Are you personally prepared to go without some or all those things, or is it other people who should not have what they want and need? I want the things I have, some of which are on your list, so I'd have to say - I do mind, yes! The things I've bought employ people, who in turn buy things. The trick is to have the energy to spend to recycle all waste - mince everything up, and then process it back into constituent elements for further manufacturing. That's why we need limitless clean energy, and the earth is a big ball of molten rock - containing so much energy it will still be hot when the sun goes supernova in about 5 billion years. — karl stone

Huh? What about the ice ages? I don't think you are working with all the facts.

That's one way to go, but do you really want to disenchant people who believe in God as part of their identity and their purposes - but who have no power to craft energy policy? Are you going to look a little old ladies in the eyes and tell them - there's no such thing as God? And even if you are willing to be that cruel - how do you know there isn't a God? I don't know if God exists, and I know I don't know! — karl stone

That is a good point. I have not said there is no God. When the Bible is read abstractly the Jews who wrote the old testament, and I, do not have a problem with that. The problem comes with the literal interpretation of the holy books and denying science. I can say that publically but I have not argued the point with a friend who is over 90.

How the Bible is interpreted really depends on how a person is educated and that is why I am usually talking about education.

I could not disagree more. Over-population is not a problem at all. The misapplication of technology is a problem. I live in the UK, and population density is relatively high by global statndards, but less that 2% of the UK land surface is actually built upon. Globally, it's going to be less than that. So, if humans can live sustainably - there's no lack of room. And magma energy can give us all the energy we could ever want - we could deslainate sea water, pump it inland and make the deserts bloom if we so chose. So over-population is not a real problem; it's a consequence of the scarce, expensive and polluting fossil fuel energy we continue to use. It limits what we are able to do.

The geology book "GeoDistnies" talks about the finite limit of resources. I think this book by Youngquist or books by other geologists are important to understanding our reality. Also, a trip to India or China might give you a different perspective on population size and limits. And those polluting fossil fuels are a vital ingredient in the fertilizer that is required for feeding millions of people. Morocco has the world's largest supply of phosphate. Phosphate is an essential ingredient of fertilizer and I don't think I want to be around in Morocco's supply is exhausted.

Here, we're philosophers. We volunteer to have our ideas tested to destruction. Similarly, polititians and industry have a responsibility. I seek to convince you, and politics and industry that a prosperous sustainable future is possible - that humankind can live long term by harnessing magma energy and using that to meet all our energy needs, plus capture carbon, desalinate, irrigate and recycle. If we applied those technologies, we could bring 3 or 4 billion poor people into the first world economy - sustainably. The economic opportunity is vast, and we're missing it because of an addication to fossil fuels!

It would be easier for you to convince me that you know enough, if you did not begin by declaring overpopulation is not a problem. The communist in China did not impose a one child per family policy for light reason. China has a very serious water supply problem, and places, where the water supply is from melting glaciers, will not be able to sustain their populations when the glaciers are gone. Places that are experiencing high tides and land loss are rapidly losing the ability to sustain their populations. High tides mean salt makes the land infertile. Countries with a high poverty level can not provide enough jobs, and this leads to wars against minority groups and against other countries and it drives the flood refugees. It will be very hard for you to convince me overpopulation is not a problem. Where I live there is a huge homeless population and poverty is a more serious problem because rents are so high, and none of this would be so if we were not dealing with overpopulation.

If I were king, I would command every community to measure its resources and limit its population to what those resources can support. Without such measurements how can we know what is sustainable?

↪Athena On point. We (seem to) have the means to mount a global movement on climate. Nevertheless things look better only by comparison; perhaps there's still a long way to go before democracy and the internet, among other things, can have the required effect.

Relative vs. Absolute. We have improved but there's still more that needs to be done. — Agent Smith

I just posted there must be death for there to be life. How many people want to think about that? I suspect most non-religious people are in as much denial as religious people. I believe all of us have a hard time accepting reality. I don't know if there is a good way to deal with that? The science folks want to believe technology will save our asses as much as the religious folk wants to believe a God takes good of us. We live on a finite planet and we might need to accept its limits while working on exploring the universe and trying to find a new home.

I'm not sure I should be pharoah; cultural appropriation and whatnot! I'm thinking more along the lines of philosopher king of the world. But I'll settle for philosopher.

It's wierd, isn't it, that despite all this technological advance, things are getting in strange ways worse. In my view, the chaos we see is the causal consequence of acting at odds to reality. Religious, political and economic ideological concepts do not describe reality as it really is - science does! Acting on the basis of ideological concepts we act at odds to reality, and as the disparity between our course, and 'true north' becomes ever wider, the chaos increases.

Magma energy is a viable technology. It was proven by NASA in 1982, in a series of papers entitled The Magma Energy Project. I cannot be certain the project was not developed because of the vast national and economic interests in fossil fuels, but science showed limitless clean energy is available, and it hasn't been developed. That was over 40 years ago, and in the meantime - global population and fossil fuel use have doubled.

My hope, recognising this relationship between the validity of knowledge, as a basis for human action, and the validity of the outcome - will allow us to have our cake and eat it. I'm certainly not suggesting we tear down the churches, banks and borders, to start again from scratch, making all our representations conform to strict scientific rationality. Rather, my hope is that recognising the significance of a scientific understanding of reality will create the authority to do that which is necessary to survival; namely, develop magma energy to meet all our energy needs, plus power carbon capture and storage, deslaination and irrigation, and the recycling of all waste - allowing for a prosperous sustainable future. — karl stone

That sounds wonderful and I watched a show last night about Bill Nye the Science Guy and his fight to get religious leaders to accept science, We all need to picket this place at the top of the tourist season
https://arkencounter.com/ . It is a theme park presenting a full-sized Noah's ark as though this were science. The people who present this park, and visit it, are the enemies of science. They are climate change deniers. Or perhaps we could find out which churches in our neighborhoods are climate deniers and ask to talk with them about global warming?

