Why progress?

Why would a happy small-village fisherman give up his life as a fisherman in pursuit of progress, only to jump from a building that he helped build?

If progress is objectively better, then how could people have ever been happy without progress?

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They didn't know better.

YOU didn't know better.
Odin was RIGHT.

>then how could people have ever been happy without progress?
They were happy for the time. But it was more perilous. It's easier to be happy now.

>"They didn't know better"
>Better

Again, you progressives assume it's "better".
There have been many times where tribal societies have abandoned the progressive lifestyles their colonizers gave them

>Again, you progressives assume it's "better".
Because it is. You can objectively do more with progress.

Progressives leave out the need of the soul. Which has simple needs, contrary to the direction of the progressives. With each step toward progress, the more materialism will solidify. The purest humans were the earliest forms. From Adam to Enoch to Jesus, we have the purest forms, and then Noah to Abram to Moses, the forms become less pure. (Sorry about the confusion of timeline here, but our history has been corrupted and it's vital to understand the correct way)

"Progess" is nothing more than redoubling our efforts after having lost sight of our goals. It is an improved means to an unimproved end. Technology should be made for man, and not man for technology.

>You can objectively do more with progress.
>more
Like more progress?
That's how the system goes. You want to progress, because you've not progressed enough. ITS 2017!!!

This

Because the happy small village fisherman would die at 30

>Like more progress?
Exactly. And give better quality of life.

The happiest people I've ever met were the women in Kerala, India - who lived in poverty but their eyes shined with joy. They told me that they were totally content because they trusted in God completely.

Ignorance is bliss. But if we were meant to remain ignorant, God wouldn't have given us capacity to learn.

Progress is a hard word to define. It can be used by anyone to justify their actions. Is progression making lives easier and more meaningful? More technology? What does it mean exactly?

>inb4 shariablue shill

In our progress, we find more ways to gain pleasure. In the beginning, man's needs for pleasure were simple. You want to find food and eat it. You want a good shelter to stay warm in. Simple. And very enjoyable. But as we progress, we add to that. We are creatures that get bored easily. So, we're always striving for something more. We want something a little more harder to reach. So we create abstract pleasures. And yet it's never enough. And the pain of the world increases right along with it. This is simply because pleasure is tied in to pain. You can't have just one. They are poles apart. And to increase the pole of pleasure is also to increase the pole of pain. It's important to understand that seeking pleasure and seeking bliss are two different things. We are part of a society that says we should focus on the former. And that is really where all our problems arise. To seek pleasure is in a way to seek division and loneliness. Pleasure goes hand in hand with individualism -- narcissistic behavior if you take it far -- and this is the very root of division. Division in all things causes pain.

There is no answer. Progress is the lie to exploit to ignorant. True progress would never be achieved globally, simply because of ignorance to the world beyond the self and greed.
Find a woman and find yourself, we will all be dust soon enough.

>Better quality of life
See, that's the illusion.
The better quality life was when we were happier.. We didn't need progress to be happy.

The industrial revolution (Which was super progressive) saw wages of 100 hours per week, all for the cost of living. They wanted to progress, because progress meant that that there were better tools, less work, etc; but little did they realize that the labor market always needs workers. Someone finally stepped up and demanded child labor laws.

Food and eating aren't pleasures. They are necessities. Hunter gatherers didn't have to work hard to farm, provided that they had very few children, because nature was abundant. When we started to overpopulate, the lack of resources compelled us to farm, which drove a society on debt rather than abundance.

>those luscious soles
classical boner

>The better quality life was when we were savages
It objectively wasn't. We couldn't do anything. We had no time, and ended up like ants.
There'll be a singularity point where we can balance happiness vs energy expended, but it wasn't when we had to subsist.

Average lifetime stats were massively skewed by high infant and mother mortality rate. If you survived to 16 you were likely to survive to 60.

The pursuit of progress is what makes us human. It is the very essence of our being. How else did we progress from sleeping in caves to makes tents, to dried mud huts and eventually houses of wood and stone? The strive fo greater things is what brought us to where we are, it is what distinguishes us from apes and other primates. Progress is what defines us and always has.

Human happiness is fleeting. We are designed to gain happiness from setting and working towards a goal.

The fulfilment of said goal, may not be as helpful as you have imagined. Instead leving you without purpose.

This is one reason we are supposed to raise a family and maintain close relations with friends and relatives (our tribe)

Raising a child into an adult and helping them as they go forward provides us secondary goals.

Doing something easy is rarely worthwhile. Difficult things provide challenges to us physically and mentally, which in turn forges greatness and also provides sustenance to our basic nature.

