Sushil, I enjoyed reading your comments. I whole-heartedly agree in regards to excess consumerism. When will people learn that buying new clothes or new anything does not lead to happiness. As long as the marketers keep bombarding people with advertisements, then it will continue up until there are no natural resources left.
One of my goals on this rock is to spread the message about the destructive effects of the consumer society. Not many people listen, but one or two do occasionally. Good to know there are some people out there who think the same.
High consumption will yeild high production. This is where the “positive” guys stop their mind clock. They need to read intermediant or advanced microeconomics. The production function is exponented at technology. We do not have the technology to nuclear fusion, to Mars, to global warming protection. We are running fast out of feul, space and air in the stink zone. Curbing consumption is useless if the “harmonious” level doesn’t, or no longer exist, which is to say that planet earth doesn’t possess an asshole. Nevertheless it’s got plenty virgina. India’s national weight will soon tilt the planet’s axis southbound. India’s technical development is all in software, so unless we are evolved to adapt compact discs as our food, then it’s no good. I urge the environmental workers in India to concentrate on one child policy, which will be the greatest contribution that they could make for the health of the environment. I also urge the world’s biggest poluter by far, Americano, to drive mini coopers to work and take enough condoms on the way. Brizilians should keep growing their trees. South Africa needs to stop erecting Toyota ads along the tribal highways and China must not be content with only two nuclear power stations. Everybody should consume more spiritual goods by investing their cash into polution free stocks, then exchange their shares for double glazing windows. Turn the tap of while brushing, you super fish. Vegetarians, stop eating away our green. Have your glutton dogs neutralized, billionairs, just to make sure that your families don’t need the airbus for an inner city trip.
Dear friends - once again I want to thank everyone for expressing your views. The article "Industrial Society Destroys Mind and Environment " was posted in several parts on this thread. There is one more addition to the topic and I am posting the complete article here in order to maintain continuity of thought.
The modified article is now available in the first post of thread.
sushil_yadav
sushil yadav,
There are some aspects that I would question on your writing. Greed is a trait in humanity as well as animals we all have it to some extent . For instance a dog or a cat may not want a particular piece of food that you give them they will spit it out, but should another dog or cat come along they will instantly pick it back up and eat it before their competion does. Man does the same. Your suggestion seems to be that humanity must give up what is natural, for some it is possible for others they will kill because of it, How would you change this?
Also I don’t think you quite touched enough upon wether man as a whole is sane, too much change too fast has given man a type of communal traumatic shock syndrome. There is more I would question but lets start with these above. Thankyou.
Kris.
Dear Kriswest,
Thanks for your views. What you have written is true. Animals do fight and compete with other animals. This is primarily limited to food and territory. Even plants and trees compete with one another for their share of sunshine. But this activity and behaviour of animals does not lead to widespread destruction of Nature.
With Man it is different. Humans have indulged in overactivity - billions of people are engaged in making , buying and selling of thousands of consumer goods. This overactivity has killed nature/ environment. Even if Industrial Society were to live in a completely peaceful environment - no wars - no violence - it would still destroy environment because it is making thousands of consumer goods. In other words we can say - the process of making, buying and selling of consumer goods is the most violent activity - it leads to killing of animals, trees,air, water and land - the entire ecosystem.
sushil_yadav
Short of turning man into an agrarian society which is impossible, the only other way to stop destruction as you put it is the mass destruction of man.
Have you thought perhaps of destiny, our very nature is based upon animal instincts these instincts of food and territory are more sophisticated in man then in beast. To save the world from man, man must leave the nest. perhaps that might be our solution. It is entirely feasable to go to other planets with our seed. Perhaps the world here is just our nest and we must leave it as all creatures leave. Give me a solution that is simple and feasable that will work in 20 years or less and I will listen. I do not believe that we can be less then who we are but, we surely can be more.
Oh fuck! That sounds like a larf!
So as the species tries to become more and get beyond the system, it actually will destroy the system and itself? [* Remembers Taoism *] Hmmm… Humanity is even more screwed then I thought.
One of my older questions was of the “dark flux”.
