How fast can this ship go? Depending on how far in time you go, you’ll need to spend a long time traveling through space to get to where Earth was…

The Earth is traveling along an elliptical orbit around the sun, the sun is orbiting the Milky Way, the Milky Way is traveling along a curved trajectory. Why, if you kept your momentum, would you end up on Earth?

The trouble is, the world isn’t neatly divided into oppressors and victims. Each human has many, many identities and factional affiliations—mother, Christian, Mongolian, nerd, working class, jogger, AI avoider, manager, voter for whichever party, drug non-user, scientist, tribe member, entrepreneur, posh, conspiracy-recogniser, ethical shopper, activist, Perth resident, woman, etc, etc, etc.

What determines which of those identities is salient at any given time? Which of the lines that cross cut our societies defines who will fight whom when violence becomes the norm? Those are hard questions.

The kind of violence you’re advocating for—populist violence, mob violence—isn’t a targeted, controlled force that you can unleash on a specific target. It’s a breakdown of the social contract, of the sense of safety and trust that keeps people following the co-operative rules of civil society. Before unleashing it, you want to be confident that the lines people will divide along when their lives, their families, their future are at risk are actually rich-vs-poor.

That does not seem likely today. Reasons:

• historically, the lines along which our species have divided for violent factionalism have been ethnicity and geography. These are the natural attractors. Convincing the masses to see themselves differently (i.e., the people who look/speak/think differently to me are my friends, the people similar to me but richer are my enemies) when the shit hits the fan takes serious effort and preparation.

• the information networks that shape how people identify themselves are controlled by the rich, they are actively working to prevent this.

• people today, in my experience, seem to most strongly identify with left-vs-right political affiliation (possibly due to that network manipulation). If anything, this is the fight they’re itching to have: to defeat the other poor people for their different opinions about transsexuality, etc.

The seven richest people in the world all own media networks. They know that violent societal breakdown is a possibility and are much better prepared to channel that chaos to their advantage than you are.

This doesn’t mean that you should give up. But advocating for violence at this point is inviting disaster. That violence will hurt you, not them.

That would be nice 🙂

Yes, this we agree on. It’s likely impossible and we’re running out of time. But that doesn’t mean that violence is an effective solution. It will just accelerate the decline into factionalism, a state in which the wealthy will be even more advantaged.

Right, and how are you ensuring, in this age of intensifying populism, captured information networks and unbridled individualistic greed, that once you release the genie, violence will only be used for that purpose?

Very curious about the deleted comment that inspired this response.

Because violence won’t solve the problem. We need global coordination. Violence just turns us into squabbling regional and ethnic factions.