- cross-posted to:
- communism@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- communism@lemmy.ml
cross-posted from: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/35986695
I’ve been called eco-fascist for suggesting anything that might help the environment, no matter how small. I’m not impressed by this buzzword.
I feel like you can’t blame the corpos 100% and then proceed to do nothing to help the environment. Like I get that capitalism and unnecessary waste driven by it are by and large the problem, but it feels like people just use that as an excuse to put in zero effort personally and continue to live their lifestyle of overconsumption. It’s very defeatist imo.
“Humans are the virus” is related to the racist “overpopulation” myth which leads straight to eugenics. Sure, many words are overused, but “political ideology that combines environmentalism with fascist principles, often advocating for authoritarian measures to address ecological issues” is a bad thing.
When I am ill with an infection, I care not that “Not All Bacteria” cause the illness, I still take antibiotics all the same. If I have cancer, I do not give a shit that Not All Cancer Cells will destroy my organs, I still seek chemotherapy.
Capitalism is entirely a human invention, and the most widely adopted ideology. I care not that “capitalism is the problem” because if humans can’t get their shit together, then they are the root cause of the problem and Capitalism is just another symptom.
Put another way, in the words of Jesus Christ (paraphrased): “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they don’t destroy their home and then pretend like they aren’t the problem because ‘Lily Capitalism is the actual problem’”
Oh, btw: Misanthropy != Fascism. Ecofascism is a belief that all people should stick to their racially segregated “homelands” and live in harmony with nature. Whatever people who say “‘Humans are a virus’ is literally ecofascist rhetoric” believe it to be may be the actual solution to the oncoming apocalypse we’ve gotten ourselves into. I’m a misanthrope who loves the biosphere more than humanity’s right to do whatever it wants and get away with it because “it’s the ideology, not the people who participate in the ideology.” I’m not a fucking racist.
That’s ok, we are not all born to fight, let alone see the enemy.
If there are no more humans than no one will care about the environment.
If humans weren’t greedy dicks then capitalism or any other form of government would work perfectly. You can’t force humans to not be greedy dicks. No matter what system is being instituted it is susceptible to greedy dicks.
capitalism or any other form of government
But capitalism isn’t a form of government tho.
Nor is communism of even feudalism.Oops you’re right I meant economic system
Yes we can, via laws & regulation (which are also laws). You have no clue about what unrestricted greed does to people especially, on the recieving end
Nope, doesn’t work because power obsessed sociopaths worm their way into government and change the laws
How naive are you?
Yes if you don’t enforce it, but you don’t want to enforce it now, do you. You love greed until you are on the receiving end
You can’t even understand your own mother and here you are making bold assumptions about the personal values of someone you met on the internet half an hour ago. Fucking classic reddit right there man
Greed is the source of nearly all human misery and it is not necessary for life at all, and I have personally witnessed what it has done to people
I do not love greed in any form and the fact you just stated that with such effortless confidence tells me our society really isn’t worth saving.
And now these statements, despite being only minor glimpses into my value system will of course immediately fill you with ten thousand assumptions as to who I am or what I think.
That’s mental illness friend
<Complaint about bold assumptions of individuals values>
< Bold assumption about all of humanity >
<Assertion of personal perspective>
<Further complaints about assumptions>
<Name calling/Labelling>
If you don’t have anything to contribute but meta tags, you don’t need to make the effort
Think of the trillions of electrons that died to post your mindvomit
I mean, nobody has to reply on a public internet forum.
Unless you are being forced to reply…wait…that would explain a lot.
Ok, if you are being forced to reply to internet messages against your will, try and add some sort of code in the replies so we can try get you out of that environment, it sounds awful.
Also electrons don’t die, don’t be silly.
There is, of course, the electron cycle of transmigration of states.
It’s like they don’t even teach basic electrotheism in school anymore, smh.
They’re coming out with some really weird blazor libraries these days.
Dammit, missed the code tags
@page "/lemmy-reply" @using HypocrisyManifest <p>Complaint about bold assumptions of individuals values</p> <p style="font-weight:bold">Bold assumption about all of humanity</p> <p>Assertion of personal perspective</p> <p>Further complaints about assumptions</p> <p>Name calling/Labelling</p>
Are you familiar with anti-trust laws ? Anti-corruption laws ?
