselves.

Speaking as one of the super-rich elite, I can explain it all to you very simply. Humans used to be the source of wealth, and back then, to own humans as a king/emperor was the measure of status. At first, the industrial revolution multiplied the value of human labour by the power of the machine, but as machines become more automated, human labour becomes more redundant.

We are approaching the point where the elite no longer need subjects as humans but will prefer machines as more obedient, reliable and productive. Expect, therefore, to be recycled via wars, climate disasters, etc, leaving a few thousand technicians of a machine dominated wilderness. Masses of humanity are unpleasant and no longer necessary. Therefore, 'Goodbye, get off my planet.'

Collective and cooperative efforts on a global scale are impossible. One cannot coordinate and cooperate with 100 people at once, let alone 9 billion. So I’m not sure about the reasonableness of that. — NOS4A2

I would dispute this. There is a difference between coordination of efforts and coordination of objectives.

As to the involuntary force-governed cooperation of the governed, that can be said to be true of all governance. As Weber says, the state holds the monopoly on the legitimate use of violence.

It is a curious thought and I admit my own shortcomings when reasoning with such vast sets of particulars in mind, but what is one way one might engage in collective and cooperative effort at a global scale? All I can picture is someone following a crowd to some unknown location to take part in some unknown activity.

I am a cynical and skeptical old man. :sad:

I was an idealist when I was young, but life turned me into a realist. — Agree-to-Disagree

:up:

I don't understand how enlightened self-interest can not yet have reared its head though. — Pantagruel

Prisoner's dilemma, right ? We do manage enlighten self-interest, to some degree, within groups that have enemies. Is it just a coincidence that such groups have enemies ? Like the boundary between the organism and the environment it exploits ?

And of the pleasures of inclusion/exclusion ? The pleasure of being a member of the elite ( or merely maybe having somewhere to climb )? Did we evolve to function as a species ? Or to function in a tribe that sometimes had to wage war ? The idea of the universal human family is beautiful, but perhaps it's the sleeping lion's exotic dream of being a lamb.

At any rate, reasonable and optimum futures on such a scale and with such methods are invariably immoral futures. The amount of force and theft and meddling involved to coordinate such activity, let alone to execute it, would become worse than the initial problems themselves. — NOS4A2

:up: :100:

Speaking as one of the super-rich elite, ... — unenlightened

If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof over your head and a place to sleep …
… then you are richer than 75 per cent of this world.

If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish someplace …
… then you are among the top eight per cent of the world’s wealthy.

It certainly might look that way, but people have to accede to that authority on a continuing basis. — Pantagruel

They were made to accede to it the first time a ruler stuck his face on a coin and demanded it back as tax, tithes, tribute, toll and license fees. Once it was established as the medium of all transactions, they had no choice. And of course, a very few always had more of it, and were always happy to lend some at interest. So much for helping a neighbour who's fallen on hard times: let him get a payday loan!

As I see it, money has become a resource. — Pantagruel

It's the metric by which all actual resources are evaluated, while itself having no direct usefulness and no reliable or predictable value. Everybody lives in a "marketplace", selling their time and effort to get money so they can give money for the things they need. Or else buying other people's effort and time in order to sell those same people the essentials of life.

Resources must be regulated, the more stringently the more essential they are to life. — Pantagruel

Must or should? Like air, water, food and shelter? They're regulated only sporadically and and then not strictly or effectively.

but what is one way one might engage in collective and cooperative effort at a global scale? — NOS4A2

Move the UN headquarters to Indonesia.

Hardly humanist instruction. Transcendental reverie. It doesn't fit the case.

The next time the woke tell me they are going to set rolling the wheel of Dhamma, I'll give them a pass... — Pantagruel

Religions generally see life on Earth as a place of sorrow, or even view existence itself as a failed project. Religions are not life-affirming as such.

Religions are not life-affirming as such. — baker

This is also not true of many kinds of religions. Calvinistic Protestants aspire to a calling, a special task that gives meaning and utility to life. And various indigenous fertility rites throughout history can't be described as anything but life-affirming. Harvest festivals. Frazer's Golden Bough is a great resource.

I don't understand how enlightened self-interest can not yet have reared its head though. — Pantagruel

benefitting the general good of human life — Pantagruel

Time for some Adam Smith again:

The proud and unfeeling landlord views his extensive fields, and without a thought for the wants of his brethren, in imagination consumes himself the whole harvest ... [Yet] the capacity of his stomach bears no proportion to the immensity of his desires... the rest he will be obliged to distribute among those, who prepare, in the nicest manner, that little which he himself makes use of, among those who fit up the palace in which this little is to be consumed, among those who provide and keep in order all the different baubles and trinkets which are employed in the economy of greatness; all of whom thus derive from his luxury and caprice, that share of the necessaries of life, which they would in vain have expected from his humanity or his justice...The rich only select from the heap what is most precious and agreeable. They consume little more than the poor, and in spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity, though they mean only their own convenience, though the sole end which they propose from the labors of all the thousands whom they employ, be the gratification of their own vain and insatiable desires, they divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements...They are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants, and thus without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society, and afford means to the multiplication of the species. When Providence divided the earth among a few lordly masters, it neither forgot nor abandoned those who seemed to have been left out in the partition.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_hand

(emphases mine)

What would "enlightened self-interest" even be?

This is also not true of many kinds of religions. Calvinistic Protestants aspire to a calling, a special task that gives meaning and utility to life. And various indigenous fertility rites throughout history can't be described as anything but life-affirming. — Pantagruel

Sure. But not Roman Catholicism, not Islam, not Buddhism, many kinds of Protestant Christianity. That is, the biggest, most populous religions have a negative view of life.

So you are being ironic, right? Because grocery stores don't distribute unsold produce, they dispose of it.

but what is one way one might engage in collective and cooperative effort at a global scale? — NOS4A2

The science community do it all the time.

the rest he will be obliged to distribute among those, who prepare, in the nicest manner, that little which he himself makes use of,

Except for the vast majority of luxuries he distributes among his several other dwellings and bank-vaults and off-shore accounts, sharing with no-one, not even the government that gave him license to gain his wealth.

They are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants, and thus without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society

Has anyone ever ever observed this to be the case? It's not even true of the most basic necessities: people are still starving and freezing to death, even in prosperous societies. People are still denied life-saving medicine and clean water.

Adam Smith was seriously full of shit. An Economist, was he?