It is not strange to me that things are getting worse, because the ancients saw the end as a time when there was more life on earth than the earth could support. We are there. The mass of humanity has overwhelmed the earth's ability to support it. The world seriously needs population control and it would be nice to do this with reason, instead of killing the excess humans in our countries and making war on other countries. The refugee problem around the world is the reality of overpopulation. This terrible future was predicted and we can even use the bible to explain it. But the Bible is not the only source of information about the end of time. No matter how well we develop our technology, if the mass of humanity is not reduced the earth will not be able to sustain it.

And perhaps we should get a better grip on reality. Any species will become destructive to its environment if nature does not keep it in check. That is a problem with plants and animals that are not indigenous. Chances are good in a new environment nothing will hold it in check and it will proceed to destroy the environment. It could be ivy that spreads and kills everything it climbs on, and then deprives the animals of the food they need. It could be feral cats or feral pigs brought to the island by people. Thinking life is either good or evil sucks, because without death there can not be life. Everything needs to be held in balance. And I would bet, even non-religious people walk around with a fantasy in their heads about some kind of Garden of Eden where nothing dies.

↪Cornwell1We haven't made as much progress as we thought in the ethics department have we? Our desire to act (only) on the matter of global warming is driven by economic worries and not in any way due to concerns for the environment. As I thought and this seems to be true, translate global warming into monetary losses and we'll waste no time doing something about it. Why didn't someone think of this from before? Damn! — Agent Smith

Absolutely and I am having a hard time not understanding our delay in doing that. It seems obvious to me when a tornado, hurricane, flood, fire does a lot of damage, the cost of that should get our attention. Maybe better news reporting would help us connect the dots and become aware of the cost of ignoring the problem?

With regard to the thesis set out in the opening post, ten pages ago, ideally, I think it's our responsibility to understand what's true, and act morally with regard to what's true....not necessarily 'because God says so' but because there is an objective reality that's a web of cause and effect relations, and acting on valid knowledge within a causal reality is necessary to valid outcomes. For instance, imagine a criminal in court - who tells lies. If those lies are believed; the court may act morally, but the verdict will not be just. Valid knowledge of reality is necessary to morally valid outcomes; but also functionally valid outcomes. Imagine a technology based on principles that are wrong to reality. It won't work.

It's the same with the world. Nature is one big machine, and we're a faulty cog insofar as we are wrong, causing a system wide dysfunction. It's scientifically possible to solve the climate and ecological crisis. The earth is a ball of molten rock containing an effectively limitless amount of energy, we could harness to meet all our energy needs, plus capture carbon, desalinate, irrigate and recycle, and so balance human welfare and environmental sustainability very much in our favour. Nasa proved this in 1982 - but somehow 'The Magma Enenergy Project' was quietly discontinued, and 40 years later, global population and fossil fuel use have doubled, and Trump Digs Coal!

If you see things in terms of chaos and order you end up with totalitarian government, but if you see things in terms of knowing what's true and doing what's right, you get morally valid outcomes that work! — karl stone

Very nicely worded. Not many people know what science has to do with morals and democracy but you do. In my eyes that makes you are a very valuable person.

I used the word chaos because around the world weather is being very chaotic! This year snow in unusual places has made the news. Where I am, January was so warm, flowers began blooming, and now things have taken a turn for the cold and we are reopening emergency shelters for the homeless.
A gal I know in Arkansas tells me it is over 70 degrees one day and freezing the next. Her weather has really been chaotic and that is the kind of thing that causes tornados. It is hard for people to wrap their heads around global warming when they are faced with snow blizzards or snow in unusual places, so I think we need a better understanding of our actions throwing nature into a state of chaos. And from there, your words are exactly right! Lying to the jury will not lead to justice.

It kind of reminds me of Egypt and thinking it is the pharaoh's job to prevent chaos from destroying the harmony with nature that is essential to staying out of trouble.

What I'm really concerned about is if climate action has a deadline to meet and whether we're already past that date with destiny. — Agent Smith

Even if that is so, it is still necessary to discuss how humanity will deal with it. Many civilizations have fallen because the people exhausted their resources, or weather conditions lead to famine, or disease forced them to move. Those people did not have the science to understand their situation. If they were living in large civilizations, they did not have the communication systems we have, so they had no chance of collaborating on what was happening and what to do. Today we have science and amazing communication systems and we like to think we have democracy, but obviously, we do not have a good understanding of how to use all this.

What choice do we have? I don't see anyone proposing solutions that are certain to produce results, practicable, fair, to name a few qualities that matter.

What happened in Glasgow (COP26)? Absolutely nothing if you ask me. — Agent Smith

James Carter was our president from 1977 to 1981. His focus was on reducing our dependency on foreign oil so we would not applaud his policies, but he ask us to be conservative and turn our thermostats down to 68 degrees. If we all did that, that would be a huge saving because there are so many of us. He also advanced solar energy. We know part of the problem is eating meat, so some of us are eating less meat or no meat at all.

Here are suggestions and consider because there are so many of us, we can make a difference. The more of us who choose to take action, the easier it will be for the government to take action.
https://davidsuzuki.org/what-you-can-do/top-10-ways-can-stop-climate-change/

Understand, President Reagan lied to us and he dismantled what Carter put in place. WE MUST NOT COUNT ON GOVERNMENT BECAUSE WE CAN GET PRESIDENTS WHO LEAD US IN THE WRONG DIRECTION. WE MUST COUNT ON DEMOCRACY- THAT IS ALL OF US WORKING TOGETHER TO ACHIEVE GOALS. :heart: :flower:

Wait & watch. :ok: — Agent Smith

I don't think that is a good idea. That is kind of like standing on the railroad tracks and wondering if the train will stop before passing you. It would be smarter to get off the tracks.

And when it comes to consuming fossil fuels, the US was the world's supply of oil. The recession following the 1974 OPEC embargo oil to the US was a real wake-up call! Reagan lied to us by saying we did not need to conserve oil. Then he slashed domestic budgets and poured everything into our economic and military control of oil in the mid-east bringing us to the mess we are in now. I don't want to get too political, but Vietnam and all the following mid-east wars are about oil and protecting our economy that consumes more oil than we have. Our need for oil and our money spending to getting oil, has caused the oil countries a lot of pain. The Vietnam war was very painful to us and them. This is not moral.

