A bunch of people thinking they outsmarted the meme by asking “who made capitalism”.
A better question is “when you say humans are a virus, which humans exactly do you propose to exterminate in the name of saving the planet?” Because the bunker-state ethnonationalist, the trumpists, the Peter Thiels and the Mark Andreesens, the Dark Enlightenment and Network State and Tech Zionism neofascists, they know exactly what they mean.
The earth is big enough to support modest human life. It’s not big enough to support billionaires’ delusions of singularity. So they imagine to purge the parts of humanity that are not their particular version of white.
Don’t fall for their fascist propaganda.
When I said “humans are the virus,” I think people heard “so we should kill the people I don’t like,” and missed the part where I don’t like all humans.
I don’t say it anymore, because I don’t want to be overlapped with fascists who apparently say the same thing.
fascists have never left power without violence in all of human history, so keep dreaming about a peaceful solution
I’m sure the rhetoric stems from propaganda, I won’t disagree there. But I don’t think that trying to logic the analogy itself is the way to outline the problem with it.
Calling humans a ‘virus’ may not mean an extermination is the intention of the person regurgitating it. You can control a virus instead of just exterminating it, for example. It’s just a term people are familiar with that they associate with abusing resources and multiplying beyond a sustainable level, thus creating a toxic environment around them.
A better question is “when you say humans are a virus, which humans exactly do you propose to exterminate in the name of saving the planet?”
I don’t propose to exterminate anyone. I think it’s inevitable that the human virus will eventually kill its host.
If you think we are getting out of this worldwide authoritarianism surge without violence, you are a shitty student of history
Can I achieve something by exterminating myself? It should do something, right?
Maybe not having to live in depressing world itself would be a great achievement.
Ah, so just exterminate the correct people. Got it.
Nobody has to die if we just make billionnaires millionnaires again.
Sorry no, some billionaires have to die
There’s no chance in hell that would happen non-violently.
Good that you clarified that :D
I disagree, there are some psychotic people in power and they don’t care one iota about anyone but themselves and maybe a small handful of like minded people. To me they should be wiped from the earth.
You are correct that the planet can support a certain number (whatever that number is), but not with these people in power.
Now will we be able to truly figure which ones are the correct ones, probably not but we need to keep looking and root them out, expose them to the world and then let nature take its role once they are all hanging from the highest most visible place for all to see what happens when you are the virus that is continuously trying to destroy the world.
It’s easy, mulch all the sociopaths. Problem solved
You don’t need capitalism to suck, though. The Spanish conquistadores were slavers and genocidal murderers but they certainly weren’t capitalists.
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Every system finds ways to shift the blame. What they need are folks who drink the cool aide. Currently it‘s capitalism.
That doesn’t mean capitalism isn’t any less cruel
In fact it allows for blind institutional cruelty that no one has to take responsibility for.
In a very real way, more people have died from capitalism than ever suffered at the hands of the inqisition
But go ahead and keep trying to handwave the horrors of capitalism
If humans weren’t greedy dicks then capitalism or any other form of government would work perfectly. You can’t force humans to not be greedy dicks. No matter what system is being instituted it is susceptible to greedy dicks.
We can regulate greedy dick behaviour
Madame Guillotine can help with that
There are human societies were greed is not accepted.
Which ones? Which ones don’t damage their land or steal children from enemies or rape or steal? Please don’t try to say any indigenous tribes because they are all guilty of one or more these.
Any indigenous tribe. But seriously it was not long ago that no professional fishermen anywhere would ever overfish.
Only because they weren’t capable of it lmao.
There’s at least some evidence supporting human driven extinctions as far back as some of the earliest ‘modern’ (ie Homo sapien) hominid populations.
this is only true to the smallest of extents, there were plenty that had those behaviors, survivorship bias is not a good footing for an argument.
Survivorship bias is so important to remember when talking about human societies. Even our perceptions and knowledge of indigenous tribes is limited by survivorship bias. Consider that there may have been many more “peaceful” or “non-greedy” tribes, but they were conquered by groups of people that were more violent and selfish. There must be so many tribes that have been wiped away without a trace, tribes we know nothing about.
