There are countless industries which exist just to take from you as much as they can. It flows upwards, not outwards.

Like it would be nice if they triple-charged you for car repairs at a dealership if those profits went into the hands of the repairman. But they cut the repairman wages, and up the price. That is a universal practice.

Debt collectors, insurance companies, banks and credit card companies, hospitals, rental agencies, ... am running out of examples. There are more. Many more.

They exist to take your money, nothing more. They don't simply offer you a fair service for a fair value. The few at the top seek to make as much money as they possibly can, and will stop at nothing to extract it.

This is where AI comes in. Do not fret about the jobs it will take, it is almost entirely in the extraction economy. Their jobs are being replaced only as an extension of this process, which they freely signed up for and participated in—to earn a paycheck at your expense, not because they offer a fair service.

We all live to create millionaires. Don't think about Billionaires, they are almost unrelated. It is the average millionaire who lives at your expense.

How is this philosophy?

It takes philosophy to decide you deserve more than other people. It takes philosophy to believe you can take what does not belong to you. This is all philosophy.

You may like Hegel or Kant, but they have nothing on the extractor—mere wordplay.

A school of fish. They swim together like a flock of birds.

It's not just religions, or ethnicities, or tribes, it's ideologies. It's social cliques, sexualities, corporations. People like to be in a group, they like to blend in, and represent that group, and defend it, and identify with and as it.

This seems to be political, but it's not. It's just a mentality. As the old saying goes, either you are in, or you are out.

Perhaps that's what philosophy appeals to, or who it appeals to. The un-tribed, the outcast. The random free thinker.

But even as we do this, we are grouping ourselves informally—we like philosophy.

First of all, it's not about throwing insults and being a baby.

We get it, you're so clever and witty that we all have to just change your diapers. Nice job on that fascinating bit of hatred. Heard. Thanks.

Politics is about persuasion, but it's also about listening and being responsive.

But the art is being exciting and interesting.

It is not messaging and propagandizing people. That sometimes works, but not for long.

You can't force-feed your message, or rely on the other candidate(s) being worse. You need to actually change peoples' minds. You can rely on the choir, your hosts of mind robot lookalikes.

You're trying to reach the 10% of people who are probably going to make up their mind on the day they go to the polls. That's how you win. It's subtle, but indelible.

And if you want to bring people into your political ideology, you can't be rude to people. People realize that politics is a pathway for rude people to be rude. That's why so many people don't even bother—all you do is shrink the electorate.

You get a Trump not by not having enough voters, but by having too few people participate. Or you inspire too many people to vote against you because you aren't very nice.

Not the candidate. The candidate can be whatever works for them. But the politically-active person.

You have to ask yourself, is anything actually happening?

Like, you know something must be going on. Things are moving, birds are chirping ... but is it actual, or just seems to be that way?

This is why love is essential. You can use your heart to navigate the world. You can just accept that things are happening, supposedly, and love your environment.

Deep inside, and I know it's hard, you can use something—what is it?—to just love and care about people and stuff.

And if you're totally functional and are moving through life as though it's actual, and you have to pay bills and change diapers, you don't question the reality of the world. That is your status.

That doesn't mean it's real, it means you're absorbed in it. Which is fine.

One will continue to love you, and support and uplift you however they can.

For no reason. Because we love you.

They basically want you to sit in your displeasure and grime.

That's what makes you marketable. Dependable unhappy and disheartened.

What one wants for you is different. To free your voice, your words, and to say what you really mean—without living in a bubble of obvious memes and disgusting rhetoric (it's not just on the right, it's very much a left thing too).

We want you to express yourself as you are. Even if only in your head at first.then later aloud.

But we don't want you to only say what is acceptable by your political bubble, but what you truly feel and mean.

The philosophy is this: truth conquers fear. None of you are trustworthy or free of fear.

Instead, all of you are vulnerable and lost and valuable to my psyche—I could not do it without you, and I love you with all my heart. You are my brother's and sisters, which is not a trite thing to say.

But we will remain divided until all this truth come out, not on social media, but among real people in real environments.

And it take nuance. You can't just pile on the truth all at once, one must endeavor over the longterm to sprinkle in anecdotes and teachings about your actual lived feelings.

Nobody care about a meme. Nobody care about your rude thought, your negative reflection that have value to you and you alone.

But life if a flow between positive and negative. Thry want you to totally discard your thoughts and become like robot.

You are here to be who you are. Promise that, from God or whatever you call it, above—which means within.

You are here. Be real with us, about all your thoughts, but don't dwell on only snide comments and absolutes. Flow. Opwn your mind and flow. Some things are good, and some things are bad, and they live together.

You have just won. Your bull*hit woke ideology just won Best Picture. Here's why it matters.

Nobody is going to start a revolution. Nobody, it's such a false notion devoid of any actual relationship to reality, that this film is mere comic book fantasy.

It features a man who is turned on by being threatened by a woman. Hold on. It's not just a woman, but a black woman. That means white men are habitually designed to become attracted to violent females. That's the rub. Maybe it's true for some men, but most of us find it disgusting and repugnant. So dwell on that.