All I wanted to convey was if climate scientists are using climate models to predict global warming, we should exercise caution for the simple reason that chaos theory implies that even the tiniest variation in the inputs (possible in the real world) would nullify any predictions whatsoever. — Agent Smith

There is a saying that when we resolve one problem we create three more. We really do not know as much as we need to know and if we were okay with that and moved cautiously all the time, that would probably be a good idea.

We can feed millions of people because of large cooperate owned farms and fertilizer and that has been a serious pollution problem. Until we reduce the size of our population, I don't think we will have good solutions. But if we all came to love the earth with some reverence for the miracle of life on this planet, that could lead to improvements.

I think the OP's onto something.

Remember chaos theory, how it began? Weather! The long and short of it is that small differences in initial conditions lead to outcomes, downstream, that are extremely divergent. So given a weather model, inputting a temperature of 2.001 degrees Celsius and 2.002 degrees Celsius (a variation of 0.001 degrees Celsius) could mean that one scenario leads to a scorching hot day and another a blizzard.

If so, the reliability of climate models that predict global warming is thrown into question. Chaos theory precludes it, oui? I believe climate deniers are in the know about this. — Agent Smith

I like your explanation of chaos theory. But when it comes to being a climate denier or believer I am on the side of believers. Most of Oregon has experienced a severe drought and the drought condition worsened so badly a new word had to be invented. "Exceptional drought" is worse than "extreme drought". Normally Oregon had so much rain I thought we would never have a water problem. That is no longer true and the fires we had two years ago, made me take that very seriously.

I like old people so I listen to their stories whenever I can and long before any mention of climate change, they were talking about how they would never go into the woods to log, without their rain clothes. They were saying our climate change began before everyone was talking about it.

I garden so I noticed a few years ago, that spring started to come earlier. I could not trust my own sense of what was happening until that also became a subject of discussion. I think many of us will be planting earlier this year and what we plant may change if we continue to have extremely hot summers. Too much hot weather thickens the skin of plants and makes them less pleasant to eat.

↪Athena Does your blog have a name yet? The connection between the internet and democracy seems like a really interesting one, and I would love to check out your blog!

Thanks for sharing that incredibly helpful list! — DA671

Oh dear, I am supposed to be doing payer work so I can get a paycheck, but I think you have given me a new subject I need to write about in the Blog and that led to finding a link that explains the history of the subject of the thread and clarifies the Military-Industrial Complex is not just conspiracy theory. At the moment the title is "militaryindustrialcomplexornewworldorder" I think I need to add - to separate the words. I don't know how people would access the blog, but I can send you an invite. I have just started working on it and it is not that well developed. For sure I must explain how the internet makes the power of democracy even more universal because it is a tool encompassing our individual consciousness on a scale never before possible.

The New Age is also the Resurrection. Archeologists, geologists, and related sciences are resurrecting the past. This is a time of reckoning for all our past sins. I am speaking a huge flood of information that changes our consciousness so dramatically the people of the New Age will not able to comprehend life as we have assumed life must be. We will look as primitive to them, as apes are primitive to us.

There are many nice people out there; it just sometimes takes time to find them :) — DA671

I have been puzzling over this for a long time. I think forums are our best meeting place. I have started a Blog but I am just learning to use it. Religious people have the benefit of being organized in such a way they can be more effective as a group. But attempting to organize people without an established organization is extremely challenging, especially for someone without money. However, there are organizations, and thanks to the internet we can find them and join them.

Here are 36 organizations we can support.
https://foodtank.com/news/2020/10/36-organizations-helping-solve-the-climate-crisis/

The difference the internet makes, along with a better understanding of democracy, can radically change our reality. My main focus is improving our understanding of democracy.

I just had another thought. Looking at the list of organizations to fight climate change, I see all the little groups of Christians, before there was organized Christianity. I think religious kind of breath beginning as separate little groups, eventually joining into a large group, and breaking down again into smaller groups.

Your enthusiasm is inspirational and reinvigoriating! Even though we do have to resolve certain issues, I think that active participation and a balanced approach can definitely help us achieve our goals to an adequate degree. Thanks, for being there. — DA671

Please, may we all understand the miracle of democracy is bringing out the best in each other. In a democracy, we are not subjects. We are equals as the gods. That does not mean we are the same. The miracle very much depends on our variety and different points of view. The consciousness above us, that is all of history and all of our minds, is far greater than waht any form of dictatorship can manifest. You know as China is developing great technology, but maybe not a great a culture?

We need a better understanding of that miracle of democracy than we have today. Education for technology has made us as mean-spirited as Nazi Germany was and it was education too focused on technology for military and industrial purposes that led to the paranoia and meanness and blaming, blaming, blaming "those people". We see the problem in forums every day. People attacking and arguing with a very mean spirit, putting the attacked person on the defensive and destroying the possibility that together we can work miracles. Our problem today is one of spirit. If we are nice to each other, and work together, some really good things may happen.

And yeah, it's definitely encouraging to finally see (after a long time) many people who wish to genuinely contribute towards the well-being of others :) — DA671

Then it is not just me seeing this. That is exciting. All through history, things have swung this way and that way. When we experience enough shared pain we have joined together to counteract the problem.

I believe in the New Age. A time of high tech, peace, and the end of tyranny. What will be new is our consciousness will be so different, we will not be able to relate to the past, and this is the result of technology. We are no longer a labor-intense society. That makes a big difference and we need to think of a new future so we can work on creating that.

To deal with global warming, what do our neighborhoods need to look like? Personally, I am elderly and I want to live in a complex with others my age and those things I need to stay as fit as possible, such as a swimming pool and a variety of exercise programs, including stimulating my mind. That is not affordable for me, but if we were planning for a better future, that might be in the plan.

The Japanese have focused on creating neighborhoods where everything is in walking distance and the children are safe. What a wonderful thing to wrap our minds around. Environmental concerns are natural to such planning.

Many people pay careful attention to the weather because it affects their lives. Our weather report includes the severity of the drought we are experiencing and sometimes the air quality is mentioned. We can encourage our weather reporters to keep us informed and aware of our environment. So many people are ready for this, we can make it happen.

