Isaac Asimov’s The Naked Sun was first published in 1957. In the second novel of his famous Robot series, Asimov crafts a rich and entertaining detective story set in a dystopian future in which humanity has colonized many worlds. Over the millennia this has resulted in planets whose cultures evolved in strange directions since breaking free of Earthly rule.
This story is set on the mysterious world of Solaria, a bizarre, isolationist, and technologically-driven society which bears a disturbing resemblance to our own.
One vision of the future
In Asimov’s vision of the future, humanoid robots play large role in daily life on all worlds, taking care of many of the mundane tasks humans once performed. Detective Elijah Baley of Earth has been sent on a secret diplomatic mission to investigate the murder of a robotics expert on Solaria. Initially Baley is confused by his mission—Solaria is rumored to be the most advanced of all human worlds, why couldn’t they solve a murder on their own? The reasons become clear once he arrives and gains a sense of Solarian culture.
Baley finds himself on a strange world completely dependent on robotic labor. Nearly every job in society is held by robots. In fact, Baley is amazed to discover that there are only 20,000 humans living on the entire planet. The Solarian people, through advances in medicine and genetics, have extended their lifespan to hundreds of years. Each citizen lives on a vast estate spanning hundreds of miles, with gardens, lakes and fertile fields tilled by an all-robotic workforce of roughly 10,000 to every 1 human.
The Solarians appear to have built a utopia. They want for nothing. They do not have to work. They have armies of robot servants who anticipate their every whim and up till now, their society has had no crime at all.
But for everything there is a price. The Solarian people placed far too much value on the high technologies and thought too little of its’ damaging affects of human socialization.
As the centuries passed and more forms of labor were assigned to robots, Solarians became increasingly distant from one another, delegating all tasks that might require human interaction. Eventually, Solarians became completely isolated from one another. By the time of Baley’s arrival, this societal evolution had reached an extreme. The Solarian people do not ever physically come into one another’s presence, but rather communicate through real-time holographic projection, which they refer to as “viewing” (as opposed to “seeing”- speaking to one another in person).
The idea of physical contact horrifies the Solarians. They avoid it all costs, the only exception being to engage in sex on scheduled occasions with their spouse, assigned to them by the government to ensure the population does not die out. So great is their phobia of germs and real-life social contact that even sex is regarded as a revolting but necessary civic duty, and one that is carried out with great reluctance.
The reason for Baley’s assignment suddenly becomes clear: if the Solarians live in complete isolation from one another, how could one of them have committed the murder?
The mystery that unfolds is gripping and thoroughly entertaining, but let us focus on relevant aspects of Solarian culture for the moment.
United States of Solaria
When reading the above description you probably noticed at least one or two aspects of Solarian culture comparable to our own. While America certainly has no aversion to sex, there are more similarities than differences.
Physical And Social Isolation
Take a look at the how the infrastructure of America is designed. In most parts of the world, living spaces, areas of commerce and public gathering areas are either incorporated or within walking distance of one another. The American suburb, by contrast, was designed to give each family dwelling within their own miniature estate—a separate house with its own yard, garden and driveway for a car.
Essentially an invention of the G.I. Bill for veterans of World War II, the suburbs exploded in the the late 1940s and have become the dominant method of residential development for the better part of 70 years. The majority of Americans today now live in suburbs.
Coupled with the midcentury “white flight” phenomenon, the dream of a “3 bedroom with a white picket fence” was sold as the ideal lifestyle, and the American people bought it hook, line, and sinker.
What has been the result of this? A complete breakdown of what people once took for granted: Community. Many Americans live in big McMansions with larger and larger yards, reminiscent of the grand estates of Solaria. To those living in the burbs, ask yourself: how many of your neighbors do you actually know? Probably those on either side of you, maybe the guy across the street. But it’s quite common for people to live within a hundred yards of each other for years, even decades, never knowing one another’s name.
Since the suburbs are designed in such a way that more often that not makes walking from point A to point B impractical, people are forced to own cars and to go about their day without passing one another on the street. While some suburban neighborhoods have parks, in general the infrastructure is simply not conducive to encouraging human contact.
By the time the average American arrives home from work (which again, he probably had a long commute from) he is likely to be dead tired and just wants to collapse on the couch and watch Netflix. Get up, drive to work, drive home, consume entertainment, go to sleep. Rinse, repeat. The atomization of human interaction brought on by the rise of the suburbs has destroyed the sense of community the once bonded neighborhoods and towns together.
Decline In Social Skills
Many people have noticed a precipitous decline in the last decade of basic social skills among people. This is particularly evident in the younger members of the Millennial generation, who have never experienced life as an adult in a world without smartphones and social media.
What has this done to in-person socializing? People are unable to sit through lunch with a friend, a date, or just engage a one another in friendly banter without constantly checking their phone for status updates and “likes.”
In the book, Detective Baley questions a murder suspect via hologram who is dismissive and arrogant towards him. When Baley confronts the man in person, this suspect, a powerful and respected scientist on Solaria, is frighted into an infantile state, cowering in the corner and sucking his thumb.
An enormous percentage of young Americans seem to be afflicted with a mild form of autism, going about their days in a sort of sleepwalk, physically in the real world but psychologically in a digital one. Observe a typical 18-25 year-old American woman in a Starbucks or riding or the subway. Her eyes are fixed upon her screen, hunched over her phone in almost defensive curl.
In the event that a man asks her for directions, to share a table or, heaven forbid, spit some game at her, there’s a fairly good chance she’ll react with a mix of fright and socially-inept confusion.
After all, that “rando” just walked up to her in person and inserted himself into her reality. He had the audacity to enter the Solarian estate of her life without passing her smartphone screening test first.
That’s, like, “weird.” She prefers to “view” her men via Tinder first.
Spiritual Emptiness And Fetishization Of Technology
The Solarians’ society and worldview is entirely fueled by their own neuroticism and worship of technology. There is no religion or philosophy on their world. They have no real belief system to speak of at all, except in their own scientific greatness. At no point in the course of their evolution did they ask themselves, “yes, we’ve gained much with the choices we made, but what have we lost?”
Solaria stands as a worst-case scenario of what America could become. American culture has in so many ways rejected the belief systems and traditions of its past, focusing only on the rationalist, reductionist view of the world and blindly embraces every new scientific or technological advance without first considering the long-term implications.
The decline of religion in the United States has left a spiritual void which has been filled by the decidedly poor substitutes of cultural Marxism, materialism and obsession with technology.
Streaming porn on demand has contributed to the development of a generation of sexless neckbeards who “view” a hundred different females before getting out of bed in the morning, but cower at the thought of speaking to one in real life. Teenagers and preteens now have 4G smartphones and have never known a world where they couldn’t access such content at will. The deleterious affects of this will become apparent in the coming years.
Various Silicon Valley titans involved in the so-called “transhumanist” movement are attempting to extend human life by curing the “disease” of aging. Rather than making peace with death and accepting it as part of the natural order of things, they seek to extend their lifespans by centuries, if not cheating death all together.
To be sure, if such a thing is even possible it is many years away, but it is just one more similarity between our nation and a fictional world that would have seemed ludicrous only a few years ago.
Conclusion
In Foundation and Earth, set many thousands of years after the Robot series, Asimov revisits the isolated world of Solaria, forgotten by the rest of humanity as the colonization of space continued. By the time the protagonists arrive, the evolution of Solarian culture has reached new levels of decadence.
The population has dropped to barely a thousand, who by this point can no longer be considered human. The Solarian people have genetically modified themselves into a new, hermaphroditic race that gives birth on their own. Their estates now span thousands of miles, their brains completely integrated with their technology and all need for physical meeting has been eliminated.
While such a scenario is still a far cry from present life in the US, one can’t help but reflect on how a mere decade ago it would have seemed unthinkable that a former Olympian would lop his jewels off and receive awards and a reality TV show for doing so, but here we are.
Only by consciously rejecting the messages, belief systems and “values” fed to us by media and power elites, as well as embracing the principles of Neo-Masculinity, can free-thinking men reclaim this country and steer it not backward, but forward in a new and healthier direction.
Until such time, we have no choice but to conclude there are far more similarities than differences between our culture and the technocratic dystopia envisioned by Asimov.
Read More: Was America Better Off Before Smart Phones, Text Messaging, And Social Media?
Okay, I have to ask the obvious question: Did Asimov tip us off in this novel what his People planned to do to the goys in the U.S?
Asimov was on our side. Get your head out of the arse of collectivists.
Kratom can solve these issues.
If Kratom Man got into a superbeing fight with Queen Elsa, who would win?
If Kratom Man got into a fight with Queen Elsa, Kratom Man would be getting laid.
And that would give Elsa’s song “Let It Go” a whole new meaning. . . .
something, something, kratom.
Good article. However, I consider the transformation of the suburbs one of the most promising possible revolutions. Suburbs could be the missing link in enlightened human autonomy, not isolation.
As a suburban revolutionary, I have spent the last 12 years landscaping for productive independence. Prepper-lite philosophy.
I have found that with rain-barrels, fruit trees, taking composting leaves by road, grape vines, secret chicken coop, strategic crops such as malabar vine spinach etc, the suburbs could be the key to a society that balances partial self-sufficiency with integration into society.
You can never be totally independent in the suburbs, buy the small plot of land offers the potential to produce most of your own fruit, veggies, eggs, without moving to the country where there are no jobs.
I would say that with the dog sized cow or dwarf cow which produces several gallons of milk a day, it should be possible to acheive good independance by adding dairy.
(Missing from this, I will say you probably still need to buy your carbs, dried beans and meat outside home. BUt carbs are cheap, as are rice/dried bean combos for protein and can be stored cheaply for years).
But without the chemlawns, for those who prefer gardens, every lawn can be a football field or soccer field for the kids if people get over their chemlawn obsessions.
I actually have a more positive take on suburban life, even if I am too isolated from my neighbors.
It has taken me years of fighting the HOA to work on my projects. However, I have been lucky because of several trends.
Neighborhood is less upscale and yuppied. With more working class folk relpacing wannabe yuppies, growing trendiness of gardens, my own improved stealth gardening techniques, and my improved talent for politics compared to my ill-tempered and ill-advised fights with HOA busy-bodies when I was younger.
But I am optimistic that with suburban homesteading, that the suburbs can be ground zero for launching a bottom-up neo-peasant workers revolution of self-sufficiency with enlightened cooperation. Local and self-production and barter are two important keys for resisting the NWO.
My own ideal would be to see a suburban communities where people barter figs for squash, baby-sitting for lawn more repair etc.
With Zimmerman style armed community watch teams by citizens on the look-out for thugs, thieves and undesirables.
We are far from that ideal. But I do go to my neighbor’s business for dog-walking when I am on vacation, and I do see many more gardens than 10 years ago.
The revolution is advancing.
Now that’s making lemonade out of lemons!
It requires patience and commitment, but is is a good hobby. I will say also that it is instinctual for agriculture to hold families together. My wife respects me much more seeing me do productive work outside, and it has brought out her female cooking and homemaking instincts to have fresh ingredients that cannot be purchased at a store.
Find a girl intersted in agriculture. Or a foodie. She will be into the gardening stuff and will have some admiration for a dude who is not just another obese,GMO cheetoes eating, Mountain Dew drinking shithead sitting on the sofa.
