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Politics : Rat's Nest - Chronicles of Collapse -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: el_gaviero who wrote (3271)	12/1/2005 8:03:35 AM
From: Crocodile	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24213

I think you and Ted Trainer are a bit naive. Yes, perhaps I am. I have absolutely no understanding of why it is that some people want more and more, and want huge houses for 2 people, or to drive a big pig of an SUV when they live in the city where they don't have to forge their way through snowdrifts or mud. Or why they would need a $500K RV home with granite kitchen counter tops and a hot tub which they will drive several thousand miles to "camp" at an RV park. And somehow, all of this is good? Yes, I am obviously naive because none of that makes any sense to me. I don't see any of this kind of "growth" and "Super-sizing" as preventing social ills or war. So yes, you could say I am "naive". “Growth” cannot continue indefinitely, but to go to something else is not easy. Did I ever say change was going to be easy? Or that what comes next will be easy. I don't see that anywhere in my post. On the contrary, I doubt most North Americans have any stomach for what is likely to come down the pipes over the next while. If humanity can find a way to adapt to the conditions which they have created, then they will probably survive. If not, we shall revert to the dark ages of feudalism and tribalism, or perhaps we will just cease to exist -- that depending on just how inhabitable our "host" becomes in the future. All I have said is that the desire for more and bigger is a like a sickness that will eventually lead to destruction of the larger system. Like drinking alcohol or eating fat-filled junk food until the liver is destroyed. Once the liver is destroyed, the body dies --- unless perhaps you can acquire someone else's liver -- but even then your chance of survival will be touch and go. In my world, I deal mainly with with biology and the study of biodiversity. . . relationships between species, habitat, parasites, aliens and invasives, vector species, pollution, disease, destruction or degradation of habitat. Despite how some people would like to paint life on earth, humans are not so different than the rest of the creatures on this planet. We may think ourselves to be above the laws that govern all life, but unfortunately for us, we require clean water and breathable air, warmth (but not too much of it), food, shelter. Unless we find a new "host" for our species to migrate to -- we must either stop replicating and consuming our current host, or prepare to eventually expire when we've siphoned the last drop of blood out of the one we currently occupy. We are not like parasitic larve that will somehow metamorph into wasps and go flying off looking for a fresh cecropia caterpillar to lay our next generation of eggs on... Well, perhaps, the science-fiction writers are right and some of us will manage to finangle a space on the mothership when it leaves for some other solar system. I suppose that the alternative is for us to "evolve" into creatures that can tolerate a good dose of benzene in our water, breathe filthy air, and perhaps grow a good coat of mastodon hair to stay warm when we can't afford or even buy the oil to heat our homes. Personally, I would think it more practical to learn how to conserve what we have and develop alternative and sustainable energy sources... and for people to say enough is enough and slow down their replication to a level which will maintain the health and welfare of our "host". A bright parasite would find a way to do just that. ~croc

To: el_gaviero who wrote (3271)	12/1/2005 12:09:02 PM
From: No Mo Mo	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 24213

"...people would for the most part compete by accumulation rather than by armed conflict." The operative word being compete. If people learned history, they would understand how far we've come. There is no need to go back to feudal times. Look at what the people of our grand parents or our great-grandparents had. The average Joe Six Pack in the western world has access to medical care that would appear miraculous to them, entertainment options that one could not exhaust in a lifetime; he can get on a jet an be almost anywhere on the planet in a day. If the people of the western world could come to see that we're "here". Most anything people dreamed about materially from the beginning of time has been realized and surpassed. The granite countertops in a 500K RV are superfluous and that competition was won long ago.

To: el_gaviero who wrote (3271)	12/27/2005 1:59:24 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 24213

“Growth” cannot continue indefinitely There are certain limits, like the energy capacity of the entire universe, and in practice I imagine the real limits are orders of magnitude below that, but they are still well above our current level. Growth can continue "indefinitely", when indefinitely is measured in terms of human history rather then a long a time frame of billions of years. “Growth” has to come to an end. I very much doubt that to be the case. Tim