Are there people here who actually factually believe the Industrial Revolution was a bad thing?

Are there people here who actually factually believe the Industrial Revolution was a bad thing?

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Anarcho-primitivists

>Primitivists using Veeky Forums

I guess it's possible...

It was kind of like global climate change: in the long run we can't imagine life without it, but it sure sucked to be one of the poor slobs who had to live thru it.

I actually met someone in real life like that few years ago.

Fucking dumbass was arguing about going back to the old days and telling me how the government made things worse. Stupid fuck couldn't respond when I responded in kind about the massing of city created specialization knowledge and the progress drove him live comfortably in modern city life enjoying all the abundant/safe food and the utilities like internet/phone/cars.

It really just depends
>fat, but live a comfy life with modern amenities under a pseudo-democratic authoritarian govt
or
>Life is hard and every day is toiling, but only answer to the council of elders and have literal Grecian god body

If somebody is a primitivist then comfortable and safe modern life would not be something they value, it would be the opposite.

>The government gave us comfortable modern living

I think you mean capitalism gave us that buddy.

>Implying capitalism doesn't rely on enforced governmental policies and the rule of law provided by the state and its coercive faculties to be able to exist and sort its effects

>thinking a historical event can be "good" or "bad"

Primitivism is half-right. The problem is that it's silly to advocate for a primitivist political platform, or a primitivist lifestyle, because it's impossible to forcibly return the world to pre-industrial conditions, what with widespread pollution and intrusion of technology into even the deepest jungles and most barren deserts.

Nevertheless, that doesn't change the fact that all of the Big Problems nowadays (ranging from person ethical things like "what's the meaning of life" to society-wide questions like "what's the best form of government") these wouldn't be problems in a pre-industrial society. People nowadays feel cast off, adrift in a sea of valuelessness, what the existentialists call "condemned to freedom." There are no inherent values, we must making meaning for ourselves, etc.

This is wrong. There ARE meanings and values, and they're located in nature. Human beings don't have a transcendent purpose, they have an imminent purpose; to survive. Once your survival is guaranteed by technology, you feel the malaise of meaninglessness.

On top of that, high-technology civilization basically guarantees eventual human extinction, if not the extinction of all life on earth, either through nuclear war, or self-replication nano-machines, or the creation of a terrestrial black hole, or whatever. High technology might provide us the means to survive through an impending ecological disaster, but at what cost? Our entire species will be dependent on technology forever after, like a cancer patient on life support.

This

Best anwser you will get

Luddites FTW!

That was one of the most interesting historiographic debates.

Initially, everyone simply assumed it was awesome because progress, science and all the nice and comfy things that come with it.

Then came the revisionists and submit the Industrial Revolution to some actual proper analysis and came up with these statistics of how 'wonderful' was the average life of the average guy (and children) capitalistically working in the mines and factories for Monsieur Le Boss and how much the urban-oriented lifestyle had fucked in the ass the traditional rural, agrarian-oriented communities life-style.

So everyone agreed: fuck the IR.

But then came the revisionists of the revisionists and said Hold on, nigger, and began pulling more papers with more statistics that, in short, confirmed that living as pleb during the first stages of the IR (until the ~1840s more or less) did indeed suck when compared to pre-IR life conditions, but after that there was a sustained general improvement in those life conditions.

So everyone then agreed that, overall, in the big picture, yes, the IR was good.

What a bunch of horseshit

>Nevertheless, that doesn't change the fact that all of the Big Problems nowadays (ranging from person ethical things like "what's the meaning of life" to society-wide questions like "what's the best form of government") these wouldn't be problems in a pre-industrial society

Those WERE problems in pre industrial society dumbass. Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, they all wondered about the meaning of life.

>Whats the best form of government?

They ALSO wondered about that. Cicero wondered about it. Marcus Aurelius wondered about it. A more modern approach comes from fucking Hobbes in the Leviathan, also pre industrial. What about Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau. Social Contract tells you anything?

>Once your survival is guaranteed by technology, you feel the malaise of meaninglessness.

Stop projecting. Ever heard of the pursue of knowledge? We are far from guaranteeing our survival thanks to technology, widespread disease and poverty still rule the world and yet you advocate for privitivism.

>On top of that, high-technology civilization basically guarantees eventual human extinction, if not the extinction of all life on earth, either through nuclear war, or self-replication nano-machines, or the creation of a terrestrial black hole, or whatever.

