Luddites Unite

[TRobinson465]

Technological process has been probably the only positive thing of this degenerate age compared to the Buddha eras of the past with tens of thousands of year lifespans.

Overall its a boon for the next generation. Tractors threw millions of farmers out of work, but now 90% of modern society doesnt have to be farmers anymore to grow enuff food to sustain the population, it freed us up to do more things. the same with online stock brokerages erasing stock brokers from the mix, fingerprint reading AI throwing professional fingerprint sorters out of work as well.

That said, throwing people out of work is still inflicting suffering on society. what we need is a strong social safety net or some kind of public compensation system so that society can reap the benefits of technology while minimizing the suffering of those initially thrown out of work by the disruption.

Technology can be used positively for spiritual purposes as well. DW and accesstoinsight for instance. We just have to use it properly. Although i think eBuddhism is certainly lacking in a lot of faculties compared to in person Buddhism, and definitely has some big downsides, the potential for good is also there. The internet led to misinformation being easily spread, but it also allows the truth and the Dhamma to be easily spread as well. meditation apps are a huge benefit to society by making meditation easily accessible, but they have been corrupted by the for profit corporate world. If we removed greed from the equation the benefits would be immeasurable.

Advancements in transportation as well, an almost unparallelled positive. Sure there are some drawbacks, wars reaching farther and disease spreading wider, but that was an almost 90% net positive advancemnt.

[JamesTheGiant]

Overall its a boon for the next generation.

Not anymore. The young today are the last generation. Artificial Intelligence is not the impossible science fiction it once was, and will be here in one or two decades, followed quickly by human extinction unless we get really lucky and solve the control problem/alignment.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ControlProblem/wiki/faq/

[SarathW]

It appears to me that there is a shortage of people in the world except for China.
Perhaps this is a result of the modern lifestyle and low birth rate.
I also see a lot of LGBT people now in the open.

[Nicholas Weeks]

Overall its a boon for the next generation.

Not anymore. The young today are the last generation. Artificial Intelligence is not the impossible science fiction it once was, and will be here in one or two decades, followed quickly by human extinction unless we get really lucky and solve the control problem/alignment.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ControlProblem/wiki/faq/

Factor in Neuralink- a chip in the brain connected to Lord AI - bad news. Master Hua predicted this brain chip notion 50 or 60 years ago.

[TRobinson465]

It appears to me that there is a shortage of people in the world except for China.
Perhaps this is a result of the modern lifestyle and low birth rate.
I also see a lot of LGBT people now in the open.

China has a shortage of ppl too due to its one child policy and the fact that 60% of its population are males. Most developed countries have declining populations and technology can help keep the economy above water thru higher productivity.

Yes some modern tech has been mostly negative. Social media is a leading cause of the hyper partisanship seen in a lot of the worlds politics and a leading cause of depression. But again this is due to corporate greed not the tech itself. It's because the algorithms they use to show ppl content encourage this stuff.

[SarathW]

It appears to me that there is a shortage of people in the world except for China.
Perhaps this is a result of the modern lifestyle and low birth rate.
I also see a lot of LGBT people now in the open.

China has a shortage of ppl too due to its one child policy and the fact that 60% of its population are males. Most developed countries have declining populations and technology can help keep the economy above water thru higher productivity.

Yes some modern tech has been mostly negative. Social media is a leading cause of the hyper partisanship seen in a lot of the worlds politics and a leading cause of depression. But again this is due to corporate greed not the tech itself. It's because the algorithms they use to show ppl content encourage this stuff.

As far as I can remember China has lifted the one-child policy.

[TRobinson465]

It appears to me that there is a shortage of people in the world except for China.
Perhaps this is a result of the modern lifestyle and low birth rate.
I also see a lot of LGBT people now in the open.

China has a shortage of ppl too due to its one child policy and the fact that 60% of its population are males. Most developed countries have declining populations and technology can help keep the economy above water thru higher productivity.

Yes some modern tech has been mostly negative. Social media is a leading cause of the hyper partisanship seen in a lot of the worlds politics and a leading cause of depression. But again this is due to corporate greed not the tech itself. It's because the algorithms they use to show ppl content encourage this stuff.

As far as I can remember China has lifted the one-child policy.

