World issues ~ deep thinking matters.

[Being645]

... I wouldn't deny all these facts you delivered ... but

I am not an ape, fortunately. Millions of years have taught my system
to behave differently, given me more of a choice as to my behaviour.
I'm aware of my capabilities to make a decision, to appreciate the
consequences and to revise the outcome - and I know what it's for.

And even apes know tomorrow, what happened to them yesterday ...
So the nervous system is, definitely, able to LEARN ...

That's why, IMHO, education is one of the most practicable means for any
improvement, whatsoever.

[Bartek]

i'm not denying a fact that human can learn form the past but history didn't prove that. even now we got new term "war for peace".

[Being645]

Oh yes, that's disgusting ["war for peace"] ... the only thing one can do is
express - your opinion, your feeling, your point of view ...
I know people who write letters to newspapers, magazines or in the web.
People organizing conferences and meetings with those in our parliaments ...

And it does make a difference, whether information is spread all over the world and in every language ...
the latter is also important, because exactly those who are mostly concerned, hardly ever have a second language at hand ...

But in one point, I have to agree with you ... all these slow but obvious
developments can never take an influence on that pain I feel in my core
which will probably never stop hurting, I assume, since it's burning there
for far more than a decade.

Insofar ...

So spend everyday as if it were your last, and one day you'll be right

: : : .... you might have a long, long wait ... Laughing

Or shorter than you think

No need to hope for that ... but at least a last resort in case of emergency ... ... like the dream of the the merciful hand of a God or a destiny or just the result of some long-term self-destructive behaviour ...

Brrr, I have to get out, now. It's raining so nicely. I can hear it through the
open window. Take a breath and a walk ... outside.

[markfiend]

I am not an ape, fortunately. Millions of years have taught my system
to behave differently, given me more of a choice as to my behaviour.

I'm afraid that any anthropologist will tell you different. We're all too similar -- both in genetics and in behaviour -- to the other apes. We've barely started to overcome our ape natures with a thin veneer of civilisation. And thence stems most of the problems Debs points out in the first post of the thread. We're a violent, territorial pack-animal with brains big enough to conceive of planet-destroying technologies.

The money that the USA spends on weapons could feed, clothe, educate and house the entire population of the world, with enough left over to send humanity on its first steps to the stars. Instead, it's used for killing people. But when you stop and point out the insanity of this state of affairs, people look at you as if you're green or something.

People are afraid of each other, afraid of the unknown, afraid of death, afraid afraid afraid. And it's all a fucking LIE anyway, life is a fucking illusion, life is far too important to be taken seriously. We are all one; when you kill someone else, you're just killing yourself. It's insanity and it needs to stop.

But.

I don't know how to stop it. If you try to point out to people that they're living in chains when they could be free, they go and do something crazy, like nailing you to a cross, or shooting you outside your hotel in New York, or...

I don't know.

It makes me mad.

But I have hope. Not much hope, but a little. We are making those steps moving away from our animal natures. Individual people can make a difference, and the slow drip... drip... drip... of water can, over time, wash a mountain away.

[markfiend]

Wow, I've just read that back. It came out a bit stream-of-consciousness, but I ain't changing any of it.

[MadameButterfly]

to those who believe we can make a difference!
And to the rest for your comments!

The money that the USA spends on weapons could feed, clothe, educate and house the entire population of the world, with enough left over to send humanity on its first steps to the stars. Instead, it's used for killing people. But when you stop and point out the insanity of this state of affairs, people look at you as if you're green or something.

That is so true! Not only the USA but other countries have enough money to do the same. Realized that when this credit crisis started and those in power started to panic hence "covering" debt where there was money missing and the amounts well...out of this world really! Another thing that struck my mind was wow as soon as it looks like there is a money problem all other problems that NEED sorting out where quickly forgotten about, or put to the side such the global warming that might just make that drip, drip, a sea that will wash land away! Your post was a good one!