If you are not rich, some sort of art or originality is the next best thing.
That’s a very sound insight. Ultimately, a shared non-sexual interest with your wife, like gardening and cooking, or an interest and knowledge about farming and horticulture can be the basis of a long and content relationship.
I love driving up to the home of my Romanian friends. They fled communism in the 80’s or 90’s. They have done well here, but have all their Romainian peasant skills which they have integrated into their American lifestyle.
Always chuckle when I see the husband, Stephane, out digging with a shovel barefoot.
I need good boots for my feet and always try to have good gear. But they get great results with the most basic of the basics.
You know there’s very few things that actually “ground” you in every sense of the word like working the earth. It’s a strange but deeply rewarding instinct to see what you’ve worked or tended for so long yield results that cannot be measured in any economic or utilitarian sense. One day the civilized world shall collapse and blessed be the man who knows how to work the land- and the bankers and technicians shall call upon your door seeking advice,
more like at your door, armed, looking to take your shit
We should start decentralizing the food production now. Gardening is the best way. I produce about 75 percent of my fruit/veggies on typical suburban 1/4 plot. Figs, blueberries, grapes, tomatoes, asparagus, greens, Asian persimmons etc. Eggs from chickens. As land is more scarce, the agricultural revolution will be about vertical gardening also. (I actually think the trellis approach like I saw a lot of Asian farmers doing in the Japanese countryside are more beautiful anyway-my wife is Japanese.)
Stock much in 2 big garage stock freezers. People really at the top of their game do as my grandparents did. Homecan their produce. I will never forget the brightly colored beets and other veggies I saw on the shelves of my grandparents underground pantry in the 60’s and 70’s.
I am okay at canning acidic stuff such as tomatoes. But have never attempted the high pressure canning of things like okra.
But my grandfather grew almost everything they ate. My grandmother canned it all. They were school teachers, but spent their summer producing food for winter. (And my grandfather also had a dairy farm, so self-sufficiency was a way of life).
I do not think they suffered like most during the great depression because they were integrated in society as teachers but had their own production capacities. I do remember my grandmother telling me their checks were often 2 or 3 months late as the state could not pay them on time.
When prices were low, they lived ok from their salary and did not have to mortgaage the farm to purchase things. But they could make their own clothes, food etc. with their skills. Their son was a tinkerer who maintained all the machines and car engines.
My Grandma made beautiful clothes from the cloth feedsacks in the 30’s and 40’s. But still took the time to be a great painter and piano player.
The consumer society, if it collapses, will leave people in a bad way because they have lost their skills.
My goal is to recover what has been lost. But I am nowhere near the level of my granddfather and grandmother. But compared to most today, my wife and I are ahead of the game.
Even as a college student, I kept a picture of my grandfather on the wall of my dormitory room.
They had a hard lifestyle, but it was very rich.
We would all be better served by being more self sufficient. I grow maybe 10% of my food in my garden. It is refreshing to know on a 1/4 acre plot that others can grow the majority of their food (not sure I have the proper sun for that though). It has helped foster a hobby of gardening and cooking. And what is more rewarding than eating a delicious meal that you grew and prepared yourself? Women appreciate a good cook–indeed my father was one and all my happily married men are the cooks in their households. I love a woman who can cook well, but.. don’t really need one!
Gotta say you have some balls, or some serious patience, to try doing this in a community with an HOA. I will never, ever, ever, ever live under the rules of an HOA.
The fruit trees were easy. They are acceptable. Planted a row buy the road. Interspersed with some tiny holly bushes (huge now) blacking biew of garden. And another row back to block the row of front yard garden. Planted tiny evergreens (big now) along side of yard to blaock view of backyhard and back more a 6 foot fence.
Each step must be planned with patience. Plan how to block the view several years before each new patch.
Fortunately, our HOA is more laid back than most. And I have had some serious conflict in the bast until I learned stealih gardening.
My lot is barely visible from the road. And even close to the road where I cannot plant, say corn, I plant things like nopales. Edible cactii that are seen as an ornamental and not an edible.
Also, I am lucky to have an isolated lot with woods on the left side and back behind my home. And a neighborhood with more rednecks who violate covenants more and more to the point they mean less and less.
My neighborhood was built in the early 90’s, and HOA’s, I believe, tend to weaken as the years go by.
Agreed…I’m doing the same type of stuff here in Thailand.
Wow, year round growing season ?
There is something to walking barefoot in the grass:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/11/04/why-does-walking-barefoot-on-the-earth-make-you-feel-better.aspx
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/11/04/why-does-walking-barefoot-on-the-earth-make-you-feel-better.aspx
Indeed
Sorry, but no.
Was married for a looong time to a realtively grounded, religious girl who I’m now divorced from. I tried to cultivate such interests for many reasons, but mainly for self-sufficiency and heath reasons.
The problem comes down to WORK. Women generally don’t want to work. They think gardening is like that radish they planted in kindergarten – simply, easy and foolproof. Real gardening is work. Same for cooking. Real good food takes real strong technique and can’t be done in 30 minutes of less, ala TV cooking show time. Good cooking is work! And it creates a lot of cleanup which is also work. So, while I did both, my ex could only have an interest in working to produce good crops and good food, my ex could only muster up enough interest to surf the web endlessly reading about and looking at these areas of interest, but could not invest the effort to actually engage in them.
Real good food can be made in less than 30 minutes and with little clean-up if you know what you’re doing.
Great story. Makes you realize the amount of skills that have been lost across the generations.
You’re on top of the food game. I’m impressed. The percentage of food dependent people who have never procured a single meal for themselves is high, I can’t say how high, but I know a lot of folks wouldn’t know what to do other than pillage and steal as soon as their tenth meal is missed.
New Orleans was a glimpse of this. I’ve always said New Orleans is a strategic location and portmouth and should never have been overloaded with dependents. The vast water sink was too large. It should be rebuilt with intersecting levies where the city looks like an eggo waffle. If one square is breached, the whole basin isn’t incapacitated. Notice with an actual ‘waffle’ when you pour syrup on it, you have to literally pick it up and tilt it copletely sideways and rotate it just to flood all the squares. The ‘waffle’ concept for N.O. makes it flood proof.
Skilled engineers and the like should live there, not unskilled welfare moms and democratic party sucklings. If all major roads in N.O. were raised 15 feet to ride on levy piles which could be done by corps of engineers, then it would be possible to sustain development below sea level. All major intersecting roads throughout the city would serve a dual purpose as levies with the paved roadways riding along their crest or ridge. I’ll also add that the soil there is intense with minerals. Monster cuces will grow there.
God forbid someone actually see a *gasp* garden with food in it! How far we have come from the Victory Gardens of the 1940s.
I think some fruit bearing plants are far more attractive than a green lawn that has to be physically cut every 2 weeks.
So… you’re a Marxist?
This article has really brought the Marxists out of the woodwork.
Agriculturalism, in some views, is quite possibly the worst thing that ever happened to humanity and the planet.
Many of those skills are obsolete. Are you aware of the new skills that have been created across the generations?
I would say the opposite. This is all about freeing the individual’s food consumption and sources from centralized control.
Unpatented and homegrown. If anything, it would be like the peasants under communism who were allowed to tend their own small patches to make up for the fact that the centralized economy was failing and individual initiative was required.
I sure like not going to the grocery store very often.
Fair enough.
What do you mean by centralized control?
That aside, whenever possible I go direct to the farmer. Cheaper and better. The Internet makes this easy not of course.
Personally, I have no interest in growing my own food. Rather, I would prefer to pay you or someone else to produce it for me. Division of labour.
They’re not obsolete. There’s a huge difference between skills and knowledge. Anyone can press a button on a computer screen that does xyz…however knowing why x leads to y and onto z is where knowledge comes into play…it’s knowing how to do and fix things when the computer program doesn’t work. If thing went belly up in this world, I suspect that the majority of button pressing technocrats wouldn’t have a clue how to survive in the “real” world.
More nonsense. Marxism was all about eradicating the self sufficient farming communities. This is what happened under the collectivism of Stalin in 1930s Russia where the Kulaks were exterminated by the Marxist regime. How you equate self-sufficiency with Marxism is beyond comprehensive.
If you think so, come try and do my job.
It was part of the “Back to the Land” Marxism of the 19th century. Stalinism was very different for specific reasons. There is no such thing as self-sufficiency. You always need other people.
You sound like a 19th Century Marxist talking about fleeing from modern technology and going back to an agrarian subsistence. We tried that for millennia and it was back-breaking work leaving people at risk of famine and disease. Agrarianism was a nightmare that the human race only recently woke up from.
You don’t know what you’re talking about. Marxism was all about the urban working classes…you’re confusing 20th “back to the land Maoism” with 19th century Marxism.
I’m not talking about modern technology…so don’t misconstrue what I said. I’m discussing how certain types of social media technologies when used constantly can become an unhealthy substitute for real, visceral human relations. Do you really think that the resources of the planet should be squandered on unnecessary entertainment technologies. The time will come when we’ll have to make hard choices as a species because we will have depleted so much of the resources of the planet on stupid, useless things. Oddly, food and agricultural production will become critical concerns in developed countries in our future.
There was a “back to the land” movement in Europe as well as the similar Agrarian movement. No it was not pure Marxism but they picked up fruit from the same tree.
Personally, I do not know a single person who substitutes social media for real human interaction. This is probably for the reason you suggested. It is no substitute.
Who gets to decide what is necessary and what is not? You? IMO it is grain farming that is the primary culprit when it comes to depleting the planet. Certainly not social media which uses a tiny fraction of any resource.
The point is that it’s not you or I who’ll make these decisions, the fact remains that they’ll nevertheless have to be made in the not too distant future. In a world who’s population is outstripping it’s finite natural resources, especially in terms of natural metals used in technology, we’ll have to either start conserving at this stage in our evolution ,between, essential and non-essential production or we’ll have to begin over the next 50 years, harvesting metals from other near planets, like the Moon and Mars.
Actually it’s more the grain that’s used for feeding cows that are used in beef production that’s very inefficient. Globally, the most useless crop is coffee which has zero nutritional value and extracts nearly every mineral out of the soil in one season.
Cows eat grass not grain. Likewise humans eat meat, vegetables and fruit, not grain. There is no purpose in growing grain other than to ensure that grain can move around the planet sucking up resources. It has been the cause of wars and famine for 6000 years as civilizations expand to find more arable land once the grain crop has destroyed the local topsoil.
Coffee being useless is merely your opinion, not a fact. Personally, I find it very useful.
It can only be you or I that make these decisions. Conservation is the way to kill people. It is a recent concept. A more forward thinking concept would be to find new resources, as humanity continually has in the past.
No problem with that. Paying a small farmer is voting with dollars to decentralize wealth. I personally believe the shit could hit the fan soon. With either supply disruptions or skyrocketing of food prices.
Which is why I recommend people store at least a few weeks of food. Hardcore folks like Mormons and survivalists store 1-2 years. They could be right, but that seems extreme. Expensive and impossible to rotate. Unless you want to eat canned goods and MRE’s all the time. Very unhealthy. And wasteful if all your food expires.
