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Talkin’ about a Revolution

drb.ie

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Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#61

Post by CalRobert »

baxtr wrote: post #55
graemep wrote: post #19

The world gets both better and worse. it is something that I regularly get voted down for saying here, but IMO the west is unduly pessimist because it had a golden age from winning the cold war until the late 2000s, took an overly optimistic view of the future and the inevitability of progress (remember "the end of history") and cannot cope with things going back to normal. Things get better, sometimes they get worse…

I talked to a history professor recently and asked him how he viewed the whole situation. He leaned back, thought for a bit and answered: It’ll be all fine on a 200 years perspective, democracy will continue to increase its footprint, people will lead better lives. It’s the next 30 years I’m worried about. PS: ofc, I have no clue if he’s right or not. But I thought it’s an interesting take to share.

“democracy will continue to increase its footprint”

What was this based on?

Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#62

Post by aprilthird2021 »

boxed wrote: post #21
resurrected wrote: post #2

[flagged]

https://x.com/Aizenberg55/status/1905249003291484566 Looking at those graphs I think one sees a war started by the weaker force and losing badly. A genocide in the same way as a bully being smacked in his face is bullying.

You realize genocide has nothing to do with graphs? It has to do with the leaders of the army accused saying they want to use starvation of the civilians of their own country as a tool of war among various other things. Since Israel does not recognize any Palestinian nation, and is the de facto occupier of the land the Palestinians live on, they are effectively civilians in the Israeli state

Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#63

Post by mardifoufs »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #51
mardifoufs wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is not voting for the administration that enabled and did absolutely nothing to stop the genocide of their relatives or community in Gaza voting against their self interest? You realize that the deaths that happened in Gaza are probably more important than whatever grievances you have against Trump for some people? We are talking about tens of thousands of deaths, directly enabled by the previous administration (…

You think Trump is going to do better? Looks to me like he is doubling down on it.

No, that's not what I said. But that doesn't mean that people would actively vote for the previous administration. They just won't vote at all.

And I'm not sure what you mean by doubling down. Biden was basically letting Israel do whatever it wanted to do. Absolutely did nothing for more than a year of bloodshed. Doing anything (like direct discussions with Hamas, bypassing israel) is better than just doing nothing. Even if Trump is a drooling, die hard supporter of Israel.

Like if Trump did what Biden let Israel do, I don't think the Muslim population would've been surprised. But even the reddest/war hawks of presidents(Reagan, Bush) never let Israel just have a complete carte blanche. Yet Biden, a supposed ally of the community, did.

Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#64

Post by sofixa »

baxtr wrote: post #55
graemep wrote: post #19

The world gets both better and worse. it is something that I regularly get voted down for saying here, but IMO the west is unduly pessimist because it had a golden age from winning the cold war until the late 2000s, took an overly optimistic view of the future and the inevitability of progress (remember "the end of history") and cannot cope with things going back to normal. Things get better, sometimes they get worse…

I talked to a history professor recently and asked him how he viewed the whole situation. He leaned back, thought for a bit and answered: It’ll be all fine on a 200 years perspective, democracy will continue to increase its footprint, people will lead better lives. It’s the next 30 years I’m worried about. PS: ofc, I have no clue if he’s right or not. But I thought it’s an interesting take to share.

> It’ll be all fine on a 200 years perspective, democracy will continue to increase its footprint, people will lead better lives.

What could that be based on? Ask the people in Venezuela, South Africa for instance, things can definitely get much worse even for decently developed countries with democracy and a solid economic foundation.

Combine with the growth of religiosness in young people across multiple growing countries, and broad (sometimes related, sometimes not) anti-democracy trends, I really wouldn't be that optimistic.

What would make one think that e.g. the Coup Belt in Subsaharan Africa will some day get more democratic? The fundamentals aren't there - the populace is generally poor and poorly educated. Strongman rule over years/decades can erode the little civic society that existed, and then it's very very hard to get an effective democracy functioning.

Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#65

Post by baxtr »

dataflow wrote: post #58
baxtr wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I talked to a history professor recently and asked him how he viewed the whole situation. He leaned back, thought for a bit and answered: It’ll be all fine on a 200 years perspective, democracy will continue to increase its footprint, people will lead better lives. It’s the next 30 years I’m worried about. PS: ofc, I have no clue if he’s right or not. But I thought it’s an interesting take to share.

