Discussion a stance on life as it currently stands...

[Mr Myemna]

It stands today as a dominant idea in most modern societies that we humans are in some kind of continuous suffering, be it continuous or with little breaks in between.

if someone today is to mention that the condition that they're in is, for lack of a better word, miserable. they're usually faced with the common response that life is just that way, we're in some kind of condition, a human condition which our suffering is fundamental to, and that nothing we do fully alieviates said suffering....which i can't help but find at best very hard to substantiate and at worse very bizzare.

well first, don't living creatures adapt to the environments and conditions that they live in over a long enough period of time ? you don't see polar bears trying to escape the freezing waters because it's too cold, they're adapted to said environment. haven't sapient humans been around for long enough for them to adapt to managing themselves through the conditions they live through ? does it not seem wasteful that our bodies keep on sending signals of discomfort to things we're supposed to been living through for most of our history and are fundemental to our very being ?


i digress, it seems to me (based on some level of careful observation) that the things we react so negatively to are things are detrimental to us, things that actively harm us, and more on that, things that weren't happing to us very often, it's somewhat nuanced:

the suffering we exprience almost seems fundamental to us because when we look back into history, it seems to us that we've been living just the way we are, just more primitively,
what one needs to do is look at history in a way unattached to the way european historians saw it, a more radical approach does suffice.... what actual archeological findings tell us (not taking african tribes as a living fossil, they're not, they've been living and engaging with other societies and are concious shapers of their social structures) is that:
a large number of earlier homo sapiens lived in staunchly egalitarian horizontal societies, where there were no strong gender roles, genders were fluid, specific professions, although somewhat limited due to their current technological level were very flexible in how you approach them, change through them, and improve them, educating the less knowledgeable, took a more level headed practicionary approach, that didn't establish authority between the educating and educated, but respect of expertise, which allowed for criticism and even further learning....

and while this seems like an unecessary turn away from the topic at hand, what i'm trying to say is that the things we suffer from today: hunger, death, sickness, poverty, societal exlusion, racial discrimination, systamatic oppression. were either created very recently in our history or amplified by our material conditions

we experience death much more intensily because we are stratified, we have atomic families, structures which emphasis reliance(both material and emotional) on a very tiny number of individuals, which among amplifying the toll of individual deaths, atomic families also reinforce many forms of domination like Ageism and patriarchy
hunger is also amplified by our current conditions, food common pools such as forests and fields have been enclosed, private property rights forces people to be seperated from nature, forcing us to do monotonous jobs to those who claim ownership of those pools, there's hardly any escape from the way of life forced upon us, in the traditional sense that is
and other forms of opression were also created relatively recently in our history
another form of suffering being the existential one, while being around from much earlier in our history, and arguably not exclusive to us humans, is severly amplified by the thing that's supposed to combat it, religious fundamentalism, a thing about it is that it forsakes a niche human honesty, the honesty of one's existential condition, the pioneers of religious fundamentalism claim their faith paints and colours every aspect of one's existence, often making extremely bold claims about one's experience, which leads to further complications (i would discuss it in more depth if y'all are interested) among other things like the gossiping and blaming attitudes, but those are not necessary to it

the narrative that i'm trying to paint here is that the manifestation of our "human condition" has deeply coincided with the deep establishment of many forms of domination among us, and it is entirely natural and human to be miserable when something that foreign strikes and proliferates in such a way, it's entirely natural to be broken down by something that inherently harms us so much, by way of limiting our freedom to be human, we are not made to live a life of domination, we are to live egalitarian

and what twists the knife further in our wounds is the constant advancement of notions like "personal responsibility", "self-betterment", "finding meaning" deeper into our throats, freedoms which only the rich and powerfull are able to excercise while lecturing the rest of us on how to live in less misery than what they help to inflict upon us, it's often propagandised that our miserable condition is the only way, and that our persumed "human nature" will prevent us from any other form of social organisation, and any attempt of rebellion against this misery is accused of immorality and harming the people it's supposed to empower, it's sickening, yet the machine pushes even deeper into our throats, constantly wearing the veil of "pragmatism" to make place for it's rotten propaganda, while constantly crushing any attempts of revolt, of autonomy and of freedom

our response is normal, it's human. the conditions are not, they're vile, they're rotten. i believe there's reasonable chance for a hope of our current condition changing, but that change doesn't come with playing along with our dominators rules, it comes with violent uprise, it comes with force, it comes with solidarity, and comes with love for humanity and humans, we're not bad, our systems are, and there's hope of changing them.... there's no obligation for you the one reading this to share the revolution, you are the steward of your living affaires, it's just that it would be really nice if you did.....

P.S: some of you might wonder why i lean so much onto political discource, but really, that's a part of the problem with our hegemonic reality, we're made to believe that politics are a cause of conflict, that they're the business of the "right" kind of people, and that we shouldn't bother thinking about it. but in reality, this line of thinking is what allows practices which breed misery to proliferate, the people who will to help, need to start from there.