Typical nonsense from the non technologycally savvy. Environmental science IS a thing you retard, and it has application including economic policies such as establishing fishing quotas, emissions, etc. which are CURRENTLY regulated via international treaties for trade. The EU is a great example for it.

Fucking samefag or complete ignorant fucks. Both are stupidly wrong.

You are clearly ignorant about human development troughout the centuries. Start reading and apply yourself

it's not contradictory by itself as long as you don't make yourself dependent on it

not him but all the people you are pointing to were high castes free from the quest of survival, I'm pretty sure he is referring to normal average folk, the kind of people that in those societies would be too busy working

Settle down Beavis. I didn't use a single profanity and yet you're so mad you're thing is peppered with swear words and personal insults. I'm not "advocating" primitivism, that's the very first point in my post.

Also, Cicero, Marcus Aurelius, Voltaire, Aristotle, Epicurus, none of those people lived in pre-technological society. I'm talking about before large scale construction, before concentrations of human population, before settled agriculture.

>We are far from guaranteeing our survival thanks to technology, widespread disease and poverty still rule the world
Yeah that's how it should be. Doesn't change the fact that widespread access to technology has increased the human population by 5 billion people over the past 200 years.

>Fucking samefag
Look at the post counter dumbass. Just because you got a job in IT and it sucks doesn't mean you have to take it out on me.

The beef isn't with materialism but with the notion that the entire society should revolve around matieralism, with no access to the spiritual / higher dimension, which can give life a true purpose and direction. The purpose and direction is itself material prosperity / money, this is what constitutes "progress", not, for example, discovery of new planets, self-improvement, or other such glorious achievements.

This post is so retarded at so many levels that there's enough material to write an essay on retardedness

Let me guess, you are an american from some bumfuck redneck state right?

>I'm not "advocating" primitivism, that's the very first point in my post.

Yes you are, you said they are half right but only because it's impractical to return the world to a pre-industrial condition. The rest of the post was you giving really bad reasons why it is correct though. That's advocating. You admit it's silly to advocate it, but you still do it.

>none of those people lived in pre-technological society. I'm talking about before large scale construction, before concentrations of human population, before settled agriculture.

You said pre-industrial societies, not pre-techological ones. Completely different things.

>Doesn't change the fact that widespread access to technology has increased the human population by 5 billion people over the past 200 years.

So? Current probabilities say population growth will decline by 2100. You seem to prefer doomsday scenarios, so a high population is inherently bad, but that's where environmental regulation comes in, and also, the tendency for developed countries to have fewer birth rates. The more technologycally advance and better quality of life a society has, it becomes less populated

>you still do it.
Because it's ethically preferable. Just because it's hard doesn't mean it's morally wrong.

>Completely different things
Nitpicking. As technology proliferates, both alienation and actual injustice propagate as well. So even pre-industrial, while not totally pre-technological, is slightly ethically preferable.

>Current probabilities say population growth will decline by 2100
Fine, that doesn't account for all of the already-existing people. I don't "prefer" doomsday scenarios, but high-technology makes them more likely to occur, just as it increases the comfort of the first-world individual. That's just a fact. Cave-people didn't have the means to destroy entire natural environments.

So did you get out all your frustration and angst by calling me names? I see your new post is perfectly reasonable. You should have started that way if you want to have an actual debate and not mouth off like a little baby

Pure horseshit as the other user said.

First of all the real problem with going back to primitivism is that there's no way to sustain 7 billion people that way.

Second, exitentialist questions existed waaaay before pre-industrial society same as questions to the type of government. Even primitive society aren't exceptions to the government problem.

Also
>high-technology civilization basically guarantees eventual human extinction
is pure assumption. In fact, standards of living and life-expectancy have gone up while mortality rates have gone down sistematically fo the last couple of decades, all thanks to technologic innovation. There's no reason to believe extinction is going to happen, if anything, it's becoming less and less likely and chances will probably reach zero once we start colonizing other planets.

>Our entire species will be dependent on technology forever after, like a cancer patient on life support.
How is our species being dependent on earth any better?
Reminder there've been multiple times where humanity was at the blink of extinction due to natural phenomena.

>there's no way to sustain 7 billion people that way.
So what?

>pure assumption
So is the idea of colonizing other planets

>standards of living and life-expectancy have gone up while mortality rates have gone down sistematically fo the last couple of decades, all thanks to technologic innovation.

Again, so what? Just because your individual life is more comfortable doesn't mean it's better for the survival of life on the planet.

