The Utopia that Never Was
Todd Hayen
About three years ago, before this Covid swill was poured down our throats, my wife pointed out an article in the Toronto Star about a proposal to have cars fitted with bumper cameras, or some other nonsense intended to cut down on illegal parking, hit and run offenses, and various other “bad” things that if recorded on video would make all of our lives better.
Surely anything that would lessen the crime rate was a good thing.
“Can you believe this bullshit!” I blurted out, as my defiant shrew ire flared up.
“I think it’s a good idea,” piped in my wife.
Picture the familiar cartoon of a man clenching his teeth with the black cloud over his head—maybe with some thunderbolts cracking out of it.
So why would this bother me so much? That seemed obvious, the old “what if this gets in the wrong hands” mantra went through my head—really? “It just isn’t right!” I silently exclaimed.
First of all, it was rather fishy that these things would just come with a new car and you wouldn’t have a choice. Then of course it is quite obvious it is an infringement on privacy—there are many ways that such a thing could be “used against you.”
Oddly, that wasn’t what bothered me the most. I actually thought more about the poor criminal whose privacy would be violated rather than mine. I thought about how a world without crime would be a bore, and that it just wasn’t fair to wipe all crime out of the culture making it squeaky clean—what would we do without crime novels to read?
Am I crazy?
Dostoevsky had a word to say about utopian cultures back in 1864 (like a crimeless one). He thought a perfect world would be a disaster. In his novel Notes from Underground he says:
Now I ask you: what can be expected of man as a being endowed with such strange qualities? Shower him with all earthly blessings, drown him in happiness completely, over his head, so that only bubbles pop up on the surface of happiness, as on water; give him such economic satisfaction that he no longer has anything left to do at all except sleep, eat gingerbread, and worry about the non cessation of world history––and it is here, just here, that he, this man, out of sheer ingratitude, out of sheer lampoonery, will do something nasty.”
Here is a bit of commentary from a website discussing Dostoevsky’s work:
Notes From Underground (1864) is a blistering assault on utopianism, socialism, and Marxism based on Dostoevsky’s view of human nature. Even if a utopian society was attainable, says Dostoevsky, we would not be satisfied by endless food, comfort and pleasure. If you satisfied every human desire, we would throw it all away just for something interesting to happen, just to give ourselves a challenge to overcome and prove that we are human beings and not lap dogs. According to Dostoevsky, we would rather wallow in misery and self-pity than be handed everything on a silver-platter! It is our unique proclivity for destructive decisions that make us human, and we wouldn’t give that up for anything—even heaven on earth.”
This resonates with me. And I wonder now if I was channeling ol’ Fyodor that day in the kitchen talking to my wife.
It does make sense. I remember a while back I was watching an old Twilight Zone episode about a bad-guy criminal who gets killed, and he thinks he has more than likely gone to hell. But rather than devils dancing around and fire lapping at his feet, some nice dude in a white Panama suit greets him.
“What would you like, my friend,” the guy says…and the episode continues with this poor schmuck getting every single desire he could imagine met. He wins every poker hand, and drinks bottle after bottle of booze without getting sick, has beautiful women climbing all over him.
“I’m in heaven!” he exclaims—until he gets bored. He then begs the white-suit guy to tell him where he actually is, “This ain’t heaven is it! Tell me!” he screams. My 67-year-old memory doesn’t serve me all that well, and I can’t remember details about the show, but I think the Panama guy says, “What do you think?”—Imagine, if you will.
I remember this episode had quite an impact on me, and I decided right then and there never to pursue a life of crime.
Now, let me be clear, I am not a fan of crime.
Of course there is crime, and then there is crime. What I am thinking here is a bit more metaphoric. And I do actually believe we could live in a relatively crime-less society and do pretty well (as I write that sentence, I hear my wise voice in my head saying, “Who are you kidding?”—think of the movie Demolition Man. If you don’t know it, watch it).
But I have to admit, that sort of society doesn’t seem natural. Life, to be natural and fulfilling and meaningful has to have the dark side somewhere integrated in the experience. There must be shadow, crime, disease, discomfort, losing, disappointment, sorrow, stupidity, depression—need I go on?
Yin/Yang stuff, “you can’t know happiness unless you’ve experienced sadness”—you get the picture. As cliché as this sounds, it is sadly true.
Utopias are always actually dystopias in disguise. If you read a novel that claims to be a utopian novel, you quickly see that the society described is not all that benign. Many novels are described as dystopian literature but are presented as utopias, consider Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451.
You just can’t create a perfect society. Not only is it creepy to think about, but it simply would not work.
From an article on the Internet:
In order to find or create a utopia, you must also discover or create a dystopia. When there is a perfect place, an equally opposite place hides from within it. From the outside, utopia and dystopia can be clearly defined; a dystopia is a terrible place ruled by unrelenting dictators forcing slavery and their ideas upon the population while a utopia is a perfect, ideal place to live in for any man or woman.”
Interestingly enough we currently live in a “Utopia wanna be.” We have people believing that if we follow the agenda, which has put us through unwarranted draconian demands, we might be able to avoid disease and death.
These people generally feel at war with nature, and at peace with a distant (at this point in time) belief they could live forever if the proper science creates devices, artificial organs and tissue, brain implants and the like to transcend our sloppy and inferior flesh and blood bodies.
These people also believe we can erase crime from the culture with more militaristic police, more devices for surveillance, digital IDs, digital currency, and more control over all people so the ones who have “nothing to hide” can be separated from the ones who have committed crimes against the system (which, of course, could be anything the system deems criminal—case in point, Canada’s Trucker Convoy in the summer of ’22).
Again, not everyone on that side of the fence (sheep) think this way—some are not even sheep. Some are just frightened out of their wits, some are just blind, some are just totally unwilling to look anywhere beyond their noses, and yes, some are just stupid. But I do have to say I believe most people over there (sheep) believe that they can get through life easier if they do what the authorities say to avoid disease, death, suffering, (nature, dirt, germs, insects (unless they eat them)), hot summers and just plain, uncomfortable, living.
The “agenda” psychologically manipulates people to believe that their lives can indeed be perfect, that they can indeed avoid disease, even death, that “Zero Covid” is indeed possible, and that the state will indeed create a perfect world for them by never putting them in a position where they have to think for themselves and take responsibility for their own lives.
Needless to say, this simply will not work and will ultimately end in disaster. If we survive this ordeal we will look back and see that this was the utopia that never was—and God willing, never will be.
Todd Hayen is a registered psychotherapist practicing in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He holds a PhD in depth psychotherapy and an MA in Consciousness Studies. He specializes in Jungian, archetypal, psychology. Todd also writes for his own substack, which you can read here
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The confusion in our mind is self generated. It arises from the noise we allow in, to disturb the natural harmony.The noise is generated by our ego, its need to grasp, and judge. There is an innate balance to everything, and we can find it in our core awareness.
Today I read a short and simple truth:
Grant your blessings so that my mind may be one with the Dharma.
Grant your blessings so that Dharma may progress along the path.
Grant your blessings so that the path may clarify confusion.
Grant your blessings so that confusion may dawn as wisdom.
-GAMPOPA-
It may be Buddhist, but what it’s saying, I feel, is that the confusion and chaos that we seem to experience is, in fact, our way, or our path, to wisdom. In this short life as a sentient being, a human with awareness, could we ask for anything more?
(Note: the Dharma is: something like “natural law.”)
Well said! The absolute lies beyond the mind, and this is where the Spirit can be discovered. In a quote attributed to Lao Tse ” To him whose mind is silent the whole universe listens “. Per HH Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi ” In thoughtless awareness you have the continuous availability of the Divine force. It’s a terrible power that works out. ”
Utopia is achieved ( not found nor created ) when we become one with our Spirit, which is the purpose of mortal life and our destiny. Dostoevsky must have known this, and today both the urgency and accessibility to this discovery is greater than ever. All that is needed is the desire/will to have it, and the availability of one or more who does already – of which there are a few million now.
