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A book of Mike Davies. "Planet of slums" Read some of it some time ago. The part that we really stood out for me, was the revelation that many people still live amid and among human excrement. I mean, even the Ghanges river in India very sacred to the Hindus, I heard was filthy with excrements.
Should easily find book doing a google search.

Great talking points P. Yes, I also recommend a book that I did read almost entirely and which informs me of much of what I know of the modern Economic paradigm the world lives under. Hence, I created that thread about Capitalism is Evil. I did get a bit carried away but I have deeply affected by knowing all this. The book is "The Case against the Global Economy" Our species has really gone astray and sometimes I think maybe its best if we disappeared for all our sakes.

So are the hippies going to join in on the revolutionary festivities on November 4th or smoke a bowl?

Great book. Paints a dark picture of the dystopian present.

There are simple truths here.

Capitalism reflects human nature, our desire for more.
There are more people than we can absorb in the workforce already.
Future trends then toward automation, further enlarging the surplus population.
The future trend is for further wave disparity, more slums, more poverty, more hungry bellies.

At the time of the French Revolution the populace was being heavily taxed. I recently read the tax rate was over 90%, 11/12ths is the quote. That sounds astonishing and I can’t verify the accuracy of the number, but it’s clear that much of the populace were hungry and felt poorly used.

Now that does not prove a revolution is imminent, or even likely, but possible. Pot, and smack, and coke, and booze, and high fructose corn syrup, internet, and celebrity news are among new inventions that tend to keep the populace subdued. Soma, SOMA, SSSOOOMMMAAA!!!!

A few years ago I saw a documentary about life in a Lagos trash dump. The movie tried to show the nobility of the people and slanted it to “this is future, this is how we live with dignity in trash.” Hogswallow.

We have the honor of being a vertebrate higher life form with a cerebral cortex unrivaled in the animal kingdom and YET we choose to live like cockroaches.

Amazing.

Truly. Our success in facilitating the existence of 7 billion plus on this planet is totally misguided That should have never been an objective. If we were wise it would have been to control our population.

If we were Wise we would know what our objective is. Or maybe even that we need one.

Newfie wrote:If we were Wise we would know what our objective is. Or maybe even that we need one.

Interesting point. An objective of self regulation requires external stimuli. If you think about it seriously up to the industrial revolution and fossil fuel age that have caused ecological human overshoot we never really had any sustained external stimuli to code for self regulation. Before germ theory and fossil fuels and all the other advances famine and plagues would cycle through our planets population on a regular basis. Civilizations would rise and fall as in Egypt or Rome but we never experienced an explosive exponential rise in population globally for a sustained time through several generations.

We do have to give ourselves a break here in the sense that our species is confronting a novel situation unheard of in the history of our species. We have no cultural tools for self regulation. In fact all the tools in our chest, both biological and cultural, where honed during times of constraints so we are actually "programmed" to breed and prosper and multiply.

And so we find ourselves here where we are today. A novel place.

What I repeatedly emphasize in these discussions is that expecting our species to self regulate before the stimuli act on us is like putting the cart before the horse. We haven't even gotten close to the painful consequences that will play a role as external stimuli to mold our culture or not.

The verdict is still out on the simple question if we are culturally capable of self regulation of our population and consumption or if our current situation is just another cycle, just on steroids and on a global grand scale. The correction will still be the same famine and disease as in the past, the question is will we still blame god this time around or we will look in the mirror and take ownership?

Ibon,

Because for a long time humanity was a marginal species, at times verging on extinction, our “objective” became species survival. We had low populations so our genes coded to maximize our self propagation. We are still stuck in that mode. Our objective is to reproduce.

That objective is now working against our species survival. Can we adjust?

Newfie wrote:Ibon,

Because for a long time humanity was a marginal species, at times verging on extinction, our “objective” became species survival. We had low populations so our genes coded to maximize our self propagation. We are still stuck in that mode. Our objective is to reproduce.

That objective is now working against our species survival. Can we adjust?

Exactly. The answer to that question really is going to play out on a grand scale as we enter into the thick of the consequences to human overshoot.

And here we are staring into that abyss, into that unknown, and pondering this most existential of questions.

