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A discussion |
| [Introduction]
Just a place to float ideas, and shoot them down!
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| To start, I'll go with something short and purely conceptual. I'll move on to the more concrete stuff later. There is no objective proof of the existence of a physical reality. I think this is true. Our entire existence is faith-based. Everything we witness is modified by our senses, and as such open to manipulation by both exernal and internal factors, like expectations. As such, it is reasonable to assume that any limitations we place on reality are in fact limitations imposed by our own preconceptions, not by the rules of physical reality itself. This appears to be reinforced by modern physics, whereby the suggestion seems to be that consistency is an illusion generated by the observer effect, as suggested by the Schrodiger's Cat thought experiment. I suppose my point is, is our perception of the ability of humanity to acheive "X" goal the only limiting factor on humanity's ability to achieve "X" goal? |
Let me be sure I understand you correctly. Which one of these would be a correct restatement of your position? 1...There is only one kind of stuff and that stuff is thought. Thought is what we are thinking and even though we have the illusion that there is a material universe which is not thought, actually it is thought because the only way we have knowledge of it is by thinking about it. And therefore there is no reason to suppose that the universe is anything more than thought. It's our thought that there is a material universe. 2...There are two kinds of stuff. Our minds and everything else. However, whatever everything else might be, we only know it as thoughts in our mind. I assume that you are holding the first view. Why? Since you state that "...any limitations we place on reality are in fact limitations imposed by our own preconceptions, not by the rules of physical reality itself..." that requires I assume that you are taking position number one -- all is thought. I see one problem with the internal logic of that view. There is no way to prove anything with it, including the assertion that all is thought. If all is thought then you can think either all is thought or you can think no, all is not thought and you will have no way of knowing which idea is correct. If you think all is thought, then you believe that and that's the way the universe seems to be. But if you believe not everything is thought, then that becomes the way the universe seems to be. However, if you believe someone you love will never die, and then they do, what happens to your view that all is thought? If all is thought then why not think immortal thoughts? Surely, people who create their universe with their minds would not choose to kill themselves with old age when they could just as easily think themselves to be eternally young? But possibly you were asserting position #2, that there are two kinds of stuff, our minds and everything else? In that case, what is the basis for assuming that our minds have any more influence on everything else than everything else has influence on our minds? It would seem to be a two-way street. Examples could be given. But I will wait for your response.  |
| Correct, I am holding the first view. Why? A few reasons. Firstly, everyone holds number 2, and I like to be awkward and see if people can defend the classical position, even though as far as I can tell it is in fact undefendable. Secondly, because I have experienced the edges of lucid dreams, seen their complete perceptual reality, and as such have no reason to believe that this entire reality couldn't be created by interacting thought patterns (the interaction is only needed to create consistency, not reality). It is possible to prove anything whilst holding that viewpoint. I do not believe in an objective reality, however I do believe in other people, not because I have any evidence for that assumption but because it helps my sanity to do so. As such in order to prove any assumption or theory about reality it is simply a case of referring to another person in order to verify or reject that viewpoint. Much as we are doing now. all is not thought and you will have no way of knowing which idea is correct. If you think all is thought, then you believe that and that's the way the universe seems to be. But if you believe not everything is thought, then that becomes the way the universe seems to be. Although this is true, what you are arguing is circular. All you have proven is that each approach is entirely arbitrary, in that neither has any real validity. This is not true, as I can undoubtably prove I exist as a thought pattern, as I am aware. Anything beyond that is conjecture. This is the crux of my argument. A rational mind cannot reasonably assume the existence of anything outside itself without falling into a faith-based viewpoint of reality, which in effect places all empirical science in the same realm as the most esoteric religious belief. Just because a thousand other people agree that your mathematical calculation is roughly correct and accounts for the majority of observations, does not mean another person will not come along tomorrow with a theory that blows yours out of the water, or points out that your universal theory in fact only accounts for a very thin spectrum of phenomena, and is completely inaccurate when dealing with others. Witness Newtonian physics versus Relativity. In that case the most likely answer is that although both are acceptable explanations, neither is really hitting what is true, as neither can generalise across what is supposed to be one system. In other words, there is no over-riding internal consistency within the physical world as our models understand it. However, if you believe someone you love will never die, and then they do, what happens to your view that all is thought? If all is thought then why not think immortal thoughts? Surely, people who create their universe with their minds would not choose to kill themselves with old age when they could just as easily think themselves to be eternally young? As I say, I don't believe in an objective reality (that for me is the same as believing unquestioningly in a spaghetti monster), however I do believe in other people as thought patterns separate from myself. From there I jump into the concept that reality as we see it is socially determined. The reason we don't remember the early years is because we have not been taught how to see them yet, what we see is a mess of stimuli that cannot be separated and analysed. As such, the reason we cannot choose to live forever in this reality because we have been taught it is impossible. Equally, when faced with a dream state we have not been given limits for, we can extend our reality to last as long as we want. I have had dreams lasting for longer perceptually than I have been asleep. I have spoken to people who have had out of body experiences that involved watching the creation of the universe from start to finish, watching an entire lifetime pass. All these suggest that our real ability to perceive extends far outwith what conventional wisdom views as the possible. If someone dies, I don't believe their thought died. You're falling away from my concept there. If only thought is real, the death of an objective body does not equal the death of the thought. I view the thought as the creator, the body as the explanation required by the outside observer. I suppose the hard thing to grasp is that I'm attacking reality from a purely subjective viewpoint, and accepting that instead of grouping two or more subjective viewpoints and calling them objective. That's just lying to yourself really. |
Then would this be a correct statement of your position if I were you... I think, therefore I exist. I am thought. Everything I know is thought. Therefore there is no reason to believe there is anything other than thought. However, I do not believe that I am the ONLY such "center of the universe". There are many others, much like myself, and each one of them exists in his universe of thought. Our thoughts intersect in many ways. One way is that we have all agreed to share the illusion of a material universe. This is a 3-D space that we have created so that we can all have a visual appearance. From time to time we "discover" rules about it. Although a better way to say it is that we "create" rules about it since everything is thought. As time goes on we modify those rules. This is the progress of Science. OK, that does allow for other people and it allows for a lack of immortality simply because that's what we all agreed on, probably in the hope that evolution would make things better and better so we're willing to play at death to improve our collective selves. It's not a big deal since we aren't really dead, we're just pretending to be dead. Actually, I could accept such a formulation of reality. It does have the advantage of removing the fear of death from the system. So to whatever extent dying makes people unhappy, knowing that it's just a form of sleep or a journey to another thought place should make them happier. I assume in this view that any problems we face can be solved by mutual discussion and changing our minds to believe in a new form of reality? I can accept that. It's not really inconsistent with the view of the universe as being composed of mind and everything else and there being a two-way interaction between the two. Quite a bit of our "thinking" about things involves either splitting things up into parts that we can name and understand or in putting named parts together into ever larger configurations and giving them new names. Like the transition from individual to family to village to city to nation to planet to whatever. Or in the reverse direction from body to heart to blood vessels to blood to red blood cells to molecules to atoms to particles to whatever. If there are any problems with adopting an "all is thought" view as the top level, I can't forsee them right now. Proceed with the discussion! Question: Do you believe there is any problem that all of humanity faces today? If so, what is it? |
| Woohoo! We started at the right place there, for sure. We're definitely on the same wavelength here, and as such a reasonable discussion of the problems faced by the world can be attempted. I think there are a few problems which are in the process of being overcome. I don't think we even really need to discuss them for them to be solved, it will happen naturally but it's fun to interact I think. I'll start with equity. Why every time I choose the biggest possible term I don't know. There is an imblance in the distribution of resources, that should be fairly easy to see. The problem lies not in how the resources are distributed (that is actually near perfect) but in how we go about obtaining what we need. I'm Scottish. In Britain we have a setup which would allow us to be totally insular if we stayed at a low-technological level and controlled population. I think the US is the same? However, third world countries like Africa have mineral wealth that is essential to allow us to develop the technologies which will allow us to explore space and continue to maintain globalised communication networks. My query is: How can we rejig our trading networks with these countries in order to ensure that our excess alleviates their need, and vice versa? |
