Sexual Morality.

Sexual morality probably comes from the fact that humans mate year round. Animals just mate once a year to procreate, and then stop. They don't need sexual morality. Humans do, so they need some inborn restraint, to prevent things like overpopulation. Some sexual offenses are meant to protect individuals and society. But that's different.

 

How's that working out for you?

 

Population growth was controlled by food production which in turn was controlled by the limited amount of Nitrogen in the soil. Then came the invention of fertilizer which happened right before the graph curves upwards.

Since fertilizer production is dependent upon oil, coal and gas in its manufacture, this does not bode well for the human race as we quickly use up what is a limited resource.

 

I don't know if I agree with the premise of this argument, because there is no universality to sexual morality. Incest for example, is accepted in one form or another among numerous cultures and traditions. pedophilia is a relatively modern construct. Pacific island cultures, where you would think population growth could be an issue, traditionally, tend to have very little of what we would call sexual morality. Gender equality as well varies from one culture to another.

I agree with the school of thought that our most distant ancestors were very promiscuous, which was innately designed to assure a healthy and diverse gene pool. In time, fertility became a serious issue for our ancestors. At first, for the game of our hunter-gatherer ancestors, then for the animals as we began to domesticate and develop animal husbandry. We know that even our paleolithic ancestors understood a connection between menses and the moon, as we have found yoni shaped lunar calendars. So there was a mystical sense to our sexuality and the magic of birth, and sexuality took on a spiritual significance. Initially, I believe there was an equality to the sexes, and that male and female were two halves to a sacred whole. I argue this because of the fact that you find a sexual equality in many indigenous cultures that you do not find in the so-called civilized ones, and also because of linguistic roots around the language of sex. However, the Goddess rose up in control of fertility and the yoni became all powerful. It was about this time, or shortly after that mankind begin to congregate into small farming communities, which developed into villages and lager communities.

It was at this stage that institutions began to form, and I argue that spirituality evolved into religion. As man began to control more and more of his food resources, and his means of production, he began to understand the concept of in-group and out-group, and this in turn gave him a sense of property, and he began to see things in a more rational and objective manner. He was no longer a subjective piece of nature with limited control over his life and ability to feed himself, but instead was becoming a dominating force that could objectively shape nature to his will. We can add to this the fact that, innately, we are all still very promiscuous. We hide this with the social constructs of marriage and morality, but deep down, I would argue that we all are driven to keep our gene pool diverse and healthy.

Initially women had control over fertility and thus were the leaders in this process as I mentioned, the goddess and the yoni reigned supreme. The feminine however, fits with a more passive subjective view of nature and we could say that it connects to us at a more subconscious level (not to say that women are more passive, as each of us have a masculine and feminine aspect to us). The yoni appeared all over---in the shape of early corrals and barns, for example.

But as man began to understand the concept of in-group out-group, he began to see the world in dualistic terms, which fit in with his gaining a stronger objectivism in seeing the world around him. This in turn validated and strengthened his understanding of property. The masculine began to rise up, and rebel against the feminine. The masculine, being more conscious and objective, was a better fit to his desire to control his reality. The male god became dominant. It is here that we see the rise of the patriarchy. The patriarchy sought to control reality through his objectivism, his duality, and his understanding of ownership. It is because of this that we see a development, or a stronger development, in sexual morality. Not as a means of controlling population, but as a means of control and ownership.

 

Morality is a construct of Humans, it is as much a crutch as religion is.
Personally, I am noticing a shift in the Human condition, one that may save it for another few generations, but will ultimately result in extinction.
The current population of the Earth is dying. I know that sounds like an obvious conclusion, but I'm not saying that all things die. The fact is that we have a problem. Childbirth rates are down globally.
There is no place you can see that better than in Japan. Like Japan, all of our viable sources of childbirth are dwindling, either through age, asexual abstinence, or voluntary gender reassignment.
Regardless of what some factions would have you believe, Humans are incapable of spontaneously swapping functional gender roles. It is true that there are species on the planet that are capable.
We know of many species of fish that are capable of sequential or spontaneous hermaphroditism. We do have what used to be called hermaphrodites, now termed "Intersex."

