Is rebellion possible?

The only rebellion possible is against materialism, against capitalism, etc. No matter what you do (what you do these days essentially being one and the same with what you purchase) you are locked in the system. The only real rebellion is dropping out, if not completely dropping out then reducing your intake. There is a shroud of insanity that has gripped the globe but it is all illusory. It requires that everyone agree upon the most ridiculously ancient and arbitrary territorial premises.

How ridiculous is the phrase 'fiat money', when money is in itself an abstraction? A derivative representation of real labor, it historically becomes more and more derivative. Recently, quite literally so. On the plus side, the cold hard calculating logic of computers is now in control of most of it, and I think this is where the rebellion will come. Perhaps someday the machines in control of the stock exchange will analyze all data, declare it all meaningless ('fiat') and instantaneously destroy the global monetary system in an effort to make things more efficient. It's a fantasy I like to indulge in, but I don't necessarily think it is required. The internet is democratizing speech, destroying privacy (personal privacy and 'private property') barriers, breaking down political barriers, rendering country lines less and less real, and slowly eliminating the means of production and literally the very tactile nature of the goods and services we have built our society around obtaining and worshiping. What has happened to the music industry and the movie industry will soon happen to pretty much every facet of your commercial life.

Social networks online and the orgy of data-mining is sort of the last hurrah of capitalism. Already we are realizing that private property is an illusion, that privacy is an illusion, that we are all one on this planet together. As more and more points of view are encountered, as more and more people become aware of even the most fringe behaviors (Bronies, anyone?), acceptance and compassion will grow. The recent polls about the public not caring about the NSA support this trend. We are evolving past the old illusions.

This is a pretty terrific thing. It's essentially the start of a spiritual revolution, happening from the outside-in, the material world dissolving.

The internet and the concept of home computers were born in the revolutionary heyday of the 1960s. Engineers often developed these products while experimental with acid and mushrooms, going through ego death, foreseeing a radical new concept of the future, one that is so unique it has historically escaped description. The most radical concepts of the psychedelic revolution -- the death of private property, the breaking down of national barriers, instant global telepathic communication -- are all becoming literally true before our eyes.

― Emperor Cos Dashit (Adam Bruneau), Tuesday, June 11, 2013 1:29 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this post is exemplary of the worst kind of techno-topian blather

dropping out of society has its appeal but a) the hippies (and a bunch of other people) tried it and it didn't really change anything and b) it's kind of selfish - it's all about improving your own life but not doing anything for anyone else

doesn't have to be like that all. it doesn't have to be dropping out either. it can be all about helping people too.

There are obvious limits to how far you can take anti-materialism, but the average first world resident has plenty of room before they hit those limits. I also think the internet is never going to bring about some non-materialistic utopia.

The best I can envision is a turning away from the idea that the earth's resources belong to anyone who can grab the biggest share for themselves. Such an idea would need to be built into social norms so widely accepted that anyone who breeches them is shunned as an outcast. There are no signs this is going to happen soon, if ever.

scott your suggestions veer closer to "being nice to people and doing the things you want to do" more than "rebellion"

not that the former is bad, just...

also we're 500x more likely to have depleted the earth's resources and brought on the end of civilization-as-we-know-it to have a successful worldwide (or even hemisphere-wide) revolution

well there's more to it than that. but i don't really have a philosophy of rebellion. my own brand of slow living yokelism is something i work at little by little. and its not for everyone. it involves never going anywhere ever. no place that you couldn't conceivably walk to. and no growth. which is a form of rebellion within a system based on growth. or maybe not no growth but just maintaining some sort of subsistance level of existence. you know, a thoreau kinda thing. i just think things have to get smaller. life has to get smaller. if we are to live into the future. and i think your only responsibility should be to your community or tribe. but i'm not gonna go live in a yurt. and i kinda hate gardening...

i'd say that the consequences of depleting the earth's resources increase the possibility of radical political change, but still not to a high probability

but i don't know how many millions of people would have to live like this in order for certain corporate and governmental apparatuses to be dismantled due to lack of interest. what if they gave a war and nobody came and all that. maybe it would take a hundred years and we haven't got a hundred years.