The most important thing is to be creative and imagine what would be better! Then we need to be civically active, not only to achieve good things but to learn what democracy is about. We absolutely must participate in committees that are working on social problems because that is how to learn how democracy works. We need to take back governing ourselves.

I think we are experiencing a new dramatic change that is mobilizing the people who believe in cooperation and who are compassionate. I have started a blog that is consuming much of my time and maybe it can become a place for caring people to participate in a change of consciousness.

:cry: :heart:

The is a beautiful video! I am so sorry our world is in such a mess, but we really didn't know we were causing so much harm. We have so much to do and need to do it very fast, but we aren't talking with each other.

Look, participating in civic activities is maybe even more important than voting. Look for a civic project you can become a part of. It doesn't matter what that project is as long as you are interested in it because you will more learn about how democracy works, just by getting involved. That is how we must take back our country. That is our best hope for getting through the very hard times we face.

And I want you to know you have been important to my understanding of much more than you could realize. I hoped you help me be a better and wiser person. If I just don't forget the lesson.

Sorry for my digression with shopenhauer1 from your OP but shopenhaur1 and DA671 had already established the digression and I am sure you can still bring us back to the OP if you feel there are still points about Global warming and chaos not yet aired. — universeness

I am good with what you are doing. I can see the different discussions happening in the thread and I think we need to just go with the flow. In the past I tried to control MY threads. :lol: That ruins everything and I am seeing how important creativity and relationships are.

Okay the New Age consciousness has begun. Like I am in total shock about our government discussing paying for child care, and frequently I am hearing information about poverty that is based on research. Since women have held seats of power, child welfare has been improving. Over 6 thousand years of patriarchy and in just over 50 years of women having power, we are seeing important changes. To understand how the future may be different is to understand our past and I am just too tired to think things through. I look forward to having something intelligent to say in the morning after I have recharged my batteries.

One more thing. I think duty is wonderful! This is why we should not argue. Concepts like duty can mean different things to different people. Women have been very dutiful and they did what they did because it is the right thing to do, not because of high pay.

Just reading my way through this thread from the start and I just 'in general terms' wanted to declare myself as a fan of your overall positions on this topic. :strong: :grin: :up:
7 minutes ago — universeness

Well thank you. I think that means there is hope for the future. No matter what happens, even if we are reduced to a few tribes barely able to survive and reproduce the next generation, if we realize the connection between science and good moral judgment, and what this has to do with democracy and raising the human potential, there is hope. We will find our way.

Who says that nature is not capable in providing for all, if left alone? — Raymond

You might think about the answer for yourself. One of the most damaging things we do is have huge farms that require huge amounts of fertilizer. The job of the man who explained this type of farming had the job of helping small farmers become more successful. He realized these small farmers could not produce enough to feed the mass of humanity that was in desperate need of affordable food. The food shortage was a crisis and so was throwing them off the land and replacing them with huge corporations, a crisis. Leaving now landless farmers with no source of income. The very people he was supposed to help, were hurt, but the masses had more food.

You probably know the problems with relying on manufactured fertilizer. That fertilizer runs off and gets into rivers and then oceans and is a serious pollutant. A main ingredient in fertilizer is oil and right now our method of extracting oil from the ground is seriously polluting.

Every living cell must have potassium and phosphorus and we get those minerals through our food but potassium is not naturally abundant. Morocco has almost half the world's known supply of phosphate deposits and our food supply is dependent on it because it goes into our fertilizer. Only when the ground has a lot of a mineral is profitable to mine it. China, the US, Africa, and a few other nations depend on the Morocco supply of phosphate and it is finite. So what do we do? Stop mining for phosphate that goes into our fertilizer, which then pollutes the rivers and oceans?

If you want to argue what is wrong with our lifestyle of abundance, there are some really good books. If you want to know what mineral resources have had to do with history and future wars, see if you can get Walter Youngquist books,"Natural Resources and the Destiny of Nations" and "GeoDistinies". "Abandon Affuelence!" by F.E. Trainer will give you some good talking points. That book covers- "The review of recent evidence on major global problems examines resources and energy scarcity, environmental destruction," and more.

There is no doubt our way of life is not sustainable. It is like we are riding a bicycle that is going faster and faster and as we go downhill, and we don't know how to put the breaks on. The problem is, if we don't put the breaks on, we go over a cliff. How do we safely slow the bike down?

But please give up the notion that we can just return to a simpler way of life and everything will be okay. Life has always been a challenge and people have always destroyed their environments when they stayed there too long. Marvelous civilizations fall when the soil and other resources are exhausted. The economy of Rome depended on gold mines and chasing after the gold required a huge militarily expensive, just as the US exhausted its own easily accessible oil and needs to use military force to secure its mid-east supply of oil. When the gold was exhausted, Rome abandoned the northern part of Europe, and Rome itself, as the power elite moved east to Constantinople, closer to newly discovered gold mines. There is no place for us to move and we can not absorb the mass of humanity that is fleeing desperate poverty.

I was not a happy kid at school and I saw quite keenly what it did. It mobilizes each and every citizen for war and this condition of total mobilization does not leave you. It continues in higher education, in the jobs you undertake, in the time tables you are being regimented into, in the meticulous moment of testing, examination, from university days to child rearing advice... We have a society of mass mobility but also mass mobilization in which you are called to whichever front you are needed, a mercenary plying his trade, going to wherever you are ordered. That is our condition. You would like to read Ernst Junger I think. Ernst Junger is an old German conservative who saw in the first world war the forge in which a new age was being crafted, the era of the 'worker', but the worker regimented like the soldier... It is a wonderful text eerie in its precociousness of society's self understanding... — Tobias

Okay, I have to read that! He published a few books and I am not sure which one is the most important to my effort. I am too tired to figure it out now.

I have started a blog for the purpose of documenting my concern about the military-industrial complex. Would you know which book is the best for explaining the era of the "worker"? I really do not care about the gory details of war. It is what an increasingly high-tech military has done to the whole of society that concerns me. Or maybe I do not need his book but can simply go with your explanation? How much of an explanation of your perspective can you give us? Might I use it in the blog?

