Brick doesn't believe in global warming. Very sad!

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Some of the content was explosive, though.

This seems to be the point everyone is missing.

The Ted we are talking about was created by the government maybe not to exactly what he did, but to be an agent of some kind of chaos.

I preface by saying I haven't studied him but I think he would have been better off taking the step into nihilism rather than some kind of sentimentalist. His philosophy, taken to its logical conclusion, would have decried the creation of stone tolls as somehow taking us away from our natural state.

He has kernels of wisdom in his philosophy. They are unsurprising wrapped in a lot of crazy

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

Before I found out a senior thesis was optional I was planning to write it on the idea that technology was actually a bad thing for society.

I could've been the Unibomber if I chose to write that paper.

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Doesn't that perfectly describe the social media age we live in?

Yeah. No one followed sports teams until Facebook was created.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Of course you ignored the part about "artificial goals, consumption of entertainment, and political activism" which you can't deny has increased dramatically as more and more people started having access to high speed internet and smartphones.

maybe, but as others have said, he doesn't consider that the life of a serf (which existed in some areas all the way to the 20th century) was equally devoid of meaning.

I doubt early humans, residing in caves and struggling every day for existence before dying at 30 ever sat back and thought "this is great"

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

You asked "doesn't that perfectly describe the social media age we live in?" and there is a huge hole in that description involving "following sports teams".

He made some generic comments about technology, and now like a person looking at clouds if you stare at it long enough you start to see the shapes in them that were suggested to you.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

People were most fulfilled during the Black Plague. The entertainment was cholera.

There are only two options: the desire to live in the present date, or the desire to be return to feudalism. There is no in between.

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True, I think there is a middle ground though. Personally, I think we are much worse off as a society since the invention of the smartphone. It's a very useful tool for many things but look at our world today. Trump would have never been elected President without it. Too much information flow is driving us crazy!

There really isn't because of medicine. You don't get to pick and choose technologies. One has always lead to another, and/or crosspollinated.

I know it's debated on if the translation is actually correct into English, but I think "life is suffering" is still one of the most accurate quotes. Humans are very good at solving the current sources of suffering and sometimes creating new ones with an overall increase in the quality of life. That makes it theoretically possible that someone who had to make the choice to send their 8 year old kid to work in a dangerous factory was more "fulfilled" than someone today who has to decide if that 8 year old can do karate, baseball, and swimming or if there is only time to do karate and baseball.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

"Life sucks, then you die" was big for a while

"Make the best of it" doesn't seem to go over too well these days.

I see the real danger of the emergence of the mobile phone is that, while it a tool for bringing people closer it's application has resulted in greater personal isolation

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

Good point.

it's the "don't blame the technology, blame the dependence on it" that pretty much sums it up.

i think any of us who were on-line in the 80's/90's/early 00's were perfectly content to spend some time on the interwebs, and then come back to society.

now the interwebs IS society, or at least pushes a "new normal" for society.

kids are growing up more isolated too. people wonder why there's this explosion of "mental health" crisis...

He was absolutely right.

We're worse off with technology than before. Anyone who grew up in the 70s knows this to be true, when we didn't have technology but lots of board games and little league games.

Children are getting no real education being on their devices all day. It's a catastrophe.

To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.

Nietzsche.