My own survivalist lite approach is producing over half of my veggies, getting a few chickens, storing a couple of months of carbs (couscous, spaghetti, rice).
And you might want to get a firearm. I am not into AK’s, AR-15’s etc. But a good squirrel rifle and a cheap revolver could at least keep you in the game in a SHTF scenario.
(I think that many hardcore ssurvivalists endanger themselves financially by spending too much on guns. Why in the heck would a dude on minimum wage buy a 1000 dollar gun when he cannot even afford his trailer park rent.. Not smart. Moderation in all things. You can get a cheap single shot shotgun used for 75 bucks and a decent pistol for less than 200.
That is enough, as if you plan on fighting the government, you will lose and are an idiot. On the other hand, if you live in a place like Detroit where they cannnot afford to pay the police, a small .38 special will give you some capacity of self defense.)
I like the .38 special. I would have that as back-up.
Yeah I think storing years of food is a mistake. It pins you to an area and a large band (say like government) will just come in and take it, along with your guns, thank you very much (like in New Orleans).
I once saw a show of preppers and the guys wife was laughing at him. She lived in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge years and survived by living in a cave eating bugs. She told him “they will just take your shit!”
Really you need a plan for when you actually do run out of food. What then? How will you get more? These questions that are being ignored when one dumps another case of beans in the basement.
I like the 38 special revolver. No, it cannot “clear a room” as my son likes to point out. But revolvers are simple. I am not counting on fighting to the last man in a SHTF scenario. I have not had the training. However, if there are lots of break-ins because of a bad economy, I do not want to be a sitting duck.
I may not be the toughest dude around. But trying to take my shit or take me out does entail at least some risk.
Or if things get bad, law enforcement cannot respond, I could see me joining with concerned neighbors to be part of an armed community watch.
Fortunately, law enforcement is still effective in my area. But every community in the great US of A needs vigilant citizens volunteers ready and willing to be deputized as a back-up if city or county government cannot meet pay-roll and officers of the law are laid off from work.
Every adult male should own a firearm and be ready to serve as a deputized enforcement officer to support the sheriff and or/keep order if need be.
That is how a citizen is difficult from a subject.
Not only that, this is what a man is. Ready to fight and die for his family. Men today that tell me “guns scare me” make me despair. What should scare you is bad men coming to take your shit, whether that’s your possessions, your woman or your children. Therefore a man assumes the responsibility for protecting his family in spite of his fears.
A man doesn’t call a boy to come and defend him. That is pathetic.
The nice thing about a revolver is that it is reliable. Which is why I would also prefer to have one as a back-up/
Clearly you don’t understand food storage rotation methods. Quite simple. The harder part is building up the stores.
With all this women rights and transgender rights they’re trying to make lemons out of lemonade.
This sounds highly marketable and timely. You should monetize your ideal.
It’s good to see someone doing this. I’m sure vast numbers of people have the mind to pursue similar objectives in planning and affecting their surroundings but many folks are beaten by the clock or their rat race obligations kill that extra time and resources required to do so much as even scratch and plant a few seeds. Every prep task put off adds up to no prep and the zombie HOA silver hairs and streisand beaks with pearls vote you down and shout you down at your doorstep. HOA biddies are brainless zombies who act as unwitting enforcers for the consumerism/dependence enterprises and rackets. They make it unwritten neighborhood ‘because the bitch says so’ law that you pad the pocket of chem lawn and have the newest crap in your yard and if you have a full sized cow, they have code enforcers try and cite you for dung runoff. Sorry for being so negative. Half the battle in the west is throwing off the women and he-bitches in power who want to keep all non elites dependent on the government tit and the walmart shit.
I love the idea of buying a house for exactly those reasons. But I’d never buy one in an HOA or with a strata. Fuck. That. Noise. How did these things come to exist? It’s all the drawbacks of living in a condo with none of the advantages.
I’m thinking small lake front house/cabin. Fish, fruit trees, garden plot and dogs and maybe even horses and cows. And plenty of fresh water right there… and no HOA.
Suburbs are fine. People need to find something important to worry about.
That sounds really interesting. Do you have a website or something?
Right now, most “transhumanism” amounts to wishful thinking and silly theater, like Zoltan Istvan’s “Immortality Bus.” But transhumanists have basically the right idea over the long run. A lot of what we call “transhumanism” now, in 2015, people in a century or two will probably call “health care.”
Nah, the government wants most of us dead before we’re old enough to collect social security. Only the richest will have access to such anti-aging technology
As the military taught me, it’s cheaper to recruit new privates and lts that you can train up, as opposed to keeping NCOs and Captains who actually know and are skilled at what they’re doing.
SV pukes wouldn’t share that technology, they’d simply barricade themselves in ‘estates’ and use us for labor until the robots came to replace us all.
I think men should reserve transhumanism for ourselves and keep women away from the upgrades. Women have shown that they can’t handle the relatively minor enhancement of contraception in a socially responsible way, so what havoc could they wreak if you give them rejuvenation, radical life extension, intelligence increases, morphological freedom, superior recuperative powers, technological telepathy and so forth?
I joke about this, but I think the Disney company did us a favor by making the film Frozen. Transhumanism sounds like all fun and games now, but look at what happens when an enhanced woman goes into the mountains to create an ice castle with her superpowers and inadvertently plunges the world into endless winter. Think of Frozen as a warning against female transhumanism.
I’m not honestly sure I want to be ‘transhuman’. There’s a lot to be said for the feeling you get as your 8 month old son naps on your chest as you doze in a hammock. No amount of electronics or “virtual” will ever match that.
While I certainly understand and respect your opinion, you have to realize that that feeling you get is just a mix of chemicals hitting your brain. Those feelings are justified and good, but they are no more “real” that those generated by drugs, sex, skydiving or anything else that causes a neurotransmitter release.
Now, imagine if you will, as a transhuman, you’ll have control over the “cocktail” that’s swirling around in your head. If you desire, you can simultaneously feel the pleasure of an orgasm coupled with the burst of love at first seeing your child, and, for good measure, the pride of watching your wife walk down the aisle.
I don’t want to be harsh, but those who say “nothing will ever match that” have not experimented with the things (drugs) that are, in fact, designed to “match that”. The feeling that you can get today, even with our crude understanding of brain chemistry, is beyond the realm of human comprehension.
And, no, I no longer use any mind altering substances (except for some good wine). But as a young man, I was very into that scene and, in many ways, it showed me how far the human mind can really go. Nothing I’ve ever done since then (including things that most would consider “massive life accomplishments”) has ever approached the feeling that can be generated with a simple chemical.
Sad, but true I’m afraid.
That sounds like utopian Communism
“I don’t want to be harsh, but those who say “nothing will ever match that” have not experimented with the things (drugs) that are, in fact, designed to “match that”.”
Wrong. A lot of *have* experimented; the reason most of us left is precisely because it can’t “match that.” The other night I listened to a live performance of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony broadcast on KUSC. You can see the recording here:
http://www.kusc.org/kusclive/index.aspx
This is a far more emotionally intense and satisfying experience than any drug. If your “massive life accomplishments” aren’t nearly as good as the drugs, then why not leave it all behind and just go back?
Alternatively, if we’re transhuman others can alter the cocktail in your brain and make you obey them.
While I understand what you’re saying, and also have had some very intense/amazing experiences sober, the simple fact of the matter is that drugs can take you “beyond” what your body can do naturally. Most people would agree that orgasm is the most intense pleasure anyone can feel. The pleasure of orgasm pales in comparison to the pleasure that can be induced by a huge injection of cocaine or heroin. The “spiritual awakening” that people get in church is nothing like the awakening that you can get with a few pieces of paper soaked in LSD.
Drugs stimulate directly, the brain only responds to stimuli. Yes, over time (which is why I don’t go back to drugs), the brain wins out. You can’t keep that wonderful feeling forced by drugs for long and the side effects are horrific. But, IMHO, the fact remains that nothing in natural human experience can come close to that which can be found at the end of a pipe/needle/pill/paper. It’s taking what your brain does normally and throwing gasoline on it. You can get a huge fire without any gasoline. But, without question, if you throw gasoline on a fire, it’s going to get MUCH bigger MUCH faster than it would normally.
Ray Kurtzweil, head futurist at google, gobbles upwards of 140 pills a day; he wants to be around long enough to upload his whatever into the whatchamacallit
Hopefull an intern will trip over the plug powering his “whatchamacallit”.
Transhumanism will be making corporations God over you. If you achieve immortality in such a vessel, you will in reality be living in a corporate constructed hell. Especially if they have functions to prevent “suicide”.
I prefer to let my spirit return to God.
Moreover, any improvement you achieve will not be the result of your won efforts of self-improvement.
Yes, there will likely be some transgenic bull-dykes that will probably enjoy kicking the ass of a “real man” to demonstrate the superiority of the “freak” over the “natural man”.
But nature and spirit will prevail. At the end of every age, there is an era of degeneration where moral laws are turned upside down. And that which is evil becomes good and vice versa.
I recommend not transgenic upgrades but patience. Be content with who you are and what you have and weather the storm.
Exactly… Remember Vanilla Sky? Tech Support!!!!
No dude it’s the safety nets created by the Government that did that
I often imagine when I see people taking selfies of themselves with their smart-phones that it represents a real symbolical image of their unconscious sense of not being in the visceral world, like when you walk by college students doing this in a crowded street. The harder they force their smiles into the lens the more distorted and disjointed they seem to be from reality and the world.
God forbid they ask a stranger to take their group photo. They get a selfie stick.
Their world might disappear too if they interacted with a real native!
Here’s a question. If all jobs are covered by robots and the population grows exponentially how will those people pay for anything if money is necessary and comes from jobs? When 5 billion people are starving, uneducated, and homeless, but there’s an abundance of everything will you finally get that our system is unsustainable? Is that what you want for future generations? Don’t you think this is dumb? I do.
The bottleneck in meeting demand is finite production, not lack of pieces of paper with president’s heads on them.
Exactly. We are running out of water on the west coast, and people still don’t get this.
Amazing.
Wait ypu believe that Environmental propaganda?
Well, your population more than doubled since 1980…and its mostly a desert…yeah, what could possiblty go wrong lol
Agreed on finite production and resources, but money is entropy/debt now. It dictates who gets what resources and there’s no ceiling on printing more money then resources with a fiat currency. As long as there are loans new money gets printed every day. Go look at the fed reports. Question is should all the resources go to people who know what to do with them or the Walmart twins, Rothschild dynasty, Rockefellers, koch brothers, Goldman and sax, bill gates, Phil knight, Saudi princes, etc etc as opposed to the other 8.5 billion people who live on this planet and are potentially much more intelligent? These people will replace workers with robots and they’ve proven it with their underpaid Chinese workers.
This system is what divides men. This system is what turns women into sex objects and men into success objects. The system that rewards the biggest sociopaths society has ever let run rampant.
Robotics is only capable of replacing repetitive and operational based employment. These robots can do the same repetitive task over and over, but they are a very long way from being ‘intelligent’. We already see this in todays labor markets, intelligence is the more valuable skill and that is reflected in the salary differences between say a mechanical engineer and a general mechanic for example.
