The Future

Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
1

Forget all that you know, think that you know, or think that you may know.

I want to talk about the actual future of our world’s societies.

I cannot speak on another person’s behalf, so I will only speak on my own just to start. I want to discuss what I believe the future should or should not be like. I want to discuss what you believe the future should or should not be like. I want to understand where we are and where we are going. An expression comes to mind: if you seek to know thy future, then know thy past. What is our past? It is one of human civilization. I am not a historian, but I do have an extensive knowledge about at least a few things concerning the past of our human specie. Humans have evolved and adapted to our environments. We are evolving and adapting to them now. He shall continue to do so in the future or we will die together as a specie. We are nothing without our environment or our nature. Even in space, mankind must take with him his environment, which is oxygen, water, food, and exercise to stimulate the physical effects of Earth’s gravity in our bodies. To be a part of mankind, a person must necessarily take with him the definition of what it means to be man along with the nature from which he was derived.

I say that the history of man is a history of violence. I say that the history of human sexuality is a history of human rape. Humanity is comprised of the Earth, so then we are also comprised of what it means to be living animals. To torture a cat or dog is no different than torturing a slave, terrorist, criminal, or civilian. All living things feel pain insofar as they feel death. Death causes pain, because without pain, living things would not be forced to live. The fear of death is the second-most fundamental propulsion of the will to live. The first is the will to survive. Survival entails reproduction. Since we are all born as the products of rape, with no concern to the classification of the context, we all have a job to do, which is to survive and reproduce further. Failing this, we die. Hence from conception, the living being known as man, with the form of humanity, is determined to survive, reproduce, and then die after completing the cycle imposed upon us from the beginning of life itself.

The human being is the same as all other beings on our planet in the sense that we all call Earth our home. Civilization has branched out and conquered the ends to our earth, so now our communal or individual survival is mostly taken care of. Any person may find a job and work out their life in servitude if he or she deems it fit. There is nothing else beyond this. The human individual is now a part of a larger organism. A person is a cell of blood and human society and civilization is the matrix into which we fit and circulate ourselves. Our roads are our veins. Our products are our tissues. Our landscapes are our organs. Our cities are our minds. The human civilization is a complete colony. We are forced to lose our individuality as a sacrifice to this communal organism. We are forced into a comfortable slavery to its needs, because this path was set in motion long ago.

Other people know more about history then I do. I wish I knew more, but frankly, I don’t have enough time to commit to history to learn all that I need to know. I don’t have enough time for the depths of understanding architecture, mythology, spirituality, religion, science, business, economics, education, propagation, mental stimulation, and the rest. I am ignorant of a great many things. What I do know is that all of these things shape a common future and a shared vision, a shared ego. If we recognize that human civilization is akin to almost every other animal structure system on the planet, then we can compare and contrast where we stand now. If mankind rules the earth, then what is our next destination. How many species are above our own that we cannot account for? In the same way that is foolish for a bee to believe that humans are not more intelligent than them, it is foolish for humans to believe that there are not creatures more intelligent than us. They watch us and we are unaware. This is the hierarchy of life. Where do we go is the question that is on my mind.

If you can define the future in any way you can imagine, then what would you do? For me, my person is wrapped up in the drives I already mentioned. I am a man and I desire survival first and foremost. I desire reproduction to fit my natural inclinations. I then desire a comfortable lifestyle to live out in peace until the day I die. I do not guess that this differs greatly from person to person. Most people desire the same thing, but the fact is that these people are usually poor. Poor people want the basics, except I am very different in the light that I do not want to live my life as a dreamer. Poor people want the basics, but this also means that they shall be lied to, that the world is great, wonderful, and happy when it is contrary to this case. The rich themselves cannot escape this assault either, which is why I believe the richest of the rich need religion, dreams, and ideals more than anybody else. I can only guess that the rich are hungry for new thoughts more than anybody else. I wouldn’t know firsthand though.

The truth of our future and of whom controls it is obvious to me. I control it. You control it. We all control it. We simply play different parts to the whole. Some are red blood cells. Some are white. Some are cancers. Some are cures. However, what we relate to is often what we are. If I want to be a cancer, then I shall be a cancer. If I want to be a cure, then I shall be a cure. Who gives people their respective purposes if not themselves? Control is given to others is blind faith. Control is handed over to God. I believe that it is time to take this control back. I have my say in the matter of the world, but now I would like to see an effect. I would like to see the effect of you as well.