Yes Intersex persons do possess both Male and female presenting ,external genitalia, but they are at times either not complete, or do not function properly. Many known intersex are surgically reassigned at birth to prevent any ambiguity.
(That's not a subject for this post though). You will frequently hear such axioms as "Nature finds a way." What I have been seeing, only because I have nothing better to do than research the odd and unusual.Intersex Births are on the rise.
To me this signals a form of desperation on the part of nature (if you wish to give it a human countenance) to save the species.

In the 1950's, Columbia University Graduate (BS, MA, PhD) and Award Winning Science Fiction Author, Isaac Asimov, wrote about a sub-culture of Humanity that split off from the Mother planet and established a colony in deep space, where they perfected the science of Asexual Reproduction. Eventually this led to their society becoming so minimalist that they could live, work, eat and exist without contact from other humans. They would live on compounds miles apart and only interacting by video feed when trade was necessary. There were no births until a death was imminent, and then the process would be automated and the new born would be ready to take over for the dying adult almost immediately upon passing. That civilization ended up remaining isolate nearly 20,000 years, and by the time it was rediscovered, the population had dwindled from the thousands to less than one hundred.

Morals change, concepts of sexuality will change. Will it be a good thing if Humanity learns to reproduce without partners? I cna't say. But what I do know, is that at this rate, our future will be violent and lonely.
Even groups that advocate for unity and inclusion, fight among themselves. How can you have a peaceful, and moral society, when your own group can't determine what is peaceful and moral? That or the whole of the group is led around by the nose by a single deciding personality that controls what is right or wrong.

 

That's very interesting. I am not so pessimistic about our future, but I do believe we are living at a crossroads, and depending on which way we take, as I have said on this forum numerous times in the past, the future tool that defines our existence will either be a sharpened stick or a quantum computer. I haven't considered biological aspects of this though.

I spent 20 years living in Japan and in some ways when this latest trend in birth rates began, I was not surprised in regards to a segment of the population. Unfortunately I came home from Asia in the 1990's and have not returned, except to the Philippines (as I have a Filipina wife), since. I try to keep up with what is happening there by reading and watching Japanese media, but I remember going to Manila for a month or two and returning to Japan to see changes that happened across the country just in that month. It is such a dynamic culture. I have always been curious to how significant this trend is. My wife keeps talking about going back there, but then COVID changed our plans and so forth. Maybe next year.

On the other hand, I have described the Philippines, including on this forum, as an exaggeration of Western culture. All the problems, vices, sentiments, and existential crises of the west are exaggerated there. The Spanish, through the Catholic church imposed strict sexual morality onto a people that had the sexual freedoms of other Pacific cultures and the result is a country where no one can get divorced and everyone commits adultery. (Then again, over the past several decades I have only visited and not actually lived there so things may have changed since I did live there, though I doubt it). I spent about 5 years all together living there before coming home to the States in '97.

My wife and I have done our part to sustain the human race. We have 5 grandchildren. Yes, once a month we make the kids come over to our house and make babies in front of the cameras.

I'M JOKING!!! Ok, we didn't really play a part in having the kids give us grandchildren. Well, not directly---I would say that my wife, not allowing her daughters to date while they were in High School played a part in why our oldest grandaughter was born. (And there's that catholic imposed strict sexual morality coming back to bite again). But that's another story.

I have a lot of thoughts on this, but unfortunately don't have time, so I'll respond more later.

 

I believe that currently, the average number of children a women in Japan gave birth to fell to 1.26 in 2022, down from 2.06. According to Japan’s internal affairs ministry, more than 800,000 Elderly Adult Japanese Nationals passed away in 2022.

Women in Japan are increasingly reluctant to marry and have children, because of financial pressures and traditional gender roles that force many to give up work as soon as they become pregnant.

I would love to go there and study the culture first hand. I've spent a lot of time reading about Japanese culture and history, and this may sound a bit morbid, but I want to see what a culture in decline looks like up close. Problem is that I can't go there. I wouldn't be allowed. Except maybe for 10 days or so as a tourist. Not enough for what I want.

My Medical conditions make it impossible to bring my medications with me, and I can't be without them. My age makes it nearly impossible to get gainful employment in Japan, so I would be no more than a burden on their system. A shame really, since they have taken steps to make the country more amenable to foreigners over the last couple of years. I hear the Government has bene sponsoring more Western/American style residential and commercials districts to help bring foreigner into the country again.

Just a passing thought, Was it the Philippines or Thailand that they would select young boys and force them to live as girls? I remember hearing something about that once, but never paid too much attention at the time.

