Thanks for the challenging, enlightening, thought-provoking chat with Prof Sam Vaknin.
Another “joker” must be added to the deck that Sam peripherally touched on: the fantasy that is the foundation of industrial civilization —- the eternal possibility of unlimited growth. Perhaps the wild card is best labelled “karma” —- collapse of systems like ours based on that fantasy, is inevitable. While the apocalypse of 100s of previous empires, following resource depletion & overshoot, was “merely” a localized event … this is a first in our history: all on the globe will be adversely affected.
Also good to consider alternatives to Sam’s contention that “aloneness” is a more natural condition of humanity, that “society” is an artificial mind-construct. Consider that that the dichotomy of aloneness / society was created about 10-12000 years ago, when the virus of believing that humanity was separate from Nature, began to spread … when the fundamental ignorance that humans had the “divine right” to exploit / extract anything & everything else on the planet, regardless of long-term consequence (a basis for narcissism!) created patriarchal hierarchies, , misogyny, capitalism. There are still pockets of small societies in which the ancient, indigenous wisdom of “all life is one” underlies the politics, culture, economics of those small sustainable groups … and most likely, they will be the seeds of wiser humanity that survives the collapse of our polluting, destructive capitalistic “civilization”
Regards from a wild, relentless, indomitable, although adorable side of the World, also known as poor cousin West. Despite the infinite natural resources 😂 and also human resources, btw...as u can percieve...😘
Thanks for the challenging, enlightening, thought-provoking chat with Prof Sam Vaknin.
Another “joker” must be added to the deck that Sam peripherally touched on: the fantasy that is the foundation of industrial civilization —- the eternal possibility of unlimited growth. Perhaps the wild card is best labelled “karma” —- collapse of systems like ours based on that fantasy, is inevitable. While the apocalypse of 100s of previous empires, following resource depletion & overshoot, was “merely” a localized event … this is a first in our history: all on the globe will be adversely affected.
Also good to consider alternatives to Sam’s contention that “aloneness” is a more natural condition of humanity, that “society” is an artificial mind-construct. Consider that that the dichotomy of aloneness / society was created about 10-12000 years ago, when the virus of believing that humanity was separate from Nature, began to spread … when the fundamental ignorance that humans had the “divine right” to exploit / extract anything & everything else on the planet, regardless of long-term consequence (a basis for narcissism!) created patriarchal hierarchies, , misogyny, capitalism. There are still pockets of small societies in which the ancient, indigenous wisdom of “all life is one” underlies the politics, culture, economics of those small sustainable groups … and most likely, they will be the seeds of wiser humanity that survives the collapse of our polluting, destructive capitalistic “civilization”
It's great to see you engage with this material in such a thoughtful way. Thank you for your comment.
Regards from a wild, relentless, indomitable, although adorable side of the World, also known as poor cousin West. Despite the infinite natural resources 😂 and also human resources, btw...as u can percieve...😘
A.k.a. projection speech 🙃