Nothing in this analysis denies the possibility of civilization; what it denies is growth-dependent industrial modernity as a viable end state.
A preindustrial, low-energy, sufficiency-based civilization—stabilized at a few hundred million people (a more than 99 percent reduction from today), bounded in throughput, and governed by strict ecological caps—could preserve a positive conservation gift over time, albeit with smaller buffers against environmental variability, resource shocks, and climate extremes than those of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers.
Achieving this would require dismantling fossil-fuel extraction and combustion industries, large-scale heavy manufacturing (steel, cement, petrochemicals), mass motorized transport networks, industrial monoculture agriculture, synthetic fertilizer and pesticide production, and the global just-in-time supply chain infrastructure.
Such a civilization would instead rely on solar-income technologies (solar thermal, passive solar design), wind and sail power, small-scale hydro, biomass managed as a closed-loop resource, durable materials designed for repair and reuse, and agroecological practices that build soil and biodiversity.
Modern reformism that seeks salvation through better policies while retaining the growth imperative may slow the reckoning, but only a shift to anti-natalism, sufficiency, and regeneration can plausibly prevent ecological overshoot and collapse—an outcome toward which unchecked growth will drive us regardless.
Ultimately, the collapse of industry and the reduction of human population by over 99 percent will occur regardless of our choices.
The Conservation Gift Ledger: A Global Hectares Test of Pinker’s Progress Claims
Pinker's "belief in progress" argument can be straightforwardly refuted with an ecological analysis measuring historical gha (global hectares—Earth's biological footprint capacity).¹ Every period of "progress" since we left the Paleolithic has entailed greater overall regress in the form of a diminished conservation gift for future generations of humans and non-humans—primarily during the industrial age.
The Paleolithic Conservation Gift
The numbers expose the betrayal. Hunter-gatherers preserved a +11,997.5 million gha conservation gift—living sustainably on 0.5 gha per person² while bequeathing 2,399.5 gha per person³ out of a total biocapacity of 2,400 gha per person⁴.
Calculation: 2,400 – 0.5 = 2,399.5 gha/person; 2,399.5 × 5 million people = 11,997.5 million gha.⁵
Contemporary Ecological Debt
We have relentlessly liquidated this inheritance, converting it into an –9,588.0 million gha deficit by 2022—a debt predicted to deepen further as ecological overshoot intensifies.
**2022 calculation:** Sustainable share 1.5 gha – actual consumption 2.7 gha = –1.2 gha/person⁶; –1.2 × 7,990 million = –9,588.0 million gha.⁷ **Illustrative 2100 scenario:** 1.2 gha – 3.4 gha = –2.2 gha/person⁸; –2.2 × 10,400 million = –22,880.0 million gha.⁹
Footprint Decomposition and Decarbonization Limits
Contemporary overshoot stems from multiple resource demands: carbon emissions comprise approximately 60 percent of the total footprint (equivalent to forest land needed to sequester CO₂), cropland demand ~20 percent, grazing land ~10 percent, with built-up areas and forest products comprising the remainder.
Even complete decarbonization cannot restore balance. While eliminating the carbon component (~1.6 gha/person) would reduce the average footprint from 2.7 to ~1.1 gha/person—theoretically below current biocapacity of ~1.5 gha/person—this scenario assumes eliminating all fossil fuels while maintaining current material consumption, no population or economic growth, and that non-carbon ecological pressures (biodiversity collapse, soil depletion, freshwater depletion) remain manageable. None of these assumptions are realistic.¹⁰
Robustness Analysis: Testing Parameter Extremes
Critics might question the precision of these estimates, arguing that uncertainties in biocapacity, footprint data, and population figures could undermine the analysis. However, even under the most generous assumptions favoring technological optimism and conservative ecological accounting, the core argument remains unassailable.
To stress-test the ledger, consider extreme variations across all key variables:
**Paleolithic Gift Range:** With total planetary biocapacity constrained at ~12 billion gha, varying population (1–5 million) and hunter-gatherer footprint (0.2–1.5 gha/person) yields a gift of ≈12 billion gha annually⁴ (human consumption was negligible).
**Contemporary Debt Range:** Sustainable share: 1.2–1.8 gha/person, actual footprint: 2.6–3.2 gha/person (±10 percent uncertainty), population: 7.5–12.5 billion (UN high/low variants). **Result:** Debt ranges from –6.0 × 10⁹ to –2.5 × 10¹⁰ gha.
Even adopting the most favorable assumptions simultaneously—maximum Paleolithic gift (12 billion gha) combined with minimum contemporary debt (6 billion gha)—humanity remains in severe ecological deficit. The smallest possible debt magnitude still equals half of the largest possible historical gift, confirming systematic biocapacity liquidation across all plausible parameter combinations.
Technological Mitigation: Insufficient to Close the Gap
Optimists might invoke technological solutions—yield improvements, renewable energy transitions, afforestation—to argue that innovation can restore ecological balance. However, the scale of required mitigation dwarfs realistic technological potential:
- **Required restoration:** 9–25 billion gha deficit closure - **Global forest area:** ~40 million km² (equivalent to ~6 billion gha)¹¹ - **Agricultural yield improvements:** Historically 1.5 percent annually for major crops, insufficient to offset population and consumption growth¹² - **Maximum reforestation potential:** Recent studies suggest 195 million hectares globally feasible, equivalent to ~0.3 billion gha¹³ - **Renewable energy:** Reduces carbon footprint but cannot restore biodiversity or soil depletion
Even complete global reforestation of all technically feasible areas would recover less than 5% of the minimum debt, while realistic technological gains (1-2% annual yield improvements) operate at margins insufficient to reverse the fundamental overshoot trajectory.
Even if ecological harms beyond the gha footprint—microplastics and chemical pollution—were solved, our deepening gha overdraft would still ensure that progress is inevitably undone.
The Ultimate Trajectory
This path terminates in such severe ecological degradation that human population and longevity will decline back to pre-industrial levels (as ecosystem-collapse models have repeatedly demonstrated)¹⁶ —but now without the +11,997.5 million gha conservation gift that hunter-gatherers had preserved.
Food-system collapse and disease resurgence drive mortality upward and life expectancy downward¹⁷. Biodiversity loss and failing infrastructure precipitate epidemics and undermine medical care¹⁸. Crop failures and fisheries collapse reduce access to calories and protein¹⁹. Resource scarcity and economic contraction strip material wealth and employment²⁰. Natural-resource conflicts intensify under acute scarcity²¹. Institutional breakdown ushers in coercive controls—curfews, rationing, martial law—to manage scarcity²². Infrastructure failure and extreme weather erode public order and basic protections²³. School closures and crisis-driven budget diversion hollow out education systems²⁴.