The concept of “sustainability” is also by in large nothing more than a fear campaign used by the left to manipulate you. There is an abundance of most natural resources and scarcity is somewhat of a good motivator to improve technology or develop alternatives. We are not just going to suddenly run out of something with no alternative or solution.
As for what happens to these uneducated people, well evolution would dictate that they either adapt to their new environment by becoming more educated or they are bred out within a couple of generations.
On the contrary robotics is evolving and ai is already here. A generation or two from now will see lots of intelligent robots. In fact I dare say they are potentially so efficient it is almost a fact that we will use them as tools for governing in 500+ years. Anytime you create a life that life will learn and evolve.
Sustainability is real. Peak oil etc not so much. There is nothing wrong with equality. In fact if you think there is you have some deep psychological issues. In nature animals fight, but they also work together all the time without money. Who’s fault is it people are uneducated? Ours, because to put it bluntly most of us are a bunch of pre-programmed narcissistic assholes. Unfortunately you don’t understand ego. Your ego or Id in froyd terms blocks out concepts of sustainability or scary things because they get in the way of what you need to do to eat and live. In other words denial is not a river in Egypt and you do not need to be in touch with your subconscious or be aware to survive yet. So when you do need to be aware and you are unprepared how will you be any different from any other group of over inflated egos that are uneducated and don’t care. It’s the equivalent of taking mercury after it was found harmful because it used to be medicine and you still believe the old propaganda. Everything is propaganda and it can be used like a gun for good or bad.
“Robotics is only capable of replacing repetitive and operational based employment. These robots can do the same repetitive task over and over, but they are a very long way from being ‘intelligent’.”
This is true (for now, and the foreseeable future), however, if robots replaced most “repetitive and operational based employment”, a huge swath of the world would find themselves permanently unemployed. A huge swath of the world works at jobs that can be easily automated by machines and/or robots. Those working in knowledge work, for the time being, seem to be safe. However, don’t overlook the fact that 1/2 this country has an IQ <100. Most of those people work in jobs that are in some way directly threatened by robotics.
We will need a new model over the next 30-50 years, there’s no doubt of that in my mind. Finding meaningful work with a low IQ is difficult today. It will be impossible in the future. We cannot structure our society only around those with high IQs, so we must come up with a solution for those not gifted with a superior intellect to go about living in our society. I suspect this will be a short lived (in evolutionary time) situation. Robotics will progress and more intellect will be required at about the same time that genetic engineering becomes a more real technology. Selection for IQ will be one of the most significant applications of this, and should keep us from having a massive population of people who cannot function in the work world because of missing intellect.
Feeding a stray dog simply gives it the chance to breed additional stray dogs. The leftist who bases their thoughts on emotions would say that we should prop these unfortunate people up. The reality is that we simply need to stop them from having children..
For the last few thousand years these low IQ individuals were typically the fodder for war against other civilisations. The industrial revolution came along and these people became the fodder for our factories. In a post industrial world these people are redundant, they have no purpose, no value and civilization will simply go on without them..
The economics behind this are also sound. Given the sheer amount of money spent on wealth redistribution and services for these low IQ individuals, we would be freeing up an awful lot of economic drag by simply writing them off as the losses they are. Robots will still consume as they need to be designed, they need to be built, maintained, powered, managed, replaced and recycled. I expect to see a shift in industries, but all said and done this will just result in a much high standard of living for you and I.
Amazingly accurate and haunting.
Solaria sort of reminds of the future in Demolition Man
I find that movie to be so amusing, because at this point California seems to be desperately attempting to create the society there, instead of taking it as a parody. And it still has the best breakdown of the difference in society ever uttered:
“You got that right. You see, according to Cocteau’s plan… I’m the enemy. Because I like to think, I like to read. I’m into freedom of speech, the freedom of choice. I’m the kind of guy who likes to sit in a greasy spoon and wonder – “Gee, should I have the T-bone steak or the jumbo rack of BBQ ribs with the side order of gravy fries?” I want high cholesterol. I wanna eat bacon and butter and BUCKETS of cheese, okay? I wanna smoke a Cuban cigar the size of Cincinnati in the non-smoking section. I wanna run through the streets naked with green Jell-O all over my body reading Playboy magazine. Why? Because I suddenly might feel the need to, okay, pal? I’ve SEEN the future. Do you know what it is? It’s a 47-year-old virgin sitting around in his beige pajamas, drinking a banana-broccoli shake, singing “I’m an Oscar Meyer Wiener.” You live up top, you live Cocteau’s way: what he wants, when he wants, how he wants. Your other choice: come down here… and maybe starve to death.”
The only thing that’s changed is that the call them “smoothies” now, instead of milkshakes.
They got the part about the 47 year old virgin right.
http://dailycaller.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/pajamaBoy-e13874871215341.jpg
Jeremy Osborne, you are fined five credits for repeated violations of the verbal morality statute.
Take a look at the how the infrastructure of America is designed. In most parts of the world, living spaces, areas of commerce and public gathering areas are either incorporated or within walking distance of one another.
This is sadly true. Today I saw a young cute girl I’ve never seen in my neighborhood before.. turns out she lives just a few doors down. Modern American communities are anti-social. It is orders of magnitude harder to even come into contact with strangers in most smaller cities and suburbs, as compared to European and even Latin American planned cities, with their plazas and boulevards and malecons. There are opportunities that you can seek out, there are public parks, outdoor events, dog parks, meetups, etc. but the city itself is planned for you to work, not to socialize.
America, I suppose is still such a young country and you’ve so much space. Europe is different, especially England and France where the main streets and the market squares, local cricket green are important places where you’ll meet people in your town everyday. The American “Mall culture” came in about 10 years ago, building enormous soulless places that sucked a lot of the life out of the local high streets in towns. However, the people have started to react against this development and want their high street back. The high street is a really key social element in European towns, because you’ll find out all the local gossip from all the local characters there anytime you stroll down…and gossip and chat are a key part of the social fabric in any society.
There is a double edged sword with the American consumerism. While buildings that are 50 years old to you are brand new, we build the majority of our structures to last only 50 years or so. So the strip malls last less than a life time, and all this can be rebuilt with quality and good design. The bad part is that Americans are very weak in the city planning and design, cuz you know, that’s socialism, which is the only thing we hate more than terists (no, really). Some urban planning and design is needed to create public living spaces, efficient and green routes of travel, etc. China, as polluted as they may be, is doing a great job with city planning. Heck, they are taking it to the extreme, building subways and parks that aren’t even used because they were too aggressive with the expansion.
“China, as polluted as they may be, is doing a great job with city planning. ”
http://gizmodo.com/welcome-to-the-worlds-largest-ghost-city-ordos-china-1541512511
I always thought that american cities were designed reasonably well, but, like most modern cities they’re designed for (a) Commerce and (b) Retail (c) For single people who generally live in a one bed-room purpose built apartment blocks and walk to JP Morgan or Citibank where they work.
It’s sad that the centers of our large cities have become places were families are excluded from living, whether by accident or design.
Crazy! I wonder if the reluctance to move there is tied to the Asian group mentality vs individualism? Because a city like that, new, nice, well planned, and not crowded, actually appeals to me!
High street lost to soulless mall culture which, in turn, will lose to even more soulless “Amazon culture”. The trend is towards more isolation, not less.
Individuals bear the brunt of judgment though. We have walking paths, parks, lakes to fish in. We do. So do our neighbors. There is no uber-will that forces isolation. You want to help people be social, then be social to them. It doesn’t take much, even the youngest of us were raised in households with other human beings who were social.
Yes , agreed, and I have moved to a part of town where I can walk to everything I need, while still living in a detached home with a fair bit of privacy, enough to go pee in the back yard, etc. and a friendly, walkable neighborhood where I can interact with neighbors and strangers. It can definitely be done, but in America one must seek it out, you’re not going to just end up walking past the plaza every day where all the people hang out like you do in many older esp. European cities.
Agreed. People are far more social and much less glib in Latin America. Makes for a much more human culture. Sure, there are smart phones, but there is still far less social atomization than in Anglo America.
It´s really sad thinking about all the “friends” I´ve lost contact with just because I´m not on fagbook. Even phone calls and emails seem to be too time consuming and bothersome for some people.
And then when you meet them 10 years later by coincidence they´ll give you dumb shit like: “I was thinking about calling you BUT…..I couldn´t find you on facebook.” or “I didn´t know what to say”.
Widespread clinical narcissism is what makes social media such a big hit these days.
Facebook has been, in my opinion, the most destructive of the new technologies introduced. It has vastly decreased actual socialization, facilitated the spread of gossip and bitching, and made relationships, be they friend or romantic, all the more artificial. For men in particular, I think Facebook has been destructive, as it its overuse has demasculated a great many men. If Facebook were to disappear overnight, I think the country would be a much better place. And this is coming from a guy who does have a Facebook profile (but very seldom uses it, mostly to stay in touch with far-away cousins).
I believe once they find out they don´t have any real friends all the heavy Facebook users will be very sorry and depressed sooner or later. Real friends you can only find far, far away from “social” media.
My only 2 friends (the reliable ones) are both anti social media.
I recall a bit of news about a year ago that facebook went down in California for a few hours. People were calling the police about it.
Everyone on Facebook (Fakebook) has a wonderful life and everyone on LinkedIN is a consummate professional.
nice comment….i will use that again more than once…
When I hear somebody snark about suburbs, it’s a clear indication to me that they don’t live in one.
My children, still teens, grew up playing ball in each others yards. Their high school football games have hordes of kids sitting shoulder to shoulder cheering They have after school sports and band. There is so much social activity here that the urban areas look like isolation boxes. Rural areas join suburban most of the time now. I suspect that the author is from a big city and has never actually lived outside a metropolis.
Give me a quite suburb over living on top of my neighbors any day of the week!
Our football game yesterday was a modge podge of social activity and fun. I’d video it but I’m a bit worried that the a) white nationalist would invade (we’re all blonde/red haired and blue/green eyed) and b) people would know who I am. You couldn’t put a popsicle stick in between kids, the cheering, the band playing, our side cheering in unison, the other side cheering, the camaraderie, the after game meets at popular restaurants en masse . This entire “isolation” thing has to be a product of the Blue areas.
No videos- posts like these conjure up a more modern version of the town in “Its a Wonderful Life”.
Are you a banker with a heart of gold?
From what I’ve noticed there are two kinds of suburbs. The ones like you mention, and then the ones where people get a little bit of money and then want to feel isolated from the rest of the world. In our city we have a few burbs filled with the nouveou riche middle-managers with the big fish in a little pond mind set. They’re all born again Christians, go to the same churches, belong to the same clubs, and by God wouldn’t be caught speaking to a black person or someone making less than $100,000 a year. Those poor and coloured people are only for laying off en masse and locking the car doors against.
On the other hand, we have the burbs with the sociable famlies who’d give you the shirt off their back. They just happen to live there because it’s the way things worked out.
My wife tapes the band shows (daughter is in the band), and we get quite a lot of clips of the general audience. Seems so normal to me, but then I hear outsiders on forums and on the radio comment about it here and realize that it’s not the norm at all.
Banker? Thems fightin’ words!
