My God We are ALL DOOMED

[cal3thousand]

First off: What flavor is that Kool-Aid you're drinking? Oh, Liberal.

Yet... We have such closed minded brainwashed masses we get responses shouted out from there tightly closed little boxed minds they just HAVE to try to fit it in one of big government party terms they've been indoctrinated to unconditionally love/hate without a moment of there own thought applied.

Luke, what you said is so true. It's saddening.

And they continue to be brainwashed because those in power own the media.

 

[Arlo1]

Woah what rock have you been hiding under?

What? You were hoping to pick him when you were choosing sides? No peaceful living for YOU!

Im referring to this->> I wonder if Ch00paKabrA has any clue what so ever... How may people are on the streets alone because they loose their health as they get old and have to choose between living or their savings... How about the number of people in prison?? Are you telling me when they get out of prison if ever do they go home to their pre paid house with all their televisions?? This whole statement is so far out to lunch its not even funny!

The USA method does not involve a 1% and 99% resource distribution. That is liberal BS of the worst order and is nothing more than a complete bucket of lies. This 99%er ideology does not take into account the movement of the people up and down in income/wealth ladder over the course of their life-times. Of course, in the USA, thanks to Capitalism, the people in the BOTTOM 5% of our society are still ranked in the TOP 6% of the wealthiest people in the World. The vast majority of those who live in Poverty in the USA have: Multiple televisions, an automobile, a place to live with all utilities, air conditioning, cell phones and much much more. Does that really sound like Poverty?

 

[Ch00paKabrA]

Yes, Ch00paKabra does have a clue. I am a proud Libertarian. I am also a business owner so I actually do have a clue that those in the "occupy" or "Utopia" groups do not. I understand what it is like to have wealth and also what it is like to be flat broke. I am one of the few that actually knows what it is like to have much and also to have nothing. Most do not.

When I was younger, I was a true Liberal. I was in a Union voted Democrat and supported all liberal causes. The best thing to ever happen to me was that i lost my union job. This forced me to go out and work my butt off. I worked as many as 3 jobs just to make ends meet. I worked my way up from the mail room to be a Vice president of a global corporation. The only VP with out a college education. While a VP I earned a degree in Economics and Business administration.

Over those years I learned something that too many on this board will probably never learn. The Liberal Utopia does not exist. You can not legislate income equality. There will always be those like me who will succeed for no other reason than we have the balls to work hard.

When I was younger, my girlfriend got pregnant and I convinced her to have an abortion. I was pro-choice. Later, after I got married and saw the miracle of my daughter being born, i realized just how selfish, cruel and monstrous it was for me to have killed my first child. I am now pro-life.

I have experienced the greatest joy that a man can experience - the birth of my child. I have also experienced the greatest grief that a man can experience when my wife, two step children and my daughter were killed in a car accident when she was only six years old.

So yes, Ch00paKabra does have a clue.

I also know what it like to spend every dime you have just to get your head strait. I am not proud of it but it was necessary for me to commit myself to get well mentally. It took all of my life savings. Of course Since the economy is crap, when I was finally well, there was no way for me find a job. Did I sit on my ass and collect Welfare? Food Stamps? Unemployment for 99 weeks? No. I found odd jobs, saved my money, started a Landscaping business and now I work my landscaping business in the winter and I buy and rehab homes in the off season. In less than 3 1/2 years, I have built a net worth of almost a half million dollars.

It is interesting that Someone like me can do this while many of you complain about how hard it is and how the government should step in and make sure that people like me give my hard earned stuff to you. I am also dyslexic and have an IQ of just barely over average. But, just in case you were wondering, I do have a clue.

I just get sick of hearing people talk about how unfair life is. Get over it and get to work.

 

[LockH]

Ummm... Sorry. Was looking for the "How many angels can dance on the head of a needle" thread. But re "EVs", betcha MY "EV" gets hugely better kms per mg of Li. (Wind-assist otta help also.) Say! Just how many foot pedals DOES the Tesla have anyway???

