541–550 of 648 posts
Also highly relevant is Aldous Huxley's Brave New World: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World
Both were influenced by _We_ by Yevgeny Zamyatin.
While I love 1984, I think Fahrenheit 451 has become more true than Orwell's novel. People have willingly given into an information bonanza that is the internet, with headphones always in (seashells). We don't need the TV walls, as our cellphone has taken that role, altogether with the hyperactive delivery of such content. A collectivist state has not become the dominating power, but wealthy individuals and corporati…
Another classic anti-utopia becoming relevant today is 'Brave New World' by Huxley. See brilliant comparison with '1984' on comic [1] which summarizes Neil Postman's book 'Amusing Ourselves to Death'. [1]: http://highexistence.com/amusing-ourselves-to-death-huxley-v...
Wishing for the entire population to be highly educated and interested in important matters is, I think, a fool's errand. You're never going to get that from people unless you start culling less-intelligent people, which obviously isn't a good idea for many reasons.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you honestly don't believe the world is unambiguously better now than it was 20-30 years ago, you've been living under a continental plate the entire time. The world has gotten better in almost every way including the rapid fall in poverty rates, more reliable sources of food and medicine, and better access to technology for even the poorest folk. All the problems that seem so overwhelming now like the threat of n…
> the world has finally recognized and united around solving the single greatest threat to our civilization If it's CO2 you are talking about, Trump already said he doesn't give a shit. EDIT: sorry for citing wrong ("world" instead of "majority of the world", wasn't intentional), but even then, you don't get a majority without the USA.
This even includes progress in the United States. Even now, it's hard to see one of the worst CO2-emitting sources of energy (coal) gaining that much traction with natural gas being quite a bit cheaper here. If solutions that emit less CO2 than natural gas get even cheaper, those start becoming no-brainers to implement.
I'm sure that some states will try to nudge more from a government level (see: California), but even in states that don't, if economics dictates that the CO2-less solution is better, it will most likely be implemented regardless of political bluster. For example, Oklahoma is long known for being a traditional oil and gas stalwart. Yet as of 2015, 18% of electricity in Oklahoma is generated by wind. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Oklahoma)
While I love 1984, I think Fahrenheit 451 has become more true than Orwell's novel. People have willingly given into an information bonanza that is the internet, with headphones always in (seashells). We don't need the TV walls, as our cellphone has taken that role, altogether with the hyperactive delivery of such content. A collectivist state has not become the dominating power, but wealthy individuals and corporati…
> the world today still is a better world it was say 20 or 30 years ago Are you sure? Can you tell me why you think this? Domestic crime has increased. We're bombing seven countries. Civil rights have been diminished. Human rights have been diminished. The last administration went to far greater lengths to go after whistle blowers and journalists than any in history. Income inequality is at all time highs. More than…
For the stuff about war, what you're forgetting is all the stuff that came before: Vietnam, Korea, WWII, various other police actions, Beirut, etc. The 60s and 70s were a particularly turbulent time in recent American history. Do you see the National Guard out, shooting American protesters today? Nope. But they did exactly that in the 60s.
You're factually wrong about many things here. Civil/human rights were much worse in the past; just look at how hard it was for black people before the Civil Rights Act of the late 60s. You think today's incidents of cops shooting unarmed black people in the back is bad? It was a lot worse in the past, people just didn't care and no one had cameras to record it all. Rodney King was the first big instance of this being recorded by a bystander. Someone else mentioned gay marriage; 30+ years ago gay people had to hide in "the closet", many of them marrying heterosexually just to hide themselves. Crime is lower today than in the past, despite what some alarmists would have you believe. Go look up the actual stats. Crime in America has been on a downward trend for decades.
Income inequality is not at an all-time high. It's a lot worse than it should be, I agree, but go back to the Gilded Age and compare. It was worse back then. They didn't even have simple worker protections like 40-hour work weeks and OSHA to keep from getting maimed or killed on the job.
