The repercussions, ethics, and morality of a post-scarcity society

I find that rather hard to swallow. Hard work might make Scott a little "unhappy" because it's hard work, but I would think that unhappiness would be outweighed by the fact that…

edited 12th Aug '13 10:39:34 AM by Robotnik

Even as someone who really values his alone time, I'm going to play devils advocate here and say that your version is much better. I really resent our modern trend of downplaying bad things and being ultra sensitive about them instead of discouraging them and telling people it's ok.

Negative traits aren't ok. That's why they are negative. Maybe he's not depressed, he just can't really make emotional connections. If he doesn't yearn for emotional connections, then he isn't really that introverted either. Even the most introverted people can feel lonely. If he can't make those connections and doesn't particularly want them, then I'd say it's a pretty good case for sociopathy.

Training people to find the meaning of life sounds way too much like brainwashing to me.

Shit, we already have that, it's called people who don't think for themselves and look to religion to tell them what the meaning of their mortal lives is. Ain't nothing wrong with religion, but people need to decide what gives their life meaning on their own, not be told it by someone else. If anything, that's a human struggle that we all have to go through as individuals. I'm not saying you can't get advice from others, but it isn't really something you can(or should) go and start doing powerpoints on.

edited 12th Aug '13 10:43:05 AM by Barkey

That sounds to me like he's suffering from mental illness. Especially with the Antisocial Personality Disorder. That's a result of brain chemistry and needs therapy and medication. The existence of mentally ill people says very little about society. The fact that we're shit at treating them, and keep blaming them for their illness says more.

And for you or me, it probably would, but this is a person for whom the act of talking while he is playing a video game is an unsufferable offense that causes him to flip out. Actual, honest to god hard work? Insurmountable.

This ties back into pain being relative. What seems inconceivable to you or me that it would be anything more than a minor hardship easily worth achieving due to the benefits on the other side, is a Brick Wall of Difficult for him, because he's never known hardship before.

Everything anyone does is a mental illness. Your kid has an active imagination? That's an illness. Here are drugs. Your kid doesn't? That's an illness. Here are drugs. Sad? Illness. Happy? Illness. Angry? Illness. Antisocial? Illness. Too social? Illness.

There are mental illnesses for everything.

edited 12th Aug '13 10:45:30 AM by TobiasDrake

^

I think the best way to kick that tendency out of them is to put them in a position where someone else has absolute power over them.

Shit, send him to boot camp and make him deal with someone else owning his ass for a few months, and then send him right on back home. That'll expand the levels of what can bug him way beyond what they are now. Or he'll fail to adapt and off himself or something.

"You're annoyed that I came in and woke you up while you were sleeping? GET ON YOUR FUCKING FACE AND TASTE TEXAS. STOP CRYING YOU BITCH. GET OVER IT."

edited 12th Aug '13 10:48:50 AM by Barkey

and <baleful look>

Because over-diagnosis and mistreatment happens doesn't mean mental health is a crock. It means we're crap at dealing with mental health. Bootstraps, drugs and coddling aren't the ways to deal with it, but until the various systems dealing with this are sorted, people can and will fall through the cracks. Sometimes with partial fault of their own... but, by no means all the fault. And, without the correct help targeted to the actual problem, it can be damned hard to make positive changes.

Nobody is in full charge of their lives and emotional states. Feedback of many kinds happen... including neurological states you're not aware of.

edited 12th Aug '13 10:53:26 AM by Euodiachloris

It doesn't seem like hardship is the only thing missing in Scott's life, though. He also doesn't seem to have any self-esteem or desire to have his ego stroked, and if that's the case, like Mike, that's an anomaly, not the norm.

If I were him and I was going down, I'd take you with me. Of course, that's why I'm not in the army.

edited 12th Aug '13 11:02:23 AM by Robotnik

That's also why I'm not a drill instructor. Breaking people down for a living isn't really what I want to do for a career, I'm not enough of an asshole.

Yeah this guy Tobias is talking about is not just lazy, he also has no ambitions beyond it sounds like. He is miserable and doesn't know how to change that, but judging by how you describe him I doubt hardship would have helped.

If his parents threw him out at 18 I think he would have shut down from the pressure of it all essentially, and more hardship earlier on would probably have made him more depressed because he wouldn't know how to deal with it, and it's obvious his parents aren't helping. He seems to have 1.) A genuine case of depression and lack of ambition, or 2.) Doesn't know what he wants out of life and is in no rush to figure out, and is lazy because of that.

I don't get why you think this will happen to everyone though, in all my life I've met people in bad and great situations who have ambition, (not all very big ambitions admittedly) very few who do not. It doesn't seem that common to me and I don't believe it would go away if people didn't have to worry about paying their rent and were instead only worried about saving up for a house.

edited 12th Aug '13 11:06:46 AM by Wildcard

Barkey, all education is brainwashing. Hell, you just advocated sending someone to boot camp in order to wash their brain.

edited 12th Aug '13 11:08:29 AM by imadinosaur

I agree that illnesses exist. My point is that everyone has something. I've personally been diagnosed ADHD and clinically Depressed, and it's been suggested that I may be Manic-Depressive Bipolar, though I've avoided seeing a doctor to find out due to poverty. I'm not denying that they are a thing.

But, like I said, everyone's got something. I've mentioned my friend Willow before, manic-depressive bipolar, paranoid schizophrenic, synesthesic, and a whole host of other issues. She thrives. She's engaged to be married, works very hard to carry her weight, goes out of her way to make new friends, takes care of her sisters and other friends, and all-in-all is probably the strongest person I've ever met.

She's like this because she had to be, because her sisters depended on her to survive. Hardship and survival made her a stronger person despite the illnesses she suffers. So why can't other people do it? Why is Depression bad enough for some people that it cripples their entire life and prevents them from ever doing anything?

