REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Society is not the government, or the nation

POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Sunday, January 31, 2016 17:29
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Saturday, January 16, 2016 10:21 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


In past posts, I've conflated societies and nations, which was probably confusing to everyone. Especially me.

I think some people may feel that I support rabid nationalism (I don't) or Big Government (not necessarily that either, altho sometimes only Big Government can solve a problem).

I've stated over and over that I think the United States has lost its society. I believe that the EU is losing its social fabric, too, due to international bank-imposed austerity and rampant immigration.

So, what binds a society together?

More than anything, it's
A common view of what's right and what's wrong, and
A common language.

If you don't have those, you don't have a society.

Time and time again, I hear Democratic and Republican politicians refer to "American values", especially around the SOTU and elections!

So, what ARE "American values"?

Hard work?
Equal opportunity competition (technocracy)?
Helping the disadvantaged?
Devil-take-the-hindmost capitalism?
White-ness?
Christianity?
Gun ownership?
Getting drunk and sleeping around as much as possible?
Taking selfies?
Sedating oneself with a smartphone and videogames?
"Freedom"?
Savings?
Investment?
Being "business friendly"?
Free trade/ open borders?

I guarantee you that whatever you pick, you'll wind up at completely different endpoints.

Now, having incompatible values may be TOLERABLE in good times, when everyone can get most of what they want. But during times of significant stress - economic and polity - the fractures in our society (if any can be said to exist) absolutely come into plain view. (Sometimes we're even forced to confront our own internal logical fractures, and that's saying something!) About half of the people seem to feel there's a significant problem, but they're all pulling in a different direction: Less guns? More guns? Less inequality? More inequality? More jobs? Free trade? The other half have mentally and morally checked out, or are so overwhelmed with their lives they've got no spare time to think about the issues.

This dysfunctionalism - IMHO- is not accidental. Through the magic of advertising and the trivialization of the media, and thanks to the power of the churches, most people have been so swamped with ghafla (distraction) they no longer recognize real, mortal threats (and not the fake ones hawked in the media).

There is an author who lived thru the dissolution of the Soviet Union- who speaks from experience about collapse. (Dmitry Orlov) There is economic collapse, there is financial collapse, there are disasters, there is impeding war, there is even national collapse. But all of these collapses are solvable for the average person, IF YOU HAVE A FUNCTIONING SOCIETY. That means that an effective number of average people agree on what the problem is, and how to solve it, and are fundamentally correct in their assessments. Right now, the people defining the problems (to them) and the solutions (in their favor) are TPTB. The rest of us are left squabbling and bickering over trivia.

When Obama speaks of a conversation long overdue, he shouldn't be talking about race. Race is just a tiny fraction of this long overdue conversation.

So, what ARE American values?

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Saturday, January 16, 2016 11:51 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Right now, the people defining the problems (to them) and the solutions (in their favor) are TPTB. The rest of us are left squabbling and bickering over trivia.

Hasn't it always been like this? At the very beginning, Washington, Jefferson and Monroe were TPTB and #1, #2 & #5 richest presidents of all time.
http://business.time.com/2014/02/15/the-10-richest-presidents-in-ameri
can-history
/

And today's Christians in America split themselves into 35 major groups for trivial reasons. They squabble and bicker about every little detail in the Bible. You cannot get two of them to unite so that the number drops to 34. More likely the number will rise to 36. http://undergod.procon.org/view.background-resource.php?resourceID=87

Despite the religious conflict, churches aren't burning down competing churches, which is all America really needs to keep functioning. That is the main American value that holds the country together: don't burn down your neighbor's church! But I do get the impression that Texas Republicans want to commit arson against their political competition.

Texans have done it before when they put a torch to the Union. Didn't work so well, but it took years of war to prove it convincingly. Ted Cruz thinks this time it will work. Ted ought to extinguish his flaming torch.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Saturday, January 16, 2016 12:10 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


HAHAHA!

Good description of Cruz!

Well, IMHO, we need more (at this point) that simply not burning each other's churches down. The de-industrialization and rampant financialism are serious problems that are biting us in the butt now, and will bite very hard if/when the USA dollar loses its value. Because right now, we're buying everything from abroad.

Other problems I would put in the "important" category are environmental- the collapse of fish stocks (needs international attention), loss of biodiversity, global climate shift, degradation of internal natural resources. We can't have a healthy economy on an unhealthy resource base - look at China, they tried it and see how well it's working for them!

But your mileage may vary. One way to figure out what people's values are is to have them tell you what they think the problems are.

So, what are America's big problems?

--------------
You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Saturday, January 16, 2016 12:19 PM

WISHIMAY


I don't really know much about fixing society, but I have a story this morning that I thought was interesting...


My kid has been telling me for weeks that the kids she sits with have been annoying her with how much they talk about Sean Menendez and other boys that they have crushes on. My kid doesn't care. She's not allowed to date, and like her parents, is a little bit of a late bloomer in that department.

I told her she needs to be proactive and set up boundaries. She talks to teacher and the teacher tells her that a table on the other side near the wall that no one sits at has....ta-da.... *wi-fi*.

My kid sits there for lunch and plugs her headphones into her I-Pad. A few minutes later one of her friends comes up and says "Hey, why are you over here by yourself?"

Kiddo says "Because I wanted to be by myself today and this table has wi-fi..."

Friend says "Hey everyone, come sit over here, this table has wi-fi!!"

Groan.


I think the problem is and always has been...people are just so freaking stupid! We have nothing better to do than quibble over nonsense.

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Saturday, January 16, 2016 1:19 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


A fine example of the media dumbing-down the next generation. Getting people to focus on the Kardashians and Sean Menendez (whoever that is).

--------------
You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Saturday, January 16, 2016 1:32 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Well, IMHO, we need more (at this point) that simply not burning each other's churches down. The de-industrialization and rampant financialism are serious problems that are biting us in the butt now, and will bite very hard if/when the USA dollar loses its value. Because right now, we're buying everything from abroad.

These are all very solvable problems. Remember WWII? Remember the Great Depression? Everybody that couldn't find work during the Depression found work during the War. The USA ended up richer after the war than before. Not everyone expected that, even if the USA was on the winning side. Obviously there was no Ted Cruz in 1941 telling everyone that government is the problem, never the solution, and business must fight the War plus earn a profit, too! Cruz is a big supporter of the gold standard for the dollar. Freely printing money during WWII would have made Ted furious. "You're debasing the American dollar and destroying the very foundation of America!" he would have said.

Ted would have called for assassinating FDR over wartime price controls and rationing.
Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Other problems I would put in the "important" category are environmental- the collapse of fish stocks (needs international attention), loss of biodiversity, global climate shift, degradation of internal natural resources. We can't have a healthy economy on an unhealthy resource base - look at China, they tried it and see how well it's working for them!

All these problems are unsolvable so long as you insist every solution must be very profitable for business. The Chinese, the Brazilians, and the Americans can't see how to make a profit by NOT cutting down the Amazon rain forest, for example, so they won't solve it.

If going to the moon could only have been justified by the profits from raw materials returned to Earth and real estate deals on the moon, nobody would have gone there. For a brief moment in history, the moon wasn't about money. Back on Earth, Spain only explored America because the King and Queen believed they'd get rich trading with India! That didn't work out, except Spain found another motive to keep sending ships -- stolen gold and silver! The Americas were about money from beginning to end.

Doesn't always necessarily have to be about only money. Except Americans can't imagine any other reason to work on a problem.


The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Saturday, January 16, 2016 7:30 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

Doesn't always necessarily have to be about only money. Except Americans can't imagine any other reason to work on a problem.
So... American values are about profit/pillage, hegemony, and genocide?

Yeesh. Not a very good foundation to build on.



--------------
You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Saturday, January 16, 2016 8:19 PM

WISHIMAY


You know, I've always had this thought that working together with other people to achieve better things for a community would be a really nice way to spend my time. Then I remember... oh, yeah...people...

EVERY DAMN TIME I've ever worked in a group with other people, someone turns into Napoleon or Rip Van Winkle or Mean Girl or is literally to dumb to understand what is happening and what they should be doing.

I can't count the number of times I have been working with hubbs on a project and it goes horribly, horribly wrong because his blood sugar dips, or he just doesn't want to be doing whatever it is and would rather be playing a video game or reading a book.

I think a lot of time just communicating IS the problem with people. Too much to say, too little comprehension, too much room for error.

I hate to be one of those "I'm afraid to try, so I fail now so I won't have to fail later" people, but I just can't seem to get anywhere with the enigma that is humanity. It really does seem that only money and brainwashing and "fear for self" are what can make people work together in any real capacity.

If we could make people think there is a gun to their heads and we will take away all their money maybe we could get somewhere...with ANYTHING...

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Sunday, January 17, 2016 9:30 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:

So... American values are about profit/pillage, hegemony, and genocide?

If it was good enough for slaveholders Washington and Jefferson, the two richest Presidents of all times, it should be good enough for you.
www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2015/02/22/247-wall-st-richest-p
residents/23484127
/

The little old ladies in my family talk about the energy and purpose of their life during WWII compared to the dullness of the 30s. They didn't go into combat yet life was filled with energy, even following the war. But a little at time the values of business came back into control of everything. By the time of Carter or Reagan (the old ladies argue about which one) it felt like being in the 1930s. There was far more money, but everything was again ruled by the almighty dollar.

I thought money and survival were the entire point of Malcolm Reynolds' existence. Then River aimed a loaded gun at Mal's face, reawakening him to a bigger universe that he had stopped caring about.

Before that gun in the face, Mal was exclusively about money and surviving – and a little sex with Nandi, the doomed hooker. Mal had been ranging across a vast universe and yet the total purpose of his life was at the same level as an amoeba. He was microscopically small minded. Even with a gun in his face, River had to cock the hammer on the pistol to get Mal to stop talking long enough to hear River's goal, which was much bigger than money or survival, alcohol or sex.