This is why I could not complete my book. I am constantly learning something new. I love the idea of a blog where can just add information as I become aware of it.

True. And just like science is used nowadays to spare us from our own wrath on nature, while nature is increasingly the victim of scientific beating, people back then had their own means of coping. Rain dances, rituals, or whatever. Offerings included. But at least, nature was left alone, to a higher extent than these days. — Raymond

That is not exactly true. Primitive lifestyles were not always eco-friendly. The most common problem was deforestation. Easter Island is a good example of the problem. When all the trees were cut down, the people could not build boats and meet their dietary needs by fishing. That led to eating everything on the island, which finally lead to cannibalism. The next most serious problem is just exhausting the soil.

Around 3,000 years ago, farmers settled on the fertile Loess Plateau in western China, a region about the size of France. By the 7th century, the rich soils were feeding about one quarter of the Chinese population. But intense pressure on the land eroded the soil. By the 20th century, desertification had condemned the remaining population to poverty. “It was a desperate place,” says Juergen Voegele, an agricultural economist and engineer at the World Bank who first visited the region in the mid-1980s. But that would soon change. https://rethink.earth/turning-desert-to-fertile-farmland-on-the-loess-plateau/ — RICHARD BLAUSTEIN

Here is a list of animals humans hunted for food until they became extinct. https://www.britannica.com/list/6-animals-we-ate-into-extinction

Civilizations collapsed because of exhausting the region's ability to support life. In the past, people would just move to another area. Today they can not do that because there are people everywhere. The problem is not just created by science and technology. The problem is also our success and the increased humanity.

Where humans are consuming groundwater, they are nearing a disaster as they are consuming that water faster than it is replaced, and soon those regions will become deserts. Another problem is the limit of minerals essential to making fertilizer. The planet can not support the mass of humanity.

The climate change is one of them. — Raymond

But without science, no one would know we have global warming. People would still think everything is about the will of a god, and if that god is pleased with us or not.

Plagues and famines, earthquakes and hurricanes, etc. have always been part of human history. Bad things happened long before technology and human beings were sacrificed to the gods to keep us save from their wrath.

We could not know about global warming until we had the problem and the technology to measure everything and understand the problem. We need to process this information and decide how we are to manage it. That is moving forward not backward. However, learning from the past could be vital to moving forward. A big problem with that is human populations are too large to maintain without modern technology. I think we are backed into a corner that it is going to be very hard to get out of.

This caught my eye and I'd like to make a short riff on it. My own math skills, not much more than yours, have led to a small epiphany. My own naive understanding had me believing that there was always a place to get to, that I could try to get to. That is, some end point or destination; in maths, for example, the solution to some problem. But, as with the Hubble deep space pictures, or thinking about Antarctica or the Canadian North, or of Mandelbrot sets, or of any of the limitless vistas of math, one realizes there is no real there to get to. It just keeps on going, dwarfing humanity to less than a dot. With that one combines the observations by Farley Mowat of the Inuit of Northern Canada, who spent their lives in trackless wastelands. They, he observed, were never really away from anything, because where they were everything was, their home being wherever they were. (Mowat's example being the comparison of what southerners mistakenly thought the Inuits' homes were, with what they actually were: carelessly built ramshackle huts built of findings v. the caribou skin garments they wore perfected over a few thousand years of development.) A whole entire different understanding of place (and time) and being. I suspect mathematicians and cosmologists, et al, are part Inuit and must be to remain sane. — tim wood

That is truly beautiful but also terrifying! I think my head just can not comprehend it. I am not comfortable with being lost in space and time. It is like being naked and vulnerable. But who I am should not depend on externals, right?

Of course the question of identity is a philosophical subject, very much so. It featured and still features prominently in debates on political philosophy between the more liberal inclined thinkers and the so called 'communitarians'. You might really like the work of the communitarian thinker Alisdair Mcintyre. I think the phrase, 'the lonely crowd' is very well put. I think that is the situation we are in. — Tobias

I found an Alisdair Mcintyre speech on-line
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191001-dunbars-number-why-we-can-only-maintain-150-relationships#:~:text=The%20theory%20of%20Dunbar's%20number,about%20150%20connections%20at%20once.

I think the "lonely crowd" is unavoidable because of our human nature that includes limited social capacity. We are lucky to know 600 people by name. The number of people we can really know is much less. "There are well-defined limits to the number of friends and acquaintances the average person can retain." https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191001-dunbars-number-why-we-can-only-maintain-150-relationships#:~:text=The%20theory%20of%20Dunbar's%20number,about%20150%20connections%20at%20once . I don't care about the details other than establishing when it comes to being social there are very real biological limits. We can compensate by becoming members of smaller groups, such as a church, or a professional group, or a fraternity. Prejudices play into this biological fact. We might avoid Mormons or people of color or people with another difference that to our mind separates "us" from "them". We must have mercy for each other because it just isn't easy being human and we are demanding far too much from each other than what is reasonable.

This is where the importance of "customs" and "good manners" comes in. We can compensate for our limits by sharing customs and ideas of good manners. If a total stranger claims to be Christian then this person becomes "one of us" making religion essential to the formation of civilizations. I like my grandmother's 3 rules.

1. We are respectful to everyone because we are respectful people. It doesn't matter who the other is because it is about own character as a respectful person or an uncouth jerk.

2. We protect the dignity of others.

3. We do everything with integrity.

I think that covers just about any situation?

but simply going back to the old ways will not do it. In any case, a lot of people would die were we to die if we did that. The question is what wisdom is when confronted with such a conundrum. The criticism is made possible by the mass mobilization for science we have undertaken in the past decades. — Tobias

:lol: In the old days, I left home early in the morning and did my own thing all day and then went home when people began turning their lights on. I don't think it is safe to give our children that much freedom today. We didn't lock the doors to our house or car and we lived in a Los Angeles suburb. :lol: If you can find the movie "Blast From the Past" it makes an interesting statement about social change where I grew up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhMQOb0tEmI More has changed than our understanding of science. We no longer have the culture that we and that is why I write!

