save the world

[TinyBubbles]

All well said; All this is being done to enrich the already obscenely rich. To really fix the problem, people will have to redefine themselves and their needs... cooperate with each other a bit more; return to the village mentality (in part) somehow without abandoning the global progress towards things like space exploration, medical advancement, et cetera. It can be done, it'll just take some creativity and positive persuasion.

In addition to the rich becoming richer though, more jobs are produced, more tax revenue collected.. accelerated economic growth, which generally means not only do the rich get richer but depending on the state's income distribution policy *everyone* will get richer, if only indirectly by benefiting from improved local infrastructure. So there's obviously some pretty compelling reasons to keep the system the way it is.

If we're really to change the world, to reverse overpopulation and to reduce environmental damage, I think we really need to readjust our cultural values. You say we should cooperate with each other; I think so too, but in what ways do you mean? How specifically should we cooperate, and what would incite us to? Returning to the village mentality in a world with surplus unnecessary commodities likes cars and the internet isn't going to be straightforward. Maybe religion would help in this regard, since pretty much every major religion advocates a life of temperance.

 

[~jet]

In addition to the rich becoming richer though, more jobs are produced, more tax revenue collected.. accelerated economic growth, which generally means not only do the rich get richer but depending on the state's income distribution policy *everyone* will get richer, if only indirectly by benefiting from improved local infrastructure. So there's obviously some pretty compelling reasons to keep the system the way it is.

Ehh... yes and no; The average american, for example, while having more doo-dads, is actually a lot poorer than they were 30 and 40 years ago during a time when they could actually own their homes and their cars... today these these are essentially only rented, and on credit at that. Meanwhile, in just the last 10 years, the elite have absorbed the majority of all ownership in the country (and elsewhere as well.) Recent trade policy changes and deregulations have shown that they increasingly see the rest of us as a less than necessary commodity, besides.

If we're really to change the world, to reverse overpopulation and to reduce environmental damage, I think we really need to readjust our cultural values. You say we should cooperate with each other; I think so too, but in what ways do you mean? How specifically should we cooperate, and what would incite us to? Returning to the village mentality in a world with surplus unnecessary commodities likes cars and the internet isn't going to be straightforward. Maybe religion would help in this regard, since pretty much every major religion advocates a life of temperance.

Mayhaps the religions themselves do this, but the religious generally seem to do anything but; so often at each other's throats and seeing everyone strange from them as either an enemy or an eventual enemy; this is one extremely important point we must unlearn if we are going to have a future at all. As for cooperation, we need to learn that, thanks to the internets, the office setting is becoming obsolete, and that's a lot of electricity and heating and unfarmable space that can be restored to things we need more... like farmland or wilderness or properly organized and ecologically balanced living space (thus returning wilderness to other sections of the world instead.) Growing food locally, making furniture and clothing locally, offering local services, et cetera... these ensure you know what you are buying, who you are buying it from, and that you and your neighbors have a reliable foundation for life... something that takes a little stress out of our lives, reduces our hatred and/or fear of one another, and is more sustainable in the long term. Education has to be restored. Between that AND less stressful lives, all evidence to date points to a net effect of reducing fertility besides, thus also helping reduce the pressure on the pot over time (by reducing population at a steady pace that doesn't o'erstress aging infrastructures that we simply should be happy to do without.)

 

[~jet]

In any case, the above can really only be accomplished by making this model more appealing than the materialistic self-indulgant and thoroughly unhealthy one we've got going now.

 

[MindYourHead]

Ehh... yes and no; The average american, for example, while having more doo-dads, is actually a lot poorer than they were 30 and 40 years ago during a time when they could actually own their homes and their cars... today these these are essentially only rented, and on credit at that. Meanwhile, in just the last 10 years, the elite have absorbed the majority of all ownership in the country (and elsewhere as well.) Recent trade policy changes and deregulations have shown that they increasingly see the rest of us as a less than necessary commodity, besides.

X2.
Americans the past 30 years or so have been using credit more and more to make up for wages that increasingly have not only not kept pace with living costs, but have also had less and less buying power per dollar.