Also
>How is our species being dependent on earth any better?
Because we evolved that way? Human beings and their predecessors were shaped by millions of years of natural selection and environmental pressures. How arrogant to think you could just hurl yourself into space and it would be equally fine. Our bodies survive perfectly efficiently in forests and plains and deserts, not so much in an empty void.

>So is the idea of colonizing other planets
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_mission_to_Mars#Current_intentions_by_nations_and_space_agencies
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX#Mars
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_One
Humans will colonize other planets. The only real question is when.

>Again, so what? Just because your individual life is more comfortable doesn't mean it's better for the survival of life on the planet.
It's not only more comfortable, it's also longer and chances of dying have been reduced. If pollution becomes a problem for human life span then humans will control pollution as well, just as we have started doing the last decades.

>so what?
>primitive is good because I say so, nevermind actual scientific evidence that our life has become more comfortable, longer, we suffer less disease and have a reduced mortality. Technology will kill us (?) so we better kill ourselves before with food shortages, reduce our lifespan and increase our mortality by going back to the woods!
This is you

>evolution gave us great brain power and adaptability
>the main objective of life is to survive and reproduce
but somehow
>we have to limit the use of our abilities because we originally evolved as hunter-gatherers!
?

I don't think it was good or bad, but had both good and bad implications. Children working in dangerous conditions, a heavier workload for the former peasantry and the conformity which comes from mechanizing the world isn't arguably "good," and you can admit that without being a luddite.

>This is you
No, both of you are misrepresenting my position. I admitted in my first post that it's impossible to "go back to the woods." I agree with you that, if human beings survive, they will try to colonize space and try to implement technology to correct environmental damage. We've already reached the point of no return, where our comfortable lives free of high infant mortality are dependent on not just industry, but high technology.

None of that changes the fact that it would be ethically preferable if none of that had even happened in the first place. If human beings had tempered their pursuit of material comforts so that our bodies and minds could keep up, and we could have a technological world that DIDN'T destroy natural environments and animal habitats., that would have been the ethically preferable scenario. To just throw up your arms and say we missed our chance, let's just pursue technological progress whole hog, is still misguided.

What makes you think we can't go back into the woods?

We're perfecetly capable of surviving in nature with limited technology
Imagine how the earth would 20000 years after we decided to do something like that
Gives me a boner

it would be objectively worse to go back to pre-industrial conditions, there is more to life than putting a bone through your nose, smearing faeces over yourself and dancing around a fire, as fun as it may be

>Because it's ethically preferable. Just because it's hard doesn't mean it's morally wrong.

Oh you had to go there. That really doesn't resolves anything due to morals being dependent on whatever ethics everybody chooses to follow, and even saying "choose" imply it has already been selected one.

i.e. it's a valve concept to say "it's not morally wrong"

>Nitpicking.

And that's why I said it's horseshit. It's not nitpicking, pre-industrial and pre-technological societies are millenia apart.

A pre-technological one belongs to a society that barely fits the term society. Fire is technology, same as a knive or any other simple tool. See why you are deeply wrong?

Alienation and injustice are not propagated by technology, they are by human relationships regarding their governmental systems. The inca were preindustrial and they didn't had homeless people since it was mandatory that everybody had a job. You are projecting waaaay too much. Besides, every human development chart from the UN will tell you our human conditions under technology are way better than before.

Injustice is solved with a proper judicial system. The rule of law came from centuries of judiciary development. You are deeply wrong about that assertion

> I don't "prefer" doomsday scenarios, but high-technology makes them more likely to occur, just as it increases the comfort of the first-world individual

You don't prefer them yet that's all you rely upon. Also

>That's just a fact. Cave-people didn't have the means to destroy entire natural environments.

Complete utter horseshit. Ever heard of Easter Island? Yes, they deforested their tiny island and fucked themselves. In Australia the aborigens caused the extinction of Genyornis newtoni since they ate their eggs which they barely put one in a year

>I see your new post is perfectly reasonable
Yeah, it's true, but that's because I was triggered by the stupidity of your post

>call someone out for being rude by berating them and calling them names in turn

you have some good points user, don't ruin them

>whatever ethics everybody chooses to follow
If you lived in the woods with 100 other individuals and had only minimal agriculture, you wouldn't have to "choose to follow" an ethics, the way to live would just come to you borne out of survival needs.

>Fire is technology, same as a knive or any other simple tool.
Fair enough, but I literally said it's not possible to go back to either condition, so that's irrelevant.


>Easter Island, Australia
Those are unique cases, because island ecologies are largely cut off from the rest of the world, especially in pre-technological times, and have their own self-contained ecosystems.