This does not mean I am stuck in the past because I believe if we do not self-destruct, we are transitioning into a New Age, that is so different from the past, people in the New Age will not be able to relate to our primitive past. Exploiting each other and nature as we have done up to this point will be unthinkable. Dressing people in uni-forms and having them march into the enemy's weapons will be unthinkable, but dropping bombs on the enemy may still occur? I like what Alisdair Mcintyre says in the speech because he mentions what a culture and time in history has to do with our concept of morals. It is also a political matter. We now have reactionary politics based more on our feelings than our intellect. When making decisions we look inward to see how we "feel" about this or that, not evaluate how it fits with our principles. What are principles? We have a culture that is so unsure of everything we are powerless to do anything but follow orders to get what we want. This is not a good stopping place for the future.

Ok, so your problem is with a certain cultural identity, an ideal form. It is not a form we have or a form that might have manifested itself fully at any one time, but a certain cultural ideal that you refer to as 'democracy'. I understand it and I am not criticizing it just seeing if we can get our terms straight and aligned. This cultural ideal is built around equality, but also around a set of cultural values. The heroes of old, maybe the battles of old fought by different liberation movements, the stories of old. One peculiar puzzle you face is that the stories of old also relegated the narratives of others to a seat of lesser importance. In the US for instance the stories of the native Americans or stores of people of color. Every American hero you names is a 'dead white man' in popular parlance. I am not the most woke on this forum, but sensitivity to this aspect of 'democracy' is needed. You present it as a rather unproblematic situation that existed in the USA of old, but like Athenian democracy it was made possible by the exclusion of a lot of 'others'. That kind of exclusion is not deemed acceptable anymore so we live in a different society, one cannot without committing grave injustice, revert to a situation of the past. — Tobias

Absolutely and I am puzzled by your ability to understand what I am saying because my fellow citizens do not. If I were rich and younger, I would have to visit your country and study its education system in an effort to understand why you think differently from the nation that makes me rant like a crazy person.

I think we should come to understand democracy by reading the Greek and Roman classics and then perhaps visiting other countries to see who well they are working with the principles. Democracy is a complex concept and we need to understand the complexity.

Yes, it is about heroes and stories about the struggle to have justice and liberty for all, but not totally. Oh dear, you cause me to think deeply on this and it is difficult as giving birth to a child! It has become popular in the US to attack heroes. It is being said the effort to be a hero makes people terrible human beings. Our national heroes were strong, independent leaders and we destroyed them. We had education for independent thinking. Now we are voting party tickets, with ministers telling their congregations how to vote, and we prepared our young four "group think". This is a serious social, economic, and political change.

Your fault-finding, that the stories are about dead white men has truth but is not totally true. I believe I mentioned the hero stories were multinational. A huge part of our cultural education was European folk tales and our explanation of our democracy begins with the Magna Carta. We were able to teach morals without depending on religion by using those folk tales that are about virtues. True this Euro-centric education did not include people of color or Native Americans and that fault should be considered. On the other hand, our federal government was strongly influenced by Native Americans. They had a federation of tribes and were closer to the Greek city/state organization than European kingdoms and that helped those who were literate in the classics understand that past history.

Because I have collected old textbooks, I know some textbook publishers did a better job than others. :lol: My favorite children's history book is very quaint. Technically it is more of a fairy tale than fact, but that book has more cultural value than the technically correct ones, that are so dry it is cruel and inhuman punishment to make a child read them. The book I like best, begins the explanation of democracy with Athens, not the Magna Carta.

The hold Christianity has on the US needs to be understood. The Bible was used to justify slavery and to argue against it. When people believe they are doing the will of God, they have the strength of that belief, and the Civil War with two opposing ideas of God's will was especially intense. The Christian control of education has been problematic, and the South's control of education has also been problematic when it comes to racism. We are now dealing with the Christian mythology of our democracy and that is a huge problem!

"That kind of exclusion is not deemed acceptable anymore so we live in a different society, one cannot without committing grave injustice, revert to a situation of the past." How are natives with different languages and different cultures included? Some of them wanted to be included and they were treated terribly. Others did not want to be included and did their best to defend their land but lost.
We are not that far from killing each other for control of land. And with intense pain, many of us feel, if native Americans controlled our evolution instead of Christians and Europeans, we would not have global warming. Christianity prevented us from accepting the earth as one living organism that needs to be protected.

The situation with people with African heritage is an extremely difficult one! You might remember we fought a civil war over than one, and the matter was not resolved with a civil war. We are still in an intense fight to preserve the past or bring about radical change. I read a book about education that was published only a few years ago, that was extremely racist! :scream: Science is making a huge difference but as you might see in your news of the US, we are at each other throats over if we should wear masks or get vaccinated. I am saying, we are not very scientific. That problem falls back to ignorance of Athens and what science has to do with good moral judgment. and democracy.

You found fault with Athens and that is justified, but we also need to understand what it had to do with science and good moral judgment, and democracy. Democracy is constantly evolving. The direction that evolution takes, can increase human potential or destroy the democratic nation. When we look at the racist problem we are dealing with, it validates what Socrates said about exploiting people. Sooner or later the exploited people will become a problem. We have sown a racist seed in our democracy and are far from your understanding of what is wrong with it.

Ok, clear enough. But then, what Athens had was no democracy as we understand it. People loving outside the city walls were not citizens, women were not citizens, slaves were not citizens, foreigners were not citizens. Even Aristotle (and I mean Aristotle, not a footnotes in the history of philosophy!) could not vote in Athenian democracy. He was a foreigner, a 'metoik', excluded from many rights the full Athenian citizens had. — Tobias

What an absolutely delightful argument!

Hold on to your chair because I am going to get very cynical. :wink:

Since when did the fate of the poor become the government's concern and the government paying for child care?! :scream: Really, you want women mucking around in government? That appears to lead to a nanny state and the destruction of our capitalism because of the evil of socialism. And as for those foreigners, do you want them coming in and having a say in government?

I don't know how aware of US politics you are but those concerns did not end with the fall of Greek city/states. The end of patriarchy and that social order, has been traumatic. And God knows, those refugees flooding into our country pose a serious threat! And the last thing we should do is open our borders and give them voting rights! And it is even a problem to give people of color voting rights, even if they are technically citizens. Trump won the election and Biden should not be living in the White House, and this is a very serious matter. This is so serious it was okay to storm the Capitol Building in an effort to prevent the wrong man from being president.

