CPD operating "the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site"

[exploited]

I don't think that overpopulation can explain social ills. I think that social anxiety can. Basically there are millions of Westerners who don't see themselves as filling any meaningful social role. Perhaps at one time they would have identified, first and foremost, as a member of their church, the head of their family, as part of a fraternity or labour union, etc. Now all that unites us, like the mice in the experiment, is comfort based upon consumption. And what is the result?

Japanese kids just refusing to bang, like pandas. Teenaged boys who can't get an erection from real women because they are used to consuming porn, not dealing with a relationship. Millions of people who do literally nothing but consume resources and work to consume more of them. Millions who are totally apathetic to any social goal beyond that. Millions who join gangs or extremist groups to gain a sense of meaning, all the while driven by the same desire to consume, whether that means stoning an adulteress to death or killing a random person as gang initiation. Hell, even political protest is a form of consumption these days - it is something to feel good about, not something real (Tumblr v. the women who secured emancipation). Millions who will never have a long-term relationship, not with their jobs, their friends or even their family.

That is what this experiment speaks too. It isn't as simple as attributing problems to one particular cause - but we can at least speak to the role that social anxiety has, even if the causes are diverse.

Stuff like this is allowed to happen because we are largely comfortable. Like the mice, we have all we need - so why rock the boat? These cops aren't some magical force oblivious to social cues or pressure. They are simply acting out on the same lack of meaning as everyone else. What role does a cop really play these days? Most of them don't even work where they live - how can the traditional sources of meaning apply to them? They arent protecting communities, they are enforcing the law. They aren't helping neighbours, they are policing strangers. And so you have many cops now identifying more as soldiers than police officers, because that is the closest source of meaning they have. They derive more worth from belonging to a brotherhood than they do from the social role of police officers, which is supposed to be a healing role.

Non brought up how rural communities are now some of the most violent places to live. And I think that reaffirms my point: rural life has never been so desperate and meaningless to so many of its people. It used to be that everyone worked on farms. Those farms were owned by families. A massive amount of social networking and organization was done through the auspices of farming. You went to the same church as the guy toiling in the fields, who went to the same dentist as the guy who owned the farm. It instilled a real sense of community and social responsibility - and that is largely gone, for good and bad reasons. Now instead of taking pride in their small town, people flee them. Urban centers have rendered them social wastelands, and consequently you have more people who don't see themselves as filling a meaningful social role. Instead they scrape by making minimum wage at a Tim Horton's, working for and with people they don't really know, doing a job they don't care about. Compare that to my parents generation - on my family farm, we had two women who worked for us for thirty years. When the farm sold they were devastated. It brought real meaning to their lives, even though they didn't make a fortune and it was hard work. Similarly, the closed down tobacco plant employed literally half the town at one point - it wasn't just the economy that got hurt when it closed down. It was the rich and vibrant social network that it created and sustained.

We are creating a world where there is no need to have meaningful social roles. We can just eat and f**k and sleep and work, and everything is disposable. That we can't get the motivation to save ourselves seems so obvious when you look at it like that.

[eynon81]

abuse of government authority, or perceived abuse of government authority...was the key issue of the American Revolution and the formation of the United States...a time when the European population of North America was around 5 million.


I'm not seeing over-population as a major or even minor contributing issue. It's mostly about power and control.

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[eynon81]

oh...ok. I am sated.

[The Dharma Bum]

[The Dharma Bum]

I do agree that lack of meaningful social roles is the cause of anomie

those roles have been replaced by automation and outsourced labor. Products are cheaper but now we have a situation where there are not enough roles for everyone to fill.

this is purely the result of class society and private property in combination with technical advancement. We call this separation between social roles and the people who should be holding them "alienation" and it is a undeniable factor in the modern method of production.

Our social pattern is breaking humanity. There is no way that drugs and conditioning will produce a creature that can tolerate what society is becoming.

[The Dharma Bum]

[The Dharma Bum]

you guys realize the reason the NSA doesn't certain information to be revealed is that it shows how closely tied our government is with multinational corporations.

this is who is behind the wars, which are commercial in nature, as all war is.

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014 ... porations/


at some point the general population must be made to see what is going on right under their noses

[The Dharma Bum]

http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/12/mic ... on-valley/

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