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Post by Morreion on May 25, 2011 8:04:30 GMT -5
Humor about the human condition from Louis C.K. -
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Post by Laethaka on Nov 9, 2011 8:16:39 GMT -5
it's a compelling idea, but I don't think it's as radically new and threatening as people often talk about. Dostoevsky was writing about civilized people being "overstewed" and luxuriously unhappy in The Idiot in the 1860's.
The tricky thing in this country is that a lot of our luxuries are wrapped up in ideas of freedom. It's sometimes very hard to cut between "freedom from"s and "freedom to"s. An excess of the former makes people idle and bored, but "freedom to"s are vital to most of what most of us love about western democracy. So we have to be really careful trying to cut anything back...
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Post by Morreion on Nov 9, 2011 9:54:19 GMT -5
+1 for the Dostoevsky reference! There's no doubt about it- freedom and happiness are complex issues. After a certain level of ease, additional amounts of wealth do not make for significantly happier people. If your neighbor is more well-off than you are, you tend to be less happy, even when you have a fine life. I think we can chalk this up to human nature- Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground talked about such things. I know of no cure for that! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happiness_economics |
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Post by Laethaka on Nov 9, 2011 18:39:36 GMT -5
Did you ever read Upton Sinclair? I finished The Jungle while playing DAOC, and his main ending point is imagining a utopia where everyone is given just what they need (socialism, etc), but hard work and community service is still encouraged by being rewarded with access to books and education. It sounds pretty fanciful, but it's a neat concept that (paraphrased): There are only a finite amount of material resources for us to share, but there are an infinite amount of non-material resources. So materials should be rationed by need, and non-materials can be distributed by the default system where some people get unhappy and greedy and rake in as much as they possibly can. I think virtual worlds offer us a new way to think about what "non-materials" can really be, ie. not just books. Imagine how equitable and sustainable the world would be if people only consume resources that they need to keep playing an MMO, and then they put all their hard work and greed and willpower to improve their surroundings into a virtual environment that causes zero violent crime, privilege, enclosure, or waste. My friend and I have termed this idea The MMOnastery because the participants put in a communal effort for subsistence living then focus all their energy elsewhere, just like religious ascetics. BUT-- like all utopian ideas, this has some terrifying possibilities... simianuprising.com/images/futurewowplayerlarge.jpg |
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