The world is not going to blow up tomorrow and if it were, then would it change the nature of humanity? I do not see that it would. Like others, I see the person beneath the clothes and beneath the skin. We are products of fate and destiny. We are determined to become other than what we are. We desire to transcend ourselves and become powerful, but I also want to encourage others to push beyond their prior limits. Strive to be more otherwise you don’t stand a chance.

For my future, I want this. I want to have some children, not a lot but maybe a few, two or three. I want a wife and a family for myself. I do not want to worry day-in and day-out for their immediate survival every step of the day, and I probably won’t in the sense that most things are already taken care for the general population. If a person wants to work and can, then they should be put to work. If a person wants to drink, eat, and sleep in a bed, then they should drink water, eat gruel, and sleep in a dry cot at the least. If a person does not want to contribute or be responsible for society, then they should not be allowed a say in the matter and they should not be allowed to produce children into a world where they are not wanted. Because we have nowhere to go, we must live with one another. I believe that people do not like or enjoy this, but it is necessary. Contribute minimal. Receive minimal. If you don’t want to be a part of this system we are all forced into, then don’t reproduce and don’t complain. Live on your water and bread. Like it. Then die a comfortable death in peace.

The poor people who I have met want a chance. They want to be a part of the system, but the system forces them out. It is because the system does not include free thought, but what harm can free thinking do except harm those who are not free. I believe that this current issue is caused by wealth. When people see that they threaten the establishment, because they realize the monopoly of power, then they are condemned and banished or must be silenced in their voices. People who are bums face people who are policemen. They are unwanted, but why? I believe that often times it is because they are intelligent. They understand more of what they feel and express it outright. They do not repress what people normally repress. Because of this, they have no place in society. Though, once we understand that these repressions are shared by all, then what is our problem with any other? Are we part of the same, human condition? Are we a part of the same absent absolute? I suppose that we are. It is a shared dream, but a dream nonetheless. That, more than anything, is what fits people into a commonality of communion.

Spiritual leaders of the past ages recognized these facts and while they did not have the scientific achievements that we uphold today, they were not hindered by their lack of updated technologies. By understanding human nature and the will of men, then gifted men may see and plan the world in which we shall live and thrive. We manipulate nature and nature manipulates us. Let’s do it in a more productive way. Maybe we already are. Maybe the head of the human beast, our civilization, is already doing what it must to survive? Perhaps there are no conspiracy theories at work, because our mind is a shared one. When we as human beings are understood to be part of a global colony, then it makes more sense to realize that social groups act collectively, which may be misunderstood and badly predicted by thoughts constrained by individuality. The common mind is exactly that: common. An single individual can instigate and propel this bundle of thoughts into different directions. Let’s do that.

What should families of the future look like? What do we want for ourselves? Who should we include and who should we not include? Who should rule and who should be slaves? Who should take the blame for our problems and who should do the blaming? Who should be killed and who should not be killed? Who should say what happens and what does not happen?

What will happen regardless?

Here are some topics that I would like to discuss in-depth over the course of this thread:

  1. Human history and civilization
  2. American society and globalization
  3. Common ethics
  4. Power individuals and societies
  5. Spirituality and religion
  6. Science
  7. War
  8. Violence and criminals
  9. Family structures of patriarchy and matriarchy
  10. Human society as a collective organism
  11. Free thought and philosophy
  12. Politics
  13. Necessities for human life
  14. Education
  15. Sexuality
2

:laughing: :laughing: :laughing:

What is the future of all societies and civilization? E X T I N C T I O N

It’s quite simple boys and girls. Once energy is created it eventually exhausts it’s power source until it itself fades out.

When a universe is created we have somthing called cosmic degeneration or entropy where in the future all of existence exhausts the very particles and mass that makes it up in that it folds into itself.

So please note that on these discussions about the future all things that humanity strives for and defends will come to an end where there is no escape. Yes, life truely is a joke like that.

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Mr Doom-

This thread is about what to do for ourselves in the meantime while we wait for that end.

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You do realize that when Woody Allen put that argument forward it was a joke, right?

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  1. Human history and civilization

Human history begins a very long time ago and I am not familiar with all of the details about where we came from, but I do know many things in certain areas. What I do know is that human beings have been around since the beginning of time itself, because living things do not just pop into existence out of nowhere. And even when they do, scientists study such things and eventually find where they came from. There is a reason that everything is here and everything is the way that it is. This reason is all-encompassing. Because humanity shares existence with all living things in the universe, the essence of the human soul or spirit has some kind of substance within it that connects with all things, and even the beginning of time. People generally understand this thing as matter or materiality. The human form has come a long way to be represented by our current bodies, but at times in the past, we were shaped differently. We were different beings and animals. Where did we ultimately come from before we walked upright? I don’t know, but I can guess.

