The Maelstrom of Violence

[Eric the Green]

(02-02-2021, 01:25 PM)Einzige Wrote:

(02-02-2021, 01:00 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(02-01-2021, 06:10 PM)Einzige Wrote:

(02-01-2021, 12:11 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(01-31-2021, 02:23 PM)Einzige Wrote: It is easier to find your own purpose when the instruments of production are made available to the whole society.

If machines do everything, and people do nothing, how does that help?

Machines won't do everything. They will do the overwhelming majority of physically constructive activities - construction, plumbing, welding, farming. There will always be creative human activities, from the arts to interpersonal services.

OK, but how does that help with the average person?  Most people are not artsy and creative or intellectually curious enough to pursue knowledge for its own sake. Instead, we'll have, as Paul Brower noted, people with hobbies and others with pathologies -- primarily substance abuse.  The singular alternative to all that is some form of mandatory social engagement.  In the past, the military draft served that purpose.  What would work today is ????

The average person absolutely would be artsy and creative and intellectually curious if the world allowed for it, but the overriding demand for profitability in all human endeavors precludes it. Those social pathologies (and I say this as a victim of it myself) overwhelmingly stem from feelings of social uselessness, which are grossly exacerbated by bourgeois class society.

I think I mostly agree with Einzige's statement.