Purpose (you’re using the word meaning incorrectly) for me was hard earned.
I figured out that no being in existence wants to have their consent violated. Then I figured out that in some way, shape or form that everyone is having their consent violated. I call this “the consent violation problem”
Then I figured out that when you’re having the best time of your life and it’s stomping on someone else’s heart, that this is a structural problem I call “the pleasurable exclusive access problem”
Then I figured out that for every winner there is more than one loser, another structural problem that I call “the negative zero sum problem”
So now I have a purpose. Violate these three problems as little as possible and work to fix them forever.
Is the east or west in decline?
After what I wrote above… does it matter?
These are just hallucinations… what I wrote is the core, it’s real and true from all reference frames.
What I am saying is that the older people I have met have had a resilience that was not merely physical, and which is also revealed in history, and that they retained a toughness to cope with their trials and tribulations. That isn’t to say these people didn’t suffer, but they stayed in the ring, to use a metaphor. The question is, where does this resilience come from? I have spoken to many younger people in my profession about this observation and many of them said that they wouldn’t be able to keep going like the older people had. This is also backed up by the number of people with psychological problems in our times, which I put down to the fact that they haven’t got anything to believe in.
I’m not even restricting this to a belief in a God; but even in Buddhism, we are confronted with depression. The Buddhist perspective is that an underlying selfishness/egotism is often the basic cause of feeling depressed. This doesn’t mean that the suffering person should be ‘blamed’ for the condition, but rather it opens up a very specific approach to the problem using meditation and emphasis on compassion and loving-kindness. You see, I think that the underlying problem of “selfishness” really boils down to the fact that we struggle with a concept of self that tends to block out our connectedness to a community and, from a Buddhist perspective, from Dharma.
The more individualist we are, the less support we feel from our peers, and the less common goals we have. This has an effect on the whole way we interact with society, and the worst part is that in tribulations we feel alone and may even block the compassion of others. The community spirit needs to be encouraged; people need others to point out that which they cannot see. It also needs to have certain elements like chanting or singing, music and dancing, but also meditation, contemplation and learning. I feel that these are aspects of human culture that we need to form a resilience that isn’t just a result of military drill. Of course, that also helps to a certain degree, but I think that we need a other components as well.
Unfortunately, it is only a minority of people who would be willing to take part in such a community. I notice at the gym that most people are doing their thing and only have superficial contact with others, and the exception confirms the rule. And, like I say, the materialist question, “does God exist?” isn’t necessarily a part of it. Besides, another thread could perhaps deal with the question whether Christian faith is materialist by nature, which I believe we can answer that it is not. At present I am more interested in metaphysical idealism than any materialist argument.
It is curious that you point to Scandinavia as proof of high levels of mental and material wealth. I discovered this on the internet:
In Europe, I’m not experiencing the level of “foisting views on others” that may be the norm in America for example. In fact, the influence of the Church is quite small, and the Islamic influences are also comparably small (except in Moslem communities). Therefore, I don’t see that as the problem you have named. In fact, I think that the fact that 38% of women and 32% of men will receive treatment for a mental disorder at some point during their lifetime may be an indication that they are struggling with something that society no longer addresses. Of course, there have been mental disorders in the past, but we have identified the problems which were prevalent then. This is a new situation and I have stated my case above.
You see, religion isn’t just about a belief in some divine being, it is also about a common goal. It is about a community aiming for the good of the whole. The number of care homes, care for the disabled, hospitals, clinics, and hospices run by the church (at least here in Germany) is quite high and was higher before the state started turning them into commercial businesses, demanding that they make a profit. The charitable aspect of faith is also important and playing a role in the larger society.
This is something I see as on the decline, and it is due to an inability to stay the pace. I observed very often that the older members of staff were more resilient, despite the aches and pains of getting older, than younger staff members. There was a point when staff would ask me to employ an older nurse rather than a younger one. There was also a common feeling that older staff members chose the profession as a vocation and not just as a means of getting paid. Of course, you may say that this was a local thing, but I travelled quite a lot as regional manager and was told the same story elsewhere as well.
But as I have continually tried to point out, this is one component of a larger issue, albeit that many aspects come together. Perhaps you can see that I am not just one of those Christians on the street waving a banner.
