The world is big, the world is complicated, and filled with all sorts of people with diverse and conflicting actions and motivation. Basically “the world” as it relates to humans...is a mess, perhaps unavoidably so, given I brought humans into the discussion.
I believe thinker Erich Fromm has a perspective that applies to our current situation, politically, morally, and psychologically. In very broad terms he thought there were two fundamental types of people, those who love death and those who love life. The classifications he came up with was biophilia for those who ‘love of life’ versus necrophilia for those with a ‘love of death’. In The Heart of Man Fromm broadens it out some so the love of death also includes the death of spirit and creativity which he held was core to a fulfilled human being.
And THAT in a nutshell is the current state of our world and the U.S. Not completely, but it is necrophiliac path we are on. Politically, the Trump administration wants to hurt as many people as possible and still maintain the Republican/Maga support. It is only residual effects of a functioning judicial system that has prevented mass deportations to torture prisons in foreign countries, when that is gone, anybody can be picked up by masked somebodies and disappeared. For once there is no due process for somebody there is the possibility of no due process for everybody. THIS is a desire to kill the spirit, creativity, of whatever convenient victims they can find.
The focus on immigrants is just the shortest path to the most cruelty, the disease of love of death, like any disease, searches for the weakest part to consume. But as Trump has declared anybody who disagrees with him as an enemy, all of us are also vulnerable.
In Adam Becker’s More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity, the tech bros like Musk, Thiel, and Andreessen (and more) part of their crusade is reach “the singularity” where they (and the chosen who meet their standards) will have a technological “rapture”, where they will be either lifted away from Earth in space ships and live on space stations surrounded by the emptiness of space, or possibly on a barren, poisonous planet like Mars, OR go full "assumption" to digital heaven where their consciousness is upload to an AI managed computer and they can “live” forever. The irony is lost that this theoretical or virtual life comes at the expense of actual lives, from the effects or global warming or diversion of money away from real people to a vastly more expensive endeavor of questionable validity.
The uploaded consciousness scheme is the most obviously religious (but really they are all religious) in that you have to die before you can be resurrected in the new digital form. This sociological approach of this goes beyond turning people into to commodities but instead “life” is turn into a digital backup. Unstated is if it will be an NFT.
Another plan of the tech bros is the creation of Dyson Spheres to power space exploration. These Spheres would be megastructures designed to capture a star's energy, and consuming planets for raw material to continue moving through space eating more stars and planets forever.
Like so much of the tech bro imagination this was already thought about in old adolesent entertainment, in this case it is Marvel Comics from back in the ‘60s with Galactus who devours planets to sustain his existence. Also lost of them is that Galactus was considered a villain, now, for them he is the hero. Comics and misinterpreting old Science Fiction is the intellectual foundation of our Tech Overlords. Climate change is irrelevant, because massive power plants to power ever increasing data centers to drive all the AI and crypto computing are required for the new technological heaven, either in space or online. The upshot is with these unlikely futures, sacrificing lives and imposing suffering of “others” demonstrates their means to fulfill their ends, falls well within the necrophiac diagnosis.
In Texas, the hatred for humanity come masquerading as protecting life in order to inflict as much pain as possible. Anti immigrant measures like razor wire buoys across border rivers and designed to hurt or maim so the desire to hurt is blatant.
The ultra strict anti abortion laws are more sinister since while shouting about protecting the life of the unborn, this is done while deliberately imposing pain and possible death to the living, the already born. In the cases of pregnancy gone horribly wrong for women who want to have a child, thes woman cannot get a procedure to save their lives or save them from suffering. So again, like the theoretical, or possible, or theoretically possible virtual life of the AI tech overlords, REAL people are appropriate to torture or kill. These laws have been in place for years now and it is obvious they should be changed, since this is not debating when life begins (which I would, but that is for another time), it is all about causing suffering...that is the spirit of Texas and it is “not a bug, it is a feature”
Take all the above and when we see ALL republicans moving to the goal of removing any publicly funded healthcare the goal is clear, cause more suffering, more death...again the diagnosis is necrophilia...a love of death.
Oh, but don’t forget, ruin the budget so Republican MUST cut social security. The goal? To cause as much suffering to masses of older people. Fortunately there is a propagandist pipeline of news, bloggers, tweeters, whatever, to bring younger angry voters in on board to replace the dying oldsters.
Maybe I am riled up because I am now one of the oldsters in the sites of Republican guns that will kill Social Security.
Of course this type of insecurity has hung over the heads of millions before me, maybe the realization that it could actually happen to me is something I should have thought of before.
BUT, in another Erich Fromm book, Escape From Freedom, he feels it is is financial and psychological uncertainty, basically capitalism, that lays the groundwork to entice people to be drawn to the certainty of authoritarian regimes. But for me I can’t fall for for the Bullshit, not that I have any wisdom or extra intelligence, it is just that this kind of over the top BS is so blatant and so unpleasant I could never fall for it. Unfortunately ALL republican politicians have fallen, either willingly or cynically, but either way the result is the same, they sold their souls.
I mean I don’t even know if there is such a thing as a soul, but I can’t even sell out a possibly fictitious soul.
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