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The Golden Age of Mankind


Jor-el

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Over the years I have on this forum noted that many believe that we are evolving ever upward and that we are leaving our most base nature behind. As such many believe that we are developing or evolving toward a Golden Age, where humanity can eventually address many of the problems it has encountered over the ages and which it has also many times inadvertently caused by its ignorance.

Many are the authors who envision a bright future with the aid of technology, mankind may be on the verge of rewriting the very laws of nature that still bind it.

The political interpretation given the Golden Age by Virgil, who situated it in the future, resurfaced in subsequent eras of revolutionary change. Queen Elizabeth I of England was frequently hailed by her supporters as the virgin goddess Astraea, and the famous lines of Virgil's fourth Eclogue quoted above are supposed to be the source of the motto Novus ordo seclorum (New Order of the Ages) that appears on the Great Seal of the United States. The British poet Shelley hailed the promise of the romantic and revolutionary era with these lines, which foretell the dissolution of empires and the advent of a new religion, superior even to Christianity:

The world's great age begins anew,

The golden years return,

The earth doth like a snake renew

Her winter weeds outworn;

Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam

Like wrecks of a dissolving dream....

Saturn and Love their long repose

Shall burst, more bright and good

Than all who fell, than One who rose,

Than many unsubdued.

Not gold, not blood, their altar dowers,

But votive tears and symbol flowers.

But my issue here, the reason why I post this is that I believe we are writing our own ticket to extinction instead.

I have been called Doomsayer and I have been called Negativist as well as Pessimist, but I wonder what technology will save mankind from itself?

http://scitizen.com/

http://www.overpopulation.net/

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There have always been two opposing views.

In the Middle Ages the poets pushed the idea of laudatio temporis actii or praise of times gone by. They claimed that the Golden Age was a long time ago, that the world was perfect when created, from Eden to this.

Truth is the historian can see that was not true (see pages 14-16 of this book). When the medieval author was praising the past he could not remember the times when people ate at the table with no manners whatsoever, not even wiping their mouth and then passing a cup all dirty around the table for some homes had only one or two total, some castles had few too, but courtly culture developed manners in the West.

Even a casual understanding will tell us that things are exponentially becoming better than they were in the past.

We crawled out of the ocean, up into trees afraid of predators, then walked across the land into tribalism. We had diseases that ravaged us, laws that kept women down, and even wars that killed vast percentages of our population at any given moment in history.

So the other view is that we progressing and that will not stop. Each generation gathers more collective wisdom. Innovation not only lets us solve problems but identify new ones. It takes some time to realize a problem then to fix it, we might be experiencing lag where we are finding so many that it will take some time to solve them, then with the media effect of reporting them all it could seem that we have more than ever before, but in time we will solve many and discover more.

Even war is in decline

TED Radio Hour on NPR had a wonderful piece by Steve Pinker entitled, "Is the World a Less Violent Place?" (the 11:36 minute segment can be found on this page)

He pointed out that yes, we are less violent, less tribalistic, with societies that have the mechanisms to resolve issues without violence.

The fact that our own authorities and governments are better able to resolve differences without violence is a light of the world.

One interesting statistic presented was that in the last century war produced 100 million deaths but that could have had 2 billion if we had the same tribal mindset of those in the past.

Violence is decreasing in our world.

CONAN: Yet we always hear: the 20th century, the most violent, the bloodiest century in human history.

PINKER: Well, people who make that claim never cite numbers from any century other than the 20th, and as Joshua Goldstein has pointed out, the 17th century with its wars of religion, the 14th century with its Mongol invasions, many other centuries have atrocities that can hold their head high when compared against the 20th century.

The annihilation of native peoples of the Americas and Australia and Africa, the Islamic and Atlantic slave trades racked up horrific death tolls.

War And Violence On The Decline In Modern Times

Murder is also in decline

It’s not only deaths in war, but murder, too, that is declining over the long term. Even those tribal peoples extolled by anthropologists as especially “gentle,” like the Semai of Malaysia, the Kung of the Kalahari and the Central Arctic Inuit, turn out to have murder rates that are, relative to population, comparable to those of Detroit. In Europe, your chance of being murdered is now less than one-tenth, and in some countries only one-fiftieth, of what it would have been if you had lived 500 years ago.