Now it takes 2 people working full time to partially maintain a certain standard of living, that only required one person working full time to maintain 40 years ago.
It was unusual when I was a kid in the 60's that both parents needed to work.

 

[~jet]

X2.
Americans the past 30 years or so have been using credit more and more to make up for wages that increasingly have not only not kept pace with living costs, but have also had less and less buying power per dollar.

Now it takes 2 people working full time to partially maintain a certain standard of living, that only required one person working full time to maintain 40 years ago.
It was unusual when I was a kid in the 60's that both parents needed to work.

Yes exactly; in the 50's, a highschool janitor could expect to raise a couple of kids in a modestly acceptable house at a modestly acceptable standard of living without going deeply into debt on that income ALONE; today he and his wife would both have to do the same job double time (thus rarely if ever seeing any kids they could barely afford to have) just to keep up with the interest payments on all the money they have to borrow to pretend to have a standard of living at all. And this is just america; Most people around the world would kill to live this well, and the elite are happily exploiting them all for practically slave wages just to broaden the profit margin on the goods they turn around to sell to us at the same or higher price which we can't afford and really don't even need.

I don't know that the [human] world can be saved with such a top-heavy and me-myself-and-i attitude. It may be left to the survivors to learn from this mistake and rebuild in a world that has extremely little bio-diversity and little more than jellyfish to offer by way of food. Yes, I know this is a bit dire and gloom-and-doom; I just haven't seen much evidence to contradict this fear as yet. Progress is some areas is good.... aaaaaand thoroughly not even remotely close to being an approximation of good enough... not when the masses are so self-absorbed and/or obscenely overworked that they can't focus on anything but themselves/survival.

 

[MindYourHead]

Yes exactly; in the 50's, a highschool janitor could expect to raise a couple of kids in a modestly acceptable house at a modestly acceptable standard of living without going deeply into debt on that income ALONE.

Yes, I should have specified I was reffering to maintaining a modest standard of living like the majority of us do.

 

[Galileo]

The thing is, is that any move like this is going to require a lot of change, and in a relatively short time.

and it's going to meet a lot of opposition, especially from massive corporations, who have a vested interest in lots and lots of human beings being born so they have a massave market.

you can repeat and repeat as much as you want that it's not fair to say, limit couples to having 1 or 2 children, but if you want to be fair on the children that you're going to have, then it's better to limit yourself to having only 1 or 2 children in the first place. and yes, maybe it isn't fair to have an entrance exam for parenting, or to limit the number of kids everyone can have so that everyone can have at least one, it's only not fair, because at the moment, be ye rich or poor, you can have as many of them as you want! that's what we're used to, and we don't want it taken away, because...because....because that's what we're used to! it's our right damn it, because it always has been! well, not if you're in china, but you get what I mean.

But, if the number of children were limited, at least the children that were born would actually have an existance. they would have the possibility of having jobs, stability and a relatively clean planet to live on.

you can't have a revolution without a revolution.

 

[~jet]

Yes, I should have specified I was reffering to maintaining a modest standard of living like the majority of us do.

Oh no worries; I didn't get a different impression and this is just my data-driven opinion I'm speaking from anyways; Trying to add to the convo, not abscond with it. =)

As for me, I'm trying to find a way to not have to buy a house (assuming I intend only to be here a couple years) in this ridiculously expensive area (D.C. metro) and yet not have all my earnings wholly vanish via rent. It does not SOUND modest at all, but I've considered the possibility of buying a boat to live on... sure it'll depreciate far more than a house but, unless it sinks, it'll have SOME resale value, unlike an apartment which is a 110% financial black hole =P

 

[~jet]

The thing is, is that any move like this is going to require a lot of change, and in a relatively short time.

and it's going to meet a lot of opposition, especially from massive corporations, who have a vested interest in lots and lots of human beings being born so they have a massave market.

you can repeat and repeat as much as you want that it's not fair to say, limit couples to having 1 or 2 children, but if you want to be fair on the children that you're going to have, then it's better to limit yourself to having only 1 or 2 children in the first place. and yes, maybe it isn't fair to have an entrance exam for parenting, or to limit the number of kids everyone can have so that everyone can have at least one, it's only not fair, because at the moment, be ye rich or poor, you can have as many of them as you want! that's what we're used to, and we don't want it taken away, because...because....because that's what we're used to! it's our right damn it, because it always has been! well, not if you're in china, but you get what I mean.