Hmmm... why is it our responsibility to address their needs? I think the way these things usually go is like this: 1. Advanced nation exploits resource wealth of less-developed nation. 2. Less-developed nation figures out they are being exploited. 3. Revolution and turmoil bring about a new government in the less-developed nation. 4. The new government either confiscates the means of resource production or negotiates more favorable contracts with the advanced nation. 5. Advanced nation complains that the less-developed nation has too much control over the resources that the advanced nation needs to survive. 6. What follows next is either more negotiations and new contracts or the advanced nation invades the less-developed nation and forces them into an agreement that is more favorable to the advanced nation. The less developed nation should use step 3 and 4 to improve its education and infrastructure. If it merely lets the strongest of its citizens grab all the new wealth, then it will be in poor shape to resist step 6. The advanced nation should practice restraint at step 1 and should invest in the education and infrastructure of the less-developed nation. I think England in India might be an example of what should be done. The more harsh the advanced nation is at step 1 then the more turmoil will follow later. But there is an economic paradox in asking companies that want to mine and sell the mineral wealth of Africa to teach Africans how to mine and sell their own wealth. They will learn how to do it anyway, but it would not help the profits of international resource companies to turn over control of the resources before they absolutely have to do it. So I would say, beyond encouraging as much of a humanistic approach as possible, I don't see that there is much that can be changed. Do you? |
| Hmmm... why is it our responsibility to address their needs? Because we are part of a collective thought process. If we take without consideration for the consequences of our actions, we build a debt of negative feeling towards us, which in the end results in the collapse of what we stole to build. I guess I'm defining a less ethereal form of karma. To your very accurate 6-point guide to the rise and collapse of civilisations (happily ignoring the collapse of the advanced nation despite the fact that the "indomitable" western civilisation that has held sway since roman times is now on the verge of economic and social failure) is fair. However, return to my point: I suppose my point is, is our perception of the ability of humanity to acheive "X" goal the only limiting factor on humanity's ability to achieve "X" goal? I will expound. Is our obsession with "the past being a guide to the future" (despite many a segment of fine print stating the exact opposite) the limiting factor on our ability to escape the "rise/fall" model of society? I think so, in fact I think that is the only reason we are in that pattern. People are generally inflexible, and find change incredibly difficult to deal with. They would rather self-destruct than alter a self-destructive thought pattern. Funny, from one perspective. Sad, from another. Would I worry about this? Not really, were it not for the glaring apparency of the imminent descent into a global period of authoritarian fascism. One way or another, either via the western patriot act/nanny state model, or via the eastern social control/collectivist capitalism, we seem to be determined to have leaders who will force us into shape. So, my next query is the western idealist model of individual freedom married with social cohesion a real impossibility, or is it only destined to be so because we insist on failing to learn from the past? |
I think saying "individual freedom married with social cohesion" is another way of saying that the forces of both competition and cooperation are at work in any group. The balance is going to always be dynamic. Sometimes it will seem like we have gone too far in a competitive, individualistic direction and sometimes it will seem like we have gone too far in a cooperative, collectivist direction. I think movement too far in either direction is self-correcting. The Soviet Union collapsed and the West had a Great Depression. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia became more individualistic and capitalistic. And after the Great Depression the West became more collectivist and socialistic. Self-correcting forces at work. I don't think "individual freedom married with social cohesion" is an "ideal". I think it is an acknowledgement of political reality. As far as self-destruction... I don't see any tendency toward self-destruction. You would have to give an example of what you mean. I think the main driver of the "rise/fall" model is generational change. Nobody alive today was alive 100 years ago. That's why education is so important. And why it can never be as good as we would like. If there was a class of immortals then they would make excellent teachers. But real teachers die just like everybody else. Meanwhile our civilization is constantly coming under the control of a new generation who just learned what a civilization is. It's not like a civilization has people in it who were around from the beginning. It's always starting over. But unfortunately, junk is piling up. The law code is becoming bigger and bigger, the history is becoming thicker and thicker, the science is becoming more and more advanced, the technology is becoming harder and harder to learn. People lose the ability to know what's important. New people get discouraged. They get lost in the details and the complexity. The same general types of mistakes get repeated over and over. The only way out is either better education techniques or actual genetic manipulation of human brains so that everyone becomes more intelligent or else the historical solution of letting the old civilization collapse so that a new one can rise from its ashes. |
| I don't see any tendency toward self-destruction. I apologise, to be fair I have a tendency to think on timescales that are pretty unrealistic. I was thinking of the collapse of the Mayan, the Egyptian, possibly the Atlantean, the Roman civilisations, and the concurrent loss of almost all information pertaining to their culture and technologies, especially in relation to the older ones. Perhaps I shouldn't think so far back. I mean, we don't do that any more, right? To self-correcting forces, yes they do exist. I just worry a little looking at the setup and sentiment in the US that the next collapse won't bring "self-corrective forces" but just a tougher clampdown on the people. As I say, it's clearly a more efficient social model to provide a robust economic system. I do't know if the great US firewall filters this stuff, but there's a decent link at the foot (1). Now, I know the debtors will want to prop the US up in order to maintain their debt payments, however I just worry about the sustainability of the big car/high waste/high consumption model. It may be that the georgia guidestones (2) are actually a global master plan, in which case the basic plan is reduce population heavily in order to maximise the living standard of the remaining few. 500,000,000 is a heck of a reduction, down 13* from today's figure. I think the problem with the western model is it sets the bar unsustainably high for living conditions. Having 95% of the wealth in the hands of 5% is not sustainable long term, and I just worry a little about how that system will break down. It strikes me as such a big change, and so completely out of a large chunk of the western worlds heads (blinkers are good for avoiding fear, not avoiding problems), that the only way it will happen is from outside. I know it's easy to feel invincible, but really no-one, and no nation is. I think the main driver of the "rise/fall" model is generational change. Nobody alive today was alive 100 years ago. That's why education is so important. I'm not sure if children really want to smash society to the extent you think they do. Again, I'm looking long term here. Look at the fall of Rome, and tell me there aren't parallels in modern day popular culture. However, I think the issue lies less with the children and more with the adults inflexibility. Rather than provide any kind of viable alternative, we blindly push on with what we know, frustrating the next generation who eventually become so disillusioned that the only option is to abdicate responsibility and leave the mess to rot. If there was a class of immortals then they would make excellent teachers. But real teachers die just like everybody else. Just as well, since people's minds fade fast. The older someone gets, the less able to deal with the new technology, the new systems, they become, and the more they see the current reality as "untenable". That's what creates the constant worries about the younger generation. I'm not worried about them really, the technology and so on will be fine in their hands. I understand technology fine, it's easy to learn as much as I need to about it. I also understand as much of science and numerous other topics as I need to. What I do worry about is the inflexibility of the political system, the economic system, the obsessive money-hoarders. It is those elements that are really needed to maintain global communication, which is vital to avoid international conflict and a "1984" scenario where the "great enemy" lurks just beyond an impenetrable wall. Old people get lost in details and complexity, I usually find intelligent kids relish the complexity that they deal with. In the UK our exam results get better every year, and every year all the cynical parents say the exams are getting easier. Every olympic games the runners get a touch faster. The world keeps getting better, and yet the doomsayers still think it will collapse at any moment. I don't think it has to. What worries me is, the people with the money and power know it has to if they want to keep their standard of living where it is. So, look at that picture and tell me it doesn't worry you even slightly? Then again, good always seems to win in Hollywood, so hopefully they're on the ball with reality too. Refs (1) http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/jan/18/us-federal-deficit-china-ame... (2)http://www.radioliberty.com/stones.htm |
I'm not saying that kids cause the fall of civilization. I'm just saying that as successive generations progress their motivations subtly change. Look at ancient Rome. The first generations who founded the Roman Republic were heroic and proud of building something great out of something small. The Republic grew and became prosperous and succeeding generations became more and more adapted to the idea of Rome's greatness and took it for granted. Life was easy, especially for people in the ruling classes. They did not have the ruggedness of the heroic generations so they became lax and eventually Rome became an empire ruled by decadent emperors. The masses were given bread and circuses. The rulers were given wealth and power. Everybody became immoral and spiritually weak and the decline was in full swing. Of course, there was no smooth curve from rise to fall. There were periods of progress and periods of setbacks. There was the Pax Romana period. But the overall trajectory went from lean youngsters hacking a new land out of the wilderness to fat oldsters wallowing in the wealth the land produced. I'm sure there is a parallel with American history or English history. It's probably true of any nation that it begins as a noble enterprise and ends as a decadent failure. I can't think of any nation that has failed in a heroic way. Coming to an end is just not considered heroic. There is no way to tell where America is in the cycle. It could totally collapse in a year or it could keep going for another four or five centuries. It's a certainty that eventually the American flag will be replaced by a different one. There has never been a nation in all of history that lasted forever unchanged. So there is no use worrying about issues of decline and fall other than making some effort to postpone the decline and keep the rise going as long as possible. I have full confidence in the new generations doing that. Why shouldn't they? It's their future. Their goal will be to make it a good one. It's the old people you have to worry about because they are jaded and cynical and have no future to lose. I can hear some old geezer saying, "Hell, let it fall! Who gives a damn! Maybe the world would be better if this civilization collapses." I have even heard pseudo-economists make that argument against the "bail outs". They say, "They should have let everything collapse. Then the the market could correct itself naturally without government intervention." It's pretty sad when the "market" becomes an entity to be prized more than "people". The view that human misery is okay as long as the free market functions unfettered is pretty sick. Fortunately, the majority of people do not feel that way. What were we talking about?  Oh, am I worried slightly? Yes, I am always worried slightly. I make no assumptions. Anything could happen. I like keeping up with the news because there are always surprises. It's a story that gets written as we read it. There is no one who can thumb ahead and see how it all turns out. But there are plenty of people who want to rewrite what has already happened!  So I don't trust history all that much. Didn't somebody say "history is written by the victors"? I despair of having truly accurate knowledge about anything, but I have a the feeling I have a rough sense of what's going on. I don't see any way to interpret it as an overall rise or fall because clearly China and India are rising fast, the Middle East is falling (or potentially rising) and the West is currently treading water, or possibly falling a little, or possibly rising a little. Can we really say for sure?  |
