Myrddin wrote:I believe it was you who posted and I quote
That sounds like a pretty solid belief.
Do you want free love too Man?
What?
If you must know I am a combat medic that saves lives. I haven't fired a shoot in anger since I've been here. I have helped save multiple lives though.
And that changes the fact that you're part of the military? You could go around giving people handjobs, it still wouldn't change the fact that you are the violent wing of corporate and political greed.
Oppress people? Are you getting that from you leftist handbook? Actually the Iraqi's have more freedoms now then they've had in the past thirty years.
1) Is there a leftist handbook?
2) And some cops really do help people. But, I believe I wrote, and I quote: "it still wouldn't change the fact that you are the violent wing of corporate and political greed." Now, said belief is tentative, so I can't be for certain. But I believe it was I who wrote it.
"The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself." - John Stuart Mills.
I'm wondering if you've ever read "Mills." I'm guessing you haven't. But I love the quote! And if I followed the quote to its logical conclusion, I would be killed by cops - or some other branch of the government's b*tch-slap.
And it's Hooah. Ooorah is the Marines. Get it right if you plan to criticize.
yeah, my argument has been dismembered because i confused the moron grunt of one group with the moron grunt of another. Here's my grunt: Grar-rarr.
Last time I checked, DEATH has a 100%:0 win/loss ratio on the ol' human race - industrialized or not. Disease or Not
That's a cop-out. Do you know why?
Here's a hint: You could use that as an excuse to not care about or do anything about any terrible business.
Simplistic or not - if cars are so evil, DON'T DRIVE ONE. Don't be a hypocrite.
By avoiding driving a car, i'm still systematically attached to them: My food comes from cars, planes, tractors, etc. I have to stop car culture in order to stop the evils of cars.
By the way, I brought this "systematic" thing up last time. Remember: "The only way to stop the irreversible and absolute destruction is to stop it at its core: end industrialization/production/civilization. "
One of the things that defines intelligence is the ability to grasp patterns. Since you haven't grasped that yet, you are getting closer to the ant.
Civilized diseases? Last time I checked, viruses don't discriminate between civilization and non; they just survive by finding hosts.
Ha! The last time you checked! So you're a big fan of medical literature are you? When you get the chance, read the link i posted before about how civilization doesn't have a monopoly on medicine. Also check out John Robbins' Food Revolution - it's a simple read that talks about how industrialized people have a lot of diseases that non-industrialized people dont. Also think about the antibiotic resistant diseases/virii out there.
In Guns Germs and Steel, he'll be sure to let you know that some diseases do indeed have civilized origins.
You are talking about the 1500's here. (Guns Germs & Steel) Kids in Eurasia/North Africa, who developed around livestock, still need those drugs- today.
I'm saying that had it not been for colonialism, Africans wouldn't have been displaced and their population wouldnt' have been intensified. Source: Guns Germs and Steel the dvd (narrated by the thick-eastern accented J-Diamond).
Waaaa Waaaa, okay, colonialism is bad, we all get it. What do we do now? Again, we'll tell them we are going all natural, and they are on their own- wihout our help.
Haha I wish we all got it. What we do: acknowledge that we have a systemic problem, not a simple linear problem. Instead of falling for the Systems Archetype of Shifting the Burden, we look more fundamentally at the past and develop a realistic solution that incorporates REALITY - as opposed to "resources will last forever and so long as we feed everyone, everyone will be fine."
How many people and communities are destroyed for lack of a reliable fresh water source?
That sounds like something i would've written. Now what I would follow it up with is: civilization poisons water
. <- emphasis on the period.
This is why I say your beliefs are almost religious.
Now I'm not going to hold it against you, because it's a metaphysical-ish, phenomenological type of gig, but we are all religious/dogmatic. Our entire perception is based on the presupposition that what we see is reality. Epistemologically, we are completely wrong - and yet, as Nietzsche noted, we continue to live. All the truths and logics that supposedly base our lives on aren't a-priori truths. Check out Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for a more thorough look. He talks about it when they talk about ghosts. It's fairly close to teh beginning. you can also look it up online by finding the online book and searching for "ghosts" in the text.
By the tenets of your faith, you should be GLAD that all these are dying and returning the Earth to a sustainable balance, and AREN'T competing with you for limited resources.
You're under the impression that you're using deductive reasoning. I assure you, you're not.
1) Regardless of the
supposed premise that people must die in order for the environment to become sustainable again (notice the supposed, I do not subscribe to the view), I wouldn't be "glad." There's pros and cons.
2) I'm not even sure there's
limited resources when you dont look at the world through the presupposed vision of civilization.
GREAT! Yes, thanks to technology, only 2% of the American workforce is still on farms, and food output far outstrips what it was 150 years ago, when a majority of Americans slaved away on farms 15-18 hours a day - 7 days a week.
This is quickly turning into Civilization and Industrialism 101.
1) The reason that we have to "slave away" on farms is because agriculture is a pain in the ass. check out Jared Diamond's
Agriculture: The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race. Agriculture has its pros and cons. The pro is that it can (unsustainably) feed a LOT more people than can foraging. The con is that it does so unsustainably. Like Quinn says, agriculture (ultimately) leads to famine. Agriculture isn't the answer to famine.
2) The reason we dont still "slave away" is because we have "ghost slaves" (that's the actual term that some peple use) in the form of oil. But, little buddy, oil doesn't last forever. There's like a billion books (and by a billion i really mean at least 10) on Peak Oil. Read up.
2a) In short, we will be slaving away again assuming we use agriculture. The reason I mentioned earlier in this thread that we would be foragers again is because we will have denuded our lands of its topsoil - check out some World Watch Institute figures for that.