American rates, too, have fallen steeply over the past two or three centuries. Pinker sees this decline as part of the “civilizing process,” a term he borrows from the sociologist Norbert Elias, who attributes it to the consolidation of the power of the state above feudal loyalties, and to the effect of the spread of commerce. (Consistent with this view, Pinker argues that at least part of the reason for the regional differences in American homicide rates is that people in the South are less likely to accept the state’s monopoly on force. Instead, a tradition of self-help justice and a “culture of honor” sanctions retaliation when one is insulted or mistreated. Statistics bear this out — the higher homicide rate in the South is due to quarrels that turn lethal, not to more killings during armed robberies — and experiments show that even today Southerners respond more strongly to insults than Northerners.)

Is Violence History?

And our higher morals will always spring forth collectively even if we take a few steps back

From a modeling perspective, it’s plausible that all ten commandments were assembled from the combined wisdom of people who, drawing on the oral and written history of past and current generations, and bearing close witness to their own psychological and emotional dynamics, realized that certain individual behaviors ran counter to personal stability and undermined group solidarity, thereby making the community vulnerable to exploitation and domination by more cohesive groups. They labeled these practices “immoral,” anticipating that over time economic, psychological, social, and political forces would bring about either the elimination or relative decline of groups that countenanced them.

The Ten Commandments and other moral precepts are recorded in the world’s holy books. Distilled and refined through the ages, they constitute the moral foundation of human societies.If somehow they were to disappear from consciousness and we had to start over (think of William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies), we would, by trial and error and with much bloodshed, gradually rediscover some of them from scratch and discard those that, in the meantime, circumstances had rendered obsolete.

Although some attribute moral principles to divine revelation, that’s just one explanation and it’s unverifiable. We may instead think of them as having been discovered in the same way that we discover everything else—through careful observation and verification. Having demonstrated their value in reducing suffering and/or in maintaining social stability, they were then elevated to special status, not unlike the process that results in the formulation and promulgation of successful science models, theories, rules, and laws.

A given rule of thumb can stand as shorthand for the whole body of observations and reasoning that undergirds it, in the same way that Newton’s laws encapsulate classical dynamics. The moral principles of religion represent an accumulation of proverbial injunctions that function as reminders and ethical guides.

As with all models, so with models of morality: close follow—up scrutiny may bring exceptions to light. Exceptions have long been sanctioned to the commandment “Thou shalt not kill”—to wit, capital punishment and warfare. But Moses may yet have the last word. As we move into the twenty—first century, the global trend to abolish capital punishment is unmistakable. Likewise, the inefficacy of war as an instrument of foreign policy is becoming clearer, and, as it does, the frequency of wars is diminishing (as documented by Steven Pinker in The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined).

In the next post, I’ll explain why I think ending the stand—off between science and religion is worthwhile, and suggest some of the elements of a deal that would enable them to co—operate going forward.

The Evolution of Moral Models

With technology there is also always a lag time from the time a new technology is introduced to the time we learn its dangers and how to responsibly use it.

The only question that remains is if each of us as individuals are going to make the choice to better our world by helping others around us, even in the smallest of ways, or will we just not offer anything, withdraw and distance ourselves, or worse, will we add negatives (even pessimistic outlooks drag yourself and those around you down)?

Edited by The world needs you
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Over the years I have on this forum noted that many believe that we are evolving ever upward and that we are leaving our most base nature behind. As such many believe that we are developing or evolving toward a Golden Age, where humanity can eventually address many of the problems it has encountered over the ages and which it has also many times inadvertently caused by its ignorance.

Many are the authors who envision a bright future with the aid of technology, mankind may be on the verge of rewriting the very laws of nature that still bind it.