It is weird being sentient of the problem but being part of a collective that does not yet know or want to engage.

Ibon, says painful consequences. But isn"t that the whole point that as individuals we try to avoid pain of all kinds. So taken to the macro level our species has tried to avoid the "pain".
Can we truly accept our medicine and humble ourselves before the limits of the natural world. Not conquer Nature but learn to live in harmony with it?

Can we truly accept our medicine and humble ourselves before the limits of the natural world. Not conquer Nature but learn to live in harmony with it?

Please explain exactly what that would look like. Are you suggesting everyone give up anything that was ever made through the use of hydrocarbons including your vehicles, house, clothes, food etc.? Are you suggesting everyone suddenly go back to living in mud huts in the wilderness with only clothes that they can make from vegetation (given that killing animals for clothing or food is almost certainly not living in harmony)?

The issue is that man has also not been in harmony with his environment. The BS that some bring to the table that First Nations/Native North Americans were somehow "tuned" with their environment has been shown to be complete and utter crap. They had Buffalo jumps where they took what they wanted from the dead and left the rest to rot or be consumed by scavengers. They warred and killed each other, there was fewer of them so apparently not important historically. They raped and abducted women and children (if they didn't kill them). They killed all the animals that they needed or wanted and had no concept of "living with nature". This is a Hollywood fantasy that never existed. There were fewer of them so the impact is harder to notice.

I have no problem with people being expected to live more responsibly. Use less plastic, recycle, compost, turn your lot into a shot at a self sustainable garden, turn your house into one that has help from passive solar (active solar still requires a lot more hydrocarbon investment), eat responsibly (i.e. don't waste food whether it is garden greens or red meat or high quality scots whiskey), buy what you need not what you want. That being said the idea of "living in harmony" is basically ludicrous. No matter what we do we use up the resources of the earth. If you believe we were not meant to do so then I suggest you have a problem that is difficult to solve.

For starters. How about keeping population to sustainable levels and utilizing an energy resource that is not so polluting as fossil fuels

Onlooker,
I think it’s less about avoiding pain than reproducing. Reproduction has its pleasures, but there is also sever pain with childbirth. Hunter gathers would sometimes need to endure a great deal of pain, and risk, to secure food. They would fight on a regular basis.

I think the drive to copulate is right up there with breathing. We will mate with most anything most anytime in order to sate that urge. When you get down to it, and excepting our current soft times, we really are not that fussy about our partners so long as they “git ‘er done.”

Well, yes the sexual pleasure and all the other comforts, conveniences and pleasures that modernity has given to mankind

Newfie wrote:At the time of the French Revolution the populace was being heavily taxed. I recently read the tax rate was over 90%, 11/12ths is the quote. That sounds astonishing and I can’t verify the accuracy of the number, but it’s clear that much of the populace were hungry and felt poorly used.

Now that does not prove a revolution is imminent, or even likely, but possible. Pot, and smack, and coke, and booze, and high fructose corn syrup, internet, and celebrity news are among new inventions that tend to keep the populace subdued.

Not accurate. At the time of the French Revolution the population of France depended almost entirely on Wheat as their staple food, not unlike the Irish in the 1840's did a generation later with the Potato. Due to a serious of very bad harvests the price of wheat in France hit record highs and the bulk of the population could barely afford to feed the worker in the family, children were starving. To try and solve the crisis the Monarchy (Louis XVI) put a price control on bread bringing the price down close to what it was before the crops failed. The bakers resisted because they were not able to pay for the wheat unless they got a lot more for the bread. Ultimately they went to a work around, the bakers would make just a few loaves of bread at a loss and if you waited all night at the door and were first in line you could buy a loaf, one to a customer, until they were all sold. The rest of the wheat they baked into small 'cakes' which were priced high enough for the baker to make up the high cost of wheat and the losses on the dozen or so loaves of traditional bread. When Marie Antoinette gave her famous quote "Let them eat cake" she was trying to convince the King to put cakes on price controls as well so the starving masses could afford to eat. The super high taxes referred to were attempts to punish profiteers selling wheat for exorbitant prices knowing that people were starving.

If Louis XVI had been smart enough to buy foreign grain and sell it directly to the bakers the people would not have been so desperate that they revolted and beheaded him.