 

Another factor at play, as I understand, is men who are not interested in dating or marriage, but would prefer to play video games, or watch sports and so forth. My first wife was Japanese, and her younger sister was married to a guy that was as boring and quiet as could be. His only interest was baseball. She would walk around their apartment in a thin jimbe, which is a loose fitting summer clothes, and no underwear, including when I was there. Her husband would just sit and watch baseball. She would flirt with me and showed a lot of attention to me. and we would have great conversations, where I would hardly hear a word from him. I know she was starved for attention.

In fact, I found Japanese guys in general to be boring, while the women were always very interesting and loved to socialize with me. Japanese women are hot for foreigners, which is true all across Asia. A lot of this has to do with the novelty and uniqueness of dating a foreigner, but I think that there is the added benefit that they actually have someone to talk to. I wouldn't say that this is a new social phenomena for men, as that has always been a typical Japanese male persona, and somehow Japanese women fall in love with them and have children. Perhaps as Japanese culture becomes more westernized maybe Japanese women are wanting a more interesting partner. (Japanese women were anxious to spend time with foreigners, even sleep with them, but I think many were afraid to fall in love, as then there was the question of whether he would stay in Japan, or she'd have to move abroad. But just about every Japanese/foreign couple I knew ended up marrying, i.e. she quickly fell for him. I saw very few Western girls in relationships with Japanese guys, they tended to find them boring too. In places like the Philippines, the added benefit was, as they called it, a blue passport----every Western foreigner was assumed to be an American, and many of the girls there were anxious to live abroad.)

It is a really fascinating culture, and very complex. Your first impressions of Japan often turn out to be wrong, and when you finally realize something that seems to be true, you discover the exact opposite is also true. I first went to Japan as a student (as a philosophy major which I later changed realizing that the life I wanted to live after being in Japan required money) and eventually worked in the stock market there. This connected me to everything from Japanese high society to the seedy world of yakuza. This was even more so after I met my Filipina wife. She was a TV actress, but being a Filipina and very beautiful a lot of night clubs were always trying to get her. She would introduce her Filipina friends who did work in night clubs, so she made a lot of connections that way, which sometimes were yakuza as well. Then of course there was the exciting world of the stock market itself. It was the 1980's and if I was ever going to teach a class on the Japanese culture of that time, one movie that I would certainly include as class material is a movie that came out in America under the title, A Taxing Woman. It is about a woman tax evasion investigator, and it portrays the Japanese world I saw better than any other movie I have seen. Many of the characters were just like people I knew. It is fictional, but it is based on real events.

(Coincidentally, about the time I met my Filipina wife, I was an analyst for Shearson Lehman, so I knew most of the real life characters portrayed in the movie, Barbarians at the Gate, not the people that worked for the tobacco company, but those that were with Shearson Lehman and American Express. In fact I met a lot of big names through that position---I talked to Adnon Kashoggi numerous times, Henry Kissinger was a director, I met Trump one time--and it took a whole minute for him to insult me, because I did not agree that tariffs were effective (our interaction lasted no more than a minute or two as I recall, T. Boone Pickens was another figure I interacted with.) I was still a long haired hippie, though often times my hair was not as long, but it was definitely shoulder length most of my career. Again this was the 80's when Dress for Success was every yuppies bible, so I often point out that I must have been a pretty good analyst because I was able to keep my job despite my hair. I had a real knack for picking stocks, so I was considered good---some of it was luck, some of it was reading charts, and some of it was my interest in philosophy and culture.

As to your last question, that doesn't sound like the Philippines, and I don't know if such a thing actually happens in Thailand, but I will say that there are a lot of transvestites in both countries. In fact I have a sister-in-law that was born as a male. In the Dayak culture, an indigenous sea-faring culture that lives in the Philippines and Indonesia the transvestites are believed to be the strongest healers. They also have healers that are not actually transvestites, but take on the transvestite persona to become a healer. But, of course, the actual transvestites are the strongest healers in that culture.

I still want to respond more to your previous post, but I am getting too tired...

 

Some serious factors I see that are playing a role in this global falling birth rate include what could be the dying stages of capitalism and the impact on our lives of social media and technology.

