The most distressing thing I read recently was that we could solve global warming by planting a trillion trees. It would cost about $3-400 billion in total, that's about 2 billion for each country, and would return the atmosphere to near-pristine condition by sequestering carbon. I calculate you could do it in about 5 years.
It distresses me because I cannot for the life of me think of a way this could be funded and executed. Governments have access to land and cash, but so far their tree planting efforts have been attempts to greenwash themselves and resulted in utter failure - except Ethiopia, which has done quite well because they approach it as an actual acheivable policy rather than a feelgood news story. But one country can't do the whole thing, Ethiopia is doing 4 billion trees, which is 0.4% of the total required.
Ethiopia is doing this because they have problems with drought and deforestation, so they need to "re-terraform" their country fast. Most countries won't bother. So we're left with the private sector.
Again, I cannot think for the life of me how you could make a tree profitable. I suppose you could increase the amount of commercial planting by replacing plastics with wood and paper where possible, then ensuring that the inevitable waste is buried, rather than burned - but there's a limit to that. And fruit trees, too... but most such farms aren't great for the environment as they require tons of water to be piped in, and we need to replace our forests, not build more farms.
Charity: Charities have been trying to solve hunger, a similar problem, for decades, with zero results. Charity is basically a way for assholes to salve their consciences. It does not solve social problems because it is not meant to solve social problems - it is meant to perpetuate itsself, make donors feel good about themselves, and provide tax shelters for the rich.
I fear it cannot be done. It's the collective action problem; like vaccination, we could have done it in the 20th century, when we had a global community and people were less selfish, but I can't for the life of me see it happening now.
The problem is related to Game Theory, the Prisoners' Dilemma, which we are all prisoners of these days. If everyone works together, we all share a reward - the environment gets fixed and we don't have to die. If one or two countries shuck their responsibility, they get a double reward - they share in the improved environment without having to pay their share of the $400 billion. So there's a massive incentive to do nothing, let someone else take up the slack.
But then hey, there's a lot of rich countries that could afford to do it almost single handed! Look at America and China! Even little old Britain could do a good few Ethiopias worth if we pulled our fingers out!
It gets worse, though: If any one country tries to cut the Gordian Knot and makes an outsize commitment they risk the "sucker payoff" of taking on the problem for themselves. Here's what happens: the Prez or PM gets a Nobel Prize and liberals love 'em, but the people don't see any great economic benefit and risk all sorts of socio-economic harm - for instance, the reason the Brazilians cut down their forests is that it is a huge part of the economy, and if they stopped doing it, they'd have mass unemployment and riots in the streets. Not much point when all you get in return is a pat on the head from the Nobel Committee, really.
There are some problems we simply lack the capacity to solve, not because we lack the technology or the money, but because actually doing the necessary work requires a functioning global society, and we don't really have one of those anymore.
...I agree wholeheartedly that the government and big business are up to no good and are essentially using the virus as a biological weapon. We have a lot in common, and I genuinely hope you don't take this post too harshly. I don't mean to be insulting, but you have the facts entirely wrong.
All this stuff about the virus being a big load- It's
not true. The virus is very, very real.
I've read the fake documents pushed by Qanon types, and the reason they are so obviously bullshit is that they all seem to adhere to the same supervillain logic.
Fact check: High level criminals, governmental or corporate, do not refer
ominously to "The Plan" and do not gloat openly about the virus being
profitable with arch quotation marks like a fucking supervillain. Nor do
they refer to "The unquestioning nature of the masses" and ominous
"plans" for "Global Finance and Mass Inflation" or whatever.
In
fact, high level criminals are boringly banal. They hide most of their
crimes in plain sight behind a wall of boring text so laden with jargon
and euphemism that it's almost impossible to decrypt what the hell
they're going on about. They talk about
"derogation from the customary workings of market‐based capitalism",
"Trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights" and "Certain
Provisions of the TRIPS Agreement", not "mwwaaaahahahahaaaa then we'll
kill everyone and the world will be MINE!"
Also
most of the actual documents that reveal their Eichmann-esque thought
processes are publicly available. And they're horrific enough. They
don't need a leet haxxor to reveal the "troof", people don't bother
reading that stuff because it's so boring! Example:
I don't want to be insulting, but there's no nice way to say this: Stop
watching capeshit movies and get off Facebook, they're rotting your
brain. And if you want a conspiracy, a real one, take a look at this shit:
Now that's a real horror, that's happening in the real world: Millions of people in developing countries - most of the worlds' population, in fact- are being held hostage so that pharma companies can make even more money. The system has begun to feed on death - and if you're an anti-vaxxer, or one of the countless conspiracy buffs making it all about you, you're not resisting - you're an integral part of it.
Have some empathy for others and use a little logic. What do you think has happened to all the people who have died? The death toll is in the millions now - What do you think they died of, if they didn't die of COVID? If they didn't die, where do you think they went? Hillary Clinton can only fit so many people in her sex dungeons.
