It’s not either/or, you can have community with or without material goods. I do have community and a sense of purpose and a satisfying life with my family around me. Many don’t, but that has always been true at all times and all places through everything we know about the history of human life. You’re writing as though misery and suffering were recent inventions of Capitalism, previously unknown to mankind.

The fact is though we are all in the developed world swimming in material wealth and comfort unimaginable to most humans from even a few generations ago. Only an incredible abundance of cheap energy and raw materials make this possible.

Yes the very wealthy have yachts and helicopters, but if you have a reasonably up to date smartphone and laptop, a can of Coke or a Starbucks, maybe a PlayStation and a microwave oven, etc, there isn’t really much a billionaire can spend that will get them anything significantly better. The main advantage of wealth is getting other people to do things for you, but in terms of material life were in an incredibly democratic and egalitarian era.

I agree that things have gotten better over time, but how can you be so smug about it?

The amount of hoarding, infighting, and extortion has been disgusting. We're advancing as slow as species seemingly could short of completely falling apart and destroying their Earth, and even that's in question right now.

If we did things the way I'm speaking of, I guarantee you we'd have all of these things and more. Going slow and doing things right is worth it. Having value for creativity, community and labor is worth it. Not justifying oppressive decisions we couldn't have changed on the basis that we got some cheap consumer crap from it... it's worth it to me at least.

This line of thought is unpopular now, but if history is any indicator, the sentience of the future will look back on these logs and question how the fuck you could read these words and not fucking get it. We would be more advanced if we didn't do these things. Not the other way around.

You’re largely right, we definitely need to move sharply in a more sustainable direction. Income inequality is a growing problem. However your assertion up thread that we in general don’t benefit is incredibly naive. I think you’re conflating disagreement with that position with disagreement with a whole host of utterly unrelated issues.

> we in general don’t benefit is incredibly naive

I suppose my relativity isn't from zero, but instead a sense of neutral pace. If I'm on a trek towards better lands, I don't benefit from a broken leg, but I still make progress.

To me, the concept that we're perpetually slowed down by the selfish behavior of those who generally do nothing more than seek power for themselves means we don't benefit.

I don't think there's anything that could stop humanity from moving forwards, so to say we benefit from impatient selfish jerk offs who cut the line, to build walls, and then extort resources from everyone trying to move forwards is... well, they paid a lot of money to put a nicely spinned narrative out on that.

How thankful we all should be to have been sold advancement. :)

I think you're mistaking my statements for a personal religious dogma. I'm just telling you the way the world is. We may or may not agree on the prescription for the world's ills, but it's irrelevant.

You're assuming consumption and community are mutually exclusive. They are not. Plenty of examples to be found to show they are not dependent (10, 01, 11, 00).

You ask why any of this is necessary to get these goods. I assume by "this" you mean the fossil fuel industry. It is necessary because as a high density energy source it has no competitive alternative. It's literally the best fuel source mankind has found in the strict terms of transportability and output relative to mass. Civilization's capabilities have grown in parallel with the improvement of its energy sources. Decreasing available energy means decreasing (or ceasing) growth/development. Do you want to be the one to tell China, India and Africa that they can't develop further?

Things we imagine are still constrained by physical reality. Technological progress for the next 100 years will still have unbreakable dependencies on high density energy. Unless a miracle happens.

What if one believes life in general is more or less meaningless and that the “better” feeling you get from community is nothing more than various chemical releases that can be triggered just the same as consuming as many resources as I can while I’m here?

Why seek the good feelings by relying on a community that you have no control over than pick your favorite things to consume? Why have people that lived within the community model for thousands of years defected the first chance they could?

Any other action is just going release the chemicals in slightly different but similar ways. So using your logic, why is being a selfish hedonist going to be better than the first option? You have just given a somewhat nihilistic argument that neither outcome matters.

Meanwhile, have you tried both ways? My personal experience suggests that acting benevolently to others is much less stressful, makes one much happier, and that leads to better physical health even. Compared with being a bitter curmudgeon on the other extreme, you will likely be happier and live longer. It's a much better way to release the chemicals.

Good argument. For the record I don’t actually believe that Anti-social consumption is a quality way to live a life. But I do think it’s important to kick around opinions that make a moral appeal or claim to be “the way”.