She's special because she had to be. That's the point I'm trying to make; that pain and hardship is all relative. Hardship can mean the difference between whatever illness you suffer being just something in the background that you push aside when you have to in order to reach for the stars, or a crippling debilitation that ruins your entire life. The impact of pain is all about what you have to measure it by.

edited 12th Aug '13 11:10:29 AM by TobiasDrake

People thrive in all kinds of situations, success doesn't always come from hardship.

This. And I know, because it sounds like me. If I were put in a sink-or-swim situation, I'd just sink, because I'd assume I was doomed from the start and might as well off myself at the beginning. Not that it would matter so much, but it's an unenviable position, and I wouldn't want it to happen to anyone else.

edited 12th Aug '13 11:16:43 AM by Robotnik

A lot of people say that. "I would sink, I couldn't manage it, lazy people will just choose to be lazy," but you would actually be surprised what you are capable when pushed to the wire like that. Laziness isn't an illness, it's a product of convenience. When that convenience is taken away, people can do incredible things.

edited 12th Aug '13 11:16:57 AM by TobiasDrake

No, there are plenty of lazy people in bad situations too.

Actually, brainwashing is typically defined as a discouragement from falsification. In other words, brainwashing tells you that the the moon is made of rock, not cheese, and you had better accept it. Education tells you that the moon is made of cheese, but you should experiment yourself.

There was once an entire country that believed in a Die or Fly philosophy, too. See, there was this war that had destroyed every country they modeled themselves after, and the entire world started to rebel against an ideal that they'd strove for for nearly a millennium. This country was surrounded by extremely powerful, racist, and downright genocidal neighbors, so they told themselves that since their unique virtues were pretty much backed into a corner, and the very way-of-life for their nation was at stake, it was time to shine.

So they invaded China, Korea and Mongolia and committed war rape along the way. But that wasn't enough, because without control of the Pacific Ocean, their efforts at protecting their magnificent way of life were being thwarted by one of those bigoted bullies I mentioned before. So they attacked that nation to get them to chill out.

For anyone who doesn't get it, that country was Imperial Japan.

My point with all this being that Die or Fly doesn't always encourage people to be paragons of virtue and strength. It can also make people into barbaric monsters worse than the destitute layabouts we were trying to prevent.

edited 12th Aug '13 12:06:27 PM by KingZeal

Quite. Otherwise teaching someone to read and write would be brainwashing them — I hope that imadinosaur wasn't thinking that!

I suspect that what's really going on is that we're misinterpreting how the human mind typically acts. We tend to adapt to our circumstances and perceive pleasure as relative. A rich person might feel barely any pleasure at eating a ridiculously fancy banquet, but even someone who has experienced a comfortable middle-class life, with very little pain (maybe less than the rich person has experienced), would find much greater pleasure in the same thing. The reason being simply that the rich people are used to it, and for them it becomes mundane.

If you want to go climb mountains or scuba dive in underwater caves or build a giant mech in your backyard or fly into space, those are things you'd be free to pursue in a post-scarcity society. The threat of poverty is not a requirement for adventure, excitement, originality, or a sense of direction in life.

On the other hand, if you want to force millions of people to live in shitty conditions and/or toil for hours every day at jobs they don't like...well, that neither is nor should be up to you. Each person should have the freedom to decide those things for themselves. That's what post-scarcity does. 'Some people might not choose to use post-scarcity the way I would', by itself, is an absurdly bad excuse for trying to avoid that state of society altogether.

The part that would help that dude going to boot isn't any of the "brainwashing" it's that after maybe having some legitimate shit to cry about, all those little things won't matter as much. What he needs is someone who has power over his life to not put up with his crybaby bullshit, whatever can put him in that scenario, that's what he needs.

"This bothers you? Tough shit. Put up with it." That's what whiners like him need.

I doubt that would help maybe break bad habits maybe. I doubt even through training he has the resolve to be in the military, and resolve like that isn't something that is built quickly. I doubt it would give him direction or ambition, which he is lacking. Though I can certainly see the peace corp helping him find that better, (not sure about that judging by the idea that giving his blood makes him feel good).

@ Meklar: I don't see any of that happening in Star Trek, just the same old problems — which will remain in a post-scarcity society. What if what a person wants is to annihilate another race or country?

And yet, even military boot camp (at least here in the states) will provide for your basic needs and essentials. You don't need to stitch your own clothes from scratch, or forage your own meals, or anything else unless it's part of a calculated exercise. And even then, if you should fail, there is typically aide on hand to make sure you don't die or suffer irrevocable damage.

I have no problem at all with enforcing discipline upon people. But, that's not the same as leaving people to rot if they're colossal fuck-ups. If anything, the military model proves that this is possible.

edited 12th Aug '13 1:56:32 PM by KingZeal

So it exists only in the context of an LSD trip. Got it.

wat

I mean we're not quite as far gone yet as Kashmir or anything, but the last several years have been a series of increasingly worse droughts just shy of the Dust Bowl because we keep throwing shit into the atmosphere that melts all our glaciers. Just because we haven't started rationing yet doesn't mean we're not looking at huge and immediate problems.

edited 12th Aug '13 2:34:22 PM by Pykrete

^^

It's more about expanding the boundaries via context than it is setting any new types of behavior.

When I got out of boot, regular everyday issues upset me a lot less, because I'd been innoculated to stress to a degree by how stressful boot camp was. Then after deploying a few times, I was innoculated to stress even further. Essentially, not a whole lot of things legitimately bother me these days when it comes to every-day problems. After that type of stress, little things don't bother you anywhere near as much.

Yeah, this is exactly what I mean. I suppose I might be more optimistic about a post-scarcity society if everyone had to be put through rigorous disciplinary training like BCT.