I don’t know, some of us (not me) have pretty good instincts when it comes to resources. We are aware that money = resources. The system by which we get resources may be artificial, but it seems to me a pretty natural thing for an intelligent species to put together. Not everyone can do the same thing, we’re not like ants where we have defined roles (at least not obviously). Money kind of seems like a natural development in a post specialization world. One thing that can be used to trade for all things. You might not be interested in a shirt for your crop, but you’ll sure as shit take a note that can get you anything you want.
I don’t know, I’m just some uneducated idiot from nowhere. That said, I don’t imagine that money is the final development for our species, at least I hope not.
People would be easily conned if it wasn’t money. I can imagine a world where some jackass walks up to someone and says, “ahhhh! You look like a man who likes to eat! I see you defending that berry bush there, and I don’t blame you. It’s a swell bush. What if I were to tell you that I met a man who can turn just one quarter of that bush into a year round supply of fresh berries. Look at me, look how fat I am. I didn’t get this way eating from one bush for one season. No siree. I got this way because this man shared his secret with me. You let me leave with a basket of berries, exactly a quarter of your bush, and I’ll return with enough blessed seeds to feed you for a lifetime! Your bushes will grow in the dead of winter! You won’t have to stand here defending it anymore. It would take an entire population to rob you of all your fruit.”
We do have natural defenses when it comes to our resources, and that actually explains greed a bit. I’ve known people who are so generous with money they don’t have yet, because it isn’t a resource that needs protecting yet. “As soon as I sell this place I’ll have 2.5 million and I’m going to look out for you.” Gets 2.5 million, never hear from him again. Now that he has the resources, his instincts kick in for him to protect those resources.
Edit:
Coming back for a little more because it hit me, I do have instincts about resources. I want to make sure the entire tribe survives, so I spread my resources around as I get them and work for free haha. Damn my instincts. Can’t have shit.
Oh it was awful, totally not worth it. He had cocaine as well, but he didn’t get charged with the acid. He was drunk, 17, on Xanax, in his mother’s car. When the police got to him he was eating the cocaine and had to be hospitalized because of his heart.
Funny thing, I was telling his story earlier.
His mom turned him into a junkie to control him. Sad thing really. She did all of her kids that way. He was the only one she turned into a junkie, she convinced the rest they were schizophrenic.
Poor guy has seen nothing but trouble his whole life.
Oh yeah, just isn’t something that regularly occurs. I had a buddy wad up a sheet of uncut blotter and swallow it when he crashed his car and the police showed up.
He spent some time in the hospital before going to jail.
My uncle isn’t particularly tech savvy, like, at all. I finally had him good to go on Windows XP. The transition to Windows Vista and then 7 went well enough with minor issues here and there. Big problems started with 10, and now that he’s stuck on 11 he is completely lost.
I haven’t used it much because I switched everything over to Linux on my end awhile ago.
I spent over and hour on the phone with him yesterday trying to help him copy a damn file. I had to get him to read every little thing he seen on the screen to make it work and finally realized “show more options” is a thing.
He said, “I swear to you, copy and paste is gone. All I see is copy as path. What the hell is copy as path?”
Older users are totally screwed now. I had him good to go by explaining explorer as a file cabinet with a little bit of magic here and there. Now it takes ages to get anything done.
And getting his printer going the other day over the phone. Good god.
Some of these changes are absurd and they make absolutely no sense whatsoever. For those of us who grew up on computers we can just growl and figure it out. Why should we have to though?
I wish I had started him on Mac OS years ago. I really do.
I can say with 100% certainty that my family didn’t have political views until they got Facebook. They didn’t vote. They didn’t talk about it. They didn’t care. They all vote now. Christmas dinner used to be a time to catch up with everyone and see all the new offspring. Now it’s a Trump rally. Literally everyone in my family votes now, and they all say “I didn’t ever vote until Obama/Romney if they got online earlier, and they didn’t vote until Clinton/Trump if they got on later.