We will have spent our ecological inheritance for a few hundred years worth of temporary gains, leaving our descendants permanently impoverished in a depleted world.
The Moral Dimension
The moral dimension compounds the tragedy. Alongside destroying our own species' future, we have committed ecocide against countless species that have gone extinct or been severely decimated. This represents an absolute moral monstrosity that vastly overshadows any "better angels of our nature" moral improvements during the few centuries of "progress" where humans ate their seed corn for short-term gains.
Conclusion: Progress as Ultimate Regress
Progress reveals itself as the ultimate regress—trading sustainable abundance for temporary population and longevity increases followed by permanent ecological exile. Pinker celebrates what is actually humanity’s greatest betrayal while ignoring its ultimate cost. The conservation gift ledger demonstrates that no reasonable margin of error, technological optimism, or methodological adjustment can restore the fundamental sustainability that our species abandoned in pursuit of industrial “progress.”
Anti-Holocaust Denial Champions Now Lead the Charge in Gaza Genocide Denial
The extraordinary irony of our time reveals itself starkly: those who built lucrative careers and institutions on self-righteously combating Holocaust denial have now become primary exponents of Gaza genocide denial.
This unmasking exposes not just moral bankruptcy but the material incentives that drive what Norman Finkelstein termed the *“Holocaust industry”*—a formidable network of Jewish organizations, institutions, and individuals who have weaponized antisemitism and the Holocaust for financial and political gain.¹
To make matters even more ironic, a number of these organizations disguise their self-interested lobbying by curating a façade of broad humanitarianism. They promote not just Holocaust education but also pad their portfolios with “Holocaust *and* genocide” education, alongside other token liberal causes—LGBTQ+ rights, anti-Latino discrimination initiatives, and so on. Sometimes this is rebranded under the do-gooder banner of *tikkun olam* (“healing the world” in Hebrew).² ³
If Jewish institutions that support Israel (the vast majority) are cast as accomplices in—or deniers of—the Gaza genocide, their Holocaust-anchored moral authority evaporates. This endangers not only their ethical standing and public persona but also their financial, political, and community benefits.
Furthermore, recognizing the Gaza genocide would force examination of the broader settler-colonial and apartheid system that has defined Israel since 1948. The Gaza genocide thus becomes the logical consequence of that system-just as genocide or near-genocide has frequently been the ultimate outcome of settler-colonial apartheid regimes.
For example, for Native Americans and Indigenous Australians it was a culmination of extreme dispossession, marginalization, torture, and violence. These atrocities were often amplified by labeling resisting peoples as “savages” once they fought back and tales of their real or alleged atrocities spread among the settler populations.⁴ ⁵ ⁶
Contemporary accounts from the mid-19th-century US Indian Wars and the Australian frontier conflicts repeatedly justified massacres and forced removals on the basis of real or alleged “atrocities” committed by resisting tribes.
This same logic of deflection—blaming the victims’ resistance, “atrocities,” and “savagery” to justify genocide—resurfaces in the discourse around Gaza genocide denial.
The recognition of the Gaza genocide would delegitimize not only current supporters of Israel but the entire Zionist project these organizations have spent decades defending. It would also undermine the billions in donations largely justified by that defense.
This explains the attempt to turn the Gaza genocide itself into an antisemitic “blood libel” against Jews. Such tactics preserve organizational self-image and increase antisemitism-related donations, since anti-genocide, pro-Palestinian activism can be labeled antisemitic.
Meanwhile, more liberal Zionist organizations specializing in tokenistic do-gooder activism employ a subtler strategy. They frame the conflict as a tragic and excessive but conventional war rather than genocide. Then they tokenize or scapegoat “extremist” elements—Netanyahu, Ben Gvir, West Bank settlers—instead of acknowledging what B’Tselem termed a decades-long Israeli settler-colonial apartheid “regime of Jewish supremacy” or the polls showing that most Israelis support genocide and ethnic cleansing.⁷ ⁸ ⁹
In conclusion, the very organizations that once posed as bulwarks against genocide denial now leverage similar tactics—denial, minimization and moral deflection,—to obscure and dismiss the Gaza genocide. Exposing this reversal not only challenges their moral authority but also demands accountability for having enabled genocidal settler-colonialism under false pretenses.
¹ Norman Finkelstein, *The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering* (Verso, 2001).
³ Jewish Public Affairs Committee of California, “JPAC and Jewish Caucus Secure Record $80 Million for Security Grants Protecting At-Risk Institutions,” June 23, 2024, jpac-cal.org/2024/06/23/jpac-and-jewish-caucus-sec…
The Genocide Recognition Imperative in Gaza: A Simpler Path to Disarm Media Propaganda
In confronting entrenched Western media techniques that obscure Israeli responsibility and dehumanize Palestinians, refuting each propaganda tactic individually has merit—but securing both formal and informal recognition of the Gaza genocide offers a more straightforward, comprehensive solution. A genocide determination would largely dismantle the semantic evasions, false equivalences, and institutional complicity that underpin current coverage.
Plus genocide recognition in Gaza will not only dismantle media euphemisms, it will also recast Israel’s history of settler-colonial dispossession and apartheid as a seamless continuum of violence, and invoke binding legal duties. Combined with grassroots activism and human-rights documentation, this unified label will create a reinforcing loop that accelerates discourse correction, drives accountability measures, and secures an enduring, fact-based historical record.
This deeper historical implication is precisely why even the most sympathetic of Zionist liberals recoil at the term. When asked whether Gaza’s devastation qualifies as *genocide*, Senator Bernie Sanders admitted, “We can argue about definitions, but what does that mean in real terms? … When you get to the word *genocide*, I get a little bit queasy. … You’ve got to be careful when you use that word.”¹ His discomfort illustrates how profound the implications of the *fact of genocide* are for Zionist denial.
Legal Clarity
Under the 1948 Genocide Convention, genocide encompasses acts committed “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”² A formal finding by bodies like the International Court of Justice (ICJ) or International Criminal Court (ICC) creates binding obligations: war terms such as “offensive” or “clashes” to describe genocide become legally indefensible, compelling media outlets to adopt more precise terminology.
When the UN’s International Commission of Inquiry labeled the 1995 Srebrenica massacre as genocide in 2004, coverage shifted almost overnight from depicting a “civil war” to exposing systematic extermination of Bosniak Muslims.³ Although detailed refutations of propaganda can chip away at bias over time, authoritative recognition can shatter long-standing media distortions in a single stroke.