We evolved and adapted as a human specie. We are animals, not unlike any other animal on this planet. We are conscious and other animal species are conscious. We are self-conscious and other animal species are self-conscious. We are not that different from anything on this planet really. Everything on our planet is made up or comprised of essentially the same thing. This all implies that humanity as we know is the direct result of our planet Earth. Nature is responsible for almost everything. The small things that we are responsible for are the small exchanges of action between ourselves and others. Nature put us into play and we must nurture ourselves afterward. We have a good enough job so far to get where we are today. We have survived and created a human history and civilization for ourselves, but humanity is not complete now and it may never be. We relentlessly aim and strive for more. Life wants to live forever with no threat of death. This is the driving force behind the nature of life itself, to face and defeat all odds of death. We want to win for the final time. It will never happen.

We were small hunter-gatherer societies. Over generations upon generations of human reproduction, mankind has evolved into specialized laborers to accomplish tasks that have never been done before. At points in time long ago, behind us, ancient societies of men and women could not afford specialization. There were traditional gender roles assigned to human females and males and we evolved into what we are now from that picture. The mind of men and women are different. The mind of no two people are alike. We are all unique in some ways and ambiguously the same in others. Where we differ we are individuals. Where we share the same we are parts of humanity. We are independent and dependent at the same time and this is not a contradiction. It is a degree of contrariness. Nowadays, human populations can afford new adaptions and technologies to serve us as we produce more than enough people to fulfill our basic requirements of water, food, sanitation, shelter, and education. This was not always presumed for human history.

Not even two hundred years ago did human societies benefit from vaccinations and treatments for widespread diseases. We have come a long way, but from where I wonder? I guess that human hunter-gatherer societies hunted and foraged for food, until people settled in areas and developed techniques for farming. Once farming cultures came to be, then the first human civilizations came into existence as we know them. We were migrating groups of bees until we found places to build nests as a specie. These societies laid down simplistic laws for themselves to pave the way for bigger and stronger societies. Then, human population could and did expand. Specialization became luxurious and human knowledge appeared orally and then inscriptively. The first math systems were formed to account for trading between different groups of people. This is the basis for human civilization as we know it.

Human civilization is where we are right now. We are parts of a larger puzzle where we fit into the world or we do not. People are forced to adhere to social rules handed down by social states and if they do not follow these rules, then they are punished accordingly. Because human civilization expanded across the planet many generations ago, there is nowhere a person can now go to live by his own rules. All of the world’s borders and properties have been drawn up and handed out. Colonization forced civilizations into war with one another and from this development, we are now live in an atmosphere that is pushing for globalization. What I mean to say is that human people are intuitively acting in ways that compel us to make a colony or nest out of our entire planet. People are immigrating and emigrating, mixing with one another until our specie is generally bland and non-threatening by appearance. When I talk about the future of civilization here in this thread, then I am referring to our world as a singular civilization. What do we want it to look like?

Civilizations are built by persons part of a society. There are individuals, but there are also collective entities. These entities are people without identity or authority. They are people who rely on the system without question and shall not question nor push the status quo. They are successfully unthinking drones within our colony. Those people who are no drones, and there are few of these types, are leaders and shall dictate who says and does what. Authority becomes assigned to where it rests naturally. People who become authoritative figures are naturally authoritative. It is even genetic. It is also more. A genetic purpose does not entail active success. Circumstances may arise where children are unborn or killed prematurely, which signifies that these children did not stand a chance to realize or actualize their potential to become true leaders or true followers.

Civilizations are built upon many structures. The first is water and air, two natural elements. These are priceless and if consumers put a price on these things, then I believe there is essentially no way to avoid a full-scale war over rights to these things. If a person is denied water and air, then they will die immediately. To prove this, imagine not drinking any liquid for one week and guess how far you will go. Imagine not breathing for five minutes and guess how far you will go. It should be a self-evident fact. The second thing that civilization is built on is food, but this is not given away freely. Around our world, people starve to death daily. Some people do not get enough to eat, so they die. It is an American norm to believe that everybody in the world should be fed, unless a person plans to look a hungry crowd in the face, with an abundance of food, and deny them just to be cruel. I believe that almost nobody would realistically do that. The only reason to do the contrary would be by holding a fanatically delusive ideal that it is in your best interest to make enemies out of entire groups of people without a practical excuse for it. The thing is, the world has the food to feed all of its poor. The problem is: overpopulation.