Killing, wars AND THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A WAR FOR PEACE! Don't believe that as that is what they want you to believe.

Also my hope is also still there, it has to be as I have a younger generation to look after. To teach that fighting will never solve a problem to talk it out will, to think for yourself and to know that what someone else says is just an opinion and learn the facts. To love those who look after you, respect the elderly & mother earth as she is home to us after all.

[boudicca]

My own two cents:

As with so many issues, I think human beings have a tendency to think in very simplistic, black and white, polarized terms when it comes to The State Of The World We Live In. In my own life I have at times held views from both extremes - at one point thinking that the planet we live on is fcuked, humanity are the fcukers, and something needs to be done (or loads of things) to bring us out of the mire - be that marching, political movements, ideological warfare, revolution!... whatever.

I graduated from that view to the realization that nowhere is it written that Nature (of which, lest we forget, we are a part) was ever meant to be some kind of utopia. It struck me as childish to expect this world and our lives to be free of danger, war, destruction and death… is that not as valid a part of human experience (and indeed the experience of the universe) as peace and harmony? At the risk of sounding painfully corny it’s like expecting day to exist without night. It is us who have judged these aspects of reality as “bad�, because they are threatening and dangerous to our existence. The universe itself, I suspect, is rather indifferent to whether we all slaughter each other or not.
So I swung round to a similar indifference… went from wanting to make a difference to seeing it all as ultimately not mattering either way.

Now I see both these viewpoints as too extreme, and I think something in the middle is the right attitude to take. I think it’s possible to acknowledge the inevitability of suffering, war, inquality, destruction, hate, without completely resigning oneself to every bad thing that happens in the world, and not even trying to make a “positive� difference.
Take poverty as an example. Unless we impose some terrifyingly totalitarian regime upon the entire planet, there will always be haves and have-nots, relative poverty at the very least. I think we must come to terms with that and stop fooling ourselves with the dream that it will ever be completely eradicated. Does that, however, mean that we throw up our hands at famine in Africa and street children in South America and say “hey, that’s just the way of things, it’s Nature, man�. I think not.

It is still possible to try and right blatant wrongs to some extent. To aim for peace whilst accepting we will never be completely free of war. To curb the worst excesses of our hatred and anger whilst accepting they will always be a part of being human. I don’t think it’s a toss up between a blind battle for heavenly peace and love and shrugging our shoulders at the worst mankind has to offer.

[mh]

I'm afraid that any anthropologist will tell you different. We're all too similar -- both in genetics and in behaviour -- to the other apes. We've barely started to overcome our ape natures with a thin veneer of civilisation. And thence stems most of the problems Debs points out in the first post of the thread. We're a violent, territorial pack-animal with brains big enough to conceive of planet-destroying technologies.

Precisely. What's any hierarchical human organisation but a direct reflection of ape social organisation? President, King, Pope, Boss, Gang Leader or whatever have all got alpha male written so large over them that it's not even funny. "Civilization my butt", in other words.

Chimpanzees show deference to the alpha of the community by ritualised gestures such as bowing, allowing the alpha to walk first in a procession, or standing aside when the alpha challenges.

In certain highly social species such as the bonobo, a contender can use more indirect methods, such as political alliances, to oust the ruling alpha and take his place.

Gorillas use intimidation to establish and maintain alpha position.

[markfiend]

Not only the USA but other countries have enough money to do the same.

Oh granted, but I picked on the USA because they spend more money on their military than the rest of the world put together.

[MadameButterfly]

Not only the USA but other countries have enough money to do the same.

Oh granted, but I picked on the USA because they spend more money on their military than the rest of the world put together.

This is true so we can use the USA as an example. With the new president I really got my hopes up until he started with sending troops to Afghanistan. That said I was wondering, what about the help for those troops coming home that have been fcuked up with things like traumatic stress due to having to kill and seeing death and having to learn to live with it for the rest of their lives? Bet there isn't enough support there for them. On the plus side he is going to try sort out that everyone living there has medical insurance (one huge problem) and that should cost quite a fortune. So in this same breath I would say stop the war and start helping your people, that from an average Joe on the street.