Research on information cascades further shows that once a critical mass of respected institutions adopts “genocide,” it propagates rapidly through governments, media, and civil society.⁴ Outlets clinging to passive constructions and generic war metaphors find themselves glaringly out of step, accelerating correction across the board—far more efficiently than piecemeal rebuttals of each semantic trick.
Similarly, the current and historical Israeli pretext of “counter-terror” will give way to the Palestinian legal right to armed struggle against an illegal occupation, with terrorist excesses seen in the context of an apartheid system of traumatizing torture where 40% of all Palestinian males since 1967 have been kidnapped into Israeli prisons—among countless other abuses.⁵
Historical and Social Impact
A genocide determination underscores the targeted nature of violence against Gaza’s Palestinians, forcing journalists to attach names, narratives, and context rather than reducing victims to anonymous statistics.⁶ This single reclassification undoes multiple dehumanization tactics at once, restoring agency and empathy.
Public recognition of genocide carries moral weight comparable to the Holocaust.⁸ Denialist rhetoric such as “all wars are tragic” becomes taboo, refocusing discourse on Israel’s actions in Gaza and invalidating deflection tactics.
Major human rights organizations have also played a pivotal role in this recognition. Leading groups such as B’Tselem, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch have published detailed, documented reports concluding that Israel’s actions in Gaza amount to genocide.¹⁰ Their authoritative assessments have contributed significantly to framing the debate, increasing international awareness, and exerting pressure on states and media alike to confront the ongoing atrocities.
Informal Recognition: The Catalytic Role of Political, Social, and Grassroots Acknowledgment
Beyond legal rulings, informal recognition—through political declarations, civil-society resolutions, media self-corrections, and grassroots activism—has historically accelerated shifts in public discourse and media practice. In 1993, a joint declaration by EU foreign ministers labeling the Bosnian conflict genocide prompted major outlets to adopt the term, even before the ICTY’s formal indictment.¹⁵ Similarly, U.S. congressional resolutions on Darfur in 2004 spurred cable networks to reframe reporting from “civil war” to “genocide” narratives.¹⁶ Media self-corrections—such as The Washington Post’s retrospective headline amendments on Rwanda—demonstrate that even acknowledgments lacking legal force can force outlets to reassess language and sourcing.¹⁷
Moreover, grassroots movements and online activism have become indispensable: global protests, online petitions like the Avaaz campaigns, and social media hashtags such as #GazaGenocide have pressured journalists and editors to address genocide terminology and human rights perspectives, helping to reshape coverage in real time.¹⁸
Accountability and Next Steps
Genocide rulings activate the Responsibility to Protect doctrine, triggering sanctions, investigations, and diplomatic interventions.⁷ Media that downplay or deny genocide risk professional censure and legal exposure, prompting them to include human-rights experts and reduce airtime for state spokespeople—accomplishing in one measure what many targeted critiques attempt separately.
With genocide established, investigative reporting can more easily map the networks beside the Netanyahu government that enabled it: the Israeli establishment and public at large,⁹ ¹⁰ U.S. media, lobby groups and politicians, European outlets, etc.¹¹ ¹² ¹³
A formal genocide ruling affirms that Gaza’s devastation is the culmination of a decades-long settler-colonial and apartheid regime.¹⁴ Historical context—occupation, settlement expansion, and systemic discrimination—must be fully acknowledged once genocide is legally recognized, sidestepping fragmented historical corrections.
In conclusion, while detailed refutations of individual propaganda techniques have their place, securing formal and informal recognition that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute genocide provides a far simpler, more powerful lever. Euphemistic reporting and denialist discourse would eventually become untenable, compelling outlets and institutions to confront hard truths or face significant ethical, professional, and legal repercussions.
Israel's Willing Executioners: Popular Complicity in Nazi Germany vs. Israel During Genocide
In March 2025, 82% of Jewish Israelis supported the forced expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza, while 47% endorsed killing all inhabitants of conquered territories—echoing the biblical conquest of Jericho. These figures, documented through transparent polling, provide clearer evidence of eliminationist ideology than Daniel Goldhagen presented for Nazi Germany in his controversial work *Hitler's Willing Executioners*.
While Goldhagen’s thesis about German eliminationism relied on contested and limited archival evidence from a closed autocracy, contemporary Israeli public opinion demonstrates unprecedented clarity of popular support for eliminationist policies within an internally more open society than Nazi Germany.
Evidence Quality and Methodology: Israel’s Transparency vs. Germany’s Contested and Limited Records
The fundamental difference between these cases lies in the quality and transparency of available evidence. Israeli public-opinion data emerges from a more open system—with competitive polling institutions, transparent methodologies, and cross-validation across multiple surveys. In stark contrast, Goldhagen’s evidence for German eliminationism depends on contested, more limited archival materials from a society where greater internal coercion shaped behavior and testimony.
Israeli Polling: Transparent Evidence
Multiple Israeli polling institutions have documented eliminationist attitudes using professional sampling, clear question wording, and consistent results across time and organizations.
A Hebrew University aChord Center poll conducted in May 2025 found that 64% of Israelis overall—and a larger majority of Jewish Israelis—agreed with the statement “there are no innocents in Gaza.”¹
The demographic breakdown reveals the depth of this dehumanization: 87% of ruling-coalition supporters, 73% of right-wing non-coalition voters, 67% of centrist voters, and even 30% of left-wing voters endorsed this view. Notably, 92% of Palestinian citizens of Israel (Arab Israelis) rejected this dehumanizing perspective.
The consistency across polling institutions strengthens these findings. An Israel Democracy Institute poll conducted in July 2025 found that exactly 79% of Jewish Israelis reported being “not so troubled” (23.4%) or “not at all troubled” (55.6%) by reports of famine and suffering in Gaza.² Meanwhile, 86% of Palestinian citizens of Israel expressed concern about this humanitarian crisis, highlighting the stark ethnic divide in moral response.
Methodological Reconciliation of Survey Differences
The March 2025 Geocartography Knowledge Group poll found 82% of Jewish Israelis supporting “forced expulsion” of Palestinians from Gaza using a *for-expulsion or against-expulsion* binary-choice format.³
In contrast, the Hebrew University aChord Center poll from February 2025 asked about “forced emigration, transfer, or expulsion by force” with three options, yielding 60% support, 26% neutral/no opinion, and 14% opposition.