I think that the “the consent violation problem” is a problem with individualism, in which people are failing to see themselves as a member of the whole, which seems in particular a Western problem. The idea of being part of a collective seems to work for the orients better in many ways, perhaps because their idea of “self” is different in that it is an illusion. If you try to get down to what you individually are, you find that you are only a protrusion of the collective. Your atoms change, your thoughts are repetitive re-recordings of what you have heard, what you consume becomes part of you and you excrete what is no longer wanted, and you are reliant upon the air, the sun, the green of the vegetation and the colours of the flowers. So what is you?
Then the question is, why do you think you have to give consent? We are all just bustling about in this world, and continually asking and giving consent would only confuse things. Of course, if your freedom or intimacy is infringed upon, we already have laws that state that consent is needed, but even that is a question of degree. I think that the attempt to get people to busy themselves with our gender, forcing them to use certain pronouns individual to each person, is another expression of intrusive individualism. People have lost a vision of who they are because they feel they don’t belong anywhere and so they make up groups to belong to.
It addresses a real problem from the wrong side, and it is a lack of identity that is causing it.
I guess I don’t see what the supposed extra resilience of older people, and how older nurses being doughtier than younger ones, has anything really to do with religion, or with the alleged decline of the West. I think the West and the rest (of the world) are in decline because of climate change, resource depletion and overpopulation.
That is because you don’t see the church (or other religious gathering) in the way that people earlier saw them. It wasn’t just about sermons and hymns, but it was about a common direction for life and community and looking after your own. This made people psychologically more resilient than today. Today the individualism causes many problems that we won’t see because it is the ruling dogma. A person who had lived for ninety years in Europe during the twentieth century had lived through two world wars that took place in their land and the economic crisis of the thirties. I just hope the present generation isn’t faced with something similar.
The nurses I spoke about weren’t particularly religious, although when my friend and I held a devotional talk (mostly as a dialogue), we were applauded. And when it came to the push, they upheld Christian values and criticised those who didn’t. This meant that our nursing objectives weren’t in doubt, and we were quite successful because of it. Everyone pulled their weight. Unfortunately, it was only exceptions amongst the younger staff that did the same. I see it as a transmission of values in second generations, who were still affected by the faith of their parents or grandparents.
There is no doubt that in most countries, there has been a general reduction of violence in comparison to the past. This has been due to the development of democratic structures, although the feudal structures already had a police force in many cases, and the surrendering of arms into the hands of authorities has made the large difference. Where that hasn’t happened, like in America, violent crime is much more prevalent than where it has. This is obvious when we see that in Germany, even after WWI, there were private armies and militia who became the backbone of Hitler’s anti-democratic movement before WWII and enabled his rise to power.
There was also already a Trade Union movement that had started in the 1850`s or thereabout, which began to flourish after WWI but fell victim to the Nazis prior to WWII. It came into its own after the war and had a lot to do with how societies came back. Countries like Germany had a more constructive relationship with the unions, and this contributed to the boom that the country experienced. Other countries experienced a struggle between Unions and Political Parties for status and power, which slowed development. In the UK, for example, the Unions were beaten by a conservative Government and the country suffered austerity afterwards.
I think Shermer is right about having to earn, fight for and argue for moral progress, but this isn’t what I am seeing. Instead, democracy is too much hard work for many people, and they vote for people who promise to take it out of their hands for them. After WWII, I think people were more willing to fight and argue for values, having fought for the survival of democracy in Europe, but after that individualism sneaked in and although there were positive developments, there were a lot of shadows being neglected. We forgot that we had to earn the progress we had attained, and people started talking more about their rights, and in Europe people thinking that they fell from heaven.
What we have also noticed is that enhancements in daily life rapidly reduce our adeptness in certain areas. The more technology enters our lives, the quicker we become reliant, and we overlook the fact that a loss of electricity takes those enhancements away. A whole industry could collapse due to a sun eruption, which we know has happened in the past. Our mobility comes at a price and our infrastructure takes added mobility into account, taking things out of housing areas. We also don’t value sustainability, and our products have an expiry date - products have even been made worse to guarantee that sales continue. Penicillin was once a life saver, but now we have multi-resistant microbes due to misuse. In fact, the Pharma-Industry is making us dependant on them.