River only had to say a word and Mal got the point. Mal's a very fast thinker when he is forced to be. At gunpoint. That's why he was fun to watch.

For most people there is no River in their life to explain with a gun to their heads the bigger purpose in life than money. They will be little old ladies before faintly sensing the point Mal clearly saw after one word from River. But they could understand while young.

Which American businesses serve a bigger purpose than moneymaking? I know they are out there, but few and far between.

Trump is a fat sack of $100 bills walking upright. Trump is richer than all the Powerball Lottery winners from this year and last. He is far richer than Washington and Jefferson, the previously richest Presidents. He is the personification of money glorified. And he has a realistic chance to be President, which is a sad thing to say about Americans' values and purpose.
www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/01/donald-trump-mediocre-businessm
an


America doesn't have to be this way.

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Sunday, January 17, 2016 12:17 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Here is part of my diatribe about American society that I posted under the American men + marriage + American woman thread.

Quote:

So, as far as MEN being fathers ... well, are men interested in it???

I don't know- look at JACK. Nice enough guy, but 100% interested in himself, his videogames, hot babes, and in the stinkin'-thinkin' that comes of being an alcoholic.

Not fatherhood material. Probably only good as that uncle who show up once in a while smelling lightly of booze or beer, entertaining as hell but totally undependable.

I would take a stab and say that MOST men on this board have never been fathers, and probably never will be. The only person in the past who fessed up to being a dad was CHRISISALL.

----------

What is the solution?

Well, once again, we- as a society - HAVE TO DECIDE WHAT WE WANT. Do we want a bunch of underwear-wearing, pizza-snarfing, video-game playing guys who only want a hot women to give them head once in a while while they're engrossed in their virtual worlds? IF NOT, WE HAVE TO MODEL A DIFFERENT BEHAVIOR ON THE MEDIA - one that portrays fatherhood as manly and not- as you say- a buffoon.

Do we want women who are doing their best to fit into this hyper-commercialized world, where they're encouraged to sleep around as much as possible in the mistaken belief that this is somehow "liberation"? Or who feel that they have to do everything by/among themselves because their male counterparts are lacking? THEN WE HAVE TO MODEL A DIFFERENT BEHAVIOR FOR WOMEN IN THE MEDIA.

Do we want a younger generation which realizes that life doesn't always give you happy endings every thirty minutes, that uncertainty, sacrifice, and even pain are part of the equation of being alive, that personal comfort and entertainment are not the highest goals in life, and that the art of being a human grownup is showing up, day after day, and sometimes just keeping on keeping on?

THEN WE HAVE TO REVAMP OUR ENTIRE CULTURE, WHICH FOCUSES ON THE IDEA THAT WE SHOULD FEAR BEING UNHAPPY, THAT OUR COMFORT AND TITILLATION ARE THE HIGHEST GOALS IN LIFE, THAT WE OWE NOTHING TO ANYBODY, THAT WE SHOULD BE JUST ATOMIZED CONSUMERS FLOATING IN A SEA OF POTENTIAL PURCHASES.

And that, my friend, would take such a sea-change I doubt that we will get there in my lifetime, even if there is utter catastrophic collapse compelling us in that direction.



--------------
You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Sunday, January 17, 2016 12:29 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.





Quote:

So... American values are about profit/pillage, hegemony, and genocide?- SIGNY

If it was good enough for slaveholders Washington and Jefferson, the two richest Presidents of all times, it should be good enough for you.
www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2015/02/22/247-wall-st-richest-p
residents/23484127
/


It is so refreshing to discuss with someone who isn't completely mesmerized by that narrative of the Noble Founding Father!

Quote:

The little old ladies in my family talk about the energy and purpose of their life during WWII compared to the dullness of the 30s. They didn't go into combat yet life was filled with energy, even following the war. But a little at time the values of business came back into control of everything. By the time of Carter or Reagan (the old ladies argue about which one) it felt like being in the 1930s. There was far more money, but everything was again ruled by the almighty dollar.

I thought money and survival were the entire point of Malcolm Reynolds' existence. Then River aimed a loaded gun at Mal's face, reawakening him to a bigger universe that he had stopped caring about. ... Before that gun in the face, Mal was exclusively about money and surviving – and a little sex with Nandi, the doomed hooker. Mal had been ranging across a vast universe and yet the total purpose of his life was at the same level as an amoeba. He was microscopically small minded. Even with a gun in his face, River had to cock the hammer on the pistol to get Mal to stop talking long enough to hear River's goal, which was much bigger than money or survival, alcohol or sex.

River only had to say a word and Mal got the point. Mal's a very fast thinker when he is forced to be. At gunpoint. That's why he was fun to watch.

For most people there is no River in their life to explain with a gun to their heads the bigger purpose in life than money. They will be little old ladies


or wizened old guys ...

Quote:

before faintly sensing the point Mal clearly saw after one word from River. But they could understand while young.
Which American businesses serve a bigger purpose than moneymaking? I know they are out there, but few and far between.



There are? I know none. The definitional purpose of a business, in American law, is to make a profit. Anything else in a non-profit or a foundation or a charity or a scam.

Quote:

Trump is a fat sack of $100

$1,000,000 correction

Quote:

bills walking upright. Trump is richer than all the Powerball Lottery winners from this year and last. He is far richer than Washington and Jefferson, the previously richest Presidents. He is the personification of money glorified. And he has a realistic chance to be President, which is a sad thing to say about Americans' values and purpose.
www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/01/donald-trump-mediocre-businessm
an

America doesn't have to be this way.


I have not got to the end of my thinking about Trump. In fact, I've kind of avoided him. He definitely knows how to generate publicity! He's very adept in the reality-TV culture that too many of us seem to accept as real. But there is one GOOD thing to say about Trump being extremely wealthy - HE IS NOT ABOUT TO BE BOUGHT OFF, LIKE OBAMA, HILLARY, GEORGE, BILL, AND JOHN (KERRY).

His business contacts with the Wall Street and CIA/NSA - especially the dark CIA/NSA - seem to be nil (unlike H Ross Perot and the Bush family.) He has no immediate connection to DC, which, in my book, is a big plus. His comments on Russia and on Syrian immigration (and immigration in general) make sense to me. I would have to look into his business contacts - where he makes his money, what shady business he's done - to get a better sense of where he's going.

--------------
You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Sunday, January 17, 2016 5:51 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Quote:

Which American businesses serve a bigger purpose than moneymaking? I know they are out there, but few and far between.
There are? I know none. The definitional purpose of a business, in American law, is to make a profit. Anything else in a non-profit or a foundation or a charity or a scam.
. . .
I have not got to the end of my thinking about Trump.

I admire Google for the self-driving car. It may never make money. That is why Google calls it a Moonshot. www.google.com/selfdrivingcar/

Then there is SpaceX, because it's Space Rockets!


Trump says he's a winner and you're a loser. Crassness is not Presidential. “I have great relationship with God.” When Trump calls, God always answers the phone because, you know, it's Trump! the greatest human God ever created!




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Monday, January 18, 2016 11:53 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

“I have great relationship with God.” When Trump calls, God always answers the phone because, you know, it's Trump! the greatest human God ever created!
That's not what he said. You're misrepresenting him. Listen again.

I DID listen, and to tell you the truth, I'm not hearing anything in that statement by Trump that I wouldn't hear from ANY candidate who is appealing to evangelicals. Don't ALL evangelicals claim a special relationship with god? Isn't that how evangelicals differ from Catholics, Lutherans, Anglicans, and Methodists- they have a personal relationship with God?

----------

But for different reasons, I DID sharpen my thoughts on how I would be evaluating the candidates.

As you - and probably everyone else here knows by now- I'm critical of Obama. Hillary too, btw. Also Bush, Bill Clinton, and Bush before him.

From my POV, Obama has represented every entity EXCEPT the American middle class. He's:

Fed the banks ($17 trillion by some accounts)
Coddled the pharmas (Obamacare doesn't shop for best prices, or control Rx costs)
Loosed the hounds of the military/ industrial/ spy complex,
Funded, armed, trained, and provided air and political cover for jihadists in the ME
Destabilized or destroyed more nations than Bush (Count 'em up.)
Signed on to universal bank bail-ins (at the G20 in Australia)

Worse, he's STILL pushing for the TPP and the TTIP.

I used to think of his anti-American actions as raisins in a bowl of oatmeal: Individual actions presented to him, or forced on him, while he's playing golf or making speeches or hoping for better days or otherwise waffling, but that these anti-American actions weren't really HIS plan - and perhaps not even "a" plan - but simply opportunistic actions foisted on him by the various powerful deep state interests which are in a complex competitive-cooperative relationship with each other.

But them someone that I know said something like

Obama is busy imploding the American state ... or words to that effect ... and it came to me that is EXACTLY the outcome of Obama's decisions. And not only that, it might not be accidental or opportunistic, but purposeful. That Obama may not simply be lacking in any strong loyalty to the American citizen, or "triangulating" between his self interest and his ability to get away with it, he may actually have very pointed loyalties elsewhere.

There is Obama ... and Merkel too, by the way ... busy spreading their respective nations' legs economically, militarily, financially, and culturally, representing everyone except their citizens. And you might then logically ask: IF they're not representing their citizens, WHO are they representing? Immigrants and refugees? (Which BTW their own policies created.) Banks?

If they had any loyalty at all to their own nations, they wouldn't be doing 90% of what they're currently doing. So I think we can rule out the idea that they have their citizens in mind. The question is whether or not they're -literally- on the other side: Are they whittling away their nations' sovereignty on purpose, or are they just being played by appeals to their greed and vanity?