Critics questioned the 82% “for expulsion” result by pointing to the lower 60% in the aChord poll.⁴ But what they ignore is that most respondents choosing “neutral/no opinion” would still prefer expulsion over opposition when forced to choose. Reallocating neutral respondents—mirroring the 60 : 14 ratio among committed respondents—splits about 81% toward support and 19% toward opposition, near reproducing the 82% figure (81.1% to be exact).* Apparent polling differences thus confirm, rather than undermine, the reality of overwhelming support for expulsion.
German Evidence: Contested, Limited Archives in Autocracy and Wartime
Goldhagen’s case rested on trial transcripts from Nuremberg and later prosecutions, battalion reports, personal letters expressing perpetrators’ pride, and memoirs boasting voluntary service. Critics—including Christopher Browning, Richard Evans, and Hans Mommsen—have highlighted fundamental problems with this evidence base.⁵ These documents represent a narrow, possibly coerced subset of the population, subject to extreme peer pressure and career incentives within an autocratic system.
Browning’s *Ordinary Men* documented situational pressures, peer influence, and coercive environments that complicate Goldhagen’s portrayal of widespread ideological volunteerism among Police Battalion 101.⁶ Evans warned against overgeneralization from selective archival testimony, while Mommsen emphasized the need for comparative context with other Nazi territories and wartime societies.
Scale of Support: Majority vs. Minority Participation
Beyond methodological contrasts, the sheer scope of documented support reveals the starkest difference between these cases. Israeli polls show majority—often supermajority—endorsement of extremist policies across the Jewish population, whereas German evidence shows direct participation by a small minority.
Israeli Supermajorities for Extremist Policies
Alongside the 82% backing expulsion of Gazans, 56% of Jewish Israelis supported expelling Arab Israelis (their own fellow citizens), and support reached 66% among those under 40.³ Both figures mark dramatic increases from 2003 baselines (45% and 31% respectively), indicating growing extremism over time. Most disturbingly, 47% of Jewish Israelis endorsed the army “killing all inhabitants” of conquered territories, explicitly approving genocidal tactics.
German Minority Participation
By contrast, Goldhagen’s evidence identifies only a few thousand core perpetrators—Einsatzgruppen and police battalions—within a much larger population.⁷ Even generous counts suggest minority rather than majority involvement, further complicated by extreme coercion in Nazi Germany.
Information Access vs. Coercive Control
Most significantly, these extremist attitudes persist in Israel even with greater freedoms and access to information compared to Nazi Germany.
Israelis can view atrocity footage online and read detailed investigations by B’Tselem, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch.⁸⁻¹⁰ Opposition media, civil-society groups, and academics operate with far fewer constraints than existed in Nazi Germany, where a totalitarian apparatus monopolized information and punished dissent with imprisonment or death. Under such coercion, documented “support” for genocidal policy is inherently ambiguous.
Historical Context and Academic Debate
Goldhagen’s thesis sparked debate because it portrayed ordinary Germans as ideologically committed killers, challenging functionalist explanations emphasizing bureaucratic momentum. The Israeli data removes many ambiguities: eliminationist attitudes are openly stated, transparently measured, and broadly shared in a comparatively open society.
Theoretical Framework: Popular Complicity and the Cost of Resistance
Complicity must be scaled to the cost of resistance. Under totalitarianism, resisting genocidal ideology or orders risks imprisonment or death; under the pressures of an open society, resistance primarily entails extra effort, social ostracism, or economic loss. Because these costs are lower, moral responsibility—and thus complicity—is greater.
This framework is more accurate than fixed legal thresholds because it calibrates culpability to lived realities.
In many instances, it is also more charitable and lenient than prevailing legal systems, which overlook nuanced realities of coercion, manipulation, and personal risk. At the same time, it is less lenient than nationalistic legal practices that frequently excuse—or even glorify—state-sanctioned violence.
Broader Implications: External Violence by Relatively Open Societies
Israeli polling demonstrates that relatively open societies can coexist with mass endorsement of ethnic cleansing and genocide. This exposes the myth—sustained by branding electoral plutocracies as “democracies”—that internal openness correlates with external restraint. Victorian England, the freest state of its era, crushed India with famine-level policies; the United States, freer than Russia, has a more extensive record of foreign violence. Openness and aggression routinely coexist.
It is plausible that a *genuine* democracy—where political and economic power are broadly shared, nationally and internationally—would reduce external violence. Yet Israeli evidence suggests that formal institutions in relatively open societies, operating within ethnic nationalism, colonial logics, and plutocratic structures, can legitimize genocidal violence even more efficiently than totalitarian propaganda.
The willing executioners of the twenty-first century announce their intentions not through coercion, but through the expression of eliminationist will in relatively open societies.
By curtailing behaviors that provide short-term pleasure but lead to long-term distress, chronic illness can reduce the net burden of suffering. Although living with ongoing pain and functional limitations imposes a baseline level of discomfort, patients often adopt healthier habits and avoid risky indulgences, thereby preventing additional suffering that would have accrued later. Empirical studies show that chronic illness prompts immediate negative reinforcement—discouraging harmful behaviors through instant discomfort—and fosters more stable well-being by resisting the usual hedonic adaptation seen after positive and negative events[1][2][3][4]. Consequently, the combined effect may be **less total suffering over time**, as the avoidance of unskillful behaviors offsets some of the chronic illness’s inherent distress[5][6].
mr1001nights
www.reddit.com/r/economicCollapse/s/XIy7gFBw0B
Nothing in this analysis denies the possibility of civilization; what it denies is growth-dependent industrial modernity as a viable end state.
A preindustrial, low-energy, sufficiency-based civilization—stabilized at a few hundred million people (a more than 99 percent reduction from today), bounded in throughput, and governed by strict ecological caps—could preserve a positive conservation gift over time, albeit with smaller buffers against environmental variability, resource shocks, and climate extremes than those of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers.
Achieving this would require dismantling fossil-fuel extraction and combustion industries, large-scale heavy manufacturing (steel, cement, petrochemicals), mass motorized transport networks, industrial monoculture agriculture, synthetic fertilizer and pesticide production, and the global just-in-time supply chain infrastructure.
Such a civilization would instead rely on solar-income technologies (solar thermal, passive solar design), wind and sail power, small-scale hydro, biomass managed as a closed-loop resource, durable materials designed for repair and reuse, and agroecological practices that build soil and biodiversity.
Modern reformism that seeks salvation through better policies while retaining the growth imperative may slow the reckoning, but only a shift to anti-natalism, sufficiency, and regeneration can plausibly prevent ecological overshoot and collapse—an outcome toward which unchecked growth will drive us regardless.
Ultimately, the collapse of industry and the reduction of human population by over 99 percent will occur regardless of our choices.
