nina's little fedi corner

some people say civilization is falling apart typically for entirely wrong reasons but has it ever actually been good, in the global sense

we've been increasing our technological level and amassing knowledge on all sorts of matters over the the millennia, and we've also been going through various periods that have been better or worse in different aspects, but at the same time we've been consistently plagued with the same issues all this time that somehow appear to be inherent because they've been with us all this time and there doesn't seem to be any indication that they'll go away

over the centuries we've built a societal system, according to some, "the best-working one so far", that has perfected at least one thing; exploiting these issues we have and turning them into something supposedly desirable and beneficial

since doing so, we've developed so much technology and increased our "quality of life" according to these standards that we've set for ourselves; in a system where exploiting others that don't have the same level of power and privilege in life is considered a good thing, this is very easy to do; we've also made up a system of wealth to turn all this into a convenient abstraction where most of it ends up being fake but it doesn't matter because if everyone is convinced enough to buy into it it still generates real wealth for those on the top by the end, and the "middle class" ends up still materially satisfied enough to keep the thing running

and we've convinced ourselves that this is the meaning of freedom, that ultimately it all boils down to trying to make it as high as possible

and i feel like there is potentially lots that is good in humanity, but we, ironically through our material "progress", are trying our hardest to suppress that; and it feels a lot like all the good human qualities are in direct conflict with the greater reality we live in, where huge numbers of people are emotionally numb and strictly conforming to and enforcing a set of norms meant to bring out the worst from everyone for the sake of preservation of said reality

and it's why our politics are shit and feel like it's getting consistently more hopeless; it's why we buy into dumb tech shit of $currentyear, whether it's "artificial intelligence" or whatever they come up with; it's why we deal with smug idiots that don't even realize how sad and hopeless their existence is; it's not going to get better and all these are just symptoms of far greater underlying bad

and it makes me really sad at times, but at the same time i recognize that's not going to help anything, but i'd really like things to be better, because at the same time i feel like we have lots of potential and there are many beings i like but what do we even do...

probably try to make the best of things, at a smaller scale? how long can this world last? what can we do to protect the vulnerable from harm, especially given it seems like there's going to be more and more of it? we've eliminated so many things over millennia that were supposedly keeping us in the dark, whether it's religion, feudal rule, totalitarianism, etc, and supposedly we are "free" now, why doesn't it feel like it? maybe the dark ages have always been...