During the final moments of the “dark flux” we will be farthest from “God” and it will be impossable for “him” to “hear” our “prayers”, etc, and then bang: supernatural solutions? “God” comes “back”?
^But this sort of “event” is rooted in “the new system” claim [biblically].
Instinct
Sushil yadav, allow me to address the anxieties underlying your concerns, rather than try to answer every possible question you might have left unvoiced.
First, let us consider the fact that for the first time ever, as a species, immortality is in our reach.
This simple fact has far-reaching implications. It requires radical rethinking and revision of our genetic imperatives.
It also requires planning and forethought that run in direct opposition to our neural pre-sets.
I find it helpful at times like these to remind myself that our true enemy is Instinct.
Instinct was our mother when we were an infant species.
Instinct coddled us and kept us safe in those hardscrabble years when we hardened our sticks and cooked our first meals above a meager fire
and started at the shadows that leapt upon the cavern’s walls.
But inseparable from Instinct is its dark twin, Superstition.
Instinct is inextricably bound to unreasoning impulses, and today we clearly see its true nature. Instinct has just become aware of its irrelevance, and like a cornered beast, it will not go down without a bloody fight.
Instinct would inflict a fatal injury on our species.
Instinct creates its own oppressors, and bids us rise up against them.
Instinct tells us that the unknown is a threat, rather than an opportunity.
Instinct slyly and covertly compels us away from change and progress.
Instinct, therefore, must be expunged.
It must be fought tooth and nail, beginning with the basest of human urges. I’m sure I don’t have to remind you that the alternative, if you can call it that, is total extinction - in union with all the other unworthy branches of the species.
Collaboration
In our current unparalleled enterprise, refusal to collaborate is simply a refusal to grow–an insistence on suicide, if you will.
Did the lungfish refuse to breathe air? It did not.
It crept forth boldly while its brethren remained in the blackest ocean abyss, with lidless eyes forever staring at the dark, ignorant and doomed despite their eternal vigilance.
Would we model ourselves on the trilobite?
Are all the accomplishments of humanity fated to be nothing more than a layer of broken plastic shards thinly strewn across a fossil bed, sandwiched between the Burgess shale and an eon’s worth of mud?
In order to be true to our nature, and our destiny, we must aspire to greater things. We have outgrown our cradle. It is futile to cry for mother’s milk, when our true sustenance awaits us among the stars.
Disruptor
Let me remind all citizens of the dangers of magical thinking.
We have scarcely begun to climb from the dark pit of our species’ evolution. Let us not slide backward into oblivion, just as we have finally begun to see the light.
Addressing Sushil Yadav
I’d like to take a moment to address you directly, sushil yadav
Yes. I’m talking to you.
The so-called One Free Man. I have a question for you. How could you have thrown it all away? It staggers the mind.
A man of science, with the ability to sway reactionary and fearful minds toward the truth
choosing instead to embark on a path of ignorance and decay. Make no mistake, sushil. This is not a scientific revolution you have sparked…this is death and finality.
You have plunged humanity into freefall.
Even if you offered your surrender now, I cannot guarantee that our benefactors would accept it.
At the moment, I fear they have begun to look upon even me with suspicion. So much for serving as humanity’s representative.
Help me win back their trust, sushil. Surrender while you still can.
Help ensure that humanity’s trust in you is not misguided
Do what is right.
Serve mankind.
I agree that the decimation of the sickly/degenerative elements of the human race would be the “logical” thing to do. This is of course only logical in light of an atheistic and evolutionary worldview. Human life has no value, according to evolution, other then when it furthers evolution. Evolution is so dangerous because it is implied racism. There are no moral absolutes in evolution. Ironically, evolution is taught in the same classroom in which racism is condemned. Darwin knew exactly what his theory would mean in his “Preservation of Races.” Hitler should be considered a hero by all for implementing evolutionary implications to the next, logical progression. Why not kill the elderly, the faggets, and the genetically unfit? They are all useless apendages of society anyways (biologically at least) so why not?
Controlling Weather and the Ultimate Negation of Nature
Technology will ultimately lead to our undoing. Both computers and man will share a symbiotic relationship, such a dependence on each other, that the very concept of human nature will be wiped out.