As to capitalism, if we don't change our course, the whole world will be composed of two-class societies and the lower class will be living in a Dickensian nightmare. (Actually, many Americans already are and don't even realize it--if you adjust the wages for inflation that the characters made in Dickens' novels, they would be higher than many people make today, certainly higher than minimum wage.)

Before moving on, let me point out that this also exasperates another serious problem that hardly anyone is aware of, but I have written about it before on this forum. In about 2012 a Swiss economic research institute did a study on the flows of capital around the world. They wanted it to be more comprehensive than ever before. What they discovered is that the ownership of corporations around the world is clumped into groups, which are then clumped into a single super group of ownership---in short, almost all corporations of any significant size are all ultimately owned by a relatively small number of multinational companies that also own each other.

This is not the result of some conspiracy or secret cartel---rather it is just the way capitalism tends to evolve. If you are the investment manager of a large multinational corporation making big bucks to invest the company's investable capital, you aren't going to risk your job and put it all into high risk small companies. You will put some of it into such firms so that you can try to get a higher return, but you are going to invest a good portion of it into other large multinational companies that offer lower risk. The companies at the top of this mountain of capital ownership are too big to fail, and at the next level you have companies also too big to fail, and this is more true than what governments and their first year college level understanding of economics realize. If Sony, for example, were to fail, it is not a Japanese problem, it is a world problem. A failure of one of these companies risks causing this whole structure to implode. An economic scenario, where such a thing could happen to one of these firms, would be a credit crisis, and that is already a depressionary event. So we have reached a stage where governments in the major first world nations can't screw around anymore when faced with a credit crisis, unpoplular decisions have to be made, and too-big companies have to be saved. (When Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008, the government had the means to save it, Geithner likes to place all the blame on the CEO, Dick Fuld, and the banks and so on, but I paid close attention to everything and I know that there was a lot of discussion in Washington of, 'Let's see what happens if they collapse,' leading up to that fateful day. Most people do not know what happened, but credit markets froze up, and we came very close to a climactic failure of the world's credit markets. Too big to fail companies today, are even much too bigger to fail.

Anyway, back to the discussion, the cost of rent, or to buy a home, medical care in the US, the cost of food----we are strangling the middle class. And doing worse to the lower classes. I was appalled by the unjustified inflation following the pandemic, and that we are still suffering from today around the world. Some of the inflation was justified, and certainly smaller companies had no choice but to raise prices because of their costs. BUT---if a company is raising prices and making record profits at the same time----the people should be showing up at their doors in a large gang with pitch forks and torches and screaming for the board of directors and the CEO, as if they came to destroy Frankenstein's monster.

Corporations, which have no social contract to the people, have been gaining power since the days of Reagan and are now out of control. The federal reserve can do all it wants with the interest rates, and they are very effective at running the economy, but now with the nation's meat packers, for example, with anti-monopoly restrictions removed, and being that they are all owned by just a few people, the Fed will never bring down the price of steak, or ground beef, or even the price of a hot dog filled with throw-away parts of animals. Meat packers can basically charge what they want, and everyone, including the farmers that grow their meat, are at their mercy.

How can people responsibly bring a new life into this world when they can't even afford to live in a place they can call home. I think this situation is already at crisis levels but no one knows it because corporations have the power to sway public opinion, and certainly influence politicians, especially one party in particular which I won't name, but their initial rhymes with the first letter of the foreign nation that is a long term adversary, but still obviously has too much influence over key people in this party. No it is not Denmark, or Dominican Republic, or Delaware (that's the wrong party, and Delaware is not a country).

This problem--which boils down to the distribution of wealth, income, and power, or in one word--Greed, is not just one of having babies, but a key part to issues of homelessness, drug abuse, the increased polarization of, not only our nation, but the world, and so on.. This is also not a problem of conspiracy. Conspiracies muddle up the truth, and point us to look where we shouldn't be looking. Conspiracies point us away from the real problem. Conspiracies are kind of like when poor uneducated people, and older people, fed up with the way government and the wealthy treats them, turn to a wealthy con artist to be their president who says, I will help you and life will be so wonderful, even though he actually screws them over left and right while helping his wealthy friends, and enabling them to take even further advantage of the schmucks that voted for him.

I will talk about technology in my next post. I mean, this stuff is probably obvious to you already, but...