Whatever faults individual utopian thinkers have expressed, there is something in common in utopian thought. Society that is good, that lives in peace, where everyone is free and equal, that means no discrimination, therefore no conflict, therefore peace, and peace is remained with Justice.
Where did you get the idea that everything would be perfect and there was nothing to do so everybody would be bored to death?
The idea in utopia is to make society equal and just. So that everyone can have a good life.
We all have our private issues. Everyone is unique.
That’s why all forms of totalitarian dictatorship fail. Humanity’s march for Freedom has been a long time coming, but now we are finally at the gates of true freedom. Don’t you see it? Don’t you see through this dystopian (= anti-utopian) bullshit surrounding us right now? All that lying, all deceptions, every little sin and evil is revealed. The ruler of this world, the Devil, has risen because it’s in an emergency! It is in great fear of losing its position as the World Ruler.
But the Devil already lost. So the future is not dystopian.
In utopia we all are free and so we do not give our power or ourselves to anyone else.
Societies have long existed before nationstates or other forms of tyranny. Society exists as long as people exist. For our own sake it would be better to have a good society, don’t you think.
If people were asked, would they rather have war or peace, equality or inequality, justice or injustice, freedom or slavery, what do you think they would answer?
Would you rather suffer or not. Would you rather believe a lie than know the truth. Would you prefer evil? These kinds of questions have been asked in Spirit. And everyone has given their answers, I suppose. I know I have.
”Yin/Yang stuff, “you can’t know happiness unless you’ve experienced sadness”—you get the picture. As cliché as this sounds, it is sadly true.”
I don’t think it’s true. Yin and yang as female and male, for example, are not opposites but halves. They are complementary sides like left and right, up and down, and there is no competition or conflict in them. The idea that light requires shadow, truth requires lies, good requires evil, health requires sickness, sanity requires insanity, and so on, just isn’t so. The truth exists in reality but lies do not. No-one needs insanity to be sane. So this very popular idea doesn’t work.
Logic works.
Logic doesn’t need illogic. Illogic doesn’t even exist to Logic.
Lies do not exist to Truth.
In order to know that two plus two equals four, we do not need any of the lies that can be told about this equation. Truth is all one needs.
And there can never be balance or peaceful co-existence between truth and lies. They are opposites and always in conflict. Lies create that conflict. Lie is an assault, an attack against truth just like war is an attack against peace. And who needs war anyway.
Harmony exists not in mixing truth and lies, good and evil, justice and injustice, equality and inequality, but harmony does exist in interconnectness of things that are true and good.
That interconnectness can be broken only with lies. But lies are never true, and being untrue they are not real.
Some things are really either – or. Meaning they cannot co-exist.
I think a lot of today’s thinking is the result of luxury. Dostoevsky is not; he is a hectic, tense, depressed and gloomy thinker, forged in a harsh environment and leading a difficult life (although he indulges in pleasures, one of which is gambling). He, given his nature, circumstances and mature life together, lives in partial dystopia.
I do not think that today’s thinkers – who are really very smart and have easy access to the work of almost all the thinkers before them-forged in today’s luxury of tranquility unmatched by the average standards and harsh conditions of those old times-can successfully enter Dostoevsky’s thought of “the dungeon.””It means immersing yourself convincingly in this dark world, which cannot be done by force of will. So, with the exception of a few stubborn thinkers, the rest, otherwise very witty, barely touch the shadow of Dostoevsky’s work. (Including modern Russians, what more can they learn about Dostoevsky? Nothing. Too spoiled.)
Dostoevsky would have written harsh words for modern thinkers if he had been alive. (He would have been an anti-vax, too, if he had been alive.)
In my opinion, the convenience of thinking has grown so much that an invisible inner utopia has been achieved, connecting Rich thinkers from all over the world. There is nowhere else to go and everything is ready for physical reset and replication in the Metaverse. There they will give him gigabytes and everything will be like internet communication, which is already part of life, even people.
What utopia, philosophy, psychology, etc. N.? People directly lose their jobs and remain on the streets as a result of measures “to fight the pandemic”, or worse-they are forced to prick themselves. (Dostoevsky would write about them.) There’s not much psychology here, at this point when the knife is literally on the bone. It’s just getting started, buckle up.
” I actually thought more about the poor criminal whose privacy would be violated rather than mine. I thought about how a world without crime would be a bore, and that it just wasn’t fair to wipe all crime out of the culture making it squeaky clean—what would we do without crime novels to read?
Am I crazy?”
Possibly. Certainly confused.
The “surveillance state” is not going to eradicate crime, the surveillance state is the crime.
Supposedly, you are a 67 year old practicing psychotherapist with a PhD, yet this piece reads like it was written by an edgy oxbridge undergraduate for the debating society. (I know, I’ll argue in favour of crime – that’ll shock ’em!)
If you had to deal with the threat or reality of actual crime against your actual person on a daily basis or you would not try to make a joke out of it.
“And I wonder now if I was channeling ol’ Fyodor that day”
To paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen, Todd, you’re no Dostoyevsky
With all due respect, I believe you’ve missed the point. I apologize for not making it clearer.
Preacher Harari: “Humans are hackable animals”, “there is no spirit”, “God is fake news”, “the next step is surveillance to get under the skin”, “there will be a lot of unnecessary people in the future, and the best thing I can think of are video games and drugs”…
Well, at least these people can be immunized against the deadly virus, right?
False binary file?:)
(I don’t know who is resurrected and who isn’t, I’m not a fanatical Christian. For me, the logical impossibility of the non-existence of what is very simplistically called God is beyond doubt. And so it will be until those who explain the origin without God answer something other than “we do not yet know, but there is no evidence that it is from God” to the question “Where does it come from? From it? Okay, it from where…”
I have never ignored any professed atheist on account of his unbelief, if he is inclined to reasonable debate and does not use his “belief in science” too repulsively. Everyone interprets for themselves, it doesn’t concern me.
It’s about symbols and principles. The principles of those of whom Harari is a prophet are not very cool.)
No less, and perhaps even more interesting – in connection with today and in connection with the difference between the two types of spirit – are parts of his biography.
Yes, yes, I know: “Oppressed by savage circumstances, he embodied his need to find vent in the Christian concept of God,” something like that. Maybe, I don’t know.
Something similar to what our venerable believers in the salvation of the Russian Empire or under the Celestial Empire China are doing now. Maybe it’s the same; I think there’s a difference.:)
—
(Second attempt to post half or less of the “too long” comment. which makes it meaningless to some extent.)
The forum system has some new, or old, but unknown to me tool: “input is too long”, although the post fits within the allowed number of characters. It’s pretty snarling if you’ve been writing a comment for an hour, for example, but still the comment is nothing special and it doesn’t matter. The important thing is to be alive and healthy:)
Suffering is the only human condition that one cannot avoid; how we carry on reflects on how we deal with the challenges of our perpetual state of suffering.
Joy is the only Human condition that one cannot avoid; how we carry on reflects on how we deal with the challenges of our perpetual state of joyfulness.
‘Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.’
In reading this article I realize I have always been thinking my life would eventually hit a time when everything would be nearly perfect. I believe this thinking was the result of years of Louise Hay and the power of positive thinking! Anyway, now I am accepting the good and the bad and realizing it is all part of being a person. I appreciate this article for giving me more food for thought in this area. And to realize that believing a utopia can be achieved and that it would be a wondrous existence is not a wise path.
The wise see utopia in every smile.
My grandparents grew up in a farmers family in Eastern Prussia. Long, cold, dark winters there.
People would work hard in the summer but in winter there was not much to do.
They still had to care for their cows, hens and horses but mostly they sat around.