Just curious, as always.
L

 

[liveforphysics]

It is interesting that Someone like me can do this while many of you complain about how hard it is and how the government should step in and make sure that people like me give my hard earned stuff to you. I am also dyslexic and have an IQ of just barely over average. But, just in case you were wondering, I do have a clue.

I just get sick of hearing people talk about how unfair life is. Get over it and get to work.

That sounds like a hell of a journey! I like it! I like the changes in your belief system along the way as well.

I was raised ultra-conservative in a household that idolized Rush Limbaugh. No joke. I was even involved in embarrassingly foolish conservative/liberal policy debate in highschool...

Once I started thinking for myself sometime in my early 20's (Better late than never!), I became libertarian. Libertarian is at least a lower-harms lower-evils system of government, but in the last few years I realized even the best libertarian government will eventually turn evil and rot internally until collapse (the fate of virtually all governments of any topology).

The problem is if you want to govern, if you WANT to impose your will on how others experience their lives, you are inherently the wrong person for the job, yet that's precisely what any large central government inherently will be composed of, regardless of what what label and topology you affix to it.

We have evidence of which systems work long-term, and they look nothing like any inherently harm-causing as well as temporary government system which can be defined with political terminology. I've seen no evidence you can even have stability of any kind while your population is indoctrinated to love material things over experiences, and to always choose amassing wealth/securing-resources at the cost of lives/kindness/sharing etc. Fortunately, those broken values are taught human constructs rather than an inherent species flaw (the very few human cultures that are actually stable have shown us proof of this).

 

[Joseph C.]

Yes, Ch00paKabra does have a clue. I am a proud Libertarian.

In other words, you are another liberal that doesn't know what liberalism means.

Yet you have the cheek to go accusing others of being liberals when you don't even know what it means. You're not alone but you're still wrong so do yourself a favour and look it up.

Liberalism is all about the individual and personal freedom. It has little to do with society.

 

[Joseph C.]

The problem is if you want to govern, if you WANT to impose your will on how others experience their lives, you are inherently the wrong person for the job, yet that's precisely what any large central government inherently will be composed of, regardless of what what label and topology you affix to it.

We have evidence of which systems work long-term, and they look nothing like any inherently harm-causing as well as temporary government system which can be defined with political terminology. I've seen no evidence you can even have stability of any kind while your population is indoctrinated to love material things over experiences, and to always choose amassing wealth/securing-resources at the cost of lives/kindness/sharing etc. Fortunately, those broken values are taught human constructs rather than an inherent species flaw (the very few human cultures that are actually stable have shown us proof of this).

I have been giving some thought to the systems that are currently needed and those which will soon be redundant. I have bunched them into two categories.

What is Government really needed for today?

• 
  Electricity distribution for commerce and residential use.
  Healthcare.
  Education
  Roads.
  Water treatment.
  Judiciary/police.
  Public/national representatives/negotiators.
  Oversight.

What is Government needed for tomorrow (next decade or so)?

• Electricity distribution for energy-intensive commerce and residences without access to their own power source.
  Healthcare.
  Education (numbers greatly reduced).
  Roads.
  Water treatment.
  Judiciary/Police.
  Public/national representatives/negotiators (numbers greatly reduced - important local political matters voted by general public through secure software).

What is Government needed for in future (beyond the next 20 years or well-beyond in the case of the judiciary)?

• Electricity distribution (greatly reduced in size).
  Healthcare.
  Education (numbers reduced beyond all recognition. Curricula are taught by national lecturers via internet broadcast custom-tailored to each individual. Instead of teachers there are tutors.
  Roads.
  Water treatment is greatly reduced. Many homes and business treat their own sewerage and obtain the majority of their own water.
  Judiciary/Police. Judges - the true basket cases of the judicial system have been replaced by software which algorithmically weighs each case based on predetermined criteria. Everyone gets treated equally.
  
  Public/national representatives have been replaced by negotiators. General public shapes both local and national policy not politicians.

P.S. religion has been almost completely wiped out. People no longer take drugs but are addicted to virtual reality in which they can take virtual drugs. 8) Privately people are far more liberal. Politically/socially they are far more liberal socialists.

 

[liveforphysics]

What is Government really needed for today?