| Apologies for the delay, busy head the last wee while. Nope, I suppose we can't be sure. Most of the topics I had in mind were related to how to create a sustainable global community, how to distribute wealth more evenly, how to ensure countries receive a more reasonable share of what they produce. How to minimise racial and ethnic tensions etc. However, I don't think we'll go far with that since I get the impression you are of the laissez-faire, free market, slash and burn persuasion. As such, give me a topic..... Need more characters so I'll just illiterate for a while. Can't catch craziness. Don't doubt distinct definitions, every eulogy enlightens. Free folks find forgotten fathers, gasping great gallons greedily. Having heated himself, icy instincts instantly, juxtapose justifications. Keyless? Keep kicking. It isn't important. Just joke and jape. |
No, actually I am the exact opposite of free market slash and burn. I believe in a totally planned economy with mandatory death when citizens reach old age. (I'm thinking 80 but could probably be persuaded to change it to 90 as long as there was no free health care for people over 80) I would efficiently mine and process resources. Everyone in the world would have basically the same standard of living. Instead of wealthy people owning mansions, there would be elaborate resorts available on a time share basis to everyone. The continuous cycle of innovation and destruction would be brought to a stop. The actual functions of products would be analyzed and then the most efficient way to achieve that function would be standardized. For instance, there would not be 100 different types of automobiles but only 3 or 4. Same with trucks, heavy equipment, etc. Oil would be reserved for making jet fuel for airplanes. Nuclear power would be used everywhere. Nuclear wastes would be recycled as much as possible. Any remaining radioactive waste would be stored on the moon. It would be loaded into unshielded rockets by robotic means and crashed into a particular designated crater on the moon. The abundant nuclear power would generate electricity. Everything would run on electricity with the exception of aircraft. Food would be grown in three ways. Individual farming and gardening would be encouraged and subsidized. Large industrial farms would be used for large cities. Ways of processing algae into synthetic foods would be explored. Fishing would be strongly regulated and the purity of the seas would be a goal. Large ships would be nuclear-powered. Because of the adoption of a universal standard of living, there would be a minimum of political conflict. A large number of new religious cults would be developed so that no one religion could dominate. Major cities would be home to thousands of different cults, faiths, self-help groups, community-help groups, etc. Education would be desire-based. Children would learn whatever they wanted to learn. There would be plenty of guidance given them and an interest in history would be encouraged so that they would understand why the world became the way it was. So no, I am not really a slash and burn, free market guy. |
| Not sold on the standardised collectivist approach, myself. People are robotic enough right now without forcing everyone into ever decreasing boxes. Variety is the spice of life, as they say, and trying to force the world to own one type of toothbrush, buy one type of breakfast cereal, it all sounds way too "demolition man" for me. Planned death at 80-90, again, way way to robotic for me. The aim of modern medicine is to increase longevity, increase quality of life for the elderly. Hoarding scared old people onto buses to gas them is just weird. We are talking about actual people, here, not a bunch of battery hens we are trying to farm in the most efficient way. Honestly, if this is what the future world will look like then I'm running before we get too far into it. To provide the same standard of living for everyone, worldwide, is non-efficient and fails to grasp the variety of cultures in existence around the world. Not everyone wants the same standard of living. Everyone wants to be free from oppression, able to eat and drink and live without fear or pressure, but they don't all want a nice white picket fence and a 9-5. Many subsistence farmers have better work/life balances and score higher on happiness indexes than the average I-clone westerner. Innovation is vital, to attempt to halt progress by saying "we've invented everything, it's as good as we can get it, now standardise" is to completely smother human creativity. Some people just like to create things, even if it is just an improvement on what went before. To say....no, your idea is not 100% efficient....is to consign that person's dreams to the junkpile. Robotic, logical, but far from human. Saving oil for jet fuel is important, most plastics can be created organically these days. Recycling in general needs to be better in Britain, not checked in the US. They collect but don't have enough uses to really make the process efficient. When I look to the future, I don't look with current technology in mind, but considering future developments. I see nuclear power as an ok solution for the grid, but my own thought is that I would rather have my house off the grid run from renewables. Easily done these days, and I would feel far better about it then having a plant on my doorstep and a glowing moon. Plus we use hydroelectricity in Scotland to great effect, so luckily we could skip the whole nuclear issue entirely. I think if you give it 20-40 years, nuclear fission will start to look a little like an unpredicatable dodo with deadly poops. Having electric cars is a decent plan, I'm waiting to see how the hydrogen cars pan out myself but we'll see. Again, I tend to look to the future rather than working what I have now forward. Religion is already pretty varied, and that in itself causes problems. People will always want to fight over who has the best heaven, or who should be in hell. Or like Scientology be willing to pay huge sums for a stupid answer they could have worked out themselves if they'd sat and thought about it. Religion: People should be happy to listen to their conscience and go with what it says. If they need moral rules, then make them for themselves and don't impress them on others. If they want a like-minded community, base it on a community centre and the fact they are human, not what religion they are. Education-wise, yeah that sounds reasonable. If they'd let me write as much as a I wanted to at school I probably wouldn't have wandered aimlessly quite as long. However, it sounds kind of Steiner-ish? I have had friends who went to Steiner schools, some loved it, others didn't. The only thing that worries me a little is peer pressure. In Scotland at least, I can guarantee with that system many kids would choose to do what their friends did so they didn't seem "uncool". That's just a fact. Maybe the US kids are more independent, but from what I see it looks the same over there. All in all, I suppose my general opinion now is that we need to get rid of superpowers entirely, and allow each nation to contribute it's own little portion into creating a global society. It seems superpowers may be too internalised, right through society, to really see the huge spectrum of humanity that exists in the world and that a simplistic "make a box, squash em in" approach is going to fail, hard. What you suggest above sounds more like something I would fear the Chinese would do. I had always hoped that the Starbucks, Macdonalds, Iphone, Gap subtle standardisation was as far as it would go, but if it really were to progress to the extent which is suggested above, I would be siding with the Unabomber. My own personal opinion is that corporate responsiblity is key. If corporations put less effort into posting record profits for shareholders and more into making their business equitable for the people who build and maintain it, and improve quality of life in the countries they operate in, then in actuality we wouldn't have to change very much from the way we live now in order to create a relatively harmonious system in the short term. Following that, technology is advancing so fast that 10 or 20 years down the line things may look very different. Having said that, corporations are massively greedy. Perhaps in the short-term the only option is to watch the stock market crash as people see it for the imaginary gold machine that it is. After that maybe we can create something other than the 95/5% wealth split we have today. Kill the rich, feed the poor. Unless the really rich decide to stop having 100 times the money they can spend in a lifetime. |