According to you they shouldn’t exist, because a crafty psychopath will get in anyway & yes you do love being greedy as long as it benefits you, why else would you be defending capitalism.
Socialism HAS been tried & it works. You see I want everyone to get welfare, because with it you can have a safety net against the abusive owner-class. BTW, I’ve never been on reddit (I don’t even have a twitter account)
So I’ll be upfront and say i don’t know shit about socialism as a concept.
Do you have any examples of socialism that has worked (or is currently working) at modern nation scales ?
I’m genuinely not picking a fight, just looking for examples to read up on.
Concern troll, enjoy your report
Cuba, Laos, Vietnam & the state of Kerala in India. China too (but they shifted to state-capitalism). Most of Latin America were electing socialist leaders as well. (Until some coup came along)
We can regulate greedy dick behaviour
Madame Guillotine can help with that
Our entire schtick is co operation, it’s literally why we’re the dominant life form
Your generalization is false
The majority of humanity are not greedy or obsessed with profit
The problem is that the few ridiculously greedy sociopaths that do arise per-capita are just so FUCKDAMN good at amassing power and wealth that we assume it’s the natural lot of all people
So we just test and dispose of sociopaths at birth, problem solved. We already have the tests for it.
Don’t look at me like that
and thankfully those sociopaths have enough money to get rid of idiots with those ideas that get too close to power.
Yep, which is why we need to use nontraditional power tactics like leveraging drones and cyber attacks as well as flashmob tactics and social media control
Money buys you a private army but not loyalty, we need to start early and get idealists positioned in those private armies
Make inroads with the children of billionaires tired of their parents’ excesses, this was a valuable vector during the French Revolution that almost no one talks about
More than anything we need to accept the fact that no amount of signs or shouts are going to stop the ultra wealthy from destroying everything for more imaginary numbers in an already unspendable bank account
It’s still objectively eugenics to target people based on genetic conditions, especially if the genetic condition has a not wholly undesirable result.
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There are human societies were greed is not accepted.
Which ones? Which ones don’t damage their land or steal children from enemies or rape or steal? Please don’t try to say any indigenous tribes because they are all guilty of one or more these.
Proof that lemmy is a failed experiment already, this asshole has five upvotes
Any indigenous tribe. But seriously it was not long ago that no professional fishermen anywhere would ever overfish.
Only because they weren’t capable of it lmao.
There’s at least some evidence supporting human driven extinctions as far back as some of the earliest ‘modern’ (ie Homo sapien) hominid populations.
Amish
The Amish are highly discouraged from getting an education of the high school level and beyond.
Members are shunned by the community and family of they decide to leave the faith.
this is only true to the smallest of extents, there were plenty that had those behaviors, survivorship bias is not a good footing for an argument.
Survivorship bias is so important to remember when talking about human societies. Even our perceptions and knowledge of indigenous tribes is limited by survivorship bias. Consider that there may have been many more “peaceful” or “non-greedy” tribes, but they were conquered by groups of people that were more violent and selfish. There must be so many tribes that have been wiped away without a trace, tribes we know nothing about.
But the real barrier to this hypothetical “non-greedy population” idea is the matter of scale. A peaceful village of 100 people is easier to create and maintain than a peaceful global population of 8+ billion. Even if indigenous villages managed to build such utopias where greed doesn’t exist, their models wouldn’t easily scale to the world we live in now.
I welcome you to inform us of this utopia you speak of.
duck chasing meme Which human societies?
You’re putting the cart before the horse. Capitalism uses the threat of poverty and the profit motive to condition humans into being greedy dicks.
Destruction of nature & unwise use of resources, or even just multiplying to a point where even the most prudent resource management & minimal environmental impact per capita is the absolute goal could still destiny biodiversity.
This has to do with economical tendencies of living beings, not a particular socioeconomic system.
(Yes, capitalism is accelerating the process by taking away freedoms from the masses - but even a commune can decide to chop up the whole forest for wood. World is a fuck.)“Virus” might not be the best word for it tho (infestation maybe? Fits the capita growth statistics), but successful animals that oversaturate their environment (eg lots of food, no predators, longevity after procreation, tech) cause biodiversity loss (anything from local collapse to a global extinction event with cofactors like climate change or air structure change - what is novel with humans is how rapidly we are developing in our last 0.5% of existence, and how rapid the global impact we case is, it won’t take us 10s of thousands of years, we can speedrun in less than a millennia).
The lack of empathy and true understanding of reverence is the issue.
People do not respect the meat that befalls their plate, the bacteria that ferments their beers, the trees that warms their homes.
Capitalism has two routes, horde through meekness or horde through exploitation. When you horde through meekness, any worth is solely yours - you submit and embrace this moment of life wholely separate from you. You cannot control the world.
Humans are a virus, because we reach for the stars as we eviscerate our host. Lest we learn compassion and empathy, we will consume this earth. The flooding isn’t biblical this time, it’s predicted by science as man decays.
hoard
Thanks!
A bunch of people thinking they outsmarted the meme by asking “who made capitalism”.
A better question is “when you say humans are a virus, which humans exactly do you propose to exterminate in the name of saving the planet?” Because the bunker-state ethnonationalist, the trumpists, the Peter Thiels and the Mark Andreesens, the Dark Enlightenment and Network State and Tech Zionism neofascists, they know exactly what they mean.
The earth is big enough to support modest human life. It’s not big enough to support billionaires’ delusions of singularity. So they imagine to purge the parts of humanity that are not their particular version of white.
Don’t fall for their fascist propaganda.
When I said “humans are the virus,” I think people heard “so we should kill the people I don’t like,” and missed the part where I don’t like all humans.
I don’t say it anymore, because I don’t want to be overlapped with fascists who apparently say the same thing.
fascists have never left power without violence in all of human history, so keep dreaming about a peaceful solution
I’m sure the rhetoric stems from propaganda, I won’t disagree there. But I don’t think that trying to logic the analogy itself is the way to outline the problem with it.
Calling humans a ‘virus’ may not mean an extermination is the intention of the person regurgitating it. You can control a virus instead of just exterminating it, for example. It’s just a term people are familiar with that they associate with abusing resources and multiplying beyond a sustainable level, thus creating a toxic environment around them.
A better question is “when you say humans are a virus, which humans exactly do you propose to exterminate in the name of saving the planet?”
I don’t propose to exterminate anyone. I think it’s inevitable that the human virus will eventually kill its host.
If you think we are getting out of this worldwide authoritarianism surge without violence, you are a shitty student of history
Can I achieve something by exterminating myself? It should do something, right?
Maybe not having to live in depressing world itself would be a great achievement.
It’s easy, mulch all the sociopaths. Problem solved
Ah, so just exterminate the correct people. Got it.
Nobody has to die if we just make billionnaires millionnaires again.
There’s no chance in hell that would happen non-violently.
Sorry no, some billionaires have to die
I disagree, there are some psychotic people in power and they don’t care one iota about anyone but themselves and maybe a small handful of like minded people. To me they should be wiped from the earth.
You are correct that the planet can support a certain number (whatever that number is), but not with these people in power.
Now will we be able to truly figure which ones are the correct ones, probably not but we need to keep looking and root them out, expose them to the world and then let nature take its role once they are all hanging from the highest most visible place for all to see what happens when you are the virus that is continuously trying to destroy the world.
Good that you clarified that :D
Yeah but… Humans created capitalism, so again the root issue is that humans suck. Just think of it this way: No humans, no capitalism.
And it’s not just capitalism, living beyond their means was rather common for many civilizations in the past and some of them paid dearly for it. And look at who ruled the area when the aral sea started to dry up, which fucked the entire area to hell. That wasn’t capitalism, just a short-sighted communist (or “communist”, but that definitely wasn’t capitalism) regime.
It’s definitely possible for humans to not suck in this aspect, but once you get to a certain level of technology and organization it gets pretty hard.
People often conflate capitalism with greed because the core of capitalism depends on people acting selfishly. But other systems can also reward the greedy.
