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I hate the world my ancestors have made. I hate the shiny metal prison that uses drugs and manipulative interactive propaganda to try and convince people they're happier or have more agency than a medieval serf.
I yearn for brutality and its reality. I yearn for the truth of man's condition in this Chtonic age of lies.
But most of all I despise those that, as you do, hide their cowardly quest for mere comfort behind a communal social standard that only exists to leech on their betters with impunity.
If rejecting this giant daycare is egoism then egoism is a moral duty.
Well at least you're honest. If you want to go back to an apocalyptic world of brutal violence, Girardian scapegoating, and evil then you're welcome to it I suppose. You and the rest who follow you into hell will reap what you sow. I'd argue that you have no idea what you're in for, but given the fact that you despise me, I doubt you'll listen.
I just hope those of us against that dark vision can stop you before you and your cohort destroy the world.
The world deserves to be destroyed. I don't aim to do it myself though, it's doing fine on its own. All I want is to survive and inherit the Earth.
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Feel free to travel to Somalia, Syria or Ukraine with brutality available to experience. Personally I am entirely not looking for more brutality in my life, thank you very much.
They have. (for "happier" I do not really have enough knowledge to answer, but I also expect that)
Claiming that typical people nowadays have less agency than medieval serf is a quite wild claim. What kind of serfdom you compare to modern life?
I mean I've been to places like that. It is refreshing in a way, but you don't really get the proper experience as a tourist.
Plus none of that is needed, I can just go to my cabin in the woods.
But all my personal tribulations make your quest for comfort that has sacrificed freedom and humanity no less evil, of course.
How many years of manual labor do you need to buy a dwelling for you and your family? How much free time do you have per day? Per year? How much control do other humans have on the way you live your daily life? How many hours do you have away from anybody? How much do you pay in taxes? Can you be conscripted in an army against your will?
I don't find it wild at all personally once you actually look at what is going on instead of the stories people tell about what is going on.
But of course the only answer when we start to look at the grim reality of modern man is to clutch at the true purpose: comfort. Oh but wouldn't you just get sick and die, wouldn't it all be very hard work? Yes, but at least you would have lived a human life and not that of a machine.
I'm not stopping you from retiring to your cabin in the woods where you can bask in the absence of civilization all you want, while you don't seem to be satisfied unless everyone is plunged there along with you. I find your way far more imposing on freedom.
Unfortunately if you did practice what you preach you wouldn't be able to prove it because you wouldn't have network.
Somehow, though I've found a lot of red tape to constrain me to live away from civilization, I fail to see the coercion I have ever generated.
Must be of the invisible sort that only exists to grasp at when one doesn't want to consider alternatives to their position.
You sound like the people who call out socialists for using phones made by capitalism or call out Christians for not being socialists like they imagine Jesus was. Have you considered that people can have belief systems that aren't constrained by the principes you yourself hold?
Cop-out. Is a communist blameless because right until his party took power, he had not coerced anybody?
This is a nonsense question, communists do not believe coercion is immoral.
But I fail to see how this is relevant to my position. I'm merely exiting from society. Are you saying I deserve blame because I intend to create a society you disapprove of once this one is done for?
Am I, the individual, unfairly restricting the will of the State by having thoughts and desires that go against its will? Is mere dissent a moral crime? Well tough shit, I'm not a fascist.
If fellow serfists came to power and reinstated serfdom by force, what would you do?
Do you equally take responsibility for all the impositions of the system you're currently defending?
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For the record I don't believe serfdom is morally justified because it subverts competition between rulers. I believe in exit rights after all. All I'm saying is that those people lived generally more free and human lives than we do today. Not that their system was perfect or something I literally advocate for.
That said, since we want to play cards on the table, I am indeed in favor of a new feudalism. So if people do manage to make patchwork a reality for some or most of the world I'll rejoice. I don't see why I shouldn't or how that's hypocritical however.
It's not like people are stealing land to make it happen, most of the current projects I'm following are both completely voluntary and paying for whatever land they want to occupy in the first place. That's more ethical compliance than most historical homesteaders ever had.
I'm sure any actual world order would have to concede some of those principles on the altar of practicality, as they always do, I'm not naive. But I see no reason to prefer the rules based order over the concert of nations. So I don't.
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How many times have you had to fight for your life against an angry mob? A wild animal?
How many times have you had to face starvation, or thirst, or truly look the spectre of death in the face?
When in your life have you had to sit back while a corrupt noble comes in and rapes your wife and daughter?
You are so deluded it would be comical if your ideologies weren't so dangerous.
More light, less heat, please.
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I did once run from a mob and had my share of wild animal encounters by now. I also got pepper sprayed and robbed at knifepoint by lowlives some years ago. Turns out cities are much more dangerous than the countryside in my experience, especially if like me you are armed.
If anything this is how I ended up believing what I believe.
I've been poor, but it is legitimately impossible to starve in the modern world if you're not mentally ill. I did almost freeze to death once and I think that one counts.
I'm not a modern day German, so never. And I never will.
I fully understand that my beliefs are outside of what you deem acceptable, but it's fine, I also think yours are. The difference is that I actually have reasons for my belief that don't boil down to increasing my comfort at any cost.
My reasons boil down to the fact that I think violence is wrong, and I believe in the Christian ideal of suppressing our urge for violence. Fighting for a future where humanity can be something better.
Yeah I don't think upholding Christian ideals is the route you want to take in arguing for transhumanism -- it's extreme hubris and rejection of God rolled into one (either of which tends to be rapidly fatal in the OT, and non-negotiable bars to salvation in the NT), almost inherently and certainly in practice. "Another bite at The Apple", if you will.
I'll reconcile it eventually. Meanwhile I'm comforted by Christians of the past who were dedicated to raising our fallen world into a Heaven of its own.
Ain't no goin' back, man
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Interesting. I don't really see Christianity as incompatible with my goals or even in large disagreement with my complaints about modernity.
In fact I don't disagree at all that man is a beast that has to be tamed and that violence must be correctly contained to appropriate settings. Do not mistake me for a savage. The quest for a more brutal truth is not the quest for slavery to the passions.
If anything my complains are fully translatable to Christian theology. The modern world is a tower of Babel, and this aim you speak of to make humanity better is the scourge of hubris. And is destined to ignominious failure. Man is as he has been made and he will remain so until judgement. Salvation is not to be attained by making ourselves perfect but by seeking redemption in Christ.
Besides, the Christian ideal as I understood it has never been to completely renounce violence, but to tame our nature to prevent us from using it unwisely. Jesus himself had to right some wrongs by the sword and I've seen many scholars insist that his message is not one of weakness but of properly restrained strength. Blessed is the soldier who keeps his weapon sheathed and is patient in dealing with others rather than use anger, even though he very well could overpower others and get his way. Or as the mistranslation calls him, the meek.
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I don't think these happened all that often.
I think the lack of these is precisely what he's lamenting.
The feeling's mutual.
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Dwelling of quality matching one that serf had? Zero, better is available for free and abandoned. I prefer to pay for superior standard.
Much more than serfs. Much much more than median, but that is also higher than what serfs had.
For start, I am allowed to leave settlement where I was born. I guess you can find axis on which serfs had more freedom but overall this claim seems extremely shaky.
Can you be more specific? Freedom of selecting how I will work, freedom of movement are fairly important to me and would not switch to serfdom unless forced.
Are you under impression that serfs could not be? And I am vastly less likely to die in war than serf and vastly less likely to be conscripted. And in case of conscription I am vastly more likely to survive.
Less than serfs, unless you mean some nonsense metrics like absolute tax value. Or you do not count mandatory work as taxes.
On any meaningful metric like tax burden I pay less.
As much as I want, unlike serfs (though if anything I would focus on family/meaningful connections with others - that seems much better target if you want to go "we are in worse situation than serfs")
You're not allowed to live in shantytowns and shacks, you're not even allowed to build them, I know men who tried, eventually the constabulary comes to kick you out of your illegal out of code dwelling and force you to pay into the racket.
Best I've seen is people who convert existing farming structures, and that runs you at least some years of labor to buy the land.
You'll have to forgive me, I don't see our 80 days a year of mandated holy rest from here.
I'm not talking about freedom to choose what you do for a living, the modern world clearly requires that flexibility and thus give you much larger on paper freedom there. I'm talking about the amount of scrutiny you get doing this work, hence why I follow up with asking how long of a time you spend away from anybody's gaze. But that one's not really a contest, the serf doesn't have a black rectangle in his pocket that tells everybody where he is and allows them to summon him at all times.
Outside of perpetually insane places, such as Russia, conscription has been viewed as abominable throughout the middle ages and a clear act of tyranny. It took a literal revolutionary government beset by ennemies on all sides to change that norm in France. And the change of that norm led to the Napoleonic era and the invention of total war.
People always seem surprised when they learn about this, but ask any medieval historian and they'll tell you just this.
I don't think I need to say anything here really.
lets take simple one...
For start, weekends alone give you 105 free days in 2023. Add to that public holidays, paid holidays (last one may not apply in USA, I guess - but I expect that you can still take unpaid time off).
Also, [citation needed] for that 80 days.
Also, you seem to narrow down from serfdom in general to some specific variety. Can you be more specific? Again, what kind of serfdom you compare to modern life?
(all numbers are for comparison purposes only)
If I earn 6 000, got taxed 3 000 while serf would have total income 600 and got taxed 500 then my tax burden is lesser. Despite that I pay 3000 and serf 500.
If I earn 6 000, 4 000 going to taxes then burden may be still lesser than earning 600 and getting taxed 350.
Obviously this comparisons are fraught with problems given that vast majority of tax burden for serfs was mandatory labor, which could be treated also as payment for land (and partially was). And many restrictions both past in modern are effectively taxes.
Medieval historian friend of mine gave me that particular figure, Of course it's more complicated than that, but if anything it's a lower bound you can work out out of Urban VIII's limitation of non sunday days of obligation to 36 in the 17th century. Bishops could institute at many new feasts for their dioceses as they wanted before then and you'll find larger lists if you look for them.
But really what we're arguing about is the total amount of work people put in and how comparable it is to the modern work week, which is unsurprisingly a debated topic. Lower estimates, such as what you'll find in Schor's heavily quoted book are around 150, higher estimates are about 300. But fittingly for this thread since Schor's book became popular it's become a culture war topic that people use to push various labor related agendas so I'm disinclined to believe any American view on the matter.
I'm mostly going off Pierre Goubert's account which is definitely on the lower side of that debate, but I don't have those books around me to give you a proper figure from him.
I'm really only talking about what I know and have been taught about, which is its form in Anglo-French civilization.
Oh I see what you mean.
I think a better measure is effective total tax rate. Though as you say that's more difficult to measure because there were so many different entities at the time and most of it was in kind.
We do have extensive scholarly work on that in my country because tax has such a storied history in France and was one of the specifically claimed reasons for the French Revolution.
The way the historians measure it, since it is mostly composed of indirect taxes, is to measure the amount of days worked a year.
François Hincker in his book on this topic Les Français devant l'impôt sous l'Ancien Régime, which I eventually read because it was quoted on one of my exams, gives us a pretty stunning figure that stayed with me:
18 days total, which can be compared to say, France's current mean total tax rate of 56.9% which with the equivalent average salary computes to 208 days yearly to pay taxes.
Now I'm not saying the comparison holds for every place in Europe at that time, but when De Jouvenel and others argue that the revolution actually worsened the tax burden for everyone including myself, I'm inclined to believe them.
Well, that is still lower than just weekends. So not sure is it a win for serfdom.
How many days of work for manor lord were obligatory for a typical serf? Or is it something that have not existed in England/France or was removed quickly? ( https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pa%C5%84szczyzna seems to not have even equivalent page in English/French).
that seems quite likely given that events that lead to revolution started from France being basically bankrupt
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daily, you mean.
The real question is how many days in a year does he need to work to feed himself? Let’s say he only consumes bread. One kilo of bread was 0.3 francs. So they both need, and ancien regime worker gets as his entire salary, say 200 working days times 3.33 kilos = 666 kilos of bread a year. Cheap bread’s 3 euros/kilo, so modern counterpart needs 2000 euros to live all year, or about a working month. Clothing and butter are even cheaper comparatively.
Edit: that’s... very little bread, actually. Hard to believe they were this close to starving. A kg bread is 2200 kcal, so he gets 3800 calories per day (not just working day) to feed his family. And nothing else. No meat, no clothes, no rent, no entertainment. I guess they must have eaten potatoes, which cost only 0.02 francs per kilo. That’s 10 tons of potatoes yearly salary, or 19 000 kcal per day. That’s more like it, now they can afford clothes and the poule au pot on sunday.
I think you're confusing franc and livre which were two different currencies used at different times.
You're correct that food was expensive though, the twilight of the Ancient Regime was a time of famine after all. But not that expensive. I recall reading people spent half of their income of food.
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