But, if the number of children were limited, at least the children that were born would actually have an existance. they would have the possibility of having jobs, stability and a relatively clean planet to live on.

you can't have a revolution without a revolution.

The sad part is, we can have a nonviolent, friendly, healthy revolution... or we can have a 90-odd-percent die-off that takes most of the ecosystem with us. The barrier is poor education, materialism, and the aforementioned corporations.

We need to replace them; decide they aren't necessary to a progressive and/or wholesome way of life... en masse.

And yes, the fact of the matter is, human beings MUST consume biomass in order to survive, period... no matter what we do in terms of things like electrical generation, pollution mitigation, political/economic maturation, etc. The world isn't capable of supporting 7 billion people for very long, much less indefinitely... we should have stabilized as a specie somewhere between 1 and 2 billion, if we wanted a perpetually acceptable future potential. So yes, it seems unfair to limit the number of children.. but it is more unfair to said children to burden them with the consequences of overpopulation, too... a handful of generations of voluntarily small families will do far more for human heath and survival than just about any other innovation we have in the works currently. This should be a matter of intellectual responsibility spread benignly across the masses, rather than a matter of brute force or incentivizing, etc.

 

[~jet]

BTW, apologies to all... this is just one of my passionate issues; Don't be put off by my enthusiasm

 

[Galileo]

oh yes, I totally agree with you on that point, but like I said, do you want a revolution without a revolution?

in time, I think it's the sort of thing people could come to understand on an educated intelectural level, esepcially since most of it is just common sense. but at the moment, it just isn't. ad into it religious barriors needing to be broken down with regard to birth control and abortion and so on, implementing such a world-wide policy, or even nation-wide would be a lot of work, and yes, in the beginning, it would require some enforcing, because there are always going to be people who think that rules are for other people.

but, the bottom line is, is that yes, people sometimes do suffer when major change happens. that's the way revolutions work, because the whole point is is that some people aren't going to like said changes.
On the other hand, it's necessary if we want to keep surviving as a race. if you don't care, then go for it, have as many kids as you like. you won't be around to see it all go to hell, but the most basic nature of man is to have children in order to preserve itself. if you care about preserving yourself, you should care about all these things.

 

[~jet]

you won't be around to see it all go to hell

Well, it kinda sorta already is going to hell, and sooner and more rapidly than even previous doomsayers proclaimed, contrary to people making fun of them. Entire villages are disappearing into the mud in Alaska and Siberia; others have been washed away by south-east asian floods (which, in turn, warn of a serious LACK of water in years to come, what with glaciers disappearing.) Our entire economy has been convinced that it can't survive without wall street and walmart and weapons sales to bickering 3rd world nations, etc.

Ugh... now I'm annoying even myself. =)

 

[laurie]

Why do we need more money to pay higher costs nowadays? I'm bad with economics, so I don't understand why it happened. Sure, I get inflation, but why has it risen so much? And doesn't it sometimes happen that it goes the other way and less money is worth more?
It seems mad that people are living on credit! I'm so confused!

 

[randomsomeone]

I just try to help save the world I happen to live in. Through my friends, how I parented my kids, my career choices, even small decisions...they all tie into making the world better and not worse. In the process, these have made me better, too...more able to devote my personal energy and creativity in a way that seems to multiply rather than diminish over time.

 

[Galileo]

I do volunteer work and so on, a lot of it actually, but not because I have some mad idea that my work is specifically going to make the whole world a better place, and that isn't the reason why I do it anyway. I do it because I care about my region because it's where I live.

