txttletale:

simulation theory guys are so funny because like who cares. if im in a simulation then everything around me is still just as real as i am so who cares im going to go eat some simulated ice cream and then have a simulated nap who give a shit

The theory appeals to all the guys who think they’d be Neo

apas-95:

void-milf:

Civilization was not developed to produce food for people. It is specifically the organizational processes of limiting access to abundance as a means of social and ecological hegemonic dominance. Hope this helps :)

This serves fairly well as an example with the errors common in discussion of more modern technology, by showing them at their root, where they are the most clearly wrong. It is an idealist error, one which almost directly reverses cause and effect.

In reality, of course, the development of agriculture *did* facilitate social control - precisely *because* it produced food for people better than the previous mode of production did. The specific fact that agriculture produced food more reliably than hunter-gathering is why it afforded a measure of social control. If it did not, then it would not afford any social control, as it could simply be ignored - if there really *was* abundant food, then a new method of producing food would not be socially relevant. Social power does not spring out of thin air, it is not simply the result of Greedy People. It can only be brought about by material imbalance. New modes of production, new technologies, can create social power - but only insofar as they are materially useful enough to grant those who control them social power.

This is the key point that been a consistent issue with opponents of historical materialism - the material basis of specific social systems is in the fact that, despite resigning their oppressed classes to worse *relative* lives, they do improve their *objective* lives. The conflation of relative social standing with objective prosperity leads to absurd positions, like the idea that hunter-gatherer production was relaxed and abundant, or that subsistence farming was some cottagecore fantasy, or a hundred misunderstandings of what ‘progressive’ implies in a historical sense. It also leads to luddism; to attempts to fight against new technologies themselves due to their facilitation of deepening exploitation, while ignoring the ways they objectively improve standards of living. Fundamentally: any political program that *explicitly aims to reduce the objective standards of living of the people* is working against the people’s interests, and will not receive their support. This is as true of luddism as it is primitivism, accelerationism, or any other 'some of you may die, but that’s a risk that I am willing to take’ tendency.

Fundamentally, historical materialism is the analytical framework that corresponds to real-world practice - it is the only one that actually *works*. And historical materialism is clear - it is methods of production that principally lead to the development of social systems, not the reverse. I’d say it’s putting the cart before the horse, but maybe that’s too high-tech.

ashidentshappen:

madmonksandmaenads:

Don’t buy the Bourgeoisie narrative of Cain and Abel. What Cain did was revolutionary praxis against the Sheep-Owning class.

Honestly, did Cain know that hitting his brother that hard was gonna kill him? Like, in the story there are only four people and none of them have ever died so I feel like it would be a reasonable assumption on Cain’s part to think that a lil bonk couldn’t kill a human

There’s a good one-act play about this, “Husk” by Erin Proctor.