Leo M.J. Aurini

Trained as a Historian at McMaster University, and as an Infantry soldier in the Canadian Forces, I'm a Scholar, Author, Film Maker, and a God fearing Catholic, who loves women for their illogical nature.

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9 Responses

  1. nazgulnarsil says:

    I don’t think you’ve internalized your thesis. With holodecks the moral distinctions between shooting heroin and doing something “meaningful” go away. Neither affects anyone except the person doing it. So your only possible further objection is to assert that your morality makes you better than others.

    But this just makes the holodeck the logical conclusion of welfare. We could simply give the proles cash payments (and save ourselves a pretty penny in the process), but that wouldn’t afford us the opportunity to force them to conform to our values and gloat while doing so.

  2. The Frequentist says:

    Hello there Aurini. I apologize in advance for the long comment that follows. The kind of society you are describing in this video is essentially an evolution beyond the civilizational winter described by Spengler’s model – a fifth season, which has only recently been made feasible due to the massive improvement in technology over the last few centuries! It would be really interesting for a MT like me to think up possible ways this could happen. A couple of thoughts inspired by this video:

    Firstly, on listening to your succinct summary of the Star Trek universe, I realized that the universe shown in Idiocracy is the exact same thing, except all the elites and natural aristocrats were wiped out by what is essentially a decades long cultural genocide! The proles living in that world were well fed in what is a post-scarcity world with autonomous machines, but there was no direction for society, no cause, because the spearhead of the societal arrow – the elites – were wiped out from the gene pool.

    Secondly, a day long marathon of the Cathedral-fest series Spartacus (they made a series about a man who was the symbol of defiance to authority, about how temporally universal the Cathedral’s values are! The cheek of it!) made me wonder about the collapse of the Roman empire being a case of democratization of elite pastimes. I think that when the Colosseum was made, gladiators had probably been present for many years, but access was available to only a privileged few (you being the historian are probably a better authority on this). Once the masses had access to elite pastimes, they couldn’t handle it and remain socially functional, which is why the whole society collapsed over time. Is this hypothesis correct? Once again, my apologies for the long comment, and gratitude for having the patience to go through it!

  3. SGT Caz says:

    Nozick put out the idea for an “experience machine” that is similar to the holodeck, as a defeater of hedonism and utilitarianism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_machine

    His thesis assaulted the notion that people could be happy hooked up to the pleasure contraption, but as you point out, some people are different than others. Maybe some would. I grew up watching Star Trek, and the point of the show always seemed to be about how the prejudices, the capitalistic pressures, and all those other liberal evils had been eliminated from society, spawning a new and improved human race; it took a while for me to realize that this was a crock of shit, and about the only things creating meaning in this world for most people are their children and their job. We’re ALREADY too close to a post-scarcity society, and the closer we get, the less value we will have to each other.

    Anyway, this is all a power struggle anyway: of COURSE the lower classes want more welfare, as it provides for them with the moral obligation carried by others. It’s a trick of Judeo-Christianity and its love of the pathetic: http://praxamericana.blogspot.com/2013/01/word-games-wants-and-needs.html

  4. I will comment despite my ignorance. Don’t see the link to the brilliant essay. Interesting analysis of Star Trek (I’m a fan not a fanatic) and natural aristocracy. I was pondering this question from a different angle while driving this afternoon, wondering if my values could function with natural selection advantage first in the minority and then in the majority as the culture and the mode of governing.

    Evolution is God (or God’s rep) and evolution is a tool (for a thinker). There is no way in hell carrying deadwood is a good thing. Might makes right. Cooperation is mighty, and were rights come from, as incentive to join and maintain the group. Then a power grab corrupts the group and a new group is formed. For a group to be stable it must still deal with and peel off natural selection. Friends helping each other is not communism: it is libertarian cooperation, an investment in an able cohort based on first-hand knowledge.

    I highly recommend The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. So we have an evolutionarily stable state (civilized decline at hands of oligarchy as opposed to rise with shared rights and responsibilities). If are smarts are worthy (of evolution), it must be an advantage first covertly in a minority of natural aristocrats, and then with natural selection and reproduction (genes or memes) it must be an advantage overtly as a systemizing thing. Men are mentally superior to women (as in realistic) because so many men were culled: twice as many of our ancestors were women than men. Pruning must happen period. The free market prunes society internally; conquest, externally. And who has the diving right to land or its resources?