| 1. Standard of Living But achieving a higher standard of living is what drives competition, agression, and ultimately warfare and oppression. By equalizing the standard of living you remove the incentive to kill your neighbor for his possessions. You said yourself that the rich are the problem. Who do you think the rich are? They are the people who want to have a higher standard of living than everybody else and have actually managed to achieve it to an extreme degree. It's not enough to say that we should have different standards of living just because people like variety. Obviously it would not be individual variety but some kind of group variety where different members of the group have different lifestyles. But that will not keep any particular member of the group from being stuck in a lifestyle. And if it's a crummy lifestyle he might want to rebel and go after the better lifestyle. In that way you set in motion the machinery of competition, aggression, and warfare. This is why cults often make eeveryone give up all their worldly goods. In that way lies peace and harmony. Ownership of goods means you must protect the goods and therefore you must have defenses and therefore somewhere there is an offense being mounted against you. He who owns nothing need not fear being robbed. However, I don't like the idea of the state owning everything because someone needs to be responsible for upkeep and maintenance. So let's all own enough to have a good life, but let it be the same as evryone else has so that there will be no jealousy. Parents do this with their children all the time. There would be no peace in the house if you give the favorite child toys and games and the other children get cardboard boxes to play with. 2. Mandatory Death It's the very fact that medical science can prolong life that requires an artificially imposed death day. Once it is accepted it will be a time of joy. Relatives will gather together to say good-bye to a family memebr. People will look forward to the end of their life instead of fearing it. The known is always more welcome than the unknown. Suicide rates will drop. The savings in medical costs will be trememendous. It can take over a million dollars to prolong someone's life from 90 to a 100. Imagine future advances in medical science. 10 million dollars to keep them alive until age 110. 100 million dollars to keep them alive until age 120. It's absurd. Why should a community devote it's energy to keeping old people alive? It makes no sense. Eventually all young people would live in poverty so that old people could be kept alive for a few more years. People die. That's just a fact of life. 3. Religion Actually people did NOT fight over who had the best religion as long as there was a large number of them. In ancient Rome there were numerous cults and mysteries but no fighting. It was only when Christianity became a dominant religion that religious fighting began. Before that all wars were political and economic. The idea that there should be 3 or 4 large strong religions is not a good one. The idea that there should be thousands of very small religions is an excellent one. It will eliminate the power of religion to cause chaos in politics and economics. 4. Innovation Too much so-called innovation is simply remodeling existing systems so that the "newest model" can be sold to the consumer. If you look at the difference between decades of cars, you can see that some innovation is very harmful. For example my old truck uses the old style of glass headlamp that sells for about $10. But modern vehicles have quartz bulbs mounted behind plastic shields. Within a few years the plastic becomes cloudy. The cost of replacing the headlamp is over $100. Is that useful innovation? But you are right, some innovation is necessary. However, small improvements that increase costs by large amounts are not good innovations. And the marketplace is no help in sorting it out since psychological techniques are used to induce consumers to want "New!" products. 5. The Future Probably it will look a lot like today. It's very difficult to make a major change in anything. Although people like to say the internet is a major change, actually people have always liked to talk to each opther and have access to information. Speeding that up doesn't constitute a major change, I don't think. And if you look everywhere else things haven't changed much for the last 40 years, have they? Here are some things that are very much like they were in 1971... airplanes, automobiles, jet planes, rich people, poor people, oil in the middle east, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, houses, apartments, office buildings, roads, trains, bridges, tunnels, popular music, teenage stlyes, city attitudes versus rural attitudes, drugs, alcohol, prostitution, man in space, nuclear weapons, submarines, 3-D movies, amusement parkes, starvation in Northeast Africa, etc, etc, etc... And what has changed? Telephones have become small and portable. Anyone can own a powerful computer. Most computers are connected together in the internet. The bigger the system the more difficult it is to change it and the human global system has become very large. |
| 1. Standard of living. He who fears theft creates his own prison. It's a knowledge that they have too much, that they are screwing the rest, that circles his/her mind. Some people are happy to not have what we in the west have. At the same time, in the US it seems the divide has got so great within the country that fears like yours have overtaken the collective consciousness. Freedom does not lie in having nothing, it lies in having enough. Biting off your nose to spite your face works for some, but if we want to create a functional global network then we need computers and the like. Pieces of the jigsaw, cogs in the wheel. View it how you wish, but if people are happy where they are I can leave them there happily. Ask an average tibetan if they want an Ipad 2, they'll laugh and tell you they already have what they need. Family, friends and food is enough for some. Simultaneously, some want to go to space. So, people with aspirations get a little more, the rest get whatever they are happy with. That is a huge variety of things. I just think having $10 mill plus is killing others for the fun of it. I guess what you are asking for will work in the US. In other countries, there is less competition, more acceptance, and generally we can work together without having the state even everything out for us. All we need in the UK is less welfare, we pay people just to have kids. Might actually be a cunning plan, though. Low birth rates are an issue In the UK we have unarmed police and no guns. That's why I don't have the level of fear you have. I know we can protect ourselves by just being reasonable people. (no you didn't save our ass, you armed the germans till it stopped benefiting you). Funny thing is, clever people with good ideas get little, while fatcats cream their brains like zombies. The rest just find their natural level of happiness, monetary, social and family. It's a simple tradeoff and people get it here, mostly. 2. Mandatory Death Cold. Increase pension age, increase immigration, mandatory savings. Better than mass killing. http://www.squidoo.com/theoldestpeoplewho Some people vegetate in older life. It's a choice they make. Other people live till well past 80 or 90. Some people like our 90th birthday female skydiver do things which many people lack nuts for their entire life. End of the day, life is about choices, and trying to go all Nazi is just going to break people. Legalize voluntary euthanasia, don't enforce it. Really, fascist states should have died in WW2. 3. Religion Fine, religion is a joke to me anyway. We all have a god/godess inside us, we just made it really hard to find them for ourselves. So to me, who a person worships is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Everyone has their own moral compass inside. If they need a messiah to tell them where north is, fair enough. 4. Innovation Agreed, the standard greed culture has gone on too long. Make products to last, stop making rubbish then upgrading it slightly to sell it. I'm right with you there, it's all about maximising profit for minimum effort. I feel I'm being laughed at. Maybe we need to wake up now a little. Sisyphus lives today, I think. Hopefully we can all see the light before the boulder crushes us back to the bottom of the hill. 5. The Future Compare today with 30 years ago. Computers, mobile phones, the internet, mass global travel, improved communication. Heck, we're alrady sprinting, and people only get faster. Look at 100m sprint times if you want proof. Give us a few years of the right people running things, ones with vision, and guess where we'll be? Not running round in circles anyway. People get tired of that. |
1. Standard of Living Why should the rich start helping Africa? The rich don't think like that. You get a few of them like Bill Gates who want to use some of their money for good deeds, but as a group they aren't people who go around helping others. 2. Mandatory death It's true that a few people manage to remain healthy well into ages where most people have already died. We will grant an exemption from mandatory death for anyone who can make it to the death bureau office under his own power to claim the exemption. No wheelchairs or scooters allowed! 3. Agreement 4. Agreement 5. The Future It's true that 100m sprint times have fallen by 10% from 1910 to 2010. HOWEVER, during that same period the average height of humans has increased, the amount of time devoted to training athletes has increased as has the quality of the training, the science of nutrition has improved, medicine has improved. So the human of 2010 is a bigger healthier better trained human competing against the human of 1910. There is no inherent reason why the future should be better than the past and if you take things as a whole you can make a good argument for no overall improvement. A lot of modern humans might prefer living in the Athens Greece of Pericles time to living in some modern industrial city. There are Americans who prefer the America of the 19th century to the America of the 21st century. 6. How to ensure countries receive a more reasonable share of what they produce Is it your opinion that countries do NOT receive a reasonable share? |
| 1. Because karma is real and their system will be destroyed otherwise. Simple as that. What they do I don't really care, it's not my problem. However, a good place to salve that reparations angst is Africa. However, we choose to leave lunatics in charge, so maybe we deserve to be crushed, a la Romans. 2. Mandatory death Ach, if you want. If they still have people who love them and want them alive, then that's a no for me. If they don't, a psychopath could compare it to kiling a wounded puppy. I just see people as inherently different from animals. I'm weird like that. Again, I would like to see all your systems in place in America, just for a laugh, but exporting them would not work here. 5. The Future Heh, yeah, fantasists who never lived in those times think they were better. Send them back and see how they like cholera and non-flushing toilets. Brushing their teeth with twigs. Amputations without anaesthetic. Slavery (1/3 the population in ancient greece were slaves). Draco....any crime punishable by death. (1) Rose-tinted spectacles get more effective the less people who are alive to tell you the truth. Why people romanticise about history so much I have no idea. Talk about wasting your life. Seems a lack of appreciation of life is one issue, a lack of real knowledge of history another, and a lack of vision being another. There may be more. I'm just going to pause to have a little laugh imagining a molly-coddled modern family wandering around the wild west, dodging arrows, dysentry and buckshot. 6. How to ensure countries receive a more reasonable share of what they produce It is your opinion they do? http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/african-bioresources-exploited-... http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1830 http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/World_News_3/The_exploitation_of_Africa_... That's a simple one. Beyond that, look at American Indians, Aboriginies. Heck, Britain was pretty bad for it, but we were barely even civilised then. We thought foreigners were basically cattle. We've built our world by screwing people. It can't go on forever. There are better ways, they do exist. To continue, the west cultivated dictatorships in order to minimise the amount they have to pay to strip mine a country's resources. The people of the countries let it happen, but we actively encourage this behavior whilst preaching freedom. Truly hypocritical, truly evil. Now the dictatorship angle is failing, we try puppet "democracies" owned by corporations. It would be funny if it wasn't so obviously about to backfire. Consider how much you earn, and how happy you are. Then explain why you are defending these guys: http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-1607938/The-Forbes-100-billionai... Have they worked that much more than you? Have they worked any harder than these guys: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12301421 $15 a day for breathing sulphur with no gas mask, no gloves? Jesus wept, mate. Rupert Murdoch grinned his way to the bank. If you really care that little about equity, then there is no hope. To simplify: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_of_wealth There's the distribution of wealth. http://www.mapsofworld.com/thematic-maps/world-oil-proved-reserves-map.html The distribution of oil resources. http://www.mapsofworld.com/thematic-maps/world-fuel-export-map.htm Distribution of fuel exports. Basically, cash is concentrated on our side, whilst it's actually us who are buying everything from them. It simply won't work for long. People aren't that daft. However, if we work towards fairer systems, then maybe we can lessen the blow a little. |
