@mrbadger42 There's nothing unique about us. Plenty...

@mrbadger42
There's nothing unique about us.

Plenty of other civilizations in history self-destructed because some class of wealthy people couldn't stop stuffing their pockets with blood money.

Like 4 Mar 2023 at 6:13 | Wall-to-wall | Open on mastodon.social

4 comments

benda

@tofugolem @mrbadger42 I don't know, I think there's something unique to a society as a whole embracing it. the media is one thing, but Americans in general know what's going on. in the sense that they know very few people have almost everything and control the state and everyone else is getting screwed. but did their analogues throughout history go "oh, well it just has to be that way. it would be too burdensome to ask for seconds". I'm genuinely asking, I don't know a whole lot of history.

4 Mar 2023 at 6:25 | Open on stoners.social

Tofu Golem

@benda @mrbadger42
Once most of the wealth and power are in the hands of the few, you either give up and try to deal with it as best as you can, or burn everything to the ground.

I'm sure some history buff will set me straight about that, but the former seems to happen more than you would think.

4 Mar 2023 at 6:28 | Open on mastodon.social

benda

@tofugolem @mrbadger42 it certainly seems so in more recent history western history. I wonder about classical euro and the rest of the world's empires. either way, I think Kurt's quote is still alright in that, whether or not the first, is certainly what we're seeing here.

4 Mar 2023 at 6:38 | Open on stoners.social

Tofu Golem

@benda @mrbadger42
There's some quote by a famous ancient Greek philosopher in which he insisted that every tyranny started out as a democracy, and something about that quote makes me think something similar was at play in whatever cases he was talking about.

4 Mar 2023 at 6:44 | Open on mastodon.social