>>482995I'm analyzing the situation to explain why we're stuck in this trap, not analyzing to find the first aspersion that feels good and confirms what I wanted reality to be based on "me wantee". If I wanted to change the world, and I do, this approach you suggest is a terrible way to do that - leads to people who are easy to goad and cajole, which is part of the problem. All I can say is I'm writing a book about this problem, and while it is not a complete and thorough argument, you could - if you can glean something from it - learn more than you would by this grasping for opportunistic facts, and from that, maybe you could think of something different. What you can't do is the same shit that has failed for centuries and expect different results. There is a reason why this happened, rather than some statement like "human nature" that is thought-terminating.
I don't know why you jumped to thinking this is about "existential dread" or other such faggotry. I make clear that we can stop this any time, but every time that has been suggested as a collective effort of note, there are forces at work that will shut that down no matter what. They know what happens to them and this "total system" if that happens. It would be the end of this cajoling behavior. It would end the project they're trying to capture and co-opt, and the people who think like this come from many angles. No one has a monopoly on this, but the Marxists are experts at "jumping in front" and their approach is very much about that - to do what was necessary to prevent the democratization of knowledge that was happening without any pedagogy insisting on it, because people saw the conditions around them and knew that the world they knew could not hold in any way. There is a obsessive need of the cajolers to insists that history doesn't move until a thought leader declares it has moved, and that "nothing ever really changes" - to retreat to institutional shibboleths when the institutions are the problem, and always have been.
>Or explain why you think the borg collective would be good a future?If you aren't already suffering enough to answer that, the world we're going to suffer through will make the Borg appear like the right answer to extirpate the menace that is humanity. It's a shame the Borg were wasted, because there is a treasure of potential in the idea that they originally were before the "human supremacy" mentality of that story took over. But then, I don't believe a Borg-like collective would be inherently hostile or averse to diplomacy, or fail to comprehend "individualism". Individualism is a mental pathology that is sadly predictable, but humans don't really know what a collective mind and exchange would mean. They only know their aspersions about "collectivism", because the institutions of the human race are monstrous and exist to forbid this sort of communication between social agents.
Then again, the entire universe of ST is a pure fantasy and probably should be ignored. Space travel and empires are almost certainly a physical impossibility, nor would they really answer what life is here to do. Even if you imagined creatures very different from humanity that could live in conditions compatible with interstellar travel, they still have to ask why they would do any such thing, or what goals they would maintain. Nearly all of the universe is lifeless and hostile to the existence of it, and life itself has uncouth habits that require us to ask if "life" like this is worth living. Funny how that always exempts aristocracy and their fruity cult.
In any event, I dismiss the possibility as a "permanent settlement", because all of the "other systems" turn into the victory of the lowest class in some way against aristocracy. Means the end of humanity and everything they toiled for, everything they sacrificed for. It is more important for humanity to ensure we lose than any benefit to themselves or any sentiment they might have had. That is the judgement of history.