“I’d like to share a revelation I’ve had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized that you’re not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with their surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to another area, and you multiply, and you multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague, and we are the cure.” -Agent Smith
Humans lived for 200,000 years before we started acting like a cancer. It’s not our species that is cancer, it’s the dominator culture that evolved within our species that is the cancer.
I see capitalism more as a tool that arose due to the rise of the dominator culture in our species. A species without dominator instincts would not invent capitalism.
Ok, but why did feudalism come about, after 200,000+ years? Capitalism is just a current incarnation of an exploitative system brought to us by dominator culture. Before Capitalism it was Feudalism. If you back far enough, you get to stable groups that operated for millennia apparently without the need for domination being the primary driver of society.
Using game theory, if the players start out cooperating, this can go on indefinitely, but once someone cheats the game becomes exploitative. Sounds a lot like what happened in our species.
The history of humanity is the history of class dynamics. Feudalism came about as a result of agricultural development and the ability to store products, rather than needing to use them before they expire.
I know that’s the common story, not sure I believe it.
I don’t know that it makes sense to talk about class dynamics at a global/species level until the 19th or 20th century when culture and ideas could spread. Until then any class dynamics were probably intra-group.
Evidence shows that the change from pre-agricultural to agricultural societies was not linear or quick, it took thousands of years and happened in fits and starts in different areas before really catching on everywhere. It doesn’t make a lot of sense that we invented agriculture and suddenly culture changed to protect the crops.
Feudalism did not occur everywhere, it was mostly a European thing
Eh, roughly 1-2% of people are psychopathic and we’ve only really destroyed the Earth since we adopted capitalism, the system in which a very small, unempathetic minority has control of pretty much everything.
But that’s not my largest issue with Smith’s comment. It’s more that an program of his stature definitely should have a better grasp on taxonomy. Viruses aren’t even alive according to some current classifications. Parasitic organisms would be much closer. Unfortunately there aren’t really any parasitic mammals. Vampire bats, perhaps? And that simile — capitalists as vampires (the human kind) — is a bit older than Smith’s virus metaphor.
Marxferatu
“The figure of the vampire is the ultimate individual: predatory, inhuman, anti-human, with no moral obligation to others.”
“viruses are not even alive” - viruses and other acellular entities that are part of what we call life on earth in general are finally starting to be recognized as such: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26305806/
Humans lived for 200,000 years before we started acting like a cancer. It’s not our species that is cancer, it’s the dominator culture that evolved within our species that is the cancer.
It’s Capitalism. Capitalism is humans as cancer. It’s why we joke about late stage Capitalism.
You’re not wrong.
I see capitalism more as a tool that arose due to the rise of the dominator culture in our species. A species without dominator instincts would not invent capitalism.
Capitalism arose as a natural conclusion to the contradictions of feudalism, not out of some vague sense of Human Nature.
Ok, but why did feudalism come about, after 200,000+ years? Capitalism is just a current incarnation of an exploitative system brought to us by dominator culture. Before Capitalism it was Feudalism. If you back far enough, you get to stable groups that operated for millennia apparently without the need for domination being the primary driver of society.
Using game theory, if the players start out cooperating, this can go on indefinitely, but once someone cheats the game becomes exploitative. Sounds a lot like what happened in our species.
The history of humanity is the history of class dynamics. Feudalism came about as a result of agricultural development and the ability to store products, rather than needing to use them before they expire.
I know that’s the common story, not sure I believe it.
I don’t know that it makes sense to talk about class dynamics at a global/species level until the 19th or 20th century when culture and ideas could spread. Until then any class dynamics were probably intra-group.
Evidence shows that the change from pre-agricultural to agricultural societies was not linear or quick, it took thousands of years and happened in fits and starts in different areas before really catching on everywhere. It doesn’t make a lot of sense that we invented agriculture and suddenly culture changed to protect the crops.
Feudalism did not occur everywhere, it was mostly a European thing
Why not? After Primitive Communist tribal societies, class has existed in every major society. It doesn’t need to be global.
Nobody said it was linear or quick, just that class conflict is what drove change.
Sure. Different forms of class society with different contradictions have existed in other places.
Based and Bookchinpilled.
Ah, I see you’re a man of culture as well.
A lady but yes indeed!
Actually I’m an ROUS.
Rodents can be ladies as well, don’t be speciesist.
LROUS
True, before the advent of agriculture 10,000 years ago, human societies were largely egalitarian for around 290,000 years…
Animals don’t form equilibriums on purpose, eg invasive species
Eh, roughly 1-2% of people are psychopathic and we’ve only really destroyed the Earth since we adopted capitalism, the system in which a very small, unempathetic minority has control of pretty much everything.
But that’s not my largest issue with Smith’s comment. It’s more that an program of his stature definitely should have a better grasp on taxonomy. Viruses aren’t even alive according to some current classifications. Parasitic organisms would be much closer. Unfortunately there aren’t really any parasitic mammals. Vampire bats, perhaps? And that simile — capitalists as vampires (the human kind) — is a bit older than Smith’s virus metaphor.
Marxferatu “The figure of the vampire is the ultimate individual: predatory, inhuman, anti-human, with no moral obligation to others.”
“viruses are not even alive” - viruses and other acellular entities that are part of what we call life on earth in general are finally starting to be recognized as such: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26305806/
Are my red blood cells alive, per se?
Also, not to be a quenchcoal, but a single paper suggesting a classification doesn’t really mean scientific consensus on the matter.
As I said, most current definitions. I am aware of different views as well. It’s not my personal opinion, just the prevailing definition.
About the red blood cells - in my opinion, individual cells of multicellular organisms are alive per se, yes.
You’re right about the consensus, but I think times are changing and thinking differently about viruses is becoming a trend.
So your nails are also alive? Or just the nailbed? Or the nails rven alive after you discard them?
Red cells are a part of an organism, but they’re not an organism themselves, so they’re not exactly " alive".
But viruses, that debate is nowhere near as simple, haha.
With red blood cells it’s not as simple either.
Yeah, it isn’t.
Definitions in biology, man. There’s always an exception, and an exception to the exception and…
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