Calvin being an anarchist explains a lot about my politics.
Thank you for teaching me something about myself.
this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2024
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Rereading Calvin and Hobbes as an adult is surreal. All the things you loved as a kid were still there, but you understand the philosophical musings so much better. Those wagon rides were wasted on 7 year-old me.
A couple lifetimes ago I worked for a company that provided web metrics for GoComics. We had a meeting to go over them, and I was so excited to see that Calvin & Hobbes comics had 5X the views of every other comic.
So I got on the phone and I pointed this out to the marketing drones on the call, and one of them said "Yeah, that doesn't make any sense to me. Why don't people like our new comics?"
And I felt a deep, deep sorrow for them.
Some people play Disco Elysium and think the story and characters are lame. I don't believe in a soul, but some people are more soulless than others.
I tried playing that game and it had a lot of philosophical ideas.
But the world was just too depressing and the amount of reading that game required to be fun was too much.
Where are these defeatist democrats I keep hearing about? I've never actually met one. I've never had a conversation, even a casual one, where someone on the left is like, "Well, at least I can still afford my bag of rice..." But every fucking political meme I see has these shitbrain democrats that are just puttering around with no purpose like some limp dick avatar of social justice. Stop making up positions and then applying incorrect labels to them, you aren't helping anyone.
Considering it's being contrasted to anarchism, the comparison of 'Life could be worse' with 'Life can be better' is accurate. Democrats are generally liberals who want to refine the system, not tear it down and build a better one. "Representative market capitalist social democracy is the best and most stable we've found, so let's not fuck it unnecessarily." Whereas anarchists are generally in favor of tearing down current extant institutions to be replaced with other systems of economic and social organization. "The current system is cruel and you cannot refine it. It has to go for life to meaningfully improve."
And, of course, Republicans seeking to tear everything down and build an intentionally worse system in its place.
I'm always interested in the comparison with programmers who want to start from scratch to make it better, only to make it just as bad as before, but after spending a lot of efforts.
It's always an interesting question to explore. I have some anarchist sympathies, though I wouldn't count myself in their ranks. I definitely get their criticisms of the current structures of society, and anarchism isn't nonviable. But at the same time, I don't know that it's the way forward.
All I know is that capitalism has outstayed its welcome.
But at the same time, I don't know that it's the way forward.
As an anarchist, amusingly I fully agree with this statement. I don't even think that a society in line with my ideals is currently possible (humanity needs to socially evolve) but more of a guiding light to aspire to and try to affect lasting change around me that can align with it after I'm gone.
All I know is that capitalism has outstayed its welcome.
One of the darkly humorous things that I find with the current state of things is that capitalism is a system that punishes stagnation but, those in power are desperate to maintain stagnation in the economic system or even regress towards earlier incarnations while preventing the system from evolving in any way that could better serve humanity. Those at the reins are, ironically, opposed to foundational parts of their own ideologizes economic system.
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Life being hard definitely does build character though. It just also happens to make that person extremely more likely to be miserable too.
My character is fucking huge. It needs to stop being built.
Also when Republicans say it, they only think other people need to build character.
it's just not the only way to build character
Suffering builds character. It's the JJK way
Life being better is what actually builds character, not being worse. Arguably life being worse convinces people to be evil, albeit for pretty justifiable reasons.
Calvin's dad never said that. He only ever said that household chores build character.
Well, Calvin did say "Being miserable builds character" when impersonating his dad.
I don't remember either one of his parents ever laughing like that. I love this one!
And camping in miserable conditions.
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They are not wrong as it does build character. They never said it was good character.
It doesn't necessarily build bad character, I didn't have a great upbringing and I think it did result in some positives in my character. However, as they say, there is more than one way to skin a cat and I think there are better ways of bringing out positive character traits...
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Meh, it's a practice in gratitude. We have it better than 99.99% of humans that ever lived. Is that an excuse to stop improving for future generations? No. It does make our shitty life seem a little less shitty tho. Things can always get worse, if it can't your dead and won't be phased anyways.
We have it better than 99.99% of humans that ever lived.
Do we really? I often see this talking point thrown around and when asked for elaboration, usually wealth is pointed at.
I poop in cleaner water than people used to drink. I still have teeth because a dentist filled my cavities. I'm typing this comment on a device that can show me nearly anything I want.
We've got it really, really good. It could also be better and more just.
There's a ton more that people always forget. How often do you worry about random brigands attacking your town and burning everything? No, I don't care if are actually still afraid of that (you scaredy cat). It doesn't happen now, but it used to happen all the time.
How many of your 10 children have died of preventable illness? It used to be like 30%. Even royal families had problems with disease. Look at this shit:
Peter the Great had two wives, with whom he had fifteen children, three of whom survived to adulthood.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_the_Great
How afraid are you of having enough food to eat to last the winter? That was an annual worry, and is the reason why harvest festivals exist. Unless you are from the third world, your family has not worried about this for 100 years.
Eh it's all subjective and honestly a bullshit statistic to get people to shut up about how bad they have it, à la "well kids are starving in Africa."
Don't get me wrong. Way less child death, way less time spent processing your own food for the winter, access to advanced medicine if you can afford it but otherwise it really doesn't mean anything. It's a clever statement to try to push back against people wanting it to be better and pretend they are enlightened to how bad it is.
Life expectancy is still basically the same. It's not like people didn't live well into their 90s even Before Common Era. Less physical labor is nice but also new health issues are arising anyways. And actually average lifespan is going down for those with less wealth.
It's essentially a litmus test for seeing if you can be an optimist in the face systemic issues that are currently occuring and an easy hand wave of "well im sure people were more upset in the past"
I think the only true metric we should be comparing people to is the present. The majority will always be in the past but the people alive today are more important than ghosts.
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Your life being worse builds character.
I dunno, I see Democrats more as Calvin's "Life could be a whole lot better too!" Then they poll to find out how life could be better, make lofty campaign promises that inevitably become watered-down half-measures when they have to build a coalition around their various corporate interests, get stonewalled by Republicans who call them un-American socialist scum on Fox News for even trying to make life better, go on the political talkshow tour to sheepishly defend their character, get ignored, then give up and do nothing until the next election cycle.
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That is the thrust behind, "Why does Christian god let's the evil happen ?"
This is the Epicurian Paradox, for those interested.
The Christian god is presented as all powerful, all knowing, and all good/benevolent. We see evil acts EVERYWHERE plain as day, but taking the Christian god at face value, it shouldn't even be possible for evil to exist:
- If a god knows everything and has unlimited power, then they have knowledge of all evil and have the power to put an end to it. But if they do not end it, they are not completely benevolent.
- If a god has unlimited power and is completely good, then they have the power to extinguish evil and want to extinguish it. But if they do not do it, their knowledge of evil is limited, so they are not all-knowing.
- If a god is all-knowing and totally good, then they know of all the evil that exists and wants to change it. But if they do not, it must be because they are not capable of changing it, so they are not omnipotent.
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