• 
  Electricity distribution for commerce and residential use.
  Healthcare.
  Education
  Roads.
  Water treatment.
  Judiciary/police.
  Public/national representatives/negotiators.
  Oversight.

It's interesting my friend. In the proven stable systems, a government is not interfering with how people wish to do any of the things on that list.

It appears you may have isolated the core items which must not be governed to have long-term stability.

 

[Eskimo]

Near future we have a very different society. People are not needed to run it anymore, machines take over jobs. When masses are not needed anymore to run economy, then pretty much only option left for them is to go agricultural again. Or something. Start farming again. Society of the future is pretty damn shurely agricultural society, with high-tech cities for few.
American-British political debate is wild to read for a guy like me coming from eight-party system. If you ask me am i liberal or conservative, i can not answer, because it"s too tight bracket for me. I dunno who i would be in America.
I support: protectionism, free health care, free cannabis, patriotism, free alcohol, public transport, electric vehicles, paid sex, free guns, national currency, central heating and free education.
I am against: feminism, Euro, speed limits, abortion, Ayn Rand, Martin Luther, antisemitism, high prison population, russophobia, medicalisation, psychologysation and over 50% public sector.
:wink:

 

[Ch00paKabrA]

It is interesting that Someone like me can do this while many of you complain about how hard it is and how the government should step in and make sure that people like me give my hard earned stuff to you. I am also dyslexic and have an IQ of just barely over average. But, just in case you were wondering, I do have a clue.

I just get sick of hearing people talk about how unfair life is. Get over it and get to work.

That sounds like a hell of a journey! I like it! I like the changes in your belief system along the way as well.

I was raised ultra-conservative in a household that idolized Rush Limbaugh. No joke. I was even involved in embarrassingly foolish conservative/liberal policy debate in highschool...

Once I started thinking for myself sometime in my early 20's (Better late than never!), I became libertarian. Libertarian is at least a lower-harms lower-evils system of government, but in the last few years I realized even the best libertarian government will eventually turn evil and rot internally until collapse (the fate of virtually all governments of any topology).

The problem is if you want to govern, if you WANT to impose your will on how others experience their lives, you are inherently the wrong person for the job, yet that's precisely what any large central government inherently will be composed of, regardless of what what label and topology you affix to it.

We have evidence of which systems work long-term, and they look nothing like any inherently harm-causing as well as temporary government system which can be defined with political terminology. I've seen no evidence you can even have stability of any kind while your population is indoctrinated to love material things over experiences, and to always choose amassing wealth/securing-resources at the cost of lives/kindness/sharing etc. Fortunately, those broken values are taught human constructs rather than an inherent species flaw (the very few human cultures that are actually stable have shown us proof of this).

Hmmm... It seems that we agree on a great many things. The truth is that there is no form of government that can last. All governments will eventually fall prey to themselves and try to oppress. This is why Libertarianism is the best of the worst. For instance, When I was younger, I smoked. I have since quit but I still feel the effects. I understand that later on in life I will need medical care. This is what i am building my net worth for. Not so that I can have shiny things. I am not going to ask the government to care for me and when my resources runs out, then I will die. That is the way of things.

What the occupy and liberal movements don't understand is that money is not wealth. Goods and Services are wealth. The money is an artificial construct to encourage the creation of Goods and Services. The "Progressives" would have you think that it is Greed that makes some people rich and keeps others poor. This is ridiculous. As if by simply being greedy I can transfer money from one person's pocket to my own. Only governments can do that. I must make someone's life better and in doing so I will acquire wealth because it will be freely given. That is the secret. Now any on here who are "Progressives" know. What they do with that knowledge is their own affair.

My point with you was that we can judge other societies by how they distribute resources. I am a student of history and it is painfully obvious when we in the US try to emulate failed regimes like many European Socialist and Fascist societies. I reacted poorly and I owe you an apology. I regret coming off the way I did. I am not the man I used to be and sometimes I have a tenuous grasp on my sanity at best. I hope that you can accept my apology.

 

[speedmd]

Love this, working folks fighting other working folks and arguing semantics while the 1% (no one here on ES) are robbing us blind. Got to love the fog screen. Work of art.