Okay, enough of me venting. Tensions are running very high right now and I very much appreciate having a different preceptive in an international forum. I don't think the US looks very civilized compared to some European countries that have more experience with being civilized. Advanced science and technology is changing everything and thanks for noticing when I speak of democracy it is an ideal not limited to the US.

On to a more thoughtful reply to your post.

Indeed! Actually the same kind of military regimes were enabled everywhere in bureaucracy, in the hospitals, in areas hit by pandemics, in factories and in schools. Michel Foucault write about it brilliantly. But actually, the German military, at least in WW2 was so ruthlessly efficient because they allowed field commanders leeway into how to reach objectives. That you describe is known as Taylorism, or Fordism, the mindless deskilled working on the production line. The current 'mobilization' of citizens is far less crude and more insidious than that. We are led to accepting the goals rather mindlessly, but the means. we are taught to think about them. It is much more efficient than thinking ahead in every eventuality. As actually German lawyers learned. Prussia was also one of the first countries with something like 'science of law'. What I mean is, also 'Prussian education' developed. We are no longer in the 19th century. — Tobias

I am so glad you see the expansion of military order throughout the whole of society. You may have been taught to think about the means of achieving goals. But I don't think this comes with education in the US. There are factions that are trying to get us there and the US is on the brink of another civil war!
We are processing a complete change of consciousness and this is a very turbulent process! People are flipping out and gunning down everyone in sight. The storming of our Capitol Building was an organized action and I don't know how anyone can believe Trump did not intentionally inspire it. From what I have heard through television, Germany has made awesome progress and I speak of the US that has not made that progress and is in intense trouble right now. We are at the point where Hitler took over, not where Germany is today.

And I am not sure about everything I have said, but I am trying to think through want you said and my more immediate information gathering that has been hammering away at the industrial model of education. I have so much thinking to do and I am thrilled by how you stimulate it.

Just part of the inevitable change of life? You mean the inevitable "progress" as part of a lifestyle that has done more harm to humanity than any other form has done and that even claims about itself that it is a lifeform lifted above other forms, as you write yourself. Now every form of life thinks it's the best, but imposing it by force is something completely different. Claiming that beating people in submission in favor of The Way, and that it's only natural this had to happen, that it had to be that way, is not any different from turning people into submission in the name of God. Again, this is no attack against science (I'm one myself!), only a defense of people who want to base living on a different story. — Raymond

I think you speak with much more hindsight than you realize. Only recently have many of us accepted global warming is happening. It is all well and good to look back and look forward and conclude we have not been angels without fault. But I think we should acknowledge this kind of thinking is the result of our progress. We can know more today than ever before and if we were not here, we could not know so much and would not judge ourselves wrong. I think you need to be a little easier on humans who are learning as we go.

If it were not for the technology we have developed fewer people would live to old age and that would be terrible because young people do not have the perspective that is gained with age. We would not be able to feed the world as well as we are doing. We have so much to be thankful for, and I think being thankful or throwing stones, is more about our attitude than anything else.

Yep. I like the "little pepper-corn" analogy. I've mentioned before that the number of new research papers in math alone arriving at Cornell's ArXiv.org surpasses 250 per day. — jgill

Wow. A gentleman in the apartment complex where I live is devoted to math. I asked him what is happening in the math field and he explained there are many sources of information and a lot is going on and he was not moved to speak of any one thing. :lol: I had no idea something like 250 papers per day is what he was talking about. Kind of like someone from a small European country coming to the US and expecting to drive across it in a few hours. The truth of the matter can be overwhelming. And considering my math skills are third-grade level, I can now understand why he didn't want to explain more. You speak of a world of thought that is very foreign to me.

These countries are western in fact. Cities in India, China, Afghanistan are all alike. I mean the ways of life made impossible by western expansion. There are, or better, were, lots of them scattered around the globe. African tribes (showing themselves for money to tourists), Aboriginals (some in Australia drinking alcohol after being robbed from their land), people on islands who got cancer by nuclear testing), people in India getting used for money while their ancestors lived a happy life before the advent of the west, native Americans, people from Africa living a happy life before the west arrived, the Hopi Indians, Inuit ways of life, people living happily in nature, etc. — Raymond

While I agree with some of what you said, I also disagree with things you said. I sure do not see Cities in India, China, Afghanistan as the same. I also do not blame the west for all the problems.

As the imperative of growth dictates. Progress=growth. Litterally. More, deeper, larger, higher, faster, further, richer, shorter, thinner, fatter, boomer, or banger. "The record is broooooken!" I'm not saying this is inherently wrong, but it fucks up nature. That's the reason for the chaos in nature. And the unholy alliance of state and Science. I'm "a scientist" myself (like anybody..) but at least I realize what once was God and State is now Science and State. — Raymond

That is a better explanation of what has gone wrong than blaming the west. I am not arguing disrupting aborigines' lives is not harmful or even tragic. But life is change and with the bad comes the good, such as clean water, medicine, technologies that benefit people, resulting in more people living into old age and then all the problems that come with growth. It might be unavoidable that mankind brings on the chaos that destroys life on the planet, or that one human consciousness consumes all human consciousness, making what has happened to the aboriginal people of the world just part of the inevitable change of life.

In a philosophy forum, it is paramount that we consider the meaning of life and the best possible values. Realizing such things as feeding the very poor will increase the size of their breeding population and therefore the problem of keeping them fed and this becomes a problem for the earth as the growing population of humans consumes resources and this can mean the extinction of species and global warming. We need to wonder and attacking is not wonderful.

All non-western forms of live. — Raymond

Please, explain. Are you saying the Chinese have a better way of life? Perhaps India is the best model? Arabs are equal to Asians? Do you want to live in Afghanistan?