I live in the metropolis and I literally crave the smell of wet pine trees…
Suburbs are good if there is a community to be a part of… Otherwise I agree that it sucks.
good for raising families, bad for single young men
No shit. I can’t count the number of people I know that live in swanky condos downtown and don’t know a single neighbor. Not one. They live 30 feet away from each other and don’t know each other’s names!!
The bottom line is that you can form social networks anywhere, but the people make the difference. If the people suck, you aren’t going to spend much time with them whether you live in the burbs, or downtown, or on a farm.
“There is so much social activity here that the urban areas look like isolation boxes. ”
I never feel more alone than in a big city. 1000’s of people every day, not a single one who would bend over to help you up off the street before a car runs you down. The isolation in a big city isn’t physical, it’s mental. Just look at all those who do everything they can in a city to prevent any interaction (on the phone, walking fast, sunglasses on; stay the fuck away from me face).
Big cities are the perfect hideouts for all kinds of disgusting freaks who don´t want to be identified and ridiculed.
Try being a transvestite in a small village. Good luck.
I grew up in the suburbs, and I think it was great.
Yes, it was a little boring because in my area everything closed down early in the night, but you could also drive 30 minutes into the city.
Overall the best description is that it was pleasant….not exciting, but not boring. It was safe and clean.
People hate suburbanites because we are the bourgeoisie. I guess we’re not edgy enough for them.
And most of the haters are homosexuals that like the art-fag lifestyle meaning having dicks in their mouths at all times.
Okay, so good for raising a family perhaps, but God awful for single men
His suburb very closely resembles the one I grew up in. YMMV
“spiritual emptiness and fetishization of technology”…great sentence and true….
I do agree about the fetishization of technology as something that impedes genuine real human interaction. It takes away from the fluid potential that’s inherent in reality, that little act of kindness or intrigue that makes it worth while getting out of bed each morning. Smartphones and all the rest are only ephemeral things that should not be confused with the real thing, however, I fear this line has been badly blurred over the last ten years, especially with under 30s who seem to be almost autistic if they’re not cybernetically connected to the virtual social network at all times.
Yes…talking with someone takes practice. Social interaction takes practice which you do not get when you are texting. You don’t learn how to interpret body language, facial expressions so your term autistic is perfectly apt..
One simple way to avoid creeping downward into this atomized zombie like state is this….
GET RID OF YOUR FUCKING TV’s DOUCHE BAGS!
I unplugged many years ago now whenever I’m at a friends or in public where a TV is on I can’t even bear to watch. I force myself to communicate with others even if they don’t like it.
I’m curious as I don’t live in America. But, if you live in the suburbs in America where is the center of your community. In other words, how are you connected to the people you live with? Are there families that have lived in the locality for generations, what bonds keep the place together.
If you are white you are not allowed to have those things. The center of the American house is their fucking TV. They sit underneath it’s glare like salivating monkeys slogging through countless displays of predictive programming and social engineering.
A truly free thinking man must eject this poison from his household if he has any fucking balls left that is.
Do people not go out to play sport in the evenings in America? Go walking even? Watch the cricket/rugby at the local grounds on the weekends? I suppose we do watch a lot of TV in Europe too, but it’s a different kind of TV, l think?
The closest we get to that are coffee shops where people sit with earbuds in, typing away at their laptops, in little pockets of electronic isolation, but within sight of other people doing the exact same thing. It’s kind of disgusting.
I would imagine it maybe a little different in Europe but still the same traps of modernity are there.
Basically modernity kills the masculine soul. You may have some tighter communities but my experience from indigenous Europeans isthat they have been thoroughly pacified and feminized. One need only notice that several Western European nations have the most feminist laws in the entire world.
America has some specific problems related to the post industrial technocratic age and so does Europe. The bottom line is this….. Modernity while making our lives easier and more comfortable, effectively kills men and their natural drives to excel and conquer.
To my point above, the more people around, the more lengths most people will go to avoid interaction.
What? Different kind of TV? Where in Europe do you live?
The Austrian, German and Swiss TV is exactly the same crap as the American TV. No difference at all. 95% American movies and series with lots of commercials in between.
It depends on where you live. Not all parts of the U.S. are like this.
“In other words, how are you connected to the people you live with?”
You’re not. There is no center of the community. Nobody lives there for more than a few years, usually. There are no lasting bonds.
HA
Seriously though, there is no center of community. People move 12 times in their life, us kids spend all our time in school (to this day, i have no place to socially interact with my peers), men spend all their time at work, and women find a group of friends and never deal with anyone else.
Still the big difference between America and Europe is the fact that Americans live to work. That’s not the case in Europe. We work less, have more annual leave, retire in our mid 50s, have free healthcare, and state pensions on top of your private pension. We have about 12 bank holidays a year plus three church holidays. America seems to all about work, work, work, at least in Europe the left wing policies have given some real practical benefits to citizens…
There is no community center here in American suburbs. Its all vast swaths of crappy, cookie cutter homes hastily built with the cheapest possible materials using the cheapest possible labor money can buy. Neighbors aren’t interested in getting involved with each other or having a community in the true sense of the word. This is primarily because people stopped looking at houses as a long term, multi generational asset that you passed on to your children. Instead people see them as an ATM machine that they can get cash out of with home equity loans or try to flip for a profit. As a result, the majority of your neighbors in a typical suburban setting will only stay there long enough to realize any financial gains before bailing out for greener pastures. Or until a bank forecloses on them for buying a house for much more than they can afford.
Whatever the case may be, the days of a true “community” where everyone in a neighborhood knew each other and looked out for each other have long since gone. In today’s society, where the expectation is one of instant gratification with no responsibility or inclination to hard work to earn it, there isn’t time for outdated concepts like getting to know your neighbors.
I also think the reason you don’t have true communities in American is that your country was founded on an uncompromising egalitarian premise- that everyone makes his own life by using his own work and talent.
In Europe, there is still very much a class system in most countries and belonging to a certain class has nothing to do with how much money you have, although generally the middle (not the upper) classes are the most well off. However, class is very much defined in Europe (rural parts) by your family history, its connections in the region, through marriage, through sporting connections, rugby and hunting for example, and of course through religion and schooling.Community in rural parts of Europe is all about these traditional connections and this is what makes it a real community in many ways. In many ways I’m not a huge fan of the class system in the traditional manner, but, it does nevertheless safeguard many of the defining values in a given culture.
People are connected to each other by voluntary associations. They gather at churches, school functions, local sports leagues, Scouts, and so on.
So there is still hope of real communities in America. It’s local groups and the values they represent which are the last bastion against the march of the disposable consumerist society where values are equated with lifestyle choices.
This is spot on. There is absolutely nothing on TV worth watching today. I got rid of cable TV a long time ago. Anything I do watch is limited to the occasional movie that I either download or stream. TV has become a sewer line of intelectually bankrupt garbage interspersed with useless advertising for worthless crap nobody needs.
internet is the problem
you can’t live without it but it can eat up so much time
Yes. Aside from TV people who want to unplug need to get the fuck off social media too
there must be a way to use the internet for what its good for and only use it for what its good for without it eating up all your time…
“The things you own end up owning you.” – Tyler Durden, Fight Club
Man wasn’t wrong.
I was trying to have a chat with one of the IT girls at work, the other day. Just lighthearted smalltalk, nothing serious. The girl, literally, did not know how to hold a conversation. She would talk out of turn, had inappropriate fluctuations in volume, would interrupt with raucous outbursts of laughter. I kept thinking she is a bit off her rocker, except, EVERYONE is like this, now — especially women.
I’m not that old — 35 — but I remember just a short time ago, when people had to interact to get through life. Now it’s all electronic (as I type this to you, dear reader, online).
Now it’s all electronic…that’s ironic! But, I find that virtual conversations sometimes slowly work their insights in your real life more than real conversations work their way into your virtual conversations.
“The Solarians appear to have built a utopia. They want for nothing. They do not have to work. They have armies of robot servants who anticipate their every whim”
Every year scientists and engineers are making advances in miniaturize sensors but there’s one aspect of this phenomenon to which a lot of enlighten people have given a good bit of thought. Is having sex with an ultra-realistic robot hooker cheating?
For my own part, yes and no. Do I look at that old robot on ‘Lost In Space’ waving its tentacular arms around and get all hot and bothered? No. Not hardly. Now when I look at the image of Jeri Ryan playing the infamous borg, Seven-of-Nine on Star Trek Voyager? You better believe it! Just don’t tell my wife!
more – http://goodstuffsworld.blogspot.com/2012/09/is-having-sex-with-robot-cheating.html
Seven of Nine apparently still had her female sex organs.
I’ve never understood Trek’s view of sex, BTW. On the one hand Roddenberry created his franchise as liberal humanist propaganda, which presumably would include advocacy of sexual freedom. But on the other hand it never showed the characters getting much action. Oh, you might see Captain Kirk putting on his boots in some hot alien chick’s bedroom. But then Spock apparently got an opportunity for sex only once every seven years – the opportunity, mind you; it might not work out. I can see from that why nerds have always identified with the Spock character.
But has Trek ever had a regular, sexually promiscuous female character, sort of a Starfleet version of Lenina Crowne from Brave New World? I don’t recall any.
And yet Star Wars has more than enough ladies in the movies and shows and comics that get some action. 😉
I haven’t looked into that. I never found Carrie Fisher that attractive, and she looks like hell now.
Trek never had any really attractive actresses until Jeri Ryan came onto the Voyager series, then Jolene Blalock in Enterprise. Oh, and I like Alice Eve in the second movie reboot.
Grace Lee Whitney as Yeoman Rand really turned me off. She looks like white trash, like the sort of woman in the U.S. Army who would have gotten a job on the night shift as a prison guard in Iraq, alongside Lynndie England.
Jeri Ryan and Jolene Baylock has aged pretty well for the most part. However some other Trek actresses have not. Most recently Jennifer Lien, who played Kes on the first 3 seasons of Voyager. She was recently arrested for flashing minors. Age hasn’t been kind to her.
Quite a few of the “babes of the week” on the original series were flat out hotties. But, unfortunately, none of the regular actresses were up to that standard. I suppose it would have thrown off the entire dynamic of the show if they had been.
I never heard of her, had to look her up.
She is only 40 years old! Looks like 50
I was talking about the shows and the expanded universe. Enough Jedi pussy to go around. Good ones, evil ones, human ones, alien ones, there’s one for everyone.
A sad commentary on human existence and especially Japanese society.
The nerds who develop these robots must be very, very lonely, and at the very least, mentally ill. The picture above is what happens when mental illness is not treated early on in a child’s life.
This sounds like the movie, “Demolition Man”. Stallone plays an Alpha Male cop who gets defrosted to capture “Simon Phoenix” (Wesley Snipes) another Alpha Male who kicks the shit out of everyone in the future, because all people in the future are total wimps and PC douche bags. Meat, alcohol, profanity and physical sex are all crimes that are punished by the state.
It wouldn’t surprise me to see some of the ideas in The Naked Sun appear in popular SF here and there. It is, after all, one of Asimov’s finest works. I consider it one of my formative sci fi novels, I first read it when I was 9 or 10 years old. Asimov wrote a metric assload of books, but this was one of his best efforts, on a par with the original Foundation stories, or The Gods Themselves. And it was published in *1957*, which just blows my mind.