We may still exist, but in a world, not unlike the matrix. I dont mean to say, humans will be slaves in a simulated world, but that we may opt for a virtual evironment over a natural one. This, I believe will produce a schizoid mentality, not to mention a shattered identity, when questions of “who am I?” become who also are these virtual characters that I’ve created for myself.
Instead of worshipping a God, we’ll send our praise to a computer progammer.
Instead of a computer matching our feelings, humans will be cold and detached and much like a machine. There are many unforseen elements to the virtual world, but I also believe that our concept of time will change, based on the fact that computers can make decisions in billionths of a second, below all our human perception. And the politics of time will seperate us from the true natural rhythms of our planet.
The sad thing is the word “progress” has such a positive connotation and commericals for super sleek gadgets have us believe the future tech world will be paradise. They say its inevitable. And most people adhere to it.
Penis’s will ultimately lead to rape?
No, technology is not to blame.
The people who control the technology [these being the corporations and the governments] – are really to blame.
restraints have been placed on the penis: laws, inheirent goodness, social estrangement
speaking presently of technology, it appears all is headed in the right direction. Fast is good. Faster is better. And very little thought is given to TOO fast. Nobody really speaks of of restraints. Speed limits are a sham, because my car can reach speeds that exceed 100
you can look out your windshield and see where you’re going, but look to the side and the blur of scenery and see what your missing.
i usually do not read internet articles which are so long, but this struck me deep… ive been thinking about this topic a great deal… and you clearified it for me…
a good 2nd experiment for this wud be
test his emotion, make him a shepherd for 4 years, test it again.
Why is it necessarily true that technology would lead to our undoing?
If we look to the past, to lesser times. There is no paradise there.
Computers are an evolutionary tool. Like the twig to the chimpanzee or the damn to the beaver? Does the twig lessen the chimpness of the chimp, the damn lessen the animal nature of the beaver?
Does using your computer to post on this forum not stimulate and entice your mind and your emotions? Emotions, intellect, human nature itself can only be enhanced through CAE, through computer assisted experiences.
Virtual environments further our knowledge of read ones. Why else do you think computer modelling and simulations are so useful. From chimp to casual office worker, there is no animal that has such a fanciful relationship with the “natural” rhythms of the Erde.
My friend, I’m afraid you’ve only given this a small amount of consideration. Computers are an evolutionary tool, yes, but evolution will take an even further step, with the human race giving rise no another form. The paradise I spoke of is not realistic, its implied in how technology is sold to consumers. “Easy as a push of a button” No work, like the days in the garden of Eden. A sort of promise to fill.
Technology appeals to us because it might benifit us medically. We all want to be immortal, so technology is seen as our savior. Thats great, but what’s overlooked is that all our advancements come from the things like the department of defense, where technologies are developed to neutralize the enemy, if not destroy.
Try to imagine your kids spending all their time learning in a simulated enviroment, so much so that they only exit to eat, sleep, and shit. Try to imagine what it will do to their psyche when they are faced with the natural world, a world where they cannot manipulate pixels. That would be very frustrating, almost torment. Why would they then carry any value into the natural world, and what will happen to the natural world as a result?
I could go on, but I feel too strongly about this topic to keep it short.
While I don’t think anyone here is announcing the approach of paradise it is true that many processes, many tasks have become easier. The amount of physical required within society has diminished considerably, and many tasks that were once required manual labour are now fully automatic. Working hours as compared to last century have decreased, although it is hard to see how they could fall further still without further technological revolutions.
I guess the bottom line is, things have gotten progressively easier for human kind from industrial revolution onwards. No mythical garden’s of Eden to be found, however things are as easy as pushing a button or ignition.
A 5 minute drive to the store (as opposed to a 5 hour walk) or an automated assembly lines (as opposed to hundreds of workers engaged in tedious repetitive work).
Great strawman argument. I’m so “sure” that every technology advance to date has been the result of evil military R&D. So would you care to tell us how the Toyota Prius Hybrid electric car was derived from American ICBMs? Or how the invention of the machine gun resulted in my Lexmark all-in-one.
Another strawman argument. Technology appeals to us because it does benefit us medically. Immortality may be an ignorant pipe dream, but I for one would like to spend the majority of my life in a reasonable state of health.