 

[Ch00paKabrA]

Yes, Ch00paKabra does have a clue. I am a proud Libertarian.

In other words, you are another liberal that doesn't know what liberalism means.

Yet you have the cheek to go accusing others of being liberals when you don't even know what it means. You're not alone but you're still wrong so do yourself a favour and look it up.

Liberalism is all about the individual and personal freedom. It has little to do with society.

That's funny. You are joking right? I am just being sarcastic - sorry :lol: . I can tell by the "u" in favour that you are not in the US. In the US it is a society thing. Perhaps we use the term in a coloquial fashion. In the US Liberal/Progressive is synonymous with believing that the government has all of the answers. That government is the solution instead of the problem. I don't and neither do other Libertarians. We have many things in common with both Liberals and Conservatives but we have many differences as will.

We believe that a person should be free to do with his body as he deems fit (similar to Liberals) Unlike Liberals, If he smokes or drinks, I should not have to pay for his cancer treatments. He should or he should die. Shrugs shoulders. If he rides ebike over 20mph and crashes and cracks his head open then he should pay to put humpty dumpty back together not me (sorry, I just had to throw in that jab at the high perf ebike crowd - I couldn't help myself).

We do not believe that we should be involved in any wars unless we are attacked (similar to liberals). If we are attacked most of us believe we should respond quickly, decisively and then get out and let the enemy pick up the pieces.

We believe that the government has no business in mandating or paying for healthcare. This is decidedly unlike Liberals.

Libertarians are 100% against Gay Marriage. Before you get your panties in a bunch. We are against government involvement in ALL marriage. The government has no business involving itself in marriage at all. This is a spirtual/religious thing. Let the churches deal with it. We don't care what people do in their bedrooms but keep it out of government and definitely out of our schools.

There are many many more similarities and differences. However, the differences are stark.

Perhaps it would be better to examine the differences in the actual belief structure instead of looking it up in a dictionary.

Hope that helps

 

[liveforphysics]

Absolutely forgiven and forgotten. Holding a grudge is an unproductive self-burden.

 

[Architectonic]

I can tell by the "u" in favour that you are not in the US. In the US it is a society thing. Perhaps we use the term in a coloquial fashion.

Liberal, Libertarian, Progressive, Conservative, Anarchist, Feminist, Nationalist etc. all have had different meanings and contexts at different times and in different places.

In Australia for example, liberal is not interpreted as someone who shares the values of the USA Democratic party. In Australia liberal is interpreted as libertarian, although Liberal (note big L) is noted as having similar values to the Liberal party (one of Australia's two dominant parties), which started off more as a Libertarian party, but shifted towards something more in line with the USA Republican party over the years.

While I won't get upset at your funny spelling, I suggest you don't use such political labels. Sure you might be OK with using them with people you know who use them in the same way as you, but it is not a good idea on the internet.

Apart from that, I personally don't subscribe to any 19th or 20th century ideology as I've moved long past that, but whatever floats your boat intellectually...

 

[liveforphysics]

Apart from that, I personally don't subscribe to any 19th or 20th century ideology as I've moved long past that, but whatever floats your boat intellectually...

+1.

Ironically, if you just chose to peacefully live your life in love and kindness without wishing to impose our will on others, it may define us as anarchist still though. lol The label making folks are an ambitious sort.

I love the insanity of how extreme people get over labeling there big government systems like they aren't all >95% similar. Somehow if another country wants to practice an alternative wealth distribution system from our own extremely-government-involved system of business, it becomes justified to spend trillions creating doomsday weapons to keep targeted for all major civilian metropolises ready to launch 24-7.

What does it say about your own systems ethics if you're willing to create and 24-7 keep ready systems that incinerate the lucky millions of human beings and slowly torture ALL the rest to horrible suffering deaths if enough are used in a short period. Yet, for some insane reason they find it doing there people a better service somehow than something much cheaper like health care.

 

[Dauntless]

Dang, time to send in the peacekeeper.

You quiverin' yet?