The political interpretation given the Golden Age by Virgil, who situated it in the future, resurfaced in subsequent eras of revolutionary change. Queen Elizabeth I of England was frequently hailed by her supporters as the virgin goddess Astraea, and the famous lines of Virgil's fourth Eclogue quoted above are supposed to be the source of the motto Novus ordo seclorum (New Order of the Ages) that appears on the Great Seal of the United States. The British poet Shelley hailed the promise of the romantic and revolutionary era with these lines, which foretell the dissolution of empires and the advent of a new religion, superior even to Christianity:

The world's great age begins anew,

The golden years return,

The earth doth like a snake renew

Her winter weeds outworn;

Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam

Like wrecks of a dissolving dream....

Saturn and Love their long repose

Shall burst, more bright and good

Than all who fell, than One who rose,

Than many unsubdued.

Not gold, not blood, their altar dowers,

But votive tears and symbol flowers.

But my issue here, the reason why I post this is that I believe we are writing our own ticket to extinction instead.

I have been called Doomsayer and I have been called Negativist as well as Pessimist, but I wonder what technology will save mankind from itself?

http://scitizen.com/

http://www.overpopulation.net/

from your last link:

Our crashing population is both good and bad. It is good because these numbers show the indisputable evidence of the collapse that has been under way now for the past 13 years. This is the ultimate wake up call for Homo Sapiens. If there were ever a sign to take a long hard look at what we as a species are doing to all of the life sustaining ecosystems on Earth, this is it.

On the other hand this is bad because we have yet to recognize the alarming facts that for the last 16 years we have passed the sustainable food limits that Earth can produce relative to population. This plus our population is going down faster and faster each year for 13 straight years. Meanwhile 3.6 billion people are barely getting enough to eat with more than 1 billion of them in total abject poverty. And let us not forget that somewhere between 10 and 30 million children die every year of the worst possible death, starvation and starvation related diseases.

I find a lot of merit in the theories that our planet is a self-regulating system, an evolving superorganism becoming more conscious of itself through mankind who are it's central nervous system. People who believe in this talk about the slowing down of population growth as well and the role of technology, but this is a more optimistic view than your's:

The interlinking of humanity that began with the emergence of language has now progressed to the point where information can be transmitted to anyone, anywhere, at the speed of light. Billions of messages continually shuttling back and forth, in an ever-growing web of communication, linking the billions of minds of humanity together into a single system. Is this Gaia growing herself a nervous system?

The parallels are certainly worthy of consideration. We have already noted that there are, very approximately, the same number of nerve cells in a human brain as there are human minds on the planet. And there are also some interesting similarities between the way the human brain grows and the way in which humanity is evolving.

The embryonic human brain passes through two major phases of development. The first is a massive explosion in the number of nerve cells. Starting eight weeks after conception, the number of neurons explodes, increasing by many millions each hour. After five weeks, however, the process slows down, almost as rapidly as it started. The first stage of brain development, the proliferation of cells, is now complete. At this stage the fetus has most of the nerve cells it will have for the rest of its life.

The brain then proceeds to the second phase of its development, as billions of isolated nerve cells begin making connections with each other, sometimes growing out fibers to connect with cells on the other side of the brain. By the time of birth, a typical nerve cell may communicate directly with several thousand other cells. The growth of the brain after birth consists of the further proliferation of connections. By the time of adulthood many nerve cells are making direct connections with as many as a quarter of a million other cells.

Similar trends can be observed in human society. For the last few centuries the number of "cells" in the embryonic global brain has been proliferating. But today population growth is slowing, and at the same time we are moving into the next phase—the linking of the billions of human minds into a single integrated network. The more complex our global telecommunication capabilities become the more human society is beginning to look like a planetary nervous system. The global brain is beginning to function.

This awakening is not only apparent to us, it can even be detected millions of miles out in space. Before 1900, any being curious enough to take a planetary EEG (i.e., to measure the electromagnetic activity of the planet) would have observed only random, naturally occurring activity, such as that produced by lightning. Today, however, the space around the planet is teeming with millions of different signals, some of them broadcasts to large numbers of people, some of them personal communications, and some of them the chatter of computers exchanging information. As the usable radio bands fill up, we find new ways of cramming information into them, and new spectra of energy, such as light, are being utilized, with the potential of further expanding our communication capacities.