Children (including myself) do and have spent the vast majority of their time in front of the television screen watching TV or playing Xbox, or infront of their PCs surfing the net, playing PC games, watching and listening to MP3/5s, DivX and posting to forums such as these.
And I can tell you this, if anything it has enhanced my appreciation of nature (camping, bushwalking, boating and 4Wding Amongst my favourite of activities), and judging by the number of young people also engaged in such (the vast majority) it hasn’t hampered their appreciation either. How else does one explain the rising popularity of environmentalism? I don’t suppose yesteryears materialistic baby boomers have had a change of heart
It is clear that you do feel strongly about this. But you should be careful. Emotion clouds the mind and misdirects intellect, and can result in irrationally decided outcomes. I imagine that we share many common ideals and hopes for the future of the natural world. Would it not be better to identify what elements of the industrial world should remain and which are overtly harmful rather than condemn the whole of humanity to the dark abyss of ignorance?
What solutions do you offer? I would like to hear them. The world really is in need of solutions and positive action, now more than ever!
[/i]
Just because someone recognizes the problem, doesn’t mean they are the same person to come up with the solution. It needs a joint effort.
Me, personally, I would call for a national holiday called National Slow Down Day. Also I think civiilization should focus on nothing but food and shelter. That should slow things down.
I’m just glad I’m not gonna be around for the mixed up confusion of simulated worlds.
For anyone who is really curious about the negative aspects of technology, this book is the best I’ve found. Its out of print, but you can still order it.
TIME WARS
(the primary conflict in human history)
By
JEREMY RIFKIN
Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Rifkin
Neo-luddite
Views
People related to this category claim that technology is a force that may do any or all of the following: dehumanize and alienate people; destroy traditional cultures, societies, and family structure; pollute languages; reduce the need for person-to-person contact; alter the very definition of what it means to be human; or damage the evolved life-support systems of the Earth’s entire biosphere so gravely as to cause human extinction or omnicide.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Luddite
People are scared of [size=200] SCAREMONGERS[/size]
Too fast for you and me… well you maybe. Have you ever noticed
how fast children adapt to things?
I don’t think an extrapolation of fast (okay), Faster (even better), and then some how even Fast equals bad!?! How does that fit the trend?
What would be a blur to us will be slow motion to the fast thinking next
generation. Remember what happened to the Neanderthals? Neoluddilite ROFL.
Here’s a little article 4 ya -
From: cp@panix.com (Charles Platt)
Subject: Jeremy Rifkin’s book
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics
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Rarely, a writer has an opportunity to say something about
someone he regards as a true menace to the human future. I
was offered this chance recently (on a very modest scale)
when The Washington Post asked me to review the new book by
Jeremy Rifkin, “The Biotech Century.”
I believe Rifkin is the commentator who poses the greatest
threat to attempts to transcend limitations of the human
condition. His book is useful as a catalogue of recent
advances in molecular biology and genetics, but is pernicious
and dishonest in its pretense to be a “guide,” when in fact
it is a polemic.
Normally I don’t quote my own work online, but in this case I
offer the text of my review, largely because I would like as
many people as possible to know about Jeremy Rifkin. If you
are unconvinced by my evaluation, I invite you to look at his
book for yourself. Anyone who believes in the promise of
technology to improve our lives should be extremely concerned
by this man.
–Charles Platt
Profits of Doom
by Charles Platt
Doomsayers have always been in plentiful supply.
“Resources are scarcely adequate to us,” wrote the Roman
scholar Quintus Septimus Florens Tertullianus, “while already
nature does not sustain us. Truly, pestilence and hunger and
war and flood must be considered as a remedy for nations,
like a pruning back of the human race becoming excessive in
numbers.”[1] This was around 200 AD, when world population
was under 300 million.[2]
Tertullianus was wrong, Malthus was wrong, and modern
academics have been wrong–most spectacularly when an MIT
study team deduced from a massive computer simulation that
all reserves of lead, tin, zinc, and petroleum would be
exhausted within 20 years. (This was back in 1972.)[3] Still,
the abysmal track record of pessimistic pundits has never
impaired their popularity–which explains Jeremy Rifkin’s
lucrative career as a gene-splicing alarmist, even though
none of his horror scenarios has come close to reality, while
research continues safely under severe restraints and
promises huge benefits ranging from cancer cures to new crops
that will fight third-world hunger.