6. How to ensure countries receive a more reasonable share of what they produce Oh, man, don't give me a bunch of links to read. I'm not doing a research paper on this. I'm not buying the view that obtaining resources somehow "screws" the people that live near where the resources are located. Pulling oil out of a country where people travel on the backs of camels does not screw the people. Extracting platinum from a country whose people have no idea what to do with platinum does not screw the people. I'm not defending people who search and find resources. I'm just saying that leaving the resources unused doesn't benefit anybody. If a country knows what to do with its resources then it will do it. 7. Being fair But my main problem is with the idea of "fairness". That isn't what evolution is about. If life was fair then the dinosaurs would still be the dominant lifeforms. But they got an unlucky break and now they are extinct. Quite a bit of life simply depends on who is where when doing what and if you are in the right place doing the right thing at the right time then you fare well and if otherwise you fare poorly. There is nothing inherently fair or unfair about the universe. It just is. Now I suppose you are saying humans should be fair with each other since we understand the concept. But in actuality fairness only exists where there are clearly-defined, agreed-upon rules and and enforcement mechanism for making sure the rules are followed. Being fair is a complicated process, not something simple that you can just "do" as if it were like sneezing or something. 8. Karma is real Ahem. Isn't that your own version of a romanticised view of history? I guess it relates to your desire for everyone to be fair. Karma is similar to the Christian concept of Heaven for the saintly and Hell for the sinners, isn't it? |
| A reviewer of the item suggested that it would be more informative if the contributors gave sources rather than simply providing subjective opinion without evidence. However, I will leave the references till the end from now on. I didn't realise you weren't a reader :P 6. Take the platinum. Take the oil. Provide reasonable infrastructure in return. People need decent roads, electricity, water. Why not provide that since you are taking from their land? If I take vegetables out of your garden, when I don't know you, and give nothing in return, then what do you call me? Would I be a decent human being, in your estimation? I understand the "one nation under god" gives some elements of the community the right to treat earth as their garden of eden, however it is hugely short-sighted. I worry it may be incurable if it is even found in self-professed atheists. Evolution is about finding a balance within nature. A reasonable way to coexist with the rest of the system whilst still achieving the desired goals. Survival of the fittest applies to everything. If the fittest make things unfit for the rest, the majority rules. 7. Fairness is the cyclical nature of power. When a power gets so internalised and out of touch that it thinks its welfare is paramount over the welfare of the planet at large, it usually gets dismantled pretty quick. Which leads me to my next point: 8. Karma, in fact, has no hell. All it requires is the playing out of little roles over long periods of time, in a process of gradually increasing understanding. The world is hell, heaven is where the heart is. Pretty soon someone is going to work this cooperation lark out. I'll breathe a sigh of relief when it happens. |
| Reader I'm a reader but it's mostly fiction. Although I did just read a great nonfiction book. Do you know Bill Bryson? He's written some funny books. The one I read is not meant to be so funny, although it's very entertaining, and it's called A Short History of Nearly Everything. Highly recommend it. But I don't read much in the way of data. So the reviewer didn't like subjective opinions unsupported by references, eh? Well you must have made him very happy with those links. But what is the solution to the sharing problem that you think exists? I remember back when I was crafting candles (long time ago) it required different colors of clays and sands. I would search for them and dig them where I found them, private property or not. Very small quantities, less than a bucket. But I felt no need to "share" anything with the landowner. It seems silly to even consider it. I take a bucket of his clay which undoubtedly would have still been there in the ground when he died and I use it for a practical purpose that helps me to stay alive for a few more days. Are you saying you want me to give him payment for something that has no value to him but only to me? Something that most likely he is not even aware of? It isn't quite the same as "taking vegetables from your garden" - that's entirely the wrong analogy. The correct analogy is I planted a garden on a piece of wasteland that you own and grew some vegetables there. Since you contributed nothing to the labor I will give you nothing from the garden. In reality, if I were to make such an arrangement I would give the landowner a few vegetables, but what is his "fair" share? Is he to determine that or me? I say me since without me there are no vegetables. It is merely his good luck that I choose to grow some vegetables on his land. Obviously, the problem of who owns what is at question here, too. Did the Native Americans "own" America or were they encamped here? You don't own something unless you can successfully challenge any other claims to ownership. Was it fair that Europeans displaced Native Americans? Fairness doesn't apply because they were not participating in a mutually-agreed-upon rules structure. Looking at situations and judging them fair or not fair is subjective. True fairness is applying a rules system in a non-biased way. Observe that now the Native Americans do participate in a mutually-agreed-upon rules system and have their own lands within the USA. I think a lot of the situations that you see as questions of fairness might just be situations that need a rules structure. A political solution is needed, not some voluntarily "sharing of resources". |
| Politics isn't really something that interests me. Generally it's more a way of imposing conditions favourable to ourselves while forcing everyone else into corners. The way the American Indians, and the Aboriginies were dealt with was not terribly intelligent. I would hope we would not be aiming to repeat those mistakes. Rather generous of you to allow the American Indians to have lands within their own land. Took quite a long time after they stopped trying to kill you though, in which time the general goal was to crush as much culture out of them as possible. I think we have hit the end point of this argument. From my perspective, the focus on how things were done in the past creates a continuous cycle of rise and fall, mistakes are made and remade. It seems boring to me. You still think "might makes right." That is your perogative, and exactly what the stereotype asks for. A reasonable rules structure, to me, is to provide the basic things people need. Your land is your land, you shouldn't have to kill me to let me know that. If BP comes to America, and sticks an oilwell in your waters, we pay you taxes. If we mess up we pay huge fines. Those rules do not apply for the companies in less developed nations. What we need is a consistent set of rules for ourselves. Not the lame excuse that "when we pay the dictator he just spends it on guns." My humble opinion is that the time for aggresive colonialism is over. However, if the West wants to continue and be subsumed by what will likely be a more repressive Chinese government, I'm happy to ride that wave. |
| "...Those rules do not apply for the companies in less developed nations. What we need is a consistent set of rules for ourselves..." Yes! This is what I am saying too. Without rules in place you have no way to judge what might be fair. If BP after it's oil spill had been allowed to impose it's own idea of what the penalty should be, then it would have chosen as low a penalty as possible and rightfully so. The purpose of BP is to reward the people who invest in it. Being overly generous to victims of it's mistakes would take away income from the people who made BP possible in the first place. But the USA and UK are advanced countries with advanced political systems and have an elaborate system of rules to deal with situations like an oil spill so BP did not have to decide what was fair. The rules did the deciding. If a company is getting resources from an undeveloped country, it isn't possible for that company to make decisions that would be fair to both itself and the people of the country because the interests of each are opposed. That's why you need a political system and rules. It might be boring but it's the only way to guarantee fairness. Will the West be conquered by China? What do you think? I sense you fear China may be growing too powerful. Is that your feeling? |
| My personal opinion is that the actions of companies worldwide should be subject to the laws of their own country. That should be enforceable. Make a few international laws that provide for privatised development of roads, irrigation and clean water. These are hardly things that anyone in the world can claim not to need. Companies can pay contractors to conduct the works, generating jobs etc. The idea that a coherent government is needed isn't really true. Charities provide help all the time with no real government aid/cooperation. The government concept is primarily to ensure that the country in question adopts the same "concentrate money and power" system we do. If we had gone into Iraq and left Saddam in charge whilst improving the living standards of the poorest, perhaps it would have been easier than the way we have done it. Maybe warfare isn't really the way anymore. People just resist guerilla style until we go home. It's what I would do, it's what you would do if our countries were invaded. People are the same the world over. Good or bad government, it's ours to deal with. To countries where we're not fighting, other side of the world or not, we're still defecating on our own doorstep by failing to live up to our supposed values. The thing is that free-market corporations are not seen as a separate entity from the countries that created them. As such, any injustices committed by them are seen as reasonable cause for reprisals against civilian or military targets. China, I don't really fear it as such. It already owns everything that actually generates money, it has surplus cash rather than debt. Economically speaking it is in the best shape of pretty much anywhere in the world. And clearly economic dominance translates into total strategic dominance very easily. Will this translate into the same military displays of strength as have been seen across every other global power? I hope not. I prefer civil liberties to efficiency. However, the world turns as it will, and old habits die hard, on all sides of the fence. |