Yes, in many ways (but not all), things are definitely worse for Americans than in 1997, but overall things are a lot better than there were in the past before that. The 90s were simply an exceptional time, especially if you were a white American: the economy was booming, we were in a big lull between military adventures, the Soviet Union had collapsed and the Cold War was over, the Internet was becoming a household item (much like electricity or the telephone or the automobile became commonplace decades before, radically changing society). It was a great time to make money, buy a house, not worry about nuclear annihilation, etc. About the only people who were having a really bad time were the people in former Yugoslavia.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel that if you honestly believe the world is unambiguously better now than it was 20-30 years ago this reflects either your youth or privilege more so than any objective truth. I'll just leave this here: http://thebulletin.org/timeline
If you honestly don't believe the world is unambiguously better now than it was 20-30 years ago, you've been living under a continental plate the entire time. The world has gotten better in almost every way including the rapid fall in poverty rates, more reliable sources of food and medicine, and better access to technology for even the poorest folk. All the problems that seem so overwhelming now like the threat of n…
Your claims regarding the reliability of food and medicine sources are questionable. They are predicated on a fragile system of international logistics that if disrupted would result in mass starvation worldwide. Geopolitical instability raises the odds of just such a disruption.
Your assertion that existential threats like the threat of nuclear war were worse in the 90s is objectively false. All three of the world nuclear superpowers have active military operations with theater overlap. With these militaries operating in close proximity and occasionally bumping into each other the odds of an accidental escalation are greatly increased.
The fact that the majority of the world has identified global warming as an existential threat is heartening but as other commenters have pointed out the world industrial superpowers have to get on board and start pursuing aggressive policy changes for meaningful change to take place. Unless or until that happens what the rest of the world chooses is largely irrelevant.
TL;DR: I'm glad things are better for you now. It's not about you.
While I love 1984, I think Fahrenheit 451 has become more true than Orwell's novel. People have willingly given into an information bonanza that is the internet, with headphones always in (seashells). We don't need the TV walls, as our cellphone has taken that role, altogether with the hyperactive delivery of such content. A collectivist state has not become the dominating power, but wealthy individuals and corporati…
Another classic anti-utopia becoming relevant today is 'Brave New World' by Huxley. See brilliant comparison with '1984' on comic [1] which summarizes Neil Postman's book 'Amusing Ourselves to Death'. [1]: http://highexistence.com/amusing-ourselves-to-death-huxley-v...
The most amazing thing to me is that the 0bama administration was very good at Orwellian manipulation, yet it was rarely remarked upon. I mean, the guy got a Nobel Peace Prize, then proceeded with eight years of undeclared war on many different countries. "Droning" became a verb...
I don't think you can call getting the Nobel manipulation by the Obama administration. They didn't arrange that I believe.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel that if you honestly believe the world is unambiguously better now than it was 20-30 years ago this reflects either your youth or privilege more so than any objective truth. I'll just leave this here: http://thebulletin.org/timeline
If you honestly don't believe the world is unambiguously better now than it was 20-30 years ago, you've been living under a continental plate the entire time. The world has gotten better in almost every way including the rapid fall in poverty rates, more reliable sources of food and medicine, and better access to technology for even the poorest folk. All the problems that seem so overwhelming now like the threat of n…
This is factually wrong.
You're looking at things worldwide, and while it may be true that on average, things are better than 20 years ago, in the US this is simply not the case for the majority. The 90s were an economic boom time in the US, and there was almost no military action going on at all, the Cold War was over with the Soviet Union collapsed, and people were making money hand over fist in the internet bubble (which didn't collapse until the early 2000s).
>Not to mention that the majority of the world has finally recognized and united around solving the single greatest threat to our civilization, a threat that pretty much irreversibly changed our climate by the time we identified it and became completely unavoidable by the 1990s.
This is factually wrong as well, if you accept that you're not going to get very far when the US completely disagrees with you, and this is important since the US is one of the biggest energy consumers and carbon polluters. In case you haven't noticed, the Trump administration, and the half of the nation that voted for him, does not believe in global warming, and wants to massively increase coal production and usage.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because "The standards you walk past, are the standards that you implicity accept/allow"... Most of the worst dictators and tyrants in the world didn't start off at 'maximum mayhem'. They tend to start with lies, misinformation, subterfuge and misrepresentations, then they move up to things like false accusations, inquisitions, persecution and the like. Every step just makes it easier to move closer to full blown dep…
A few good governments too. Wilson, usually rated in the top 10 presidents, ran with "America First" and "He Kept Us Out" for his re-election. We joined the war only a month after his re-inauguration. In hindsight, that was likely for the best but it seems a misrepresentation.