    By not outright killing the losers within citizenship, they can be redirected to productive uses elsewhere, but the intrinsically useless? No quarter. They cannot be salvaged except to grave risk. Once useful idiots vote, you are on the way to oligarchy of credit with taxation and decay, unless the oligarchy is also a natural aristocracy. Charity is local because firsthand vested interest is the proper judge, not feeeeeelings.

    Just how does the Nu Wurld Odor intend to rule itself once it has won? Roman elite turned on Roman soldiers once Carthage was salted and tax farmed all that could be tax farmed. It is not necessarily wrong to tax farm or to enslave, unfortunately. Not everyone will be net productive with freedom, but you get far more productivity with those who are most productive and net productive with freedom. They are the innovators and problems solvers. Conquest and any natural selection in general is natural and is virtuous in that its danger and consequence creates the distinction between virtue and vice. Can omnipotence without personal consequences be virtuous or corrupt? The question for us is will anyone rival the elite insiders who have weaponized nearly the entire population into useful idiots evolving into domesticated livestock that will deserve and need domestication like the turkeys we eat every November. Can we become insiders of a rival movement and organization and culture, like a cancer, for the system permits no production for the producer. Can the elite be gamed like they gamed Western populations? Game has political ramifications, because sex like land is a crucial and unique form of wealth. If there is not natural selection, there is no virtue. If we are to live virtuously, we must respect natural selection and evolution like we respect fire.

    Step one: freedom from parasitic useful idiots. The cancer is the cure. The elite will kill the useful idiots once they are no longer useful. As for the parasites, they will cry victimization, but they will never segregate. The host only is free when the parasites are dead and gone. It would be foolish to defeat a king but let his infant son live with a heritage and likely innate tendency to restore rival subjugation. There are two heritages to consider: (1) the bankster elite, and (2) the negative net utility sheeple. Strength of one will cultivate and evolve the other. Corrupt rich and poor are a danger to those who would unleash human potential to a civilized patriarchy of philosopher-kings.

    P.S. I liked the link to the Argentinian apocalypse. Puts things into perspective. Have a community of guys you can trust will win the day. This online stuff won’t get it done, but I understand some of you guys are connecting offline. I’m not religious, and I hope religion or cultism is not necessary to get a critical mass of people in real life. Maybe the gene pool will evolve to that point where philosopher-kings make a first-class citizenry, but I don’t think we are there yet, which sucks for me. And how does nature get agreement? If the ghetto were ‘subjected’ to the same standards as whites when whites were something, perhaps the ‘ghettos’ would have refined themselves into something civilized and net productive, and if not, not enough value. Now it’s a question of white America: enough value? Mother nature can wait forever and make it from scratch if need be. So sadly inefficient when we are…humanitarians.

  5. zhai2nan2 says:

    How do we get to Star Trek?

    Resilient Communities.

    Permaculture (as explained in vid below)

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6b7zJ-hx_c

    Fab labs, artisanal 3-D printing, etc.

  6. It troubles me that the comment by zhai2nan2 has a home here, but perhaps my appraisal of it as Kool-aid propaganda is in error. Post-scarcity without patriarchy? Agenda 21 smart growth compounds of population reduction and isolation lovingly dubbed resilient communities?

  7. zhai2nan2 says:

    I’m just a guest here RealityDoug.

    Also, I don’t know that resilient communities will lead to post-scarcity without patriarchy.

    The current anti-patriarchy political correctness is a kind of centralized Bolshevism.

    Resilient communities fight centralization, but they aren’t inherently non-Bolshevik.

  8. Justin says:

    That’s what concerns me the most about decentralization as manifested in resilient communities. If it is undertaken with a leftist bent, the entire project becomes a hippie commune that is sure to collapse from dysfunction.

  9. Jared says:

    I like the video, but I think the answer might be a bit more simple.

    1. The heroes (at least Kirk & Picard) are a lot closer to the nerds that made up the original fanbase. The hero of the future isn’t a gravel voiced George Scott, or a snarling Clint Eastwood. They quote Shakespeare and play pirates on a holodeck.

    2. Technology has finally solved all the problems of the world that people use to turn to things like religion to find the answers for.

    We don’t need mana from heaven, we have a matter replicator

    The love of money is the root of all evil, well money is all but useless in a post-scarcity economy.

    From Wrath of Kahn, “According to myth, the Earth was created in six days. Now, watch out! Here comes Genesis! We’ll do it for you in six minutes”

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