I'am unfamiliar with the tale you mention in the OP, but my analysis still stands for it, and life in general.

>no time
You had so much more time than people do today. Most "savage" tribes are living leisurely, while you wake up every day at 6 in the morning to go to your job that you have to do until you go in debt and find yourself working 2 jobs; and suddenly, you find out that you have to pay for a child.
We've had to regulate to reduce the amount of time we worked.

I worked 17 hours a day on a boat for an entire fishing season. We do get days off; but the days we get off (due to weather), all I want to do is sleep. I have to fuel myself with energy drinks and coffee to be able to function. I was so burnt out from working, that I forgot to pay my bills; though I had a lot of money to spend, I found myself going in debt because I needed special pillows and mattresses to be able to afford my working lifestyle. My back is fucked, one of my ankles is fucked; and my hand got fucked. This is purely driven by market prices, too.
Employment insurance helped me a lot, because now I have time AND money. But what do I really need money for? My taxes go to the city to help build their infrastructure, to import cheap labor, and to fund progressivism.

What is this all for?
I could catch cod, lobster, shrimp, scallops, etc; and I could live for weeks on local catch. But the market prices have driven them skyhigh, because of regulations. Without those regulations, the fish would be gone. As a matter of fact, we're forced to give our product to the cities. Cities (and progressivism) wouldn't survive without rural areas that are abundant with resources.

>Most "savage" tribes are living leisurely
On gibs from civilised people. And even those savages have advanced in other ways.
Not societies fault that you have a shitty job.

To defend themselves from those who do progress.

>The pursuit of progress is what makes us human.
No, what makes us human is our DNA. We walk on to legs, can talk, can use tools; that's what makes us human.
The giraffe has the longest neck, but never looks up at the stars, so what are we with our binocular vision and short necks? We're another animal, learning to think that we are above nature; when every time we go against nature, we destroy it, and we destroy ourselves.

>how could people have ever been happy without progress
That fishing village is progress.
>you progressives assume it's "better"
We assume it's better not because it simply is but because we love it.
A village progresses or improves because it's tenants have a love for it. Societies degenerate when the love is gone. The family, race, ideals, etc are things men love, and when they love such things life improves.
>tribal societies abandoned the progressive lifestyles
Africa was incapable of the progressive lifestyle.
>You want to progress, because you've not progressed enough
Progress feeds conservatism. You conserve what you've made.
>See, that's the illusion.
>The better quality life was when we were happier.. We didn't need progress to be happy.
We don't but when we are happy we progress. It's natural, not artificial that men should learn and improve.

Do paganfags believe in science, and the theory of evolution?

>No, what makes us human is our DNA. We walk on to legs, can talk, can use tools; that's what makes us human.
more advanced animals you mean. but we are not like the animals, we progress. We make art, we dance, we sing, we love, we hate, we build, we develop ideas, animals do not even do this on a small scale, the ones who show signs of improvement always fizzle out or lose it within 2-3 generations. Man is the only being in existence to improve himself consciously.

>go against nature
progress is in our nature

>believe in science, and the theory of evolution
if they are retarded they might.
The Darwinian tautological fallacy needs to die, this 18th century mysticism which our modern technology can barely explain is as affront to science.

tell me more

>when every time we go against nature, we destroy it, and we destroy ourselves.
I agree, but if there be no higher purpose then there is no such thing as progress. the fact that man progresses in some way and develops some metric is proof he is has a greater purpose than a rock

>food and eating aren't pleasures

Can we explore that? First, where does pleasure come from? Does it not come from a feeling of desire? We eat food to live, and with the things we live for, individually, we find desire. We desire food to live and it gives us pleasure. But not everyone eats food for pleasure. There are many people who eat bland food because it's healthy. They desire good health. So you see, the source is the same. The desire for good health is the same as the desire to eat for pleasure. And so if desires are always toward pleasurable things wouldn't that then make eating a pleasure?

>On gibs from civilized people
Are you really that dense?
You assume that civilization comes with abundance. Why did we ever start farming? We killed out the native populations of animals, and we stole their food; we didn't stop breeding, and then someone discovered that they could plant the seed to get it to grow again; we replicated this process until we could sustain ourselves. But in sustaining ourselves, we turned whole habitats into farmland. We've killed the environment.

Without civilization, the oceans would be abundant enough that I could just set a trap and it would fill with crabs and lobsters; all the necessary protein. The spruce contains all the necessary vitamin c. If I didn't have to pay to the city, then the city wouldn't give us the benefit of cheap lumber. We would have to work to build houses, and building houses would be a community project. But guess what, we would learn to keep our dicks in our pants, and we wouldn't overpopulate, and that means we could eat a lot more, and that there'd be less work.
Whatever work we had to do, would be fun, because it wouldn't be out of debt but from abundance.