do you pay taxes?

environmental change on a national political level would have to be forced. like martial law. i dunno...

yeah, we pay taxes. i don't want to have anything to do with the system. criminal justice system, etc. so, yeah, i'm no snipesean.

i mean i could probably get away with not paying taxes for years. but i don't want to deal with govt people if i can help it.

i wonder if it wdn't be closer to rationing in the UK during World War 2, which wasn't quite the same as martial law. i dunno, depends how long developed countries can stave off the worst effects of resource depletion and what happens to the polities when it starts to bite - there's already a steady increase in disillusion with existing political systems

it might actually take mass evacuations from shoreline areas before any real change happens.

yeah, we pay taxes. i don't want to have anything to do with the system. criminal justice system, etc. so, yeah, i'm no snipesean.

― scott seward, Tuesday, June 11, 2013 3:51 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

???? by paying taxes you have everything to do with the system!

this thread is confusing to read through because rebellion can mean so many different things. it's a teenage smartass, it's Nat Turner, it's the Merry Pranksters, it's Lenin.

i guess the kind of hypothetical rebellion i think about the most would be the result of resource depletion (particularly potable water and soil fertility) and environmental degradation (particularly climate change and especially droughts), leading to the collapse of the global economy. that would create a few simultaneous conditions that would seem likely to foment rebellion/revolution. namely, A) the sudden decline in living standards for a significant amount of people, and B) a population divided against itself as the gap between winners and losers increases even more and the winners feel the need to wall themselves off from the rest of society, literally and figuratively, and the basic security of the losers becomes threatened.

joseph tainter (teehee) is well known for his writings on complexity and collapse, and he argues that civilizations collapse when increases in social complexity begin to experience diminishing marginal returns. and donella meadows (systems thinking theorist and overall cool lady) made complementary arguments that systems don't gradually decline, but rather collapse at the height of their complexity. civilizations have inevitably collapsed. the difference, now, is that "civilization" doesn't mean easter island or rome or the mayans, but the entire world, together, since the global economy is integrated to the point where a crisis in one region creates a crisis across the world.

look, i'm not a survivalist, i don't live off the grid, the people with the guns have some hold on me. i admit that. its too much of a hassle to make some moral stand and not pay them. they can close my store, they can put me in jail, court, all that nightmare stuff. i didn't pay them when i was single and living alone. i didn't have a bank account either. or a driver's license. i got paid in cash for years. but you know shit happens.

so stop suggesting you are engaging in "rebellion," scott, because you aren't in any meaningful sense

civilizations have inevitably collapsed

what does it mean to say that something that already happened was "inevitable"?

given the very complexity you (Z S) refer to, I doubt anyone's ability to reliably "predict" the circumstances that would lead to open rebellion against whatever world-system we find ourselves in tomorrow

I don't think scott is really suggesting people live in rebellion, he is just suggesting people move to western mass with him

i'm not suggesting i'm any better than scott or anybody. he's probably less of a consumer than me in some ways. but if you pay taxes, those drones flying into buildings in yemen have your name on them. PRISM has your name on it (in two senses, I guess). the Wall St bailout has your name on it. etc. obvs.

btw there is no way to escape the world-system, even if you are one of the uncontacted peoples in brazil or the islands in the indian sea.

any notions of revolution that start w/ such a premise are romantic garbage.

Not owning a car is a great form of modern rebellion.

maybe just maybe an oversimplification

xp otm

I don't really get why 'paying taxes' makes anyone more a part of the system than any other economic activity, like, say, buying records. it's not like the govt runs out of money for bombs when you don't pay your taxes.

when you buy records you are also paying taxes! (if the shopkeeper is law-abiding)

the only way to rebel is to cultivate practices that exist (to whatever extent that they can) outside of capitalism. transcendental or ecstatic experiences are particularly good at this.

fuck that

but i do have some hanging crystals and peyote i can sell you for a low price

it's just impossible to dismantle the economic system (god willing it'll dismantle itself) so you need to find lacunas in which it hasn't entirely intervened, or change the focus to elements that partially participate in capitalism and partially have elements that remain outside it (religious, music, sex, drugs, etc).