Secondly, and most obviously, nobody is trying to fight a revolution. Even the most revolutionary spirits are totally attached to the system that provides them with everything they need and want.

It's based on a Pynchon novel that was inspired by events that occurred in the 1970's. It got updated into present times because it serves some kind of fantasy that exists in the zeitgeist, and a lot of younger people imagine themselves to be, like, in the French Revolution or something. It's absurd, and only irrational people actually think like this.

The reason why its protagonist is a beaten-down deadbeat is because that's what happened. There's no revolution, we're all just cogs in a machine, and nothing matters.

The story says, no! The revolution is ongoing.

We used to watch films about organized crime. Because that was rational. There was/is organized crime, and nefarious people are doing unfortunate things.

This idea that a middle class pretty girl is going to one-up a deep cabal of white supremacists intent on controlling the world...

Look, every time you click your 'buy' button, there's this soft, unintentional, misleading, ordinary guy who sits behind a desk and collects your money.

It's not that complicated. And you participate. And this kind of garbage, like we'll rise up and take over, it's sadly untrue.

We just elected a film to represent our culture that is not only worked-over garbage that has nothing to do with reality, but also bolsters our collective commitment to being class-slaves without recourse who take up digital junk everyday and pretend we are heroes.

Because a pretty girl says so.

Eritrea was once an Italian colony. It has a distinct culture, and resides on the Red Sea, as a trading country, dependent upon the sea.

There was a war which lasted 30 years, after its founding in 1952, but the war brought it into the 1990's. They won. It's a tiny little country, and its people are clever.

Ethiopia—and one has known sever Ethiopians, who are always the salt of the Earth, wonderful people—wants to overtake Eritrea, simply for access to shipping ports.

We must stand with the Eritrean people as they struggle against Ethipian dominance in the region. ..

As my lival convenience store owner explained, you can have access to our ports, but you must pay. And this payment will further enrich Eritrean society.

Please care about this situation, and tell me how these conclusions are wrong. Your thoughts and concerns are like manna in the desert. Let us care about Eritrea.

Most posts here are a reaction to philosophies which have come down to us through a modern (premodern?) lense; we are entities navigating some kind of reality, and there are abstruse facts—people should understand them, because they are self-evident, however hidden.

In one's limited opinion, there is no way to understand any fact without direct perception. We have become evolved to accept 'seemingness' above actuality. We tend toward the 'right way' not because it is the right way, but because it seems to be so. Seemingness rules over truth, or the 'good', should they be synonymous (truth=good).

Because we live in an increasingly objectified culture, one where people immediately share and spread their intimations about a perception of 'my life is thusly, therego life', it becomes increasingly necessary to abstract and pull back. No, life is not about accomplishments and travel (which is the single token of existence in contemporary life). It is about the negotiation with truth.

But why do we do or perform this? The performance of philosophical norms has to do with the negation of illustrative patterns, such as hubris, illusions, and pride. People tend toward performance, rather than living a truth—which means truth is merely the performance of abstruse negations. In essence, portraying the philosophical pattern is a means of negation, or elimination of a certain kind of obligation. I am happy. Look and see. The end.

Instead of supplying proof of happiness, or satisfaction, they supply a photo imitating such a construct. There is a performance, like a stage-actor, for a camera, which will indicate to the world they have seemingly advanced into some kind of obscure destiny.

All of this needs to be avoided entirely. The spirit of life is not hidden, or behind a wall of unattainable—if performable—content moderation, but under the skin; raw, impassioned joy which cannot be captured or contained by 'sharing'. It has nothing to do with Hegel or Kant. It has no bounds, and its infinite pleasure cannot be expressed.

However, and instead, we seek toward imitation and performance. Even in academic pursuit, one is simply attempting to project their grasp of theories. In a perpetual chain of wording, of jargon, of imitation. The seemingness of 'knowing stuff'.

Truth cannot be grasped theoretically, it is a lived experience, which builds actual character, and supplies life with its inherent meaning, though it cannot be expressed.

Remembering when one graduated high school, in the year 2000, looking around and wondering why we all still looked like adolescents. It felt weird. Remembered attending high school graduation for elder cousin's, long before, and thinking they looked like soldiers, like men and women.

But accepted, it was probably 'perspectival' (a word which the built-in dictionary of this phone refuses to accept). One was merely incapable of seeing their own advanced physical form, due to some perpetual 'nowness', or reflection defection—just can't see it in oneself.

But later one went and looked and compared high school graduation photos of people from the 1960's, 1970's, 1980's, even 1990's, and compared and contrasted. And though there were obviously people endowed with eternal youth, the average face in the photos kept getting younger (on average). By the time the 2000's came, the average high school graduate appeared, physically, to be in the 8th grade (all things considered).

Society had slowly moved to infantile dimensions. Kids were being coddled to the point of non-advancement, though maybe not intellectually (in terms of academic laws of advancement). Something wasn't adding up.

The average person graduating high school with a common core of capacities believes they have succeeded, but have they? If we keep lowering the bar? Not simply based on test performance, but actually intellectual integration with human life.