Anyway, what I'll be looking for is whether candidates are willing to step up in favor of American sovereignty - laws protecting our environment etc- or are they willing to cede it to some international business court, adjudicating ONLY on the terms of the "free trade" deals that were signed?

I already know about Rand Paul, he's a staunch supporter of America. But he's not even close to being a nominee.
I already know about Hillary, she's a weasly traitor.

I don't know about Bernie, and I don't know about Trump, but I'm going to find out: where do their loyalties lie?


--------------
You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Monday, January 18, 2016 4:21 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:

. . . where do their loyalties lie?

I think loyalty has nothing to do with their performance. I think the rich and powerful, The Powers That Be, or the Top 1%, move society forward at a pace slow and comfortable enough for themselves. Some would move so slowly that they are actually going backwards, rather than forward. Each of them would move at a different pace, but it is always the pace they are comfortable with. Since this is MLK Day, let's quote LBJ: “What is that goddamned nigger preacher doing to me?” Johnson reportedly remarked after the speech. “We gave him the Civil Rights Act of 1964, we gave him the Voting Rights Act of 1965, we gave him the War on Poverty. What more does he want?”
https://theintercept.com/2016/01/18/martin-luther-king-jr-celebrations
-overlook-his-critiques-of-capitalism-and-militarism
/

The Powers That Be are at the tip of the pyramid. The pyramid below applies to the entire world. I know tip top people claim they don't have the power to move any faster, but that's not true. The tip top doesn't want those lower down to be applying pressure on their betters. What safer and more inexpensive way to stall than to lie about your power?

www.credit-suisse.com/us/en/about-us/research/research-institute/publi
cations.html


www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=1328

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Tuesday, January 19, 2016 7:38 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


When you take a guy like Trump into your bed (or, if you prefer a different analogy, get a blood transfusion from him) because of his sweet words, you will get more than words from him. Trump has a social disease. Christians are cheering for him although he does not worship their God. His is Money.

Nobody with a brain has ever believed that Donald Trump is a Christian in any serious sense. I am not talking about his gambling casinos or broken marriages or strategic bankruptcies to cheat his associates or even his mean spirit. I don't think he could pass a third-grade test of Bible knowledge. But yesterday's gaffe in quoting 2 Corinthians 3:17, as trivial as it seems, suggests more: that he literally has paid no attention to Christianity at all. In fact, given how hard that is in a country as awash in religious references as the United States, it suggests much more: Donald Trump has spent most of his life actively trying to avoid religion as completely as possible. And yet, apparently evangelicals love him anyway. Their judgment is bad about who gets into their bed (or blood).
www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/01/two-corinthians-walk-bar

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Tuesday, January 19, 2016 10:09 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Trump is a monotheist. I believe the "christians" with a little c, unlike him, are polytheistic worshipers of Christ and Money. The "christians" and Trump share a god.

www.houstonchronicle.com/author/nick-anderson/

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Wednesday, January 20, 2016 12:45 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


So, what ARE "American values"? asked Signym, who answered the question with a list of possible attributes. I think it's always been simpler than a long list: American values are only about accumulating wealth and appearing to be puritanical. American values always have been only those two things.

Trump is the perfect example of half those values. He's about wealth. Ted Cruz is the other half. He's the Puritan. I'm convinced that both these values are the foundations going all the way back to before there was a USA.

Here's a Puritan in action: Ted Cruz was solicitor general of Texas. In 1997, Michael Wayne Haley was arrested after stealing a calculator from Walmart. This was a crime that merited a maximum two-year prison term. But prosecutors incorrectly applied a habitual offender law. Neither the judge nor the defense lawyer caught the error and Haley was sentenced to 16 years.

Once the error was discovered, instead of just letting Haley go for time served, Cruz took the case to the Supreme Court to keep Haley in prison for the full 16 years.
www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/06/11/lazarus.dretke/

Some of the justices made clear they found Cruz’s suggestion that Haley return to jail unacceptable. “Is there some rule that you can't confess error in your state?” Justice Anthony Kennedy asked. Yes is clearly Ted Cruz's answer.
www.texastribune.org/2012/07/23/cruz-supreme-court-work-heart-campaign/

The case reveals something interesting about Cruz’s character and Americans in general. In his career and public presentation Cruz is a stranger to most of what would generally be considered the Christian virtues: humility, mercy, compassion and grace. Ted Cruz is running strongly among evangelical voters, especially in Iowa. Cruz’s behavior in the Haley case is almost the dictionary definition of pharisaism: an overzealous application of the letter of the law in a way that violates the spirit of the law, as well as fairness and mercy.

Cruz's speeches are marked by a long list of enemies, and vows to crush, shred, destroy, bomb them. Those are true American values. America built its success on those values. If it is not working for America now, it is because the world changed, not because American values changed.


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Wednesday, January 20, 2016 9:53 PM

WISHIMAY


I think I'm quite possibly cabin crazy, but that's HILARIOUS to me tonight, G. Thanks!

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Friday, January 22, 2016 7:44 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

Ba...
First of all, it's "Bah", not "Ba". Even in Canada and the UK, where the word "bah" originated. "Ba" is what sheep do.

Quote:

... humbug. You lose when you try and reduce the actions and beliefs of 300,000,000 people to 2 things or try and do a list "American Values." That so 90's.

We have many attributes, and many even seem in direct opposition.

Well then, that's the problem right there: nothing ties people together. Under stress, that will fail.

I know you have a serious grotch against me, and nothing I say will make a difference (to you), but maybe you'll take heed of a fellow Canadian:

Quote:

The underlying law of corporate globalization its media presentation is undeniable, but taboo to name. Whatever stands against the transnational corporate market as the cosmic engine of humanity’s well-being is anathematized and annihilated in one nation after another. The methods range from bombing social infrastructures in Slavic and Arab societies to silencing and reversing undeniable facts exposing the lies of the system. No alternative to feeding resources into the life-blind growth juggernaut has arisen at a productive level. The media repel any real economic reform as unthinkable.

In this borderless chaos of corporate globalization which now strips even the social infrastructures of the European Union to pay big banks and dispossess workers, the mass media select out whatever joins the dots of the cumulative catastrophe unfolding on both social and ecological planes. No real threat to collective life security computes except constructed enemies who mutate from one Orwellian hate object to the next. The collective life capital on which everyone’s continued breathing, water, nutrition, biodiverse surroundings, social security and knowledge depend are not even conceived.

... Perhaps the worst problem of this system has been the way in which the lives of the younger generations have been sacrificed beneath notice. There is no private profit in enabling the young to understand and flourish as human beings. But there is ever more profit in exploiting the young’s increasing market demand as well as cheap labor. The vast and growing global businesses of junk foods, violence entertainment, and selfie-chatter have one thing in common. They depend on the young as unthinking spenders. In this way the next generations are made pervasively addictive consumers degrading human life capacities the more corporate commodities are consumed by them. Maximizing corporate sales and ‘investor’ profits is the sole value criterion. Even infants in the crib are consciously conditioned into this expanding addictive-junk cycle as “job-creating growth”.

... A deep core of our problem is that the US has in fact no collective ... interest or consciousness in its constitution, its dominant social sciences, its actionable laws, or its white fundamentalist religions. Western market and political doctrine repudiate collective consciousness in principle. Only self-maximizing atomic individuals with no binding life community alone exist to this ruling mind-set. Self-serving corporations and consumers compete for survival according to market rules whose algebra is life-blind. Endless “trade agreements” override any society’s collective laws if they reduce expected profits to private transnational money sequences. The Trans-Pacific Partnership is the latest extension of this sociopath metaphysics built into the ruling market paradigm.- John McMurtry, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada



There's a world BEYOND what you know. I point to something which has existed for millenia since the beginning of history: the basis of human survival and the cornerstone of human progress, which is called "society" and your response is "Huh?"

Yanno, it used to be that "liberals" used to talk and write about creating a better society. Now, all liberals do is bitch about Russia. Your goals, even within the space of your posts here on Firefly, have diminished.





--------------
You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Friday, January 22, 2016 8:14 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

No, sorry, you are looking to the past for ways to live in the future.
No, I'm looking for lessons in the past about how to live in the future. Maybe even things to avoid. Yanno, the person who refuses to learn from experience is the person who's incapable of learning. And the person who learns is the person who examines what happened in the past and derives the fundamental drivers behind events, and decides whether those conditions should be reproduced or not. That is the basis of learning, and of science.

A person who is unwilling - or incapable- of examining the past is incapable of learning. That person seems to be ... you.

Quote:

The future is about Change.


Yes, it is. Change that you're not prepared for.

Quote:

It's up to you: Change or it will Change you. Or you will just be heard shouting as you spin down the drain of history.
No, it's about EVERYBODY. Only in cartoons can a single person effect historical change. Do you live in a cartoon???

Quote:

The US - most modern nations - are made of many micro societies, and they can work and function just fine together

The US- and ALL nations, modern or not- live in a real physical world, no matter how many people stroke each others' backs and tell each other that they're great. Can they work and function when the drought doesn't end? When the fish are gone? When everyone is poor and nobody has the agency to make a living for themselves?

Quote:

as long as there are equitable laws in place and a fair system of applying them.
And that is THE POINT of this thread- ya maroon!

WHAT IS "FAIR"?
What is "equitable"?
WHAT KIND DO SOCIETY DO WE WANT?
My god, it's like talking to a goldfish. Are you incapable of keeping more than one thought in your head for more than three seconds at a time?

Quote:

It's still a work in progress - always will be. Anything man creates will likely be flawed and will always need care and attention. If you can't handle the imperfections or the actual, honest work (not bitching on a forum) it takes to maintain - go be a hermit.
It seems to me that the person who can't handle imperfections is YOU. Because any time anyone points out that - HEY! Things aren't perfect! There are problems! - you go all fucking haywire.