And got creative: making music, singing, telling stories about werewolves (with the wolves howling outside), did a little carving, repairing, spinning and weaving, feasting and riding the horse-sleigh. Carefree.
Not much decadence there. Decadence, I came to think a long time ago is a phenomenon that occures when people can’t do anything anymore, when they have lost all creative abilities. Like the feudal class, like the bourgeoisie, like us today.
Marx called it “Entfremdung”. You are estranged from your own inner self. Then, and only then you can tell people, they are incapable of taking care for themselves.
Please forgive my poor english.
The reason why most people don’t sit around making music with each other and telling stories is not because of “decadence”, as you (and Marx) put it, it is because our human-sized communities have been destroyed and 80% of people are living like battery hens in cities, staring at screens all day.
Marx was married to an heiress and never did a day’s work in his life. Some champion of the working man.
The purpose of Marxism was precisely to drive the “working class” away from revolution – Marx was preaching atheism to a mostly God-fearing people, immediately alienating the majority of his potential revolutionaries. The only place that marxism really took hold, in the UK anyway, was so-called “academia” and it continues to infest to this day. Marxism was instrumental in quenching the last flames of revolution in this country that WWI had missed.
Marx was one of them, not one of us. Controlled “opposition”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Su1Rdw3SRHY Twilight Zone “A Nice Place to Visit”
Hey thanks! I’m sure I futzed up the details…creative license…thanks for finding this…I completely forgot I could have checked it out myself, but I kind of like writing what I “remembered”…
if manufactured Utopia means existing in delusive contentment, it’ll fear enlightenment, so in truth (which at no time was)…it Antiutopia.
O.T.
A few Revenge pieces have arrived in my emailbox lately. Pieces urging that the Dr Josef Mengele and Adolf Eichmann clones in state bureaucracies, hospitals, and big pharma. pay for their crimes against humanity… I worry… There’s a lot of grievances around…
I would suggest instead Bishop Tutu’s South African “Truth and Reconciliation Commissions”**
to heal the wounds… Except, bringing the perpetrators of crimes against humanity face to face with their victims, well, psychopaths can show remorse, but they’re soon back doing what they enjoy best… Psychopaths have no conscience…
Psychopaths are drawn to power. They like to cloak themselves in The Law…They’re in corporations, state bureaucracies, hospital admins, armies, and many lesser ones join The Police Force…In fact, they are the backbone of The State…(as a long dead anarchist pointed out ‘States are organised force, claim a monopoly on the use of violence’)…
In the immediate post-WW2 years a only handful of the Nazi bastards were hung . Most of the clones were kept on, working for the post-war State…
My misgivings about the Bishop’s commissions is – they never really went after The Big Fish…In reality, they couldnt – because The State protects itself…As for the little fish, i read that low ranked concentration camp guards, though in their 90s, can still be called before The German State’s Courts for Judgement….
It seems to me that the calls for us to have our revenge against the clones may be counter-productive…The clones will just dig-in, will not admit to doing any wrong…
** premised on the Catholic Church’s Confessionals
And even if the sinners are punished/killed, new ones will pop up in their places.
Todd, you don’t believe in the existence of covid surely? If so, what makes you believe in it?
The cleverest psychological trick those in power have come up with is to tell us stories that they know a minority will disbelieve in part but also believe in part.
When they tell you a story part of which you know is a lie you need to vet that story for any truth whatsoever.
I predicted from clear signs of a psyop on Day One (against-reality images of people falling flat on their face and laid out on the ground and on hospital floors and claims of a couple of species of snakes being “reservoirs” of the alleged virus) that there would be no virus because I knew:
1. They only wanted us to believe in a virus they didn’t want one for real (in psyops they do what they want for real and fake the rest – they wanted the jab but not a virus)
2. They couldn’t make a real virus work for their narrative in any shape or form – I was unaware at the time of the shocking claim by certain scientists and doctors that viruses have never been proven to exist but regardless, even if viruses did exist they couldn’t make one work for their narrative … and realism or even simulating reality as closely as possible is simply not part of the MO as is evidenced by the snakes and falling-over people.
Have you read Catte’s article? https://off-guardian.org/2022/08/05/the-covid-shell-game/
There were over 50 of us working in the bread factory. Wally was one, he ran the machine next to mine. Wally was only a few years older and was married. We didnt talk much while working: the din of the machines, and demands of the production lines saw to it…
Wally was a good union man. He kept in mind when i would attend regular union executive meetings and would ask about, over the following days, what transpired…
.
The industry was changing, had changed considerably over the previous decade. Global corporations had moved in, bought up 80 – 90% of suburban & family bakeries and consolidated production into a handful of highly mechanised factories…The number of bakers had shrunk, and more would soon be discarded by the automations that were being introduced…Our individual productivity soared…The union was considering fighting for a shorter work week to benefit our reduced numbers from the changes…
Wally stunned me with his reaction the day i told him of the Union’s thinking…He was adamant, would have nothing to do with a shorter work week. He would oppose the idea whenever it was raised…Wally was deaf to persuasion, no matter what arguments i made.
.
It took me quite some years to let go of the idea that Wally’s wife must be a nag.
The reason Wally would oppose a shorter workweek, didnt want more free time was because it was more time for her to get on his nerves…Worktime to him was time away from Her !
But she wasnt to blame at all… Wally was like so many, they just dont know what to do with their non-work time. Work is structured time: freedom frightens (A massive leisure industry was developed on their not being able to creatively use their idle time.)…
I began to understand Wally from reading about the Occupations of The Factories in France, May-June 1968…The tens of thousands of workers who occupied factories, offices, etc, were a brake on the revolutionary process. They couldnt shake off a lifetime of conditioning, of having their time and lives organised by others…Collectively, they couldnt go beyond the passivity of occupying their workplaces, of walking out of the factories giving the middle finger to their old lives…. None could stop being A Worker…
Capitalist ideology has always had a strong Utopianism. It has always dangled The Future in front of our eyes, that Future being the inverse of the repressive reality of capitalism’s Present…
“I just dont know what to do with myself” (1960s. Lusty Dusty)…
Interesting insight … and while some workers may resist shorter hours because they don’t know what to do with all that unstructured time those in power don’t want it either – too much time for us to reflect on what’s really going on.
We’ll soon have even more time on our hands, what with fewer jobs and this handy AI gadget ….. with a hidden sinister purpose:
“Amazon’s billion dollar bid to merge with Roomba robot vacuum maker iRobot is another way for the company to get your personal information – which could include the floor plan of your homes.”
This thing also communicates with the voice assistant Alexa, gathering more and more data about us.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-28/amazon-rumba-bid-sparks-privacy-fears/101374130
My Uncle’s family were Bakers, people on-line like dates our families standard of living slowly declined post 1968 with the rise of The City property investers.
Thanks for the insightful vignette. Two concurring items popped into my head:
My long-deceased father was a milkman. He began his career during the Great Depression of the 1930s, during the “horse and wagon” era; he was thrilled to get steady work as a milkman.
Anyway, he confirmed the widely-made claim that the horses would be “puzzled” when milkmen attempted to drive past residences of ex-customers; the horses wanted to stop as usual, and had to be strongly urged to keep going.
When I became a State Worker, I came to spend many hours in break rooms participating in, or listening to, discussions with senior employees. Every so often, ostensibly to downsize the burdensome staffing budget by trimming some dead or dying wood, the governor and legislature would propose “early retirement” legislation that provided financial incentives for senior employees near retirement to pull the plug early.
Now, it’s certainly true that some of the early-retirement qualified employees had financial obligations, e.g. children in college, that (they claimed) made it unfeasible to accept even an enhanced early-retirement package. But apart from such pragmatic considerations, I was at first surprised to hear so many co-workers in the group invent reasons for not retiring.
