Contemporary Society?

What is our (humanity's) current society like? I've been mainly sheltered and now I'm almost adult and need to know how society works to succeed. Who are the powerful people (not limited to humans, including organizations of people and such. Are there still 'governments'?)? What are they like? What are the best ways to deal with them? What skills are important? What about technology? I'm lost in all the information, Where do i even start? Did I even ask the right questions?

Im just say it straight: its all fuarrrked up from top to bottom. The modern world is an incomprehensable mess of unimaginable magnitude that will collapse soon. Serously, dont bother.

There are no powerful people. No one is actually in control of anything.

>>11606 This is the best answer you'll ever see in this thread. Some people have positions that allow them to exert one form of power onto certain groups of other people, but for every person there's others pulling their strings. It's a circular mess of a network graph. Powerful people do what they need to do to remain powerful, which is basically what others expect them to do. Powerless people do what the system and others make them do. Some have the illusion of seeing the whole picture right until it's shattered to pieces by some detail they ignored. Also make sure you don't waste time on reading political philosophy or watch/read political news. It's a waste of time which is detrimental to any kind of success. It's on the same level as religion, except its a more hot topic these days.

>>11608 This is the worst answer you'll ever see Governments are quite powerful people, especially EU or USA. Japan seems to have a massive amount of power via brainwashing over it's citizens. You're right, though, that looking at it one part at a time is a pointless. You have to focus on the greater themes if you want to get along. specialization is key in our society as it is, if you are a jack of all trades but a master of none, nobody will hire you, or if they will, it'll either be as a mistake, or for a low pay position. you do need to be able to take care of all your needs by yourself, and it is important that you learn some basic things like Mathematics and certain philosophies such as existentialism and relativist essentialism. basically existentialism is the philosophy of empirical science, where you only know what you directly perceive, and that everything else is a sort of fiction to help us better understand/predict what will happen in the real world, and that the real world is what you perceive, or the real world is something which you can only access by what you perceive. relativist essentialism is basically that each person forms their own conclusions about what they perceive, and that is (usually) what they hold to be real, and their personal reality is the reality for them, and many interpersonal conflicts are solved when you realize that those people had realities that were somehow out of sync with each other, for instance if (classic, though maybe sexist example) a taciturn man never says he loves his wife, but his wife thinks he doesn't love her because he never says it: in his reality, he is being frugal, in her he is being cold.. see? the point is that both their conclusions were true relative to their personal realities, so then truth is always relative to some reality, objective reality is then what everyone (at least everyone in a certain group of people) agree on. I would like to make sure I say that when i say "mathematics", there are two things which fall under the term, there is the pure mathematics which deals with and studies patterns or abstract objects of any sort, and then there is applied mathematics, which most people are more familiar with, which is mostly various tools for mechanical calculations, such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, exponentiation, differentiation, integration,, and how to use them to know more about reality. learn both, but for material success focus on the applied, and for cultural success focus on the pure, but both are necessary for the other, without understanding the theory behind a tool, you are basically using it superstitiously, whereas using it knowing why it works ensures you will, so long as you are mindful, you never err. in terms of pure mathematics, you are greatly aided in your studies by the applied because much of it applies to mathematics itself, so you will find it much faster to learn either if you learn both, learning both together is actually exponentially faster than learning either one by itself. start with Bertrand Russell's Principles of Mathematics for pure math, make sure you pay attention to the philosophical details and do complementary reading, but don't take his philosophical positions easily, form your own. i recommend it because it is a great compendium of many parts of maths. don't bother with his Principia Mathematica, except for some detailed examples of formalism. also make sure you complement not only his philosophical positions, but complement the content with exercises and drills, do as many drills on each topic, for each skill. master the basics so you can build the more interesting tools. and also try proving each theorem for yourself before reading the proof given in the text. you should always practice your proving skills. Bourbaki does a great systematic formal approach to mathematics, i recommend using it as well, but seem to forget the concrete, so make sure you create or find concrete examples of each abstract object as you read them. in terms of drills, any old big fat elementary-, middle-, or high- school textbook on the given subject will do nicely. but don't buy them, because they're expensive and it feeds the industry of overpriced low-quality courses s hilled to stupid schools who don't know how or what to teach. just steal it from someone, or pirate it. the exercises are nice, though, but you might want to avoid the word problems, the lessons, and the answers and solutions manual. well, you can skim the lessons if you want, just don't take them seriously. also, be sure to touch up on the subjects that the aforementioned courses were too early for, including CS, probability, category theory, and don't forget to look out for alternative logical systems, such as the intuitionist ones, probability has it's very own logic, and maybe you can find more. i'm not really interested in those other logics, the classical logic is perfectly fine, just thought you might like to know in case you wanted to form your own opinions. and the order doesn't matter, skip around however you like, just be mindful of your progress and what effects it, you are your own god, or something.