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mr1001nights
www.reddit.com/r/ScienceNcoolThings/s/ha7gEMfe2F
The Conservation Gift Ledger: A Global Hectares Test of Pinker’s Progress Claims
Pinker's "belief in progress" argument can be straightforwardly refuted with an ecological analysis measuring historical gha (global hectares—Earth's biological footprint capacity).¹ Every period of "progress" since we left the Paleolithic has entailed greater overall regress in the form of a diminished conservation gift for future generations of humans and non-humans—primarily during the industrial age.
The Paleolithic Conservation Gift
The numbers expose the betrayal. Hunter-gatherers preserved a +11,997.5 million gha conservation gift—living sustainably on 0.5 gha per person² while bequeathing 2,399.5 gha per person³ out of a total biocapacity of 2,400 gha per person⁴.
Calculation: 2,400 – 0.5 = 2,399.5 gha/person; 2,399.5 × 5 million people = 11,997.5 million gha.⁵
Contemporary Ecological Debt
We have relentlessly liquidated this inheritance, converting it into an –9,588.0 million gha deficit by 2022—a debt predicted to deepen further as ecological overshoot intensifies.
**2022 calculation:** Sustainable share 1.5 gha – actual consumption 2.7 gha = –1.2 gha/person⁶; –1.2 × 7,990 million = –9,588.0 million gha.⁷
**Illustrative 2100 scenario:** 1.2 gha – 3.4 gha = –2.2 gha/person⁸; –2.2 × 10,400 million = –22,880.0 million gha.⁹
Footprint Decomposition and Decarbonization Limits
Contemporary overshoot stems from multiple resource demands: carbon emissions comprise approximately 60 percent of the total footprint (equivalent to forest land needed to sequester CO₂), cropland demand ~20 percent, grazing land ~10 percent, with built-up areas and forest products comprising the remainder.
Even complete decarbonization cannot restore balance. While eliminating the carbon component (~1.6 gha/person) would reduce the average footprint from 2.7 to ~1.1 gha/person—theoretically below current biocapacity of ~1.5 gha/person—this scenario assumes eliminating all fossil fuels while maintaining current material consumption, no population or economic growth, and that non-carbon ecological pressures (biodiversity collapse, soil depletion, freshwater depletion) remain manageable. None of these assumptions are realistic.¹⁰
Robustness Analysis: Testing Parameter Extremes
Critics might question the precision of these estimates, arguing that uncertainties in biocapacity, footprint data, and population figures could undermine the analysis. However, even under the most generous assumptions favoring technological optimism and conservative ecological accounting, the core argument remains unassailable.
To stress-test the ledger, consider extreme variations across all key variables:
**Paleolithic Gift Range:** With total planetary biocapacity constrained at ~12 billion gha, varying population (1–5 million) and hunter-gatherer footprint (0.2–1.5 gha/person) yields a gift of ≈12 billion gha annually⁴ (human consumption was negligible).
**Contemporary Debt Range:** Sustainable share: 1.2–1.8 gha/person, actual footprint: 2.6–3.2 gha/person (±10 percent uncertainty), population: 7.5–12.5 billion (UN high/low variants). **Result:** Debt ranges from –6.0 × 10⁹ to –2.5 × 10¹⁰ gha.
Even adopting the most favorable assumptions simultaneously—maximum Paleolithic gift (12 billion gha) combined with minimum contemporary debt (6 billion gha)—humanity remains in severe ecological deficit. The smallest possible debt magnitude still equals half of the largest possible historical gift, confirming systematic biocapacity liquidation across all plausible parameter combinations.
Technological Mitigation: Insufficient to Close the Gap
Optimists might invoke technological solutions—yield improvements, renewable energy transitions, afforestation—to argue that innovation can restore ecological balance. However, the scale of required mitigation dwarfs realistic technological potential:
- **Required restoration:** 9–25 billion gha deficit closure
- **Global forest area:** ~40 million km² (equivalent to ~6 billion gha)¹¹
- **Agricultural yield improvements:** Historically 1.5 percent annually for major crops, insufficient to offset population and consumption growth¹²
- **Maximum reforestation potential:** Recent studies suggest 195 million hectares globally feasible, equivalent to ~0.3 billion gha¹³
- **Renewable energy:** Reduces carbon footprint but cannot restore biodiversity or soil depletion
Even complete global reforestation of all technically feasible areas would recover less than 5% of the minimum debt, while realistic technological gains (1-2% annual yield improvements) operate at margins insufficient to reverse the fundamental overshoot trajectory.
Even if ecological harms beyond the gha footprint—microplastics and chemical pollution—were solved, our deepening gha overdraft would still ensure that progress is inevitably undone.
The Ultimate Trajectory
This path terminates in such severe ecological degradation that human population and longevity will decline back to pre-industrial levels (as ecosystem-collapse models have repeatedly demonstrated)¹⁶ —but now without the +11,997.5 million gha conservation gift that hunter-gatherers had preserved.
Food-system collapse and disease resurgence drive mortality upward and life expectancy downward¹⁷.
Biodiversity loss and failing infrastructure precipitate epidemics and undermine medical care¹⁸.
Crop failures and fisheries collapse reduce access to calories and protein¹⁹.
Resource scarcity and economic contraction strip material wealth and employment²⁰.
Natural-resource conflicts intensify under acute scarcity²¹.
Institutional breakdown ushers in coercive controls—curfews, rationing, martial law—to manage scarcity²².
Infrastructure failure and extreme weather erode public order and basic protections²³.
School closures and crisis-driven budget diversion hollow out education systems²⁴.
We will have spent our ecological inheritance for a few hundred years worth of temporary gains, leaving our descendants permanently impoverished in a depleted world.
The Moral Dimension
The moral dimension compounds the tragedy.
Alongside destroying our own species' future, we have committed ecocide against countless species that have gone extinct or been severely decimated. This represents an absolute moral monstrosity that vastly overshadows any "better angels of our nature" moral improvements during the few centuries of "progress" where humans ate their seed corn for short-term gains.
Conclusion: Progress as Ultimate Regress
Progress reveals itself as the ultimate regress—trading sustainable abundance for temporary population and longevity increases followed by permanent ecological exile. Pinker celebrates what is actually humanity’s greatest betrayal while ignoring its ultimate cost. The conservation gift ledger demonstrates that no reasonable margin of error, technological optimism, or methodological adjustment can restore the fundamental sustainability that our species abandoned in pursuit of industrial “progress.”
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mr1001nights
Anti-Holocaust Denial Champions Now Lead the Charge in Gaza Genocide Denial
The extraordinary irony of our time reveals itself starkly: those who built lucrative careers and institutions on self-righteously combating Holocaust denial have now become primary exponents of Gaza genocide denial.
