Most didn't know enough about it and the nefarious didn't ever care enough about it. — universeness

1896 Arrhenius publishes first calculation of global warming from human emissions of CO2.

Geneva, 13 September 2022 (WMO press release) - Climate science is clear: we are heading in the wrong direction, according to a new multi-agency report coordinated by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which highlights the huge gap between aspirations and reality.

There are no 'nefarious'. There are world leaders, statesmen, economists, captains of industry and job creators. And there is 'progress'. Luddites, go home!

It's the most recent in a string of defeats to aggressive climate action that stretches back more than 25 years.

the majority of the population were not informed enough to take serious enough action in response. — universeness

How come you and I knew? I heard it on ordinary popular broadcast media and read it in news magazines - not privileged scientific communiques. In fact, Sagan said it on popular media. Once there was internet, information was readily available. Scientists' warnings were regularly on the evening news.
But there was a catch: in order to avoid the predicted bad outcome, they would have had to give up a convenience or two. It was easier to listen to the deniers.
Especially when denial became official public policy.

Officials with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), the agency in charge of setting conservation policy and enforcing environmental laws in the state, issued directives in 2011 barring thousands of employees from using the phrases “climate change” and “global warming”

You are struggling as best you can, for the sake of all of us, yes? — universeness

Hell, no! All of yous are on your own.

Are you not still a secular democratic socialist? — universeness

Nope. Cynical, burnt-out iconoclast.

You are struggling as best you can, for the sake of all of us, yes?
— universeness

Hell, no! All of yous are on your own.

Are you not still a secular democratic socialist?
— universeness

Nope. Cynical, burnt-out iconoclast — Vera Mont

:smirk:

Nope. Cynical, burnt-out iconoclast. — Vera Mont

How sad you became so defeated, but such has happened to many, even to some in the socialist movement that were my 'heroes' in my youth. I am glad there are many who will continue fighting.
At least (I can be assured, I think) that you will never wear a maga cap and go vote for trump (if he is still around) at the next USA election.

Don't forget, mate: at our best we're primates, not angels. — 180 Proof

At our best, I think humans demonstrate far far more empathy, altruism, cooperation, good morality standards and an ability and fierce motivation to be a net positive towards our environment and everything in it, compared to both of them, especially when one of them does not exist.

Addition: Just to be clear, I fully accept that we are primates, but my point was from the position of being the best of them, and then being at OUR best.

At least (I can be assured, I think) that you will never wear a maga cap and go vote for trump (if he is still around) at the next USA election. — universeness

I don't even live in that unfortunate, hag-ridden country. Of course, we have our home-grown right-wingnuts, anti-vaxxers, etc., as well as the imported agitators. A corrupt fathead is Premier of my province, with a majority, busily tearing down the social safety net it took three generations to construct. Construction is slow and hard; destruction is fast and easy. That's why we have longish periods - decades, even - of optimistic improvement: they act like civilized apes, only impeding social progress by legitimate means, bide their time until we've produced enough good for them to harvest.
Or, they used to. Now, there is a closing panic: they've gone mad; can't wait another cycle to consume whatever there still is.

Yeah , sorry Vera, I forgot you were living in Canada, which in my 'younger youth', I though was an indigenous tribal word for 'new Scotland,' which also translated to Nova Scotia. :lol:
The Glasgow in Nova Scotia is on my travel 'must go see' list. Have you ever been?

I still don't agree. According to what I've read, American education before that act, followed by the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, finally made some semblance of an academically rounded education possible for the majority of students. (Except where nobbled by state law and disabled by religious segregation.) — Vera Mont

What have you read? This is a sincere question because when people disagree it is usually because their sources of information are different. Also because the south and north of the US were separated from the being, the region we are talking about could be important. I have Paul Monroe, PH.D's 1910 "A TEXT BOOK IN THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION" and James Mulhern's 1956 "A HISTORY OF EDUCATION- A SOCIAL INTERPRETATION" several books by John Dewey who was a leader in education, an 1883 Bancroft "Fifth Reader" and more. There is nothing I would rather do than spend my days with these books and the people in this forum. :heart: Seriously if we all could share these books I would pull away from my present commits and make you all the focus of my life.

Looking at the 1883 reader The focus on speaking skills is obvious. So is the cultural information obvious. There are samples of stories passed down the ages that are the foundation of our culture, and important people of the past and that time in history are mentioned along with passages about the constitution and liberty. Really education for technology was limited to reading, writing, and arithmetic. While just years later our national defense needed typists, mechanics, and engineers and we were scrambling to catch up with Germany which had education for technology of military and industrial needs.