[markfiend]

Oh yeah. I've read some blog posts by a former US serviceman who came back from Iraq with a head-wound. He gets really bad migraines* so he can't work, he hasn't had a penny out of the military so he's lost his house, he's had to move back in with his parents.

*like "lie down in a dark room for three days" bad.

-------

In terms of left-wing/right-wing, I think most of us on this side of the Atlantic were expecting (or at least hoping) for Obama to be a lot more left-wing than he turned out to be. The American right-wing are calling him a Socialist, yet he'd barely be out of place in a centre-right political party in Europe.

My biggest beef with him is that he's not co-operating with the investigations into the torture under Bush's presidency.

[Nadia81]

Yes,Obama is trying and the right-wing is fighting tooth and nail(theres that animal thing again)to stop him.Certainly,humans are capable of change but until we all learn to see past our own narrow self interests and stop behaving like a pack of dogs,change ain't gonna come.

and the torture investigation..we all know where that would lead.I think Obama wants to do what he can to affect the future,rather than have the government embroiled in a scandal from the past.

[markfiend]

Some of the tactics of the right against Obama are so blatantly racist. All this "birther" crap especially. They're so dead-set against the idea of a black man being president that they've convinced themselves of this ridiculous idea -- he's black, he must have been born in Africa.

This can only come from the kind of person who would naturally pronounce "negro" with a double G.

[Nadia81]

And he's a M-M-Muslim.Oh the horror

I believe ,at bottom,(au fond sounds better but I don't want to labelled an elitist) it's not about right wing -left wing or religion or race-It's all about money /power,and thems that got doing everything they can to keep thems that don't from getting any.The race thing is a distraction -if they can keep everybody looking over there-hopefully nobody will notice what's going on over here.

[EvilBastard]

The optimism that people in the US and abroad expressed about Obama's election to the presidency is a concern. It would appear that we have lost sight of first principles, to whit, asking ourselves, "What is the nature of politics and of politicians?"
The answer is, "Politicians are lying sacks of shit who care about nothing except acquiring power, keeping hold of power, and pandering to the narrow interests of those that helped them get the power."
I wish it wasn't the case, but it is. Whether Obama was born in Hawaii, Hereford, or Heidleburg matters not. He is the reality we have. If he were to be found to have been ineligible for the presidency, he would be removed, and replaced by Biden or Pelosi, neither of whom would be a better choice.
Does Obama have good ideas? Absolutely. Does he have the first clue as to how to put them into practice once the crowd stops cheering and they turn the cameras off? I fear not. I agree with him that something needs to be done to address the number of uninsured people in the US. The UK model that he cites is not the right way to go about it (I am a big fan of the NHS, but no-one could deny that it has some gaping holes in it that successive governments have been unable/unwilling to fix/pay for).
He has an unfortunate habit of making promises that play well to the gallery but cannot be turned into reality, and this is likely to bite him in the fundament a lot sooner than he expects. In this way he is like every other politician (anyone remember "Read my lips - no new taxes"?).

It is scandalous that a country that leads the world in so many things is unable to do something about a kid who can't get medical treatment for chronic condition that will eventually put them in the ER at a far higher cost than prophylactic treatment, or that someone who put their life on the line for his country's foreign policy objectives cannot get help from the government that asked him to do it. The problem is less a lack of will and more a surfeit of dithering and the inability to make tough decisions.
One of these tough decisions involves illegal aliens - but you can't do anything about the problem because you have interests on the far left who won't let you do it, not to mention lacking the first clue as to where these people are.
Meanwhile you're propping up industries that can't compete on a global basis, damning companies that want to pay back the loans that they received, and spending your time on Letterman rather than focusing on the job you're paid to do.