This unmasking exposes not just moral bankruptcy but the material incentives that drive what Norman Finkelstein termed the *“Holocaust industry”*—a formidable network of Jewish organizations, institutions, and individuals who have weaponized antisemitism and the Holocaust for financial and political gain.¹
To make matters even more ironic, a number of these organizations disguise their self-interested lobbying by curating a façade of broad humanitarianism. They promote not just Holocaust education but also pad their portfolios with “Holocaust *and* genocide” education, alongside other token liberal causes—LGBTQ+ rights, anti-Latino discrimination initiatives, and so on. Sometimes this is rebranded under the do-gooder banner of *tikkun olam* (“healing the world” in Hebrew).² ³
If Jewish institutions that support Israel (the vast majority) are cast as accomplices in—or deniers of—the Gaza genocide, their Holocaust-anchored moral authority evaporates. This endangers not only their ethical standing and public persona but also their financial, political, and community benefits.
Furthermore, recognizing the Gaza genocide would force examination of the broader settler-colonial and apartheid system that has defined Israel since 1948. The Gaza genocide thus becomes the logical consequence of that system-just as genocide or near-genocide has frequently been the ultimate outcome of settler-colonial apartheid regimes.
For example, for Native Americans and Indigenous Australians it was a culmination of extreme dispossession, marginalization, torture, and violence. These atrocities were often amplified by labeling resisting peoples as “savages” once they fought back and tales of their real or alleged atrocities spread among the settler populations.⁴ ⁵ ⁶
Contemporary accounts from the mid-19th-century US Indian Wars and the Australian frontier conflicts repeatedly justified massacres and forced removals on the basis of real or alleged “atrocities” committed by resisting tribes.
This same logic of deflection—blaming the victims’ resistance, “atrocities,” and “savagery” to justify genocide—resurfaces in the discourse around Gaza genocide denial.
The recognition of the Gaza genocide would delegitimize not only current supporters of Israel but the entire Zionist project these organizations have spent decades defending. It would also undermine the billions in donations largely justified by that defense.
This explains the attempt to turn the Gaza genocide itself into an antisemitic “blood libel” against Jews. Such tactics preserve organizational self-image and increase antisemitism-related donations, since anti-genocide, pro-Palestinian activism can be labeled antisemitic.
Meanwhile, more liberal Zionist organizations specializing in tokenistic do-gooder activism employ a subtler strategy. They frame the conflict as a tragic and excessive but conventional war rather than genocide. Then they tokenize or scapegoat “extremist” elements—Netanyahu, Ben Gvir, West Bank settlers—instead of acknowledging what B’Tselem termed a decades-long Israeli settler-colonial apartheid “regime of Jewish supremacy” or the polls showing that most Israelis support genocide and ethnic cleansing.⁷ ⁸ ⁹
In conclusion, the very organizations that once posed as bulwarks against genocide denial now leverage similar tactics—denial, minimization and moral deflection,—to obscure and dismiss the Gaza genocide. Exposing this reversal not only challenges their moral authority but also demands accountability for having enabled genocidal settler-colonialism under false pretenses.
¹ Norman Finkelstein, *The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering* (Verso, 2001).
² California Legislative Jewish Caucus, “Jewish Caucus Announces Legislative Priorities 2023,” May 8, 2023, jewishcaucus.legislature.ca.gov/news/jewish-caucus…
³ Jewish Public Affairs Committee of California, “JPAC and Jewish Caucus Secure Record $80 Million for Security Grants Protecting At-Risk Institutions,” June 23, 2024, jpac-cal.org/2024/06/23/jpac-and-jewish-caucus-sec…
⁴ “Trail of Tears,” *Encyclopaedia Britannica*, accessed August 2025, www.britannica.com/event/Trail-of-Tears
⁵ “Frontier Wars,” *Encyclopaedia Britannica*, accessed August 2025, www.britannica.com/event/Frontier-Wars
⁶ “Savage,” *Encyclopaedia Britannica*, accessed August 2025, www.britannica.com/topic/savage
⁷ Poll: Overwhelming Majority of Jewish Israelis Share Genocidal Beliefs, *Mondoweiss*, July 2025, mondoweiss.net/2025/07/poll-overwhelming-majority-…
⁸ 64% of Israelis Believe There Are ‘No Innocents’ in Gaza: Poll, *Anadolu Agency*, June 10, 2025, www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/64-of-israelis-believ…
⁹ Israeli Human Rights Group: Israel Is Committing Genocide in Gaza, *Al Jazeera*, July 28, 2025, www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/28/israeli-human-rig…
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mr1001nights
www.reddit.com/r/israelexposed/s/qiOmMEbQMc
The Genocide Recognition Imperative in Gaza: A Simpler Path to Disarm Media Propaganda
In confronting entrenched Western media techniques that obscure Israeli responsibility and dehumanize Palestinians, refuting each propaganda tactic individually has merit—but securing both formal and informal recognition of the Gaza genocide offers a more straightforward, comprehensive solution. A genocide determination would largely dismantle the semantic evasions, false equivalences, and institutional complicity that underpin current coverage.
Plus genocide recognition in Gaza will not only dismantle media euphemisms, it will also recast Israel’s history of settler-colonial dispossession and apartheid as a seamless continuum of violence, and invoke binding legal duties. Combined with grassroots activism and human-rights documentation, this unified label will create a reinforcing loop that accelerates discourse correction, drives accountability measures, and secures an enduring, fact-based historical record.
This deeper historical implication is precisely why even the most sympathetic of Zionist liberals recoil at the term. When asked whether Gaza’s devastation qualifies as *genocide*, Senator Bernie Sanders admitted, “We can argue about definitions, but what does that mean in real terms? … When you get to the word *genocide*, I get a little bit queasy. … You’ve got to be careful when you use that word.”¹ His discomfort illustrates how profound the implications of the *fact of genocide* are for Zionist denial.
Legal Clarity
Under the 1948 Genocide Convention, genocide encompasses acts committed “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”² A formal finding by bodies like the International Court of Justice (ICJ) or International Criminal Court (ICC) creates binding obligations: war terms such as “offensive” or “clashes” to describe genocide become legally indefensible, compelling media outlets to adopt more precise terminology.
When the UN’s International Commission of Inquiry labeled the 1995 Srebrenica massacre as genocide in 2004, coverage shifted almost overnight from depicting a “civil war” to exposing systematic extermination of Bosniak Muslims.³ Although detailed refutations of propaganda can chip away at bias over time, authoritative recognition can shatter long-standing media distortions in a single stroke.