DOOD! OF COURSE it's a work in progress! OF COURSE it needs to change. WHAT SHOULD IT CHANGE TO? The FIRST thing that needs to happen is that people (OH, BTW dearie, that means you) need to do is think. Is that possible, do you suppose?

That's the point of the thread. But apparently, you can't get past that first concept. You're still stuck in cartoons!

--------------
You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Friday, January 22, 2016 11:52 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

The point of the thread is for your to tell everyone what everyone should be doing. We all know that.
No, the point is that we should be THINKING AND TALKING. And all you're doing is trolling.

As far as my ideas go, I sketched them out here: http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=60173

Quote:

So go ahead - tell us what we're doing wrong and what we should be doing instead.
Do you suppose it's possible for you to post some useful, insightful replies, instead of trolling and name-calling? Do you even know how to converse?

Quote:

Tell us of your perfect Society. Guide us since we can't be trusted to live how we want to. Save us from ourselves O' Great Snigglet!


Every time I talk about "society" you go apeshit. You back into a corner and howl and fling dung, as if you're being PERSONALLY attacked. The whole notion of "society" seems to offend you. But EVEN YOU thinks there has to be a society: a common sense of right and wrong. You yourself said

Quote:

as long as there are equitable laws in place and a fair system of applying them.


So, equitable laws along what lines? Do we all have the same rights to food, water, and shelter? Or what?

--------------
You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Friday, January 22, 2016 3:27 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


I saw an article about evolutionary theory and economics. You might notice that parts of society you dislike are the same parts of evolution that you don't like. Put another way: Neither biology nor society are intelligently designed. I know that the popular notion is that biology is designed by God and society is designed by Man, but then why is there an abundance of weird species and weirder societies if the Designers are Intelligent? If species and societies were intelligently designed once-upon-a-time in the golden past, why do defunct societies and dead species outnumber by far the living?
http://evonomics.com/updating-paul-krugman-evolution-groupie-econ/

"The idea that functional organization exists at lower levels of a biological hierarchy, such as individual organisms, but then ceases to exist at higher levels, such as social groups and ecosystems, was deeply antithetical to the Christian worldview, which assumed that a universe created by God must be harmonious from top to bottom. While Darwin was somewhat muted on this theme, his bulldog Thomas Huxley gave it full throated expression in his essay on Evolution and Ethics published in 1893. Huxley was emphatic that evolution doesn’t make everything nice and that ethical human society must be cultivated, in the same way that gardens must be cultivated to keep out the objectionable species."


The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, January 22, 2016 3:59 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:

Originally posted by G:
Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
... And all you're doing is trolling.

Go fuck yourself you piece of shit.

Are you proving that there is no such thing as intelligent design? Because I believe your reply is the type of evidence that fundamentalist Christians can fling into the face of scientists and other doubters of the brilliance of fundamentalism.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, January 22, 2016 4:39 PM

THGRRI


Quote:

Originally posted by G:
Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
... And all you're doing is trolling.



That's funny. According to you I want to bomb civilians, I'm a fan of ISIL, and now I hate old people. Go fuck yourself you piece of shit.



Excuse me G but don't you mean comrade piece of shit?

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Friday, January 22, 2016 7:59 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
I saw an article about evolutionary theory and economics. You might notice that parts of society you dislike are the same parts of evolution that you don't like. Put another way:

Neither biology nor society are intelligently designed.

I popped that out for emphasis.

Quote:

I know that the popular notion is that biology is designed by God and society is designed by Man, but then why is there an abundance of weird species and weirder societies if the Designers are Intelligent? If species and societies were intelligently designed once-upon-a-time in the golden past, why do defunct societies and dead species outnumber by far the living?
http://evonomics.com/updating-paul-krugman-evolution-groupie-econ/

"The idea that functional organization exists at lower levels of a biological hierarchy, such as individual organisms, but then ceases to exist at higher levels, such as social groups and ecosystems, was deeply antithetical to the Christian worldview, which assumed that a universe created by God must be harmonious from top to bottom. While Darwin was somewhat muted on this theme, his bulldog Thomas Huxley gave it full throated expression in his essay on Evolution and Ethics published in 1893. Huxley was emphatic that evolution doesn’t make everything nice and that ethical human society must be cultivated, in the same way that gardens must be cultivated to keep out the objectionable species."



Indeed.

Evolution, in the end, generates nothing so much as a series of (mostly) failures.

The failures often come about because of a failure to adapt to environmental changes (the Great Extinctions) but sometimes extinctions come about because because of some inherent and progressive developmental flaw, or that the successful organisms change the environment to something for which they're not suited. In other words, the flaw can be internal, not external.

My life is a graveyard, littered with the corpses of ideas I've had to give up.

I used to think ... as most children are taught evolution .... that evolution is a process of perfectability. And then I found out about all of those lovely species, of experimental forms of the kind we haven't seen since, that died out during the PT Extinction Event.

I used to think that societies evolved. That the stupid ideas got smothered or out-competed, and that societies just got better and better. And then I read Jared Diamond's book, which describes how societies extinguished themselves because they couldn't change their hidebound ideas and hidebound technologies to adapt to a new reality, and went the way of starvation, cannibalism, dissolution, complete loss ... wow, no perfectability there! (No intelligence, either. So much for humans being intelligent!)

In fact, there is a "gotcha" built into evolution ... the creatures (or societies) which use up energy and covert their environment to more and more of themselves the fastest, will be the most successful IN THE SHORT RUN. They may completely out-compete other, more conservative forms. It's just the energetics of the situation. But if you look at the species that are the most durable- those that have lasted the longest (the jellyfish, the nautilus, the shark) they are energetically very efficient: they've survived an extinction event or two!

So evolution does NOT lead to improvement- not in living creatures and not in societies. But our belief in evolution is the underpinning of our belief in capitalism, and our belief in "evolving" societies. It's too bad such a flawed idea was promoted so heavily by the capitalists (of course), who presented the idea of a Church-free, "natural" and almost-effortless environment leading to the best of all possible worlds, just letting people do what comes "naturally". (Of course, the philosophers of the day had very specific ideas about what was natural and what wasn't.)

We shouldn't model our societies and our economies on nature. Nature is blind and dumb, and will lead us into all sorts of dead - and possibly fatal- ends. It might be interesting to apply some of that so-called intelligence that we supposedly have and see if we can start guiding our societies along better paths.



--------------
You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Friday, January 22, 2016 9:23 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.


There's an underpinning of 'it's human nature' in the topic when people look into possibilities.

But, like the peaceable baboons, the courtly dolphins, and the tyrannical chimps, there are groups within intelligent species that reliably, consistently don't behave according to the general species behaviors.

So evolution of society (and organisms) is also to some extent stochastic - random starting conditions can determine the outcome to be contrary to all expectation.

When we think 'what is possible' in our future society, we needn't limit ourselves to what we assume based on our personal experience.

There have been, and are, societies all around the globe that don't work the way we think people 'naturally' behave. Societies where imperfect children have been thrown off a cliff and left to die. So much for maternal instinct. Societies where families don't live together - males and females live separately. So much for the nuclear family. Societies where there were no priests. And there goes religion. Societies where there were no rulers. And there go the kings, too. Societies where people don't get to keep what they hunt and gather, it gets all shared equally. There goes the 'reason' for the work ethic. And so on.

What we don't know about how people can arrange their interactions could fill whole libraries.

'What we want' isn't entirely relevant. 'What we can reliably survive' over thousands of years is probably more to the point.

I think we'll need to actually teach ourselves new ways of responding productively, and reasonably (with reason).

I'll use my example of two villages near a river. They're equal in all respects and remain equal in this story. At first they both start out small. The forest is nearby - game and firewood are abundant and close at hand. The river has plenty of fish. But people - being biological creatures living in abundance - do what biological creatures do: they multiply. Yes, they can develop technology that gets them a little ahead, for a while - they can develop stronger bows, learn to grind and cook previously inedible plants, or farm some simple crops, for example. But population catches up to the technology, and then they end up getting further behind, again. The forest gets cut down, and getting firewood becomes a more arduous task. Game is found further and further away. The fish they catch get smaller and smaller, then, they're no longer available.

They prepare for war. Unknowingly. The demographic transition works in the reverse direction. As conditions get meaner, more children are born.

The villages end up looking at EACH OTHER as the problem.* My share would be double, they think, if it wasn't for 'those people'. And there is conflict.



That I believe is 'human nature' and I haven't come to that conclusion without a lot of consideration. We see our problems and solutions as related to PEOPLE. That there is something that THEY'RE doing, or having; and that we can solve our problem by attacking THEM.

But in fact the problem of those particular villages is that their birthrates outstripped the resources. They could solve their problems into the infinite future, without war, without want, without strife or hostility, if they both agreed to limit their populations. That is their actual problem. And that is the only permanent solution.



So, just as an aside, someone once remarked that wild animals always live on the edge of starvation. And I haven't thought of an exception to that statement. During times of abundance the population increases to the level of available resources. (But even then, excess individuals will be born. Even during the good times they'll be individuals edged out.) And when the good times retreat, the problem becomes inescapable and extremely obvious.
We people seem to be like wild animals. We've used our technology to dodge one limit after another, at least temporarily.
But where is our intelligence? Where is the recognition that resources are limited? We might as well be eland, with our population booming with the rains and starving with the droughts.



So, I propose we put our intelligence to the test. We adopt a rational 'human nature' and find a way to actually solve our problems. BTW it doesn't need to be an international solution based on mutual trust. A very-well defended national solution would work as a start.



* There are cases where there really is a group of people who are the problem. They act as predators/ parasites on other people.




SAGAN: We are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse effect. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth's climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the cosmos, into a kind of hell.