 

I've heard of the desire Japanese women have for foreign men. The one thing I have heard from so many that go to live there, is that the fear of them leaving is justified, for no other reason, than it takes too many years for an American Man (for example) to gain permanent residency. Even once they achieve it, they still experience the stigma of being Gaijin, always treated as an outsider. In some cases not able to enjoy basic rights and privileges. And of course never having a say in government, no voting right. Now this information comes to me from friends I've known who moved there with the intent of staying, but came back after five or six years. I also have to take into account my personal experience of gaining my ESL certification and then being told be hiring agencies that I was too old to be able to work as an English teacher. That was when I was 48. they told me the cutoff was 40.

Sad tale with silver lining,with regards to an acquaintance I had in Sendai that I would trade Ideas with for Dungeons & Dragons games, as well as him sending me his artwork, renderings of how he saw the characters I created. After the 3/11 Tsunami, I lost touch with him. I never did find out if he survived. Only knowing him by his screen name it's pretty impossible to find out. However, and an ALL concepts I may have had of Yakuza faded into the mist when the US News stations broadcast video footage and reports of trucks loaded with food and emergency supplies breaking barricades and entering the disaster zone against orders to stay clear. It was reported that several Yakuza factions had banded together to bring unsolicited aid to the people in the Tohoku region. From reports of survivors in the area, they didn't even ask to be reimbursed for doing it.

I did have a chance to go to Japan after graduation in 1980, but the offers I got from Southern California Universities was too good to pass up at the time. I kick myself now for it, but don't regret the degrees I earned. I am kind of jealous of my friend who did go. He didn't get the degrees and the laurels, but he got 1st hand training in the same fields, on the job.

Was just wondering, because I had seen a documentary at one time about how these "Poor young boys" were forced to live as girls, and yet the supposed victims they spoke with all seemed rather happy with their lot, and enjoyed being who they were. I've heard a lot about the "NewHalf" culture in Japan, as well as the trans culture throughout Southeast Asia. None of it seems to be the tragedy that the news portrays it as.

 

I just have to laugh when I hear people talk about the conspiracies that are ruining society. If you look at things objectively it is easy to see, that it is all a consequence of people's greed. Material "THINGS" mean more to most that even their own health and well-being. I'm not going to point fingers, because everyone falls prey to it at some point. Right now I have to rely on certain "THINGS" to actually ensure my own well-being. But if those that assist me in maintaining it, would give up their Elon Musk specials and Million Dollar Yachts, maybe things could start to normalize. The desire for multi-million dollar decoration budgets shouldn't supercede infrastructure and basic human needs.

 

"Shouldn't"? A construct?

 

It is hard to get a permanent residence unless you get married to a Japanese, then it is automatic.

Yes there is a stigma to being gaijin, but at the same time you are like a celebrity. I am a pretty humble person generally, and if I want to experience a culture I do my best to fit in, pay close attention to cultural clues and so forth, so in my case, the stigma was more at the beginning of relationships or what have you. I also worked very hard on my accent, because I hated the sound of an American accent in Japanese. The US consulate in Osaka was very fluent in Japanese but his accent was horrible. I vowed never to sound like him. I first went as a student in Osaka, and that is where I met my first wife, so I speak with an Osaka accent (and I'm very good with Osaka dialect as I was fascinated with dialects. My accent is so good that when I spoke with Japanese and they could not see my face, they thought they were speaking to a Japanese person. That probably helped to alleviate some of the stigma. I was also good at telling jokes which would bring people to my side. Some of the jokes would trick people, for example whenever we went to a beach, I would look around and usually find a dead blowfish that had washed ashore, and would tell everyone that I knew how to prepare it, and it is really delicious, they would tell me that it poisonous and get all worried and I'd insist I'll prepare it for them, insisting that I had read a book on it, and this would go on until they realized I was just joking with them, which they did not expect at all, and they found very amusing. I was the first foreigner to pass the stockbrokers examination and become licensed, that worked at a Japanese brokoerage firm. There was one person who passed a year or two before me, but he worked for Merrill Lynch.

But there are cultural difficulties to Japanese culture that can exaggerate that stigma. Little nuances that you need a caring Japanese wife, for example, to guide you through. My first year I hurt someones feelings because they understood that I told them I would go with them on a sightseeing trip, and I had no idea that I had agreed to that, but thought I made it clear that I am not sure if I can go. There are nonverbal cues and language that seems to say one thing, but implies another. Things like that which take some time living there to master, and many foreigners never master such things.