The fact that much of what we enjoy today has been hard worked for, that people have given their lives for progress is overlooked by teenagers who take everything for granted. People have forgotten how to improve things and seem to assume that someone else will do that. It all amounts to the fact that decline comes quicker than we generally expect. We can experience that ourselves if we become bedridden for a while and then try to rebuild our strength. It is the same in society and our achievements can be forgotten after a single storm, as people experienced here recently. Suddenly everything they had is gone. People becoming destitute for no reason of their own suddenly find themselves homeless. It is so easy to neglect or ruin something and a mountain of regret in people’s lives are witness to this.
There is no doubt that this is all true, and it has provided a peak of prosperity and health in the West, the problem is that every peak has a trough (otherwise it wouldn’t be a peak) that follows, and I feel that we have been negligent of that fact. In fact, I think that we have been working inadvertently towards that downturn in our conflicts and failure to secure a sustainable advance for the whole world. In fact, we in the West have exploited nature and peoples less developed to such a degree that the consequences are now dawning on us. I don’t believe that climate change is only human made, but I do believe that we have provided the peak percentage that could make it devasting for us. The interdependency of the world will be very apparent if the changes in sea-levels occur as forecasted, and we must hope that we can cope with that without other problems, like pandemics and the like.
That would change the game and frantic people are more likely to become violent than those in comfort. The real danger is that complex societies, not realising how fragile their societies are, will over-reach, much like the UK has done with Brexit. In fact, some of the verbal diarrhoea coming from the government recently has been sounding very sabre-rassling and the rhetoric has sounded as though they were preparing for war. Imagine the economies of the West confronted with masses of refugees fleeing from rising sea levels. I think that the decline of the West is imminent, unless radical changes in attitude take place.
People in the West have been “spoiled” by developments that they assume are a result of them being so nice. The fact is that we have built our societies on the backs of slaves and oppressed colonies, profiting from the cheap but backbreaking labour of people not so fortunate. We have destroyed functioning economies in the interest of globalisation. We are so misinformed that we are bigoted beyond belief, which particularly comes to mind when, after a conflict that we have helped to cause, people come looking for our help. The chaos in Afghanistan springs to mind, where we first destroyed the progress that had been made by employing the mujahideen to fight against Soviet and DRA troops during the Soviet–Afghan War, then we invaded and thought we had beaten them, only to withdraw and leave those who had built up hopes over twenty years to the rule of the mujahideen again.
The West is, I’m afraid, so muddled, that I think that we can only be thankful for this phase of history and had better start preparing for the next.
On the contrary, it is doubtful that any of it is true, and to the extent that some of it may be true, those truths are largely irrelevant to the bigger picture, which is that civilization is showing every sign of being self-terminating because of the climate change, resource depletion and overpopulation that it perforce engenders.
Take Pinker’s first thesis:
Wow, that’s mightily presumptuous, and unsupported by evidence. In fact, the evidence goes the other way. See Jared Diamond, for example, on why the development of agriculture and civilization was the worst mistake in the history of the human race.
I’ve heard of these arguments and would agree with them, if it made any difference. I’ve also read the two books of Pinker and found that it is all very statistical, but I saw no reason to doubt his statistics.
From what you (and Diamond) are saying, Mankind has been going downhill for about ten thousand years, which seems a little strange, looking at the developments in between. I would rather say that the cultural development of mankind has had problems to solve and that it is easy to criticise what you yourself weren’t confronted with. I do not doubt for a minute that some decisions were made in early history that were long-termed suicide and caused untold suffering but looking at human beings and having been a leader in professional life, I think that guiding them to the best outcome has always been difficult.
There have been moral teachings and mythologies in the past that have tried to guide mankind to a place where there is less suffering, and statistically, they improved. The Enlightenment, building on a Christian foundation, improved the decline in violence as well, but was ultimately responsible for the two world wars and the rise of deadly ideologies as well. Unfortunately, good things often throw a shadow, whether we like it or not.
The “West” has just initiated a pact against China.
UK, US, and OZ have got together to design a “defensive” system of nuclear submarines.
Is is a sign of decline that a perceived economic threat is met with a military solution?
Is it also a sign of decline that the substance of the “defensive system” is composed of complete dinosaurs whose inital brief was first engineered in the 1950s in the cold war gainst Russia, and has failed to see the next technological innovation which is quickly making nuclear subs a thing of the past.