With near-instant linkage of humanity through this communications technology, and the rapid and wholesale dissemination of information, Marshall McLuhan's vision of the world as a global village is fast becoming a reality. From an isolated cottage in a forest in England, I can dial a number in Fiji, and it takes the same amount of time for my voice to reach down the telephone line to Fiji as it does for my brain to tell my finger to touch the dial. As far as time to communicate is concerned, the planet has shrunk so much that the other cells of the global brain are no further away from our brains than are the extremities of our own bodies.

There are also parallels between the evolution of the global brain and the evolution of mental functions. The first nervous systems made simple connections between different parts of the organism—between sensors and muscles, for example—that allowed basic reflex reactions. In a similar way, the early Internet allowed data transfer from one machine to another, but little more.

In more complex organisms nerve cells gathered into ganglia and then into rudimentary brains. This integration of nervous pathways led, among other things, to the emergence of memory—which as far as we can tell seems to be distributed throughout the brain. Memory tends to be associative; if I see a dog it may trigger my memory of my own dog, and the need to call the vet, which in turn may trigger memories of a fictitious vet in a television series, which may trigger further associations. The WorldWide Web, which has now become the repository for all human knowledge, would seem to provide a similar function on a global level. Data is not located in any single place, but is distributed amongst tens of millions of host computers across the planet. A link on any of the hundreds of billions of pages on the web will call up some or other associated page; moreover, just as human recall may take the form of a thought, a visual image, a sound, or some other modality, a link on the web may call up text, images, sounds, video, virtual reality, or some combination of them.

The web's associative memory has been augmented by search engines, which index and collate information across the net. These are rapidly becoming more sophisticated, prioritising the links returned according to content, popularity, the user's profile, and other factors. Software agents (small programs that can travel to different nodes of the net, selecting information and sending it back to the user), expert systems, and other emerging technologies will likely lead to a web that does more than just remember. It will be able to form new associations, synthesize information creating new knowledge, and perhaps solve problems presented to it. It will then have become a system that can learn and think for itself.

The changes this will bring will be so great that their full impact may well be beyond our imagination. No longer will we perceive ourselves as isolated individuals; we will know ourselves to be a part of a rapidly integrating global network, the nerve cells of an awakening global brain.

http://www.peterruss...om/GB/Chap8.php

I believe if there's a golden age in our future, it will be something like this.

Edited by ChloeB
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There have always been two opposing views.

In the Middle Ages the poets pushed the idea of laudatio temporis actii or praise of times gone by. They claimed that the Golden Age was a long time ago, that the world was perfect when created, from Eden to this.

Truth is the historian can see that was not true (see pages 14-16 of this book). When the medieval author was praising the past he could not remember the times when people ate at the table with no manners whatsoever, not even wiping their mouth and passing a cup all dirty around the table for some homes had only one or two total, some castles had few too, but courtly culture developed them in the West.

Even a casual understanding will tell us that things are exponentially becoming better than they were in the past.

We crawled out of the ocean, up into trees afraid of predators, then walked across the land into tribalism. We had diseases that ravaged us, laws that kept women down, and even wars that killed vast percentages of our population at any given moment in history.

So the other view is that we progressing and that will not stop. Each generation gathers more collective wisdom. Innovation not only lets us solve problems but identify new ones. It takes some time to realize a problem then to fix it, we might be experiencing lag where we are finding so many that it will take some time to solve them, then with the media effect of reporting them all it could seem that we have more than ever before, but in time we will solve many and discover more.

Even war is in decline

War And Violence On The Decline In Modern Times

Murder is also in decline

Is Violence History?

And our higher morals will always spring forth collectively even if we take a few steps back

The Evolution of Moral Models

With technology there is also always a lag time from the time a new technology is introduced to the time we learn its dangers and how to responsibly use it.

The only question that remains is if each of us as individuals are going to make the choice to better our world by helping others around us, even in the smallest of ways, or will we just not offer anything, withdraw and distance ourselves, or worse, will we add negatives (even pessimistic outlooks drag yourself and those around you down)?

Do you believe then that humanity can overcome its own natural tendencies?

I do not see it. Everyday things are getting worse, not better. Sure we have new technologies that help us in many miraculous ways, but they are never enough to stem the tide. And how many have actually got access to them? very few when compared to the entire world.

