West Coast Action

A message from a friend and associate In the book "Limits to Growth, the 30 year update" a group of analysts set out to discern the general behavior of global consumption and production, and what that behavior means for our future. They give an example of how if you throw a ball up in the air, anyone can describe its general path: up, pause, fall, impact. While the particulars require intense maths to determine, the general behavior and patterns are clear.

Stoicism is popular because apathy is the sickness of our age and stoicism glorifies it. Stoicism is cope for living in a dying society. Stoicism is managed decline. You need to become anti-stoic. You need to become so passionate it’s self-destructive.

One way in which the Anti-Tech movement is different than the Bolsheviks, Viet Cong, Taliban and National Socialists is that it will probably not provide a more reliable income, internet, or safety than the current order. For this reason, the Anti-Tech movement must disregard the notion of providing a more stable lifestyle than the system. Even if it can probably be done, it cannot be guaranteed at all places and times. Rather, the Anti-Tech movement should focus on ensuring that the lifestyle the system provides is unsatisfying, unstable, and unreliable.

Nations and economies are not overthrown when enough people read a particular book or accept a particular ideology. They are overthrown when the way of life the opposition provides is more stable and reliable than the way of life the ruling power provides. This principle has guided most major political upheavals in the last century, including that of the Bolsheviks, Viet Cong, Taliban, and National Socialists.

The reality is that even if everyone fully understood the nature of the system and the existential threat it poses to humanity, most would do nothing about it. To take action would mean great upheaval and uncertainty in everyone's lives. The loss of an income, internet, and perceived safety in one's community would be of far greater relevance to the average person than any reason for their absence, no matter how justified. And it would be naive to think that any person responsible for taking away these things would not be met with extreme hatred and hostility.

One can make all kinds of arguments appealing to notions of freedom, preserving nature, human dignity and the like when opposing the technological system. And while these arguments may or may not be appealing to listeners, the odds that any argument will make the average citizen do anything to oppose the system as a whole is very low. Admin finds it more likely that anyone swayed by such arguments was already morally opposed to the system to begin with.

The technological system's ability to maintain itself is largely determined by the same principles as any nation or economy's. If one wants to wrestle control away from the system, one must understand these principles. Specifically, the system is in control. It determines your name, your nationality, your education, clothing, morality, social etiquette, assumptions about reality, financial status, who you can marry, and much of what will be done with your body and children before and after you die. The system, for better or (most likely) worse, is the source and cause of most your life events and current circumstances.