Love this, working folks fighting other working folks and arguing semantics while the 1% (no one here on ES) are robbing us blind. Got to love the fog screen. Work of art.

See now, here we go. I don't really agree with the 1% analogy, but rather than be distracted by that he brings up the great point that people put all their effort into fighting. If you really want to see a show, go to an Arianna Huffington speaking engagement. Perhaps she'll be a the 'Festival of Books' again. I saw her there several years ago, scary scene. People for no reason jumping up and threatening others. All of whom are supposed to be fellow true believers, or they wouldn't be there to hear Huff and Puff speaking, right?

Liberals and conservative always point the finger at the OTHER as war mongers. It was the liberals screaming to get into WWII and Vietnam. Then the liberals howling to get OUT of Vietnam while the liberal president upped the ante and the conservative successor did the getting out. You cannot claim the other side has the monopoly on doing the bad things you don't like.

Conservatism is best summed up by the expression 'The vital few, the insignificant many.' A nanny government is SUPPOSED to come from the conservatives. Because you're never going to be grown up enough to take care of yourself. Liberalism is about such things as the right to bear arms, meaning EVERYONE has that right. Seriously, we've gotten this all screwed up in this country, even in the way we TALK about it.

The ONLY times where you find large populations with enough water, widespread education, utilities, roads, etc., the government is involved. Notice all those things are just getting worse and worse in America. Meanwhile, the State of the Union address was the opportunity to spring yet another conjob to rob people blind. The 'MyRA.' If you save $5/week from age 20 to age 65 in the MyRA you'll have over $10,000 after contributing only $6,000 to it. But that ignores the fact that if you handled such a saving in conventional retirement investing you'd have $50,000, $60,000, etc., depending on how well you do. But with the MyRA the government gets to SPEND your money now in return for a VERY low interest bond. While the invested money would do good things for the economy rather than the bad things the government will do with it. Someone who touts doing such a bad thing to you is himself a bad guy. And if they can drive up the cost of living they devalue the debt they've run up AND any savings you have, so they're anxious to bump up the minimum wage. At least the BAD GUYS are.

Oh, currently people are getting fed up with farming in California and selling their land to developers. Projected population to exceed 50 million in 30 years, close to double what it is now. Without the farming, there'll be more water available. But will it be enough? And where will the FOOD come from? Soylent Green?With the minimum wage already scheduled to hit $10/hour, there's the ballot initiative coming up to raise it to $12/hour. What? $6 isn't enough to pay for Big Mac? You just GOTTA pay $7?

I can laugh and I can laugh, but once they've REALLY screwed things up there's not going to be anywhere for me to go. Unfortunately they'll never be able to screw the country up as bad as it got in 'Atlas Shrugged.' Too bad, because if they DID, they'd be too busy running and hiding to stop anyone from fixing it. (Sigh.)

. . . . I personally don't subscribe to any 19th or 20th century ideology as I've moved long past that, but whatever floats your boat intellectually...

+1.

That may define us as anarchist still though. lol The label making folks are an ambitious sort.

 

[liveforphysics]

The ONLY times where you find large populations with enough water, widespread education, utilities, roads, etc., the government is involved.

Yet, in the stable human living example, a government once again interferes with none of these, and this method has lasted longer than all other examples multiple orders of magnitude. I think in the nomadic native aussies example, we've got human beings exploring/experiencing radically more ground in there lives than a typical western style culture, yet perhaps nothing you would call roads. It's amazing what is a suitable 'road' to a human being on foot. You may say no 'widespread education', but I know what I learned from my relatively short exposure to minimalist camping that nature offers PLENTY of ways to educate you on a massive variety of amazing things simply by spending your time in it. Things perhaps far more amazing, for-filling, and life-enriching than anything one could learn through even the best western style education system. Yes, you may not learn the intricacies of business mathematics or the reality-model-of-the-year that physics groups continuously debate on even the most basic forces like gravity and magnetism. Fortunately none of that impacts a humans ability to have amazing forfilling enriching life experiences everyday until death. If you live in a city in and do absurdly difficult engineering for a job, your reality is filled with a bunch of things that would seem familiar to many folks here, and I know first hand you can achieve human life for-fillment using this method of living. However, I believe you can have an even more intense and enriching human life experiences if you didn't have cars/roads/engineering-crap/modern science etc.