International laws? Who would enforce them? We don't have a world government. I understand your desire to live in a world where there are no governments are companies, where everyone just does the right thing because it's the right thing, where no one goes hungry, no one is oppressed, and peace and happiness are the normal state of existence. However... just because we can dream of such a place doesn't mean it can actually exist. It's true that sometimes charities try to provide assistance in areas where there is no coherent government, but it's also true that sometimes charity workers are murdered and their supplies plundered. A lawless environment doesn't make it easier to do charity work. It makes it more difficult. The real problem, in my opinion, is unequal distribution of wealth. If everyone were middleclass then we would live in an orderly world where no one felt deprived or oppressed. That's why I propose that everyone have the same standard of living as a path to peace. If you look at revolutionary situations, they are almost always about the redistribution of wealth. The reason liberal democracies have worked so well as a form of government is because their tax and benefit systems promote the redistribution of wealth. In countries that have a large class of very poor people governed by a small class of extremely wealthy people, you get periods of apparent stability interspersed with periods of riot and revolt. This has occurred over and over throughout history. Inequality breeds instability. Equality breeds stability. This seems plain to me. In a country like China, as long as it grows fast enough that poor people have the feeling that they are becoming wealthier, then the country will be stable. It's really the same reason why America was so stable after World War II. If the American government hadn't overreached with their attempt to intervene in Vietnam there would not even have been the unstable period of the 1960's. But America quickly returned to stability after the Viet Nam fiasco was over. China is three times as big as the USA in population, so logically if they can achieve per capita economic equality with the USA then they will be the dominant superpower on the planet. Currently they are gowing while the USA is not. So the longer that situation continues, the more likely it is that China will end up on top. I don't believe the present government of China has any desire to impose it's will on the world in an oppressive way, but it's difficult to know what their feelings will be when, or if, they are the world's greatest power. |
| International laws? Who would enforce them? We don't have a world government. There are numerous international laws that many countries stick to primarily because they are seen as the "right thing to do." They do not require "one world government", just reasonable governments who have the power to carry laws globally. These "laws" are usually issued by the UN. In terms of international trade law, we have the World Trade Organization. They set the rules of international trade in conjunction with the parliaments of the countries in question. I don't think no-one should do anything wrong, people as individuals can be idiots or geniuses. What I hope is that people in their national groups can stop being so short-sighted. Not likely when a majority don't even have a passport or travel abroad, or read non-fiction, that's gonna limit knowledge to Fox News. It's true that sometimes charities try to provide assistance in areas where there is no coherent government, but it's also true that sometimes charity workers are murdered and their supplies plundered. A lawless environment doesn't make it easier to do charity work. It makes it more difficult. It is more difficult to aid a country when we have crippled its government to make it easier to extract resources without paying very much. However, the fact is we work in these countries already. We just do nothing for them. Given that it is possible to set up an oil refinery in a warzone, why is it not possible to build a well in an impoverished country? It would even be better if the west kept its contractors out. Hire local contractors, give a little back. The real problem, in my opinion, is unequal distribution of wealth. If everyone were middleclass then we would live in an orderly world where no one felt deprived or oppressed. That's why I propose that everyone have the same standard of living as a path to peace. Well, you could start on that path by....I dunno, helping some of the poorest to have a higher standard of living? Or were we arguing against that a minute ago? If you look at revolutionary situations, they are almost always about the redistribution of wealth. The reason liberal democracies have worked so well as a form of government is because their tax and benefit systems promote the redistribution of wealth. That universal rule wasn't even true in your own country's revolution. Liberal democracies concentrate money and power. See below. In countries that have a large class of very poor people governed by a small class of extremely wealthy people, you get periods of apparent stability interspersed with periods of riot and revolt. That's why America looks to be in trouble to me. 10% own 70% of the wealth. The bottom 40% have only 0.2% of the countries wealth between them. Talk about a powder keg. (1) China will be stable regardless. The reason is that they are honest with their populace. Rebel and we will crush you. Simple as that. The US plays the other side. It'll function for a long time, but having almost half your country as an underclass doesn't make for a sturdy boat, especially not while all messages say "you should be able to do anything!" The system between the two is so similar. China is a government/corporation, no illusions. The US has a puppet government with all wealth and power devolved to corporations with no responsiblity to anyone but themselves. So does the UK, really. In the long-term it seems the honesty angle China is taking may minimise backlash from disillusioned citizens. Freedom-wise, you don't miss what you never had. As far as I can tell, the only way your plan will work is via the georgia guidestones route. Cut population drastically and install one world governmment that owns everything and distributes it evenly. The idea that everything would be fine if everyone was middle-class is very Bilderberg, very global elite. They assume if you kill the underclass, and keep the super-rich and middle-class, they have a perfect army of cattle to pull their golden sled. Rather funny, some just don't realise all people have an equal level of cognitive mass, regardless of how rich/influential/intelligent they are. Although that will mean nothing to the materially-focused. The "make everyone middle-class" is an untenable theory propagated by the string-pullers to trap people who don't like thinking. (2) Taking economic advice from the people who have the most to gain by milking the populace is idiocy squared. Letting the country be run by them is even dafter. There is not enough money in the world to make everyone middle-class, but there is enough money for everyone to live comfortably according to their own aspirations. The only issue right now is that for some, comfort is having a private jet, cars in the double digits and a home that costs more than the GDP of a small nation. If only a thousand people in the world can afford to live like that, and it costs the lives of millions, then they have proved themselves unfit in evolutionary terms and can go the way of the dinosaur. The fittest only survives if he has a group to protect him. We've now made the group global. Want to know why civilisations collapse? The kids get bored of fighting for a lie. References 1. http://www.dailypaul.com/111232/us-wealth-distribution-10-of-us-citizens-own-709... 2. http://zfacts.com/p/318.html |
| FOX News Funny you should mention FOX news since it's a non-American who owns it. Oh yes, I know Rupert Murdoch fast-tracked an American citizenship for himself, but for finacial reasons. I've always wondered how much he himself controlled the political slant of FOX news, but now that I see how much his media was influencing elections in Britain I imagine the right wing agenda comes straight from him. I'll be glad to see him crumble and fall if that's what happens but I suspect he is too tought to go down yet. It's true we have International Agreements but they get violated all the time. Civilizations don't actually collapse, they get conquered or transformed. You can't really say the Roman Empire "collapsed" except in the sense that the Roman Empire as defined in 200AD did not exist in 700AD, but there were still people and buildings and roads and farms and houses and schools and soldiers, just organized in a different way. Middle Class I've never argued against the poor having a higher standard of living. I think we agree if the world was one big Middle Class then it would be a more peaceful place. Although you seem to be constantly arguing both for and against the idea. Don't you realize that if there are three classes and you eliminate the poor and the rich then what is left is the middle? If you don't want the world to be middle class then you should be happy we have lots of poor people, right? You need to explain your real position on poverty and economic classes more clearly. It seems very murky to me. Sentences like this "...There is not enough money in the world to make everyone middle-class, but there is enough money for everyone to live comfortably according to their own aspirations..." don't make sense to me. Being middle class is not about how much money you have, it's about how much you have relative to others. If there are people a lot richer than you and there are people a lot poorer than you, then you are middle class. By taking from the rich and giving to the poor, we make everyone middle class. It has nothing to do with the exact amount of money in your bank account. It just means there are no inequalities anymore. So of course there is enough money in the world to make everyone middle class. There is ALWAYS enough money in the world to make everyone middle class. China That's an interesting view of China as being an "honest" country considering they don't even allow Google to operate there. I had a Chinese internet friend who wanted to practice her English with me. When she mentioned her brother and sister I asked about China's "one child" policy. She said that when the census workers came through their village everyone with more than one child sent the extra ones into the woods to hide. That reminds me of how people became so corrupt under the Soviet Union. Corrupt in the sense of lying and stealing as routine ways of dealing with an oppressive government. China is not a citadel of honesty. I know you are saying the government is honest in being a strict enforcer of rules. But that only makes the people dishonest. It's similar to children of strict parents. They still find ways to be mischievous. They just have to be more clever about it than the children of lax parents. Often it's the preacher's child who acts out the most. The children of extremely "moral" people sometimes deliberately embrace immorality. |