Contrary to the perception that State Workers are “slackers” and “slugs” who gloried in not-working for a day’s pay, these intrepid senior employees asserted that they intended to keep on working as long as it was fulfilling, they were making a contribution, etc. The truism that in bureaucracies, especially government bureaucracies, employees are gears that are readily replaceable or disposable, was ignored or denied.
Instead, they expressed the extravagant, and frankly ludicrous, belief that they were “needed”, even indispensable. It didn’t take long to understand that this was rationalization. Sometimes they even made telling asides disclosing anxiety and consternation about what “they would do with themselves all day” if they retired. And many of those who did reluctantly retire promptly got “some little job” (part-time store cashier was popular) to “keep themselves busy”.
I was gratified when one woman sitting at our lunch table candidly, though in an undertone, confessed that she wasn’t accepting the early retirement package because she couldn’t face the prospect of “being home all day with Sam”, her retired husband. This frankness was the exception.
The global herds of MMS/3i’s are pretty glad and satisfied with the show that the OPERATION COVIDIUS circus provided them.
They are now eager to take the Winter Combo Flu/Covidius JAB…
(Mine on the right has nothing to do with the real PoS on the left!)
Utopia:
The name of a fictional island, in the book Utopia (1516) by Sir Thomas More (which was probaly composed in a state of post-euphoric depressionism salted with pre-ironic optimism.)
Derived from Ancient Greek:
οὐ (ou, “not, no“) + τόπος (topos, “place, region”).
Dystopia:
Derived from Ancient Greek:
δυσ- (dus, “bad“) + τόπος (topos, “place, region”) on model of dys- + utopia.
“There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so…”
– Billy Wobblestick
So, you can choose to live in either state…
Because they both exist as states of consciousness.
I wonder if Her Royal Majesty exists in a utopian state? Or the other groups named as ‘elite’?
If there is an exception to the rule then the rule is no longer absolute.
So… Utopia is real.
Thinking it unobtainable is the fiction.
In the Twilight Zone episode you mention, the “hero” asks to go to the other place. The devil says, “This is the other place!” That show also had a profound effect on me for the same reason. Perfection or Utopia is not possible because it does not allow for personal growth. It offers no challenges, and thus we would disintegrate into dystopia. Eternal physical life, aided and abetted by AI and artificial body parts is no better. Without the possibility of death, life has no meaning. Night and day are necessary. A life without shadow has no definition.
Thank you…someone else posted the actual episode, I probably should have checked it out to be more accurate…that’s a good line! Thanks for commented, we are in agreement!
We have some ratings trolls with us today, up-voting their own friends’ comments, and automatically downvoting comments that have nothing objectionable in them at all.
“Get a life”, is the only thing one can advise them to do, but since they have no intention of doing so, the ‘ignore list’ is their inevitable fate…
It’s sad that some people imagine there’s something to be gained from such pathetic time wasting, but, after all, who would want to live in a world where everybody was the same…?
You could get a life and get over your addiction to likes
That’s really a gross assumption on your part.
I mentioned this only because of a general dislike of any kind of distraction which appears on one of the few sites which respects actual information.
I don’t expect my comment to have any effect on the trolls, but this is not a personal matter. The unusual reception of today’s comments affects everybody else, and others might like to know that their comments are not as unintelligible as the troll-bosses would like them to think.
There are some good comments here, and you might have noticed that addictions are not as common here as they are elsewhere.
mate, telling you mate, all them red thumbs was real
; )
I don’t see the place for rating this article, but I have to say, this is the most ethically decayed, morally broken, juvenile piece of trash I have read in a long time and if I have to tell you why, there is nothing left that can be done for you.
If you had to tell us why, your brain would crack under the strain…
Alright, you don’t have to tell us what it is about this article you find so objectionable. But don’t you think it would be helpful if you did tell us what your view of Utopia/Dystopia is. So strong a dislike deserves a little context, don’t you think?
FYI – RememberingMonkey is the alter ego of the Donald Duck entity who accidentally outed himself as a troll a few days ago.
this true? ffs, i thought half the posts were not unreasonable for a while, but i get him confused with “Duckman ” often…?
who else we know to be pure split characters??
i saw that opmoc crittur on saker or something the other day…. same shite as ever.
i just sense an infiltration here of late, but other than since last week i’m hardly here compared to old, so maybe a mere glancing opinion…
?
“if I have to tell you why, there is nothing left that can be done for you.”
Using the now-hoary psychological trick of planting doubt by ridicule (abuse) while refusing to adequately justify the ridicule (thus abdicating one’s social responsibility) no longer works the way you think it does. At least, it’s gotten far less effective over time.
It’s one reason why the establishment is flummoxed over Trump’s resilient popularity, no matter how long and hard they flog the character flaws that should supposedly be the death of him. After the establishment’s half-century of educating the West into consciousness about psychological abuse (that the establishment not only sees but has also long employed). His supporters know full well what is being done to them. Oops…
And if I have to tell you why, it means you are being used for the purpose of breaking wills, rather than consciously doing so.
It’s great to idealise until your a victim of crime , even worse a victim of crime that receives no justice . Of course a lot of crime is the evolved “ being “ of poverty , and those who have to resort to crime to survive because of it don’t welcome it either . Glib talk of disease and death is great until you have a disease that leaves you breathless or in extreme pain or steals your innocent child’s life away from them . Indeed Utopia is perhaps unattainable but that because it lies at its extreme end of a continuum to its brother dystopia . However as society evolves and improves we can provide security and health not just for the rich or middle classes but for those living on a pittance in some slum ghetto . So I think in this context we strive for Utopia even if we never actually achieve it . This is how a mature and responsible government achieves equality for all its citizens . Giving them this kind of equality in reflection of Maslows pyriamid hierarchy means that they do get to think for themselves and” self actualise “. Certainly Klaus Schwabbs more extreme idea of Utopia is corrupted but that doesn’t make the strive towards this the same thing , in my understanding
How is a premise supposed to be realised if it’s foundations are upon false ground, such as; we aim to create a healthy environment for all classes of wealth whilst telling them the meaning of life is to enjoy yourself with any legal desire they wish to attain satiation. Yet life is temporary and desire; a passing whim. Physical Utopia’s are not sane unless they are brutally honest about the nature of our reality.
You are what you think you are when you think you are thinking.
This was not worth reading.
And the bad grammar only made it worse
I saw this yesterday, and its a good reminder from the past. Also, only a couple minutes:
https://odysee.com/@HiddenTruths:c/Afghanistan,-Iran,-Libya-Before-Islamic-Revolution:f
Many people aren’t aware that places in the middle east were open and free societies not so long ago. Then, in the 70s, the decision was made to build China. This was largely accomplished through Zbigniew Brzezinski, but required a little economic help; The competition had to be brought down.
The plan isn’t finished yet. China is the chosen seat of the Law for the New Age (Age of Aquarius/Ea/Enki) <– new equinox. They need something to assist in making that happen. i.e. no more competition. Whatever happens with any staged conflicts, the end will be a China with no one strong enough to challenge them.
Allied forces will be scripted to lose a war that their governments will be unable to finance, and societies will be scripted to fracture. China won't have the same issues.
The destruction of the governments is currently being performed in every western country, and its being done from within in order to set up the failure. This is why there's so many ridiculous distraction stories like Ms Ukraine with her rifle, Danish PMs drugging it up, raids at MarALago, Zelensky demanding money, ministers threatening to use nuclear weapons, etc…
They're all designed to stop us from having the important conversations and have us yapping on end about nothing. This isn't in reference to the article above, just something to be mindful of. The new order that comes with it will be Beijing as the seat of the Law, and end-game style enslavement on the grid for everyone. They don’t want us talking about that.
They don’t ever mention the vaccine patents, or how they could better explain known side effects. Nor do they mention the carbon nanotubes, the internet of bodies or intellectual property rights over humans.