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Friday, January 22, 2016 9:37 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Cool!

--------------
You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Saturday, January 23, 2016 9:25 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:

Originally posted by G:
Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Are you proving that there is no such thing as intelligent design? Because I believe your reply is the type of evidence that fundamentalist Christians can fling into the face of scientists and other doubters of the brilliance of fundamentalism.



Twabba who? My reply was intelligently designed (crudeness and all) for the person is was aimed at. I do try and go for accuracy.

Take a hint: If you're bitter about SIGNYM's reply, then click on SIGNYM's name and use the function "SEND ME A MESSAGE" to send a message. Unlike the bigger society we live in, this website was intelligently designed so that these angry "retaliation in kind" exchanges can go directly to its target. That way everybody else is spared the nuclear fallout from these little wars.

Well, damn it all, I could have used the "SEND ME A MESSAGE" function for this message, but I can't stop myself. I'm acting like I am programmed to retaliate publicly. It takes more self-control to overcome my primitive urges. I believe that nearly all humanity has a surplus of primitive urges and a shortage of self-control. The shortages tend to defeat all rational or intelligent designs for societies and we are left with the mess all around us.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Saturday, January 23, 2016 11:47 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Well, to consider societies that don't behave the way we assume "human nature" would lead, it seems to me that most of these variants consist of small groups. There is the "monkeysphere" that FREM brought up ... humans have the capacity to remember and interact individually with about 100-120 people, after that it all kinds of blurs together, people start "lumping" and "categorizing" others for convenience; and more importantly lose direct contact with large numbers of people altogether.

A group of multi-skilled individuals might be able to construct an economy at about the middle-age level, with perhaps some advances like penicillin (from mold) and more effective preparation of a wider variety of "simples", but 100 people won't bring an economy up to the level that people would like.

Hence, one is necessarily forced to work with larger groups ... groups in which people have no direct contact or communication with each other, where lack of direct contact can be used to hide sociopathy and parasitism.

That's what I see developing in larger social groupings over and over ... those individuals who have no compunction against theft will energetically take over a society. And its as if our societies don't have a robust "immunity defense" against those who steal and hide. We understand the asshole, we understand the bully, but we don't even seem to be able to detect the "priesthood" or "bankster" or "con man", who (over time) take over the mores and ethics of the society to protect themselves.

To me, that's the essential feature and problem of even thinking about developing a rational human society: POWER CONCENTRATES, and there seems to be nothing in human interactions which preclude that on an ongoing basis. The only way that stops is revolution, when the parasitism/ internal predation becomes unsupportable. It would be nice not to have to have a cataclysm every few hundred years or so.



--------------
You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Saturday, January 23, 2016 4:27 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.


"I believe that nearly all humanity has a surplus of primitive urges and a shortage of self-control. The shortages tend to defeat all rational or intelligent designs for societies and we are left with the mess all around us."

That's pretty much the 'human nature' argument. We're all too full of chaotic primitive urges. No way could we form societies where millions of people live in a single city without mayhem and murder every day on every corner!

Human nature is far more tractable than you give it credit for. Especially when people have a reason to buy in to the system.




SAGAN: We are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse effect. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth's climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the cosmos, into a kind of hell.

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Sunday, January 24, 2016 7:37 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

FWIW I have spent countless hours with "old people" - most of them with dementia - in the last 12 years so that last f*cking lie of hers hit a little too close to home.
Well, G, you might want to get out with some competent people older than 60 once in a while. Yanno, moderate your condescension a bit. And, yes, I would LOVE to discuss with you, but you simply don't know how. Here's a couple of hints:

When you make a statement, be prepared to support your statement with something OTHER THAN emotion and CONSTANTLY repeated assumptions. Define your terms. Explain what you mean. Bring evidence (not allegations) to the table. Show how it has some sort of internal logic.

LISTEN to what the other person has to say. If you can't reach agreement, at least try to understand exactly what you disagree on. Sometimes it turns on a single word. It's a slow and tedious process, kind of like international negotiations. Step by step.

Stop the name-calling and insults (ad hominems), straw-manning, non-sequitors etc. I've been on this board long enough to recognize pretty much every rhetorical trick, and they reek of a weak argument.

Stick with the topic. You often (well, always, so far) bail before we even get to the point where we can at least agree on what we disagree on. Instead, you let your emotions get the better of you.

Stop dragging insults into every random thread on the board. For a few days, all you did was pop into any thread that I posted, and call me a "liar", even tho I wasn't posting about you at all. How old are you, anyway? Twelve? That kind of behavior doesn't do you any good, and hardly sets the stage for productive discussion. If anything, it just makes you look like a jerk, and maybe even a stupid, drunk, and angry jerk at that. You're not a jerk, are you? Then don't behave like one. If you won't, I won't.

And what is this "lying" shit? I'm not "lying", I have no idea what you're talking about. I AM making negative statements about your character, which- as far as I can tell from your behavior here- are all entirely true. For example, your snottiness about "knowing about computers" (As if! All you seem to know about is your smart phone and Twitter!) You may be a saint IRL, but here, you're just another dick, along with your dick friends.

Stop being a jerk, and I'll stop condescending.

IN FACT, I'LL GO FIRST. NO MORE NEGATIVE SHOTS AT YOUR CHARACTER FOR A WEEK. IF I FIND THAT YOUR ARGUMENT IS FLAWED, I WILL FOCUS ON THE POINT, NOT ON YOU. LET'S SEE IF WE CAN BOTH BEHAVE LIKE COMPETENT ADULTS FOR A WHILE.

How's that?

Oh BTW, I don't think my PM is working, so don't bother. And if you've tried and gotten nowhere, I'm not ignoring you, so don't feel insulted.

-----------

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Sunday, January 24, 2016 8:34 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Back to topic.

The problem with human society and human economies isn't "human nature", it's almost a problem of energy transfer. It's like biophysics ... some of the same patterns turn up over and over - like the 3:1 ratio of branches to main stems, whether leaf veins or human ones - due to the minimization of turbulence at that ratio.

NOT ALL HUMANS ARE THE SAME. Some are productive, some (like children) are at least temporarily parasitical. Some are very sociable and have well-developed empathy and a sense of fairness. Others... not so much.

Criminals generally don't do well because they have some sort of defect - poor impulse control, low tolerance for frustration etc. Even in primitive societies, some people are recognized as troublemakers, angry people. But with ENOUGH human beings, some will develop that are both sociopaths AND smart. These kinds of people can do rather well, and they hide their behavior by molding society to fit themselves. So the inveterate liar becomes a story-teller priest, and the knifesman becomes a warlord, and the thief becomes a capitalist.

For whatever reason, most humans simply don't seem to clue into the fact that there are human-looking predators among them.

And, yanno, there are no lessons that seem to last more than a couple of generations. Even the most ardent revolutions cool. Simply telling people about it, and trying to institute some sort of ethical awareness is doomed to fail, partly because generations will forget and partly because the problem isn't obvious at the personal level.

------------

I was told that the first studies of chimps were terribly flawed because the researchers would lure chimps out into the open with big piles of fruit, which precipitated all kinds of aggressive behavior. Maybe we need to outlaw concentrated flows of wealth and power, or at least allow distributed flows of wealth.

There are a few ways to maybe get around this problem. The first is perhaps to make sure that the means of control are too widely distributed to be useful to large-scale predation.

The means of control have to do with the media (in the past, that would be the god-kings and churches) and weaponry. Today, instead of FORCING people with whips and spears to do their work, we reward them with tokens (called money) ... which, amazingly, only the banks have the authority to make out of thin air ... which are only as meaningful as whatever importance we choose to give them. It's a beautiful system - for those who can churn out these tokens ad infinitum. Instead of having a WORLD currency, or even a NATIONAL currency, perhaps a multiplicity of currencies would prevent the kind of one-ring control that is so tempting for the sociopath.



The problem and the solution may be in the mechanics of our organizations ... simply keep them local. It would be too much work for the dedicated sociopath to have to take over every currency, every radio station, etc. Instead of tending towards a larger and larger organism, perhaps we simply need a varied ecology of production and distributions. (oh, and BTW- the difference between an organism and an ecology is transportation of resources. An organism has the same resource flowing throughout. An ecology has different organisms which convert and transfer resources between each other.) So the biggest problem might even be TRANSPORTATION - of goods, of money, or people. Keep it local and the problem may be solved. Very DUNE-ish.

--------

Or, just to be a whole lot simpler, maybe the trick is to reduce the male population to about 10% of what it currently is. That's a good genetic sampling, isn't it? Most sociopaths and aggressors are male. That might be simpler than fighting physics.



--------------
You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Sunday, January 24, 2016 8:48 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


So, speaking of ONE-RING control ...


Norway's Biggest Bank Demands Cash Ban

Quote:

The war on cash is escalating faster than many had imagined. Having documented the growing calls from the elites and propagandist explanations of the "benefits" to their serfs over the last few years, with China, and The IMF entering the "cashless society" call most recently, International Business Times reports that Norway - suffering from its own economic collapse as oil revenues crash - has joined its Scandi peers Denmark and Sweden in a call to "ban cash."


Cash ... it's so ... uncontrollable! Untrackable! Why, anybody can do ANYthing with it .. buy used goods, or pay a baby-sitter, or buy drugs.

Digital currency, that can be tracked, taxed, halted, or withdrawn by TPTB... what a tool for total control!

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-23/norways-biggest-bank-demands-
cash-ban



--------------
You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Sunday, January 24, 2016 11:26 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:

Originally posted by 1kiki:
"I believe that nearly all humanity has a surplus of primitive urges and a shortage of self-control. The shortages tend to defeat all rational or intelligent designs for societies and we are left with the mess all around us."