Lumbering defenseless nukesubs will not survive against an attack by the next generation of automonmous aquatic drones.
A low estimate for the cost of ONE nuclear submarine is in the region of £31billion. Ask yourself how many aquatic drones could be built to counter it for the same price?
It was Francis Bacon who became the greatest herald of the Modern Age when he that declared that “knowledge is power”–meaning power over nature.
The central question for deciding what is true became “does it work?” Once this question was accepted as the ultimate criteria of truth, metaphysics and theology were rendered irrelevant to matters of public truth and technological power.
Following this proposition as an assumption, David Hume could assert “No ‘is’ is an ought”. Reason and knowledge were now free from the restrictions and fantasies of speculative thought and religious power.
Only problem is: by conquering nature we are destroying it. And in destroying nature we are destroying ourselves. Hence the decline.
The CCP is far far far far more than a mere “perceived economic threat” – the CCP certainly hopes it is and pronounces its intentions to be - now largely controlling America.
AUKUS allows for AU to abandon its former ridiculous ancient and failed submarine plan with the French - already costing billions with no end in sight, no progress being made, and Chinese security issues built in.
Making any agreement with O’Biden and Johnson is all but pointless on any issue but in this one case - it allows for AU to leave a far worse situation.
I was a little surprised that the CCP allowed O’Biden to make the deal - perhaps they have something even worse planned.
So your brightest thought is that bombers should be abandoned in favor of drones?
Maybe tanks should give way to RC-HumVees?
Why not just make your entire defense system remote controlled nanobots.
There were several viable reasons to dump the French deal and not include the French in the AUKUS alliance but the most important was that with the French involved we’d be called FAUKUS.
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To get this thread back on track: Is the West in decline? Absolutely.
Of course there are countless ways you can measure decline but for me it’s pretty basic.
1: Is the average person gaining more power over their personal lives or are they being robbed of their power by governments and corporations?
2. Is the standard of living for the average person increasing or decreasing?
To me, it’s obvious. From around the 1980/90’s the average person has had to work more, for less. Since then, the standard of living has decreased even though there have been massive technological advances that have increased productivity (at least 10 times on average), prolonged life and made life somewhat more comfortable.
Again, I’m talking about basic stuff. Around the 1950/60’s the average man could buy a large home, in a great location and raise half a dozen kids on ONE wage (which my parents did) but today you need two people working if you want to buy a home half the size and support one or two children.
These are the fundamentals and I don’t care how ‘cool’ the latest technology is or if we can now live an extra 5 years on a concoction of medications, if the fundamentals aren’t right, then we aren’t ‘progressing’.
What’s this got to do with religion? Not much as far as I’m concerned. It has everything to do with moral and ethical priorities that put the well-being of humans before economic systems and political ideologies. Capitalism and socialism are simply human farming systems. Humans should not be discarded when a system fails; the system should be discarded.
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What is causing the decline in the West? The mindset of egocentric materialism. It is not an attitude of one for all and all for one. It’s me-ism.
I saw a radical change when the idealism of the young in the 1960s morphed to the materialism of the 1980s. Moccasins were traded for designer tennis shoes.
Jeans became designer and had to be name brand. The t.v. show "Family Ties’ captured the change with a materialistic child having “hippie” parents. I watched in dismay as my children sold out to the prevailing mindset out of fear of not belonging among their peers. I was outdated.
A liberal/capitalist establishment is able to co-opt, exploit, absorb, utilize, transform, corrupt and manipulate every grassroots movement until it reaches it’s limit and morphs into something else.
All systems from East to West are in decline, subservient to a power and wealth complex. Though there has always been corruption, the political, the economic and not least, the ethical cease to be viable pillars upholding nations who have relinquished the fight against their own corruption while hypocritically affirming the opposite. Also, if truth be told, far too many stupid people on the planet; among the worst are the educated holding most of the power positions in conformity with the organizations they serve. We’re slaves to a system we can’t seem to escape from, while turning evermore ineffective and corrupt.
All one has to do is observe the world. Nature itself is being corrupted with the infections WE created! Not much is left of what hasn’t gone wrong! Even our ideals are sinking with the ship replaced by more irrational versions of what they used to be. The time may come when the majority of humans will not decide anything except to survive.