The side-shows are going to get worse, so try not to get wrapped up in the distractions. The end game is nanotubes and implants in our bodies, and our lives being controlled in smart cities (easier to control).
Here’s the beginning of one:
https://news.sky.com/video/saudi-arabia-futuristic-linear-city-planned-by-crown-prince-12659554
I’m willing to bet that it ends up being a prison, and as luck would have it, its mirrored so that they don’t even have to look at it. They are driving up home and rental prices everywhere as a step to force rapid urbanization. Then, they’ll claim some kind of housing shortage and more crap will happen. Try not to get caught up in the distractions.
Yes, that fits the bill. The purposeful destruction of western societies and economies using progressivism that actually regresses morale, equality that inequalises, diversity that homogenises, multi-culturalism that mono-culturalises, activism that deactivates, sustainability that sustains co-dependence on corporations. Inversion of truth. Evil. Hell. Call the demons by their name. They have caused 1 in 6 depression and 1 in 10 psychosis and 49% single parent rate in UK.
One thing I dont understand about the current property market in UK is, from what I can tell from a distance, people are leaving the cities in droves thanks to the ‘work from home’ directive. Also pocketing large profits from inflated market. So how does that correlate with smart cities? Is it a way to empty them out in order to Build BackBetter?
I don’t know how long it will take them. The urbanization is just a step in it, and its rental costs and home prices here in the US. They drive up the rent, which helps to drive up the cost of homes.
There is an apartment complex down the road from me that recently hiked their rent from $1,300 a month to ~$2,000 a month for the same unit. A single car home, which sold for $365,000 a couple years ago, was just purchased for $535,000. These are unnatural price hikes that prevent many people from getting homes and pushes them into apartments. On top of that, homeowner insurance rates and property taxes went up with the hiked value. Its a ridiculous jump.
I saw the Line thing on a Hugo video. He also said he thinks it’ll be a prison, but I think most people can see it. Isolating people from nature makes me wonder if its because they have to keep the wifi in range.
On that note, I checked my phone with a Trifield meter today, while I was using a simple app with ads. Every time an ad changed, the meter went crazy. Sometimes, the “peak” reading maxed out over 20. The instructions safety guidelines state that it shouldn’t be above 1.
We get blasted every time an ad changes in an app we’re using. I didn’t know that until today. The ringer sets it going crazy as well.
We’re in a prison already, our parents were in a prison, the modern lifestyle structure is a prison, its ridiculous scientism explanations of reality, debt based living-for-the-future craving, anti-natural extremist materialism, isolated alienated superficial relationships, lack of local trustful familial community and fictionalised distraction and drugs supplied by the prison controller to vent the stress; is a full scale prison and has been for some time.
It could well be a prison. That prince actually locked up some plutocrats not aligned to him in a “6-star” hotel, some of them for over a year, until they coughed up ill-gotten wealth he had purportedly just heard of.
That’s downtown. (Which, unfortunately, has somehow escaped to the periphery of today’s attention-grabbing things.)
When I attended Sunday school in my primary years we were told that Heaven would be Utopia. Confess your sins, accept Jesus as your Savior, follow Jesus’s way and you will go to Heaven. Maybe living on Earth is Heavenly Utopia and those committed to hell are living in our skewed perception of what Utopia is.
” ‘ …[W]e would throw it all away just for something interesting to happen’ … / This resonates with me. ”
LOL. Hmm … what’s the step above “first world problems”?
This itch may well be true for the majority in the West, but I suspect it is strongly skewed to the protected classes, the uppers and upper middles. (Do you live in this bubble?) The rest of us have had all the excitement and “interesting things” we need, thank you very much, and are probably susceptible to being bribed, perpetually, with universal basic income. As now gradually the SHTF, that number will steadily increase.
So, there will be no rebellion. Not at this stage. We are headed for a pillow-smothering death before the next generation starts to wake up on a mass scale, in jail. You know, a la The Silent Generation’s post-WWII desire for peace and quiet, vs the Baby Boomer rebellion.
But with unprecedented technological power concentrated, unfortunately there might be no way to break out. We need to up our game, and badly.
The psychology is captured, for example, in this interesting stanza in The Specials’ (1979) “Concrete Jungle”:
I won’t fight for a cause
Don’t want to change the law
Leave me alone, just leave me alone
I want to get out on my own
But what used to be a rare, induced (political) apathy in the trauma-ridden is now all too common. Oh, sure, many of today’s apolitical unconsciously pretend to be political by having and expressing (religion-style unshakable) opinions, and they dutifully submit to GOTV campaigns to pull election levers, in order to be supported with (survival-driven) cohort approval — but they no longer actually study and debate as in functional democracies. They(we) can’t handle it any more.
Let’s get past enabling the word meme “utopia” to instantly disconnect humanity from having the intent to create a ideal, just egalitarian society. The 1% control the 99% thru meme wars first, defining words in such a manner as to instantly deflect threats to Bad Parent control of humanity.
Utopia is FAKE. Eutopia, is “the good place” in Greek. If we collectively define “the good place”, voluntarily with secured rights of non-participation and non-harm for those who do not consent, we can have “the good place”. There is absolutely nothing eutopian about mass surveillance or literally any policy being thrown at modern humanity. Anything that is “given” to you is ordered upon you. Any society not voluntary is totalitarian, including all the West where the ruling elite acts as the demonic Commerce 1% Parent telling the 99% Child Serf what’s what.
A tribe of 100 has no authority telling them what to do. They collectively decide what they want and they volunteer/appoint people to provide roles of function as needed. If the appointed exceeded his job descriptions and task, he’s replaced with some who will. The 99% has the authority. This is the Adult. We must allow this human society to evolve to adult societies and not allow the ruling rat 1% to keep us from self governing. Eutopia, yes we can!
The problem is; I think we’ve just been shown that the 99% aren’t capable, of educating themselves sufficiently or humbling themselves with alternative viewpoints, to determine a correct course of action. It’s somewhere around 40%.
“The problem is; I think we’ve just been shown…”
Yes, you’ve been shown (sent) depictions that the 99% aren’t capable, YOU aren’t capable, by the 1% as self protection from us, the 99%. This is a form of spell where they train us to self-police ourselves into thinking we cannot self-rule and send the 1% to the poor farm. Wrong. We can. Yes we can!
We become individuals only within a group. The preferred size of the group by our species is around 25 members…In mass society, or within masses, we are monads…The more people, the less our control over our social environments…Masses are the breeding grounds of fascism…’Representative’ democracy is an empty shell (a spectacle)…
Until the masses become thoughtful collective individuals creatively making a new world together. Without 1% overlords or :”leaders” telling us what to do. We decide and we do not run amok over others. Yes we can.
Your alternative update on #COVID19 for 2022-08-24. Attacking Vital Organs. Cancer up 143k%. Carbon Nanotech & Radioactive Thulium. Unjabbed low mortality (blog, gab, tweet).
Said episode
https://twilightzone.fandom.com/wiki/A_Nice_Place_to_Visit
Linen suit, Panama hat…. works every time.
I’m trying to figure out the point of this article, I think its all about the slow but steady growth of surveillance in society combined with the “if you’re law abiding you’ve got nothing to fear” canard.
With regard to surveillance, all I can say is “Where have you been the last decade or two (or three)?”. Video surveillance has been around since the 1970s, its was limited at first by the relatively high cost of setting it up and the problem of monitoring the feeds. Nothing to worry about, surely? Except that technology has a nasty habit of getting much more powerful and a whole lot cheaper. Its the implementation side of “mission creep”, the idea that what was exceptional a few years ago is now normal. So we’ve arrived at the point where there are literally cameras everywhere and there are automated systems that can monitor those cameras. Traffic enforcement is relatively easy — in the UK its used to monitor vehicles not just for speed violations but parking/waiting, bus lane and registration and other documentation violations. Its automatic as well — no human needed to issue and manage the violations. Its only a matter a time before that type of technology will be applied to humans — it has been already but on a relatively small scale as pilot projects, its just a matter of finding a way to integrate all this power into the enforcement matrix.