[markfiend]

I do fear that you are absolutely correct mr bastard.

[MadameButterfly]

I agree with you too EB!

He has an unfortunate habit of making promises that play well to the gallery but cannot be turned into reality, and this is likely to bite him in the fundament a lot sooner than he expects. In this way he is like every other politician (anyone remember "Read my lips - no new taxes"?).

He and many other presidents all over the world are fault to this though! So that governments are corrupt we know and have known for years. If I think of the man now leading S.A. he had a criminal record for crying out loud! Oh well so we can't trust governments, we will have to trust in ourselves.

I just hope that our generation that believes in these wrongs (hunger & violence) do stand together & that someone comes up with an answer to solving the problem. We as humans seem to always want to blame someone else or point fingers and moan about it instead of just doing it. Make it stop. We could at least try.

[markfiend]

To try and to fail is far more admirable than not to try at all.

[sultan2075]

I am not an ape, fortunately. Millions of years have taught my system
to behave differently, given me more of a choice as to my behaviour.

I'm afraid that any anthropologist will tell you different. We're all too similar -- both in genetics and in behaviour -- to the other apes. We've barely started to overcome our ape natures with a thin veneer of civilisation. And thence stems most of the problems Debs points out in the first post of the thread. We're a violent, territorial pack-animal with brains big enough to conceive of planet-destroying technologies.

The money that the USA spends on weapons could feed, clothe, educate and house the entire population of the world, with enough left over to send humanity on its first steps to the stars. Instead, it's used for killing people. But when you stop and point out the insanity of this state of affairs, people look at you as if you're green or something.

People are afraid of each other, afraid of the unknown, afraid of death, afraid afraid afraid. And it's all a fucking LIE anyway, life is a fucking illusion, life is far too important to be taken seriously. We are all one; when you kill someone else, you're just killing yourself. It's insanity and it needs to stop.

But.

I don't know how to stop it. If you try to point out to people that they're living in chains when they could be free, they go and do something crazy, like nailing you to a cross, or shooting you outside your hotel in New York, or...

I don't know.

It makes me mad.

But I have hope. Not much hope, but a little. We are making those steps moving away from our animal natures. Individual people can make a difference, and the slow drip... drip... drip... of water can, over time, wash a mountain away.

I'm a bit late to the party, but: you need to go read your Hobbes. And your Aristotle

edit: Mark, it occurs to me that--having had this discussion many times before--our fundamental disagreement concerns the Enlightenment project. I simply don't think it's possible. In that regard, I side with the critique of Socrates made by Aristophanes in the Clouds: if we're going to go about removing gods, we'd better have something better than the clouds to replace them with. I'm not so sure science fits that bill.

[EvilBastard]

I agree with you too EB!

He and many other presidents all over the world are fault to this though! So that governments are corrupt we know and have known for years. If I think of the man now leading S.A. he had a criminal record for crying out loud! Oh well so we can't trust governments, we will have to trust in ourselves.

I just hope that our generation that believes in these wrongs (hunger & violence) do stand together & that someone comes up with an answer to solving the problem. We as humans seem to always want to blame someone else or point fingers and moan about it instead of just doing it. Make it stop. We could at least try.

Which goes back to my first point about getting rid of governments and organised religion. Both are interested only in further their own ambitions and feathering their nests. For a guy whose credo includes vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, I've yet to work out why the pope swans about in a plane (perhaps it's a "do as I say, not as I do" thing). Meanwhile the government panders to the unions, the church, and certain social groups and remains in thrall to kinds of people that you and I wouldn't trust to sit the right way on a lavatory seat.

Get rid of them all - power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority. Not my words, but as true today as they ever were.

[Being645]

I am not an ape, fortunately. Millions of years have taught my system
to behave differently, given me more of a choice as to my behaviour.

