In the show "3 Body Problem" (I haven't read the book) the statement was made **'our civilization is no longer capable of solving its own problems'**. Would you agree?
We can solve problems, the status quo is just to profitable for those in power. Don’t you find it strange how the status quo persists despite both mainstream political parties running a Change candidate for president and winning? (MAGA is the shitters form of change, just in the wrong way)
Clearly the people are looking for solutions, even if they don’t know the answers.
Consider watching a video on first past three post voting. If we change how we vote in each of our individual states , people can vote for 3rd parties and still have their vote count if their preference didn’t win. No spoiler effect!
Aren’t we in the USA already at >200 electoral votes total that have pledged to put all of their votes towards whoever wins the popular vote? That said, I would expect a more serious resistance as it inches closer to where it might actually make a difference.
Also, I realize that isn’t quite the same thing as fully moving away from a first past the vote system, but it is a type of reformation and it does help get away from the electoral college system in particular, so seems somewhat related.
I honestly think it’s too late already. The world as we know it will cease to exist soon. We are already clearly seeing the effects of climate change, and there is much more to come based on the current level of co2. Not to mention that we keep pumping more of the stuff into our atmosphere.
Nope. There are problems that won’t be solved because of the framework of the system, but there are things that will be solved because it falls within the framework. Hopefully it goes a good direction, so far it’s been good for humans.
“Problems existing” is not the same as “never solving any problems.” Old problems get solved, new ones arise, and no problem gets solved until it does. People in the middle of the process always point to the extant problems and go “welp, we’ve never solved that one, guess we’re fucked”
We’re capable, we just have to stop relying on technology, hierarchies, and buck-passing to solve our societal problems for us.
When we rely on technology (in this case I mean “any human-made cosntruct to solve a problem” and not just “machines”), we start falling into the Golden Hammer bias. Think of a societal issue that you care about, no matter how general, look it up, and see some results are just “So-and-so has invented an app to combat [issue].” Then you look into the app and realize that it doesn’t do anything to attack the root of the problem, and instead treats some symptoms while fitting into the existing framework that caused the problem in the first place. Incidentally, that’s how society has become so full of middlemen.
E.g. insurance: health care becomes expensive enough to break the bank for everyone below a certain threshhold -> someome proposes a system where everyone pays so the people who need it can cash in -> the people who need it pay for this system, those who don’t need it don’t pay -> the system needs overhead, so it starts charging more and attempting to drive down costs -> the providers artificially increase prices to compensate for the costs being driven down -> more people need insurance. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Tons of ink has been spilled on the problems with hierarchy, but the simplest argument I can give on why it’s bad at solving societal issues is: when you put your fate in someone else’s hands, you give them the ability to make choices that negatively impact you with no recourse.
Every solution to this problem so far has either been “let’s just add another person who sits above the people who sit above us” (which just adds a layer to the original problem) or “let’s try to make our relationship more equal without removing their power over us” which cuts down on the benefits of entrusting that power to someone else AND provides none of the benefits of an equal (horizontal) relationship.
Finally, buck-passing is tempting, especially when the problems aren’t our fault. But we’ve become a global society of people looking to point the finger at someone else, and pay another person to do the hard part for us.
Take climate change for example. One of the rallying cries of online activists has been “100 companies are responsible for 71% of GHG emissions.” Great! Now what? What good did assigning blame do? What I’ve been told is that now we should get them to stop. Ok, how? The response i usually get is to elect officials who will enact sanctions for polluting and rewards for cutting down on pollution. And now we’re passing the buck, adding a middleman, giving someone else power over us to control our fate, and completely relying on the demonstrably broken technology that is representative government.
What I want to know is what I can personally do today, starting now, to combat the problem. What change to my lifestyle can I make that won’t destroy me or my future? I’m not saying we shouldn’t support representatives who act in our interests—we absolutely, unequivocally should do that (unless it hampers our ability to enact a better solution)—but I want a solution I can personally participate in, too.
Because, by and large, those solutions get a lot more good done quicker while relying less on “necessary” evils.
I can give you the only true answer to your question of “what can I do today to help fight climate change?” But you won’t like it and this ‘solution’ does not preserve society in really any meaningful way, however it does help to address climate change and prevent the entire natural world from dying of heat stroke. So the question becomes, what do you want to save? You can’t save everything and trying to do so will only result in you saving nothing.
The answer is large scale industrial sabotage. And when everything grinds to a halt and people start starving to death because of no industrialized food production and various other factors, you will regret the actions. As you and your own family fall victim to violence over food or land because everyone is panicking and trying to survive, you will likely regret it more. But then in 1000 years, there may still be people alive to call you a monster, if they remember you at all.
Or you could mandate that corporations, instead of being legally required to make the line go up at the expense of anyone they can exploit, are required to pursue less environmentally destructive practices. I wouldn’t be surprised if a number of them already did research on this but found it impacted their bottom line and dismissed it.
You’re right, I don’t like this answer. But it’s only partly for the reasons you assume. I’ll let someone else argue ethics with you, since I’m not particularly well informed in that regard.
I also don’t like this answer because it gives me a nebulous handwaving in the direction of mass action in lieu of actual advice. You may as well have said “revolution,” it’s only slightly less specific.
Which is… unhelpful, to say the least. Should I google “guide to industrial sabotage” or “how to start and run a global ecoterrorist movement”? Obviously not, that’s a sure way to end up in prison before I’ve made any difference.
All the solutions in the world don’t count for dog spit if they’re not practical (in all definitions of the word). What can I personally do here and now?
Come on. The way humans behave in groups is certainly part of human nature. And when we’re talking about solving problems of a society, it is the most relevant part.
Yes, but not all humans behave the same way in groups. That’s why cultures are different, it’s why the fields of sociology and anthropology exist, and it’s why conflating “something a lot of people do” with “human nature” is pessimist bologna.
I mean, we’re pretty good at math. We can “solve” math problems. But when the math is applied and we choose to do the opposite of what the math says, then we’ve not “solved” the problem, we legitimately make it worse.
See also: climate change, housing bubbles, food insecurity, pay equity, universal childcare, universal healthcare, universal pharmacare, student to teacher ratios, media consolidation, and most other market-based solutions.
e: and, as said below, war. That math only maths when dominating “others”.
Those were the delusional words of someone who lived in an upside down country. Kinda agree but if a single country fails, humanity doesn’t get extinguished.
Think about climate change and reevaluate that position. There is no feasible way that the countries of the world will get together and all agree to do anything meaningful about it because anything MEANINGFUL will result in mass death. There’s really no other way around it. Which is why everyone is dragging their feet. Who wants that? Who wants to be responsible for that?
Earth’s climate has changed many times before and life found a way, regardless.
People who hate themselves and have low self steem say that humans are cancer but the real cancer are the doomers that only sigh, complain and lie flat without doing anything to help because they think everything is doomed. Well, aside from the usual corporate billionaire cancer from crapitalism
No problem is ever solved no solution has ever been without further problems.
This is indicative of an ever expanding problem-solution matrix of entropy, meaning we’re neither solving issues nor creating problems, we’re just creating more complex landscapes to navigate.
This is why Buddhist monks and high tech computerized supply chains can both legitimately be said to have the answers we need, even though they’re from radically different ends of this entropy.
It’s also why they’re both wrong and lying to themselves.
We’ve Fucked Around with the planet (since the Industrial Revolution), and also invented nukes, so… I suppose we’re about to enter the And Find Out stage of FAAFO.
Add comment