You can't destroy a system billions of people depend on without killing billions of people. We need to learn to not depend on it first.
Our only hope is to culturally evolve past our current situation, and we're kinda of in the process of that now. I'm almost 50, when I was growing up any talk like this was old hippy fantasy (hippies are 25 yrs older than me), but now it's come back and more real than ever.
More and more people are seeing the police not as a helpful and necessary but as oppressors and sadists. Eating rich people is talked about every day. People are starting to realize that any state is inherently corruptible and if we want peace and sustainability we need to see the string of failures that is the state and realize it's a failed technology.
At some point, hopefully we'll get better at strategizing and acting instead of just complaining and protesting. Realistically using the tools we have available (e.g. the state) to put those currently running the system in their place.
Run for office, vote, be less dependent on the system, do mutual aid.
You can’t destroy a system billions of people depend on without killing billions of people. We need to learn to not depend on it first.
Don't be so absolute. You can destroy capitalism very well without destroying the people within it.
Yep, as I suggested. But let's not kid ourselves, most people talking online about destroying the system and aren't joking are speaking of violent communist revolution a la the 1920s.
I'm not blanket supporting the end results of everything, but the "violence" in those revolutions was initiated by the existing states, not by the people doing the revolution. Read up about it. Almost every time the workers just required the obvious (not to be crushed underfoot) and started seizing factories and farms when life became intolerable, and then the state and the rich brought the police and the army to kill them. Sometimes the end result of the state oppression was people trying to survive and opportunist authoritarian leaders taking power, but not always.
True, the death toll in practice has only been in the range of 3.5 to 5 million in one case or 1 million up to many many more in another, with 20 million deaths being a probably-unlikely outlier estimate on the high side. I don't think it's ever killed billions or even close to it.
Not every revolution has to be an Marxist-Leninist revolution. Nor is the world the same. Not to mention that Capitalism is killing millions per month right now. You're perfectly content to let Capitalism crush millions right now to maintain the benefits you have so you're just a hypocrite on top of being intellectually dishonest by presuming every revolution will lead to totalitarianism.
You're perfectly content to let Capitalism crush millions right now
When did I say that?
I think changing the system into something better sounds like a great idea. I'm being a hypocrite about it because I haven't really done shit in an activist sense; that part is accurate. But if you ask me what I want, I want the system to change into something better. I don't want it to change into something worse. How does that translate into me being perfectly content with the current system?
presuming every revolution will lead to totalitarianism
There's a reasonable middle ground between "let's ignore the history of the outcome of this strategy and assume it'll be fine" and "every revolution will lead to totalitarianism, I'm content with the current system." I am definitely not saying the second one, although I can get where it might have sounded like I was. In my opinion the truth lies somewhere between those two extremes.
You just send me on a rabbithole and Til
A part of the movement who’s nain motive was to maintain communism apparently included the creation of social classes…
“Members of the Black Classes were systematically discriminated against, as one's classification could affect employment opportunities and career prospects and even marriage opportunities. This could also be passed onto their children. Over time this resulted in a victimized underclass that was treated as if it were still composed of powerful and dominant people”
Literally facism.. of course to some this was already apparent but with this information bring public its baffeling that so many still believe china is political left.
The groups were:[1][2][3]
Landlords (地主; dìzhǔ)
Rich farmers (富农; fùnóng)
Counter-revolutionaries (反革命; fǎngémìng)
Bad influencers ["bad elements"] (坏分子; huàifènzǐ)
Right-wingers (右派; yòupài)
The French revolution claimed all men were created equal yet oppressed the noble clergy classes.
You can’t destroy a system billions of people depend on without killing billions of people. We need to learn to not depend on it first.
walkaway vibes. I wish this were practical.
Run for office, vote, be less dependent on the system, do mutual aid.
Indeed. We need to represent a better path than tearing down civilization in the hopes that everyone will get everything on their priority list, while tempering the state from the inside with sanity and decency instead of weaponization.
If a system crushes orphans, its purpose is to crash orphans. The designers and participants may say otherwise, but they are ignoring the crushed orphans.
If I make a system to move people around, but this also sometimes leads to the death of people, that does not mean that the purpose is to kill people. It is still moving people around. And instead of ignoring this issue, we make the system better at avoiding accidents and increase safety aspects.
If a system moves people around and some of them die, that’s the purpose of the system.
You can say “we don’t want any of them to die” and that’s true, but the system doesn’t reflect that.
You can say “fewer people will die because more people can get to hospitals, but some will die as a result of people moving around” and the system will demonstrate that.
Is that a “we don’t want anyone to die” system or is it a “we are going to accept some people dying as a result of the system so that more people can be saved” system?
Okay, take the medical system. People die. But far less than without. Is the purpose of the system to kill people...?
I'm not sure why you got down-voted for this as I think you illustrate the intent of the above-mentioned heuristic quite well. The intent of the heuristic isn't to objectively define what the purpose of a system is(because, well... lol), but to change the framing of it in order to better understand it's function and how well it serves it's "purpose". People who design and implement these systems tend to become married to the idea of that system just needing a tweak here and there to finally serve it's purpose 100%, usually without considering that the system may already be working optimally.