Edited by Jor-el
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from your last link:

Our crashing population is both good and bad. It is good because these numbers show the indisputable evidence of the collapse that has been under way now for the past 13 years. This is the ultimate wake up call for Homo Sapiens. If there were ever a sign to take a long hard look at what we as a species are doing to all of the life sustaining ecosystems on Earth, this is it.

On the other hand this is bad because we have yet to recognize the alarming facts that for the last 16 years we have passed the sustainable food limits that Earth can produce relative to population. This plus our population is going down faster and faster each year for 13 straight years. Meanwhile 3.6 billion people are barely getting enough to eat with more than 1 billion of them in total abject poverty. And let us not forget that somewhere between 10 and 30 million children die every year of the worst possible death, starvation and starvation related diseases.

I find a lot of merit in the theories that our planet is a self-regulating system, an evolving superorganism becoming more conscious of itself through mankind who are it's central nervous system. People who believe in this talk about the slowing down of population growth as well and the role of technology, but this is a more optimistic view than your's:

http://www.peterruss...om/GB/Chap8.php

I believe if there's a golden age in our future, it will be something like this.

Yet when we compare these advances to how many actually benefit from them, what do we find?

5% of the world benefits and the rest stays the same. Population wise we are in deep trouble, we are actively using the last resources of this planet. resources that once used will never be available again.

Water is a perfect example. Water will be the cause of more war in this coming century than any other resource. Arable land, will dwindle, and population has not stopped increasing. Even as we see the more advanced nations stabilize, the others have not and will not.

We have effectively gone over the edge. even if all of humanity stopped every source of CO2 now, we will still lose the ice caps and water will rise over 80 meters globally.

Antarctica, Greenland, and all the other ice caps, ice fields, and valley glaciers contain approximately 32 million cubic kilometers of ice. If global warming caused the ice sheets that cover Greenland completely melted then global sea levels would rise more than 6 meters. If Antarctica's ice sheets should melt, then global sea levels would rise an additional 73 meters. So, in total, if the greenhouse effect from carbon dioxide and methane gas cause all of the world's ice caps, ice fields, and glaciers to completely lose their ice-- then global sea levels could rise more than 80 meters!

World100-8190.jpg

http://newpapyrusmagazine.blogspot.pt/2008/03/worse-case-scenario.html

Edited by Jor-el
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But my issue here, the reason why I post this is that I believe we are writing our own ticket to extinction instead.

I have been called Doomsayer and I have been called Negativist as well as Pessimist, but I wonder what technology will save mankind from itself?

Indeed, what technology will save us from our own created mass extinction? What technology will save us from all the pollution created by our consumer societies? We can expect to see many Asian countries explode with a growth of a new middle class, who will want everything they see on American tv and film.

What technology will save us from denuding the earth's finite resources? What technology will save us from exponential human overpopulation?

That's not being pessimistic, that's being realistic.

"Prime Minister David Cameron has announced a £1 million prize for anyone who can “identify and solve the biggest problem of our time”."

"“What the world needs most of all right now is growth" Thanks Dave, but that mindset is the biggest problem.

"The earth is finite. Its ability to absorb wastes and destructive effluent is finite. Its ability to provide food and energy is finite. Its ability to provide for growing numbers of people is finite. And we are fast approaching many of the earth's limits."

http://www.ucsusa.or...scientists.html

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Indeed, what technology will save us from our own created mass extinction? What technology will save us from all the pollution created by our consumer societies? We can expect to see many Asian countries explode with a growth of a new middle class, who will want everything they see on American tv and film.

What technology will save us from denuding the earth's finite resources? What technology will save us from exponential human overpopulation?

That's not being pessimistic, that's being realistic.

"Prime Minister David Cameron has announced a £1 million prize for anyone who can “identify and solve the biggest problem of our time”."

"“What the world needs most of all right now is growth" Thanks Dave, but that mindset is the biggest problem.

"The earth is finite. Its ability to absorb wastes and destructive effluent is finite. Its ability to provide food and energy is finite. Its ability to provide for growing numbers of people is finite. And we are fast approaching many of the earth's limits."

http://www.ucsusa.or...scientists.html

Can you imagine a world with 30 billion people? All it will take is another 150 years.

