I've seen so many charts that describe wealth and income inequality.
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I've seen so many charts that describe wealth and income inequality. They demonstrate the mind-boggling power law relationship that has put the majority of wealth into the hands of a few oligarchs and their retinues. People who only want to abuse that power to speed up the process of increasing concentration.
But I have never seen a graph of desirable wealth distribution, let alone "ideal".
Granted, even if it existed, and people believed in it, it would likely become yet another metric that became the goal. But maybe it would be one step closer to defining the goal?
The default goal—relentless competition for its own sake—is a shitty one. Even though it has permeated nearly every aspect of our culture and society. It is the reason we have arrived at this point in history.
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I've seen so many charts that describe wealth and income inequality. They demonstrate the mind-boggling power law relationship that has put the majority of wealth into the hands of a few oligarchs and their retinues. People who only want to abuse that power to speed up the process of increasing concentration.
But I have never seen a graph of desirable wealth distribution, let alone "ideal".
Granted, even if it existed, and people believed in it, it would likely become yet another metric that became the goal. But maybe it would be one step closer to defining the goal?
The default goal—relentless competition for its own sake—is a shitty one. Even though it has permeated nearly every aspect of our culture and society. It is the reason we have arrived at this point in history.
The idea of *changing the goal* is virtually incomprehensible to everyone. What other goal could there be? It's so remote that we must recognize even finding a better goal—a better purpose—is a prohibitively difficult goal on its own.
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The idea of *changing the goal* is virtually incomprehensible to everyone. What other goal could there be? It's so remote that we must recognize even finding a better goal—a better purpose—is a prohibitively difficult goal on its own.
The deep goals of humanity are not material. Material reality is merely the substrate through which we work to satisfy them: they are *emotional*.
That is why we get derailed by addictive substances, or compulsive behaviours. They work on our emotional state. They "solve" the emotional problem, albeit briefly, and with decreasing effectiveness.
Getting rich, gaining power, enforcing totalitarian order—these are (ineffective) means to an unachievable end: emotional regulation.
Virtually everyone is emotionally disregulated. We are deprived. We have emotional malnutrition. We endure psychic suffocation. It is killing us, individually and collectively.
But we cannot, collectively, find the integrity to recognize it, or the courage to admit it. We put our faith in habits. We keep self-medicating. We get sadder, and angrier, because the treatments do not work. They only make things worse.
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R relay@relay.infosec.exchange shared this topic
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I've seen so many charts that describe wealth and income inequality. They demonstrate the mind-boggling power law relationship that has put the majority of wealth into the hands of a few oligarchs and their retinues. People who only want to abuse that power to speed up the process of increasing concentration.
But I have never seen a graph of desirable wealth distribution, let alone "ideal".
Granted, even if it existed, and people believed in it, it would likely become yet another metric that became the goal. But maybe it would be one step closer to defining the goal?
The default goal—relentless competition for its own sake—is a shitty one. Even though it has permeated nearly every aspect of our culture and society. It is the reason we have arrived at this point in history.
@8r3n7 there’s no excuse for the poverty of imagination when it comes to envisioning better realities
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@8r3n7 there’s no excuse for the poverty of imagination when it comes to envisioning better realities
@sol Excuses implies blame, implies punishment. To what end?
"Poverty of imagination": perhaps you mean "neglect"? I suggest an alternative: it is an issue of imagination being monopolized by fear. Which is natural.
Fear, and avoiding danger, is why imagination evolved in the first place. Learning to control it, and direct it to creative, productive, even loving ends, was probably the hardest thing humans ever did.
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R relay@relay.mycrowd.ca shared this topic
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@sol Excuses implies blame, implies punishment. To what end?
"Poverty of imagination": perhaps you mean "neglect"? I suggest an alternative: it is an issue of imagination being monopolized by fear. Which is natural.
Fear, and avoiding danger, is why imagination evolved in the first place. Learning to control it, and direct it to creative, productive, even loving ends, was probably the hardest thing humans ever did.
