Gear is for art. Art are politics

[Axel]

7 hours ago, jcs said:

* Alan Watts on automation and money (watch it!):

"A person who is confused, like a pavlov dogs who salivates on the wrong bell."

The consumerism part of capitalism made us accustomed to substitutes for our real needs. To a point where we are addicted to those substitutes (camera gear?). 

"If you don't work, you have no right to eat."

God said so: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread." He patented work, if you will. The context is the expulsion from the paradise. It's not a moral command, it's a curse! Slave owners and paid-slaves owners (like our employers, but in a broader sense also our whole rat-race culture) have exploited that spell over centuries. The less substitutes you need, the more you are free. More of unconciously consumed frustration reliefs only stop growing more when we either die or wise up.

How best do we become aware of our real needs? There is a psychotherapeutic advice, a technique, that I find very useful. We are all adults, and we think we can tell exactly what people expect us to be, how we should be, behave. That marks an adult - seemingly. We also can imagine that we are still children. We have many wishes and impulses that are childish. But we are practically orphans then. We should become our own parents, become our own loving father and mother, adopt us. Fight for us, care for us, educate us, even pray for us. If we did wrong, we will always and completely forgive us. No place for guilt in our mind. There is no conflict in what we want and what we are. We better ourselves in any way. We see through all tricks and use no tricks to manipulate others.

17 hours ago, tomekk said:

What you're saying would be ideal but historically oppressive regimes very rarely give up, if ever?

Stephen Hawking ("that dummy in the wheelchair. All talk, no action!") recently said the whole show could be over within 100 years from now. Our asses are history! It's highly unlikely that mankind (and the "White Man" in particular) will miraculously stop to consume and waste the planet. Like, just in time. Great prospects, one could say, so why don't we just enjoy our last dance on the volcano and consume a little more?

Because the neurosis of our time is to sit and wait until the future finishes us off. This is not going to be solved by any mass movement. The individual has to change. In the present. Buying paper bags? Selling the diesel? Change to LED lights? Drops in the ocean, and way too late. 

 

[Andrew Reid]

The individual is always susceptible to crowd forces, cultures, peer pressure, society norms, and so on. It's completely unrealistic, sadly, for individuals to act as individuals, self determining the destiny of the planet from individualistic change.

The change should happen with the forces that shape the crowd.

[Axel]

30 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:

The individual is always susceptible to crowd forces, cultures, peer pressure, society norms, and so on.

These forces work slowly, in a nightmarish slomo. We move with the current, the mainstream carries us to the end. 

38 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:

It's completely unrealistic, sadly, for individuals to act as individuals, self determining the destiny of the planet from individualistic change.

It is, indeed. 

40 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:

The change should happen with the forces that shape the crowd.

Imagine, I mean just imagine that movies and docs promote the change, that new parties with benign principles are founded and get elected and that capitalists suddenly act responsibly and sacrifice quick profits for sustainable growth and stop buying politicians. That individual residents abruptly change their whole lifestyle out of insight - in masses. That could almost prove divine influence. The age of Aquarius. It would also mean that human minds had changed in such an uncharacteristic way that they probably would not call themselves humans anymore. The necessary changes have no chance without majorities actively supporting them. And every single one of them must have undergone that change of mind, following the example of others, until the movement has reached a critical mass. Without the individuals who start it all, who leave the path on their own, nothing of this will happen.

[jcs]

4 hours ago, Ed_David said:

Agreed.

I meant that politicians have power over corporations, not the other way around.

All politicians are, for me, are members of society chosen by us to represent us.  They get a salary so they can't be bought as easily.

I like this, but I think politicians are just people - there is nothing that getting rid of them will change.

We just need systems of checks and balances.

Anarchy and small societies still have their own problems.

I mean, even living in a house of 5 friends after 6 months can turn a little nutty. 

Corporations do have power over politicians- through bribery, blackmail, extortion etc. Additionally, they offer politicians high level jobs for favors after they leave government. There's a revolving door system where people go into politics for the corporations, change policy in favor of the corporations, then leave government and go back to corporations. It's now completely corrupt and government no longer represents the will of the people (other than the will of people controlling corporations, which can represent the people who are shareholders and stand to make a profit, possibly at the expense of other people who are not shareholders of the corporation).

Politics are instantly polarizing, a divisive concept in general. If one identifies with the Left, they are attacked by the Right. If one identifies with the Right, they are attacked by the Left. If one doesn't identify with either, they are attacked by the Left and the Right and labeled anarchist or similar. It's a highly inefficient system. Millions of people have finally realized that it doesn't matter who is president of the USA. Despite campaign promises, Left or Right presidents who promised less war are forced into wars by the Rulers. Health care reform? Doesn't matter who is president, costs keep going up and level of quality continues to drop. We need to be focusing on nutrition and prevention as a first change vs. profiting from people's suffering from poor diets and habits. Food corporations profit from low quality (little or no viable nutrients) and toxic food (sugar). Pharma and health care corporations profit from the damage caused by food corporations. Guess who controls both? The Rulers. The pattern is create problems (and profit) then solve problems (and profit). Except health care doesn't solve problems, just keeps people alive long enough to maximize profit extraction before they die.