Yes. But it'll take 20 years at least for that to have any effect on their labor shortage as all the people who were born before the one child policy are now at or near retirement age and couples literally had one child to replace two people leaving the workforce. And even with the one child policy lifted the fact that only 40% of the population is female makes bringing up the birth rate harder.

This is compounded by the fact that. Unlike rich free democracies who also have low birth rates. Few ppl want to emigrate to China to replace thier population decline.

[Red Belly]

Getting slightly back on topic, I remember someone (it might have been Wendell Berry?) saying that the Luddite movement was the noblest revolution in recorded human history: people not seeking wealth or power or bloodshed, but only to preserve their way of life in the face of ruthless exploitation. I'm not strong enough on world history to know whether this is absolutely true or not, but the idea has always stuck with me, "haunted" me a little.

[Sha Bac]

Another problem is that people have children for their own amusement.

The amish give their children JOBS and purpose.

[Bundokji]

Maybe it began with the use of machines to replace humans, but the shift from the second to the third industrial revolutions have created new jobs and hierarchies that have led to the loss of meaning and spiritualities. One of the main features of that shift was the creation of new jobs such as data entry to transfer information from manual to digital forms. This marks the beginning where being an "employee" became more prestigious than "handicraft" and the impact on people's behavior and the spread of mediocracy and absurdity.

Handicraft was the transference of a skill from a master to a disciple, where mastering the skill could take up to 40 years, and is considered spiritual not only due to the respect a disciple should show his/her master, but also because it represented a lineage of some sort to maintain a tradition and the perfection of a skill. A good example would be the shift from mechanical watches to digital watches, which became trendy at the beginning and caused many famous watch makers to go bankrupt, before causing a nostalgia of some sort back to the mechanical. A watch, from the perspective of that of that nostalgia, is more than a device to keep time, but a mechanical watch relies on the pulse of its owner to keep moving, so it is also a piece of jewelry that can only be appreciated by those who understand the deeper meanings, or the art and the many hours it took to fabricate it. Japanese sword making is another example.

The shift from the third to the fourth industrial revolution was popularised in 2015 by Klaus Schwab, the World Economic Forum founder and executive chairman, and has since been used in numerous economic, political, and scientific articles according to wikipedia. It marked by the joining of technologies like artificial intelligence, gene editing, to advanced robotics that blur the lines between the physical, digital, and biological worlds.

From a purely sensual and materialistic POV, spriitualities and the search for meaning are completely redundant if humans can solve the problem of the hedonic treadmill. If the inventors of AI can focus its exponential capabilities to solve this one problem, then spiritualities and meaning are all but history, or a myth that held us captive as with god.

[Nicholas Weeks]

Getting slightly back on topic, I remember someone (it might have been Wendell Berry?) saying that the Luddite movement was the noblest revolution in recorded human history: people not seeking wealth or power or bloodshed, but only to preserve their way of life in the face of ruthless exploitation. I'm not strong enough on world history to know whether this is absolutely true or not, but the idea has always stuck with me, "haunted" me a little.

Perhaps the Luddites were encouraged by the American rebels who sought freedom (a few decades before) from the King's exploitation?

[Radix]

Avoiding obvious gotcha retorts, if possible, which modern technologies could humanity do without, to our spiritual benefit?

The problem is that we don't have a worked out and widely spread philosophy of using technology. We tend to use technology haphazardly, without giving much thought to why exactly we're using it.

[Radix]

Tractors threw millions of farmers out of work, but now 90% of modern society doesnt have to be farmers anymore to grow enuff food to sustain the population, it freed us up to do more things.

People should learn how to grow food. Otherwise, they just don't respect it, don't value it. There should be mandatory kibbutz programs that _everyone _ would need to pass. Such as two years in an agrarian community where the only food available is the one people grow on their own.

[Dhammapardon]

It's all so clean. No one touches dirt any more.
Sticking fingers into soil and trying to grow something, something amazing happens.
Now if only my poor heart would stop watering them to death.

[TRobinson465]

People should learn how to grow food. Otherwise, they just don't respect it, don't value it. There should be mandatory kibbutz programs that _everyone _ would need to pass. Such as two years in an agrarian community where the only food available is the one people grow on their own.

yeah, the khmer rouge tried that with thier agrarian communist utopia. Didnt work out very well.