Civilizations are facing catastrophic effects from overpopulation right now. Although this is a side point, it should be mentioned. Overpopulation is a scientifically proven relation of cause and effect that can account for nearly every social problem that different nations face. Once populations grow and dwell at a comfortable rate, then they become generally bland and lack huge societal problems. Some European nations are examples of this, as well as other small nations around the world. Once a given civilization become balanced, then it stays balanced unless exterior forces enter into the mix, like environmental changes. The driving force behind population is the human will to propagate its genetic code. When a group of people are vehemently charged to reproduce themselves, which can be seen as narcissism or greed, then that group will naturally force itself onto other societies in the form of war. This occurs with sex and power too. Some groups of people are naturally not content to live with what they are given and they strive for more than they can eat. This defines the white race. In the U.S., white people are generally not content until all others are destroyed and made their slaves. This drives global affairs and it precludes circumstances for war that go beyond population and resource concerns. It is why white men destroyed a whole continent of Native American people as well.

Civilizations require their peoples and the necessities for those peoples to survive. Once a society is guaranteed its basic needs for survival, then it becomes bored. Its people do artistic and scientific things. This may be why the white race decided to dominate the world also, boredom. When societies long ago became generally content with living in sustained environments, after encircling the world, then what more was needed except dominance? People had to assert their powers in sexual displays as all animals do. The white race of people, and by people I mean men, probably felt that they wanted to do something more with themselves. So they made, “Wars of Luxury”. Of course they were unnecessary in the sense of sustenance. Everybody already had their food and water. Everybody already had their places. This was not enough. Competition arose regardless. Spurned onward by idealism and spirituality, mankind justified wars for themselves and began to war with one another, simply for, “the hell of it.” This created empire-building, which began, I guess, in Egypt, Greece, the Middle East, China, Japan, the Americas, and so on and so forth. After empire-building came colonialism.

Since the beginnings of all human civilizations, most things have stayed the same. We have groups of people that settle in a generalized local for long periods of time. People work together socially to complete necessary tasks for survival. Outside of these tasks, jobs are given to people to promote growth and strengthen methods for survival. Laws are made to enforce people into specific behaviors and to oppress the natural inclinations of persons’ individual sexualities. Some people are born and bred to become leaders. Some people are born and bred to innovate. Some people are born and bred to instigate revolts. Civilization is strengthened by all of these things. Because people are born to civilization, there is almost absolutely no way that the person will be compelled to harm civilization, no matter how much supposed evil is done. Hitler was just a man unlike any other man and nothing he did was fundamentally wrong. He was a part of German society and he acted in the way that any male would have done in his identical position. He was a part of human society, as a world civilization, and he strengthened the world despite what any person may think, good or bad. There are no failures in life, because that would imply that a person is not doing his or her job. The truth is, everybody does their job whether they admit it or not. Nobody can escape life except through death. Even then, there is no guarantee.

Because everybody has their part in civilization, then I want to know who here, in this forum of supposed philosophers, is a Republic builder? I plan to build a Republic out of the world, because that is my individual purpose in life. That is what I have been deemed to be by necessity. If I were to be a lumberman or a school bus driver, then I would have been one of those, but those are not my tasks. Mine is to build our future. This is the fundamental job and purpose of true philosophers anyway. So let’s build our society however we want.

Since civilization does not change dramatically from what it already is so quickly, what is civilization going to be like tomorrow?

What do we want it to be?

6

Anyone seen Wall-E yet?

As crazy as that film is I think there is a good chance we’ll all become fat and lazy and rely completely on technology and machines to get us through life (it has already happened with communication!). Ironically enough I see there’s a chance that human race may start to devolve!

and then it will be like the matrix

robots will rule…

twitch

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“it’s a beautiful world we live in” -devo

-Imp

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Why do anything at all? That’s what I don’t understand.

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What arguement are we talking about? Cosmic degeneration and universal entropy has been proven by physics.

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Quite possible.

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Cosmic entropy would be an issue a trillion years from now. To use that as a basis of impending doom would be similar to the first life form on earth worrying about interstellar travel. We can’t imagine what would be possible given that much time of scientific advancement.

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robots?? Dont you guys understand that by obsessing about the future of mechanical robots we are shifting our attention from the real robots in the making - people! People can think less and less for themselves, and most importantly, less and less for each other. There are stereotypes and feuds in society that must be crushed, or we will become the machines.