Remember, your optimal lifestyle simply comes down to the value-set you likely were very thoroughly indoctrinated into your reality. If you are trained to believe acquiring resources/money/power is the path to life-enrichment as a human being, then you may see the Native Aussies life and his amazing life experiences and education taught directly by mother nature to a level perhaps beyond any western-educated man has achieved as a waste of a human life. Due to extremely warped western indoctrinated values thinking, it was OK with the value system of the 1964 and earlier modern-western-style Aussie government to sport hunt this amazing human life even as there populations were devastated for a variety of reasons.

Individual human beings make radically more ethical/kind choices than groups of human beings. Groups of people who grow large enough believe they are doing what's 'right-for-the-group' rather than what is ethical, kind, loving, in that situation they are confronted with are inherently going to fail at doing what's actually 'right for the group'. This is because there is no such real thing as 'the group', that's just a human construct label used to express some measure of individual human beings, it needs no protection it needs no insane and tragic atrocities prepared for or committed in it's name, because nothing exists beyond a label concept for a group of humans. What is real and does matter is doing what's right for the humans composing the imaginary group construct.

Notice all those things are just getting worse and worse in America.

Noted. Historically there is a surprisingly common trend where a government grows at an increasing rate until overly top-heavy to be capable of supporting itself from what it steals from the non-government portion remaining (which at this point has massive quality of life spread from extremely wealthy to extreme poor), and it topples on itself a few days to a few years after it starts needing to use it's own military to protect it's government from the people for whom they are ironically paid to be servants. In the last few hundred years, it's been a disappointingly statistically common end to various modern governments of all topologies.

Governments do not just shrink in size until things are running so smoothly they just vanish entirely from lack of a need to govern anything. That should be the obvious goal of any government, but unfortunately everything in a government is designed for ratcheting it up bigger easily as 'needed', but shrinking it is a painful cutting process. This means it does a lot more expanding itself than it does shrinking itself, and every population has a finite parasitic resource/wealth carrying capacity it can support before wide-scale functional collapse.

 

[Architectonic]

For what it's worth, I picked up a few valuable ideas in my journey through the ideologies.

In particular, I liked the economist van Neef's notion of core human needs.

subsistence
protection
affection
understanding
participation
leisure
creation
identity
freedom (autonomy)

Regardless of composition, any political system of scale could in principle be meta-analysed in terms of information flow of core needs, fulfilment of those needs and processing (in a computational sense).

(and note that political systems can exist on all scales - you might live in a 'democratic state', but live in an 'authoritarian' household if you are particularly unlucky).

The problem is that many of us for whatever reason tend to lack awareness of our core needs (at best, typically focusing on wants, like "I want government subsidised healthcare" or "I want a new car"). Let alone actually expressing (and actioning) those needs authentically on an interpersonal level. So when it comes time to expressing those needs effectively on a political level, most of the information is lost. Likewise, the receiving of this information is often poor too. As the scale gets larger, more and more specific information is lost.

Then when it comes time to formulating some sort of policy, you either have some sort of politician (even dictators are politicians) with a bureaucracy as a primary processing unit (as you can imagine, this system is highly lacking in both inputs and processing), or some sort of private organisation with a market as the primary information processing unit. Unfortunately, markets (current practise) are still poor at fulfilling many human needs for many people around the world, perhaps because many people don't, or aren't able (because they didn't win the birth lottery) to effectively express their needs through such a system.

But the advantage of markets is that they still have a much higher information processing capacity than a bureaucracy.

This is still of course a very Western way of looking at things and necessitated only by the scale of which human economies have reached.

 

[LockH]

Ummm... Back to the OP, and that article... In part "Yes, the Model S is a nice car -- "

So the author has some proof that that vehicle is "nicer" when hitting/running over babies or something? Watt exactly constitutes "nice", in the authors... opinion?

 

[gestalt]

In regards to the OP, we are going to keep seeing fear mongering when it comes to cleaner means of moving our populace around which is a necessary evil.