3) Technology has unintended consequences. These consequences often outweight the good that it does. So we're always trying to play catch up with the horrible side-effects - because we aren't thinking systemically.
Now, thanks to the same technology, those people in India have better jobs than farming. Go tell them you are taking that away; they will laugh in your face.
1) That presupposes that it's good to be away from your food source. That, of all things, has to be the source of spirituality for humanity. Seriously. The source. The source of SPIRITUALITY for ALL OF HUMANITY - that's forking sweet! And yet we're abstracted from that. You get abstracted from that, you get abstracted from the idea that we come from the land. Look at the results of a vision that is divorced from the environment it was once integrally connected to for millions of years. Why do people like to camp? Why do we try to maintain protected habitats? Only deluded people would answer aesthetics.
2) This also presupposes that division of labour is good. Division of labour is what starts the burgeoius and proletariat dichotomy. There are psychological affects from this division of labour. Already, there's the psychological divorce from the environment. The next is that we are trivialized by the division of labour. Instead of being gangsta riglets, we are automatons of a giant mechanized machine - life immitating art (well, life immitating culture, but culture is a narrative like any other - another example of how we're all religious - you can't avoid narratives either).
3) as far as i know (which isn't much), there hasn't been a sound system developed that is based on division of labour. Check out John Zerzan because he blasts the piss out of the division of labour.
4) Philosophers. Philosophers exist because of the division of labour. Philosophers aren't the wisemen at the head of a band (you would say Tribe, but that's incorrectico). Philosophers are the ultimate example of the psychological failings of civilization. Philosophers represent the ultimate expression of Civilization, and yet they arise out of the same crowd that butchers all life. (I'm leaving this at that, so you can draw out the other thoughts this bitty aphorism is pregnant with)
GOOD! Most people are a blessing to know, and most will even bless civilization with wonders we can only dream about.
Famines kill people. The more people there are, the more people that will starve.
Alarmist crap.
hahahahahaha Dude.
Edward O. Wilson
Al Gore
David Pimentel
Paul Hawken
Stephen Jay Gould
Daniel Quinn
Derrick Jensen
John Robbins
World Watch Institute
John Zerzan
Matt Savinar
Paul Ehrlich
Garret Hardin
William Catton
Ward Churchill
Donna Meadows
In all of these people's (and group's) works, you will find that we are irrevocably messed. Extinction is forever baby. We are destroying (complex) life on the planet. To put it in anthropocentric terms, our children are messed. In no way whatsoever is our system sustainable for another 100 years. And that's even quoting Edward O Wilson, a man I find ungodly conservative.
Our system is unfathomably destructive and wasteful. It's worse now than ever.
Well, let's cut off YOUR food supply - what's good for the 3rd world is good for you.
Again, you dont know anything about Food Production and Population Growth (that's actually the title of a Quinn dvd on his site
www.ishmael.com for $20).
My problem is that I use so many resources (really it's OUR problem that WE use so many resources). The only reason that the game isn't over yet is because only an elite few are completely wasting the Earth's resources - I'm sure you've heard that the USA uses like 25% of the Earth's resources but only has like 4% of the people or some sh*t. If everyone lived like a third world person, we wouldn't be in so much trouble.
As food production goes up, population goes up (that should be simple enough for any college person, as it's simple Thomas Malthus stuff). This is biological BUT! It does change once a group has hit a sociological point. The united states has reached that point. So then we export the food (and get people completely dependent on it and up the inevitable death toll).
I have avoided the ONNNNNNNNNNNLY solution to global famine and that's permaculture. But still, it's a local issue and there are limits to the involvement of the global community. Regardless, population will come down one way or another.
Live what you preach. Do you harp about the environment, or do you go out and pick up trash on a regular basis, like I do?
I used to think that trash was an environmental issue. That's when I was walking down main street in Auburn scolding my buddy about keeping it real. Turns out that trash isn't really an issue outside of "keeping the streets looking pretty." (I was probably 14 then)
Here are some issues:
Over-fishing the seas. Marine life is in the worst shape ever. Even attempting to fathom the terrible situation we are in when it comes to the oceans gives me a panic attack.
Industrial pollution. This is giving people all sorts of diseases.
Development. Land is being ravaged to put up homes, stores, parking lots, cell phone towers, etc.
Now my question to you is: What the f**k is picking up trash going to do for those three issues? Three issues? Obviously that's not inclusive of all environmental issues.
Live what you preach.
That's harder and more dangerous than picking up trash. Remember what I said: The only way to stop the irreversible and absolute destruction is to stop it at its core: end industrialization/production/civilization.
Now ultimately, I completely agree with "live what you preach" and what army boy said. But this means attacking the system, and attacking the system gets you prison, torture, and/or death.
A good rule of thumb is: if you're making change, you get killed (IWW, Black Panthers, Civil Rights activists, etc). So catman isn't even close to making change. But going by what I said, army boy definitely is. But the problem is that army boy IS that part of the executive system that kills others. So in reality, he's entrenched in the system and the reason his life is in jeopardy is because he's the pimp hand of a government that doesn't wince when acting naughty.
(A funny thing about so-called liberals and activists: they wince when being "naughty," even though they're up against a system that has consistently destroyed its own people and others. so-called liberals and activists could learn something from the so-called rightists who dont really value life)
"Well, bigmeow, Chimney gets to come down to the inner city where you have been slugging it out for the last ten years workiing with kids, and help out."
What? I accept your offer. I can only help until August 10th, but I'm sure as sh*t not afraid to keep it real. I've tried to get involved with United Way and FW Literacy Coalition, but I haven't got sh*t for responses.
<----notice the smiley?