A lot of people in this thread sound like typical "right side of history" progressives.

You guys assume that because technology and science have made our lives in the modern day easier, safer, and more comfortable, our political systems/other forms of social progress are also right. Tell me, if you take technology/science out of the 20th century, wouldn't it objectively be the dark ages of mankind? Terrible failed governments, over 100 million dead from 2 world wars, global crises all over the place, mass suffering, etc.

Also, something to think about:

>And at an even deeper level, the more we discover about human evolution, the more illusory certain ideas of progress become. In his book Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari points out that hunter-gatherers were actually up to six inches taller than their more “civilized” successors; their diets were much healthier; infectious disease was much rarer; they worked less and goofed off more than we do. They didn’t even have much shorter lives: If you survived the enormous hazards of childhood, you could reach the age of 60, and some lived into their 80s (and stayed within their tribes rather than being shunted off into lonely rest homes). Famines and plagues — the great catastrophes of human history — were less common. Harari notes another paradox: Over hundreds of millennia, we have overcome starvation … but now are more likely to die of obesity than hunger. Happiness? Globally, suicide rates keep rising.

Source: nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/04/andrew-sullivan-why-the-reactionary-right-must-be-taken-seriously.html

>tell me more
I don't even know what to say, a serious education is ridiculously hard to find in our world.
You are defining desire as any end goal. But to use your terminology there are different desires with differing personalities which are altogether distinct from the central or soul personality which remains conscious of itself, essentially they are different from (You).
The fulfillment of desire does not always lead to pleasure, nor is pleasure the end goal of desire.
A soldier who desires life above all yet gives himself to war for the sake of duty. he gets no pleasure from duty or his duty to do it, yet he attains a grim resolve and nothing can stop him from achieving his objective. And of course a desire could backfire and one might receive a pain instead of pleasure.

>Without civilization, the oceans would be abundant enough that I could just set a trap and it would fill with crabs and lobsters
True, but for what purpose? What are you going to achieve by doing that? Why do you need that sustenance if you're not going to progress?

...

>A lot of people in this thread sound like typical "right side of history" progressives.
>hurrr durrr progressives are dumb therefore progress is bad
Look, I too hate modern liberal society, but I don't think we need to become illiterate retards because of this.
Language, writing, wheels, fire, these are all good things attributed to progress. I am going to play the part of the true conservative and defend such progress to the bitter end.
>mass suffering
It wasn't technology that caused it, a gun doesn't cause pain, evil men with evil intent does.

I don't assume that at all. A political system and a society is only "right" if it's advancing. Democracy, liberalism, libertarianism, etc. at best are all stagnant. At worse, degenerative.

I agree all the suffering and crises is a bad thing... I feel this probably many times more strongly than you... but I also think my solution is better than
>sit and think how cool it'd be if everyone just gave up civilization and lived like we did 7 millennia ago

>I don't even know what to say, a serious education is ridiculously hard to find in our world.
Why does Darwin's theory need to die? What makes it an affront to science?

>more advanced animals you mean.
No such thing as an "Advanced animal".
Evolution doesn't advance; it survives.

>but we are not like the animals, we progress.
Progress is perpetual debt. It's a system we created for ourselves, to be afraid of debt (which incentivizes work); people who aren't afraid of debt are in the norm; those who are afraid of debt (The poor and the rich) will obsess about needing more money so they can become normal or more honourable than normal.

>I agree, but if there be no higher purpose then there is no such thing as progress. the fact that man progresses in some way and develops some metric is proof he is has a greater purpose than a rock
It's cyclical, then. We should progress, because man is progressing, and that is proof we should progress.
The higher purpose (if that's what you're looking for) should be the same for us as it is with every mammal on Earth. Our higher purpose should always be to be moral, honourable, and dignified.

In a different context, you could call it a "Pleasure". It's physical pleasure.
You could give rats and mice physical pleasure by supplying them with a constant supply of food and resources, but all it does is lead to overpopulation, violence, then to anti-social tendencies until the population dies out (The calhoun mice experiment).

We are alive because of the physical pleasures, but we live because of the social pleasures.
We eat to live (physically), but we live to drink(socially). That's what I think the higher purpose should be in life, just as it is for every mammal.

>. It's natural, not artificial that men should learn and improve.
Learning and improving is natural, for survival.

