I agree with everything you said except whether capitalism is the “real ideology”. I’d argue it too is just a tool. Ideologies themselves are a tool. I think when you go even further at taking away more and more of the disguise, the real enemy is and always has been an overdose of pure human greed and selfishness, unregulated and out of control. Capitalism is just a way for that greed and selfishness to stand out in public and say “Look at me! Celebrate me! I am a good thing, I am in your best interest! I can help you do things better!” but it’s just a costume that greed and selfishness is wearing to make itself socially acceptable as it grows further and further out of control…
It’s a really nice costume, logical in a lot of ways, makes sense, pretty convincing, but underneath it there’s still just naked greed and selfishness. If we want to truly better ourselves as a society, as a civilization, as humanity, maybe it’s time to set it all aside and really do some thinking about what the emperor looks like when he has no clothes.
Do we want to keep scrambling on top of each other to create the tallest possible pile of humans so the people on the top have the best view, or do we want to try starting to be fucking hippies and stuff again? We’ll never have zero greed and selfishness. And we don’t want to. If we had been completely comfortable, sustainable, happy living as hunter-gatherers, we still would be doing that today. Greed and selfishness are the drive that allow us to grow and explore and develop and become more than we are. But not out of control, not our only overriding goal, not short-sightedly destroying the very systems of life we need to grow, in the name of profit.
I disagree that greed and selfishness are innately driving characteristics to all of humanity, or that those traits motivate more growth and development than altruism and cooperation. Humans, after all, are a social species. I do agree that capitalism incentivizes greed and selfishness, and that in fact it is not possible to succeed at capitalism unless you are greedy and selfish. Because the material realities of our society make success reliant on selfishness, we have more people behaving selfishly than is “natural.”
Honestly though, this is why arguments about “human nature” are all bunk. We are products of our environments at all times. A hunter gatherer behaved very differently to a modern office worker, and both would struggle wildly to adapt to the other’s environment. There is no one pure human nature.
I agree with everything you said except whether capitalism is the “real ideology”. I’d argue it too is just a tool. Ideologies themselves are a tool. I think when you go even further at taking away more and more of the disguise, the real enemy is and always has been an overdose of pure human greed and selfishness, unregulated and out of control. Capitalism is just a way for that greed and selfishness to stand out in public and say “Look at me! Celebrate me! I am a good thing, I am in your best interest! I can help you do things better!” but it’s just a costume that greed and selfishness is wearing to make itself socially acceptable as it grows further and further out of control…
It’s a really nice costume, logical in a lot of ways, makes sense, pretty convincing, but underneath it there’s still just naked greed and selfishness. If we want to truly better ourselves as a society, as a civilization, as humanity, maybe it’s time to set it all aside and really do some thinking about what the emperor looks like when he has no clothes.
Do we want to keep scrambling on top of each other to create the tallest possible pile of humans so the people on the top have the best view, or do we want to try starting to be fucking hippies and stuff again? We’ll never have zero greed and selfishness. And we don’t want to. If we had been completely comfortable, sustainable, happy living as hunter-gatherers, we still would be doing that today. Greed and selfishness are the drive that allow us to grow and explore and develop and become more than we are. But not out of control, not our only overriding goal, not short-sightedly destroying the very systems of life we need to grow, in the name of profit.
I disagree that greed and selfishness are innately driving characteristics to all of humanity, or that those traits motivate more growth and development than altruism and cooperation. Humans, after all, are a social species. I do agree that capitalism incentivizes greed and selfishness, and that in fact it is not possible to succeed at capitalism unless you are greedy and selfish. Because the material realities of our society make success reliant on selfishness, we have more people behaving selfishly than is “natural.”
Honestly though, this is why arguments about “human nature” are all bunk. We are products of our environments at all times. A hunter gatherer behaved very differently to a modern office worker, and both would struggle wildly to adapt to the other’s environment. There is no one pure human nature.