587px-World-Population-1800-2100.svg.png

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1004724_512587562129126_60273006_n.jpg

Yeah this is what I see, I think it says it all.

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Yet when we compare these advances to how many actually benefit from them, what do we find?

5% of the world benefits and the rest stays the same. Population wise we are in deep trouble, we are actively using the last resources of this planet. resources that once used will never be available again.

Water is a perfect example. Water will be the cause of more war in this coming century than any other resource. Arable land, will dwindle, and population has not stopped increasing. Even as we see the more advanced nations stabilize, the others have not and will not.

We have effectively gone over the edge. even if all of humanity stopped every source of CO2 now, we will still lose the ice caps and water will rise over 80 meters globally.

Antarctica, Greenland, and all the other ice caps, ice fields, and valley glaciers contain approximately 32 million cubic kilometers of ice. If global warming caused the ice sheets that cover Greenland completely melted then global sea levels would rise more than 6 meters. If Antarctica's ice sheets should melt, then global sea levels would rise an additional 73 meters. So, in total, if the greenhouse effect from carbon dioxide and methane gas cause all of the world's ice caps, ice fields, and glaciers to completely lose their ice-- then global sea levels could rise more than 80 meters!

World100-8190.jpg

http://newpapyrusmag...e-scenario.html

I know what you mean, I'm always going on and on about renewable energy and here in Texas, I get called a hippy, tree hugger a lot! I see it like cancer that begins with a group of cells that fail to communicate with the organism that grow out of control and spread causing the organism to be sick or destroy it. That's what humanity has become, having lost their connection and communication to mother earth and becoming just like a cancer on a human on her. I don't think all technology is good and will save us, but the information age/internet, I think is and possibly part of a larger evolutionary process that could lead to a golden age and I think that depends on people recognizing they are very much part of the earth and it's part of them, we've lost that and I think that's so important, but it's hard to imagine people changing that much, maybe not soon enough. God I do sound like a tree-loving hippy!! LOL.

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I know what you mean, I'm always going on and on about renewable energy and here in Texas, I get called a hippy, tree hugger a lot! I see it like cancer that begins with a group of cells that fail to communicate with the organism that grow out of control and spread causing the organism to be sick or destroy it. That's what humanity has become, having lost their connection and communication to mother earth and becoming just like a cancer on a human on her. I don't think all technology is good and will save us, but the information age/internet, I think is and possibly part of a larger evolutionary process that could lead to a golden age and I think that depends on people recognizing they are very much part of the earth and it's part of them, we've lost that and I think that's so important, but it's hard to imagine people changing that much, maybe not soon enough. God I do sound like a tree-loving hippy!! LOL.

:wub: Hail fellow tree hugging hippie. I think if we can start using the green technology we already have and make better choices toward long term sustainability over short term profit. I think we can pull the planet out of the trash. It will get worst before it gets better if we don't. We are on the verge of a global environmental collapse or a golden age of great discovery. I think it is our call. One way or another everything changes. All religions are sooner are later replaced with another one, more suitable for the current age. I am putting my bets on Earth Base religions.

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1004724_512587562129126_60273006_n.jpg

Yeah this is what I see, I think it says it all.

“What technology will save mankind from itself?” you asked.

On its/there own, none! but if we use these things/tools correctly you never know. The internet is one thing that we can all use to come together beyond the corrupt politicians in all countries and change things, it will not happen overnight but we have to try if not for ourselves then for our children and grandchildren. Here’s a short film about such a project, it’s called ‘Peace One Day’ have a look, get involved if you like, I did last year and had a great time. We can change things but we all have to be active. The only figures I have found are from 2010 where a in 100 countries 110million people joined together to raise awareness of the world’s people’s needs on the 21 September. I think its only 93 days to the next one.

Perhaps see you on face book?

https://www.facebook.com/peaceday

take care

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Corrupt politicians might only exist because if we were them we would do the same. Change that and change them.

If you want to change the world then work on changing yourself. Better than chains, better than pains, better than playing the blaming game.