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agreed

its a shame that there are no more than we two who relise this

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i agree. in that much time, we could find a way to reverse entropy itself, or stop the degeneration of the universe, or create our own universe/reality and live within that until its cycle ends, and then create another one.

there is absolutely no reason to assume that “everything comes to an end” eventually. logically, given the time still left in this universe and the nature of scientific progress, in just a blink of an eye in universal time we could be GODS literally creating universes of our own, or finding ways to transcend or save this one indefinately.

and also, telling yourself that youre life is pointless and that nothing you do matters just because in a TRILLION years the universe might end is the most rediculous and irrational sentimental nihilism ive heard. clearly, the universe will not end in your life, therefore nothing in your life is affected by the ending of the universe. so any meaning that your actions may have remains unaffected by the eventual (possible) ending of the universe.

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Should a cell in the human body worry about the impending death of the organism and seek to overcome it? The timescale is less, a lot less, but the physical scale of our dilemma is impossibly greater. We would have been far happier living in earlier times, where faith and the imagination softened reality, gently lowering us into an inevitable oblivion with a warm, communal sense that the world really cared for us, than in the age of science, which has opened up the vast, cold, empty chasms of time and space, exposing their existence between the very fabric that we are made of, creating a gulf between mind and world, revealing finally the futility and horror of our situation. We searched unerringly for the objective truth and we found it.

Interstellar travel will remain a dream, the physical constraints imposed by our biology and the impossibly great distances mean that Earth will be the tomb of our species. Technology has become the panacea of the unthinking masses, but it was never going to be enough. Our hopes for such a destiny are no different to those of any ancient civilization such as the Egyptians or Aztecs. Our future can be found in their ruins.

That we dig up and examine the bones of the dead is an indication of how desperate our plight has become. Let us call this a quest for knowledge or a curiosity with the past or archeology and not a cry for help to those who are already frozen in entropy’s long shadow. Is it not true that the galaxies are receding from us at such huge, accelerating speeds that intercepting them is now physically impossible except in some pseudo-scientific fantasy dreamt up by researchers and the scientific media, desperate to hide the truth from the common herd and keep their research grants flowing?

But we have even less time now as any inhabitant of a previous civilization would warn us. Each one believed in its own uniqueness, each one imagined it would come to dominate the whole cosmos, each one believed eternity was given to it, each one quickly decayed to nothing. The modern world that we have built and pride ourselves on is only a tiny speck in a vast, entropic sea, the waves of which are already lapping at our feet.

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Leander, do you believe that man futily repeats history or does he evolve in it, does he progress through time and if so will he continue to do so?

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The spiraling acceleration of knowledge
from the physics of the Stone Age hunter
that began operations 100, 000 generations ago
to the hunt for the atom
could lead to an estimate
of the end of our cycle

The human specie has as little as ten generations left

perhaps much less
if we keep arguing

We need to cure our neurosis
in order to more fully understand
what has been happening to us
ever since we evolved to be
the first and only of Nature’s specie
able to reflect on the self
and our relation to the larger Self
from which we were seeded
and nurtured
to conscious attention

each cell in the body does its part
in serving the needs of the body
and leaves the worry of death
and life after death
to the collective consciousness
and conclusions
of the entire organism

Each new birth
generically updates the DNA of each cell
thus consciousness evolves
imprinting each modern child
with the conclusions extracted from new data
and its infinite permutations

Thus consciousness
remains an ongoing evolution of increasing self awareness
spiced by attention to detail
and the ethic behavior that ensures our striving for perfection
and does not have to begin from scratch again

We did not come into being
on our birthday
We have been human
for 2.5 million years

We were indeed more healthy
and occasionally more happier
in earlier times

Luckily
living on the edge of starvation
looking for food
from morn to nite
for 99,000 generations
kept us too busy to argue
or plan a battle
and allowed us to concentrate
on the tension of the snare
and the size of the prey

We put all that physics to work
in the Bronze Age
while selecting and breeding
sweetening Nature’s larder
to suit our tongue

Ahh!
Those generations
were indeed warm and comforting

at least until the clans began feuding
and the neurosis started

but then that illness
is barely a minute or two back
on our genetic chart

Warmth and Comfort
can come again
and will come again
if we have the will
to take some therapy

That is the Newtonian physicist’s view

The Einsteinian metaphysician believes
that the answer to inter-galactic travel
lies on the further evolution
of our atomic-generated consciousness
which is busy right now
redefining gravitational effects

Earth may well be empty of our physical presence
at the end of our cycle
when no more children will be born
leaving us as disembodied consciousness
A collective mind toned
linked by gene
and 3 billion years of physical exercise
on a fertile planet
on the rim of a galaxy

But then again
who is to say
that we have not the potential
to translocate

Will our curiosity remain insatiable
as we roam the Cosmos
appearing and disappearing
from everywhere
in any form
at Will

Or is the yearning
for Total Unification
our future goal