
Hannah Arendt and the hierarchy of human activity - apollinaire
https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/hannah-arendt-hierarchy-human-activity/
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telesilla
Such an important thinker of the last century. She elucidated upon
Capitalism's failure to provide the abundance that it promised, by instead
producing desire: we will never have enough, even though abundance is well
within our reach.

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trevyn
And yet, we can each choose that we have enough, and then delight in the
abundance that actually does exist. It’s an internal switch.

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nabla9
You are absolutely correct that each individual can choose, but it won't solve
issues in society. What you want is groups of people to choose to have enough.
First smaller, then larger. Eventually they change the culture.

It's important to change the structures of society so that it's easier to
consume less.

Cost of making individual choices that go against the structures are often
very hard. Cycling to your job in Netherlands versus LA are two very different
decisions.

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bobosha
>It's important to change the structures of society so that it's easier to
consume less.

Unfortunately, radical change like your idea requires upheaval and disruption
and often ends up with unintended consequences.

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neonate
[https://archive.md/UQPxB](https://archive.md/UQPxB)

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AnonC
Sadly, I’m confronted with a desktop version of an image verification CAPTCHA
while on mobile, and can’t get to see the entire grid of images to pass the
test.

Reading the article directly worked fine (maybe because I don’t have any
cookies from the past?).

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Fnoord
Firefox Reader mode on desktop worked for me.

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raxxorrax
This article would be way better without blurry references to contemporary
politics, even if you would immediately think it on-topic.

I think Arendt is wrong on some things, but it really doesn't hurt to read
about her views. Idealism for example is something she thought being a root
for nationalism and that it would impose an ideal that is striving towards
what nature dictates. But I don't think that is how idealism is understood
today, something that doesn't need an attachment to anything and can be freely
defined. I would think Romanticism as a form of it, which doesn't have that
connection "to nature" at all.

The article is a bit strange though, for example:

Precursors to Nazism and Stalinism, however, were the late nineteenth-century
movements of pan-Germanism and pan-Slavism, which explicitly called themselves
“movements” in order to signal their distrust of political parties and
national parliaments.

I heavily doubt she would have said or thought anything like this. It is not
clear if this are the authors thoughts or maybe some other statements.

The distrust can come from the already mentioned and real corruption, not
because of any form of governance. Totalitarian movements have in common that
they need their followers to believe that injustice was or is done to them.
That allows to restrict the consciences of people and allows for the grab of
power. Embarrassing, but I think the mechanism is quite trivial.

Totalitarianism needs the antagonist to breath. Be that Jews or yes,
capitalists. That is also why you do not feed trolls.

