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12 Apr 2006, 5:25 am
12 Apr 2006, 7:16 am
12 Apr 2006, 8:15 am
Awesomelyglorious wrote:
Actually, I think that our problems have nothing to do with the whole idea of people being commodities. People don't like us because they see us as weird, annoying and weak.
i may have explained my point poorly in my initial post, but i'm not suggesting people in themselves being commodities, more that social interaction has become like a transaction of sorts, so the interaction itself becomes like an exchange of commodities.
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Also, I would think that we would be more likely to look at social interaction as transaction because we do not like just socializing but instead only talk when we want something. We tend to not like talking and conversations so therefore all we do is simply try to get something, part of our problem may be that we try to have one-sided transactions because we have problems seeing the need of others and only try to help ourselves in a conversation.
well personally i wouldn't necessarily agree with what you say here. for instance, i for one actually like to socialise and converse with people, in fact at times i crave it, however i find it often to be either excruciatingly difficult, or just pointless, because of my inherent difficulty in putting across what i am trying to communicate, and my inate difficulty in talking amongst a group of more than 2 or 3 people. i wouldn't view myself as someone who just wants to get things from people, i would see this as being a basic misunderstanding of my intentions due to my unusual, clumsy or perhaps sometimes pedantic way of interacting with people.
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The idea that people have suddenly been reduced to objects seems odd to me. I think that our treatment of people as objects is not something new or caused by capitalism as in the past I think that we have seen others as people less. In the old families of 20 kids nobody really saw it as a big thing that little Timmy died because he was just one of the 20, it just means that they might have problems plowing the fields without his help now, there was not time or resources to have a big all out funeral like today. In the wars of old people killed and were killed and without too much care, we did not have some great dedication to preserving the most lives but instead saw every soldier and every person as expendable, heck, the civilians of another population were seen as tools or playthings. Genghis Khan would use the citizens of enemy cities to spread fear about his arrival in order to get other cities to surrender. In the past, slavery was considered a good way to get labor; slavery pretty much defines a human being as a tool, as a thing. The industrial revolution created the whole modern notion of families because it got people to have less kids and such. Despite our complaints about it, the modern capitalistic society is probably the best time to be alive in history.
again, i think perhaps i haven't explained my point in the previous post very well, and looking back at the post, can see that i have worded it poorly. perhaps i should edit it to avoid confusion. anyway, i'm not talking about people being reduced to actual commodities, as in slavery, that can be bought and sold. its more a matter of the human interaction becoming like an exchange or transaction. of course, you may have understood this and just disagree with it. thanks anyway for sharing your views.
12 Apr 2006, 9:41 am
12 Apr 2006, 10:07 am
12 Apr 2006, 5:59 pm