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Can you imagine a world with 30 billion people? All it will take is another 150 years.

587px-World-Population-1800-2100.svg.png

Currently I'm doing a maths course and in one of the books such a graph came up. The problem, the text said, is that it's difficult to predict long term change with any real accuracy. It used two predictions of populations which used similar models. It was accurate in the short term, but in the long term the numbers simply didn't match in the long term.

Now what I think. Well, I think you are a pessimist and you've become so focused on the negative aspects of humanity.

Your attitude is one that reeks of 'bad things have happened, we may as well give up now' what good is that? We should strive as a species to make things right, to make things better. And I think we can. It takes effort though and it takes time, but I see it. I see the problems you do, but every problem has a solution. we shouldn't just give up because the prroblem is too big or too difficult, we should keep looking for a solution to it. Only then will we actually find them.

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Well one thing that bugs me is that people who must preach change are usually hypocrites and only want others to change, not themselves. i heat at least 2/3rds with wood, grow a good chunk of my own food, havent had to put out a garbage can in almost four years now (recycle and compost basically everything), collect rain water to water said garden for the first half of summer, clean up my street of garbage weekly... and the list goes on. Oh, and I do most of this on a 1/5th of an acre suburban lot. ;)

Secondly, if we want to try and "save" the world - as harsh as this sounds - sadly, we need to stop sending aid to countries in africa/asia/etc. We are simply maintaining unsustainable populations/increasing them by shipping them food.

Thirdly, we need to stop increasing the size of cities. Cities should be small and compact, surrounded by acerages and farm land...this means less transport will be required to bring in food/goods. Tied to this is the fact we need to stop paving over farm land!!! (A real problem in the fraser valley out west here :/ ).

There are countless things we can do...we just need to do them.

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Saving the world means saving all the people in it now, not just your own, and not starving those on other continents.

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Secondly, if we want to try and "save" the world - as harsh as this sounds - sadly, we need to stop sending aid to countries in africa/asia/etc. We are simply maintaining unsustainable populations/increasing them by shipping them food.

"For God's Sake, Please Stop the Aid!"

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It is not the aid so much it is not the right kind of aid. I love the show Anthony Bourdain is doing on CNN, Parts Unknown. The man goes places nobody in their right mind would go, but he opens your eyes to what is really going on. His last show he did was in the Congo. Their main problem is they got no infrastructure. If you invested in education and infrastructure, they would go a long way. The place could be a paradise and the tourist would come. I would be more than glad to share some of our tourist with them, come next tourist season.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPMfLBPMXl8

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It is not the aid so much it is not the right kind of aid. I love the show Anthony Bourdain is doing on CNN, Parts Unknown.

But he's a chef. I would rather listen to African economists.

Their main problem is they got no infrastructure. If you invested in education and infrastructure, they would go a long way.

Perhaps if the thugs running the government there didn't steal and plunder the country's coffers quite as much they would have enough money for infrastructure and education.

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erhaps if the thugs running the government there didn't steal and plunder the country's coffers quite as much they would have enough money for infrastructure and education.

and until this is solved, there is no point in funding them...i mean sending aid.

Saving the world means saving all the people in it now, not just your own, and not starving those on other continents.

This won't make me popular but sometimes sacrifices have to be made. And imho, Its not my job to worry about people in other countries...my priorities are my family/friends and then the people in my country. Once we are sustainable for the foreseable future, then and only then, should we be aiding other countries.

Edited by Bavarian Raven
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A lot of the crap going on with their leaders is because of interference from the west and we have to eat some of that blame. We installed a lot of the nut case despots, not just the US either. At this point we can't fix that, they have too. They have to be like me losing a hundred lbs, one day I woke up and said enough is enough, things got to change. And then comes the tricky part, don't get FOOLED again. A collective mind set of get'er done seems to be lacking in the global mind set. Inject "abc's" and "123's would be a start.

If you really listen to what the Anthony says and look at what is on the film you are seeing real life. It is one of the bright spots on our horrible TV. A chef is an educated man, he is an Artist. Art is a commentary about life. You can learn a lot about life from art. I should know, I'm an Artist.