That's pretty much the 'human nature' argument. We're all too full of chaotic primitive urges. No way could we form societies where millions of people live in a single city without mayhem and murder every day on every corner!

Human nature is far more tractable than you give it credit for. Especially when people have a reason to buy in to the system.





How could I possibly argue with that? Except I will.

Nearly everybody drives on the right side of the road in Texas. They don't do it because they have self-control. Certainly not because driving on the right is intelligent -- elsewhere the arbitrary rule is drive on the left. I picked left/right because it is one of those societal rules that has to be binary when dealing with humans. Making it more complicated (drive on all sides or drive left only on weekends, other times right) would definitely be beyond human traffic engineers or human nature (there's that concept, again, but one of the things I mean is head-to-head fatal collisions when the rules are too complicated for humans).

Texas drivers stay on the right, except when drunk or fleeing from a robbery, because it's a habit or other people are also on the right at this very moment. There is no conscious thinking going on in drivers' heads, except for student drivers' heads. Everybody driving is on automatic pilot. A traffic engineer or a google driverless car engineer might be mentally engaged, but nobody else.

I'm about to be really rude and completely unscientific about how I see people function: society rules (like driving on the right) are enforced by the part of the brain that is also found in birds. To wit, bird brains! See footnote 1.

For a more complex example than left/right, if you want a comically awful example of bird brains enforcing society's arbitary rules, see the movie The Big Short (2015). The comedy comes from following four peculiar people who are weirdly conscious of what hundreds of thousands of calm and normal bird brains in finance are unconsciously but profitably doing to society. The audience laughs because the movie artistically explains underlying financial ideas that the bird brains have no need to understand. Not understanding leads to the comical collapse of companies and an economic depression.
www.metacritic.com/movie/the-big-short



Footnote 1: Comparing humans to birds would insult birds if birds had the brains to know they have been insulted. I know birds do some mental calculations: Some birds talk! Some birds sing! Birds migrate across oceans!

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Sunday, January 24, 2016 11:36 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.


"They don't do it because they have self-control."

They do it because they've been taught that that's where cars get driven, even before they learn to drive, even before they learn to talk, even before they learn to walk. It's what they see from their carseats. It's what they see in cartoons and on TV shows. It's what they're told when they're being taught how to cross the street. It's where the school buses drive. It's the side of the road where they get on any bus or other roadside transportation. It's a lifetime of experience before they even take the wheel of a car, or if they never take the wheel of a car.

By way of illustration, there was a book about a female British spy in wartime France who got caught because - by habit - she looked in the wrong direction first when crossing a street. The title was 'I Looked Right'.




SAGAN: We are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse effect. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth's climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the cosmos, into a kind of hell.

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Monday, January 25, 2016 8:50 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:

Originally posted by 1kiki:

They do it because they've been taught that that's where cars get driven, even before they learn to drive, even before they learn to talk, even before they learn to walk.

Charles Darwin on a bird's rules of sexual selection and a society's rules:

“No certain answer can be given to these questions; but we ought to be cautious in assuming that knobs and various fleshy appendages cannot be attractive to the female, when we remember that with savage races of man various hideous deformities – deep scars on the face with the flesh raised into protuberances, the septum of the nose pierced by sticks and bones, holes in the ears and lips stretched widely open – are all admired as ornamental.”

Who designed these supremely elegant feathers? Certainly not a human. If Darwin is right, the artists here seem to have been the birds themselves, which means (since the males usually have the best feathers), primarily their wives. So is there not something oddly condescending about scientists presuming to doubt whether these original designers are themselves capable of the “almost human degree of taste” which would be needed to appreciate their work?

Darwin was suggesting that the wishes of hen-pheasants – their inner thoughts and feelings as they watched their various suitors – had affected, and had finally determined, the design of later generations. This thought is frightening, not only when it concerns animals but even more when it concerns people.
www.philosophersmag.com/index.php/tpm-mag-articles/11-essays/101-the-m
ythology-of-selfishness


Humans are no more conscious when making the rules of society than birds are conscious of where their standards in male plumage originated. Or maybe birds are just as conscious as humans? Depends on how humans feel about being called “bird brained”.


The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, January 25, 2016 5:26 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.


"Humans are no more conscious when making the rules of society than birds are conscious of where their standards in male plumage originated."

Our 'rules of society' aren't in our genes. Why do I say that? Because the entire human race isn't attracted to highly raised keloid scars. Or red hair. Or irezumi. Or bound lotus-feet. Or anything really.

(An interesting case can be made that whatever is indicative of higher status is attractive. Hence, Polynesian women who ate pork as a privilege of their status, who were tall and hefty, were deemed far more attractive than lower status women who stayed slim on a diet of taro and fish. Feudal and Victorian women who never worked a day in the fields, who had 'alabaster' skin and 'buxom' figures and 'delicate' hands were deemed far more attractive than their tanned, fit, muscled, calloused counterparts who worked every day in the fields. But now that people work indoors - in their necessary servitude as lower-class wage slaves - being chubby and pale is no longer attractive. And so on.)

The entire human race isn't monogamous. Or polygynous. Or polyandrous.
The entire human race doesn't live in nuclear families. Or extended families. Or even families at all.

And you seem to think that OUR particular form of society just comes to us through genetics. When in fact it's taught to us - we're even propagandized to it. We're taught that a white man with a beard lives up in the sky, judging us (and occasionally looking after us). We're taught what (and who) is 'good' and 'bad'. We're brought up being taught IN SCHOOL the agenda that our country is free, and great, and capitalistic - by definition. We're taught to be consumers by commercials. We're taught we should strive for a young, hip way of life with our i-phones and latest trendy fashions.

We're taught this. It isn't in our genes.

Find me an example that you think is genetic - and I'll find you exceptions. I can find exceptions scattered through humankind, or whole societies that are exceptions. That indicates to me there's a LOT of 'human nature' that isn't genetic.





SAGAN: We are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse effect. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth's climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the cosmos, into a kind of hell.

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Monday, January 25, 2016 6:23 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.


signy
Well, G, you might want to get out with some competent people older than 60 once in a while.
'g'
Also - sorry to see but not too surprised that you would be so dismissive of people suffering from dementia.

As the ONLY comment signy made about people older than 60, I fail to see what was so dismissive about people with dementia.

you people need to try and think like I do...
strawman

signy
And, yes, I would LOVE to discuss with you, but you simply don't know how.
When you make a statement, be prepared to support your statement with something OTHER THAN emotion and CONSTANTLY repeated assumptions. Define your terms. Explain what you mean. Bring evidence (not allegations) to the table. Show how it has some sort of internal logic.
'g'
Straight up Siggy condescension (note 'g''s use of a demeaning nickname while he complains about being condescend to, apparently he can't keep himself from being a hypocrite!) - totally worthless except as an obvious irritant. "But I want to discuss!" Fake whine.

Well, apparently 'g' really DOESN'T know what a discussion consists of!


signy
Stop the name-calling and insults ( ad hominems ), straw-manning, non-sequitors etc. I've been on this board long enough to recognize pretty much every rhetorical trick, and they reek of a weak argument.
'g'
Yep, you've used them all.

And right on cue, 'g' responds with ad hominem.

'g'
Funny - you're lying about lying.

And another.

'g'
something you both have little if any firsthand knowledge of

And another.

'g'
you have no idea so you are super defensive

And another.

'g'
why else do you think people respond to you that way?

Actually, it's just you and THGR. kpo can actually discuss things in between insults. But you and THGR are completely vapid.




SAGAN: We are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse effect. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth's climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the cosmos, into a kind of hell.

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Tuesday, January 26, 2016 9:04 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


I'm going to pound the point about energy transfer some more, because so far nobody seems to have gotten my point.

Human society (and human evolution, and human societal evolution) isn't about our specific social constructs at all.

But just because there isn't a biological basis for the features of "human nature" that have been pointed out, doesn't mean that there aren't real physical drivers compelling society in one direction or another.

As an example of non-human, physical drivers, I look at reproductive strategies of all sorts of animals. Some animals are harem species. Some are seasonally monogamous. Some are polyandrous. Some just breed indiscriminately. Some species are fecund, some have only a few young. There are many ways of continuing each species, but they all have to be survivable if the species is going to continue! It's all about transferring food (energy) from one generation to the next. http://www.earthlife.net/birds/mating.html

Now, all of these species face constraints. I read a very interesting article about red deer in Scotland (Clutton-Brock), a harem species in which the largest, fastest-growing males get to breed. This sets up an internally-driven evolution logic in which males continue to get larger and larger ... and larger and larger ... which each passing generation. On average, males are about twice as large as females.

Why don't they get larger still? Well, large males are energetically costly. They require a LOT of food, both in the womb and afterwards. Females which have had male calves the previous year tend not to breed successfully the year afterwards for example. But event which capped this evolutionary trend during this particular study was a killing blizzard, in which food was very scarce. ALL of the males died, except the very smallest one, because his muscle mass didn't require so much food. The females did much better, nearly all of THEM survived, except some that had been stressed by having had very large male calves the summer before.

That kind of hit the "reset" button on that evolutionary trend, at least for that moment.

--------

But this whole "harem species" thing ... I know, one male, many females. It's a kind of wet-dream for some human males, because they imagine THEMSELVES as the dominant male, but the reality is that for harem species, life sucks for most males.

It seems such an odd system: breeding so many males, only to dispatch them later in life. Hardly functional!

But then when you compare what happens with birds, it makes sense: Many birds are at least seasonally monogamous. That because the chicks are SO demanding ... they have to grow so fast, they eat so much food! ... that BOTH parents are required to keep the next generation going. Males, in that strategy, are a necessary component of species survival. In harem species, where males don't contribute at all to the survival of the young (and in fact compete for resources) the point is to GET RID OF EXCESS MALES.