Research on information cascades further shows that once a critical mass of respected institutions adopts “genocide,” it propagates rapidly through governments, media, and civil society.⁴ Outlets clinging to passive constructions and generic war metaphors find themselves glaringly out of step, accelerating correction across the board—far more efficiently than piecemeal rebuttals of each semantic trick.
Similarly, the current and historical Israeli pretext of “counter-terror” will give way to the Palestinian legal right to armed struggle against an illegal occupation, with terrorist excesses seen in the context of an apartheid system of traumatizing torture where 40% of all Palestinian males since 1967 have been kidnapped into Israeli prisons—among countless other abuses.⁵
Historical and Social Impact
A genocide determination underscores the targeted nature of violence against Gaza’s Palestinians, forcing journalists to attach names, narratives, and context rather than reducing victims to anonymous statistics.⁶ This single reclassification undoes multiple dehumanization tactics at once, restoring agency and empathy.
Public recognition of genocide carries moral weight comparable to the Holocaust.⁸ Denialist rhetoric such as “all wars are tragic” becomes taboo, refocusing discourse on Israel’s actions in Gaza and invalidating deflection tactics.
Major human rights organizations have also played a pivotal role in this recognition. Leading groups such as B’Tselem, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch have published detailed, documented reports concluding that Israel’s actions in Gaza amount to genocide.¹⁰ Their authoritative assessments have contributed significantly to framing the debate, increasing international awareness, and exerting pressure on states and media alike to confront the ongoing atrocities.
Informal Recognition: The Catalytic Role of Political, Social, and Grassroots Acknowledgment
Beyond legal rulings, informal recognition—through political declarations, civil-society resolutions, media self-corrections, and grassroots activism—has historically accelerated shifts in public discourse and media practice. In 1993, a joint declaration by EU foreign ministers labeling the Bosnian conflict genocide prompted major outlets to adopt the term, even before the ICTY’s formal indictment.¹⁵ Similarly, U.S. congressional resolutions on Darfur in 2004 spurred cable networks to reframe reporting from “civil war” to “genocide” narratives.¹⁶ Media self-corrections—such as The Washington Post’s retrospective headline amendments on Rwanda—demonstrate that even acknowledgments lacking legal force can force outlets to reassess language and sourcing.¹⁷
Moreover, grassroots movements and online activism have become indispensable: global protests, online petitions like the Avaaz campaigns, and social media hashtags such as #GazaGenocide have pressured journalists and editors to address genocide terminology and human rights perspectives, helping to reshape coverage in real time.¹⁸
Accountability and Next Steps
Genocide rulings activate the Responsibility to Protect doctrine, triggering sanctions, investigations, and diplomatic interventions.⁷ Media that downplay or deny genocide risk professional censure and legal exposure, prompting them to include human-rights experts and reduce airtime for state spokespeople—accomplishing in one measure what many targeted critiques attempt separately.
With genocide established, investigative reporting can more easily map the networks beside the Netanyahu government that enabled it: the Israeli establishment and public at large,⁹ ¹⁰ U.S. media, lobby groups and politicians, European outlets, etc.¹¹ ¹² ¹³
A formal genocide ruling affirms that Gaza’s devastation is the culmination of a decades-long settler-colonial and apartheid regime.¹⁴ Historical context—occupation, settlement expansion, and systemic discrimination—must be fully acknowledged once genocide is legally recognized, sidestepping fragmented historical corrections.
In conclusion, while detailed refutations of individual propaganda techniques have their place, securing formal and informal recognition that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute genocide provides a far simpler, more powerful lever. Euphemistic reporting and denialist discourse would eventually become untenable, compelling outlets and institutions to confront hard truths or face significant ethical, professional, and legal repercussions.
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mr1001nights
www.reddit.com/r/israelexposed/s/A8lNWYpn4i
Israel's Willing Executioners: Popular Complicity in Nazi Germany vs. Israel During Genocide
In March 2025, 82% of Jewish Israelis supported the forced expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza, while 47% endorsed killing all inhabitants of conquered territories—echoing the biblical conquest of Jericho. These figures, documented through transparent polling, provide clearer evidence of eliminationist ideology than Daniel Goldhagen presented for Nazi Germany in his controversial work *Hitler's Willing Executioners*.
While Goldhagen’s thesis about German eliminationism relied on contested and limited archival evidence from a closed autocracy, contemporary Israeli public opinion demonstrates unprecedented clarity of popular support for eliminationist policies within an internally more open society than Nazi Germany.
Evidence Quality and Methodology: Israel’s Transparency vs. Germany’s Contested and Limited Records
The fundamental difference between these cases lies in the quality and transparency of available evidence. Israeli public-opinion data emerges from a more open system—with competitive polling institutions, transparent methodologies, and cross-validation across multiple surveys. In stark contrast, Goldhagen’s evidence for German eliminationism depends on contested, more limited archival materials from a society where greater internal coercion shaped behavior and testimony.
Israeli Polling: Transparent Evidence
Multiple Israeli polling institutions have documented eliminationist attitudes using professional sampling, clear question wording, and consistent results across time and organizations.
A Hebrew University aChord Center poll conducted in May 2025 found that 64% of Israelis overall—and a larger majority of Jewish Israelis—agreed with the statement “there are no innocents in Gaza.”¹
The demographic breakdown reveals the depth of this dehumanization: 87% of ruling-coalition supporters, 73% of right-wing non-coalition voters, 67% of centrist voters, and even 30% of left-wing voters endorsed this view. Notably, 92% of Palestinian citizens of Israel (Arab Israelis) rejected this dehumanizing perspective.
The consistency across polling institutions strengthens these findings. An Israel Democracy Institute poll conducted in July 2025 found that exactly 79% of Jewish Israelis reported being “not so troubled” (23.4%) or “not at all troubled” (55.6%) by reports of famine and suffering in Gaza.² Meanwhile, 86% of Palestinian citizens of Israel expressed concern about this humanitarian crisis, highlighting the stark ethnic divide in moral response.
Methodological Reconciliation of Survey Differences
The March 2025 Geocartography Knowledge Group poll found 82% of Jewish Israelis supporting “forced expulsion” of Palestinians from Gaza using a *for-expulsion or against-expulsion* binary-choice format.³
In contrast, the Hebrew University aChord Center poll from February 2025 asked about “forced emigration, transfer, or expulsion by force” with three options, yielding 60% support, 26% neutral/no opinion, and 14% opposition.