Railing against this is really just venting. You have to learn to live with it — just as the fashion for ‘hoodies’ was born of widespread CCTV usage we have to learn how the systems are used and learn how to manage this (and how to poison the databases!).
Things tend to balance out. If you reduce crime in the population through surveillance and control you increase crime committed by the authorities…
A few years ago there was a piece in the Guardian Weekly (before it fully joined The Dark Side) about a device used by the Bolshoi Ballet (?) that was turned on during performances… It would block all phone traffic within the limited theatre area so patrons could enjoy the ballet with disturbances by bleeping ‘phones…Whenever on public transport and some perp is disrupting my newspaper or book reading, or just my thoughts, griping on their ‘phone about their miserable, little lives, i wished devices that blocked all calls, limited to the bus, were available…
In the 1970s surveillance cameras were few… But if needs be affixing a can of black spray paint to one end of a broomstick, and a lead to press down the nozzle, could enable one to put out of commission any overhead intrusive, data gathering spy camera… A simple solution to less widespread technology…
“Those were the days my friend…….” (Mary Hopkins. The 1960s)
It reminds me of the bloke who had trouble in getting to Solla Sollew
My comment was up, then I edited one word, italicizing it, and now “Pending Spam” comes up…??? Please…
Hmmm- it literally said “pending spam”? I didn’t even know that was a thing. Anyhow it was in the spam folder but it was rescued.
We should rejoice in these opposites.
Far from being merely a question of choosing the bad or the good, it seems to me pretty obvious that if everything material was done for us and procured for us, our human consciousness – especially self-consciousness – would never have evolved at all.
We would have become those vegetables which are often referred to in connection with our years of extreme senility.
Without opposites, shadows and possibilities for doing evil, the very notion of ‘goodness’ could not exist.
This is a basic cosmic phenomenon, concerning not only every single one of us, but also the evolution of stars, solar systems and satellites. It’s inescapably existential, and it also has inescapable moral implications for those who regard themselves as human.
I particularly liked the Dostoevsky narrative, since it explains exactly the rationale behind the consequences of the excruciating boredom which leads our wealthy manipulators-in-chief to look for something dramatically nasty to do in order to find relief from the horror of owning and indulging in anything they please.
The cure, of course, is a system of government which ensures that literally nobody has wealth above and beyond their needs.
It’s not going to happen tomorrow – trust me – but neither is it going to go away as an ideal…
The idea would be that everybody works – really works – but everybody is also ensured the tools and environment appropriate to their talents.
There’s enough wealth around for that to be possible, and if we’re going to talk about ‘mandates’ from insane politicians to wear masks and allow ourselves to be used as guinea pigs for experimental substances, then we are also going to talk about compelling the obscenely rich to get a life – a real life – a creative job which benefits society culturally more than it benefits their spoiled children materially.
Of course that’s a revolutionary idea now, because we have already endured decades of having everything surreptitiously streamlined for our ‘happiness’. But it’s also common sense, taking into account that nagging little fact in the background that we are all going to die one day, taking literally nothing with us when we go.
So we might as well start right now to identify with the concepts that endure through the centuries – the concepts that give our lives meaning, to paraphrase Jordan Peterson.
Sure, we can shrug it all off, but then we do nothing but encourage the sickening downward spiral of culture as we know it. Work is the key to everything – and of course by ‘work’ I don’t mean slavery.
Imagine if you bought a green, built a village around it, a chapel and a pub all on private land, each member of the village owned a share, there was one private drive out to a public road, the pub was also a shared kitchen and living room, like an old England meadhall. The government could have done nothing about you all sitting in the pub eating and drinking and being merry during lockdown. The past is the future.
I like it.
But I fear there will soon be no private land left…
Perhaps the distant future may hold more promise.
“private land”
No such thing, except for the chosen few. If you’re not royalty or aristocracy you have to register your land, pay tax on it, ask permission to build on it and hand it over to the government if they decide to compulsorily purchase it.
They are trying to change our mindsets TV Radio Transgender,Black against white,Muslim against religious.Can no one see what evil they are doing?We are all mankind human humanity.Just love your neighbours as you love your family and stop hiding in your house?!?I I live outside of my house I love everyone and I mean that with all my heart.Take away their powers and they have nothing.👍
I don’t love the principalities the evil in high places.The ones that only have their interests at heart the ones that live in palaces and take away your land?Ask prince Charles he took away greenbelt land in Newquay and he’s a land lover yea right.
We can only try and encourage people to switch off their TV.
Listen to the ads now they are making childrens voices to eat non meat and global warming if we are all smart they are making global warming food shortages fuel shortage it’s all a game to them you mean nothing to the rich you are fair game.just like the probably abuse and kill our children?!?They are the synnogue of Satan I don’t know how to spell it but you know what I mean.And now they are culling us what more can I say?!?
They the parasites will never go without.😬
Oh yes they will.
They all have their final day on this earth, and even if having money means you can be ‘miserable in comfort’, it doesn’t exactly make death comfortable either…
Play that TV loud and radio.And internet let’s hypnosis the masses 😬👍
I live in Japan where I sometimes watch Japanese TV with my wife. The masks really bother me. Fucking everyone wears one, even me. Watched a doc about this rugged wild boar hunter who also wore a mask. The news readers are unmasked but are separated by thick plates of glass. Tonight I saw a large oval-shaped barrier between the news guy and the weather lady meaning the plates are now not only functional but decorative! And I moan and curse and my wife tells me to shut up already. I am so fucking angry.
The mask thing is a serious issue…not only Covid masks but the masks worn before covid…it is a clear acceptance of a toxic world we think we can escape…it is now become even more normalized. If we do normalize it, and people start wearing masks simply because it is the thing to do, the very thing we fear will eat us alive and the world, or humanity, will end, People do not in general know what they are confronting. You do, and most of us here do…
Japanese (and Chinese) have been wearing masks for years, well before Covid was invented/discovered. If you’re at a large international airport (ours is LAX) then you will have seen a lot of masked people coming in on flights from Asia.
One reason was to protect against air pollution. Its not worth stressing about.
Nah, I been here 30 years and today’s mask wearing is fucking nuts. EVERYONE (except for tiny babies) is masked. I assume they’re unmasked while mingling at home – maybe, but on the street it’s ALL MASK ALL THE TIME. I need to wear a mask at the gym and I fucking hate it. I simply can’t breathe well. But oddly NOT ONE complaint have I heard from a Japanese. This is some deeply entrenched New Normal shit.
That’s right!
instead of eliminating most air pollution, let’s get everyone to wear masks so the air doesn’t have to be clean.
Not worth stressing about.
And F**k you.
We’ve been made to expect a global society but this is irrational and insane, your society is made up of people in and around your family and environment, that’s it. I suggest getting yourself into an environment of people you trust, maybe some hippies, maybe an offgrid community, a group who can see through all this b.s.; you’ll have a similar belief, cultural practices and expectations and everyone outside of that community, it won’t matter what they do, they’re insane and you won’t need them. Much of the world really is completely insane but there are zones of sanity, it’s time to find them.
A lot of the “old worlds” writers and philosophers had the same function of putting ideas in the heads of the masses as our own dumb down modern times celebrities and movies has. Many of the old timers had rich benefactors which they wrote to please.
I agree Benton!
Are you saying this is true specifically of Dostoevsky?
It’s a general conclusion, but it could maybe also be true about Dostoevsky. To ingrain in the human mind that it would be a bad idea to live in abundance could also be words by proxy from them withholding us from abundance. But since I don’t know him in person I can’t be sure. If people had all things necessary and a bit more it is also possible we would make progress as a specie since putting bread on the table wouldn’t take all day.