I haven't unfortunately. It was on my 'watch list' and maybe if I find it I will watch it soon. But anyway, many Nazi's were guilty, men who learned how to read and write. Nazism was one side of German history, it also had wonderful theologians, philosophers, and literary geniuses. — Tobias

Yes, yes, and that is why I argue education so seriously! Saltwater is water, but you do not to drink it. When we are considering education, we need to consider what is the purpose of that education. Perhaps you can go my reply to Raymond that quotes James Williams.

Liberal education is for free men. A liberal education prepares the young to be self-governing and self-directed!

Education for technology has always been education for slaves. Our technology has advanced but it is still for slaves and their society is run by policies they do not make. This mentality wants a Hitler or a Trump, who will make life good for them. They have archy confused with liberty and favor brute force over reason. No matter how technologically smart they may be, that is not equal to wisdom. @Raymond seems to be arguing what is wrong with this.

That is exactly what we do in academia nowadays... we are not trained to be revolutionaries. Part of me resents it, but another part of me sees wisdom in this slow but meticulous grinding of our lens... — Tobias

My last post was not done when it posted because of a technical problem, but there is no harm in jumping to your last post. What you said is true, and because this is an international forum, I was made aware of this being an international problem. Amazingly Athens also had these problems! Perhaps we can see this as growing pains?

I am feeling a burning need to look more deeply into Athens's history. There was strong resistance to the increasing technological focus of education in Athens and some thought this was destroying Athens, as I have concerns about our technological focus destroying the US.

I am so grateful you are so open-minded and you are not an "either this or that" thinker. You open the windows for thinking, while many slam them shut.

Well ideally, in my point of view, education makes us happier persons who understand and can cope with the world around them. — Tobias

I love that statement! :heart:

American heroes are great but children today grow up in an international world, heck, we are even conversing here in an international forum. — Tobias

Yes, our heroes were quaint but culturally very important to the US, and destroying them, as we have done, has destroyed our culture. The result is being what we defended our democracy against. This change is directly related to the change in bureaucratic order. It is the difference between being an individual or a member of a group.

Why do you think learning about the world is important? I am not saying it is not important but I am struggling with a question of identity and unity. To destroy our sense of identity and cultural agreements could have negative consequences. Wow, could this be a philosophical subject. I somewhat envy Native Americans who have strong tribal identities as this is so different from the "Lonely Crowd" in which most of us live. And that concern of the lonely crowd is the opposite of my concern in the paragraph above, that we lose individual power and the strong leaders we need. :roll:

I don't think what I have said is comprehensible but it is confused. I am afraid this confusion is behind the intense political and social conflict we have now. I think nations can be as in great need of psychoanalysis and individuals. The US is having an identity crisis.

Why should a democracy be a way of live and social organization above all others? Why shouldn't other forms of life be sensitive to the dignity and worth of the individual? — Raymond

What other system empowers individuals and lifts the individual human potential, and therefore, the collective potential of civilization?

Three cheers for Prussian education no? — Tobias

No, I will give you a quote from James William's 1899 book, TALKS TO TEACHERS ON PSYCHOLOGY; AND TO STUDENTS ON SOME OF LIFE'S IDEALS.

"If we reflect upon the various ideals of education that are prevalent in the different countries, we see that what they all aim at is to organize capacities for conduct. This is most immediately obvious in Germany, where the explicitly avowed aim of the higher education is to turn the student into an instrument for advancing scientific discovery. The German universities are proud of the number of young specialists whom they turn out every after year, -not necessarily men of any original force of intellect, but men so trained to research that when their professor gives them an historical or philosophic thesis to prepare, or a bit of laboratory work to do, with a general indication as to the best method, they can go off by themselves and use apparatus and consult sources in such a way as to grind out in the requestite number of months some little pepper-corn of new truth worthy of being added to the store of extant human information on that subject. Little else is recognized in Germany as a man's title to academic advancement than his ability thus to show himself as an efficient instrument of reserch."

I watched a video about education last night that explains what is wrong the government attempting to control education. Good mothers and teachers of the past are focused on helping children self-actualize. Fathers are apt to set expectations and expect the young to meet those expectations. Now the teachers in the US no longer have control of their classrooms but are being controlled. The past may have had faults but child care was pretty much left to the mother as teaching children was left to the teacher, not policymakers. I want to share the video and what is wrong with the present male domination and control of education. That is education for the Military-Industrial complex instead of education for well-rounded individual growth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wX78iKhInsc

Isn't Eisenhower also the one who warned the US about the danger of the MIC? — neomac

Isn't Eisenhower also the one who warned the US about the danger of the MIC? — neomac

Yes, he was and he knew what he was talking about. I was going through the books that contained the government documents for every year, because I wanted to know more about the National Defense Education Act. After I found the information I wanted, I skimmed through the books to see what else might be interesting. That is how I found the information about new connections between government and research and government and education.

Years later I checked the abstracts for information about the recession that started in 1974 because of OPEC embargoed oil to the US. I noticed all research on poverty disappeared from the abstracts and in its place was research on welfare fraud. (controlled research for a purpose) About a year after the research change the news was talking about welfare fraud as much it takes about covid today (manipulation of the media). Germany never did better. It is what the Germans did when they wanted money for war. Control information to manipulate the public.

This research pitted the public against those bums on welfare and domestic budgets were slashed. Some states discontinued welfare to two-parent families when there were no jobs because of the recession. Forcing men to abandon their families so their families could get help. This created a huge family problem that is still with us today and then Reagan poured money into military spending.

Some of that money is what made Saddam strong because we were bribing oil producers to sell us oil cheap. We had the navy stationed in the Mediterranean Sea, making it clear one way or another we were going to take oil. The recession was caused by OPEC embargoing oil, making just about everything Reagon said about us not needing to conserve, and the poor being lazy bums, a lie. There was a huge shift in wealth and power during the Reagan years.

What I have said is directly related to the dispute about socialism and also concern about families.

An idea can fail

1. At conception stage (think)

2. At implementation stage (act)

It's unclear to me at which stage socialism fails. — Agent Smith

When the masses are clueless, as they are, democracy is only an illusion.

In another thread, Weber was mentioned so I pulled out a book of Weber Selections and he may have been a genius, but re-reading what he said, it is alarmingly mechanical. A quick scan impresses me as soulless. I may be wrong and I am inviting other opinions.