I completely agree, other systems have the potential to screw the environment as well. But capitalism is inherently like that and reached environment destroying records. I believe these things are simultaneously true.
I think it even goes beyond that. e.g. the sowjet union genuinely had issues with food security, but they still fucked up when they dried out the aral sea because they were acting shortsightedly.
Supporters of socialism/communism/anarchism/whatever-ism don’t believe that their system will never make mistakes or that it prevents all bad people from having power. But it lessens it, hopefully. If a capitalist nation were in charge during the time the aral sea disappeared, you can bet your sweet ass it would have just the same or faster.
There are a lot of people who do believe that these systems could do no wrong or repeat the narcissist’s prayer to justify any wrong doing.
True. But I suppose I should have clarified it as “intelligent, thoughtful supporters of those ideas”
But it lessens it, hopefully
It’s true that capitalistic societies don’t do any better for the environment (which was the point of my comment, they’re BOTH bad in this aspect), but at least in capitalist Europe the common people got relative wealth out of it. In the soviet union, people were oppressed by the state, poor, and got their environment destroyed.
And now that is happening in capitalist societies.
We have many decades to go until our common people are as poor as they were in the soviet union (at least in countries that were on the capitalistic side of the iron curtain), though that does seem to be the general trajectory. But soviet poverty went beyond not being wealthy - there was always a very distinct risk that the local store was out of basic necessities, and I really don’t think this is going to be common in most western european countries in this century.
You are still shifting the blame away from capitalism. If we acknowledge capitalism as the problem, then we can change things. If we claim humans are inherently the problem, then it seems pointless to improve.
Humans are a product of evolution in nature. So nature sucks, right?
Nature makes a lot of things that suck, including viruses
Point still stands. Nature doesn’t owe anyone a logical explanation.
Its actually my point. Just because we dont like it, it does not mean that nature is wrong.
Nature is a product of atoms. So atoms suck, right?
so you’re just saying we should all kill ourselves? yeah that sounds great, i assume you’re willing to go first since you believe it so strongly?
I for one don’t want me or others to die, and so i don’t go around saying poorly thought-through things on the internet.
For them is capitalism for other is the immigrants.
Some people just don’t get nuances.
Thank you for putting it well, I had similar thought that I wanted to express but I can never write it so coherently.
humans invented capitalism, soooo…
humans also invented socialism, communism, fascism, monarchy, democracy so on and so fourth.
like, you can’t just take the worst and be like “you see this is why we need to get rid of them!”. its literally the point of the post. thats what is going on right now in the US with literally any person below the top square on the family guy race card. Would you say just because less than 1% of immigrants that are in the US have committed violent crimes, that all of them are violent criminals? If you do, I have bad news for you.
on the other hand when a virus like flu or covid replicates, it produces thousands of its variants but it is only defined by the one that causes the most damage
That metaphor doesn’t work. It be more accurate to compare humans to in general bacteria and most bacteria are not harmful, there are even some know useful viruses
good point on the usefulness, I agree the analogy is not an exact one between humans and viruses as an individual per se but the fact that in both populations damages caused takes precedent over damages not caused (and in the case of humans also takes precedent over the good things humans try to do)
Right… so less than 1% of immigrants being violent criminals, makes them equivalent to a virus?
I mean sure. yeah. You have an opinion. I won’t be continuing this conversation.
nope I am talking about the top billionaire class, %1 immigrant criminals are nothing compared to the damages caused by these people. you are forcing a racism twist to the topic to win the argument but local level criminals are unfortunately irrelevant in this conversation.
You don’t need capitalism to suck, though. The Spanish conquistadores were slavers and genocidal murderers but they certainly weren’t capitalists.
There’s a bit of a fundamental difference between capitalism and other systems. Mercantilism sucked but conquistadors got some level of pushback for their atrocities. The Spanish crown fought a war over illegal slavery and the vast majority of conquistadors died poor or in obscurity.
Modern capitalism has no such brakes. Naked avarice is the mathematically correct play, exponentially growing the power of an individual at the expense of literally everyone else.