I see your point…Also, back “at that time” no telling what these folks were really complaining about…there was a lot of weird social shit going on.
Yes, all time periods seems to have had their own weird shit to handle. Future generation will have a hard time to fully understand the weird crap we living trough right now, if humanity doesn’t become totally “vaccine” brain damaged in the process.
When a lot of different authors/philosophers writes similar things they create a consensus which them lost for words and own thoughts can refer to.
Utopian ideas are born in the worst possible place: in the minds of humans. If there were an agency independent of humanity which mulls it over and comes up with the ideal world, then that world – that Utopia – just might work.
As it is, the perfect world gets envisioned as a laundry list of what people imagine would be good for them. The thing is, of course, they don’t really know – how could they, they’re imperfect?
And asking that which is imperfect to come up with a perfect world, or a perfect anything, is like asking a newborn what his favorite toilet tissue is.
Take seat belt laws for example. Please. To me, it’s a law forcing me to do something that is supposedly “good” for me, to keep me safe. When pushed, the true believers will say that seat belt laws benefit society in different ways, and I can even protect others if I wear my belt (somehow!). But what do you hear when it’s “advertised” by the state. “Buckle up for safety, buckle up!” That’s the stated reason, it’s only when challenged do the other “reasons” come up to try to justify the law.
And now they want to keep me safe by making me take a fake vaccine. That’s what they say, it’s to keep me safe, but again when pushed, it’s all about benefiting society. See what happens, give em an inch and they take a mile. The people get used to it and they keep on accepting.
Ever since I was a young adult I thought seat belt laws were bizarre. I used to believe that all laws were focused on protecting other innocent people, theft is a crime, murder, embezzling money. Seat belt laws seemed to differ radically from that, they were devised to protect the person wearing or not wearing the seat belt. Screw you, I’ll determine if I want to be safe or not, that’s none of your f–king business (I feel this way about helmet laws too). I guess I have always been a radical…thanks for the comment.
The car inner alarm goes off now constantly until you put the seat belt on, *you can not over ride it. The noise is horrific.
25 = years back the work vans would not go past 69mph with signs saying ‘How Is My Driving’ with the company telephone on the back.
*Some have brought a seatbelt buckle and left it in the car plug to over ride the inner alarming telling you ‘You haven’t got your seatbelt on‘.
I seem to have zero tolerance for anyone telling me what to do in order to save others. They can ask, but if they force me I lose it. I guess that is the sign of an immature adult…but f–k ’em.
I was recently cancelled from purchasing on EbayUK. No reason given other than ‘to keep the community safe‘ – they can GFT
It might be relevant to give us a hint as to what you were trying to purchase…
Fauci dolls with pins sticking in them might be an understandable barrier 🙂
The very same approach to bicycle helmet wearing.
The authorities refuse to acknowledge that helmets just protect the head, but DO NOT make one safe.
However, cars are not benign! Depending on vehicle size, an individual will be commandeering a 1200 to 2500 kg personal vehicle. These vehicles are a weapon.
I drive very minimally, prefer to ride a bike so i lessen the chance of killing others.
‘ “I’m in heaven!” he exclaims—until he gets bored.’
Boredom is a punishment, but only for those who have everything that they can possibly want.
I guess I solved that little problem by not wanting too much for myself.
That is also the essence of Dostoyevsky’s writing (not wanting too much), if you ask me.
Surely, decadence is one of the reasons why we are here (if I can shoot rabbits, than I can shoot fascists, so bring it on gung-hoisim that did not pan out well in the Spanish civil war).
But most of the people in the world are have nots, yet they are on the same boat as the decadent people are.
One way out of this for the bored type is to stop thinking about things that he/she wants for itself, by helping others. Virtue ethics.
Ah, well…
This is a great viewpoint…this “not believing we have to have all these things”…which of course ties in with materialism/consumerism and determining true meaning in life and living. Thank you…
Well said.
As I see Dostoyevsky’s gist here, boredom is also a state which is full of temptation to do real evil.
Utopianism only arises in nations without an intelligent inherited mythology and a valid understanding of joy. Philosophers ruminate and debate using their mental faculties and even dosteovsky seems to have fallen for the latter. It’s not that humans can’t do bad things or that suffering can be ultimately extinguished, that’s unrealistic and ignorant, it’s that when there is joy; in the individual and society; those negative things are somewhat softened and copeable.
Western societies have ultimately lost their joy. A human child naturally embodies an unconscious form of joy, it is weadled out very rapidly by western youth ‘culture’ and lifestyle and replaced with stress. Conscious Joy is not happiness because it is stable and unchanging when all about it is traversing from calm to chaos to calm. Joy is a permanent morale. Joy is a spiritual reality that defeats all evil on Earth.
Wise words William.
If only we could remain as children, rather than acting like children… Conscious joy seems a conflict of terms… Dostoevsky made some good points… Then he died…
He wouldn’t have survived long in today’s world anyway…
On a related note, an eminent chief newspaper editor in Iceland, (he’s now deceased) said in an article looking back over his life, “Everything today is disgusting – everything.”
Strong words from a conservative, who knew from long experience on the inside of journalism how bad things had become – and he never even experienced the covid atrocity…
Most people I know would love the idea of the Utopia described.
They all believe that more surveillance leads to a civilized society, some may even think that everyone should be chipped.
Any argument about it gets the cookie-cutter response:
“if you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to worry about”
~ the rebuttal to which is of course,
“then why can’t we see what our government is up to?”
The article is about a different sort of “crime”, though, that of personal freedom.
There are places around the globe that are closer to Utopia than Kanadu.
China, for example, and Israel and North Korea.
Also many megacorporations are set up in a Utopian mold.
It would be fascinating to learn how people cope, as individuals, in such idyll.
Most people are too enmeshed in the daily struggle for survival to reject any bait from those promising utopia.
“I bare, aswell, this electronic surveillance which does nothing but create a distrust that needlessly poisons our society” Jose Mujica, President of Uruguay, UN Speech 2013
Klaus Schwab and his merry globalists at the WEF (World Eugenicists Forum) are making history.
Pissing is golden!.
In fact, all politicians throughout history want to leave their mark on the world, however they can, wherever they are.
So just as dogs raise one of their legs up and leave their mark there.
All politicians want to leave their mark: ‘I have been here and this is my territory.’
All the politicians of the world are doing that, pissing and thinking that they are leaving golden marks.
Making as a declaration to existence “This is my territory” – it stinks!
And the whole of history stinks, and all your politicians simply stink…. of piss!
Doris Johnson, Liz Truss, Pissy Sunak, Macron, Trudeau, Scholz, von der Leyen, Biden. blah, blah.
What is the need of having politicians?
Political leaders are temporary leaders.
They exist in a certain context, when the context is gone they are gone.
These sociopaths called politician have to disappear completely from the earth, for this is the only way for humanity to have intelligence, freedom and a true lasting global peace..
And only now, is it possible.
Before it was not possible, for two reasons: the authentic awakened people were not yet there in the world; and secondly, the politician had not done their worst.
But now after the last three years of this virus manufactured hoax. and with all the vaccine lies and now millions injured and slaughtered, after this last 8 years of retarded NATO WW3 Russian centered aggression, and this last six months with all the criminal western sanctions causing global inflation, fuel and food shortages, and after decades of lies, mis-information and propaganda about the whole fake climate emergency agenda.
Now both things are happening.
The sincere, authentic rebel is being born among you.
And the politician has come to the end of their tether.
They have done the worst, now they cannot do anything more.
What more can they do than to bring about a nuclear war and destroy the whole world?
Before the politician and his nuclear weapons destroy the whole humanity, the few authentic awakened people have to bring fire to every heart, a fire in which the whole political game is finished.
And with the political game finished, the politician will disappear.
This is the only hope.
The existential threat of a nuclear third world war will reveal the politician in all their insane true colors.
Up to now there have been wars, big wars – the first world war, the second world war, and thousands of other wars – but they were not total.
Somebody was going to win, somebody was going to be defeated.
The third world war is going to be a total world war: nobody is going to win, nobody is going to be defeated.
All are going to be finished.
Now this is the ultimate in war, the ultimate in idiocy.
What is the point of fighting if the whole world going to be vaporized and then the remaining humanity will die of starvation through a nuclear winter?
The whole point was that you can win, there is a possibility of your winning.
At the worst you can lose, but the other will win, somebody is going to be victorious.
In the third world war nobody is going to be victorious because nobody is going to survive it.
Neither Marxism nor Democracy, neither American nor Russian – nobody is going to survive it, so what is the point?
But the politician has come to such a state, they cannot go back, the Neo-con fascists don’t have a reverse gear.
They have to keep going on, knowing perfectly well that this is going to end finally in the ultimate destruction of this whole planet, this beautiful planet.
We just need a few hundred authentic awakened persons – not politicians, not priests, not professionals but people who are experienced rebels.
They will become burning torches in the darkness of the night.
They will not become politicians, but they can destroy the whole political structure of the world, and that’s what is needed.
They will not be interested in politics, but they will certainly be interested in the humanity that the politicians have been exploiting for centuries.
They will not take power in their hands, they will simply destroy these parasites and let the power be with the people.
In fact, power should be distributed amongst everybody.
It should be decentralized, there is no need for power to be centralized.
Centralized power is bound to corrupt.
With power decentralized, everybody is powerful in their own way.
Remember, there can be no political revolution, no social revolution, no economic revolution.
We had thought that if you change the society, change the structure, economic or political, then one day the individuals, the constituent elements of the society, will change.
This is stupid.
You cannot change the society first and hope that individuals will change later on.
The only revolution is that of the spirit; it is individual.
To rebel against the whole rotten history of humanity.
Howsoever thick the conditioning may be that has happened to humanity in the past,
it can all be broken.
And if millions of individuals change, then the society will change as a consequence, not vice versa.
Tell the people that there is no future for political revolutions.
Only one kind of revolution is possible, and that is spiritual revolution.
Each individual has to change in their being, and if we can change millions of people then the society will change.
There is no other way, there is no shortcut.
Politicians are a pox upon the Earth.
Ambition is their ‘lover’.
Expedience is their orgasm.
So my comment was rejected as SPAM. I try again without the website link:
and
Please look into a movement that started in France in September 2021 called Solaris.
h t t p : / / s o l a r i s – o n t a r i o . o r g is a comprehensive website in English:
Erm… Ya had me there with political dogs pissing and leaving their mark. But the rest of your comments seem a bit over the top. >>>
“We just need a few hundred authentic awakened persons – not politicians, not priests, not professionals but people who are experienced rebels.”
Erm… “We” need about Eight billion down-to-Earth persons who just stay the fuck out of other people’s business.
The UK is collapsing in slow motion – look at some of the videos posted by Auditing Britain by AB for the evidence. Meanwhile, where I live in Finland, the media over here asked Sanna Marin whether she was being blackmailed! More and more Finns are waking up, and a high proportion know that both Sanna Marin and the Finance Minister, Annika Saarikko were former World Economic Forum, Young Global Leaders. Time to withdraw our consent and become ungovernable. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/oLnGPBMvTb0
UK collapsing: Those accounts (AB) are antagonistic reporting, poking a stick at even a calm bull will achieve aggression eventually.
The stress in the UK is over-medium and has a long history of mental illness and societal decay, authorities help cause this by de-familiarising the culture and society. But the collapse is ongoing for the past 100+ years, largely caused by individualistic economy, isolation and atomising of community and family.
What you’re seeing in these vids is nothing new and they play a large roll in causing the ongoing collapse by focusing solely on negative phenomena and demoralising the people who care, who watch. Notice the many YT adverts on the AB account, he’s probably making good money and he’s helping the TPTB. Even the greatest warrior can be destroyed solely by demoralisation, it’s that effective.
No, I wasn’t referring to AB’s verbal interactions, what I was referring to was the street scenes he captures – streets strewn with rubbish, markets selling knocked-off stolen goods, unhealthy, badly dressed, Brits.
It may be Marxism’s greatest flaw that it offers a devastatingly critical view of things as they are but its view of things as they should be is left as something implied by that criticism. The new must emerge out of the old. But what is the new? Everyone can agree thoroughly with the wrath against exploitation, immiseration, and so on. But if everyone’s material needs were granted, then how would they react? In many ways Schopenhauer was correct i.e. you are only aware of lack, not of actually holding something. Or at least, when you ARE aware of the pleasure of holding something, it’s because you have just acquired it. That is the law of happiness: it could be viewed as a negative i.e. as a lack of pain. Pain is the positive in the sense that it is the substantial thing itself. Pleasure is the negation of pain and only lasts for as long as the thing is being negated or shortly after. Once the pain has passed and the lack of pain continues, boredom sets in – which is another kind of pain.
So what do people want? What do I want? Nietzsche translator R J Hollingdale, on the topic of democracy put it like this (and this obviously wasn’t written yesterday):
“Do you consider every other man and woman your equal, in every respect, in any respect? What does political democracy mean? Is it separable from industrial democracy? Who really rules? (Do you rule?) Are we any closer now to cultural democracy, to an actual equivalence between cultural capacity between man and man, than we were in 1888, when Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ were written? (From tonight’s TV programme: BBC1 – Dixon of Dock Green, The Val Doonican Show, Saturday Thriller: Intent to Kill; BBC2: Rilke on Rodin. Is it two different tastes or two different species which are being catered for here?)”
Last month on the trains all the train guards had on microphone and camera devices to help reduce crime.
Last decade we have seen real wankers wearing this.
It’s their bosses who are the wankers.
These minor ‘officials’ are just guys who do what they’re told so that they can pay their bills.
Worrying about the moral implications of what they do is, to them, strictly for philosophers…
Sounds like typical freemasonic dualism nonsense to me.
On a more positive note, this is probably the best discussion about “the vaccine” I’ve heard in the last two years:
https://odysee.com/@sageofquay:0/Dr.-Lee-Merritt-and-Poornima-Wagh-PhD:b
The Indian virologist is brilliant, not ‘just’ on virology but on science in general. If you’re unhappy that critiques seem to keep coming from the same small group (Kaufman, Lanka, Bailey etc) and want a different voice with relevant system qualifications then this is a must-listen. Her dissection of claims that “the vaccine” is a bio-weapon is outstanding.
It’s a long and at times highly technical discussion so it’s not casual listening or “conspirotainment”. Clear the decks and buckle in…..
Utopia is more dualism. Its doublespeak:
Yep!
Utopia:
1. A world in which everything and everyone works in perfect harmony.
Harmony:
1. Agreement or accord.
Accord:
1. To make to agree or correspond; to suit one thing to another; to adjust.
Adjust:
3. To change to fit circumstances.
One could make the argument that a utopia is a world under totalitarian control, where the people are made to agree, or changed to fit, with circumstances not in their best interests.
One could argue that utopia is nothing more than enslavement.
Todda ? (I digress).
Dystopia is between our ears.
Utopia can be located in our hearts
protesting against police state over-reach is a far, far cry from utopia looming. waste of everything
After reading that Dostoevsky snippet one no longer has to worry why he’s held so high in Western world?
Same as it ever was.
It’s like when they tell me Snoop Dog or Kardashian’s husband is talented.
Unlike some, he actually bothered to shine a light upon some uncomfortable truths.
It is NOT AT ALL like Snoopdashian.