George’s comedy specials helped raise me from a young age when no one else was doing any raising. I consider him to be one of the greatest minds, social commentators, and philosophers of the 20th century, and I’ve yet to recognize a contemporary near his level. I’ll always be grateful to have had the honor to see him twice before he died.
I see a lot of people enjoy his brilliant bits, but with the way the world is and where its going, imho in the name of enthusiastic greed, I personally find a lot of peace, and a lot less depression when I choose to aspire to George’s genuine divorce and detachment from “caring about the outcome.”
Enjoy the freakshow, folks!
Bonus: I’ve seen so many comments in his bit videos wishing for George’s perspective on smartphones, well this was near his end (2008), smartphones were just arriving, and his opening words briefly address in passing what he thought about the latest tech obsession.
People always frown and say I’m being cynical or pessimistic whenever I tell them I’m a misanthrope. They assume I’m bitter and I irrationally hate my fellow human. Couldn’t be further from the truth. I actually like most people I meet. I just have a very low opinion of us as a species. If you look at the track record, I’m many of the most important aspects, it’s really abysmal. We have undoubtedly accomplished many great things, but we’ve also committed uncountable horrors—and both patterns will continue—but I’m not impressed in the final analysis. In fact, I’m pretty disgusted.
Anyone interested should briefly study individual psychology vs. group psychology. Specifically, why individuals are often better problem solvers than groups. There are reasons groups tend to make worse decisions overall than individuals. In a nutshell, it’s because the loudest voices prevail in groups, not the most intelligent, educated, insightful, etc. On a grand scale, that translates to those who want power the most are the ones who wind up in the positions that wield it. And this isn’t due to any social system or set of laws or constitution; it’s due to simple human psychology.
“Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.”
There’s always a disconnect between “Our nature is destroying us” and the people that chime into say “then be the change you want to see!”
Seriously, if cobbling enough technology together to generate MORE food than every human needs couldn’t change our nature, it can’t be done.
And What did we do with that miraculous technological revolution in post-scarcity?
Well, a tiny percentage can now glut themselves to the point of then getting outpatient surgery to manually remove the excess fat so they can do it all again tomorrow, while we also throw heaps of food away…with lots of people still starving! Gotta maintain that artificial scarcity to keep prices up after all.
That’s why AI and Fusion, things that many propose could save us from our demons, won’t. They’ll just be turned into another tool the few own and use as leverage against the many for literally nothing more than a boost to their ego scores, more gold on the hoard that will have no bearing on their daily lives.
We could decide it’s wrong and cut them down to size, but then we as a species would have to give up the ridiculous dream/fantasy of being the fuckers punching down. And we won’t do that, even as we’re on the ass end of it and have no rational hope of it changing under the current system.
No way to cure this mindset. A global plague couldn’t put a dent in this mindset.
The only way we’ll save ourselves is if we’re lucky enough to have some no name genius be born that somehow makes off world colonization possible. Our existing structures will not accomplish this.
Humanity has, in my opinion, only lasted as long as it has because every so often people were able to just walk away from a failed, corrupt society and start over somewhere else. Now that we’ve basically claimed the entire planet, that’s no longer possible. Only by being able to colonize other worlds do we regain that.
Existing human biology/neurology doesn’t seem to scale properly for governing existing populations. It just doesn’t work and the failure rate keeps accelerating.
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Thank you for explaining your thinking process.
Great insight, I learned something new today!
I still think it’s honestly weird in today’s age that we still have war. That we still resort to killing each other over disagreements. That when diplomacy fails we don’t just take a breather and head back in, that we send our family members and friends to go die.
Such a stupid waste of life that really hasn’t evolved since we walked out of caves