But the real barrier to this hypothetical “non-greedy population” idea is the matter of scale. A peaceful village of 100 people is easier to create and maintain than a peaceful global population of 8+ billion. Even if indigenous villages managed to build such utopias where greed doesn’t exist, their models wouldn’t easily scale to the world we live in now.
Proof that lemmy is a failed experiment already, this asshole has five upvotes
I welcome you to inform us of this utopia you speak of.
duck chasing meme Which human societies?
Your generalization is false
The majority of humanity are not greedy or obsessed with profit
The problem is that the few ridiculously greedy sociopaths that do arise per-capita are just so FUCKDAMN good at amassing power and wealth that we assume it’s the natural lot of all people
So we just test and dispose of sociopaths at birth, problem solved. We already have the tests for it.
Don’t look at me like that
and thankfully those sociopaths have enough money to get rid of idiots with those ideas that get too close to power.
Yep, which is why we need to use nontraditional power tactics like leveraging drones and cyber attacks as well as flashmob tactics and social media control
Money buys you a private army but not loyalty, we need to start early and get idealists positioned in those private armies
Make inroads with the children of billionaires tired of their parents’ excesses, this was a valuable vector during the French Revolution that almost no one talks about
More than anything we need to accept the fact that no amount of signs or shouts are going to stop the ultra wealthy from destroying everything for more imaginary numbers in an already unspendable bank account
It’s still objectively eugenics to target people based on genetic conditions, especially if the genetic condition has a not wholly undesirable result.
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capitalism or any other form of government
But capitalism isn’t a form of government tho.
Nor is communism of even feudalism.Oops you’re right I meant economic system
Our entire schtick is co operation, it’s literally why we’re the dominant life form
You’re putting the cart before the horse. Capitalism uses the threat of poverty and the profit motive to condition humans into being greedy dicks.
We live in a religious society that promotes a culture of bigotry. Does this mean we shouldn’t blame bigots?
We live in a patriarchal society that doesn’t take violence against women seriously. Does this mean that wife beaters aren’t to blame?
We live in a capitalist society that promotes selfishness and greed. Does this mean we shouldn’t blame selfish people? (Which is most of them.)
We live in a racist society… etc.
You are responsible for your actions and your beliefs. Step one to improving our society is accepting the reality that most humans have a poor (nearly non-existent) relationship with morality. They’re easily swayed by fallacious arguments because they are irrational and stupid. These are empirical facts about human beings that we ignore (with memes like this) at our own peril.
We should blame religion, patriarchy, racism and capitalism.
Those are perpetuated by the stupidity and gullibility described above.
Gullible to believe that we can‘t change anything? Who told you that? Capitalists!
I was saying that the gullible are to blame for us still having those problems.
so what exactly is your solution, magically making people not be gullible?
you’re just perpetuating the idea that there’s nothing to be done, you’re saying these things so you don’t have to think about the uncomfortable reality that things are as they are for a reason, that we can and should be taking action to change the systems that promote misery.
Did I claim to have a solution…?
I do think that teaching empathy and logic so that the children may understand the world and society is a good idea that would drastically reduce the number of people that fall into the category of “gullible idiot.”
How do we do that? What are the specifics? No clue. But teach people how to learn for fucks sake.
Also you are projecting a lot of your own shit onto me I think. I made a pretty simple comment and you read a fucking fanfic.
And this right here folks is why nothing will ever change. Because phantasmagorical ideological abstractions get blamed instead of actual features of reality, such as psychopathy, ignorance, greed, selfishness, and so on.
So how have things changed?
Moral progress! It takes a long, long time to convince average people to accept moral claims, such as the badness of slavery. There’s a kind of tipping point when normative facts are FINALLY absorbed into the culture and propagated through non-intellectual means (such as media and social pressure).
Democracy is actually the best vehicle for moral progress in that respect, as democratic scholars have been pointing out for the last century or so.
Democracy is great. We should really aim for it, instead of giving political power to the wealthy.
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“it is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
How dare you say something that requires self-reflection in a meme thread made for ideological-purity testing.