I think its pretty subjective il try to give you an unbiased answer. Im going to say that some part of the American government is the most powerful but only in terms of that they have set up the power structure. Someone else may be more powerful now but have not yet altered the "game". You could say the American government partly in union with a barely post soviet Russian government birthed a system and that is whats powerful. At some point a group in the American government realized that the ultimate peace is not necssarily utopic or peaceful at all, rather its a system where society and the power structure is so engrained and stable that riots and counterculture movements can continuously happen and exist yet still be unable to accomplish anything. There is no need to silence anymore because its much more effective to allow these groups to exist but have the enemy or the cause of contention be so nebulous its impossible to actually do anything. A riot happens but just sort of dies down, people get their anger out but everything stays the same. We are in a time of comparitively greater peace than ever, yet everyone knows something is not right, something feels off. If you are on the left the right is in power, and if you are on the right the left is in power. No one is happy despite how seemingly great things are, everyone feels a lack of control and impending sense of doom. As you say you are "lost in all the information". The human race has found that the excess of information has not made anything simpler or clearer just impossible to navigate. You may put this on yourself being so isolated from everything, but in fact many feel this way and just may not be aware of the extent they do. We are soon going to enter what I think of as an age of magic almost. Basically we have created so many structured systems, databases, and artificial intelligences to handle this abundance of information and the internet now has such a connected nature with our daily lives that things are going to happen that almost make no sense. If you want a concrete illustration of how we can see this now there is this phenomona where googles ads seem to present people with things they have only spoken about or that google should have no idea they want. I think a false connection people make is that "google" knows, when in fact google doesnt know. For they have algorithms and AI to keep track of their databases on everyone as well. These algorithms and technology has very much become a part of our environment, hence why I call it an age of magic of sorts. Forces we can't understand will soon exist in the environment, a few corporations only vaguely interact with them but complexity has been built on complexity to the point where they are no longer nor probably able to directly interact with it. You can think of human civilization as becoming an environment itself that is as alive and foreign as when we first begun trying to understand our environment. A key thing to understand is that because information is so big if you want to discover truly new things you have to behave as a different person. This isnt my observation and is factual and may help people understand what is so bizarre and magical about these times. I recently became a muslim and it was only after I began posting art and information related to the subject that I begun experiencing the "Islamic version" of the internet. Information I would have never seen before suddenly was being thrown in my face. If anyone is skeptical id suggest forging a new identity totally counter to you and for a month or two act as this new identity and you will suddenly be seeing things you would have never crossed paths with. This is relevant to society because we live in an information age where this information you receive will likely correlate to your position and place in society. Soon it may be unlikely we can game the system like this as the algorithms grow more complex and able to predict our patterns and behaviours. My advice to you is this, when the environment becomes unknown or impossible to know the strength is in knowing yourself and how you react. Likewise in this new world where knowing the environment for the purpose of action is a task one can spend a lifetime on, the way to the top is simply to move. Those most successful do not carefully think and plan anymore, they react quickly and adapt quickly. They also assume nothing is impossible for them. For someone like me in the face of this complexity I cry and freeze, the sort of person I have witnessed to be succesful either underestimates the complexity or simply ignores it and moves towards what they want. If you look at successful people right now we see slowly are seeing complete contradiction to behaviour previously thought of as intelligent or beneficial. Thats because the times are changing, in this sense you can do very well for yourself as the hermit coming out of the cage because you are going to be a lot more able to see this new environment. Thats all I have to say I think. Though I can get down and upset about how horrible these times are, about how powerless I am, about how controlled all our actions seem, seeing it as I have presented to you has slowly moved me towards progress. Society is hell when you struggle against your inability to control things you think you should, but when you let go of this idea you should or even can you dont become complacent rather you find the new avenues that will allow you to control. As you are no longer distracted by dead ends.

>>11602 Well, I think that if you live your life wondering about those questions, you're not gonna live. Just find something you're passionate about, be nice to people, stick around as long as you can with your loved ones, accept invitations for social situations, etc. Those questions will be answered along the way and you'll know how to handle it. Don't worry.

>>11614 >This is the worst answer you'll ever see You don't really address why though. First off, governments aren't people but a system of people with clearly defined roles. Step outside your role and you get kicked from the system; that's pretty powerless. A CEO might sound powerful but if he fuarrrks up a few times the competition takes the market and his castle collapses. These people have their hands bound, forced to pick between just a few smartest choices. Where's the power in that? Japan's citizens are brainwashed by its brainwashed citizens in its government, so Japan's "power" is really just doing whatever its brainwashed people wanted anyway. Power acquired through specialization is power which depends on those who you exert it on. Abuse it, lose it. If you can't even abuse your power without serious consequences, you're just having delusions of grandeur about your role.