>Injustice is solved with a proper judicial system
Oh come on, that has to be at least EQUALLY as idealistic as my scenario.

>more to life than putting a bone through your nose, smearing faeces over yourself and dancing around a fire
Is there really though? This is basically what everyone did on the weekends when I was in college

I have the same boner, user. I say it's impossible because there's a basic ontological gulf between people with political ideas about how the world should be, and the real workings of reality. It's pretty much impossible to perfectly implement *any* kind of political program, let alone such a radical one.

But yes, my ideal world, if human beings have to exist at all (if we're being honest, the only justification for our continued existence as a species is the self-interest of a bunch of individuals), they would be a few million total, and confined to a single large arcology that uses renewable resources, and the rest of the world is left untouched for animal and environmental processes.

Russel Kirk definitely considered it the death of traditionalism( reading him I was just waiting for him to REEEEE the fuck out over it but he just subtly put potshots in here and there) and ruining a good thing, he also refused to drive and called cars mechanical jacobins. So it was still a thing into the 1990s. Not sure about now though

You guys are doing your best to ignore fundamental human nature

the reason we're having this argument at all is because we were so successful at beating ever greater amounts of resources out of our environment. All our history is a quest to improve this aspect of our lives. It's part of what it means to be human. It defines us. We can't go back.

Sure we can try to be better stewards of our planet, and it's gotten way, way better over the last century in the developed world. Don't forget that. But that's it. That will be a part of whatever forward progress we continue to make. Better progress. No going back.

>and have literal Grecian god body

If you look at pictures of hunter gatherers on average they're far from Adonises. Best described as 'athletic looking', some are even kind of paunchy / wiry. It takes a lot of deliberate training to hit that "greek god" aesthetic, and you can be functionally strong without getting the look.

Of all the times in human history the modern day is best chance you have for developing that aesthetic, you're just lazy.

Actually, being an Athenian of the right class at the right time would probably be best. Those guys spent most of their lives in the gym.

>No going back.
Yeah I've admitted that over and over again in this thread and it's the first sentence of my first post and also the first sentence of the post you responded to

user, civilization is relatively new in the span of human history, it's not really "human nature" that we developed agriculture and all the things that stemmed from that. Most of our history was relatively static.

Not arguing that we go back, though, but the 'human nature' argument is always a cop-out. You can throw it at basically any human behavior, constructive or destructive.

>Actually, being an Athenian of the right class at the right time would probably be best.

If you're adding the qualifier "of the right class" then today is still guaranteed your best bet, if you are of "the right class" (that is to say independently wealthy). The point is that cultivating that sort of a physique is a product of leisure time, rather than the labour of hunting/gathering/farming/etc.

If you're "of the right class" today you, too, could spend most of your time at the gym, only with the added bonus of far more knowledge of diet/supplements/optimal exercise.

Some things are more essential than others. That's why sex is always such a big part of life, one way or another. Core drives are too central to who we are.

And it may have taken us time to get traction, but it was always headed this way.

Leisure or idle time was highly viewed in classical Greece, to the point of being one major factor leading into classical philosophy and the foundations of western civilization.

I'm a primitivist and I regularly use Veeky Forums. I am of the belief that the average human was far happier and content before the development of civilization.

However, I also realize that a return to such a time is unfeasible, thus the only way is forward to a future of fully-automated anarcho-communism.

If you were living at the very beginning you probably saw a decrease in living standards. However, that initial misery helped lay the foundation for the crazy future of robots and shit we live in.

It depends on whether you're taking the position of an individual at the time, an individual in the future, or the species as a whole.

Only some retarded monarchists, nobles and reactionaries

>"I'm a Primitivist"
>"the only way is forward to a future of fully-automated anarcho-communism."

You could have just stopped at "I'm a primitivist" without having to babble on about all that other shit. It's already obvious that commies and primies are of the same breed of morons with no ability to personally motivate themselves.

The problem will work itself out because nihilists don't procreate in an increasingly comfortable society, while people who can still form ambitions beyond just survival without the guide of society will live on.

Natural selection at work.

>nihilists don't procreate
>implying ambition is biologically heritable

Hey, I'm a primitivist in that I believe we're individually better off living under more natural conditions; but that doesn't mean I'll sacrifice my competitiveness to entertain the illusion that it's viable at present.

My personal goal is to have a little farm and live far away from any urban area. And if I have to work a few hours per week as a programmer to afford it, then so be it.