I don't even labour under the illusion that it will make even my country or state a better place, and I don't really care that it doesn't, because I know that there's not a lot that I as one person can do to help the world on a worldly scale.
no matter how many starving children in africa you save from death or whatever, there are going to be so many more to replace those children and the cycle just goes round and around. it's not dealing with the overall problem if why they are starving in the first place.

 

[myself]

You cant save the world, you're too small, its too big, and what is the world? the earth and rocks? the world to me is human kind.

I understand what you say, I agree somewhat...

still...ignoring the impact we have on our environment is a bit counterintuitive to me...

I might be crazy... but the issue nags at me.

I feel less stressed when I acknowledge the situation.

It seems like SOMETHING could be done...



~jet

I like the boat idea

 

[A Person]

Is your concern the health of the planet or humankind?​

If it is the health of the planet, I don't think you should worry too much. The planet will be fine. A lot of people believe that the ozone layer is not being destroyed and that the reason for the increase of the earth​

 

[Prometheus]

Besides, most studies show that humans are a negligible impact on the thinning of the ozone, if any at all. The primary contribution to atmospheric pollution is actually from volcanoes, which are FAR, FAR more destructive than the entirety of mankind. That's not to say we shouldn't tread lightly to avoid being the straw that broke the camel's back, but there are certainly more urgent environmental issues. You know, like there not being much of an environment after all this human expansion and overpopulation.

On overpopulation, though, scientists actually believe the world can adequately sustain a maximum of 12 billion humans. Of course, this most likely sacrifices most of the animal kingdom, which I am very not cool with. 1-2 billion people would be a lot more satisfactory.

As to why inflation is what it is, almighty wikipedia has suggestions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#United_States

As [URL="http://www.theworldwithoutus.com"]Alan Weisman [/URL]will tell you, the planet is perfectly capable of recovering its grandeur. If you ask me, the real problem (and solution) is the human being. We destroy, but we don't build anything back up. The battle for the soul of civilization is the same as the battle for the soul of human kind and the greatest opponent a prospective hero has to saving the world is the decadent nature of human nature.

Unfortunately, this is a beast far greater than a dragon, Mighty Beowulf, and definitely more potent than a sleeping giant. They need their Odysseus to pull the lotus fruit from their hand and shove them back onto the boat, kicking and screaming if need be.

 

[myself]

If you ask me, the real problem (and solution) is the human being. We destroy, but we don't build anything back up. The battle for the soul of civilization is the same as the battle for the soul of human kind and the greatest opponent a prospective hero has to saving the world is the decadent nature of human nature.

Unfortunately, this is a beast far greater than a dragon, Mighty Beowulf, and definitely more potent than a sleeping giant. They need their Odysseus to pull the lotus fruit from their hand and shove them back onto the boat, kicking and screaming if need be.

true. a human problem.

where did we go wrong?

for better or worse, we are here

how do we take care of this problem?

is there any fix?

a massive shift of consciousness?



do we just wait around for it, or do we work towards it?

what kind of work would it take?

 

[Prometheus]

true. a human problem.

where did we go wrong?

for better or worse, we are here

how do we take care of this problem?

is there any fix?

a massive shift of consciousness?



do we just wait around for it, or do we work towards it?

what kind of work would it take?

Perhaps where we went wrong was taking the natural being (human) out of nature. Civilization is a burden because our nature wants us to act like the animals we are, but we are kept safe by our civilization and our imposed orders. Freud believed this created a trade-off: we gained order, but we gained neuroses.

I truly think the progression of human thought, struggling through the storm though it is, is steadily evolving us out of that dependency. I'd say that the vast majority of people are "good people" insofar as their core values, assholes though they may be, but most of them are too subdued by the treacherous dredge that is social living. If I spent my life in a materialist world, abiding by very specific guidelines within a set trajectory of day-to-day life, working in a boring and uniform cubicle, I'd probably become extremely apathetic, too.

I think overpopulation screws with that, too. In a village of 30 people, most of the men (and likely women) will probably rise to defend it. In a nation of 300 million, eh, someone else'll answer the phone.