Again, the truth is boringly banal, and all the more horrific for it: Our leaders don't give a shit about us or anyone else: all they care about is their belief that making money is more important than saving lives. If they can make more money by developing treatments for COVID than by distributing a vaccine, they'll do that.
Have you ever wondered why the anti-vaxx movement is joined at the hip to the far Right? Vaccines are the most efficient form of medicine ever developed, and that's a problem for capitalists: They don't "cure" disease, they stop you getting sick in the first place!
Better for Big Pharma that the disease spreads uncontrollably, then it can be cured using free market techniques like charging people an arm and a leg for medication - like they do in America, only far, far worse.
By trying to keep people from getting vaccinated you're helping the virus spread, and that helps the system because it makes it more likely the vaccine proof mutations will breed, and more "cures" will be needed- and pharama companies make so much more cash from those that it's unbelievable.
As it turns out, however, our fearless leaders can't get away with leaving us in the West unvaccinated (Trump tried it, and look what happened to him) - but they can certainly hold up distribution to poor countries. The fact that this is going to lead to millions more deaths and probably leave COVID endemic is incidental to them - the system of "intellectual property" is more important to them than people, and always will be.
Do you see how self-centred and naive you've been, conspiracy theorists? You've been doing your enemies' work for them all along.
Conspiracy theories are just that - theories. They lack hard evidence and they make no sense. Ask yourself a question: Do you believe this stuff because it sounds good and feels right, or because it makes sense?
Thinking for yourself doesn't mean that you fall for a pack of lies because it makes you feel good - it means that you think before you believe some random made-up stuff off 4chan, every bit as much as you think before you absorb the prattlings of the "mainstream media".
By all means, think for yourself, don't take everything the media says on trust. But for God's sake: Think. Because Social Media and internet posts are also media, and they gets exploited by people with even fewer scruples than mainstream media.
Think about anonymously produced stuff: Anyone can make this content, for any reason. It doens't have to be true - nobody loses their job if an item turns out to be false, there's no scandal, nobody has a reputation to uphold or a career to watch out for - it's a complete free for all.A lot of it is just assholes talking shit for the fun of it. Other stuff is guys farming for clicks. And there's no reason to believe a word of it.
(PS yes this is another ex-Reddit comment, expanded massively for a general audience)
Evolutionary psychology is often considered a Right-wing discourse - a reactionary, racist pseudo-science that defends the status quo and allows vast swathes of people to be written off. It could well be misused as such. But scientific truth is true whether it's ideologically convenient for you or not, so I have to ask myself... what if there's something to it?
What follows is the culmination of my own darkest thoughts, and an attempt to answer the classic question: "Why the hell do poor working class people keep voting Tory, why do they support the rich, attack other poor people, and generally assist in their own oppression?"
In no way do I want any of it to be true.
Growing up, I noticed a few things. The white kids were either posh, or thick. If you weren't thick, you were automatically "posh", "middle class", "a keener"...and this was a BAD thing. The black kids didn't have that sort of divide; they were just black. Where we established a pecking order of bullies and bullied, they stuck together - if you were racist, they'd all kick the shit out of you. Fair do's.
Later, at college, I noticed that the computer science and technology department, where all ambitious and intelligent people went, had a disproportionate number of black students, who were far more hard-working and studious than the gang of dole-ites and stoners who made up my own affinity group. This was surprising to me because at the time (the 1990s), black people were being encouraged by the media and popular culture to get involved in crime and were very much stereotyped as criminals.
Have you ever wondered why the English working classes are so stupid? Why white, working class people in particular are so slavish, so devoted to drudgery and back breaking work? Why those who do break the habit of work are so utterly irresponsible, why when they can't work, they smash up nice flats and go on drugs, why they get pissed up all the time? Why they seem to have no creativity and no culture other than patriotism and vapid celebrity bullshit?
Because the industrial revolution was a crime against humanity.
It was bred into them. Literally. Nineteenth century industrialisation was like a breeding programme for stupid people.
In order to get a workforce, ordinary folk were run off of their land in the Enclosures and herded into giant cities. The only way of making a living there was basically to work yourself to death in a factory. These jobs were not only back breakingly hard... they were BORING.
Think of it. Every day, except possibly Sunday, you screw in bolts on an assembly line... or something equally mind numbing. It's noisy, hot, and crowded. If you make a mistake, you either (a) cause an accident, in which case you die, or are crippled and cannot work, or (b) get fired, in which case you die.
This is because chronic unemployment was a killer in those days - instead of going on the dole you had a choice between a life of crime and the Workhouse...
Most crimes were punished by removal from the gene pool - either via the death penalty or transportation to a penal colony.
The Workhouse was essentially a proto-concentration camp (complete with mass graves) in which, among other things, husbands and wives were split up and inmates were NOT allowed to have sex. So for non-criminals, chronic unemployment also resulted in removal from the gene pool... and intelligence strongly implied unemployment, because nobody with half a brain could have possibly lasted in those jobs for longer than a few weeks at most. Certainly not long enough to have children.
