We have a global economic system that encourages and rewards evil. More and more countries have political systems that do the same. Good people would rather help others and make the world a better place, and this prevents them from attaining power. It would probably require doing some evil to remove the evil people from power.
this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2025
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Scary book written in 1970 has proved to be incredibly prescient.
"Future Shock" by Alvin Toffler predicted that as the Digital Age moved forward, a lot of people would begin to lose their minds because they couldn't/wouldn't keep up with all the changes.
It's easy for bad people to offer an easy solution to people who have no idea how to handle it.
Aldus Huxley's "Brave New World" (1932) is another one that predicted the state we find ourselves in.
It's with noting that Future Shock wasn't about the digital age; there was no digital age in 1970. Toffler was concerned about the rate of change and information overload, and he talks about the "information era." But it's useful to note that computers weren't on his radar - the technologies he was concerned about were things like Cable TV.
But it was less about the medium - the internet, still mostly only used by businesses and universities until almost 20 years later, when the WWW appeared - fits in perfectly. Toffler's theory is that - information age or not - as a species - our society and technology had started changing faster than our brains had evolved to handle. That we could just barely handle the introduction of the cotton mill - a device that had a huge impact on society; we could just about handle that much change in a generation, but now things were changing so rapidly that society couldn't keep up.
A really great modern simile is how people talk about computer technology and legislation. That Congress simply can't keep up with the rate of change in the world of software; that the people writing laws don't even understand the topics they're legislating. How well does the average person understand how blockchains work - even abstractly? How well does Nancy Pelosi? It's a microcosm of what Toffler was talking about, that afflicts the entire species.
The information age was just another stage; the point he was trying to get across is that, as a society, we can only handle so much change. He argued that we'd been struggling with this since the industrial age started. The information age - in Toffler's opinion - would be the last straw. Things would change so rapidly that we'd (individually) be in a constant state of shock.
I don't know that Toffler's Future Shock explains how we got here, though. It might be a factor, but is this the inevitable outcome?
Huxley, I think, provided a better (if less academic) theory. We are hedonists, and those in power realize that if they play to this, they can control society.
Both, I think, ignored the fact that economic libertarianism leads to oligarchies. And rather than "too big to fail" being an example against laissez-faire economics, it's a perfect example of the exercise of it. When you have enough power to influence legislature, you do, to your own benefit.
I do think they're all factors - streams that feed into the vast river in which current we're all caught, and which seems to be leading to a waterfall of global collapse. But I do blame capitalism as the must significant source. I don't think we have any better option (not communism, for sure), but I think the capitalism we have is broken and enables abuse, and contributed the must to all of the worst things that are happening: fast fashion, cheap disposable goods, concentration of wealth, income disparity, Elon Fucking Musk with his hand puppet controlling the country. And it's only Elon because Bezos didn't think of it first.
People have it tough and I think they have gotten full of hate and greed. Evil people feed on hate and greed.
That's, ironically, how the white supremacists felt all these years lol
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There's a season for everything, even for evil, but it won't last forever.
- The rich take a larger and larger slice of the wealth pie
- Use the money to propagandize to the now more precarious and vulnerable public to bolster their position
- Rinse and repeat
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Because evil people control all the media
Wealth inequality caused by all the things mentioned here and more. It allows the wealthy to control narrative that is fed to the masses, control the amount of free time people have to think and control how much pressure is placed on your lives.
The free thinking world is gone.
But the '3 meals away from a revolution' is always true and the rich will always get more greedy. When everyone no longer has the ability to free themselves, that's when a lot of heads will roll.
Because it is.
Trust. In order for good people to achieve something they need to work together and trust each other. Bad people lie and deceive with no remorse which basically gives them the advantage in securing higher seats. Being able to lie with a straight face gives you many advantages if what you seek is personal gain, hence a lot of people keep doing it and that seems to be the goal.
Because they are.
evil people have always been there, but we're in an era of many crisis's, it was easier to ignore it when it didn't personally effect you. Now i imagine in the next 10-20 years it'll start effecting everyone in ways we've yet to imagine. But I don't think its the end of the world or anything just that its probably time we start considering what we want our futures to look like and start making plans to survive or fight.
Because they're evil. Rather, they don't place the same constraints on themselves that a good person places on themselves.
Humans are not perfect, they evolved into what they are now very very slowly. Technology surpassed that and we've learned how to manipulate the flaws in humans to control the actions of the masses. The sad part is it isn't even difficult, it's very easy to convince people to act against their interests if you get them to associate the desired action with their baser instincts: sex, resources, security.
When a flaw can be exploited, we exploit it. But exploiting it is evil.
You can chalk it up to humans being inherently evil, but it's just difficult to fight against our inherent flaws, against the animal instincts which drive us and especially the less educated.
So, Lone Star, now you see that evil will always triumph because good is dumb.
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the hard answer: the voting populace is the single stupidest form of combined intelligence to ever exist, im pretty sure 3 children under the age of 7 in a room would have a higher average IQ than any state in america when measuring the voting populace.
Voting is a joke. People don't take it seriously, it's all vibes based, and those vibes are horrendously unreliable and meaningless.
the soft answer: it is, for now. It will change, just give it time. It's inevitable.
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