How dare you say something that requires self-reflection in a meme thread made by MAGA-style ideological-purity-testing imbeciles.
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blame is a nearly useless concept
How about we start fixing the problems instead of pointing fingers
Yes, let’s fix the problem of men beating women by not blaming anyone for beating women. Brilliant plan.
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You: “Blame is pointless.”
Me: BlaMe iS pOinTLesS
You: “how dare you strawman me!!”
Blaming individuals is ok of course, but after we’re done we should look what situation gave their lacking personalities power to have any individual impact upon our society. And change that. The blaming of actors is one thing, but there are shitty scripts, too, you know?
Redirecting blame attributable to human foibles to an abstract concept like “capitalism” is shortsighted and self-defeating. Analogously, the problem over the last 10,000 years hasn’t been slavery (the concept); the problem has been slavers (their ignorance, psychopathy, and greed).
There’s no period in human history when people weren’t unfathomably stupid, because people are literally just animals (and many would happily end the world in order to get access to cheeseburgers). They make bad choices because the average person is not capable of moral deliberation. All hyperbole aside, this is an actual empirical fact.
if the structure of society is set up in such a way that practically every action I need to take to keep myself fed and sheltered ultimately contributes to climate change, then it’s fucking inane to say it is the fault of individuals being stupid.
Humans are selfish, and that’s precisely why we need an alternative to capitalism. Because if we don’t force people to act intelligently they’ll act like the animals they are and obliterate their environment until they are living on mountains of shit and corpses. This has happened throughout history over and over and over again, long before the advent of any economic ideologies.
Global warming can be fixed tomorrow if people stopped eating meat and stopped buying giant pickup trucks and stopped worshipping celebrities, and so on.
And every armed conflict in the world would end if everyone put down their guns right this instant.
We’re talking about structures that reach across the globe, with a momentum that existed before either of us were born, and with a trajectory that will be traced long after we are dead. You don’t shift that trajectory by Wishing Upon a Star that everyone Becomes Better overnight. That’s not a practical approach.
And every armed conflict in the world would end if everyone put down their guns right this instant.
This is actually true. There’s an important lesson about human nature hidden somewhere in this sarcastic sentence.
The reason we need to get rid of capitalism is that it empowers people’s most horrible greedy impulses. However, that’s precisely because people are horrible and greedy. If people were saints, then capitalism wouldn’t matter because nobody would do dumb shit like buy pickup trucks or eat meat.
Again, long before the advent of any abstract “structures” and economic theories, before Hollywood and global communication networks, when humans were still living on random islands, they behaved like total and utter morons. They were not rational. Because 90% of humans are — and again, this is an empirical fact — incapable of moral deliberation.
That’s why we had slavery for 10,000 years. That’s why people torture billions of sentient animals to death in abattoirs every year to eat their carcasses. That’s why Donald Trump won the last election.
Because 90% of humans are — and again, this is an empirical fact — incapable of moral deliberation.
90% of humans. Really. Do you have a source for this claim?
Yes. Of course. But I get the sense that you guys are in this weird ideological-purity-testing mode right now. If you actually seriously want to engage with this fascinating research topic in good faith, feel free to message me.
- asks for a source to a claim
- gets called maga
- ???
I’ll have you know I despise trump.
Oh, but since you brought up good faith. In response to simply asking for a source, you attacked my character, tried to gaslight me into thinking I’m in the wrong, and then tried to move the topic into private DMs so nobody else can see it and so you can look like the adult here. This wasn’t even a real offer though, because nobody is going to politely DM you after getting their character attacked out of nowhere like that.
The fact that you’re not willing to publicly show your source about the things you’re claiming in bold are empirical facts tells me that you don’t actually have a source, and are in fact the one not engaging in good faith.
funny you keep coming back to slavery when so much of it was justified by claiming huge chunks of people were, empirically factually, incapable of being fully human
standing in the middle of a system that incentivizes, necessitates even, that people act against our collective shared interest; a system that, half through deliberate intention and half through the selective pressure of market forces, makes sure they have just enough education to be profitable workers – and to say, “We’ve always been this stupid. Just innate, innit?”, well you’re either missing the forest for the trees or for whatever reason you’d rather believe some people can just be written off altogether.