(i truly respect your intelligence, mordy, but that is some bullshit. transcendence, etc.--whatever that is, which is to say, it is nothing--can be nearly as easily commodified as anything else.)

communal/familial relationships can circumvent or subvert the absolute totality of hegemony too - obviously never entirely, only briefly + in limited amount

i don't disagree that capitalism does infringe upon these practices, but that they also contain an element of potency that predates capitalism and that we can still access to some limited degree. some auratic functionality that remains as a trace.

transcendence, etc.--whatever that is, which is to say, it is nothing--can be nearly as easily commodified as anything else

False transcendence! You may as well just say what is the point of being in a relationship if you can go to Vegas and get a hooker.

Mordy channeling Hakim Bey here

which is a-okay with me

i'm not escaping anything. i live in the world like everyone else. its true i don't want to have anything to do with the federal government or any other powerful institution, but i'm here. i'm not hiding. and i said i TRIED to make my life smaller and more human-sized. just the essentials. but i fail a lot. we have state health insurance. i'm not a poster boy for anarchy. but i don't support the govt in any meaningful way. my taxes aren't gonna buy a lot of drones. i don't fly flags. i would never fight for this country. i don't belong to a political party. i want something else. maybe it is romantic. if the county i lived in seceded i think i might finally have a cause to fight for. i dunno. i'm not better than anyone. not trying to be. but i don't have a long love affair with what this country as a country has done with its power and wealth. pretty standard stuff really. i come from a long line of abolitionists and unitarians.

i don't charge my customers sales tax. i pay that for them.

xpost

well, the thought that the collapse of civilization's institutions would lead to rebellion is just one possibility - such a scenario could lead just as easily to authoritarian outcomes. i wasn't trying to say causes X and Y result in outcome Z. but i do think that things like resource depletion and severe droughts would make "rebellion" or revolution on a wide scale more likely to occur. certainly more likely than today, for some of the reasons that n/a discussed in his revive.

as far as the decline of previous civilizations, you're right to call me out that "inevitable" is a meaningless word when used to describe events of the past. but my basic point is that nearly every civilization has eventually collapsed or severely declined, and that our current "civilization", unlike those of the past, is globally integrated and interdependent. either our current civilization is also unlike all civilizations in that it will endure for eternity, or one or more of the numerous looming systemic threats is eventually going to create a global crisis.

i agree w/ ZS that system collapse is inevitable, tho i think the next collapse will be final + ahistorical. (my millenarianism showing.)

The only way the next collapse will be final is if we nuke the entire planet as part of the collapse and even then that's not a guarantee that a human-driven society won't survive and rebuild itself.

I do hold several idle daydreams about the US breaking up into 10-12 smaller countries at some point

i have some other theories about how the next collapse will be final. nukes def on my list tho.

i can't really imagine any circumstances under which the u.s. would actually splinter off into a thousand little countries, tho if it did happen i'd rather stick with my county or even my city than my state.

A non-violent collapse is possible, but it would require sweeping changes across the entirety of mankind. Biological and/or philosophical changes that affect every one on the planet.

bestcase: in 1000 years there will be much talk about how our present level of specieswide harmonious enlightenment was "forged" in a "crucible" (or equivalent 3013 cliche)

in 1000 years all of the first and second world countries will have figured out how to download their citizens' consciousness into Minecraft

love is not "transcendence." family is not "transcendence." it is a product of evolutionary adaptation, and in its present sense is as much a unit of a socioeconomic system as anything else.

what is it you are transcending?

i never understood that word except as it applies to theology or art--the only places i can imagine one outlining something called "transcendence"

i'm a materialist.

xposts

positing "transcendence" as a way of opting out of the existing social order makes about as much real sense to me as positing "jesus love" or whatever. it's all the same.

jesus hates you btw