The implication of calling it "the information age" is that it should have value. — Pantagruel
And my point was that "we", as is often used for all of humanity, don't have such a bad track record as the historical records of civilization would indicate.Just because we have a bad track record, doesn't me we couldn't succeed. — Pantagruel
I agree.Left to our own state-capitalist (plutocratic) devices, IMO, "global governance / unity" is thereby manifestly improbable — 180 Proof
If a majority agrees with me and I with them, then we can make such happen. — universeness
How much credence do you personally give to the possibility that we will destroy ourselves via such as nuclear war? — universeness
And pigs might fly. :grin: — Agree-to-Disagree
Yes some people do believe such, some people is not who we were discussing, we were discussing the majority.Some people believe that all civilizations destroy themselves before they achieve interstellar travel. This might explain why we have never detected extraterrestrial life. — Agree-to-Disagree
I cannot comment on what you see or personally imagineer. — universeness
It's called "maturity", no? Having become wiser.I was an idealist when I was young, but life turned me into a realist — Agree-to-Disagree
It's almost like money makes you stupid too. — Pantagruel
Money makes the system stupid - or at least, irrational. Money-as-profit has a logic of its own, which has no connection to human logic, or fulfillment or satisfaction. When money is made the driving force of a society, everything else yields to its logic; all other faculties serve its interest. — Vera Mont
Collective and cooperative efforts on a global scale are impossible. One cannot coordinate and cooperate with 100 people at once, let alone 9 billion. So I’m not sure about the reasonableness of that. — NOS4A2
I am a cynical and skeptical old man. :sad:
I was an idealist when I was young, but life turned me into a realist. — Agree-to-Disagree
I don't understand how enlightened self-interest can not yet have reared its head though. — Pantagruel
At any rate, reasonable and optimum futures on such a scale and with such methods are invariably immoral futures. The amount of force and theft and meddling involved to coordinate such activity, let alone to execute it, would become worse than the initial problems themselves. — NOS4A2
Speaking as one of the super-rich elite, ... — unenlightened
It certainly might look that way, but people have to accede to that authority on a continuing basis. — Pantagruel
As I see it, money has become a resource. — Pantagruel
Must or should? Like air, water, food and shelter? They're regulated only sporadically and and then not strictly or effectively.Resources must be regulated, the more stringently the more essential they are to life. — Pantagruel
but what is one way one might engage in collective and cooperative effort at a global scale? — NOS4A2
Religions generally see life on Earth as a place of sorrow, or even view existence itself as a failed project. Religions are not life-affirming as such.Hardly humanist instruction. Transcendental reverie. It doesn't fit the case.
The next time the woke tell me they are going to set rolling the wheel of Dhamma, I'll give them a pass... — Pantagruel
Religions are not life-affirming as such. — baker
I don't understand how enlightened self-interest can not yet have reared its head though. — Pantagruel
benefitting the general good of human life — Pantagruel
(emphases mine)The proud and unfeeling landlord views his extensive fields, and without a thought for the wants of his brethren, in imagination consumes himself the whole harvest ... [Yet] the capacity of his stomach bears no proportion to the immensity of his desires... the rest he will be obliged to distribute among those, who prepare, in the nicest manner, that little which he himself makes use of, among those who fit up the palace in which this little is to be consumed, among those who provide and keep in order all the different baubles and trinkets which are employed in the economy of greatness; all of whom thus derive from his luxury and caprice, that share of the necessaries of life, which they would in vain have expected from his humanity or his justice...The rich only select from the heap what is most precious and agreeable. They consume little more than the poor, and in spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity, though they mean only their own convenience, though the sole end which they propose from the labors of all the thousands whom they employ, be the gratification of their own vain and insatiable desires, they divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements...They are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants, and thus without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society, and afford means to the multiplication of the species. When Providence divided the earth among a few lordly masters, it neither forgot nor abandoned those who seemed to have been left out in the partition.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_hand
Sure. But not Roman Catholicism, not Islam, not Buddhism, many kinds of Protestant Christianity. That is, the biggest, most populous religions have a negative view of life.This is also not true of many kinds of religions. Calvinistic Protestants aspire to a calling, a special task that gives meaning and utility to life. And various indigenous fertility rites throughout history can't be described as anything but life-affirming. — Pantagruel
but what is one way one might engage in collective and cooperative effort at a global scale? — NOS4A2
the rest he will be obliged to distribute among those, who prepare, in the nicest manner, that little which he himself makes use of,
Has anyone ever ever observed this to be the case? It's not even true of the most basic necessities: people are still starving and freezing to death, even in prosperous societies. People are still denied life-saving medicine and clean water.They are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants, and thus without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society
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