| Well, this is a hell of a time to jump in. I don't even know which topics to address. LOL. First off, you guys have reached deadlocks on some issues, so I'd balk at prying open closed agendas. Cal, you mentioned in your email that input from somewhere else (besides UK and US, from which you fellas hail from) would make a more global discussion. Well, here it is: I'm from the Philippines. I didn't realize that my bio didn't say that (just says "My Ivory Tower," which is pretty cheesy, I guess). Anyway. Being from this part of the world both works for and against me in understanding your notions and predispositions. I'm not too big on US or UK history, but I know enough to grasp where some of your precepts are coming from. Being a bit more aware of the grand scheme of things between the powers and players in Southeast Asia, I have my own thoughts on China. But before I get to that, I'll touch on some other points you have been tossing back and forth for some time now. FAIRNESS I'm inclined to Cal's ideal of fairness, and giving back where seemingly nothing is due. But I also agree with Steve's fundamental argument of fairness being a concept that cannot be achieved without a set of rules. Fairness is a purely human concept, like good and evil. In the animal kingdom, strict hierarchies are followed, and whomever strays beyond these set natural laws of survival simply doesn't belong. It isn't fair that the lion eats the deer, but otherwise, the lion dies of starvation. Would that be fair to the lion? I too agree that humans are different from animals. When we started thinking how to rise beyond this hierarchy and implement our concepts of fairness at least to our fellow man (after all, I don't consider it fair to raise piglets to fat pigs only to slit their throats and eat them), we started to move in what we thought was the right path out of the Darwinian and into the Utopian. But right now, where we're still stuck in between, fairness between nations entails a mutual understanding of where each of them stand - and this is simply not in complete existence yet. Short version: I'm all in for pseudo-Utopian fairness, but to get there all nations must agree on what makes everything fair. This brings me to the next point I want to touch on: SHARING OF RESOURCES In my mind, there is no immediate need to share between two nations if both are self-sufficient and independent. One can give to the other, but the need is not there. But in economics, when one nation obtains an absolute advantage over one commodity, comparative advantages come about. And if these two nations wanted to stay stagnant, then they wouldn't share. But if they wanted to advance together (and there really is no other way to advance, I mean, is ignoring the other nation's existence an option?), then they'd share / trade. And mutually beneficial trade is the only way to go. Pardon me for not explaining fully nor citing references, but the overall economic output of both these nations when there is no trade is lower than the economic output of both when there is trade, and this is due to comparative advantages. This gives rise to an economic answer to a question posed earlier: why should we give back to Africa just because we take their oil? (or something like that) Because bilateral trade furthers both nations, where unilateral trade only advances one. How can the set of rules that can bring about agreed-upon fairness be established if one nation is far advanced in almost all aspects compared to another? This brings another point: should the more advanced nation help in at least enlightening the less advanced nation? If it wants to advance as a global community and not just as a nation, then yes, it should. The everyone-should-be-middle-class concept you both seem to be advocating in one way or another can only be accomplished if all the people understand one another on the same level. Disregarding economics for a second, how can the US or the UK understand a country where a teenage girl is raped and then whipped to death for it? Or how can said country understand why the US or UK seem appalled by what is norm for them? Only if the latter countries enlighten the former, that's how. Other than that, only if said country ceased to exist so the countries on a more or less even plane of understanding and shared principles can then move forward under their set rules. MIDDLE CLASS If everyone was middle class, none would be. Equality like this is a new world order. Some groups have already advocated this through the creation of a moneyless society. But again, without being on the same plane of understanding, this is not achievable. This is a good topic to breed about though, as Steve said There is ALWAYS enough money in the world to make everyone middle class, which Cal disagrees with (or seems to), but what if there was no money? CHINA The recent squabble over the Spratlys Islands between the Philippines, China, and North Vietnam has ignited my interest in China. Being a communist superpower (economically, at least) makes a country quite interesting, doesn't it? The way the Soviet Union fell is not the way Communist China would, probably. If its communist government ever falls, that is. China is indeed honest in its ruthlessness when beheading dissent, I agree. China is doing well in an economic point of view. But their economy is being affected by how much military advancement they have been trying to promote in recent years. As to why they're driven to advance their military, I sure hope it's not for aggression. China's military is huge. Infantry units alone number about two million. Any less equipped nation nearby would have a hard time fending off Chinese invaders. But I think this is highly unlikely. China has a different mindset - a very different mindset - compared to Western powers. First off, Maoist communism is a brand of socialism all its own. Akin to many ruthless governments around our part of the world. To achieve what China has become today meant killing off a lot of people who didn't agree, and I mean a lot. Similar to Stalin's bloody road to power. But in so doing, they managed to unite the country unlike how it was united before (except under the Chin dynasty, which was united much the same way). In a way, China achieved what I think is ideal: a plane of understanding where every Chinese citizen is on the same page. Though they did it through force, and a lot of their citizens are not completely sold on the collective idea. So is China a threat? It's tipping the scales economically, and that's a big thing. but a military threat? No, not at all. At least not to US and UK. China has a handful of strategic ICBMs, if I remember correctly, but if a war was to break out, even if they manage to destroy major cities of their opponent, they would fall if they chose to pick a fight with the US or UK. But they are a threat to their neighbors, particularly Russia. They are also a sizable threat to neighbors beyond a sea or two, like us in the Philippines. Will the tension ever turn into aggression? That's a backward step that I hope China's leadership understands is not beneficial for anyone. A GLOBAL CIVILIZATION Civilizations only collapse when mother nature is at work. Recent scientific evidence points to major environmental changes that caused drought or floods or severe climate change as the culprit behind lost civilizations like the ancient Egyptians(the ones before biblical Egyptians). They were affected so vastly and so quickly and did not have the right tools (in knowledge nor infrastructure) to fend off total collapse. Other civilizations grew or merged to what they are today. Was rebellion and war a part of the cycle? Why does there need to be a cycle? Given enough advancement in science and our own philosophical belief system, the repeating cycle can be broken. Though apparently this is next to impossible. And to answer the question, yes, war is always part of the cycle. In fact looking at the cycle, I think it's the center of it. Conflict destroys and resolves. With resolution comes advancement. But conflict is not the only way. A new cycle at least can be borne when conflict is no longer the preferred method of furthering civilization. But, again, this cannot be - and some sides would be forced into conflict - if there is no single plane of understanding where everyone is on the same level. The final civilization, a global one, cannot come forth unless everyone has a clear understanding of what is right or wrong, what is fair and unfair. Because the way the very concept of moral rights and wrongs differ from one country to the next eclipses the advent of a global civilization. I'm not sure if I interpreted it right but it seems your discussion was headed to a penultimate something. So I thought to add what that something might be. This single plane of understanding is closely tied to religion, but I would not want to delve into that now. Besides, I think you already capped off that discussion earlier. |
| Fox News Sorry Steve, I've probably made it seem like I am specifically anti-american, that isn't true. I'm anti the western fear-control agenda, which is multinational and primarily spread by the upper echelons of freemasonry and people like the Bilderberg. Mostly it's all just the old UK colonies, to be honest with you. We are the worst culprits. Yeah, Murdoch is the king of right-wing. He can basically use the world's psyche against it. The sooner he steps off this ride, the better. But I digress. The Roman Empire did collapse, it was closely followed by the dark ages where basically nothing of meaning was accomplished bar a lot of killing and torture. The roads were there but civilisation took a huge backward step. Middle Class I think we need to define middle class too. I mean middle class as in a global middle class. That is not really achievable or desirable. I view middle class as property owning, two cars, two kids, plasma TV. That is not necessary for happiness. I guess you meant each country having every person dead centre on it's GDP? People would still starve then. I just mean eliminate poverty, starvation and thirst. Seems a bit easier than buying everyone a car. So inequalities aren't the issue for me, unnecessary human suffering is. China As far as I see, having a bunch of discrete rules that allow torture in other countries, allow detention without trial, allow imprisonment for exposing illegal government activities but allowing people to look at porn and conspiracy theories on the internet is no better, and far more dishonest, than what China does. I would not have said the people of any western country were particularly “honest”, we have dole scroungers galore over here, and I'm sure there is plenty of crime in the US too. I won't bother with stats here, since everyone just assumes they are fabricated when it comes to crime, but I'll ask a question: Do you believe harsher sentences deter crime? If so, China should have less crime than anywhere else, citizens less likely to “act out”. 