Harem species aren't an indication that males are important. What they are is an indication that males are disposable.

If you take that logic- that it's all about successfully gathering and preserving energy for the next generation without too much waste - you'll see most strategies make sense. They have to, otherwise the species wouldn't survive. Predators which require a lot of concentrated energy tend to have small numbers of young. Over millenia, their over-survival would have decimated their own prey (food source) and so for them small litters are tolerable for survival, even perhaps preferable. Top predators have the smallest of all litters, and their survival isn't a top priority. Male bears, for example, will eat cubs, and male lions will kill the cubs bred from the previous male.

---------

So, what does this have to do with humans?

Human organizations are also dominated by energy transfer. Those organizations which harvest and direct energy the fastest and most efficiently will tend to survive. Assuming that there are human parasites or predators among us, since they have a tendency to acquire the most energy with the least effort, they have a tendency to reproduce their own strategy the fastest.

MAYBE in evolutionary time this will all balance out, but so far the advances in technology keep introducing parasitical/ predatory processes faster than evolution can weed out the societies which develop them. Possibly humans are fatally flawed, and will NEVER overcome the evolutionary driver towards short-term growth/ concentrated power in time to survive to the next stage.

But I think the concept of "human nature" is, in a sense, a misdirected one. The irreducible "nature" of humans which makes this all possible- both the rapid advance AND the internal parasitism/predation- is that humans are a SOCIAL SPECIES and seem bent on maintaining themselves in the heart of a group (for safety) despite the sacrifices that might entail.

As individuals, with an individual POV, we suck. We tend to absorb the paradigms passed on to us by authoritative individuals (The rain gods need sacrifice.) whether is really works, or not. In fact, we are EXCELLENT at denying reality in favor of dogma until it becomes so unworkable, so unsurvivable, that it has to be abandoned. And it makes sense that it would be that way: The humans which were able to discard their individual POV in favor of a group POV would have lived in larger groups, which would have been safer, and have led to all kinds of knowledge transfer and technology development. As I have said before, the same ability that allows us to imagine electrons is the same ability that allows us to imagine purple dragons. The good and beneficial comes with the bad.

What we have are runaway systems, which just get bigger and bigger, like a snowball rolling downhill. More and more people are integrated into these systems. Whether these systems are created by sociopaths or simply taken advantage of is irrelevant (I think it's both), ultimately they become self-destructive as internal corruption and parasitism expand. Like the male red deer, these systems are vulnerable to shocks, and pointed towards failure, because they aren't robust to change. And people will do whatever it is they need to do to fit into these societies. Changing human behavior will not redirect how societies/economies behave and evolve.

The challenge is to figure out how to short-circuit those physical drivers (feedbacks) before they lead to self-destruction, especially now that we have the technology to ruin the entire planet, when the consequences go beyond our village, city, or region.

--------------
You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Tuesday, January 26, 2016 12:53 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:

So, what does this have to do with humans?

Human organizations are also dominated by energy transfer. Those organizations which harvest and direct energy the fastest and most efficiently will tend to survive. Assuming that there are human parasites or predators among us, since they have a tendency to acquire the most energy with the least effort, they have a tendency to reproduce their own strategy the fastest.

Homo sapiens are one of 16 species in the family Homo. There is an extinct subspecies called Homo sapiens idaltu. "Idaltu" is from the Saho-Afar word meaning "elder" or "first born". That makes modern humans second born. I don't know what the scientific name for third born is, but there is reason to believe it is out in our world and playing havoc with second born because sapiens are so easily deceived.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_sapiens_idaltu

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, January 26, 2016 8:55 PM

THGRRI


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I'm going to pound the point about energy transfer some more, because so far nobody seems to have gotten my point.

Human society (and human evolution, and human societal evolution) isn't about our specific social constructs at all.

But just because there isn't a biological basis for the features of "human nature" that have been pointed out, doesn't mean that there aren't real physical drivers compelling society in one direction or another.

As an example of non-human, physical drivers, I look at reproductive strategies of all sorts of animals. Some animals are harem species. Some are seasonally monogamous. Some are polyandrous. Some just breed indiscriminately. Some species are fecund, some have only a few young. There are many ways of continuing each species, but they all have to be survivable if the species is going to continue! It's all about transferring food (energy) from one generation to the next. http://www.earthlife.net/birds/mating.html

Now, all of these species face constraints. I read a very interesting article about red deer in Scotland (Clutton-Brock), a harem species in which the largest, fastest-growing males get to breed. This sets up an internally-driven evolution logic in which males continue to get larger and larger ... and larger and larger ... which each passing generation. On average, males are about twice as large as females.

Why don't they get larger still? Well, large males are energetically costly. They require a LOT of food, both in the womb and afterwards. Females which have had male calves the previous year tend not to breed successfully the year afterwards for example. But event which capped this evolutionary trend during this particular study was a killing blizzard, in which food was very scarce. ALL of the males died, except the very smallest one, because his muscle mass didn't require so much food. The females did much better, nearly all of THEM survived, except some that had been stressed by having had very large male calves the summer before.

That kind of hit the "reset" button on that evolutionary trend, at least for that moment.

--------

But this whole "harem species" thing ... I know, one male, many females. It's a kind of wet-dream for some human males, because they imagine THEMSELVES as the dominant male, but the reality is that for harem species, life sucks for most males.

It seems such an odd system: breeding so many males, only to dispatch them later in life. Hardly functional!

But then when you compare what happens with birds, it makes sense: Many birds are at least seasonally monogamous. That because the chicks are SO demanding ... they have to grow so fast, they eat so much food! ... that BOTH parents are required to keep the next generation going. Males, in that strategy, are a necessary component of species survival. In harem species, where males don't contribute at all to the survival of the young (and in fact compete for resources) the point is to GET RID OF EXCESS MALES.

Harem species aren't an indication that males are important. What they are is an indication that males are disposable.

If you take that logic- that it's all about successfully gathering and preserving energy for the next generation without too much waste - you'll see most strategies make sense. They have to, otherwise the species wouldn't survive. Predators which require a lot of concentrated energy tend to have small numbers of young. Over millenia, their over-survival would have decimated their own prey (food source) and so for them small litters are tolerable for survival, even perhaps preferable. Top predators have the smallest of all litters, and their survival isn't a top priority. Male bears, for example, will eat cubs, and male lions will kill the cubs bred from the previous male.

---------

So, what does this have to do with humans?

Human organizations are also dominated by energy transfer. Those organizations which harvest and direct energy the fastest and most efficiently will tend to survive. Assuming that there are human parasites or predators among us, since they have a tendency to acquire the most energy with the least effort, they have a tendency to reproduce their own strategy the fastest.

MAYBE in evolutionary time this will all balance out, but so far the advances in technology keep introducing parasitical/ predatory processes faster than evolution can weed out the societies which develop them. Possibly humans are fatally flawed, and will NEVER overcome the evolutionary driver towards short-term growth/ concentrated power in time to survive to the next stage.

But I think the concept of "human nature" is, in a sense, a misdirected one. The irreducible "nature" of humans which makes this all possible- both the rapid advance AND the internal parasitism/predation- is that humans are a SOCIAL SPECIES and seem bent on maintaining themselves in the heart of a group (for safety) despite the sacrifices that might entail.

As individuals, with an individual POV, we suck. We tend to absorb the paradigms passed on to us by authoritative individuals (The rain gods need sacrifice.) whether is really works, or not. In fact, we are EXCELLENT at denying reality in favor of dogma until it becomes so unworkable, so unsurvivable, that it has to be abandoned. And it makes sense that it would be that way: The humans which were able to discard their individual POV in favor of a group POV would have lived in larger groups, which would have been safer, and have led to all kinds of knowledge transfer and technology development. As I have said before, the same ability that allows us to imagine electrons is the same ability that allows us to imagine purple dragons. The good and beneficial comes with the bad.

What we have are runaway systems, which just get bigger and bigger, like a snowball rolling downhill. More and more people are integrated into these systems. Whether these systems are created by sociopaths or simply taken advantage of is irrelevant (I think it's both), ultimately they become self-destructive as internal corruption and parasitism expand. Like the male red deer, these systems are vulnerable to shocks, and pointed towards failure, because they aren't robust to change. And people will do whatever it is they need to do to fit into these societies. Changing human behavior will not redirect how societies/economies behave and evolve.

The challenge is to figure out how to short-circuit those physical drivers (feedbacks) before they lead to self-destruction, especially now that we have the technology to ruin the entire planet, when the consequences go beyond our village, city, or region.

--------------
You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.





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short-circuit those physical drivers (feedbacks) before- Plagiarized

the technology to ruin the entire planet, when the consequences- Plagiarized

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Tuesday, January 26, 2016 10:38 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

That makes modern humans second born. I don't know what the scientific name for third born is, but there is reason to believe it is out in our world and playing havoc with second born because sapiens are so easily deceived.
Huh. Interesting point.



--------------
You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Tuesday, January 26, 2016 11:35 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.


I wasn't ignoring anyone, I was thinking.

I can see that there could be an interesting split between the tendency for most people to be more docile - self-domesticated as I've heard it described - and the few human predators to become increasingly dominant.

FWIW, among the many blurbs I've read there was an interesting experiment done with bacteria, by embedding a mix of different energy sources (citrate, acetate, sugars and sugar-alcohols) in the agar of petri dishes. Some bacterial colonies rapidly selected for mutations that allowed the fastest use of one energy source. They multiplied rapidly, spread quickly, used up their preferred energy source, and then died because they didn't have enough genetic variation to ultimately succeed. Other colonies, for unknown reasons, developed a variety of mutations allowing different energy sources to be used. Their numbers didn't grow nearly as quickly, and their distribution tended to be spotty, but the cultures lasted a long time as they were actually successions of population mixes over time.