On the other hand, as I said, you are like a celebrity there. Everyone wants to be your friend, and sometimes that can be irritating. When you go into a bar and just want to sit and talk with your American friend, you have to not make eye contact with any one who is vying for your attention otherwise you will have to listen to simple english phrases all night, with the expectation for a response. You get free beer or whiskey, but that's not fun if that is not how you wanted to spend the evening. But then you come back home to America, and it takes a little while to figure out why you aren't constantly the center of attention anymore. And then you miss that.

Japan has become a very popular place to go teach English. When I went in the early 80's, people were wondering, 'Who goes to Japan?' But years later everyone wanted to go, which is probably why they put a restriction on age. If you had just gone to Japan, you certainly could have gotten a job teaching English without a problem, but the problem would be how to get the visa sponsored. You could have done a cultural visa though, by taking some classes in some Japanese cultural activity such as calligraphy, music, or tea ceremony. Then you would have also been able to find students on your own to teach, if you wanted, which would have paid better than working for someone.

The yakuza were traditionally the allies of the people, protecting them when the government could not or would not. The older families still have a sense of these old ways. I did a consulting job for someone who I understood to be a former Diet member (like a former congressman), but he always struck as someone very much like a yakuza. I just assumed that it was because yakuza and politicians were alike in ways. Until his oyabun (godfather) passed away, then he had to go through an obligatory period of mourning so that it was obvious he was yakuza. He explained that it was one of the oldest families in Tokyo, and claimed his family did not get into drugs or such things. But he took me to several yakuza gatherings and social events which were very interesting and seemed straight out of the movies. My wife's younger sister was a mistress to a high ranking yakuza, and like I said, I also had contacts because of my work in the stock market. (While I worked in the Japanese firm, I used my position to trade against yakuza speculators (like the old pool funds that manipulated the US market before the crash of 1929) I made some contacts that would give me tips, and we had a computer that would let me pull up the board which would let me see which brokerage firms had bid or ask and at what price and how many shares. When a stock that was in play would move, I could tell which firms they were buying and selling from and trade against them. For example, when a stock I knew a certain stock pool was manipulating, would start dropping, I would know that they were pushing the price down as they were selling through one brokerage firm they used, but were actually increasing their holdings because they were ready to buy large amounts at lower prices through another firm they used. So I too would jump in at the lower price, or maybe a yen above it, and while everyone else would panic and jump out, I bought low knowing these guys would soon have the stock up quite a bit. I made quite a bit of money doing that.

There is still a stigma, in the Philippines, for example. They are called, 'baklat' and that can be a generic term, or, depending on who said it, or how, it can be derogatory. They perform key functions in society and are everywhere. So there is social acceptance, but they are not always respected.

 

I was going to mention that my Osaka accent created a bit of a stigma of its own. When I moved to Tokyo to work for Shearson Lehman, Tokyo people did not appreciate the Osaka accent. It is considered to be like a Brooklyn accent, and actually Yakuza all over the country speak in an Osaka or Kansai (Osaka-Kyoto-Kobe region) accent. Osaka people do not like Tokyo people, and Tokyo people do not like Osaka people. But that too, in its own way allowed me to overcome the gaijin stigma. However, when push came to shove in Tokyo, as sometimes happened, and I got angry, I naturally shifted into a deeper Osaka dialect and the other person would always back off. It was actually very humorous to me when that would happen.

Sometimes though, I also just had to be me---and just go out and be an arrogant American wild hippie.

 

So back to the problem of reproduction. Another problem I see, as I mentioned, is that of technology and social media. Social Media, while it has given us more connections with people, has taken away our actual human connection with people. Our relationships with fellow humans has been replaced with Baudrillardean simulacra. We aren't interacting with other humans as humans, but as screens on a phone or a computer, and in many cases, such as forums like this, it is almost anonymous in its nature--enough so that people can insult, threaten and argue without the restraint that would normally be present in person. (And then we give everyone guns, what could go wrong?)