But why do men learn fitness and improve their physique, when they don't use it?
The golden boy, or whatever his name is, for example, has a great physique, but what purpose does it serve? He's a body builder, not a strength trainer; he did it for vanity, not strength

>He gets no pleasure from duty
Why wouldn't he not get pleasure from duty? If he would desire more to live, then he would stop fighting. Many men have found pleasure in that way. Or, while his compatriots are dying all around, is the desire to not be ashamed from falling back retreating much more greater? When the war is over, that's a pleasure he could take with him to the grave.

You're arguing against capitalism at this point, not "progress".
>just as it is for every mammal.
Stop spewing out statements like this to justify your views. No animals give a shit about the habitats of others in their ecosystem.

>Learning and improving is natural, for survival.
>for survival
What do you think colonization is?
What do you think medical science is?
What do you think particle physics is?

The last paragraph really makes the whole thing sound more like a sad excuse.
>"We came to this world steal its resources"
Always ALWAYS with the greedy urgency.
And that's how you'll end your life, always looking for that "extra" bit of coin that will make your life fulfilled, never getting it, spending eternity in the stars finding what can never be attained.

Meanwhile, when the sun burns out, I'll die with dignity knowing that I had a full life because I wasn't in pursuit of the impossible.

There is no advance...
We were fed 7 millennia ago. We lived and died, and we will continue to live and die. The only difference, is that we can't feed ourselves today, yet we think this is progress.

>It's easier to be happy now.
Then how come I'm not?

I think we were supposed to learn nitrogen fixation, not dragon dildos

You should be, Tories and DUP are in charge now.

>You're arguing against capitalism at this point, not "progress".
Capitalism, Communism, Marxism, progress.. It's all the same to me. Your society is a product of the fear of debt. Your income equality doesn't even solve your debt. Every next thing that progress comes up with to solve a past issue, it fails. There was democracy and capitalism thousands of years ago. What has changed? Do we need another fall of Rome, another fall of the kingdoms of France, spain, and the British empire?. Do we need the fall of America or the EU? It's already happening. What has progress done?

>No animals give a shit about the habitats of others in their ecosystem.
We didn't, naturally. We didn't until it affected us. It affects us. Progress made it worse.

>What do you think colonization is?
>What do you think medical science is?
>What do you think particle physics is?
Yet the lifespan has only increased by a few years, relatively speaking. We're animals. We will die. If we could live eternally, what would the point be? To progress? The people that didn't progress have already died out, and they lived fuller lives than we're living.

>Why wouldn't he not get pleasure from duty
It is against all his desires for pleasure and is succeeded only by his rational choice of a higher purpose. It does not lead to pleasure, how does facing death and suffering and becoming only weaker or dead for it create pleasure for its own sake or even pleasure at all?
It simply does not because it does not abide by the equation which leads to pleasure.
>he would stop fighting
no he wouldn't, his desire to live can be the greatest thing he has but it can not overcome his dominant self, his central personality which is his essence, the lesser personality no matter how great must necessarily submit in the end, this does not mean the man cant follow it, it just means he is not a biologically deterministic being. Read Jung and Freud.
>many men have found pleasure in that way
never in being a coward, joy is greater than pleasure, happiness is state of being not a state of mind. Only dead men can be happy said Aristotle and Solon.
>much more greater
It might be, but he will not do it because he has resolved himself with his greater self.
>when war is over that's a pleasure
That's a peace, not a pleasure.

>We live because of the social pleasures

It is relationship. What makes us feel related to the world around us. To family, friends, strangers. To the universe. To the shores of the beach. That brings us an inner bliss. It feeds our soul. We are both talking about the same thing. The opposite of finding relationship to all those things that feed our soul is individuality. Fulfilling your individual desires. Eating, drinking, blaming, living in a big house, charging interest. All these things create the same problem. Obviously, there is a spectrum. But the small will create the large. That is why some people have too much food and some go hungry to this day. In order for food to not be a problem. As it is, it does create conflict, we must all understand the nature of desire. If we don't, any progress we make (even to feed the world) will be riddled with holes. The intention is broken from the start.

Life isn't about happiness. It's about progress until we evolve into a higher life form or make way for the next species to take our place.