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:wub: Hail fellow tree hugging hippie. I think if we can start using the green technology we already have and make better choices toward long term sustainability over short term profit. I think we can pull the planet out of the trash. It will get worst before it gets better if we don't. We are on the verge of a global environmental collapse or a golden age of great discovery. I think it is our call. One way or another everything changes. All religions are sooner are later replaced with another one, more suitable for the current age. I am putting my bets on Earth Base religions.

I hope you're right!! I guess I'm an idealist, I don't like to give up hope.

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The Reformed Druids use a 7 point star to represent the attributes of a Reformed Druid.

1 Wisdom

2 Compassion

3 Liberalness

4 Abundance

5 Nonconformity

6 Learning

7 Idealism

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The Reformed Druids use a 7 point star to represent the attributes of a Reformed Druid.

1 Wisdom

2 Compassion

3 Liberalness

4 Abundance

5 Nonconformity

6 Learning

7 Idealism

I like it!!

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What has a particular African country’s aid problems got to do with food and medical care for let’s say the displaced (especially children) trying to run from the war in Syria? Or the Sudan? Or how about Earth quakes or Tsunami, etc, etc. A child dies every few minutes 24/7/365. If we can get a man on the moon we can get food to the starving, like Bill Hicks said ‘a cruise missile with food in it’, do you know how accurate those things are? we could drop the a ‘food bomb’ right in to whatever village we wanted, lol, I must be mad we only spend kind of money when we want to kill people.

But we should be careful when donating money to charity, to make sure they are an honest one, government aid is often really bribe money, if a certain country is friendly to us (often to particular interested groups) we give their government/leaders some money and tell our tax payers that it’s ‘Aid money’, so ‘we’ pay the bribe . But besides those issues, let’s say someone tells me, because of ‘human greed’ possibly only half of my donation would get to feed the children? Should I stop giving? Or put it another way, I am supposed to be feeding 40 children every month but really only 20 children will be fed? What do I do? Well I’m mad, so I say give twice as much, or as much more as I can. Charity is only a stop gap, what we really need is ‘Peace’ on the planet which will lead to prosperity, when we join together we can change things, well that’s my view but then again I’m mad. Take care

The Tao te Ching 53

The great Way is easy, yet people prefer the side paths.

Be aware when things are out of balance. Stay centered within the Tao.

When rich speculators prosper, While farmers lose their land;

when government officials spend money on weapons instead of cures;

when the upper class is extravagant and irresponsible while the poor have nowhere to turn-

all this is robbery and chaos. It is not in keeping with the Tao.

Don’t forget --- The International day of Peace 21 September 2013 ----

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This won't make me popular but sometimes sacrifices have to be made. And imho, Its not my job to worry about people in other countries...my priorities are my family/friends and then the people in my country. Once we are sustainable for the foreseable future, then and only then, should we be aiding other countries.

These priorities are what tribalism is based on and rebranded as nationalism for it is not a pure isolationism but instead the same priorities which sponsored colonialism.

Our past wealth and greatness were based on taking from others and bringing what was extracted back home. The same priorities introduced the current global economic inequality that is the very problem which your view claims we should only address once we have solved our own problems.

Another view unrelated to yours is that a rising tide lifts all boats.

Three goals can be found in this view. The first is not helping others, the second is allowing others to become independent, the third is decreasing corruption.

While the last two are certainly problems there is nothing but conservative philosophy which claims they can be achieved by pursuing the first goal of not helping others.

The only thing guaranteed with this view is that we would not help others which might be the main goal and it is a very selfish one to only want to help your own and neglect others except to extract their resources to better our own situation.

(Shikwati is most likely not in the same social class as those he is hoping to refuse aid. The food bank is not the only form of aid either. There are education, medical, and water purification projects too.)

It is also not as if we have one uniform policy in any case. There are plenty of sources of private aid. Private donors and philanthropist will continue their missions. The view presented in the quote above is most likely aimed at influencing our politics and the amount of foreign aid as given by our government.

While corruption and self-reliance are issues it is doubtful our neglect would solve them or that our aid is the sole reason they exist or were created to begin with.

Edited by The world needs you
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