At the Nation Education Association in 1917, this urgent need was the subject of many speeches, and J.A.B. "Sinclair, Surgeon, United States Navy, Portland Recruiting station, Portland, Ore. made the immediate need to change in education clear. "As sudden the act of an unknown youth whose leap exploded the European powder mine was the stroke of the German military machine.....Such a state of events were possible only thru the workings of the most highly organized and scientifically operated military machine the world has ever known and well it was for that machine's opponents that they too were in a measure organized after the same general scientific plan.....

One of the most salient features of the opposing military-naval establishment of the European nations at war today is the specialization of the one-time-citizen-now-soldier along scientific war-industrial-trade lines, and -since past and present events the best human forecast do not justify the human hope for early world peace- it behooves the citizens of our country, now adding its part to this well-nigh universal conflict, to train its young men to think and work in like scientific line to the end that mobilization of these resources may insure our nation against disaster."

I am running out of time- this is what Eisenhower was talking about. The Military Industrial Complex began with the Prussians who ruled Germany following the 30 Years War. The divisions between the military and industry were removed as government turned the whole nation into a Military Industrial Complex. This exists today and has been developed in all modern countries because this is about bureaucratic organization and the economy and the competition for decreasing resources while the demand for those resources is greatly increasing.

Note Germany specialized its citizens and they worshipped efficency. Democracy is not efficient and there is a serious problem for a democracy if the citizens are not generalists. The German people and the citizens of the US were not that different, but their bureaucratic organization and education were different. The US adopted both the German bureaucratic model and the education model and now it is what it defended its democracy against. Reactionary politics, and everywhere a growing brutality as we revert back to being as animals. Our abundance is counteracting this degradation of our humanity but if it ends, our civility will end.

At our best, I think humans demonstrate far far more empathy, altruism, cooperation, good morality standards and an ability and fierce motivation to be a net positive towards our environment and everything in it, compared to both of them, especially when one of them does not exist.

Addition: Just to be clear, I fully accept that we are primates, but my point was from the position of being the best of them, and then being at OUR best. — universeness

That good is reliant on our abundance and that is very threatened right now. I believe our economy is very fragile right now and if it falls again, the violence will get worse. If the US defaults on its loans the economy will suffer. If we do not defend those we are committed to defending, the status and the economy or the US will take a big hit. The cost of our military and war could destroy us because our goodness is based on our abundance not our reasoning for things like universal health care and government-provided low-income housing, and that abundance may not last.

The Glasgow in Nova Scotia is on my travel 'must go see' list. Have you ever been? — universeness

Not there, no. Never did get to Nova Scotia. We saw the Bay of Fundy from the other side, watched that crazy tide come ripping in one morning. Had to cut our road trip short because my dog was ill - fatally, as it turned out, so I'm glad we brought her home. Saw a fair bit of Quebec and New Brunswick on that trip. Spent a short time in Newfoundland years before. Loved it.

What have you read? This is a sincere question because when people disagree it is usually because their sources of information are different. — Athena

All those sources I cited in the first umpteen pages of this thread, from different time periods and regions.

the region we are talking about could be important. — Athena

You have mainly talked about the whole nation - as if it were one country, rather than four or six.

There are samples of stories passed down the ages that are the foundation of our culture, and important people of the past and that time in history are mentioned along with passages about the constitution and liberty. — Athena

I believe you. Propaganda of then and propaganda of now are not substantially different: the Great Men, the Great Wars; the Great Achievements. Monuments, flags and marching songs. But the constitution is fatally flawed, and the much-touted liberty is limited to the privileged, even now; it was even more so, in those good old days.

As I've mentioned before, at its beginning, American democracy looked a lot like Athenian democracy: open to 10-20% of the population; caste, class, exclusion and bondage enshrined in law. It had not become substantially different by 1885. Those textbooks may have conned Americans into the "La-and of the free and the hooome of - the - brave" illusion, but this was not the reality for children in the fields and sweatshops, nor their mothers in the slum food deserts, nor their fathers sweating in the mines, even less so, for the chain gangs of men serving ten years for vagrancy.
The children who did have access to a decent school, with books, grew up to create the depression and Hoovervilles. They went on to accept internment camps and seizure of fellow citizens' property for having the wrong ancestors. They did not grow up to vote for universal suffrage, the right to unionize, nor equal rights for Indians... nor anything particularly democratic.
You say they were educated for democracy. So -- why had it still not happened by the mid 20th century?

The US adopted both the German bureaucratic model and the education model and now it is what it defended its democracy against. — Athena

You probably wouldn't have liked losing to Germany, either. If you want to be a wealthy, powerful nation, you have to be ruthless. Very few strategies are available.