So… do you know how to use the three sea shells?
Japan has already headed in this direction. Reportedly a quarter of unmarried Japanese men in their 30’s have had no sexual experience, despite Japan’s liberalism about sex.
I’ve lived in the city and the suburbs and can definitely say I’ve had more of a feeling of community in the suburbs than in any city. Cities can be very lonely and inhospitable places despite being constantly surrounded by people all the time. In cities people are usually very distrustful and impolite to one another (for good reason) and are too busy going about their lives to really make a connection with anyone.
How many times have you really struck up a conversation with that individual you’re sitting next to on the bus or the train? It’s not the same as a small provincial village or town where you get to know everyone by name.
The suburbs are definitely more family oriented than the city. When you’re young and single, the city is the place to be but the suburbs are a far more desirable place to raise children.
There is going to be modernization than some kind of fall like the fall of other great nations and than a revival of a basic civilization.
Not linear it’s a cycle. Build and destruction rinse and repeat. Shame I won’t be around for the revival.
Fantastic article!
However, I do question the premise. See, I’m one of the technocrats, and spend 95% of most days alone, working in front of an array of monitors and with a cell phone typically glued to my ear. I very, very rarely have to interact with other people physically. And yet, every day, I strive for not more interaction, but less. When I have a choice between “Home Depot or Amazon”, I nearly always choose Amazon. I cook at home rather than go out even though I could certainly afford to eat every meal at a restaurant if I wanted to. I spend a lot of time making it so I don’t have to deal with other people in my day to day life, and.. In general, I’m trilled about it.
See, the other part of this is that the days I’m not alone. I’m really not alone. Airports, taxis, massive cities, meetings.. And, you know what all that social interaction shows me? That the more people socially interact, the more unhappy they become. The guy sitting next to me on the plane would be thrilled if I decided not to fly that day and the seat was open. The guy behind me in the 30 minute taxi line wouldn’t bat an eye if I suddenly disappeared. Now, of course, the people I’m paying are happy to see me, but, other than that, the less I see of other people, and them of me, the happier that we both seem to be.
All of this plays into a theory I have about overcrowding and overpopulation. I think the reason that people are breeding less is because more and more of them live in crowded areas. Our brains are telling us “Don’t breed, there’s not enough food”. And, in many ways, our brains are right (there’s plenty of food, but not enough jobs to earn money to purchase it).
The final thing I’ll add is my experience traveling to places that have very few people. Places that are vast, open, typically physically beautiful.. Think Montana, Scotland, Banff, etc.. The people in those areas are so different than those who live in cities/urban areas. If my car broke down on a street around where I live today, I could die waiting for someone to stop and help me. When I was in Montana and pulled off to the side of the road to take pictures, very often locals would stop and ask “You all right”, followed by “What are you looking at”. Often a conversation would follow, and those conversation were often some of the most interesting and engaging that I’d had in a very long time.
I short, I think that people do enjoy interaction with others, UP TO a certain level. And that level has long ago been passed in most major metro areas. Now we’re like rats fighting for space (which, in fact we are, instead of actually battling though, we go to work; whoever makes the most money gets the most space). There are just so many examples of how much money people will pay to get AWAY from other people that I honestly believe that I’m not the only one who feels the way that I do.
The one reason to be around a lot of people is to try to fuck someone. And, yes, for that goal, a city has no equal. 1000’s of opportunities every day, and endless variety. But for men who are married, or those who aren’t interested in upping the notch count, what appeal does being around 1000’s of other people really hold?
An excellent comment-could-be-an-article-itself. As my wife often asks rhetorically, “How many rats can you fit in a box before they start eating one another?
I live in a rural area and I can go days without interacting with others. But in the city, nearly all of my daily interactions were instrumental, ie , persued for some specific gain or goal. Where I live now my interactions tend to be serendipidous. I meet someone I know or I don’t know them. Wr talk, something surprising or interesting may or may not take place. Cool!
People can be a challenge. To many and you end up feeling like Linus:
“I love mankind. It’s people I can’t stand!”
Or to quote Jack Handy:
Mankind is a mystery but perhaps we can understand it if we break down the word. Mankind is composed of two words, MANK and IND. What do these two words mean? It’s a mystery, just like mankind.
BS article! It’s the left that hate the suburbs. They are only “isolating” if you want them to be. Urban condo dwellers are usually faggots who don’t want to mow the lawn. I love having my own “mini-estate”. So fuck off!
Ghost in the Shell is one I use to showcase the evolution of our society as well.
In good news though, the suburbs are declining. Young people don’t want to live there anymore. James Howard Kunstler loves to go off on the suburbs having no future, but that’s a bit more controversial.
That guy is the worst- headed for the hills 35 years too soon…he’ll be proven right eventually though
The Naked Sun apparently influenced A. Bertram Chandler’s novel, To Prime the Pump.
Chandler’s Horatio Hornblower-like spaceman, John Grimes, arrives at a planet owned by several billionaires with vast estates who depend on robots to do all the work. The billionaires have discovered that they can’t have children on this planet, and the ones who leave it die mysteriously. Apparently they need a human sacrifice in this new environment to enable the process of reproducing human life – priming the pump, in other words. The billionaires try to sacrifice Grimes for that purpose, but he manages to escape, and another character’s violent death suffices to allow for the human cycle of life to resume. Grimes then bangs the hot German billionaire chick who had hosted him on the planet and moves on. Later Grimes receives a letter(!) from her with a photograph of the child he had conceived with her. She doesn’t demand anything of him, of course, because she has money and Grimes doesn’t.
Chandler published this novel around 1970, as I recall, yet it sounds surprisingly current with its depiction of the financially independent single woman with the bastard kid fathered by a throwaway man.
I live in a rural area and one of the best things about my work is sometimes I go all day without seeing or interacting with anyone. Robots won’t replace my job in my lifetime, but it possible they can replace me at some point.
Perhaps I’m just antisocial but, going all day without having to fool with anyone else is what keeps me sane sometimes.
I’m in exactly the same situation (except when I travel). I can go days with nothing but e-mail. And it’s heavenly.
I really do think that men, in general, don’t much care for being around a bunch of other people. Women are much more socially wired (which, of course, is why they have a fucking committee for EVERYTHING). Men are more loners.
Fuck, I hate having people around so much it’s made me a bit of renaissance man. I have all kinds of skills now just because I don’t want people around, so I learn to do it myself. Construction, plumbing, electrical, etc. All skills I’ve learned not so save money, but just so I don’t have to have other people around me that I don’t want there.
I’m the same I don’t like hiring someone to work on my stuff. Even though I’m married and have grown children I very much enjoy time by myself,been like that as long as I can remember. When I was a child I thought nothing of hitting the woods and playing by myself all day. As I got older I wouldn’t think twice of going hunting/fishing alone. The last few years I have taken up hog hunting at night and go almost all the time alone,sometimes my son goes with me and about once a year my wife puts in to go. When she goes I keep her out until 2 or 3 am and it’s usually cold/hot so once a year is usually enough. There is nothing like going hunting alone at night.
sprinkled with a bit of Huxley, yes the article is on target…unless you live in small town America. Small town America requires human interaction due to its nature….
“To those living in the burbs, ask yourself: how many of your neighbors do you actually know?”
why exactly on earth do you have to know your “neighbors” – suburbs or not? many people who live in apartments don’t know their neighbors either. neighbor is just someone who happened to buy or rent a dwelling near you. there’s nothing special about someone just because he’s a “neighbor”.
Yup. I moved to rural northern Nevada from a beach town in southern California to get the fuck away from neighbors. Best move I ever made. The only thing I sometimes miss is the weather and the…uh…weather.
Jew Asimov obviously knew which way our world would be heading is no surprise. A Jew world order of goy slaves ruled over by Solarians.
Some will argue that technology will rid us of our biologically and/or culturally evolved sexual dimorphism. They are wrong. Two parents, with distinct traits, will always raise a more dynamic and socially adjusted baby. Two parents with distinct traits, is more likely to cover for each other weaknesses, and emphasize advantages and disadvantages of different social strategies. Plus, when society fails us, a hunter gatherer lifestyle may be our only life-line.
Speaking of the Solarians’ aversion to sex:
Advent of the virgin births: Women who have never been in a relationship paying £5,000 to get pregnant
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3250413/Advent-virgin-births-Women-never-relationship-paying-5-000-pregnant.html#ixzz3mzAs0EQp
Your description of suburban life does not in anyway reflect my experience. Additionally, do you think there is more “community” in Manhattan high rises?
Splendid article! I would like to add a brief point of my own. This is something you seem to have implied, but I would like to set it forth explicitly. It has been my observation that the pernicious effect of our increased isolation is, in fact, twofold. Many do, as you have said, personally want very little to do with their fellow men AS A WHOLE, but this precipitates a second problem. Since so many want to limit their real social interactions as much as is reasonably possible, they do, in fact, become less desirable targets for interaction. In other words, even a person of a genuinely gregarious bent might find himself wishing to limit his interactions with all people, but AS INDIVIDUALS. We live in worlds we have personally crafted, in accord with our own tastes and interests, and thus, little by little, lose the common ground that makes our interactions worthwhile. This seems the true danger, because, in the fullness of time, it could become all but irreversible.
This article is thinly veiled Ludditism and/or Communism. It brings to mind the exhortations of Marxists that we should go “back to the land” or this case, back to a time before modern technology.
The argument is invalid and specious. For a start, “Zombieism” is a poor analogy for cellphone use. Zombies are mindless braineaters. Someone using a smartphone is “doing something”. That might be checking email, texting friends, buying groceries, or a multitude of things. The person who is appalled by someone using a smartphone is the person with the problem. To complain that a girl is checking their smartphone is to reveal your own lack of self-esteem. In other words, you are upset that she isn’t giving her attention to you! You don’t deserve her attention and you need to be OK with that.
Calling people smartphone Zombies is the same as calling your office co-workers Zombies. They are doing the same thing: staring into screens, tapping on a keyboard. But obviously to suggest they are Zombiefying is ridiculous. As it is with smartphone use.
Smartphones are amazing devices which are moving humanity forward. Betraying your fear of them in such away reveals your irrational primitive emotions (in this case, anxiety). Leave those emotions behind or get left behind. Your choice.
I thought it was an excellent article. You are correct, smartphones are amazing. You literally have access to all of the world’s knowledge in your pocket. On the other hand, the author is correct, instead of using this technology to become better people, many people use this technology to post pictures of cats, view pornography and (if lucky) engage in meaningless sexual encounters.
What is important (in my mind) is that cellphone use, like television before it, and like sex, drugs and alcohol, can make a man’s life better if he can control these things. If a man can’t control cellphone use (or is addicted to sex, drugs, alcohol, gambling) then that man is in trouble and cannot experience the fullness of life. In other words, does the technology control you? Or do you control the technology?
That’s a timeless question. It has ever been thus. The authors seems to take issue with people having leisure time, as if we should do nothing but work continuously. There is a type of human being out there that can’t stand the fact that someone, somewhere might be having some fun.
Funny you mention cats. I was just using my work computer to look at funny cat pictures. Then I got back to work after having had a brief break (notwithstanding this comment :-))
The question is this: why is it a problem if people want to use smartphones to post cat pictures or to otherwise enjoy themselves? Who am I to judge what a teenage girl does with her phone? And why should I give a shit?