"Fine"? Did the history professor consider anything other than history or politics? The way global warming and our general destruction of nature is going (not just species or climate but also e.g. depletion of groundwater in a lot of heavily populated areas), I'm not sure democracy will be our biggest concern in 200 years' time.

No, he did not consider things that have never happened before.

He can only extrapolate from events that already happened. Human made global warming is a first time, so difficult to say what will happen from a historical perspective.

Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#66

Post by eMPee584 »

baxtr wrote: post #55
graemep wrote: post #19

The world gets both better and worse. it is something that I regularly get voted down for saying here, but IMO the west is unduly pessimist because it had a golden age from winning the cold war until the late 2000s, took an overly optimistic view of the future and the inevitability of progress (remember "the end of history") and cannot cope with things going back to normal. Things get better, sometimes they get worse…

I talked to a history professor recently and asked him how he viewed the whole situation. He leaned back, thought for a bit and answered: It’ll be all fine on a 200 years perspective, democracy will continue to increase its footprint, people will lead better lives. It’s the next 30 years I’m worried about. PS: ofc, I have no clue if he’s right or not. But I thought it’s an interesting take to share.

Oh, coincidentally, that is just the time window of the technological singularity.. where we either ascend to a peace- & powerful interplanetary civilization - or accidentally eradicate ourselves out of a collective lack of wisdom and sense of connectedness. Let's play..

Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#68

Post by davedx »

graemep wrote: post #19

The world gets both better and worse. it is something that I regularly get voted down for saying here, but IMO the west is unduly pessimist because it had a golden age from winning the cold war until the late 2000s, took an overly optimistic view of the future and the inevitability of progress (remember "the end of history") and cannot cope with things going back to normal. Things get better, sometimes they get worse…

> People do not change all that much morally

This is debatable. In fact, the US culture war is absolutely about what American "morality" should be. It's what a lot of the Project 2025 Manifesto is about:

"The document spans a wide range of policy areas, but when it comes to culture, family, and morality, it emphasizes a return to traditional values, a rollback of progressive social policies, and an assertive use of federal power to reshape American culture"

There's a reason it's called a Culture War and not a Culture Mild Disagreement.

Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#69

Post by hagbard_c »

thomassmith65 wrote: post #37
suraci wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Yes, we could organize gatherings where we purify ourselves of such works of degenerate literature by gathering all the copies we can find and burning them /s

That's the wrong way - the way of the likes of 'fascists' and 'anti-fascists' alike - to go at that problem. A better way is to point out where Hegelian thought can lead and has led in the past. No books need to be burned, more books need to be published and read while educational institutions should stop pushing books which promote the destructive aspects of Hegel's thoughts. Yes, that means that Howard Zinn should not be used as the historian of choice in the USA, that all the different 'Marxist critique/perspective on ...' studies are not the ones to base the curriculum on and that terms like 'decolonising Shakespeare' [1] should become the exception rather than the rule when dealing with the cultural inheritance of 'the West'.

I understand that you were trying to sound edgy but the effort falls flat in the light of the many examples of 'book burnings' - between quotes because physical book burnings are out of vogue - by the authoritarian progressives who slowly marched through the institutions of academia. National socialists censored books by burning them, international socialists censor them by 'decolonising' the curriculum [2] and the library [3].

[1] https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-audacity-of-decoloni...

[2] https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/l...

[3] https://duckduckgo.com/?t=h_&q=decolonising+the+library

Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#70

Post by [deleted] »

dataflow wrote: post #58
baxtr wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I talked to a history professor recently and asked him how he viewed the whole situation. He leaned back, thought for a bit and answered: It’ll be all fine on a 200 years perspective, democracy will continue to increase its footprint, people will lead better lives. It’s the next 30 years I’m worried about. PS: ofc, I have no clue if he’s right or not. But I thought it’s an interesting take to share.

"Fine"? Did the history professor consider anything other than history or politics? The way global warming and our general destruction of nature is going (not just species or climate but also e.g. depletion of groundwater in a lot of heavily populated areas), I'm not sure democracy will be our biggest concern in 200 years' time.

[deleted]
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