The government be damned there is still plenty of wiggle room to do what really needs to be done which is to build communities based on more sustainable principals. There are many examples of these where people through working together have learned to feed and power themselves, greatly reducing the amount of time needed to do so. And I don't think that the technological baby needs to be thrown out with the bathwater. Technology could be used not only be used to enrich a community directly, but even offer up income or trade with other communities. For instance, your community is based somewhere that wind power makes sense and you develop and build turbines to power it all the while selling your battle tested technology to provide income. You win in the sense of getting off a centralized power grid, you provide a product that helps others do the same and have sale/trading stock for things you don't make yourself. Want to build the community further? Manufacture electric vehicles that your community can use to get around, more trade/sale stock and a huge benefit to the community. 3d printed hempcrete housing, waste recycling systems, solar water heating, local Internet wifi repeaters and the list can go on ad infinitum.

If you really want to make a difference, start living it and that's your real vote for change. The cool thing about sustainable technology and moving away from all of the centralized systems is that it is a sound financial principal and makes the community more productive allowing more time for education and enrichment of the lives of the people.

But all that is a process that takes time and effort while people want to keep up with the insane idea that we can vote our problems away. People can't imagine living in a different way than we have been, when that's what we really need to do. Maybe we can't save the world, the country, state or even county. But maybe, just maybe we can save ourselves.

*may contain non lethal amounts of bootstrappyness

 

[arkmundi]

Watched this great history: World War II: Final Days, with this take-away:

The war is an act of absolute lunacy. Not just partial lunacy, but absolute lunacy. And it may be the most distinquishing feature of the human species as an animal. That we are subject to this terrible, terrible kind of lunacy. From which, the ultimate conclusion that I drew, and have retained, is its probably the symptom or symbol or diagnostic indication of the way we are going to end. Farley Mowat

.
Any consideration that humanity can be redeemed, no matter the many noble examples that can be found in our history, must account for the fact of war, and that over time it has been increasingly used and increased in its destructive power.

 

[LockH]

Oh oh... Another one of those Canadian critters, eh?

And Plus ! re watt gestalt said above (and I promise not to throw my tea in the harbour any more.) I am trying to create my own "Pacific Trail" bike stop off (for ebikers, of course). Haven't bough any gasoline (or diseasal fuel) for my personal use for maybe over 20 years, as I am mostly a city kid anyway, plus I can go just south for vacation (Lake Ontario has been close to me for decades, and millions of animals find it handy to poop in).
L

 

[Solcar]

A few thoughts to throw in based on things said so far. I don't want to see folks writing old folks off. They have a lot of insight stored up that life experience has given them over the years, and may soon get the chance to offer that learning indefinitely as medical science figures out how to rejuvenate the body and reverse the aging process. Right now, the older people might not easily be able to ride electric bikes, but even electric bikes, like electric cars as we know them, are a transient step toward to what the future will bring through cooperating and benefiting from individual uniqueness. Pooling our different abilities is advantageous, and working together is better than going it alone, as we see by our community on ES. That is why humans are social by nature. We have governments to help at orchestrating all the individual inputs to make it work. Government will have to stay around for the imminent future, it seems, depending on the definition of government, all the way down the level of self-government.

 

[LockH]

Ummm... "Old folks" (many of whom might appear to have died in their 20's - brain-dead, I mean)? But nothing like a global melt-down to teach an old dog new tricks eh? (probably not). My money is on the young. I don't know watt might be worse, voters (qualifications, old enough to inflict watt they have "learned" on their own young or on others), or business folks with pockets full of money ("treats" for poor, starving politicians). The youth? Yum! Fresh brain! (Unfortunately, many of the human animal species are lousy students, many just as bad "teachers" - I use that word to be kind.)

 

[Solcar]

Bad bad attitudes are often gotten from learning from the wrong folks. A young person is just as likely, or more so, to be a bad example or teacher. Look at how young people tend to be the ones who are fighting in the wars. What kind of example are they giving? What are they teaching?

I'm with what Luke was saying, basically see beyond the "us against them." See beyond that old paradigm.