P.P.S: sorry for the long thread, the TLDR is that our human condition is bullshit fabricated to excuse our domination to proliferate, it being the source of our misery. would love to argue down below. also, i've shared this on both suicide discussion and recovery, because i think it should be discussed much more often, sorry if it bothers you, i love you <3

 

[theboy]

Interesting!

 

[Deo volente]

Do you have any general sources for your observations?

I wish I could say more but for now I will just say I have found it enriching to attempt to put these kinds of observations in algorithmic terms via Darwinian mechanisms. The idea essentially being that humans have been changed over time not through discrete movements and developments throughout time but something closer to evolutionary dynamics on the meme layer. One exercise I have been trying to work on; permitting that the universe is completely deterministic, to what extent can past descriptions of the world and human development be recovered? I have come to think it is far more than I originally thought, given how important free will is typically considered.

Anyway, all that to say, I agree with your assessment overall. To me, it appears that human beings have been subordinated to memetic complexes that are proceeding by the same evolutionary logic that all dynamic systems obey, and our archaic minds and bodies are now (relatively recently in history, past few thousand years) being ground up against a brutal divergence of direction.

 

[Mr Myemna]

Do you have any general sources for your observations?

I wish I could say more but for now I will just say I have found it enriching to attempt to put these kinds of observations in algorithmic terms via Darwinian mechanisms. The idea essentially being that humans have been changed over time not through discrete movements and developments throughout time but something closer to evolutionary dynamics on the meme layer. One exercise I have been trying to work on; permitting that the universe is completely deterministic, to what extent can past descriptions of the world and human development be recovered? I have come to think it is far more than I originally thought, given how important free will is typically considered.

Anyway, all that to say, I agree with your assessment overall. To me, it appears that human beings have been subordinated to memetic complexes that are proceeding by the same evolutionary logic that all dynamic systems obey, and our archaic minds and bodies are now (relatively recently in history, past few thousand years) being ground up against a brutal divergence of direction.

I'd like to apologize for the late response,
not a lot of research has been done in the field, mostly because the people who benefit most from the maintaining of the status quo are the ones who fund the research, although i took lots of Anarchist and radical literature, you can have a search in the: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/special/index
I also really like this work: https://www.eurozine.com/change-course-human-history/

I don't really think Darwinian works should be all that's taken into account, he paints the evolutionary past as linear progression instead of the complex interdependent niches that rise and go and rise again, as well as that he takes natural selection as being only driven by compition, not acknowledging that cooperation and mutual aid are extremely viable strategies for survival, in a nutshell, it turns a tribe or an entire species from competing indiviuduals into a mega-organism which competes with the rest, so it's fair to assume that this grinding competition motive of our recent history is against our genetic makeup, we do much better with mutual aid.

Although i do not make the claim that the rise of these social arrangements happened within unnatural circumstances. in fact, I think social structures of domination are much better at spreading due to their nature.

I think an Anarchist revolution is possible because we have something that makes us different from our ancestors, we have great access to knowledge, meaning that we have much better odds at breeding social structures which are fundementally anti-authoritarian/anti-domination, and that extends even to non-human and non-sentient individuals. our perceived awareness and ability to make choices can be taken as a part of the material conditions which lead to certain social arrangements, so it would be (for lack of a better word) wiser to make effort to create social settings which benefits us all equally


I'd like to be honest about my lack of understanding of academic vocabulary, I apologize if i gloss over any point you have made

 

[Deo volente]

I'd like to apologize for the late response,
not a lot of research has been done in the field, mostly because the people who benefit most from the maintaining of the status quo are the ones who fund the research, although i took lots of Anarchist and radical literature, you can have a search in the: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/special/index
I also really like this work: https://www.eurozine.com/change-course-human-history/

I don't really think Darwinian works should be all that's taken into account, he paints the evolutionary past as linear progression instead of the complex interdependent niches that rise and go and rise again, as well as that he takes natural selection as being only driven by compition, not acknowledging that cooperation and mutual aid are extremely viable strategies for survival, in a nutshell, it turns a tribe or an entire species from competing indiviuduals into a mega-organism which competes with the rest, so it's fair to assume that this grinding competition motive of our recent history is against our genetic makeup, we do much better with mutual aid.

Although i do not make the claim that the rise of these social arrangements happened within unnatural circumstances. in fact, I think social structures of domination are much better at spreading due to their nature.

I think an Anarchist revolution is possible because we have something that makes us different from our ancestors, we have great access to knowledge, meaning that we have much better odds at breeding social structures which are fundementally anti-authoritarian/anti-domination, and that extends even to non-human and non-sentient individuals. our perceived awareness and ability to make choices can be taken as a part of the material conditions which lead to certain social arrangements, so it would be (for lack of a better word) wiser to make effort to create social settings which benefits us all equally


I'd like to be honest about my lack of understanding of academic vocabulary, I apologize if i gloss over any point you have made

Thanks for the references, I will certainly check them out.

We clearly have different views of the Darwinian lens. I take a more broad view of it which has been significantly expanded since his initial contribution. I don't think it matters that much though, I agree with your points about the spread and influence of social structure and the possibilities introduced by our collective intellectual heritage. I was simply trying to reframe them into a personally preferred intellectual lens.