And if you were just smart enough to escape? You were also out of the gene pool. You either went to America, or (far less often) you became middle class, leaving your old life behind.
Thus, selection pressure changed the English proletariat. It blunted their sensoria, as those sensitive to the clamour and noise of the factory would have been bred out, it diminished their intelligence and shaped their minds as those who couldn't fit into the drudgery of work ended up unemployed, and so forth.
This explains so much of people's everyday behaviour - not only the popularity of extremely loud, atonal music and noisy vehicle engines, but also people's credulity, the way people have total faith in absolutely ridiculous lies, our vapid culture, our emotional attachment to the State... because submissive and stupid people got to be genetically successful, while rebellious and / or intelligent people were not.
And this explains the failure of social democracy over here (and its success on the Continent). In Europe, they didn't have anything like our industrialization.
European industrialization took place piecemeal and evolved over centuries, rather than being imposed over a couple of decades. European ruling classes were not able to brutalize and enslave anything like that number of their own people until the Fascist and Communist regimes of the 20th century, if at all.
This is why the French working class are so radical - they had no Fascism OR Communism. Indeed, they enjoy a great culture and recent history of Resistance to Fascism in place of our authoritarian "Battle of Britain" siege mentality.
So in Europe they do not have a docile, submissive working class. In Europe, if you give someone a free flat, they do not smash it up, or sell it on and join the yuppies - they have solidarity, not individualism. In Europe, if you try and take away peoples' rights, they protest and often successfully put a stop to that sort of malarkey.
Because in Europe, the working classes have not been bred to be slaves.
This is the tragic thing about working class racism. What our ruling classes did to Africans was some truly Nazi-like evil, and what they did to their own people was some Brave New World bullshit as well - It's not a competition!
Nominally free, 19th century Englishmen would have no escape except death or emigration. Nominally free, the smart ones died, were transported, or left for a new life in the Colonies, while the dumb ones bred... and bred... and bred... and bred....
The UK population quadrupled over the 19th century, and that of England trebled
And now we're a country awash with dummies, whose only use is as a nominally privileged, docile labour force (akin to the Kulaks of old) and voting bloc for reactionary politicians (we call them the "Gammons" over here).
What do you think the ruling classes are going to do with them, when things get tough? What did they do in the past? Ever hear of World War One? The Trenches? Ypres? Millions of people were murdered by the system in a few short years - that's how these scum solve the population problem, they hurl it into some meat grinder of a war. Or encourage them to catch some disease...
This is an unpleasant theory, I know. I don't like it either. But it explains so much - particularly, it explains the affinity of Anglo culture generally for neoliberal capitalism and the far Right. Because Anglos have been stupefied by a kind of selective breeding that took place during our period of industrialization; Eugenics in reverse.
It bears repeating, and social justice activists must understand this: Anglos have a terrible history not just of enslaving others, but also each other. We are cannibals, and the horrific thing about it is, this strategy has been extraordinarily successful. 330 million Americans, 68 million Brits, 30 million Australians and New Zealanders, 37 million Canadians... that's nearly half a billion people who think they are free, but who are deeply, genetically, unfree. Some Brave New World bullshit indeed...
I always wondered why I was different. It's really lonely being working class, or at least, not middle class, and smart, or at least not stupid. Now I know why - my great grandfather and great grandmother came here from Egypt, whose populations were not subject to the same selection pressures, my grandmother was a second-generation immigrant. My grandfather was Welsh and came to England in the 1930s; not much is known about my mothers' family, but they appear to be somewhat French and lower middle class. My people are the smart Anglos - immigrants who anglicised (Great Grandfather Mahmoud changed his name to Richard and shagged his way through three continents before copping it in Canada), smart but sociopathic and thus easily able to climb the greasy pole... apart from my immediate family, who come from a black-sheep progenitor, and that's how I got here.
It's like the Anthropic Principle in reverse; I'm here to observe this stuff because my ancestors weren't part of it. They weren't part of that horrific extermination of thought and mind that took place in the 19th centurty.
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR LEFTIST PRAXIS
It's no coincidence, then, that the Communist Manifesto was written here - by two Germans.
So - What does this mean for Leftist praxis? Nothing good. It's possible this rigid social system is ripe for revolution, but it's bound to end in Soviet-style tears, because the English proletariat are not the superior ubermensch they think they are - they're the descendants of industrial slaves, who have literally been bred to be stupid and authoritarian. Like the Russians, they will recreate the system all over again.
And that, as they say, is why I drink. That's the reason, if I'm forced to define myself ideologically at all, why I'm some weird combination of social democrat and post-left anarchist.
Sure, it'd be great revenge if Big Daddy Stalin came back from the dead and mashed up the fuckers who screwed up this country so bad that people literally believe in the Flat Earth - but what's the point of a revolution if it's just going to change the face of the man who kills you?