So? That's irrelevant, a man with leisure time now is still more capable of cultivating that physique more easily than a man with leisure time in Athenian times.

>sustained general improvement

you didn't say "got better than it was before the IR"

>Bad thing

It let us to massive progress in the end but remember the people that worked in pseudo-slavery in the coal mines
Normies keep saying "oh man it must've been so horrible to live in the middleages, no comfort no clean water", but the real hell on earth was the coal mines, just a handful of generations ago.

>pictures of modern hunter gatherers

aka people who suck so much at hunting and gathering they never got enough free time in 10,000 years to figure out agriculture

>Implying not almost any trait can become heritable if it proves to be advantageous in survival and reproduction

That's kind of how evolution works friendo. Whether directly or indirectly, if one or more individual traits are leading to more success in procreation in a postmodern society, it's gonna greatly increase the chance of being passed on.

Technology and modern western sensibilities did not suddenly stop evolution from still occurring.

>Human beings don't have a transcendent purpose, they have an imminent purpose; to survive.
And you want to abandon technology, the only thing that could possibly allow life to survive the death of this inevitably doomed biosphere?

I mean, yeah, it might kill it quicker instead, but it's life's only hope of long term survival. Adapt and spread, that's what life does - swapping out DNA information inheritance for the much more efficient and selective conscious knowledge storage and transference provided by technology is just the latest adaptation, the latest method of survival.

You may as well be protesting warm blood and empathetic pack behavior.

This is what nihilist egalitarians always completely ignore in their misguided thought process.

Ethics, in the grand scheme of things, is absolutely shit. It's only real purpose is mutual progression of individual goals. Humans could never have existed, but organisms on earth are still going to live, die, and suffer constantly until they're eventually totally wiped out by an expanding sun or something else.

Intelligent life and technology is at least an extension of a complicated organization in the universe and we can enjoy wherever that takes us.

>we can enjoy wherever that takes us
I agree, I certainly enjoy my life full of technological comforts and I take full advantage of them.

I'm not making an ethical argument, I'm making an ontological one. This guy [] says abandoning technology will condemn us to death with the "inevitably doomed biosphere."

That's totally correct. The problem is, the only reason for humanity to survive and the "doomed biosphere" to die out is self-interest of the human species. That's what I meant by "imminent purpose." There's no reason why it's ethically preferable from the universe's point of view for human beings to survive and colonize other planets rather than just go extinct. This is especially true if there are more technological intelligences in the universe than just human beings. If you're only appealing to self-interest, though, then that's fine, because at least you're being consistent.

Ambition isn't a genetic trait though, it's just psychology. You probably learn ambition from your parents (or not), but it doesn't have anything to do with genetic heritability.

>dependent on technology

I'd rather be dependent on technology and have a chance to resist the destructive forces that surrounds us rather than being entirely at the mercy of entropy.

Ambition is just another word for various reward and motivational circuits in your brain, where hereditary factors certainly are involved to a significant extent.

Drive is literally at the core of evolution. People will eventually procreate simply for the sake of wanting to continue a biological legacy if that's what it takes to survive in the future.

These are both totally different claim than you inherit your level of ambition from your parents through genetics.

>Semantics

Nobody cares. His basic point was right.

Anyone with half a brain

Also, being a fat shit with a limp dick and a limp brain from no exercise and nutrient poor diet is not living in any sense

Specially if the cost of this "living" is pretty much raping the planet and making even our atosphere carcinogenic with all the radio waves we emit on a daily basis

See:

>and making even our atosphere carcinogenic with all the radio waves we emit on a daily basis

>making even our atosphere carcinogenic with all the radio waves we emit on a daily basis>>

It's impossible to return to primitivism without destroying everything

If industrial civilization breaks down you will have 7 billion people starving to death, once they realize the food trucks aren't re stocking the shelves they'll flee into the countryside and begin eating everything they find, every last piece of wood will be burned for fuel, eventually they will begins burning garbage, once all the animals are killed and eaten they will begin to cannibalize each other, there will be warfare on the open seas as they try and catch the last of the fish, they will kill anything edible in the oceans, whales, dolphins... nuclear power plants will meltdown as maintenance funding evaporates and nuclear war is almost inevitable

After that it's debatable humanity will even survive after the massive environmental destruction , it would basically be like toba catastrophe and the Easter Island collapse combined

Basically we mcfucked up pretty bad

That is acceptable to me.

>making even our atosphere carcinogenic with all the radio waves we emit on a daily basis