I'm afraid that any anthropologist will tell you different. We're all too similar -- both in genetics and in behaviour -- to the other apes. We've barely started to overcome our ape natures with a thin veneer of civilisation. And thence stems most of the problems Debs points out in the first post of the thread. We're a violent, territorial pack-animal with brains big enough to conceive of planet-destroying technologies.

... you will surely forgive me, that I am definitely NOT some violent, territorial pack animal
with a brain big enough to conceive of planet-destroying technologies ...
although I do like climbing, trees and everything ... to gather a look over the walls of any kind ...

Well joking aside, I think the reference to our "animal nature" has long
enough served as an excuse for those who make their profits on reckless
behaviour and death.

We are all one; when you kill someone else, you're just killing yourself. It's insanity and it needs to stop.

Hhm, I don't think we are all one. On the other hand, I think it's clear that
whatever you do to anybody else, you do to it yourself, to your kids,
to your love, to your very own life, to your past, your presence and your
future. Destroying others is destroying oneself and destroying oneself is
destroying other. That's why self-destruction is so often the last resort
of revenge. We all know this by instinct. And what is called or presented
as revenge is mostly nothing but helplessness and despair.

... What's any hierarchical human organisation but a direct reflection of ape social organisation? President, King, Pope, Boss, Gang Leader or whatever have all got alpha male written so large over them that it's not even funny. "Civilization my butt", in other words.

Chimpanzees show deference to the alpha of the community by ritualised gestures such as bowing, allowing the alpha to walk first in a procession, or standing aside when the alpha challenges.

... and so on ...

Fine, this is the next example for the misuse of scientific research ...
going: "our other apes relatives" behave like this because of their "nature" and so do we.
But it is just not true, because we have far more of a choice. And what popes, presidents,
bosses, gang leaders might choose to do is often directed singularly to their own benefit,
and at any rate. Defining such conduct as Alpha has caused hundreds of thousands
male and female losers to adapt to this sort of so-called "natural" behaviour in order
to establish their social affiliation to a common "elite". Not all of them did get that far, however ...

Great fun. ... ...

[EvilBastard]

To try and to fail is far more admirable than not to try at all.

Yes, but to hurl yourself over the same cliff that history tells us only has pointy sticks and pain at the bottom of it in the hope that your outcome will somehow be different from that of those who went before isn't admirable - it's idiocy.
The smart thing is to scout around and see if maybe a little further along there's a path down to the bottom, perhaps with a bench along the way where you can sit and take in the view, and if there's a tea-shop at either end then so much the better. Or maybe you can call a friend and see if he's got a long ladder or some rope so you can lower yourself over the edge in a controlled manner.
You'll still make it to the bottom, but you'll do so in one piece, un-skewered, and successful where your forebears failed.

[Bartek]

thank you EvilBastard. you wrote something that was my point from the beging/first post in this thread: you can vote but don't expect that it will change anything. we'rethe human so we like to collect stuff that we don't need at all. but we just want to have them.

[Being645]

Yes, EvilBastard ... ...

On the other hand it's sometimes very hard to find someone to hold the rope for you.
It's like markfiend says ... They nail you to a cross or shoot you, maybe not exactly
outside a New York hotel, but straight at the wall they had you kiss before ... or they
spoil your reputation, sent you to a mental hospital, drive you into exile, to the islands,
torture your body, destroy every basis for your livelihood ... and all these "they" often
include your best friends and your family ...

And nevertheless, over thousands of years the same issues come up again and again ...
Maybe our animal brain takes a few days longer to comprehend what these issues are about ... but it will.

@ Bartek
You will have noticed, that some people collect things, you might think they didn't need, in order to share ...

[Bartek]

d'ya see that i wrote "we" ? by this stuff i meant a pleasure making stuff like another house where you can be few day a next car and other things that people use to show their social postion. ialso meant a power that as we see overwhelming most of the people and driving them to doing stupid things ( needles regulations, over prottective regulation and etc.)