>No such thing as an "Advanced animal".
My point exactly, stop treating man like he is one.
>Evolution doesn't advance
Not everything that changes evolves. Unless of course you wish to contradict yourself. In which case everything evolves forward in time and there are objective metrics by which we can judge evolving ideas, hence progress can be objectively good.
>it survives
Not always.
>>progress is perpetual debt
But it's not. It's the result of love.
>debt incentivizes work
But it doesn't, the results of debt do, not debt itself. Also work for its own sake or for leisure is a much greater motivation to work rather than the avoidance of pain.
>it's cyclical
You mean tautological. What more can men do than what men have always done? Why should we not lift our hands to the sky as our fathers did? Save for they held spears now we hold guns.
>the higher purpose is the same for every mammal
Why mammals? Also why every mammal? Why not just man? The one who makes art, music, creates, brings forth from his soul the wonders and cruelties of life, man is like nature more than animals. Man is like a storm more so than a simian.
Souls evolved from power.
>learning and improving is natural for survival
survival isn't the only end goal. Set yourself free from these materialist chains. Why do old men revel in knowledge? Their kids are grown and gone with kids of their own, their wives are long dead, their societies do not care for them. Why do they still offer wisdom and help despite this being almost counter-evolutionary? In terms of survival being the ultimate goal.
>men improve their physique because they love themselves
Golden One.
>Vanity not strength
Art not survival.

My life's fulfilled by reaching my fullest potential as a cog in the machine.
>what can never be attained
>I wasn't in pursuit of the impossible
This is always what it boils down to with people like you, huh? This is how you justify being dead weight. You have a higher knowledge that's told you our efforts are futile.
If it's all the same to you it's because you don't understand them.
>Your society
It's not mine. I'm a national socialist. My society would be a product of the fear of death.

>We didn't until it affected us.
We still don't, because we've progressed beyond that affect it has on us. We preserve out of luxury, not necessity.

>Yet the lifespan has only increased by a few years, relatively speaking.
And you don't die from a bout of pneumonia. You don't live the entire rest of your life a cripple because you broke your legs.

>The people that didn't progress have already died out
That's how it works, yes.
>and they lived fuller lives than we're living.
And now they're dead.

>Bruhhh I love progress
Well uhh... The freedom to fap to traps
White people goals

Its the journey itself, mother fucker.

I´d say progress is not inherently bad but has to be substantial and sustainable.

>This is always what it boils down to with people like you, huh? This is how you justify being dead weigh
It is because he is afraid Heaven exists.
>Your society is a product of the fear of debt.
prove it. Such societies are products of ideals and rational goals.
>past issue
because there is no more love to drive it.
>what has progress done
Given you the ability to complain about it
>we're animals
Except we are alike none but ourselves, again, art, music, religion, the self, love, cruelty.
>what would the point be
To live as we were meant to, that is to say, to die.
We should seek immortality only to give it away.

back to r3ddit, good goy

>still falling for the linear progression meme at all

My view is that as long as society is such that the majority of individuals (That actually work and aim to be self-sufficient) can achieve up to the second tier of this pyramid, then everything is fine.

Basically ask yourself
-physically, do you need anything?
If No then ask yourself
-Are you worried about surviving in the future? Does it seem unlikely that you'll be able to meet level 1 needs in the foreseeable future?
If No then you are good.

Any depression or lack of fulfillment after that point is purely a personal psychological problem and not something that all the social/political change in the world could help.

I think liberals who are always on about "progress" and etc, are just people who want to fill the void thinking it comes in the form of material wealth or envy of luxurious lifestyles lead by the elites of society, which are broadcasted to the majority of people as being par-for-the-course. If they aren't riding in limos, or have cocktail parties or tropical/international vacations then they feel incomplete and just want more and more and more. But none of that stuff would make them happy. Not until they sort themselves out and learn what truly matters in life.

not an argument

All sound pretty nice from your ivory tower but in the real world no amount of self realization will stop other people from shooting at you or blowing you up if they have reached that enlightement.

>shooting at you or blowing you up

Well that would be a world that Level 2 would be lacking.

and I said as long as your society is set up to allow Levels 1 and 2 to be easily met, then that is enough progress.

Basically food security and the defense of food/property rights/enable people to be confident that they won't be ripped off in the market of goods and services. and if there is a dispute, then there is a power to aid in settling disputes in a non-violent way that aims at justice.

>a power to aid in settling disputes in a non-violent way that aims at justice
?

>buy gold trinket after being told it was solid gold
>go home
>realize it isn't actually gold
>got ripped off
>seller says no refunds
>completely uncooperative

Without a state, you would have to resort to either accepting the burn or steal your money back at night or engage in combat with the seller.

So the state basically is able to force the seller to return your money.
Obviously when I say "non-violent" I don't mean that the state is non-violent. The characteristic of "the state" is that it claims a monopoly on the use of force/violence to settle disputes. So yes there is violence at the end of the road of escalation, but at least it isn't raw, unregulated, emotional private individual versus private individual violence that leads to blood feuds.