Anyway, I haven't concluded anything, but I think UK Le Guin had an answer for the predators - and that's to have a society without 'power structures'.




SAGAN: We are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse effect. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth's climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the cosmos, into a kind of hell.

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Wednesday, January 27, 2016 10:18 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:

Originally posted by 1kiki:

Anyway, I haven't concluded anything, but I think UK Le Guin had an answer for the predators - and that's to have a society without 'power structures'.

I strongly believe humans will not cooperate with Ursula K. Le Guin, except for humans she creates in a story.

Hoping for better society rules is probably more practical than hoping for an end to all power structures. But that puts us back where we started. What are the rules of society? And you can't have a rule: "No Power Structures". For humans that is an impossible to obey rule.

New power structures are being erected everywhere and all the time. It might be a human genetic trait that has widely spread for thousands of years. We have always had executives of various types who lay down society's poorly thought out rules and have squadrons of willing & violent enforcers of those arbitrary rules:
www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ex%2032:15-35&version=KJ21

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Thursday, January 28, 2016 12:59 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

Originally posted by 1kiki:
I wasn't ignoring anyone, I was thinking.

I can see that there could be an interesting split between the tendency for most people to be more docile - self-domesticated as I've heard it described - and the few human predators to become increasingly dominant.

FWIW, among the many blurbs I've read there was an interesting experiment done with bacteria, by embedding a mix of different energy sources (citrate, acetate, sugars and sugar-alcohols) in the agar of petri dishes. Some bacterial colonies rapidly selected for mutations that allowed the fastest use of one energy source. They multiplied rapidly, spread quickly, used up their preferred energy source, and then died because they didn't have enough genetic variation to ultimately succeed. Other colonies, for unknown reasons, developed a variety of mutations allowing different energy sources to be used. Their numbers didn't grow nearly as quickly, and their distribution tended to be spotty, but the cultures lasted a long time as they were actually successions of population mixes over time.

Anyway, I haven't concluded anything, but I think UK Le Guin had an answer for the predators - and that's to have a society without 'power structures'.



This reminds me of a post that RUE had a long time ago. RUE kind of pounded the point home several times ... and it took me several reads before I understood the importance of what was posted.

RUE posted about the stages of energy (more or less): how successive generations of humans learned to utilize more and more sources of energy- literally.

First, it was human energy. Using muscle-power and rocks to bash seashells or bones (for marrow), using hands to chip flints, walking, digging, stripping bark or cutting strips of hide to plait bindings, using teeth and stomaches to digest food.

Then finding fire to help pre-digest food, to stay warm. Literally, energy- BTUs.

Then advancing agriculture beyond the adventitious scattering of favored seeds or casual use of digging sticks to the widespread and intentional, with the use of animal power for plowing, harvesting, trashing, grinding, drawing water, transportation. Again - literally - energy. Muscle-power beyond what humans could bring to the equation.

Wind power. Water power. Power-spinning and power-looms that took the hand-work out of carding, spinning, and weaving cloth. Drawing water and powering water-pumps; draining land for farming. Sail-power.

Then, the steam engine. Wood, and coal. Large-scale industrial factories. More energy at-hand.

The internal combustion engine - petroleum-power. Electricity.

In each step, the amount of energy available for each person's survival is greater. The system is awash with more and more energy which is used to process more and more materiel.

But like the computer-simulated evolutionary systems, the more "energy" (in that case, bits) available for consumption, the more parasites and predators evolved.

My observation is that at each technological advance, the greater the amount of energy and resources available, the larger the systems are integrated, the greater the discrepancy between the top predators and the primary producers. In the simulated systems, it eventually reaches equilibrium through successive collapse. But human systems don't seem to be evolving towards equilibrium. The technology driver always points in one direction: more energy, more materiel. It only seems to be limited by external circumstances, the resources available. For example, if energy were to suddenly be a constraining factor, wide-scale transportation might become impractical, leading to the re-localization of worldwide systems, which would not be able to support such a tall hierarchy.
The social systems also seem to point in one direction, which is towards greater and greater integration = the better to concentrate wealth for more efficient parasitism/predation, leading to collapse.

I wish it was as simple as "no power structures". But in a worldwide, impersonal economy involving billions of people, you would have to first RECOGNIZE that a "power structure" existed, and that there is someone who is thieving a little bit (or perhaps even a lot) off of each transaction in that power structure

So I guess, for me, I would have to think about how to even recognize that a "power structure" (currency? communication? military? water?) exists, because any and all of those- and more- can be and has been commandeered by an elite for their exclusive benefit. I suppose once I learn how to recognize that a "power structure" exists, what its essential features are and how it's worked towards the advantage of a few, then perhaps I can think about how to cut it short.

In any case, humanity's biggest problem is overpopulation, not inequality. Inequality tends to create overpopulation, but they're not the same problem.



--------------
You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Thursday, January 28, 2016 8:59 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Okay, so I guess my first question is: what is a "power structure"?

KIKI, help me out. I've rolled that idea around, and I don't know what you mean, but you must mean something.

--------

If you mean the imposition of a hierarchy thru the use of force, then any time weapons exist and are used for anything other than self-defense, I suppose a power structure exists.

But one of the points I came to earlier showed (to me) how a centralized parasitical system could be developed perhaps without the use of force at all - at least, not a first. That is the introduction of MONEY. If MONEY becomes the medium through which all labor is exchanged, and the only way to avail oneself of the resources washing around "out there" is through the use of money, then instead of standing over the serfs with a whip, everyone might be induced to participate through reward. Being excluded from the system through lack of money would be punishment enough. Banishment is a pretty effective punishment,

I suppose the imposition of that money through force only comes in later, when the parasitism/ predation via the commandeering of money becomes too severe. (Which is here we are now, I think.)

Anyway, back to my question: What is a "power structure"? I feel there is something there that I'm not getting.

--------------
You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Friday, January 29, 2016 2:25 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Bump, for KIKI.

--------------
You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Saturday, January 30, 2016 4:54 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.


"Hoping for better society rules is probably more practical than hoping for an end to all power structures. But that puts us back where we started. What are the rules of society? And you can't have a rule: "No Power Structures". For humans that is an impossible to obey rule."

As I understand it, not all societies had 'a' 'ruler', so I don't think it's in-built into human nature. THIS type of society probably has power structures built in to it. So the question is, do we want to do what we've been doing and get what we've been getting? Or do we want something we can survive?




SAGAN: We are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse effect. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth's climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the cosmos, into a kind of hell.

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Saturday, January 30, 2016 8:30 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


But what was it about the former societies with no ruler? The biggest ones, possibly, were the Indus River civilizations typified by Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa. According to National Geographic

Quote:

A well-planned street grid and an elaborate drainage system hint that the occupants of the ancient Indus civilization city of Mohenjo Daro were skilled urban planners with a reverence for the control of water. But just who occupied the ancient city in modern-day Pakistan during the third millennium B.C. remains a puzzle...

The city lacks ostentatious palaces, temples, or monuments. There's no obvious central seat of government or evidence of a king or queen. Modesty, order, and cleanliness were apparently preferred. Pottery and tools of copper and stone were standardized. Seals and weights suggest a system of tightly controlled trade.

The city's wealth and stature is evident in artifacts such as ivory, lapis, carnelian, and gold beads, as well as the baked-brick city structures themselves.

A watertight pool called the Great Bath, perched on top of a mound of dirt and held in place with walls of baked brick, is the closest structure Mohenjo Daro has to a temple. Possehl, a National Geographic grantee, says it suggests an ideology based on cleanliness

Also, no statues of gods, no temples, no armories, no jails, no checkpoints.

Harappa, at the time, was estimated to be about 25,000 people and Mohenjo-Daro around 40,000. The civilization did not fall to invasion, since there do not appear to be indications of widespread fires or mass graves.

But

Quote:

What is clear is that Harappan society was not entirely peaceful, with the human skeletal remains demonstrating some of the highest rates of injury (15.5%) found in South Asian prehistory. Paleopathological analysis demonstrated that leprosy and tuberculosis were present at Harappa, with the highest prevalence of both disease and trauma present in the skeletons from Area G (a pit of skulls located south-east of the city walls). Furthermore, rates of cranio-facial trauma and infection increased through time, demonstrating that the civilization collapsed amid illness and injury. The bioarchaeologists who examined the remains have suggested that the combined evidence for differences in mortuary treatment and epidemiology indicate that some individuals and communities at Harappa were excluded from access to basic resources like health and safety, a basic feature of hierarchical societies world-wide
The original paper that I read indicated that people who suffered from disfiguring diseases were marginalized and victimized.

The fact that such large, highly-developed (for the time) and wealthy society existed without the trappings of gods, kings and soldiers indicates a different social organization.

Perhaps they had a "society" but no government?

What can we make of that?

--------------
You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Saturday, January 30, 2016 9:00 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.


I was thinking of N American Indians, who didn't seem to have ruling structures. 'Rule' was decided by expertise, argument, consensus, contest or other means, but as I understand it, it was provisional (depending on the needs of the moment) and temporary.

There's a theory I heard, that indicates people can get together in groups larger than families because they can accept 'stories' that give them commonality. Stories that explain god made them from mud, or that they're favored by the gods, or follow rules from the incorporeal world that make them better than others. The archaeological evidence is that large-scale populations (for the day - 10,000 to 30,000) show up at the same time as statuary showing human-animal figures - men with a lion's head for example.

So fabrications (mythology, with gods and subjects) may be *A* way people gather in groups. It may even be the dominant way people gather in groups.

But if they're exceptions, then it's not the only way.

BTW, I'm not ignoring your posts, I'm just too short on time to reply at length.






SAGAN: We are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse effect. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth's climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the cosmos, into a kind of hell.

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