Sorry if i seemed panicked earlier. I just moved out (I have a job, everything my situation is stable) and realized that I'm older now and need to take reigns of my life, And that my whole social circle had vanished at the end of high school (they went to college, I thought it was overpriced, so i stayed with my parents and continued my self education, as best I could), and now that I moved out, I'm no longer in good contact with my family, so I felt really alone and scared. I'm still scared, really. >>11614 So if I understood you right, I should study Bertrand Russell's Principles of Mathematics, Bourbaki's Elements of Mathematics (?), and practice with as many exercises and drills as I can find for each technique and topic? and to prove each theorem as I proceed, then look at various ways to proving it that have been done before. I suppose it's important to keep a record of my progress so that I can look back at it later, and so that I can more easily share any discoveries I might end up having had made along the way. >>11619 So instead of riots, what do we do? Sure we could change our principles to better ones, and change ourselves to be more congruent with our principles, and try to convince a few people around us to do the same, but that feels slow. And it only works if in the time it took to convince them, there weren't more people added to the set of those who became inconsistent with the good principles. What i meant by "lost in all the information" was that there are multiple options available, each of which are necessary, but it's hard to choose which is best to do first. There's insurance considerations, investment considerations, credit/debt considerations, how to best use the space of my apartment, what things, furniture, appliances, etc. to buy, and much, much more. It's difficult to construct the best strategy that accounts for everything, and then I thought I probably missed something. >Forces we can't understand will soon exist and we're creating them. We ought to stop (moving closer to) creating them until we better understand them. >the strength is in knowing yourself and how you react totally agreed. if we don't know ourselves, at least at the behaviorist level, and other's do, we open ourselves to their manipulations >in the face of this complexity I cry and freeze Ok, now i have to wonder: are you some alternate personality i have that I'm not aware of? I'm not sure I've ever agreed so deeply with so much of what someone says. or maybe you're some Intelligent Automaton with access to a Database of everything I have done.. Perhaps we ought to exchange anonymous contact info. I'm not sure how to do that though. How do I create an anonymous online identity shared with one and only one other person? Possibly something involving anonymous email addresses and public keys, but I don't really know how asymmetric cryptography works or how it can be used for this. >>11621 I thought I was clear that I was using "people" in an expanded sense to include governments, corporations, etc. Because they have their own will, perhaps partly composite when it's members can influence it, but things might happen that seemingly no member caused, or was influenced by the members, but the sum of the members influence doesn't account for the whole effect. And as you say >Step outside your role and you get kicked from the system it's the members that are powerless, not the organization. Vadim Zeland's Transerfing describes something called 'pendulums' that seems to agree with this idea that the big organizations are people who are doing what's best for themself. I suppose I'll try to defend a small estate where i can control everything (but I suppose I'll need to be permissive with whoever lives with me, to be not hypocritical).

>>11624 Life is as complicated as you choose to model it. Most perceived complexity is the result of excessive analysis and over reliance on "rational" thought. Its all really pretty simple if you get to the bottom of things. 1. Might makes right, seek to acquire might in whatever form it might take for you. Don't worry too much about the how and the what and the why. Just step out into the world and connect and seek. Sooner or later something will happen. 2. Know how you want to use the might. Develop a full sense of what it is you want, or who you want to be, or if it strikes your fancy eliminate all your desires all together. Dump everything you own and acquire the might of having nothing to lose. 3. When push comes to shove, and you have found yourself in a hole, or a corner that you can't club out of, take hold of everything at once and stick it together however you can. If you pile long and hard enough eventually the hole will fill up and the corner will disappear. Bury it in corpses if you must, but don't forget that violence is often inefficient. 4. Don't forget that you have control over yourself, even if you don't fully understand yourself or the nature of that control. Just do what you can with what you have. If you are smart, you'll ask for more wishes, with your actions.

>>11624 I'm not too concerned with my privacy so i'd be willing to share any contact info you would like. If you are very very concerned though I don't have any sort of encrypted communication, I used to but I've long left a lot of that behind and I probably wouldn't know how to use it anymore.

>>11624 >it's the members that are powerless, not the organization Therein lies my point. I don't think the organization really exists, it's just a projection that people make over a piece of chaos they perceive some patterns in for a while. Those patterns never really last though, so the government isn't what people think or want it to be, just chaos. Since all the power lies in this thing they project over and not with any single individual or group I vocally agreed with >There are no powerful people. No one is actually in control of anything. Politics as an entire field depends on ignoring this. They always do, often citing pragmatism or appealing to some value or emotion (How does that help me get things done in real life? While you spout philosophy X is ruining your country! Children are starving in Africa while rich fuarrrks waste money on luxury!) People will argue anything in politics, but there is no real pattern so every pattern can and will be proven wrong, leading to more appeals to pragmatism and lots of heat.

>>11628 Politics, my dear sir, is about getting other people to do things for you for free. usually this involves convincing them that you are really going to do good_things with the resources they give you, and then making it look like you are doing good_things with those resources, so they'll feel like you did do good_things so they'll be more inclined to let you do the next better_things. stay away from politicians, instead focus on something useful, like metaphysics, mathematics, or other fun stuff.

We really do live in a society.

>>11627 what's your email address, birth date, and mothers' maiden name?

The most powerful people in society right now is gamers. In every powerful person's briefcase is a PSP. World politics are decided on Fortnite servers. There are no more countries or governments, only armies of the best Call of Duty players controlling their turf by force. The best thing you can do in this Gamer's World is to buy a Nintendo Switch and increase your rank in Super Smash Brothers, and your life will be a living hell if you don't learn to play Halo.

>>12124 only one of those is contact info unless you are a wizard but i dont think your serious.

>>11606 Wrong, I control everything and I don't plan on relinquishing my power anytime soon