There are games that don’t cause brain damage in students and there is American Football.
What progress do you get by blaming humanity instead?
Reality is always the best starting point.
Our system is just slavery with PR and programming to convince us to be helpless to change anything for the better and to look at various distractions instead of the reality.
I am not just talking about first-world exploitation, I am talking about literal slavery and child slavery, which our economies rely on — which we unknowingly rely on for many of our goods.
If you factor in 40% (or more) of US agricultural workers being undocumented immigrants, you don’t really have to look hard to see that slavery is literally everywhere. It may not be the chattel slavery of past, but it’s still modern slavery.
Almost all employment revolves around exploitation, hard hours, asking you to give more than you have for the sake of the business, and so forth, all the while many participating individuals are unable to afford health care or housing. I still liken that dynamic to be modern slavery, even if the individuals reside in the first-world.
We can rise above this, but we must identify what is blocking or stagnating progress to be able to change — such as accepting the reality at hand instead of turning our gaze away.
Doesn’t mean we have to play the blame game or reduce nuanced issues down to word-play and labels. A new system is likely the best solution.
I agree. And any plan to move forward has to confront the fact that humans are obstreperous ignoramuses. So, what do we do? One strategy is to leverage democracy, which has already led to unbelievable moral progress over the last century. Another option is to leverage a populist outreach. Any other ideas?
the fact that humans are obstreperous ignoramuses
There’s a reason people are chronically misinformed or uninformed - here’s a comment I wrote the other day:
https://slrpnk.net/post/21939259/15608857
So, besides an entirely new system, human rights for all, and direct democracy, I’m calling for a rise of decentralized media (like the fediverse) and holding “news” organizations accountable for their propaganda, misinformation, suppression of opposing/critical perspectives, and omission of key facts. If they mess up too much, they can no longer peddle themselves as a news organization.
When we are misinformed or uninformed to this degree and are simultaneously subjected to this level of propaganda and tribalism, we inevitably become very polarized against each other. We stop making sense. We aren’t focusing on anything productive. We can resort to hate and violence. The key is to recognizing this manipulation and recognizing the kind of world we want to live in.
Do you want to hate or fear your neighbor? Do you want to live in a community or country that is disconnected, where many are dehumanized and suffering to extreme degrees? Do you want to be oppressed or tolerate the oppression of others? Or do you want the opposite?
That clarity and focus is the light at the end of the tunnel. What kind of world do we want to live in?
I want to live in a kind world, that has human rights, freedom, and a system that works for human benefit - instead of against it. I want to focus on solutions and help others to do the same. I want to thrive and to thrive alongside the planet and every living being on it!
humans invented capitalism, soooo…
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on the other hand when a virus like flu or covid replicates, it produces thousands of its variants but it is only defined by the one that causes the most damage
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nope I am talking about the top billionaire class, %1 immigrant criminals are nothing compared to the damages caused by these people. you are forcing a racism twist to the topic to win the argument but local level criminals are unfortunately irrelevant in this conversation.
That metaphor doesn’t work. It be more accurate to compare humans to in general bacteria and most bacteria are not harmful, there are even some know useful viruses
good point on the usefulness, I agree the analogy is not an exact one between humans and viruses as an individual per se but the fact that in both populations damages caused takes precedent over damages not caused (and in the case of humans also takes precedent over the good things humans try to do)
Who do you think made capitalism? Space aliens?
If I’m not mistaken, Marx describes capital as “dead labour”. So, to answer your question: who made capitalism? Vampires, zombies, liches. The undead.
Marx certainly didn’t see capitalism as merely metaphorical. Marx recognized that capitalism existed in material reality, that it was a system constructed and operated by real, flesh and blood human beings.
Lizard people, obviously
The funniest thing about the Lizard people conspiracy, which started as an antisemitic dogwhistle, is that David Icke by all accounts just believes in literal lizard people.
It was a stop on our journey. Historians say it was a better stop than the ones before. But it doesn’t have to be our last one!
I’ve been called eco-fascist for suggesting anything that might help the environment, no matter how small. I’m not impressed by this buzzword.