Individually, we don’t care if a teenage girl posts pictures of her cat. But the decline in social skills, (and similar declines in religion and moral values) in our younger (millennial) generation is a concern for the older generation (generation x) because my children are growing up in this world. The preferred way of teaching children has always been parents and grandparents teaching their kids. The “preferred method” is also inefficient and assumes the parents are good people. Now, kids have more and more teachers and less and less parental influence. We don’t know how this will affect our future, our kids future and future generations. The author is only posing one possible outcome.
I don’t know. How do you objectively measure a “decline in social skills”? I deal with kids all the time and they seem fine with respect to social skills, no different than when I was that age. If there is a problem with moral values, I don’t think that has anything to do with technology.
The author is following a line pursued by others on this site, essentially blaming technology for the ills befalling society. This is invalid. Technology will not create a dystopian society, men will.
There have been worse regimes in history and our problems don’t hold a candle to them. Yet they didn’t have smartphones. Clearly the problem lies elsewhere.
Your’re missing the entire point, just like people who constantly use smartphones- you end up living in a pseudo-reality that’s a pale refection of the real world as it’s not connected to the flesh and blood world where things of consequence happen. People who live and die by their smartphones have regressed back into a permanent “safe zone”. It’s a negation of both reality and one’s masculinity…
Zombie is a metaphor not an exact description of the behavior, maybe the constant use of your smartphone has made you so literal minded you can’t see the “DA Wood from the DA 3sss” Zombie might be unfair. I think moronic behavior might be a better description.
Sorry is there an argument here or just some petty insults? You write like a Marxist. Rather than respect the definitive meaning of words you have to change them to suit your argument, and then follow them with some ridicule to create an implied Ad Hominem argument.
Its a poor metaphor. In fact it isn’t even a metaphor. Its an obvious expression of dissatisfaction that someone is paying attention to something or someone else besides you. Thus it is a display of your own insecurities. Its a bit like when women complain that their man would rather play computer games than speak to her.
You are the one who started using labels, like some irritate SJW in a discussion shouting sexist or racist. Insults are sometimes warranted in such cases, it annoys me when people use labels to try and close down discussions. The left has being doing this for decades.
Insecurity? Are you joking!! I’m free from action/reaction smartphone zoobieifaction…if anything it’s actually amusing to observe the march of the automatons. From distraction…To distraction…By distraction.
“You started it!” lol.
I’m just telling you how you come across to me. You have a lot in common with Marxists. It is what it is. You certainly haven’t denied it.
Perhaps, there’s some gas left in the old comrade yet! The sticks are for the hicks and don’t think you’ll hear them thankfully talking about comrade Marx much. The wide sparse space of the country has a way of calming the mind from the endless chatter and pseudo activity you find in large cities.
Nevertheless to each their own!
I certainly agree that the countryside is beautiful and calming. I’ll leave farming it to you and then perhaps buy your excess produce. 🙂
I have no beef with smartphones, per se, but idealizing them as some kind of wonder device is a bit over the top. All technology carries positive and negative aspects, depending on how it’s used. While it’s great you can find the closest restaurant at your fingertips in a new city, there’s no denying the hordes of Millenials who are becoming increasingly socially inept when they shut off the iZombie because iZombie is the only world that they exist in, in their reality.
I travel a lot around the world, but, I don’t have (despite pressure) or use a mobile/cell/smart phone ever. The reason is counter-intuitive in that I actually really enjoy getting lost in places I visit, especially in the first few days. I love trying to figure out the public transport systems and navigating around the place by using my memory (landmarks etc) and by having to interact face-to-face with the local people. It means that you have to brush up on the language and the culture of the places you’re visiting beforehand. On many occasions, I’ve discovered interesting and strange attractions by essentially going “walk about” and in addition you get to appreciate, mostly, the help and friendliness you get from the locals when you do this.
There is an adrenaline buzz in being totally unconnected from “helpful” electronic devices in a new city, it’s hard to explain, it’s like that intense sense of freedom and wildness that you have on the cusp of manhood in your early 20s again.
My Dad thinks smartphones are an amazing wonder device. He is in his eighties so I guess its all perspective.
Watch movies from the 1980s. It is a bit jarring that they don’t have smartphones when now they are so ubiquitous. Consider what you can do now, with more computing power in your pocket than they had in an entire room back then. That seems quite wonderful to me.
I think some of us are confusing cause and effect. Smartphones do not cause people to be socially inept. Rather, socially inept people focus on their SPs. And in the past, that would have been the newspaper, a magazine, a book etc. But I do not believe people are becoming more socially inept. I think that because we observe people focused on their SPs it is a lightening rod for our attention. The SP is causing the girl not to look at me! No, she just has no interest in talking to you and even without the SP, she still wouldn’t.
In my opinion, SPs are quite possibly one of the greatest inventions ever. I put it well beyond the printing press. Why? Because of the productivity, the ability to communicate, produce and publish is right there in your pocket. Will everyone take advantage of this? No, but all most people did after the printing press was created was read pulp fiction. Most people just want to mind their own business and enjoy themselves. We need to be OK with that.
As a motorcycle rider I can tell you for a fact that people are becoming more unaware. In 1995 you’d rarely find cars swerving in lanes except for the drunk drivers or the occasional oblivious idiot. 2015 it is omnipresent, and the reason is almost always some idiot broad staring into her phone.
Few people are being productive on their phones, most are engaged in some Facebook update or game. That’s fine at lunch or at home, but on the road or sidewalk it is absolutely inappropriate no matter how you slice it.
I don’t mind enjoying oneself, but I do not candy coat the downsides of a technology. Most “reading pulp fiction” today via cell phones is causing a very real, very perceptible drop in social skills, awareness of the outside world and lack of attention to important tasks, such as driving.
I guess I’m just not perceiving any of that stuff. I always thought drivers in Virginia were terrible, even way back then. But obviously texting and driving is pretty stupid. But not paying attention while driving is a separate issue. Its not unique to smartphones.
How do you know people are not being productive on their phones? And even if they’re not, why do you give a shit? Must we all be productive all the time? Can’t I have some leisure time? Isn’t that what we work for?
I don’t give a shit if they’re not being productive. I do give a shit when they’re “Like” ing a post on Facebook and nearly broadside me. This is not a binary equation, I don’t hate smart phones, but I’m not going to sugar coat them as all honey and light, or the “best thing since the printing press” when they are clearly causing serious issues in real life.
OK but you are not describing a problem with smartphones you are describing a problem with people. You are demonstrating the “gun control” fallacy – i.e. guns are dangerous so therefore we must “control” access to firearms. It is people that are the danger – the answer to ensure proper consequence and responsibilities for how we use our tools.
Btw, I understand your sensitivity here. I have driven a motorcycle too. That said, I had a guy nearly kill me, sans smartphone, after he had just looked right at me before pulling out.
I’ve had a boss expect me to answer my phone while driving and solve customers’ problems (I was in IT support) and I was totally unable (and unwilling) to do this and it really pissed him off. I even lost my job partly because of such things.
I think it’s not only millenials looking at FB updates but also those super efficient always busy workaholics who use their phones while driving. I think all phone use while driving should be severely punished of course.
Just one further point. To call people zombies because they are looking at a SP is a terrible analogy. Zombies are mindless brain-eaters. A person looking at his SP is “doing something”. What he is doing may not satisfy your particular sense of value but it satisfies his. That’s all that matters.
Perhaps “he” (actually, most of the time a she) should pay attention to the road instead of swerving across lanes and running, flagrantly, red lights all the time. That “doing something that doesn’t satisfy my particular sense” is rather off putting, in a very life critical way.
Yeah, these assholes on the road, eating Big Macs, drinking coffee and fiddling with the stereo… that shit should be illegal!
You’re too invested in being “right” to hear me. I’m on the road daily, and it has gotten increasingly worse and worse. This is NOT an uncommon topic when bikers get together, some men have actually sold their bikes on the reason that it’s getting far too dangerous to risk any longer.
I see it everywhere. I won’t even pull out when the light turns green without a good five count, because so many are running lights now, their heads down and “updating their status” (you can watch them, they are oblivious). Mock it as you will, but I’m relating first hand experience here.
I’m not mocking I’m pointing out that people have a infinite number of things to distract them. Sometimes just day dreams. The point is, if people are getting worse at driving that is their own failing, not the smartphone. If I can put my smartphone away when I’m driving, so can everyone else.
But they aren’t. These things act in a very real way like drug addictions (http://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-nomophobia-2014-7 ), complete with withdrawal symptoms (especially if you’re a Millenial and know no other way of life). People are *not* putting them down and traffic accidents are skyrocketing.
This is not the same as stuffing your face with a big mac, which does not require you to take your eyes off the road, it literally has to take your focus off of the entire outside world (except to talk on the cell). Traffic accidents have soared so much around these parts that Ohio passed a law against texting/social networking and driving, yet despite that our traffic accident rates are soaring (up around 15% this year, which was up from the previous year, etc).
You are older, this has not been a part of your life since birth, the same is not true with Millenials. Every single day, every single day no fail, I pass car after car with some dizzy Millenial broad behind the wheel texting/social media-ing and drifting all over the place, oblivious. I wasn’t kidding on the 5 count at stop lights either, lost of bikers are doing it now, the amount of running fully red lights is shocking, unlike anything I’ve seen in years past. People are dying because of this, and not in some trivial “statistical anomaly” way.
Technology is fine and great but it doesn’t require ignoring the very real problems it sometimes raises just because you happen to like other features of it.
You can quote your experience but this is anecdotal and not fact. My experience is different. I do not see this happening. I have had people, without smartphones, pull out in front of me and nearly kill me.
You are trying to make the object “at fault”. Only people can be at fault. If the person cannot stop looking at a smartphone that is the fault of the person not the smartphone. Your type of thinking leads to prohibition which I don’t have to tell you is dangerous, more dangerous than an inanimate object. Hell, if I used your argument then logically it would make more sense to prohibit cars than smartphones.
I was a truck driver for almost 20 years and this is one of the reasons I decided to quit. I’ve seen too many times that someone looking down at their phone has run a red light and smashed into someone that has a green light, or running a stop sign and almost hitting people crossing the street.
I live in the ‘burbs. I know all my immediate neighbors. The rest come and go in rental houses which are the result of the boom in ‘investment’ real estate. Those properties are garbage and the land owners are elsewhere and only care about the cash flow. The socialists in town want to crowd everyone into the smallest space possible so no one drives a car and they can change all the streets into bike paths. I like not having the energy and activities of a few dozen people interfering with my aura and personal space on a constant basis. Sky is good. Air is good. Grass is good. Populations tend to find ways to self-regulate when overcrowding occurs. I leave it up to you to imagine what forms of self-regulation evolve to cull the human herd down to a more comfortable size. In my view smartphones and social media have facilitated a generation of the most narcissistic, socially inept, and irrational people who have ever existed. No one thinks. Journalism is dead. Opinion is news and reporters are interviewing each other about it. The latest twitter meme is the truth du jour. Technological literacy rules. Social, cultural, political, and economic literacy are dead. Personal expression has devolved to equations of emojis. If I lost my smartphone forever, I’d be fine. My kids melt down completely if they can’t find their phone for an hour. I believe if your smartphone is the centerpiece of your life, then you don’t actually have a life. Without your phone you don’t actually exist. Good luck with that.