Reactionary politics, and everywhere a growing brutality — Athena

You can't trace that to 1958. There were a few different decades between Eisenhower and Reagan. And, really, I can't see how US education is messing with Danish heads. The plutocrats have been at the helm and that, up ahead, is the Designated Iceberg.

At our best, I think humans ... — universeness

... but mostly, friend, they willingly live like
dogs and sheep. :mask:

:100: I'm convinced @Athena is completely incorrigible on this topic, but I appreciate you also making the case to expose the deeper 'civilizational' rot driving Pax Americana's inexorable decline.

Wow! That certainly is through a mirror darkly.

What "mirror" ... :smirk:

I Corinthians 13:12 For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

Or maybe the movie about a girl going mad.


No empire is meant to last forever. A century is short by Roman and British standards, but then, the US republic has done pretty well, considering

The Liberty Bell
It speaks of the rights and freedoms valued by people the world over. Particularly forward thinking were Penn's ideas on religious freedom, his liberal stance on Native American rights, and his inclusion of citizens in enacting laws....
The cause of the break is thought to have been attributable either to flaws in its casting or, as they thought at the time, to its being too brittle.... the final expansion of the crack which rendered the Bell unringable was on Washington's Birthday in 1846.

The 'them' mirror.

... but mostly, friend, they willingly live like
dogs and sheep. — 180 Proof

The mirror reflects 'us,' as 'them.' You choose to only see them darkly, as being willing to live like dogs or sheep, with not enough examples to the contrary, in your mind or in your experience, that you value more. Btw, can't beat a bit of Pink Floyd!

@Athena
What do think of this short speech from the film Gettysburg?
Do you think that some of the sentences uttered here were an important part of the American psyche during those times? Do you consider such as pure Hollywood style twaddle?

What do think of this short speech from the film Gettysburg? — universeness

I'm sure many people did believe all that. Some of the commanders were patriots, idealists, and even competent commanders - some always are, on every side. And most of the troops very probably did believe it - they always do, on every side.
They were largely ignorant of the economic reasons for war, and entirely unaware of its consequences. They could not know what their leaders would eventually make of their sacrifice or their victory. For sure, the average citizen of the North was burdened less by the costs of that war than citizens of the South, who carried that greater burden much longer. Hence the lasting resentment. That, and the Reconstruction Acts - which, incidentally, don't mean reconstructing the shattered social and economic system in the Confederate states, but military occupation and imposed new constitutions.
So there was really never any healing of the so-called Union.
But the armies didn't know any of this. They went where they were led and did what they were ordered to do.

Rhetoric (imagined pov of AGI). 'Them is us' humans.

That good is reliant on our abundance and that is very threatened right now. — Athena

For balance, when the scenario starts with 'At our best....,' It is imbalanced imo, to not mention the many historical and current examples, of people who demonstrate:

more empathy, altruism, cooperation, good morality standards and an ability and fierce motivation to be a net positive towards our environment and everything in it — universeness

when all hell is breaking loose all around them.
Some folks who are currently quite safe and who might even enjoy 'abundance,' will often travel to other lands and put their lives in serious danger, (and often lose their life) to help save the civilians, and even combatants, on both sides of a war. Not just in war zones but also during famine, natural disasters, etc etc. They just wanna help, and many of them don't even need a religion to compel them to do so. Some of the actions you have taken in the past, suggest to me, that you yourself, are capable of, and have demonstrated, such tendencies towards helping others and I am braced by the fact that such folks exist in large numbers, and represent 'us' and 'them' at our best.
To me, each such person is more valuable than most Kings, Popes, Messiahs, or Elon Musks, I have ever heard of, that was, or may have been an actual real person who lives or has lived and did actually perform the events credited to them.

To me, each such person is more valuable than most Kings, Popes, Messiahs, or Elon Musks, — universeness

More valuable and infinitely less influential.
About 50% of any modern economy rubs on unpaid labour, one way or another: volunteers, students, neighbours, friends, family, all helping one another out or contributing to the community's welfare. None of these people set the nation's economic policy. No business could operate without all the conscientious employees, who do the best work they can, whether they're properly compensated or not. None of those employees have a say in corporate decisions.
It's the generals and presidents and Ceo's who get commemorative portraits in ugly gilt frames, prominently displayed in marble foyers, or heroic statues in public squares. They run the world. The helping and working people might be given a plaque next to a doorway, or a dusty photograph in a school library. They keep the world running.

More valuable and infinitely less influential. — Vera Mont

Yes, this is and always has been the status quo, but as it has on many occasions before, the status quo can change, no matter how long it has been so.

About 50% of any modern economy rubs on unpaid labour, one way or another: volunteers, students, neighbours, friends, family, all helping one another out or contributing to the community's welfare. None of these people set the nation's economic policy. — Vera Mont

I have described to you a political system that could change this. You keep offering examples of the way things were or are and seem so ossified in your insistence that this status quo is utterly immutable, which to me seems irrational, and even disproved by natural evolution, where change is prevalent.