Then there is the issue of gaming technology and how it provides whole virtual realities to escape into. I would say this is one of the biggest reasons we are living in a Dickensian nightmare and fascism is able to raise its ugly head in America (which brings up another point I will mention next about technology). Is your nation about to fall into the nightmarish depths of authoritarianism? Well there's nothing you can do about it, but you can escape into your own little world where you can have complete freedom to do as you wish, or you can battle fascists and dictators in your own living room, and if you want, you can fight on the side of the fascists, because everyone knows they have much cooler weapons (ok, that last part may not be such a big deal in our political makeup, I mean, who wouldn't want to fly a stuka dive bomber and dive down to drop a bomb on a tank formation in a pretend world, but, you know...). The real point is that we are able to escape reality into an almost hypnotic, but certainly addictive dopamine filled reality.

The other point is that social media. with its algorithms, has provided an incredible tool for brainwashing. Carl Jung in the 1950's, warned of how easy it is if someone psychologically maligned as Trump were to appeal to similar disorders in other members of the population, which then spreads through society gaining in numbers through those who are weak willed or easily manipulated psychologically, and that is how freedom and liberty becomes endangered. But he also argued that once that person is removed from power, then things can go back to normal. What he didn't see of the future is that social media would enable more people to be manipulated in more immersive ways, and that even as that person is toppled from power, his power, the power of the cult, is perpetuated through social media. It enables some people to say, he never lost, and their whole world view, defined by their social media bubble, confirms this as true.

This is truly the age of Nihilism where truth, value, and authenticity do not exist. That's why it was so significant for me when I heard Conway say in the first few days of the Trump presidency, "He's not lying, he's just telling an alternative truth."

This Nihilism, as always in the past, bubbles up from the meaninglessness of materialism---as Leibniz would conclude, if there is no answer to the deepest questions of 'why' then we would question why ad nauseum and existence is absurd. Materialism and science, despite all its attempts, and man's dogmatic insistence to make it work, simply has been unable to answer the deepest questions of why, and at the core of this is the implications of man's mortality. But today, we can escape such questions into false realities, and we can spread a more invasive and aggressive nihilism by creating alternative truths, alternative values, and alternative authenticities.

This is not a romanticist rant, where I say we need to reject technology and get back to nature. Rather we need to figure out how to control it so that it does not control us, or that we are not controlled by others through it. In some ways it's still a new toy, that we just can't stop playing with yet. Maybe time will make it more manageable.

We need to 1.) defuse or weaken its power of alienation, 2.) remove its control over truth, and 3.) defuse its power over freedom and control. What I mean by the last one goes back to Kierkegaard who argued that most people do not want the responsibility of freedom, so they hand their freedom over to others--bosses, preachers, politicians, etc, to make their decisions for them. Number 3 may be an issue, as it has always been, of personal development and individuation. As difficult as all this sounds, it may still be easier than removing the threats to our economics, and providing a more fair and just distribution of wealth and income I wrote of in the earlier post, without going through total economic collapse from which humanity may never recover.




If you study the fin-de-siecle of Europe, you know that Nihilism does accompany the decadence of the end of an era

 

Or maybe the answer to technology and social media lies in finding the humanity within that simulacra of reality. After all, there is another human being(s) at the other end of that internet connection,

 

I’m a fairly solitary person. I really don’t want to or like being treated as a celebrity. I even try to avoid award ceremonies for achievements at my job. I’m not shy, by any means, I see it as instigating conflict. When I am applauded for doing my job, it makes co-workers uneasy. They may not show it, but the human condition tells me they are silently pondering “Why him and not me?”

My Ideal life would have been to work a job that not only paid the bills but gave me a sense of purpose. I would like to have lived in a quiet area, and had that one place I went where I walk in and they ask if I wanted my usual.

I wouldn’t be opposed to someone to help my acclimate to society over there. But, again, I don’t like the feeling of being a celebrity, or being made a fuss over. There’s one more thing as well. I ‘Can’t’ Drink. Consuming alcohol would be as bad as swallowing rat poison for me. It wold set up a serious of problems that would kill me in a matter of days. From what I’ve heard, there are instances that you will be forced to drink or be further ostracized.

I had panned on doing just that, but again, I was too late. I had inquired about being sponsored and/or working for someone. I had contacted JET, and a few other services like them. It was an interesting situation, because even though they wanted you to have a Bachelors, they didn’t specify in what. Mine is in Communications (Telecommunications Management) But no teaching credentials, So I used that to get my ESL Certification. Then, as I began the process of getting all my ducks in a row, so to speak, is when I hit the wall of Age, Physical Condition, and Medical Necessity.

I was born in Brooklyn, and lived in Queens until I was in my teens. So you can guess how my images were colored.

 

I have a permanent block, when trying to assimilate how and why people consider certain technology to be bad or detrimental in some way. Especially when they use that same tech to try and convince others about the evils of technology.

It wasn’t long ago, that human flight was thought impossible, except by magic or demonic possession. Cars, Trains, Planes, any conveyance that did not include a horse was ridiculed, called a fad, or outright dismissed. Yet, here we are.

Throughout history, how many simple tools were thought to be evil at first. How many medical practices were outlawed because the church did not approve. I don’t believe that any one single piece of tech is bad, or detrimental to humans on an intrinsic level. A Ball Peen Hammer is in itself neither good nor bad, but it can build as well as destroy. It is the user that determines the application of the device.

One of my favorite Authors Arthur C. Clarke, formulated three adages that are known as Clarke's three laws, of which the third law is the best known and most widely cited. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Social Media, and all of this great new technology is still in its infancy. We have made leaps in Science and Technology over the last hundred years. Mistakes will be made, lessons still need to be learned. I don’t believe that the answer lies in scrapping what some don’t like or disagree with.

Yes there is another Human being at the other end of the connection. I think that most understand this, but I think what they are looking for and what is missing for them, is humanity within the machine. A fear of losing ones self to an unfeeling and uncaring automata. But the attempt to give the machine that which it lacks, scares people more than the latter.

Writers and creators prey on our fears. It is easier to accept the bad than the good, so the more Terminator movies and Dystopian AI films and books that come out, the more the uneducated masses will fear the coming of more technology.

 

I agree with you. That is why I wrote this:

As you said, we will make mistakes and we will learn from that. And as I said, maybe it is just that it is a new toy, that will become more manageable once we get tired of parts of it. And then you quoted another suggestion that I had---finding the humanity within the simulacra.

I do think technology social media is good, and it opens up a whole new world for us. It was the same with automobiles---they are amazing tools that benefit us in many ways, but there are detrimental aspects to automobiles, which over time we are fixing. Cars today are far more safer than they were in the 1920's or even the 1950's and even in the 1990's.

What I am saying is that as we learn to come to terms with technology, that among its many benefits, it does have a power of alienation, and is being used to spread nihilism, and has a power of control and to some even addiction. And these factors have an impact on our society right now, and I think it does have an impact on our ability to socialize, and is adding to the polarization of the world, and because we are losing that human connection, it even has an impact on our ability to form relationships and have children.

I'm not saying that we should reject technology. Im not a big gamer, but I certainly enjoy playing with playstations and Xbox's and all those new things that provide an immersive virtual reality. But we need to recognize what technology is doing and try to figure out how we can minimize the harm it provides----just as in the early days of the automobile, we needed to figure out how to control traffic.

I don't have an answer, but I certainly can help in recognizing the problem.

 

Certainly. There are detrimental aspects to everything we have and everything we do. Some more intense and far reaching than others. But it still comes back to the tool not being the problem, the user is the problem.
There is a popular saying in the IT Support community. "PEBCAK." (Problem Exists Between the Chair And Keyboard).

It's amazing to think how intuitive some of these writers and producers can be. I often wonder if they are somewhat clairvoyant, or if it's all Monkey See, Monkey DO, and we are creating the reality we see on screen. I cold point to many great achievement that have surfaced based on Star Trek. Engineers have even admitted they took their design innovations from the Original TV Show. But the concerning thing, to me, are the ones that go to far. I hear about people around the world striving to create artificial companions. I even heard of several cases where men have actually married video game or fictitious characters. I constantly see innovations in robotics and my mind instantly goes back to Asimov's Robot novels.

But most concerning are the films that start out as absurd comedic offerings and end up seeming more like documentaries.
Films like Cherry 2000. The MC is obsessed with finding a replacement CPU for his love robot, in a world that you needs lawyers and contracts just to go on a dinner date. That came out in 1987. Look where we are now?
Or Idiocracy, from 2006. the MC's wake up from cryposleep in a future where intelligence is a crime and the World leader is a Narcissistic despot that kills anyone who disagrees with him in a gladiatorial arena with monster trucks and military grade weapons. I won't go political, but we all know a World leader with those tendencies.

It feels as though the population is being drawn into the ridiculous fantasies that the mass media is creating. If not then I have no choice but to start considering preordination as a viable conclusion.