The reason I think your example of the Healthcare System(in America to be specific) is a great example is that those who are served by said system see it's flaws first-hand versus those who design and maintain it. To the individual(s) on the receiving end, the purpose of the system is effectively something completely different than the original purpose given. To then apply the framing that the purpose of the Healthcare system is to add stress, bankrupt the sick, skyrocket costs, make people die from neglect, etc, we then see the system not as a flawed one that just needs a few tweaks, but as fundamentally missing the mark before it's epistemological foundation is even laid. We're able to get the engineers see what the maintenance crew sees, so to speak.
What the heuristic doesn't do is objectively establish the purpose of a system. That's silly, as purpose is necessarily subjective. I think our boy was trying to find a way of not only better analyzing a system, but to also help the designers of those systems see it from the perspective of those on the receiving end. What better way than to think of a system as working exactly as intended?
As for me, I think we tend to subconsciously project our intent into the world, effectively turning our framing of things we do/create as objectively inheriting the purpose we had in mind, regardless of the outcome. This can really muddy the waters with what we mean when we discuss something like purpose, which I suspect is the source of apparent confusion within this particular thread. Purpose being subjective, it will change from person to person, and purpose being subjective, it's a poor indicator of how a system functions.
A thought exercise was all well and good, but my impression from the absolute tone of his comments was that he believes a system which does x but due to flaws in the system also does y, is intended to do both x and y, period. Which is absurd and paranoid.
Exactly. It's absurd to say the designers of any system absolutely intended any and all outcomes of said system, in the same way It's absurd to attribute someone's intent as whatever you deem to be the outcome. To kind of bring it all around, it's absurd to say the designers of our overall system legitimately intended all the flaws that came with it. In fact, with things like the [American] Healthcare system, it wasn't really "designed" so much as it kinda happened. The heuristic to think of the system as working as intended is a great way to analyze it and all, but it's still important to keep in mind that the illuminati wasn't up there wringing their hands and cackling about how much suffering the barbaric American Healthcare System would cause.
I’d say the purpose of the medical system involves taking measured, educated risks.
Tge system moves people around at the cost of some dying. That may not be your intention, but it's what the system does.
Not shutting down the system as soon as you realize it operates on blood means you're ok with the amount of blood it's consuming.
Not shutting down the system as soon as you realize it operates on blood means you’re ok with the amount of blood it’s consuming.
Sometimes it's better than the alternative. Magical perfect systems don't exist. You get the best one you can and then improve on it.
No, not at the cost of some dying. That just randomly happens. The same way anything happens while doing anything. Babies are born in airplanes. That does not mean that they are delivery rooms.
Maybe you'll understand it clearer like this: There are no side effects, their are only effects.
Whatever something does is whatever it does, we have intentions with things but our intentions don't determine reality. If a system has effects we do not like our only recourse is to change the system, we cannot convince it to be other than what it is.
So then everythings purpose is to do everything. No matter how seldom sometime happens in connection with something, that is it's purpose. What a useful definition.
you understand that there's a difference between causality and coincidence right?
Chairs cause weakening of core muscles which can lead to injury, chairs are frequently found in buildings that catch fire however they are unrelated to the fires.
The whole point of the previous examples was to verify this is the logic. Why are your examples now specially not affected? Why is the purpose of the chair not to weak for muscles?
The chair is to enable comfort at the cost of weakness, but not house fires.
you have appalling reading comprehension.
Not according to your definition. My childhood house burned down because of an electrical fire. So according to your logic, the purpose of electricity is to burn down homes. It's absurd.
Yes, the system of electrifying houses is to enable widespread use of electrical devices at the cost of a few electrocutions and fires.
So why do we have the National Electric Code?
I don't know who we is here, by the blithe arrogance I'll assume usa.
Presumably because people decided there were too many electrocutions and fires and so modified electrification of houses to reduce that? What do you think you're point is? It's not that people are gleefully throwing children into fires for their TVs, it's just that stuff does what it does.
Sweet. So the point of electrification is to power homes, with a side effect of burning some down. But we can try to improve electrification, so fewer homes burn down. And over time, as we've improved the system, fewer homes have burned down.
The purpose of the system is not to burn homes down. The purpose of the system is to power homes. Some homes burn down, but that doesn't mean that by using electricity we're okay with that. And it doesn't mean we should abandon the idea of electricity. It means we should take the system and try to improve it.
Now we can bring that back to our current democratic capitalist social system. Democracy and capitalism are systems that sometimes produces death and misery. Death and misery is not the intent of the systems. We can still use the system without accepting that death and misery are a natural part. Instead, we try to improve the system. Not tear it down, improve it. And it has been improving. Not steadily, it jumps forward and then falls back at times, but over time there's been a general upward trend in happiness and quality of life. People in the 2020s have a better quality of life than people in the 1920s, who had a better quality of life than those in the 1820s. We're making things better. We don't need to tear it down.
(Agreeing, not arguing)
When something goes for so long with no amount of effort ever changing the thing beyond basically a coat of paint... Yeah, what it's doing is clearly the point. A glitch is a glitch but if it's still killing people next week, next month, next year... that's obviously a feature.