Critics questioned the 82% “for expulsion” result by pointing to the lower 60% in the aChord poll.⁴ But what they ignore is that most respondents choosing “neutral/no opinion” would still prefer expulsion over opposition when forced to choose. Reallocating neutral respondents—mirroring the 60 : 14 ratio among committed respondents—splits about 81% toward support and 19% toward opposition, near reproducing the 82% figure (81.1% to be exact).*
Apparent polling differences thus confirm, rather than undermine, the reality of overwhelming support for expulsion.
*Calculation: 60 ÷ 74 ≈ 0.8108; 0.8108 × 26 ≈ 21.1; 60 + 21.1 ≈ 81.1 → 81.1%.
German Evidence: Contested, Limited Archives in Autocracy and Wartime
Goldhagen’s case rested on trial transcripts from Nuremberg and later prosecutions, battalion reports, personal letters expressing perpetrators’ pride, and memoirs boasting voluntary service. Critics—including Christopher Browning, Richard Evans, and Hans Mommsen—have highlighted fundamental problems with this evidence base.⁵ These documents represent a narrow, possibly coerced subset of the population, subject to extreme peer pressure and career incentives within an autocratic system.
Browning’s *Ordinary Men* documented situational pressures, peer influence, and coercive environments that complicate Goldhagen’s portrayal of widespread ideological volunteerism among Police Battalion 101.⁶ Evans warned against overgeneralization from selective archival testimony, while Mommsen emphasized the need for comparative context with other Nazi territories and wartime societies.
Scale of Support: Majority vs. Minority Participation
Beyond methodological contrasts, the sheer scope of documented support reveals the starkest difference between these cases. Israeli polls show majority—often supermajority—endorsement of extremist policies across the Jewish population, whereas German evidence shows direct participation by a small minority.
Israeli Supermajorities for Extremist Policies
Alongside the 82% backing expulsion of Gazans, 56% of Jewish Israelis supported expelling Arab Israelis (their own fellow citizens), and support reached 66% among those under 40.³ Both figures mark dramatic increases from 2003 baselines (45% and 31% respectively), indicating growing extremism over time. Most disturbingly, 47% of Jewish Israelis endorsed the army “killing all inhabitants” of conquered territories, explicitly approving genocidal tactics.
German Minority Participation
By contrast, Goldhagen’s evidence identifies only a few thousand core perpetrators—Einsatzgruppen and police battalions—within a much larger population.⁷ Even generous counts suggest minority rather than majority involvement, further complicated by extreme coercion in Nazi Germany.
Information Access vs. Coercive Control
Most significantly, these extremist attitudes persist in Israel even with greater freedoms and access to information compared to Nazi Germany.
Israelis can view atrocity footage online and read detailed investigations by B’Tselem, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch.⁸⁻¹⁰ Opposition media, civil-society groups, and academics operate with far fewer constraints than existed in Nazi Germany, where a totalitarian apparatus monopolized information and punished dissent with imprisonment or death. Under such coercion, documented “support” for genocidal policy is inherently ambiguous.
Historical Context and Academic Debate
Goldhagen’s thesis sparked debate because it portrayed ordinary Germans as ideologically committed killers, challenging functionalist explanations emphasizing bureaucratic momentum. The Israeli data removes many ambiguities: eliminationist attitudes are openly stated, transparently measured, and broadly shared in a comparatively open society.
Theoretical Framework: Popular Complicity and the Cost of Resistance
Complicity must be scaled to the cost of resistance. Under totalitarianism, resisting genocidal ideology or orders risks imprisonment or death; under the pressures of an open society, resistance primarily entails extra effort, social ostracism, or economic loss. Because these costs are lower, moral responsibility—and thus complicity—is greater.
This framework is more accurate than fixed legal thresholds because it calibrates culpability to lived realities.
In many instances, it is also more charitable and lenient than prevailing legal systems, which overlook nuanced realities of coercion, manipulation, and personal risk. At the same time, it is less lenient than nationalistic legal practices that frequently excuse—or even glorify—state-sanctioned violence.
Broader Implications: External Violence by Relatively Open Societies
Israeli polling demonstrates that relatively open societies can coexist with mass endorsement of ethnic cleansing and genocide. This exposes the myth—sustained by branding electoral plutocracies as “democracies”—that internal openness correlates with external restraint. Victorian England, the freest state of its era, crushed India with famine-level policies; the United States, freer than Russia, has a more extensive record of foreign violence. Openness and aggression routinely coexist.
It is plausible that a *genuine* democracy—where political and economic power are broadly shared, nationally and internationally—would reduce external violence. Yet Israeli evidence suggests that formal institutions in relatively open societies, operating within ethnic nationalism, colonial logics, and plutocratic structures, can legitimize genocidal violence even more efficiently than totalitarian propaganda.
The willing executioners of the twenty-first century announce their intentions not through coercion, but through the expression of eliminationist will in relatively open societies.
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mr1001nights
Jesus www.reddit.com/r/IsraelCrimes/s/RdFUW5ps6P
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mr1001nights
“Education is a system of imposed ignorance.”
—Noam Chomsky
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mr1001nights
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mr1001nights
The combatant-to-civilian death ratio in, say, Iraq from 2003-2006 is orders of magnitude higher than in 🇺🇦
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mr1001nights
By curtailing behaviors that provide short-term pleasure but lead to long-term distress, chronic illness can reduce the net burden of suffering. Although living with ongoing pain and functional limitations imposes a baseline level of discomfort, patients often adopt healthier habits and avoid risky indulgences, thereby preventing additional suffering that would have accrued later. Empirical studies show that chronic illness prompts immediate negative reinforcement—discouraging harmful behaviors through instant discomfort—and fosters more stable well-being by resisting the usual hedonic adaptation seen after positive and negative events[1][2][3][4]. Consequently, the combined effect may be **less total suffering over time**, as the avoidance of unskillful behaviors offsets some of the chronic illness’s inherent distress[5][6].
Sources
[1] Pain relief produces negative reinforcement through activation of ... pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3528534/
[2] Negative reinforcement reveals non-evoked ongoing pain in mice ... pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3367085/
[3] [PDF] Hedonic Adaptation to Positive and Negative Experiences sonjalyubomirsky.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Ly…
[4] [PDF] Ignorance of Hedonic Adaptation to Hemodialysis: A Study Using ... www.cmu.edu/dietrich/sds/docs/loewenstein/Ignoranc…
[5] Chronic disease onset and wellbeing development - Oxford Academic academic.oup.com/eurpub/article/34/1/29/7295825
[6] Chronic disease onset and wellbeing development pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10843952/
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