Of course, recombinant DNA raises ethical issues and has
frightening military applications. But in The Biotech
Century (Tarcher/Putnam, $24.95) Rifkin goes far beyond
these specifics. With Old Testament hyperbole he warns of an
impending “second genesis” threatening “a biological Tower of
Babel spreading chaos throughout the biological world and, in
the process, drowning out the ancient language of evolution.”
(page 68)
In fact nature already is a chaotic system, and the
“ancient language of evolution” is a risky process of random
mutations. The AIDS virus emerged from one such mutation;
likewise, numerous hereditary birth defects that cause untold
misery. We’d be wise to learn how to inhibit these “natural”
processes merely for our own self-defense.
Rifkin, though, warns that the power to cure defects can
also be used to create superchildren. “‘Customized’ babies
could pave the way for the rise of a eugenic civilization in
the twenty-first century,” he says (page 3). Yet no one
complains, today, if a woman chooses a husband for his
intelligence or his good looks, hoping that her children will
inherit those traits. Shouldn’t individuals be allowed to
control this process with less uncertainty?
In March, 1996, UNESCO denied this right,[4] claiming
that “the human genome is the common heritage of humanity.”
Thus, women should be forbidden to modify their ova, or men
their sperm, because germ plasm belongs to future generations
of our species, not the person in whom it resides.
Rifkin extends this dubious principle even further,
opposing private ownership even of plant genes, especially by
pharmaceutical companies that extract useful DNA sequences in
third-world countries. He doesn’t explain who will pay to
turn these sequences into drugs, test them, and market them
if no one is allowed ownership rights. He simply rejects the
idea. “Life patents strike at the core of our beliefs about
the very nature of life,” he writes (page 62).
His view of life, however, is somewhat inaccurate. He
complains that gene splicing alters “our concept of nature
and our relationship to it, reducing all of life to
manipulatable chemical materials” (page 14). But life cannot
be reduced to chemistry; it is chemistry, as was proved
almost a century ago when sea urchins were fertilized with
inert chemicals in a famous experiment at the Woods Hole
marine biological laboratory.[5] Since then we’ve established
that every cell contains its own DNA program, and currently
we are learning how to modify that program with greater
precision. To Jeremy Rifkin, this seems a threat and an
insult, possibly for religious reasons, though he avoids
mentioning his own faith.
The Biotech Century purports to be an objective guide,
but this is a deliberate deception. Mr. Rifkin makes no
attempt at a fair or balanced assessment, and does not reveal
to the reader his long record of anti-science activism. His
“survey” of the next century is an endless catalogue of
horrors, real or imagined, and he offers no suggestions for
solutions.
If genetic research is impeded, millions of people will
remain hungry or will die unnecessarily. If scare tactics by
doomsayers encourage legislation that outlaws some activities
(such as cloning), the work will move offshore to nations
where fewer safeguards may exist, thus creating greater risk.
Since The Biotech Century encourages these outcomes, it
raises an intriguing question: who is more dangerous, the
scientist seeking to enhance our lives, or the pundit who
promotes unreasoning fear?
Mr. Rifkin would like tighter controls on risky research
conducted by greedy pharmaceutical companies. By the same
logic, he should favor restrictions on reckless doomsayers,
who work without regulatory supervision and profit handsomely
while accepting no responsibility for the social consequences
of their scaremongering.
References
[1] Quoted in Joel E. Cohen, “How Many People Can the World
Support?” (page 6). W. W. Norton and Company, New York, 1995.
[2] Same source as [1] (page 77).
[3] Donella H. Meadows et. al., The Limits to Growth (pages
56-61). Universe Books, New York, 1972.
[4] In “Declaration on Protection of the Human Genome,” from
UNESCO web page; quoted in “The Evolution Revolution” by
Charles Platt, Wired magazine, January 1997.
[5] Boyce Rensberger, Life Itself (page 9). Oxford
University Press, New York, 1996.