Kinda ridiculous to expect people to be mandatorily opted-into a system meant to grind them up then be like "Oh don't worry, it's just in beta and you can submit a bug report if it kills you or something." Yeah sure, it'll be "fixed" any decade now. Just gotta keep paying no matter what doesn't change and eventually something will change!
how do we strip down civilization/society - obviously, reign in the police but we'll still need meter maids and rapist chasers (civil and criminal enforcement). so how does that work? I don't ask as a challenge, I'm genuinely curious what the process looks like to those that want it, because all i can foresee is civil war hellscape if we stumble into it without a plan.
Surprise Surprise, no answer was given.
There are other replies in threads where people replied with suggestions.... honestly, I can't embrace anarchist motives.... I don't know if that's a branding issue or hesitation with embracing a label far from my comfort point.
I thoughy I was at linuxmemes first. not that kind of system I see
The system for all its significant faults is the only thing stopping Amazon from employing literal slave labor in the US, or any Republican who can pay / attract enough violent followers from firebombing every abortion clinic they can find the location of. Dangerous inequality of power isn't something the Americans created; it's a feature of the world which needs to be grappled with and moderated (whatever means you set out to use to do that.)
I'm not sure what you mean by "destroyed," but revolutions which set out to thoroughly destroy the unjust system completely have a track record of making things much much worse (e.g. French Revolution, Russian Revolution). If that type of thing is what you mean by destroyed I would urge you to look at places where what you want to do has been tried, and what happened after.
By that argument, the American revolution shouldn't have happened either. It's patently absurd to claim all revolutions always lead to the same results.
Removing a foreign occupier through violent revolution actually has a pretty good track record, yes (markedly different from destroying an unjust domestic system through violent revolution.)
Which one are you advocating for within the meme? Or something else? "Must be destroyed" can mean a few different things, all the way from FDR or Bernie Sanders which I'd be in favor of all the way to Russian Revolution which I'm not. I'm sort of just taking a guess at what it might be and responding based on the guess, but yeah I'm open to hear more explanation.
Removing a foreign occupier through violent revolution actually has a pretty good track record, yes (markedly different from destroying an unjust domestic system through violent revolution.)
You realize that Britain was not a "foreign occupier" at that point, yes? Likewise, most liberal democracies you have now are results of revolutions against the monarchies. Exactly how do you think the world changed from monarchic feudalism to capitalist democracy? Magic? The Kings abdicated because they were all just nice people?
Which one are you advocating for within the meme?
You're in an anarchist server talking to an anarchist. Take a wild guess :D
Britain was not a foreign occupier in 1700s colonial America? Must be news to the Algonquian, Iroquois, and Wampanoag.
Fair point but you know what I meant
Fun fact: There were hundreds of triracial isolates in revolution-era America, i.e. communities of mixed white/black/native people all living together in a little anarchist-style arrangement that said more or less "fuck this" to the whole concept that we have to join up with some larger entity that gives us official permission to exist as a society. They all died out as one particular one of the large entities won the conflict and waxed in power and gradually took over the place, but for quite a while they were apparently pretty good places to live.
You realize that Britain was not a "foreign occupier" at that point, yes?
My point is that the system of having people physically on one side of the ocean making decisions for the people on the other side, with no pretense of it being fair or justified or representation for people from the New World, makes violent overthrow a lot more unavoidable. I think it's more sensible to apply lessons from the American Revolution to the Mexican War of Independence than to what will happen if you walk into Washington DC armed, with a million of your friends, and announce that the system is going to be different now.
Likewise, most liberal democracies you have now are results of revolutions against the monarchies. Exactly how do you think the world changed from monarchic feudalism to capitalist democracy? Magic?
There are different responses appropriate to different levels of oppression. Violent overthrow of a monarchy is often the only way. Violent overthrow of a foreign occupation is often the only way. My point is that looking at the current system in the US, there are a lot of ways to "destroy" the system that will do a lot of damage to its positive aspects and not change much at all about its horrible aspects except for making them worse.
You're in an anarchist server talking to an anarchist. Take a wild guess :D
Of course, it's easy and surface-persuasive to say "destroy the system and things will be better" and keep the rest of it vague. Once you start getting into details is where you run into the oh shit it's actually not that simple factor.
Who knows; for all I know, once I hear your details I will be on board for them. But it's hard to say if it's all vague and feely-good-based.
My point is that the system of having people physically on one side of the ocean making decisions for the people on the other side, with no pretense of it being fair or justified or representation for people from the New World, makes violent overthrow a lot more unavoidable. [...]
There are different responses appropriate to different levels of oppression. Violent overthrow of a monarchy is often the only way. [...]
Well I'm glad that you're so adept at moving the goalposts to fit the things you consider good, but that's just what it is. All of these were revolutions. If they worked, an anarchist one can work just as well.
Of course, it’s easy and surface-persuasive to say “destroy the system and things will be better” and keep the rest of it vague. Once you start getting into details is where you run into the oh shit it’s actually not that simple factor.
If you're honestly willing to learn about anarchism, I can link you to things, but there's no point if you're here just to argue.
All of these were revolutions. If they worked, an anarchist one can work just as well.