It’s not likely that other economic systems could result in this level of global instability and ecological collapse. A king used to have some incentive to keep his society functioning; his personal power was tied to the power his kingdom could project, not his personal wealth. Our modern overlords have no problem destroying their country or environment, their wealth is fungible and can be taken wherever they want.
Every system finds ways to shift the blame. What they need are folks who drink the cool aide. Currently it‘s capitalism.
That doesn’t mean capitalism isn’t any less cruel
In fact it allows for blind institutional cruelty that no one has to take responsibility for.
In a very real way, more people have died from capitalism than ever suffered at the hands of the inqisition
But go ahead and keep trying to handwave the horrors of capitalism
Sometimes I get frustrated with people and I think this. But then I quickly snap my mindset out of this because I know really what’s the problem. Capitalism.
Yep, those are all capitalist states.
Gotta hand it to China. They’re a few years away from being coal free. A decade at most if they stay on course.
Unfortunately they don’t seem to be on course at all, with coal production and new coal power plants rising in 2024 to an all-time high.
While they have been implementing green energy, which is laudable, they aren’t phasing out coal at all. China seems to crave energy and has no bias about where it comes from.
They are the same piece of generic rhetorical label you slap on or argue you can’t slap on whenever it conveniences you. If your solution is just a sentence long, you are an over-simplifying things.
So what happened to the ancient civilizations that collapsed before capitalism existed? Ducks. It’s the ducks that need to be shot.
Easter Island comes to mind. They showed up, took every tree on the island, then the vegetation went away and the island had nothing left to give.
As we all know, communist countries would never harm the environment for productivity.
Ah yes, the only two systems. Capitalism and communism. There is nothing else or any form of nuance out there.
Of course, thanks for admitting it
We live in a religious society that promotes a culture of bigotry. Does this mean we shouldn’t blame bigots?
We live in a patriarchal society that doesn’t take violence against women seriously. Does this mean that wife beaters aren’t to blame?
We live in a capitalist society that promotes selfishness and greed. Does this mean we shouldn’t blame selfish people? (Which is most of them.)
We live in a racist society… etc.
You are responsible for your actions and your beliefs. Step one to improving our society is accepting the reality that most humans have a poor (nearly non-existent) relationship with morality. They’re easily swayed by fallacious arguments because they are irrational and stupid. These are empirical facts about human beings that we ignore (with memes like this) at our own peril.
Blaming individuals is ok of course, but after we’re done we should look what situation gave their lacking personalities power to have any individual impact upon our society. And change that. The blaming of actors is one thing, but there are shitty scripts, too, you know?
blame is a nearly useless concept
How about we start fixing the problems instead of pointing fingers
Yes, let’s fix the problem of men beating women by not blaming anyone for beating women. Brilliant plan.
I block everyone who strawmans me, you aren’t an exception
You: “Blame is pointless.”
Me: BlaMe iS pOinTLesS
You: “how dare you strawman me!!”
We should blame religion, patriarchy, racism and capitalism.
Those are perpetuated by the stupidity and gullibility described above.
so what exactly is your solution, magically making people not be gullible?
you’re just perpetuating the idea that there’s nothing to be done, you’re saying these things so you don’t have to think about the uncomfortable reality that things are as they are for a reason, that we can and should be taking action to change the systems that promote misery.
Gullible to believe that we can‘t change anything? Who told you that? Capitalists!
And this right here folks is why nothing will ever change. Because phantasmagorical ideological abstractions get blamed instead of actual features of reality, such as psychopathy, ignorance, greed, selfishness, and so on.
So how have things changed?
Moral progress! It takes a long, long time to convince average people to accept moral claims, such as the badness of slavery. There’s a kind of tipping point when normative facts are FINALLY absorbed into the culture and propagated through non-intellectual means (such as media and social pressure).
Democracy is actually the best vehicle for moral progress in that respect, as democratic scholars have been pointing out for the last century or so.
Democracy is great. We should really aim for it, instead of giving political power to the wealthy.
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“it is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
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How dare you say something that requires self-reflection in a meme thread made for ideological-purity testing.
How dare you say something that requires self-reflection in a meme thread made by MAGA-style ideological-purity-testing imbeciles.