Social ineptitude is more pronounced on females. Many ones walk looking at the sidewalk, avoiding eye contact. Not only the pretty ones, but the ugly ones too. Full-time entertainment and validation via smartphones provides her lizard brain with vacuous, frivolous stimulus.
It is much worse when trying to game them: they have very low sex drives, and little need for real men besides the occasional fuck. Beta drones are in the same level as their Instagram account: stimulus source. Even a man she would consider an Alpha needs to hit the spot during the 10 day window of the month she would be horny.
What Huxley teaches is that in the age of advanced technology , spiritual devastation is more likely to come from an enemy with a smiling face than from one whose countenance exudes suspicion and hate . He was really on point to with this dystopia stuff , it would be ausome to see a piece done on him here on Rok
An intellectual is someone who has found something more interesting than sex.
You are correct. I have said that the devil is easy to spot when he has horns on his head and walks on cloven feet with a pitchfork in his hand. In my world, the devil will come in the form of a slightly overweight 19 year old girl who has daddy issues and likes power and money. As you can see, I am not an intellectual.
There’s a great book called “The End of the Suburbs” which talks a lot about the isolationism created by the sprawling burbs. Cities were originally designed to promote community and sharing, hence more front porches, more narrow streets, less open space from your front door to the sidewalk, etc…
I can testify to this. I’ve lived at the same address for almost eight years now. I don’t know the first or last names of my direct neighbors on either side, nor the two houses opposite me across the street.
I’ve dwelled on that for a long time, but it’s too late to correct it without things being… weird. I’m moving soon, and have vowed to change that in the next neighborhood.
It’s different when you have kids. I know everybody on our street who has kids anywhere near the ages of my kids as well as several families who don’t.
Helps that some of my neighbors are cool enough to throw a block party once in a while.
It’s about time someone wrote this. I have lived in NYC for 19 years and just last year moved into inner NJ and boy does this ring true. Although I am away from some undesirables, the isolation and general lifelessness I experience here is similar to what is described in this article. No one knows one another but at least there are bars that one could go to and spend some quality time.
Nice try Agenda 21. People aren’t isolating because of technology but diversity. Having your head smashed in is why nobody goes to the shitty city anymore. The suburbs are the closest thing to paradise you’ll find on this planet. When your neighbors have enough they don’t have to steal from you. Having a nice lot between you and your neighbors lets you do your own thing without bothering others. Living in a apartment complex is like having a room over a bowling alley where the pins shout and cry when they get hit. Take Manhattan, city life stinks.
One of the very best articles on RoK. Brilliant, Mr. Lazzaro, thanks!
Btw as an American in Europe, I consider escape from the suburbs to be the greatest advantage to be gained over here.
I hate cites. I find they bring out worst in people. I also live in the suburbs and when I travel it’s the same thing!
As I see it, biggest problem with american-style suburbs is a complete lack of content. No stores, no market, no school, no park, no basketball court… nothing.There are only houses around you. Everything is at least 10 minutes drive away.
I wonder where you are located? I am on the CA coast and the suburbs do not have stores but, generally, do have everything else you describe. I also happen to know that most, if not all, new developments across the US have ‘communal’ areas – sports courts, parks, fields, pools etc.
Bring on the sex bots from the future dystopia. I’m down with some human alienation. IDGAF.
YES!
“The American suburb, by contrast, was designed to give each family dwelling within their own miniature estate—a separate house with its own yard, garden and driveway for a car.”
And us Europeans envy you for that. You can’t imagine how much I hate how crammed up space is here, especially how car-unfriendly it already was and our eco-terrorist parties want to increasingly reduce car space, make parking a paid service, force us to take public transportation or cycle. Ugh.
You envy it because you don’t have it. In reality the american suburbs are a total shit show. Rows and rows of cheaply built crappy housing owned by people who generally can’t afford them with very little in the ole brain box. Trust me, you aren’t missing anything. If I were to ever leave the city it would be for seaside resort town with a small “seasonal” crowd and then empty the rest of the year. I can understand, but don’t myself appreciate, the total isolation of farm land. But american suburbs are total bullshit. The McDonalds of life.
“The Solarian people placed far too much value on the high technologies and thought too little of its’ damaging affects of human socialization.”
I don’t want to be rude but that should be ‘effects’.
Aldous Huxley in a foreword to a later edition of Brave New World writes that sexual freedom would increase to compensate for the loss of political and economic freedom. So now we have the sexual freedom to engage in sexual encounters with Third World immigrants – gays indulge in that quite a lot, as we saw in the story about Omar Mateen a few weeks back; and nonwhite men let into European countries have run rampant sexually with Europe’s white women.
But we don’t have the political freedom of speech to ask why we have allowed these incompatible strangers to barge into our country in the first place, and to demand that our politicians – in a “democracy” allegedly our servants elected by us and paid by our tax money to look out for our interests – to take measures to protect us from these undesirables.
In other words Huxley decades ago showed keen insight into the bad trends of modernity and where they would take us. He puts these Christian goofs with their nonsense about “bible prophecy” to shame.
Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” was not so much science fiction but a prophecy based on the author’s insider knowledge of the things to come. The same with George Orwell.
star wars and lord of the rings too. confirmation bias anyone?
I just came back from a small sea town in the Italian Riviera – Santa Margherita Ligure. It is the perfect place where one can have one’s own privacy and at the same time enjoy rich social life. You can walk anywhere and the place is quite hilly, so good exercise.
The Italians are naturally very sociable but what I have noticed is that youngsters are infected by the modern technological disease. Especially, the girls are totally fixated with their phones and dress as prostitutes. It is only natural when you see a person on the phone to make sure you don’t interrupt them, so this creates a barrier for communication.
The problem with modern technology is that it makes people’s lives too easy and prevents them from focusing on a single task. Me and my wife are great admirers the arts and we were discussing how the old Italians were able to create these intricate and stunning pieces of architecture and decorative arts.
What was interesting is that many of the buildings had fake, painted facades. It’s still beautiful but nevertheless it’s an eye trickery. Look it up. Compared to the old building with the real ornaments and decoration these painted facades are fake but at least it shows the desire for beauty.
The things is that the latest generation will not even be able to accomplish a task like painted facade. Just imagine getting up there on the scaffold to paint these figures and trying to concentrate when your phone constantly buzzes. You’d rush the job to finish it quickly and the end result will be poor.
My wife is very red pill and she says it’s man’s fault that women are so crazy as we have given them technologies like the washing machine, the hoover, etc. So they don’t know what to do with all the free time. Their brains are too erratic and can’t handle it. The woman’s brain need to be occupied with manual tasks but now women have too much leisurely time. Which explains the popularity of smartphones amongst women.
America is always about Individualism and Privacy. And, then, America invented Facebook and Twitter. Americans, individualistic and private to the core, are coining terms like “Social Networking”. What is going on here!!! 😦
Censorship of ideas
looks more like the work of the network admin. I am not really up on computers, but I know at my office we have a pretty right wing catholic guy who is our IT person. He is great, but he defines what constitutes “adult” very, very strictly. I clicked on an article ones on some mens magazine. I think it might have been Men’s Health but I can’t remember and it was blocked for being porno. Another time a girl who was getting married tried to buy some bathing suits for her honey moon on her lunch break and some site was blocked and she asked me if I would tell him to unblock it.
It’s an internet provider block in Mexico. When you pay your subscription, you get access to internet in parks and malls, I paid the service for my home and I get internet in the zones where the service is available. You use you client number and a password to log in for example a movie theater. So why the fuck if I paid for it, they block it? Internet companies are owned by Carlos Slim, one of the richest man in the world. He monopolize all the telecommunication in the country. I fear that this block will be enforced in my home, So fuck my life. No more HATE for me, I think.
Wow crazy. Again, I don’t know much about it, but there was an article here on VPN’s you can get. Not even sure if that is something that would help your situation but it could be
Oh Asimov…..Yet one more “dystopia” which I consider a utopia. Put it on the list with Brave New World and every 80’s movie that happens in a town that doesn’t allow dancing.
Fuck, if this happened gradually and over a long enough period of time I would love to be a solarian.
Events like these have been my focus of research for several years.
I don’t know if any of you is a “believer” or not, but there are facts obvious to anyone who wants to see, that this Problem is not only physical (only of physical matter) in nature.
Its main components are in fact non physical structures imposed over humanity to keep them in this state, possible since beginning.
Just to clarify, I am not talking about space lizards or David Icke or some sort alien conspiracy over humans.
I am talking about pure Matrix and possibility that we actually live in a very complex simulation, but not in conventional sense of a computer that generates reality.
Hey, not pressing buttons…real question. Have you ever considered that you are 100% right about this (which I believe you are) but that there is nothing that generates it. It is just simulation. It isn’t real world and fake world. Just the simulation and nothing else.
It is a complicated idea to wrap your head around. A dream had by no one.
You are more right than you are wrong. It is just a fake world, but the thing is there are more realities or worlds, (whatever you want to call them) that have greater “value” than this world, or maybe its better to say their “level” is higher, meaning this puts them apart from our world.
Let me give you example. Most people that have experienced out of body experiences or that even have died only to be brought back by medical team, report something like this:
“Where have I been, feels much more real than the world in which we live.”
“This world is fake.”
“Something is wrong with our world, other world feels much more natural.”
They are all right. What is interesting that everybody in the whole wide world experiences non stop this first world “above” this and here is a little question for you, just for fun. You can brainstorm the idea:
Do you know what is the world I am talking about and what do I mean by the “everybody experiences it non stop”?
Think about it and give me answer.
I think you and I are in very close agreement. I mean that 95% kind of close. I would say that the people who have experiences that they feel are “more real” are more yearning for it in an unconscious or delusion state and it feels “real” to them rather than they skipped into something.
The desire to feel that there is something more real than this world has driven religion and politics and society in general since, well, forever. In the constant march of evolution we have begun to get to a place where we can feel that it is all a dream. We just haven’t all got to the point where we realize there is not a dreamer.
I will go WAY out of context for me as anyone who sees me post will know and quote a female author. There is a great scene in the last Harry Potter where Harry is dead in in Kings Cross station and talking to a dead Dumbledore. There is a truly brilliant thing said there. He asks dumbledore “is this real or has this all been in my head” and dumbledore responds “of course it’s all in your head, that doesn’t make it any less real”
Religion, politics, family, all the bullshit connections you have formed in your life and all the shit that seems so important to you, to me, to everyone…..it is all in our heads, it’s all a dream and there is no dreamer — that said….that doesn’t make it any less real.
I feel we will disagree on this one tiny sticking point. However, our agreement is far bigger and I enjoy thinking about this so thanks!
The only problem is that we are having massive dysgenics right now that will probably kill any technological progress in it’s infancy. I don’t see this happening. We all know that people look at screens to much, and this is bad, but you could have made an article about just that.
Oh, I used to read Asimov, but I’ve never read this particular one. Very insightful comparisons there, I’ll be sure to pick up this book.