All the revolutions I listed made things way worse. If they were catastrophes, an anarchist one can be as well.
Not technically wrong, but also not that useful as a way to analyze. It's not moving the goalposts to clarify statements or to draw different lessons from different events.
If you're honestly willing to learn about anarchism, I can link you to things
Sure, what should I read?
there's no point if you're here just to argue
If you interpret "Which one are you advocating for" and "for all I know, once I hear your details I will be on board for them" and "yeah I'm open to hear more explanation" as me just being here to argue, I think you are mentally unprepared for the kind of collaboration that'll be needed or the kind of resistance you might get to actually making an effort to destroy the system (by any definition of that phrase.)
Which, I mean, is fine; not everyone talking on the internet needs to be down to personally go out and seize the means of production. But I think if you're going to make that kind of bold statement about what "must" happen, it's fair to ask you to clarify and defend it at least a little bit.
The absolute best place to start imho is an anarchist faq. It goes into length into what anarchism is, what we believe and how we act on it
They say the same thing in the USA, where some 85 percent of the population are apparently 'apolitical' since they don't bother registering a vote.
Nor that it's the point, but Kelman was born in 1946, when it was about 65 percent that didn't vote, and it's been going down since then throughout his lifetime. In the modern day (i.e. long after this was written), about 60% of people vote.
If there was any possibility that the apparatus could effect a change in the system then they would dismantle it immediately.
They are dismantling it in many places in the US, I think specifically because there's starting to be a possibility again that it can effect a real change in the system.
Countries that have no elections, or only rigged elections, are regarded as failures.
You don't have to get into any kind of back-and-forth with me about this if you don't want to, but I am curious -- do you honestly believe that countries that don't use voting are not markedly less successful at giving the freedoms to their citizens that the writers here clearly believe are important?
That's one of my key points about the overthrow of "the system" in general -- a lot of times, the structures of power that replace voting if voting gets done away with are much, much worse. The type of injustice that exists in the modern American system is significant but what are you wanting to replace it with that you're asserting would have more justice? I mean, maybe. I would want to hear the details. But I think asserting that there's no reason why people would not want to be in a place that operates without voting is weird.
elections in practice have served well to maintain dominant power structures such as private property, the military, male domination, and economic inequality. None of these has been seriously threatened through voting
This part, I agree with. Just voting for the candidates presented and nothing else is guaranteed to perpetuate systems of inequality. Fully agree there for exactly the reasons that Ehrlich states. I think where we differ is:
... and so we have to work for change outside the electoral system (absolutely true IMO)
... and so it doesn't matter if we vote or not, no matter how stark the difference between any two particular candidates (absolutely false IMO)
... and so voting is irrelevant and the whole thing is a fake which we don't need (fuckin what, have you ever studied a society with big concentrations of power that doesn't use voting, and what a fuckin nightmare it turns into?)
That is my take on it. IDK, I skipped around to read up on more but my reaction was much the same to any selected sections I found. I think the problems they're describing are very real and difficult bordering on intractable. I think the solutions they're prescribing for them are likely to make the exact same problems very much badly worse.
I agree, re-instate native governments.
Iroquois Confederacy FTW
The American Revolution didn't destroy the existing system, it replaced the British control of the colonies with a federal control of the States, each of the colonial governments had a fairly smooth transition to state government, using the existing structure and most of the same people.
Potato potato. From the perspective of the British it certainly destroyed the status quo
Please don't take this as anything other than a legitimate inquiry, as that's how i intend it.
If we're claiming that all of this bad is by design, and the point of the revolution was to create this system, then aren't you saying that the revolution was wrong? Like, the founders intended to replace a monarchical people moving machine that killed some of the people and replaced it with a democratic one that kills some of the people. If they designed it that way, then the revolution was pointless, and if they didn't design it that way, then the argument that the suffering is a feature (instead of a consequence) is demonstrably wrong...what am I missing?
Impossibilism
I think the people who post and believe this kind of meme gravely underestimate the harm it will do to the most vulnerable and the enormous, mindboggling amount of money and time it will take to rebuild civilization.
but, like climate change, we're hostage to the people who are willing to go to the furthest extremes to advocate their position - jan 6th types, mostly. and like climate change, I don't see much to be hopeful for, even though I'm trying real hard to retain a shred of optimism for my kid's benefit alone.
Nobody is saying to destroy civilization.
ok so what's the plan then? how do you destroy the system but keep the tools needed for civilization to continue? It's an honest question because I see lots of doomer and boogaloo types but no one seems to offer up a plan.
Simplifying things, Anarchist praxis is to start building the new world in the shell of the old. We start building org structures we want to have, co-operatives, unions, moneyless exchange systems etc. These things naturally destabilize the existing system until it collapses under its own inherent contradictions, and then these orgs take over seamlessly.
And other lies you can tell yourself.
Dont get me wrong, i am more aligned with anarchist thought than any other leftist denomination, but holy shit we cant be this naive.
No naivety involved. This has already happened and been shown to work.
You got some examples?
Spanish Revolution for one.
10 months. It lasted 10 months . Don’t get me wrong, it was a beautiful thing. But we need to look beyond siege socialism.