Small groups of people such as families and friends living together tend to be managed by the Rule of the Jungle: whoever is strongest will get their way (where strength is not just physical: can be psychological, financial etc.). And if the group is relatively equal in effective power, and the group has not attained a level of psychological and spiritual maturity, indeed it can be a very dysfunctional situation. The same applies if the leader of a group has not attained psychological and spiritual maturity.

Politicians are functionally polarizing managers of corporations (government). Why must we use this antiquated, primitive, dysfunctional, divisive, and most importantly, inefficient system? What we need are leaders who can solve problems efficiently, who unite people more than they divide them. Where their performance for solving problems and providing working solutions is the metric of success, for which they are rewarded. In 2017 we can use data mining and artificial intelligence to measure in real-time public perception, which is amazing. We can also use new technologies to better manage ourselves and resources over the antiquated old systems which are fundamentally unstable and leading us toward civil unrest and war.

The job that politicians are trying to perform is inherently complex resource management. The first step is to remove politics from the equation: no Left, Right etc. The Resource Managers (a better name than politician) are measured by how well they solve problems for everyone, not just one group, in a fair and balanced way. These problems are essentially optimization problems. And in 2017 we have amazing N-dimensional optimization technologies in machine learning and artificial intelligence. Along with modeling and simulation technologies, we can make much better decisions than was previously possible in written history. We can experience orders of magnitude increases in resource management and utilization, providing the type of world Alan Watts described where the machines do all the work to allow us to survive and live a healthy life, so we can pursue other activities, such as spiritual development and the arts!

4 hours ago, Axel said:

How best do we become aware of our real needs? There is a psychotherapeutic advice, a technique, that I find very useful. We are all adults, and we think we can tell exactly what people expect us to be, how we should be, behave. That marks an adult - seemingly. We also can imagine that we are still children. We have many wishes and impulses that are childish. But we are practically orphans then. We should become our own parents, become our own loving father and mother, adopt us. Fight for us, care for us, educate us, even pray for us. If we did wrong, we will always and completely forgive us. No place for guilt in our mind. There is no conflict in what we want and what we are. We better ourselves in any way. We see through all tricks and use no tricks to manipulate others.

Right on Axel.

1 hour ago, Axel said:

Imagine, I mean just imagine that movies and docs promote the change, that new parties with benign principles are founded and get elected and that capitalists suddenly act responsibly and sacrifice quick profits for sustainable growth and stop buying politicians. That individual residents abruptly change their whole lifestyle out of insight - in masses. That could almost prove divine influence. The age of Aquarius. It would also mean that human minds had changed in such an uncharacteristic way that they probably would not call themselves humans anymore. The necessary changes have no chance without majorities actively supporting them. And every single one of them must have undergone that change of mind, following the example of others, until the movement has reached a critical mass. Without the individuals who start it all, who leave the path on their own, nothing of this will happen.

Right on brother. We're doing it right now: becoming a aware of what is really going on, and thinking about ways to improve the system. In order to really change and improve the system, we need to be specific about what we want. Simply promoting "CHANGE" doesn't get us anywhere in many cases, because change could be in the wrong direction, e.g. less efficient resource utilization and increased suffering. So we need clear goals and measurable metrics for useful change to occur. So what do you want to change and how will you measure the results?

[Snowfun]

The problem with this is that there is no definition of the "we". There are a plethora of groups who claim to know a (if not "the") "better way". There is, of course, neither evidence that any one of these is any better than any other nor, indeed, an improvement over the current state. By whose criteria might this be judged? Obviously "my" ideas are the best IFF the criteria are my own. And ultimately that's all that is being said here.

One of the intriguing aspects of this is that, unlike  a clinical trial, there is no control group - you can't test things empirically under identical conditions. In the UK, for example, it can never be tested whether Brexit will make things "better" (whatever that means).  So it is all speculation. And speculation dressed up as "evidence" or as a means to legitimise a minority interest is equally as dangerous as the flaws of our current system.

Yes, "we" (a collection of individuals satisfies the condition - we don't need a label) must strive always to change things for the better. But let's not perpetuate the myth that there is one defined "better way" nor, worse, that any one individual knows what that is.

It's like colour grading - yes we can all try to improve but we'll never agree on the "best" outcome or style or "look" (this sentence added in the illusionary hope of making this relevant to a filming forum!)

Tim

[Don Kotlos]

While it is true that individuals have little power to change the world compared to the masses, we still need independent individuals within the mass in order to find optimal directions of change. 

As @jcs mentioned, the multidimensionality of ideas cannot be simplified to just left or right, especially with modern systems in which democracy is reduced to voting once every few years.

People need to play a more active role in which political discussions are always encouraged and never suppressed, and education should be the first and most important step for the evolution of every society. 

[jcs]

33 minutes ago, Snowfun said:

The problem with this is that there is no definition of the "we". There are a plethora of groups who claim to know a (if not "the") "better way". There is, of course, neither evidence that any one of these is any better than any other nor, indeed, an improvement over the current state. By whose criteria might this be judged? Obviously "my" ideas are the best IFF the criteria are my own. And ultimately that's all that is being said here.