Tech isn’t entirely a bad thing, but it has certainly played a role in radicalizing nearly everyone.
I abandoned religion when I was 18 years old, and I spent a lot of time in church before then. Every church I went to talked about spiritual growth, how folks needed god to make good decisions, and the two paths you could take and how to avoid taking the wrong one.
I went with my uncle to about 20 churches in 2019(ish) and holy hell had it changed. It’s all radical politics now. Only one of those churches talked about spiritual growth, literally only one.
It spreads even to older folks who don’t use Facebook. They hear the radical speeches from everyone they know.
Whether we like it or not, most platforms are profit driven and in order to make the most money they have to keep people engaged. If you’re enraged you’re engaged, that’s the profit driven tech at work.
Well that’s not the part I’m talking about. I’m talking specifically about the leadership.
I’m an atheist who attended AA for years and I never worked the steps. The old heads definitely start to put the pressure on you after awhile though. “Yer higher power could be the universe.” Well, yeah, but it specifically says god.
AA got it right as far as that goes. Leadership revolves.
AA would be one of the biggest organized cults on the planet if the founders hadn’t thought of that.
Now, not everyone can be a leader, and those who can’t won’t generally volunteer. So, what you end up with in a small community is a handful of leaders who don’t agree on everything and therefore represent the needs of the people in the group a lot better.
Whether we like it or not, positions of leadership tend to happen naturally. As long as we hold sacred the fact that there is no truly central leadership, it shouldn’t devolve into a cult.
It might just be a part of our nature though. When you enter recovery they give you a list of places to avoid (they gave me one anyway) because the revolving leadership has fallen apart and a single personality has taken over.
Me, 38 years old sitting here in my Darth Vader jacket with my Trek shirt underneath (I like sacrilege, that’s my jam).
People tell me, “Wow, you don’t look like you’re about to be 40!”
Umm, yes I do. I’ve drank and smoked myself into a state of mental growth paralysis. You think I look younger than I am because I still dress like a millennial teenager and you’re 65.
I don’t know, some of us (not me) have pretty good instincts when it comes to resources. We are aware that money = resources. The system by which we get resources may be artificial, but it seems to me a pretty natural thing for an intelligent species to put together. Not everyone can do the same thing, we’re not like ants where we have defined roles (at least not obviously). Money kind of seems like a natural development in a post specialization world. One thing that can be used to trade for all things. You might not be interested in a shirt for your crop, but you’ll sure as shit take a note that can get you anything you want.
I don’t know, I’m just some uneducated idiot from nowhere. That said, I don’t imagine that money is the final development for our species, at least I hope not.
People would be easily conned if it wasn’t money. I can imagine a world where some jackass walks up to someone and says, “ahhhh! You look like a man who likes to eat! I see you defending that berry bush there, and I don’t blame you. It’s a swell bush. What if I were to tell you that I met a man who can turn just one quarter of that bush into a year round supply of fresh berries. Look at me, look how fat I am. I didn’t get this way eating from one bush for one season. No siree. I got this way because this man shared his secret with me. You let me leave with a basket of berries, exactly a quarter of your bush, and I’ll return with enough blessed seeds to feed you for a lifetime! Your bushes will grow in the dead of winter! You won’t have to stand here defending it anymore. It would take an entire population to rob you of all your fruit.”
We do have natural defenses when it comes to our resources, and that actually explains greed a bit. I’ve known people who are so generous with money they don’t have yet, because it isn’t a resource that needs protecting yet. “As soon as I sell this place I’ll have 2.5 million and I’m going to look out for you.” Gets 2.5 million, never hear from him again. Now that he has the resources, his instincts kick in for him to protect those resources.
Edit: Coming back for a little more because it hit me, I do have instincts about resources. I want to make sure the entire tribe survives, so I spread my resources around as I get them and work for free haha. Damn my instincts. Can’t have shit.