That's irrelevant to our topic. It also lasted 3 years
It is possible to co-opt existing structures, but how do we counter outside forces, like happened during the Spanish Revolution. I could be wrong, but Horizontalism will always be weakened against organized opposition.
That's a completely different discussion. I personally don't think it's as easy to declare that such structures are weaker. The Spanish proved that by fighting for 3 years against overwhelming odds. I think the time that revolution happened was really unfortunate, but the same sort of revolution happening at the time where the surrounding nation states are weakened enough to not be able to intervene might have a vastly different result.
But at the end of the day, the destabilization works, so we keep doing it because those orgs are also the most ethical. What happens if and when capitalism collapses is a bridge that every such society crossed when it reached it, and nobody managed to pre-plan how it would go.
You can't destroy a system billions of people depend on without killing billions of people. We need to learn to not depend on it first.
Our only hope is to culturally evolve past our current situation, and we're kinda of in the process of that now. I'm almost 50, when I was growing up any talk like this was old hippy fantasy (hippies are 25 yrs older than me), but now it's come back and more real than ever.
More and more people are seeing the police not as a helpful and necessary but as oppressors and sadists. Eating rich people is talked about every day. People are starting to realize that any state is inherently corruptible and if we want peace and sustainability we need to see the string of failures that is the state and realize it's a failed technology.
At some point, hopefully we'll get better at strategizing and acting instead of just complaining and protesting. Realistically using the tools we have available (e.g. the state) to put those currently running the system in their place.
Run for office, vote, be less dependent on the system, do mutual aid.
Don't be so absolute. You can destroy capitalism very well without destroying the people within it.
Yep, as I suggested. But let's not kid ourselves, most people talking online about destroying the system and aren't joking are speaking of violent communist revolution a la the 1920s.
I'm not blanket supporting the end results of everything, but the "violence" in those revolutions was initiated by the existing states, not by the people doing the revolution. Read up about it. Almost every time the workers just required the obvious (not to be crushed underfoot) and started seizing factories and farms when life became intolerable, and then the state and the rich brought the police and the army to kill them. Sometimes the end result of the state oppression was people trying to survive and opportunist authoritarian leaders taking power, but not always.
True, the death toll in practice has only been in the range of 3.5 to 5 million in one case or 1 million up to many many more in another, with 20 million deaths being a probably-unlikely outlier estimate on the high side. I don't think it's ever killed billions or even close to it.
Not every revolution has to be an Marxist-Leninist revolution. Nor is the world the same. Not to mention that Capitalism is killing millions per month right now. You're perfectly content to let Capitalism crush millions right now to maintain the benefits you have so you're just a hypocrite on top of being intellectually dishonest by presuming every revolution will lead to totalitarianism.
When did I say that?
I think changing the system into something better sounds like a great idea. I'm being a hypocrite about it because I haven't really done shit in an activist sense; that part is accurate. But if you ask me what I want, I want the system to change into something better. I don't want it to change into something worse. How does that translate into me being perfectly content with the current system?
There's a reasonable middle ground between "let's ignore the history of the outcome of this strategy and assume it'll be fine" and "every revolution will lead to totalitarianism, I'm content with the current system." I am definitely not saying the second one, although I can get where it might have sounded like I was. In my opinion the truth lies somewhere between those two extremes.
You just send me on a rabbithole and Til
A part of the movement who’s nain motive was to maintain communism apparently included the creation of social classes…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Black_Categories
“Members of the Black Classes were systematically discriminated against, as one's classification could affect employment opportunities and career prospects and even marriage opportunities. This could also be passed onto their children. Over time this resulted in a victimized underclass that was treated as if it were still composed of powerful and dominant people”
Literally facism.. of course to some this was already apparent but with this information bring public its baffeling that so many still believe china is political left.
The French revolution claimed all men were created equal yet oppressed the noble clergy classes.
walkaway vibes. I wish this were practical.
Indeed. We need to represent a better path than tearing down civilization in the hopes that everyone will get everything on their priority list, while tempering the state from the inside with sanity and decency instead of weaponization.
The purpose of a system is what it does.
If a system crushes orphans, its purpose is to crash orphans. The designers and participants may say otherwise, but they are ignoring the crushed orphans.
If I make a system to move people around, but this also sometimes leads to the death of people, that does not mean that the purpose is to kill people. It is still moving people around. And instead of ignoring this issue, we make the system better at avoiding accidents and increase safety aspects.
If a system moves people around and some of them die, that’s the purpose of the system.
You can say “we don’t want any of them to die” and that’s true, but the system doesn’t reflect that.
You can say “fewer people will die because more people can get to hospitals, but some will die as a result of people moving around” and the system will demonstrate that.
Is that a “we don’t want anyone to die” system or is it a “we are going to accept some people dying as a result of the system so that more people can be saved” system?
Okay, take the medical system. People die. But far less than without. Is the purpose of the system to kill people...?
I'm not sure why you got down-voted for this as I think you illustrate the intent of the above-mentioned heuristic quite well. The intent of the heuristic isn't to objectively define what the purpose of a system is(because, well... lol), but to change the framing of it in order to better understand it's function and how well it serves it's "purpose". People who design and implement these systems tend to become married to the idea of that system just needing a tweak here and there to finally serve it's purpose 100%, usually without considering that the system may already be working optimally.
