From Anarchurious earlier today:

And, to be nasty, I look at capitalism and I see the Congo. I look at Marxism and I see despots. I look at liberal democracy and I see raped Vietnamese women. I look at conservatism and I see lebensraum and Manifest Destiny. I look at anarchism and I see futility. I look at libertarianism and I see privilege confused for principle. I see the world’s ideologies, like its faiths, and I see ugliness, ruin, waste, and error. I pick from their corpses and I go back to work.

So true. So bleak.

I sometimes completely lose faith. By that I mean, I am sometimes tempted to give up on the human species altogether.

Cüneyt’s indictment is correct. What is the appropriate response?

The planet doesn’t need human beings, nor would it, nor any of its other inhabitants care if the human race evaporated into the ether tomorrow. I’m sure we all agree on that point. (On second thought, my dog might be unhappy about it).

In any event, the notion of a static, perfectible ecology is certainly naive. But one can still wonder at the marvels of human invention while remaining wary about its downside.

I take issue with those who would discount our kind through reduction. There is a type of person who, though perhaps well-meaning and kind in most regards, envies the dumb beast and resents his own consciousness. Perhaps we all do that at times, just as we all sometimes would rather be asleep.

We are different in kind, if not in biology. I suspect that most of us, save the most contemptuous, self-loathing nihilist, actually wants the species to survive. It would be rather foolish of us to complain about power and its misuse if we were anxious to hasten our own demise.

Some are inclined to hunker down. So disillusioned are they, and pessimistic about man’s nature that they insist the only hope is to stockpile provisions and wait. It’s too late, after all, to reverse the course that the base motives of our species, unchecked by sufficient political consciousness, is heading. It is a course, they say, that will inevitably rain destruction and calamity upon the greater portion of that pitiable mass of humanity that refuses to wake up.

There is, in this, an arrogance of the profoundest order, not unlike that of the apocalyptic preacher.

Whether one believes that the world is about to come to an end or not is less important than staking a position about how one ought to live. There is nothing wrong with skepticism about technology. Down-scaling may be fashionable, but it’s also prudent.

Regarding this recent post by Mr. Crow.

As usual, I will take the middle path. Sure, technology is not in and of itself a bad thing. Tools are tools. Hammers are useful. Nor am I a primitivist. That’s mostly because I have not the skills to survive should the world require me to live off the land, despite my Boy Scout training.

But tools, including the humble little fulcrum, increase the force of those who wield them. And when that tool assumes the force of billions of fulcrums; and when that tool is beyond the reach of the ken of the average village; and when that tool can analyze terabytes of purloined data daily, then the tool becomes a danger. In the same way that a nuclear weapon is not just a big bomb, technology has leaped beyond mere utility to sheer terror.

And that’s not my only issue. Who is more delirious? The Star Trek fantasist or the primitivist? I can live without my iPod, which is way cooler than a tri-corder. But I’d rather train my kids to grow beans than write computer programs.

So I guess the point of Jack’s post was something like, We’re all gonna’ die anyway. Don’t blame the bullet that you have aimed at your eyeball, blame the fucking idiot that’s gonna’ pull the trigger.