One of the intriguing aspects of this is that, unlike  a clinical trial, there is no control group - you can't test things empirically under identical conditions. In the UK, for example, it can never be tested whether Brexit will make things "better" (whatever that means).  So it is all speculation. And speculation dressed up as "evidence" or as a means to legitimise a minority interest is equally as dangerous as the flaws of our current system.

Yes, "we" (a collection of individuals satisfies the condition - we don't need a label) must strive always to change things for the better. But let's not perpetuate the myth that there is one defined "better way" nor, worse, that any one individual knows what that is.

It's like colour grading - yes we can all try to improve but we'll never agree on the "best" outcome or style or "look" (this sentence added in the illusionary hope of making this relevant to a filming forum!)

Tim

Hey Tim, there is actually a way to measure and test better ways. We can use computer modeling and simulations along with artificial intelligence (machine learning). First, what is the root problem we are trying to solve or optimize? Is that resource management: energy, food, water, shelter, and health care for as many people as efficiently as possible (including managing waste/pollution/total-population/system-stability)?

[tomekk]

8 hours ago, Ed_David said:

 I meant that politicians have power over corporations, not the other way around.

All politicians are, for me, are members of society chosen by us to represent us.  They get a salary so they can't be bought as easily.

Is it about salary? Where do people who want to buy them go in the first place? Don't they go to people in power who can change laws? How much they earn is secondary because it's not a problem for billionaires.

What about empowering people and reducing government's power. Weak government would, in reality, give power back to people. Corporations wouldn't even go to the government without any real power and would have much tougher time buying decentralised system. 

[Emanuel]

4 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

The individual is always susceptible to crowd forces, cultures, peer pressure, society norms, and so on. It's completely unrealistic, sadly, for individuals to act as individuals, self determining the destiny of the planet from individualistic change.

The change should happen with the forces that shape the crowd.

Even though, we can be the only ones to know we're going in the right path, at times. It happens too often.

[tomekk]

1 hour ago, jcs said:

 We can experience orders of magnitude increases in resource management and utilization, providing the type of world Alan Watts described where the machines do all the work to allow us to survive and live a healthy life, so we can pursue other activities, such as spiritual development and the arts!

Is our goal designing how everyone should live their life? Not everyone wants to pursue spiritual development and the arts. I'm also fine with people who don't want to live healthy life but I don't want to be forced to pay for their choices, do you? If robots ever will, that'd be great but for now wouldn't it be fair to actually make people responsible for their choices/actions for a change (responsible empowering of people ;))?

[jcs]

2 minutes ago, tomekk said:

Is our goal designing how everyone should live their life? Not everyone wants to pursue spiritual development and the arts. I'm also fine with people who don't want to live healthy life but I don't want to be forced to pay for their choices, do you?

Sure, insert whatever pursuits one desires after their basic living needs are met. Agree that if people want to live unhealthy lives, feedback would be provided, such as tax on cigarettes & alcohol (and ideally sugar!) to nudge people in the right direction to lower the burden on the health care system (an improvement in efficiency).

[tomekk]

Please, no more taxes, otherwise, we're going back to taxing everything based on one ideas of what's good or bad according to their own ideology and again - designing how people should live their life ;)! Let them just smoke (slowly kill themselves in other words) but what about denying them treatment for other people's money as a fair incentive/feedback, unless we develop robots that can treat them for free? Is it wrong if that's their choice and they know about it? If the goal is to empower people, we have to abandon current trend of steering people and deciding for them, don't we?

[tomekk]

5 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

The individual is always susceptible to crowd forces, cultures, peer pressure, society norms, and so on. It's completely unrealistic, sadly, for individuals to act as individuals, self determining the destiny of the planet from individualistic change.

The change should happen with the forces that shape the crowd.

You wouldn't do it on your own, would you? After all, you created this forum for a reason. That's how the change starts.

[jcs]

41 minutes ago, tomekk said:

Please, no more taxes, otherwise, we're going back to taxing everything based on one ideas of what's good or bad according to their own ideology and again - designing how people should live their life ;)! Let them just smoke (slowly kill themselves in other words) but what about denying them treatment for other people's money as a fair incentive/feedback, unless we develop robots that can treat them for free? Is it wrong if that's their choice and they know about it? If the goal is to empower people, we have to abandon current trend of steering people and deciding for them, don't we?

Addiction's a tough thing, brother. Perhaps tech will be developed that can more effectively help people quit. If people can't quit for whatever reason, ideally get them to pay up front for future medical costs. Is there a more fair method?

[tomekk]

It's tough, like a lot other things for other people. Getting them to pay up front or denying treatment if they didn't sounds definitely fair. Along with using donations from other people who decided to help. It's not only fair but more importantly it's about getting people to think before they do and making them responsible for their choices because nobody will bail them out if things go wrong. Unlike in the current system (banking as well ;))

[Don Kotlos]

http://filmmakermagazine.com/100531-all-movies-are-political-movies-we-need-to-do-better/#.WauWldPyuAy

[Don Kotlos]

O Charlie Chicken, Where art thou?