The reason I think your example of the Healthcare System(in America to be specific) is a great example is that those who are served by said system see it's flaws first-hand versus those who design and maintain it. To the individual(s) on the receiving end, the purpose of the system is effectively something completely different than the original purpose given. To then apply the framing that the purpose of the Healthcare system is to add stress, bankrupt the sick, skyrocket costs, make people die from neglect, etc, we then see the system not as a flawed one that just needs a few tweaks, but as fundamentally missing the mark before it's epistemological foundation is even laid. We're able to get the engineers see what the maintenance crew sees, so to speak.
What the heuristic doesn't do is objectively establish the purpose of a system. That's silly, as purpose is necessarily subjective. I think our boy was trying to find a way of not only better analyzing a system, but to also help the designers of those systems see it from the perspective of those on the receiving end. What better way than to think of a system as working exactly as intended?
As for me, I think we tend to subconsciously project our intent into the world, effectively turning our framing of things we do/create as objectively inheriting the purpose we had in mind, regardless of the outcome. This can really muddy the waters with what we mean when we discuss something like purpose, which I suspect is the source of apparent confusion within this particular thread. Purpose being subjective, it will change from person to person, and purpose being subjective, it's a poor indicator of how a system functions.
A thought exercise was all well and good, but my impression from the absolute tone of his comments was that he believes a system which does x but due to flaws in the system also does y, is intended to do both x and y, period. Which is absurd and paranoid.
Exactly. It's absurd to say the designers of any system absolutely intended any and all outcomes of said system, in the same way It's absurd to attribute someone's intent as whatever you deem to be the outcome. To kind of bring it all around, it's absurd to say the designers of our overall system legitimately intended all the flaws that came with it. In fact, with things like the [American] Healthcare system, it wasn't really "designed" so much as it kinda happened. The heuristic to think of the system as working as intended is a great way to analyze it and all, but it's still important to keep in mind that the illuminati wasn't up there wringing their hands and cackling about how much suffering the barbaric American Healthcare System would cause.
I’d say the purpose of the medical system involves taking measured, educated risks.
Tge system moves people around at the cost of some dying. That may not be your intention, but it's what the system does.
Not shutting down the system as soon as you realize it operates on blood means you're ok with the amount of blood it's consuming.
Sometimes it's better than the alternative. Magical perfect systems don't exist. You get the best one you can and then improve on it.
No, not at the cost of some dying. That just randomly happens. The same way anything happens while doing anything. Babies are born in airplanes. That does not mean that they are delivery rooms.
Maybe you'll understand it clearer like this: There are no side effects, their are only effects.
Whatever something does is whatever it does, we have intentions with things but our intentions don't determine reality. If a system has effects we do not like our only recourse is to change the system, we cannot convince it to be other than what it is.
So then everythings purpose is to do everything. No matter how seldom sometime happens in connection with something, that is it's purpose. What a useful definition.
you understand that there's a difference between causality and coincidence right?
Chairs cause weakening of core muscles which can lead to injury, chairs are frequently found in buildings that catch fire however they are unrelated to the fires.
The whole point of the previous examples was to verify this is the logic. Why are your examples now specially not affected? Why is the purpose of the chair not to weak for muscles?
The chair is to enable comfort at the cost of weakness, but not house fires.
you have appalling reading comprehension.
Not according to your definition. My childhood house burned down because of an electrical fire. So according to your logic, the purpose of electricity is to burn down homes. It's absurd.
Yes, the system of electrifying houses is to enable widespread use of electrical devices at the cost of a few electrocutions and fires.
So why do we have the National Electric Code?
I don't know who we is here, by the blithe arrogance I'll assume usa.
Presumably because people decided there were too many electrocutions and fires and so modified electrification of houses to reduce that? What do you think you're point is? It's not that people are gleefully throwing children into fires for their TVs, it's just that stuff does what it does.
Sweet. So the point of electrification is to power homes, with a side effect of burning some down. But we can try to improve electrification, so fewer homes burn down. And over time, as we've improved the system, fewer homes have burned down.
The purpose of the system is not to burn homes down. The purpose of the system is to power homes. Some homes burn down, but that doesn't mean that by using electricity we're okay with that. And it doesn't mean we should abandon the idea of electricity. It means we should take the system and try to improve it.
Now we can bring that back to our current democratic capitalist social system. Democracy and capitalism are systems that sometimes produces death and misery. Death and misery is not the intent of the systems. We can still use the system without accepting that death and misery are a natural part. Instead, we try to improve the system. Not tear it down, improve it. And it has been improving. Not steadily, it jumps forward and then falls back at times, but over time there's been a general upward trend in happiness and quality of life. People in the 2020s have a better quality of life than people in the 1920s, who had a better quality of life than those in the 1820s. We're making things better. We don't need to tear it down.
(Agreeing, not arguing) When something goes for so long with no amount of effort ever changing the thing beyond basically a coat of paint... Yeah, what it's doing is clearly the point. A glitch is a glitch but if it's still killing people next week, next month, next year... that's obviously a feature.