4th Fairness Fairness, in my opinion, is an evolutionary trait that we abandoned, then claim to have invented so we can ignore it. Most species find an equilibrium with the environment. That is fair, reasonable. About taking what you need and no more. It is fair that the deer eats the grass, it is fair that the lion eats the deer. It is not fair that a person with enough money to buy a country then skims that country's resources to make himself even more bloated. Some people are like viruses. They eat until they run out of food, or we find a cure. Recognition of the insanity of the thought process would be a start, but it seems to be really hard to see for some reason. Sharing of Resources I'm not discussing self-sufficient nations. I'm discussing nations where there is considerable poverty where resources are strip-mined in order to further fatten corporate profit margins. Fairness for me is providing the people of a county with the necessities (food, water, a roof) rather than funneling more gold into the pocekets of corrupt officials. Beyond that, fend for yourselves. But if I'm burning your oil in my 2mpg hummer, you should at least get a glass of water. I don't believe in making everyone middle class. My life is not that complicated yet. I think perhaps we should try climbing a molehill before we scale Everest. Money People always look backwards, never forwards. We started with no money, it failed when applied to large scale trading networks, so we shifted to gold, then money. So, if we go back to no money, we will almost inevitably wind up realising, as we did thousands of years ago, that it doesn't work. What we should do is go back to tying money to tangible things rather than making it appear out of deluded people's heads. China China won't need to militarily invade. Let's look at the riots in the UK right now. Put simply, in ghettoised areas of the UK, it is better to claim benefits than work. Their life has no prospects, and hopelessness is institutionalised. Labelled yobs, opinions belittled, told they are 2nd class from birth. But it's our system, we built it. It's not their fault they landed there. In these areas, drug dealers employ people and generally are Robin Hood types. One of them got killed, and now it has sparked nationwide riots. It's exactly what I said looked like an issue in the US a few posts back. Create a massive underclass, and eventually they will kick out. The UK and US are technically third world countries, it's just that nice countires are still willing to lend us money for now. That won't hold forever. Then china just rolls over, takes all the admin stuff we do just now, and leaves us to rot. It's effortless, I actually applaud them. A flawless game of Risk. That, I suppose, is where meditation gets you. Global Civilisation Read up on the Romans, look at the Dark Ages. That was an internal collapse caused by poor financial and military leadership. Exactly what we see today. Unwinnable wars, backed by inverted economies based on parlour tricks. Western Economy The funny thing is, we think we are rich countries, but really we are bankrupt countries with a population of 10% super rich, 40% comfortable and 50% struggling to survive. If our economies are exposed, as the current collapse of the market is doing, we will realise that in fact the 40% comfortable are also living on borrowed time. |
Ach! You force me to do some research. OK, here is the per capita GDP. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita You can see that Europe and USA and Australia, New Zealand, and Canada are definitely rich countries, along with some middle-eastern countries. China with its $7000 per capita GDP is not even close. However, no one is starving in China and they feel quite prosperous, so obviously $7000 per capita GDP is not a painful place to be. I haven't done the math but it looks to me like there is definitely more than enough wealth to feed everyone on the planet and give them a small TV. (Is a giant plasma screen really necessary?) I don't think a program of begging companies to please do more for the impoverishered countries that they are raping is going to help much. It would have to be something with legal teeth in it and a force to police it. As you point out about the UK riots (or in any American riots of the past) being wealthy and educated is no protection against the forces of chaos. It can happen anywhere to rich or poor. The cure for rioting is jail time. In the UK as in the middle East you have to get the rioters off the streets. Once the leaders are in jail things quiet down. No matter what the causes of a riot, it is often a long time before a particular area riots again. Any locality that rioted every year would drive out all the non-rioting residents that could sustain it, not to mention eventually burning down every structure so that it would end up just being an empty wasteland that would support no one. Although I think having everyone be on the same economic footing is the only way to long-term stability, that doesn't mean I think stability should be the ultimate goal of a society. It might be that great things can only be achieved when there is a disparity of wealth. Maybe the lure of riches spurs people on to do great things. Certainly it's why the Europeans discovered and colonized America. Almost all of the great art of ancient and rennaissance times was commissioned by wealthy merchants, politicians, or clergy. And yes I know there are lots of people who did great achievements not for wealth but for some other reason. Personally, my economic goals are the ones you described as "just enough to be comfortable". I'm not rich but I don't have to worry where my next loaf of bread is coming from. That's really all I meant by making everyone middle class. The idea of 2 cars and a swimming pool was not in my head at all. I just think of it as a level of income between the richest and the poorest. If middle class ends up being 1 car or no car that's fine with me. But like I say. That idea of economic equality is for peace. For doing great things I would support the idea of wealth and poverty. It's a trade off. As the Soviet Union found out. You make everyone the same and nobody does anything special. If you force people to live in a society where they can sink into poverty or rise into wealth, then they either work their ass off to rise into wealth, or else they give up and sink into poverty where they occasionally riot. I like the stability and peace of everyone being the same in the equal society. I like the adventure and achievements of the need to struggle in the unequal society. Hmmm, in a way those two paths describe the difference between liberal and conservative. Can you be both at the same time? That's probably why Western politics are so dysfunctional. We ARE both at the same time. |
| Okay, I'm back. Sorry about the lengthy delay. Middle Class Looks like we're all on the same page on that one, at least about having a comfortable lifestyle. I suppose since 'middle class' is a term coined from economic and hierarchic studies it does come with preconceived notions and whatnot. My idea of everyone being middle class is that everyone is content. BUT, my notion is purely idealistic. Some people will never be content unless they do / have what billionaires do / have, and catering to the heights of their content is just not practical. This leads me to picture an entirely middle class world where everyone has the urge to do / have something spectacular every once in a while just for the sake of it, but then be content with what they have after. No one needs a mansion and 20 cars to live content. It's just a a deeply rooted notion in human psychology, and it can be uprooted. Upending the subconscious inklings and philosophies would be Herculean, though. Global Civilization Just like I said, the cycle is dependent on conflict - unless a new cycle without it dawns (cheesy as it may sound). But conflict should not be the heart of civilization, and a global civilization need not take the path of the Romans or the Dark Ages. I am preaching a very Utopian and almost impossible civilization here, but wherever we're headed, I hope it's there. But when we get there, that's only the start. I agree that there are things to like from both liberal and conservative mindsets and there are advancements that only happen in disparity. BUT it is not the disparity that directly drives it, it only dictates the situation which then allows for that particular advancement to happen. And I believe there is a path to being liberal and conservative at the same time. As well as being equal yet with enough differences that brings about the same conditions that disparity of wealth does. And that takes me to my next point, which, I need to say beforehand, is quite radical, so please read open-minded. Moneyless Society Whoever said large scale trading networks needed money to trade? I'll go back to the very seed this campfire began with: is our perception of the ability of humanity to achieve "X" goal the only limiting factor on humanity's ability to achieve "X" goal? Personally, I would think so. If everyone thinks we need X to achieve Y, no one will ever be the wiser. If everyone thought we always need money to run our lives and lead us to what we're invisibly working towards, then the logic remains unchallenged, and, well..remains. Is that the only answer? No, sorry, we need money? Thousands of years ago when men started to barter on larger and grander scales the development of currency was inevitable I completely agree. But thousands of years ago they had bronze axes and loincloths. Today we have the technology to set aside what was needed for the age passed. I need you to be really imaginative now. This was a concept introduced to me by an acquaintance in another forum. Well, needless to say I liked it. I'm not completely sure how this all works out, but he provided a link on an advocacy that's trying something similar, I posted a link below too. The very advent of a moneyless society is heavily dependent upon today's technology. The most plausible arguments for this can only even be possible because of automation and robotics. If robotics and robots (it's a Hollywood term, please bear with me) can handle everything - and soon enough they will be able to - from skilled handicraft and hard work to management of resources and their partition, then humans need not do anything but maintain the robotics and automation. Everything that once relied upon large scale trading networks run by men will be performed automatically, and resources - not money, since it's the resources being bought anyway - will be taken, partitioned, and taken where it is needed. Here's a link to something very similar, a resource-based economy, not money-based: http://www.thevenusproject.com/en/a-new-social-design/resource-based-economy (I recommend you read this and other links in the site at your leisure to grasp the fundamental idea, as my explanation here would probably not suffice) Humans don't need to do anything, but they can. When they are freed from working to live (because all the work is being done by automated robotics), they can truly live the way they want. They can work if they want, but not for the need of money, but for the desire to be fulfilled or be productive. Schools won't teach students to prepare them for a lifetime of work, they will teach them for the sake of learning. Every artist would be free to pursue his art, every scientist his research, and no one goes hungry because he doesn't have a job to pay for food. Food and all other resources are rationed to people. They do not need to do anything but further their own aspirations, their culture, their civilization. Now I know where this leads. Men would want more. Well, this sort of society is next to impossible if not everyone in it understands that lavish extravagance is useless. In this sort of society there truly are no classes or hierarchies, even unspoken ones. The thirst to rise above the man next to you is nonexistent, because, really, what does it serve? When no one but you thinks you're better for having a nicer car or a bigger house than your neighbor, then the importance of having more just to have more is rendered nonexistent. It blends a controlled economy with our agreed notion of "middle class" where everyone is content, not made to settle for a uniform sum of property or something similar. Surprisingly, it also lets liberal and conservative notions mingle, and though people live equals, they can still produce advancements that would have come from a disparity of wealth simply because of their diversity. At first it's a childish notion, sure. Absurd, truly. Especially in the scheme of things today. But if at first an idea is not absurd, there is no hope for it. At least Einstein thought so. But anyway, Even if this moneyless society or global civilization is achieved, it is only the beginning. But I should ask, what are we really headed towards? This cycle of conflict will stop. It will either swallow us into it again and the cycle repeats, or we break apart from it. Right now it's not looking so great, that's for sure. If, say, we don't end up in a new, modern-day dark age, if not a unified civilization of community or whatever, what do you think we'll have? |
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