I feel like you can’t blame the corpos 100% and then proceed to do nothing to help the environment. Like I get that capitalism and unnecessary waste driven by it are by and large the problem, but it feels like people just use that as an excuse to put in zero effort personally and continue to live their lifestyle of overconsumption. It’s very defeatist imo.
“Humans are the virus” is related to the racist “overpopulation” myth which leads straight to eugenics. Sure, many words are overused, but “political ideology that combines environmentalism with fascist principles, often advocating for authoritarian measures to address ecological issues” is a bad thing.
Idk if we’re gonna have fascism we might as well have eco-fascism.
except eco-fascism isn’t “fascism but we save the planet! :D” it’s “fascism but to justify the genocide of brown people we add a bit of green sprinkles on the white supremacist rhetoric”
But also we could have neither, fascism isn’t a fatality
Plenty of bacteria and viruses are beneficial, and contribute to the overall health of their hosts.
If humans are diseases, then it is because through learned behaviors that we act in a deleterious manner towards the overall ecosystem. We are entirely capable of shifting those behaviors, of creating social structures that select for behaviors that promote co-existence and symbiosis with that ecosystem.
There are some symbiotic bacteria, but I’m unaware of any beneficial viruses. Their entire nature is to hijack cells to replicate themselves, typically resulting in the eventual death of the host cell.
Researchers are looking into bacteriophage that infect gut bacteria. It seems that over time, the viruses select for and introduce genes to bacteria that play nice with our intestinal health, rather than run amok.
Yep, those are all capitalist states.
Gotta hand it to China. They’re a few years away from being coal free. A decade at most if they stay on course.
Unfortunately they don’t seem to be on course at all, with coal production and new coal power plants rising in 2024 to an all-time high.
While they have been implementing green energy, which is laudable, they aren’t phasing out coal at all. China seems to crave energy and has no bias about where it comes from.
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Big “and yet you participate in the system” energy.
No?
What the fuck gave you that impression?
I’m saying the comic is shit because they are just multiplying causes, not that they’re being hypocrites.
Everyone just makes up shit to hear their own voices
You need to chill the fuck out dude.
No one has to suffer your existence but you.
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If you can’t chill out then you maybe need to not be on social media.
I find it hilarious that you have zero clue how much of a fragile bigot that makes you
Holy shit dude… stop trying to be a victim all of the time.
I’m not being a bigot, you dweeb. I’m saying social media isn’t exactly known to improve one’s mental health and it seems, judging by you tirade through this post’s comment section, you could stand for a break.
Wat
are you just randomly putting words together now
Oh wait the comic was earnest? I literally thought it was making fun of people who say things like this. Goddamn.
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Destruction of nature & unwise use of resources, or even just multiplying to a point where even the most prudent resource management & minimal environmental impact per capita is the absolute goal could still destiny biodiversity.
This has to do with economical tendencies of living beings, not a particular socioeconomic system.
(Yes, capitalism is accelerating the process by taking away freedoms from the masses - but even a commune can decide to chop up the whole forest for wood. World is a fuck.)“Virus” might not be the best word for it tho (infestation maybe? Fits the capita growth statistics), but successful animals that oversaturate their environment (eg lots of food, no predators, longevity after procreation, tech) cause biodiversity loss (anything from local collapse to a global extinction event with cofactors like climate change or air structure change - what is novel with humans is how rapidly we are developing in our last 0.5% of existence, and how rapid the global impact we case is, it won’t take us 10s of thousands of years, we can speedrun in less than a millennia).
The lack of empathy and true understanding of reverence is the issue.
People do not respect the meat that befalls their plate, the bacteria that ferments their beers, the trees that warms their homes.
Capitalism has two routes, horde through meekness or horde through exploitation. When you horde through meekness, any worth is solely yours - you submit and embrace this moment of life wholely separate from you. You cannot control the world.
Humans are a virus, because we reach for the stars as we eviscerate our host. Lest we learn compassion and empathy, we will consume this earth. The flooding isn’t biblical this time, it’s predicted by science as man decays.
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That’s ok, we are not all born to fight, let alone see the enemy.