Kinda ridiculous to expect people to be mandatorily opted-into a system meant to grind them up then be like "Oh don't worry, it's just in beta and you can submit a bug report if it kills you or something." Yeah sure, it'll be "fixed" any decade now. Just gotta keep paying no matter what doesn't change and eventually something will change!
how do we strip down civilization/society - obviously, reign in the police but we'll still need meter maids and rapist chasers (civil and criminal enforcement). so how does that work? I don't ask as a challenge, I'm genuinely curious what the process looks like to those that want it, because all i can foresee is civil war hellscape if we stumble into it without a plan.
Surprise Surprise, no answer was given.
There are other replies in threads where people replied with suggestions.... honestly, I can't embrace anarchist motives.... I don't know if that's a branding issue or hesitation with embracing a label far from my comfort point.
I made a flow chart to work out my thoughts
i read systemd
I thoughy I was at linuxmemes first. not that kind of system I see
The system for all its significant faults is the only thing stopping Amazon from employing literal slave labor in the US, or any Republican who can pay / attract enough violent followers from firebombing every abortion clinic they can find the location of. Dangerous inequality of power isn't something the Americans created; it's a feature of the world which needs to be grappled with and moderated (whatever means you set out to use to do that.)
I'm not sure what you mean by "destroyed," but revolutions which set out to thoroughly destroy the unjust system completely have a track record of making things much much worse (e.g. French Revolution, Russian Revolution). If that type of thing is what you mean by destroyed I would urge you to look at places where what you want to do has been tried, and what happened after.
By that argument, the American revolution shouldn't have happened either. It's patently absurd to claim all revolutions always lead to the same results.
Removing a foreign occupier through violent revolution actually has a pretty good track record, yes (markedly different from destroying an unjust domestic system through violent revolution.)
Which one are you advocating for within the meme? Or something else? "Must be destroyed" can mean a few different things, all the way from FDR or Bernie Sanders which I'd be in favor of all the way to Russian Revolution which I'm not. I'm sort of just taking a guess at what it might be and responding based on the guess, but yeah I'm open to hear more explanation.
You realize that Britain was not a "foreign occupier" at that point, yes? Likewise, most liberal democracies you have now are results of revolutions against the monarchies. Exactly how do you think the world changed from monarchic feudalism to capitalist democracy? Magic? The Kings abdicated because they were all just nice people?
You're in an anarchist server talking to an anarchist. Take a wild guess :D
Britain was not a foreign occupier in 1700s colonial America? Must be news to the Algonquian, Iroquois, and Wampanoag.
Fair point but you know what I meant
Fun fact: There were hundreds of triracial isolates in revolution-era America, i.e. communities of mixed white/black/native people all living together in a little anarchist-style arrangement that said more or less "fuck this" to the whole concept that we have to join up with some larger entity that gives us official permission to exist as a society. They all died out as one particular one of the large entities won the conflict and waxed in power and gradually took over the place, but for quite a while they were apparently pretty good places to live.
My point is that the system of having people physically on one side of the ocean making decisions for the people on the other side, with no pretense of it being fair or justified or representation for people from the New World, makes violent overthrow a lot more unavoidable. I think it's more sensible to apply lessons from the American Revolution to the Mexican War of Independence than to what will happen if you walk into Washington DC armed, with a million of your friends, and announce that the system is going to be different now.
There are different responses appropriate to different levels of oppression. Violent overthrow of a monarchy is often the only way. Violent overthrow of a foreign occupation is often the only way. My point is that looking at the current system in the US, there are a lot of ways to "destroy" the system that will do a lot of damage to its positive aspects and not change much at all about its horrible aspects except for making them worse.
Of course, it's easy and surface-persuasive to say "destroy the system and things will be better" and keep the rest of it vague. Once you start getting into details is where you run into the oh shit it's actually not that simple factor.
Who knows; for all I know, once I hear your details I will be on board for them. But it's hard to say if it's all vague and feely-good-based.
Well I'm glad that you're so adept at moving the goalposts to fit the things you consider good, but that's just what it is. All of these were revolutions. If they worked, an anarchist one can work just as well.
If you're honestly willing to learn about anarchism, I can link you to things, but there's no point if you're here just to argue.
All the revolutions I listed made things way worse. If they were catastrophes, an anarchist one can be as well.
Not technically wrong, but also not that useful as a way to analyze. It's not moving the goalposts to clarify statements or to draw different lessons from different events.
Sure, what should I read?
If you interpret "Which one are you advocating for" and "for all I know, once I hear your details I will be on board for them" and "yeah I'm open to hear more explanation" as me just being here to argue, I think you are mentally unprepared for the kind of collaboration that'll be needed or the kind of resistance you might get to actually making an effort to destroy the system (by any definition of that phrase.)
Which, I mean, is fine; not everyone talking on the internet needs to be down to personally go out and seize the means of production. But I think if you're going to make that kind of bold statement about what "must" happen, it's fair to ask you to clarify and defend it at least a little bit.