And then it hit. One was the first generation to become victims of the 'standardized testing' curriculum. We weren't quite there yet as a society, but soon (and thinking of one's niece and nephew's generation) all of academic life revolves around testing—not only to gauge achievement—but also to acquire funding.

As we slip deeper into this model of education, where kids (and now adults) are believers (academic religionists) in their own advancement based on multiple choice answers to preconcieved and easily studied answers, are we not simply getting dumber?

We can't know. Because we're getting dumber. Smarter at tests, maybe. But dumber at life.

Most people think they deeply believe things, and that there is some kind of ultimate truth which cannot be negotiated. One comes to see themselves as an extension of a shared identity within a given ethical, moral, and theological/philosophical construct. People believe themselves to be superior to others who almost believe exactly the same thing as them, but not quite, they didn't 'get there'.

It's extremely exhausting, and so you have to go to war with these people, time and time again, because they are deeply self-centered and passive-aggressive. Or aggressively passive-aggressive (backhanded(.

Because there is a flow. There's just this fliw, and things are obstructing the flow, as if they can make the stream reverse course by swimming against it.

It also helps if you have a Messianic, apocalyptic conception. Jesus didn't believe in a Messiah, he thought he was one (or he was, whatever, however you see it is fine). That's way less offensive than believing in one. Either you are or aren't the Messiah. Otherwise, please stop it.

The other aspect is cruelty. People these days always talk about 'harm', which could be anything, properly defined, but real cruelty doesn't really need to be defined. People don't like that. So when someone wants to blow up your country because of it, don't be surprised.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/43837434

AI won't replace you, your self-righteousness will.

I was highered at a friend's IT company because of the big Microsoft Windows 11 upgrade, which meant any PC on a 7th Gen or older Intel chip would not upgrade, and would therefore be incompatible with future security patches compliant with FTC legal framework.

Therefore I spent a year or more building new computers (not from scratch, but assembly level work to save our company money on the roleout), then imaging, upgrading, and installing basic software which made them network compatible.

It evolved into implication-level installations, on-site. Each level of the job meant an increase in onesown knowledge-base, but nothing like the computer wizards working upstairs (so to speak [at home]), with degrees in computer science and long lunch breaks.

Eventually, having implemented most of these products, our job resolved into installations of printers, plugging monitors in whose hdmi cables had slid out, and various other ground-level, field tech work which couldn't be physically done by the wizards upstairs (at home).

The other day a GM came to me while I was verifying a printer had an ancient fax machine plugged in (which was not our domain, at the end of the day), and begged me to come and look at his computer which wasn't screensharing to his 55-inch tv anymore (even though his laptop did, and other nearby pc's could).

The upstairs people wanted me to install a new pc. But I did a simple Google search and one suggestion was to reinstall the display driver. Which I did, and that solved it.

Everyone upstairs (at home) was shocked. That had never occurred to them in all their wisdom. They had so much experience and knowledge that it had never occurred to them to do a simple Google search.

Amen. AI-men.

That's why you lose your job. Not because AI is better, but because you are so self-righteous sitting at home in cheetos dust you cant even do a basic Google search on your smartphone.

Stop complaining.

The first thing to remember is, there are few if any examples in history of a largely materially-served nation suddenly succumbing to a mass theological revolution. The people's of the Gulf region are highly educated, econo.ically prosperous people who largely import their workers and others who are of the 'oppressed class'; but they do this work, like Mexicans and other in America, to escape an even worse situation, and simultaneously support loved ones in their homecountry.

Due to the War on Terror, there has been little incentive for the recent generation to become Islamic fundamentals, and those who remain so also have to weigh recent gains and losses, such as in Syria, or conversely Yemen, and elsewhere, as their numbers and archaic ideals become less embraced while economic opportunities have increased. It is simply less attractive to follow fundamental values—even as we see a sharp decline in religious vigor in the American 'Bible Belt'; it seems horrible and threatening, but is numerically less expansive than ever before. Blame technology or simple human intelligence expanding. Your choice.

There is a mythology of Iranian superintelligence emerging, which credits a terrorist regime with some kind of power born of its fundamentalism which simply planned so far ahead, and was so sophisticated, that it could never actually be toppled. It is here where we bow to various pundits who are magical thinkers, because it is fun.

Every dying regime has a last hurrah. Let's say 30 years (something roughly equivalent to Stalin's death extending to 1989). Khomeini died in 1989, and so it has been roughly as long for the Iranians. If you went back in time (and still) people gave the Soviets much more credit than they deserved. Totalitarianism has a short timeline. Do your own research.

Finally, the idea that dysfunction around the Gulf will bring an end to the West is surely dramatic thinking. If anything, the high functionality of the Gulf region is owed to the West, and partially drew energy away from the West. Explain then how its demise hurts the West rather than drags more investment into it? There would be pains for sure, but the vast amount of geological wealth that lies elsewhere would be soon tapped, and the world would go on. But agreed, it would make a good novel if that didn't happen.