Russell Brand has interview with Jemery Paxman, gets people excited at the prospect of 'Revolution' - Polidicks

[QUOTE=CrumbleShake;42650791]Capitalism is all about having a rich elite who run corporations, make profit and invest and a poor working class who work for them and, supposedly, some of the rich elite's money trickles down through layers of management eventually to the working class. But a corporation isn't about helping people, it's not there for the purpose of paying the working class, why should it be? It's a cliché term, but a corporation is a profit driven mechanism. It's sole purpose is to make money in whatever way necessary. If you have fully free market capitalism, the disparity only widens because the corporations make more and more profit at the expense of their workers, reduce wages, lay people off increasing unemployment, all the while still accepting big fucking bonuses, not giving a shit that it's affecting real peoples lives. [/QUOTE] Bloody hell, it's like the definition of capitalism changes from person to person.

[QUOTE=CrumbleShake;42650506]You're talking a lot about people on the whole. You can't say what all people are like and what they do because I'd wager the only people you've ever met in your life (at least the people who are like what you're referring to) were born and raised in a monetary system all about hierarchies and class, who start learning on the day of their birth that there are people more important than them, that their lives are enhanced by having money, that happiness comes from materialism etc. etc. I read a study about a man who was pissed off that all the major studies that seemed to define what people thought about human behaviour were all carried out in predominately white Western capitalist countries so he took the tests from some of these studies and carried them out in a load of different cultures like the gift-giving culture in some Asian countries as well as a cut-off African tribe and the results were always very different. The point is, you can't talk about 'what people do' because how we are is defined almost entirely by our society and, the hope is, if we lived in a fair society without so much emphasis on being better than everyone else, people would be raised to look for other ways of acquiring happiness. [/QUOTE] Look. The western worldview is, at it's core, looking outwardly to remedy the internal. Rather than provide an 'alternative worldview' as you intended, you just described another manifestation of the exact same thing but within a different context: [QUOTE=CrumbleShake;42650506]Perhaps that is what people are like when it comes to things they want. I think it's depressing, however, that you seem to rink the only way people get that is through getting money and being better than their fellow man, that the ultimate happiness in our system is to be the richest while everyone else suffers as poor. There's a lot of happiness to be had from helping our fellow man. The happiest I've ever been was not by buying something, not by getting money or material possessions but by being with my friends. Humans are social beings, money just seems to be a distraction from that and that's wrong and that's exactly why we need a system that's not so fixated on it. [/QUOTE] [I]'There's a lot of happiness to be had from helping our fellow man.'[/I] There's a [U]lot of X[/U] to be had from [U]doing Y[/U]. AKA Doing something externally to satisfy your internal drive. AKA Your life is still being driven by self-gratification (aka selfishness), but now you also believe that you're humble and a good person too. It's not that easy to actually look outside your own cultural upbringing, because as you just demonstrated, you still confuse it with your own.

[QUOTE=sgman91;42649608]I listened to the entire thing and other than general critiques of anti-capitalists (basically of Brand himself) the only real point he makes is that he wants universal healthcare.[/QUOTE] Maybe Zizek is a little too complex for you if thats all you can gleam from it.

[QUOTE=Fahrenheit;42636850]Everyone wants a revolution, just nobody wants to fight one.[/QUOTE] I want to fight one.

[QUOTE=NoDachi;42647744]Well if you want to listen to someone who says stuff similar to brand but can actually articulate what is trying to be said here. [/QUOTE] This guy just loves to look like a hobo slob doesn't he the hero pol deserves

[QUOTE=SCopE5000;42650989] [I]'There's a lot of happiness to be had from helping our fellow man.'[/I] There's a [U]lot of X[/U] to be had from [U]doing Y[/U]. AKA Doing something externally to satisfy your internal drive. AKA Your life is still being driven by self-gratification (aka selfishness), but now you also believe that you're humble and a good person too. It's not that easy to actually look outside your own cultural upbringing, because as you just demonstrated, you still confuse it with your own.[/QUOTE] He draws happiness from helping another person for no material gain. That's 'altruism' not 'selfishness' (Though the nature of those things are often debated philosophically) There is a fundamental difference there. You (I mean you) don't get to decide for him what the motives were. and please stop using an at best nebulously laid out definition of 'selfish' for christ sake.

I never got how "raising awareness" is so cherished. Like, is everyone braindead or something until a famous celebrity comes along and says "Hey look the worlds got problems" ? I feel like these are the same sorts of people who buy social satires on the rich capitalists ignoring the plight of the oppressed workers whilst at the same time they pat themselves on the back and go "ahh job well done" and then assuming somebody else is going to come along and magically fix things. They get the self-satisfaction without having actually done any real exertion.

[QUOTE=NoDachi;42651210]Maybe Zizek is a little too complex for you if thats all you can gleam from it.[/QUOTE] This kind of response is only given by elitists and people who don't understand something themselves. If you see a specific argument he made other than the ones I listed please point them out.