The absolute best place to start imho is an anarchist faq. It goes into length into what anarchism is, what we believe and how we act on it
This section elaborates more on voting specifically: https://www.anarchistfaq.org/afaq/sectionJ.html#secj23
This section elaborates about revolution: https://www.anarchistfaq.org/afaq/sectionJ.html#secj71
Okay, I read a little.
Nor that it's the point, but Kelman was born in 1946, when it was about 65 percent that didn't vote, and it's been going down since then throughout his lifetime. In the modern day (i.e. long after this was written), about 60% of people vote.
They are dismantling it in many places in the US, I think specifically because there's starting to be a possibility again that it can effect a real change in the system.
You don't have to get into any kind of back-and-forth with me about this if you don't want to, but I am curious -- do you honestly believe that countries that don't use voting are not markedly less successful at giving the freedoms to their citizens that the writers here clearly believe are important?
That's one of my key points about the overthrow of "the system" in general -- a lot of times, the structures of power that replace voting if voting gets done away with are much, much worse. The type of injustice that exists in the modern American system is significant but what are you wanting to replace it with that you're asserting would have more justice? I mean, maybe. I would want to hear the details. But I think asserting that there's no reason why people would not want to be in a place that operates without voting is weird.
This part, I agree with. Just voting for the candidates presented and nothing else is guaranteed to perpetuate systems of inequality. Fully agree there for exactly the reasons that Ehrlich states. I think where we differ is:
That is my take on it. IDK, I skipped around to read up on more but my reaction was much the same to any selected sections I found. I think the problems they're describing are very real and difficult bordering on intractable. I think the solutions they're prescribing for them are likely to make the exact same problems very much badly worse.
I agree, re-instate native governments.
Iroquois Confederacy FTW
The American Revolution didn't destroy the existing system, it replaced the British control of the colonies with a federal control of the States, each of the colonial governments had a fairly smooth transition to state government, using the existing structure and most of the same people.
Potato potato. From the perspective of the British it certainly destroyed the status quo
Please don't take this as anything other than a legitimate inquiry, as that's how i intend it.
If we're claiming that all of this bad is by design, and the point of the revolution was to create this system, then aren't you saying that the revolution was wrong? Like, the founders intended to replace a monarchical people moving machine that killed some of the people and replaced it with a democratic one that kills some of the people. If they designed it that way, then the revolution was pointless, and if they didn't design it that way, then the argument that the suffering is a feature (instead of a consequence) is demonstrably wrong...what am I missing?
Impossibilism
I think the people who post and believe this kind of meme gravely underestimate the harm it will do to the most vulnerable and the enormous, mindboggling amount of money and time it will take to rebuild civilization.
but, like climate change, we're hostage to the people who are willing to go to the furthest extremes to advocate their position - jan 6th types, mostly. and like climate change, I don't see much to be hopeful for, even though I'm trying real hard to retain a shred of optimism for my kid's benefit alone.
Nobody is saying to destroy civilization.
ok so what's the plan then? how do you destroy the system but keep the tools needed for civilization to continue? It's an honest question because I see lots of doomer and boogaloo types but no one seems to offer up a plan.
Simplifying things, Anarchist praxis is to start building the new world in the shell of the old. We start building org structures we want to have, co-operatives, unions, moneyless exchange systems etc. These things naturally destabilize the existing system until it collapses under its own inherent contradictions, and then these orgs take over seamlessly.
More elaborate: https://www.anarchistfaq.org/afaq/sectionJ.html#secj2
And other lies you can tell yourself. Dont get me wrong, i am more aligned with anarchist thought than any other leftist denomination, but holy shit we cant be this naive.
No naivety involved. This has already happened and been shown to work.
You got some examples?
Spanish Revolution for one.
10 months. It lasted 10 months . Don’t get me wrong, it was a beautiful thing. But we need to look beyond siege socialism.
That's irrelevant to our topic. It also lasted 3 years
I was referencing Revolutionary Catalonia not the wider Spanish Revolution. My mistake.
It is possible to co-opt existing structures, but how do we counter outside forces, like happened during the Spanish Revolution. I could be wrong, but Horizontalism will always be weakened against organized opposition.
That's a completely different discussion. I personally don't think it's as easy to declare that such structures are weaker. The Spanish proved that by fighting for 3 years against overwhelming odds. I think the time that revolution happened was really unfortunate, but the same sort of revolution happening at the time where the surrounding nation states are weakened enough to not be able to intervene might have a vastly different result.
But at the end of the day, the destabilization works, so we keep doing it because those orgs are also the most ethical. What happens if and when capitalism collapses is a bridge that every such society crossed when it reached it, and nobody managed to pre-plan how it would go.
getting rid of conservatives
I'm down. How?
any means necessary
Sounds dangerous. What if someone accuses you of being conservative?
i explain that i'm not. also, i'm armed, so bring it.
The posse has more guns than you. I'm beginning to think you didn't think this plan through.
I'm old. I've lived a good life. If it means that there are finally posses rounding up conservatives, I might just be ok with it.
The only way to kill bad fascism is with good fascism?
pretty much. and once you wipe the earth clean of that scum, you step back and let an AI designed by academics in the humanities take over.
What tools do you consider necessary for civilization to continue?