It's the generals and presidents and Ceo's who get commemorative portraits in ugly gilt frames, prominently displayed in marble foyers, or heroic statues in public squares. They run the world. The helping and working people might be given a plaque next to a doorway, or a dusty photograph in a school library. They keep the world running. — Vera Mont

Is a celebrity based reward system immutable? Do we have to keep insisting that this guy or gal did a thing and just keep ignoring all the others involved or the previous work they were/are so utterly dependent on? Will we each always be 'lesser,' than the 'heros'/'gods'/'celebrities,' we admire. I reject that presumption completely. I think we can each do better, and we can each do so, without becoming arrogant prats. We are now very familiar indeed with celebrity / aristocratic / divinity / elitist based leaders and leadership. It's a bad system that we need to reject imo.
Carl Sagan was a fantastic influencer imo, but also imo, his main goal was to raise others to have the same personal value, that I think he (and the Jeff Daniels character, in his wee speech in Gettysburg,) held and expressed. I used to call Carl 'one of my heroes'. I fight that urge now, and try to now describe him as one of my main influencers, but as 'people with value,' Carl and I are equal in status, as we all are equal in such, compared to anyone alive today or in history, including fantasy characters such as god.

Very improbable, not "immutable". Speculations derived from probabilities may be insightful (e.g. diagnostics, forecasting); however, derived from improbabilities, they are mere fantasies (i.e. wishful thinking). You seem to be stuck on fantasy (à la faith), universeness. :sparkle:

I have described to you a political system that could change this. — universeness

As have I and many others before us. It sounds good, and then it is either snuffed in infancy or else corrupted in its early youth. So far. Maybe next time, it'll be different and the pigs really will fly.

You keep offering examples of the way things were or are and seem so ossified in your insistence that this status quo is utterly immutable, which to me seems irrational, — universeness

Given the actual facts on the actual ground, it seems rational to me.
This house is beyond repair, beyond restoration. It needs to be bulldozed before a new and better house can be built on the site.
Note that aggression and predation have persisted all these millions of years; the lion may lie down with the lamb - inside him. The single hope for our future is that human social and economic arrangements no longer defer to nature or evolution.

Do we have to keep insisting that this guy or gal did a thing and just keep ignoring all the others involved or the previous work they were/are so utterly dependent on? — universeness

I can't observe what and whether we "have to" or "will always"; only what has been done and what is done.

Carl Sagan was a fantastic influencer — universeness

He evidently inspired you. Yet I do not see the world much changed in his wake.

Carl and I are equal in status, — universeness

Insofar as your impact on the future, probably.

You seem to be stuck on fantasy (à la faith), universeness. :sparkle: — 180 Proof

:grin: And your position, to me, is akin to those a few hundred years ago, who thought humans landing on the moon was impossible.

As have I and many others before us. It sounds good, and then it is either snuffed in infancy or else corrupted in its early youth. So far. Maybe next time, it'll be different and the pigs really will fly. — Vera Mont

You tire too easily Vera. 'If at first we don't succeed, try try again,' has no upper limit on the number of try's. The system we advocate is not impossible, so it's not like the attempt is to reach perfection. 'Better,' is always within the realms of human aspiration.

Given the actual facts on the actual ground, it seems rational to me. — Vera Mont

I accept that is your position.

Note that aggression and predation have persisted all these millions of years; the lion may lie down with the lamb - inside him. — Vera Mont

You should watch this imo, 'feel good' doc Vera. Even members of different animal species can bond, and make new relationships, unlike any that have gone before:

Such as who? :roll:

You tire too easily Vera. — universeness

It's nothing to do with my energy level. When the structural elements are riddled with dry rot, I don't waste my time plastering the walls.

'Better,' is always within the realms of human aspiration. — universeness

Sure. Aspire away!

Even members of different animal species can bond, and make new relationships, unlike any that have gone before: — universeness

And that's due to evolution, is it?

When the structural elements are riddled with dry rot, I don't waste my time plastering the walls. — Vera Mont

:up:

And that's due to evolution, is it? — Vera Mont

I will leave the scientists to fully answer that one?

Such as who? — 180 Proof

I don't have any particular names and addresses from a few hundred years ago that might fit.
Perhaps many of those who still believe we have never landed on the moon have ancestors that might fit my description, but I accept that I have no particular prominent names from that time period, who publicly stated, that landing on the moon was impossible. Does that prove none existed?
If I am a bit of a fantasist then You are a bit of a pessimistic doomster after all.

:lol: