surviving obamunism

The joke is on society, Essines will be dead in 30 years or so.

  lumpenprol said:

In re: Scandinavia, their success seems straightforward - oil, plus extreme cultural homogeneity.

just a correction, norway is the only scandinavian country with oil. true on the cultural homogeneity

  lumpenprol said:

Mr Maha, I think you need to have kids. People may not be born little capitalists, but nor are they born tabula rasas. Every kid has a distinct personality from the moment they are born. Observe them together in a playpen - even before they can speak, some are more quiet and reserved, while others will fight each other or cry to get what they want. This is the face of humanity. To (badly) paraphrase Bertrand Russell (who was quoting someone else I believe): "out of the crooked timbers of humanity, nothing straight shall ever be built."

 

Good luck with your Utopian vision - I certainly agree with you about building self-sustaining communities - but I wouldn't expect mass changes in human behavior or thought.

 

In re: Scandinavia, their success seems straightforward - oil, plus extreme cultural homogeneity.

lumpenprol - The vision is not a Utopian idea in anyway at all.. in fact, I advocate a society that is much better than our current monetary system and I know full well that because a natural characteristic of humans is to become ever emergent on a technical level, we can never reach a perfect way of living as it is impossible.

The subject of social conditioning is important - Let's take this analogy as an example: There is no difference between a Gandhi baby and a Hitler baby. If I took a new born Adolf Hitler, moved him over to an Eskimo civilisation, there is a high probability that he will become a great fisherman and will conform with their way of living. Conditioning has played a vital role in who we all are today.

  mr maha said:

There is no difference between a Gandhi baby and a Hitler baby. If I took a new born Adolf Hitler, moved him over to an Eskimo civilisation, there is a high probability that he will become a great fisherman and will conform with their way of living. Conditioning has played a vital role in who we all are today.

well that isn't true at all, infact that is one of the oldest arguments ever. didnt you read lord of the flies in high school?

maybe it isn't utopian, but it's so far-fetched it might as well be. take as an example the election of obama - a very moderate democrat, fairly similar to Bill Clinton, yet look at what started this thread. people actually believe obama is a socialist bent on turning the US into the USSR. if a painfully moderate politcian gets that kind of reaction, how do you think people will react when you propose that we basically rewrite our DNA and do away with money?

i like your ideas, i think most anyone would, but you need to spend more time away from academic discussions and more time around the 'common man' to get a little grounding. if we ever get to your civilization, it will be through a very slow evolution.

  Braintree said:

  mr maha said:

  Braintree said:

The problem is that we don't have an abundance of resources. We have a finite amount of resources, and a finite amount of time. And the more abundant our resources are, the more people there are, which make resources and time less abundant.

 

Economy still exists whether or not we use paper bills to trade, and population is directly related to economy. People might be happier in your idealized society, but longevity of our species will be severely reduced.

A relevant quote:

Bernard Lietaer, designer of the EU currency system points out:

“Greed and Competition are not the result of immutable human temperament…greed and fear of scarcity are in fact

being continuously created and amplified as a direct result of the kind of money we are using…We can produce more

than enough food to feed everybody…but there is clearly not enough money to pay for it all. The scarcity is in our

national currencies. In fact, the job of the central banks is to create and maintain that currency scarcity. The direct

consequence is that we have to fight with each other in order to survive.”

 

The intelligent management of the earth’s resources is what is important. In a saner world, we would take account of the dynamic equilibrium within our global ecosystem, and adjust our production process accordingly.

Furthermore, a Resource-Based Economy would need to be global by nature, for the ultimate

utilization of the planet is an organization worldwide.

 

The planet can only be diligently examined and operated from a holistic perspective. This isn’t subjective. The Earth is essentially a tool kit, full of possibilities for us to create an abundance of technology, food and energy. If we do not keep track of all planetary resources and view the planet as a synergistic whole, our abilities will be limited.

Sadly, the world today is divided by profit oriented commercial competition, religious groups, and

primitive nationalistic ego identifications, making it currently difficult to organize a global resource

management system. This is another reason why the monetary system, in and of itself, is detrimental

to our survival, for it inherently limits cooperation amongst tribes . As far as ideologies, it is time we

put aside our religious and nationalistic differences and realize that we are all here on the same

planet, needing the same basic things . It is only when the world works together that sustainability

and true progress will be achieved.

 

In using renewable energy sources to their maximum potential, we will have an abundance of energy. An example: Geothermal power - according to a 2006 MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) report, about 2000 zettajoules of power is currently tappable wordwide. The current energy consumption of the whole world is half a zettajoule per year. This means around 4000 years of planetary power can be harnessed immediately from this type of power.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroponics

With hydroponic agriculture, we can theoretically grow food in the middle of the desert with proper irrigation.

 

I'm not worried about food, I'm worried about metals. They're made up over millions of years, and at this rate we'll run out in several thousand; long before the envisioned society would be realized. You still lose materials when you recycle things, and not all things can be recycled [the different types of plastics, for instance].

 

Do you honestly believe we'll shed our biology so soon? We have only been around for like 200k years, which is less than half the time that the neanderthals were here. Yes, we're more evolved, but even though our technology has sped up exponentially compared to theirs, it will take a lot longer before we evolve past our natural inclination to look out for ourselves instead of our species as a whole. To reach the society you're thinking of, I would suspect we would have to be around for another 500k years, at least, and by that time, our planet will have already been ravaged by so much digging and industry.

Concerning industrial raw materials - There has never been a complete geological survey of the Earth's mineral and elements as far as I am aware, only regional ones. This must be done in the future for us to have a further understanding of what there is available.

I agree though that a lot of metals are becoming more and more scarce as time moves forward. We need to see where technology is in regard to creating synthetic substitutions for certain elements and minerals. Another key point to take into consideration is how society organizes and manages its use of these elements and materials. Within a monetary system, value increases based on the level of scarcity there is for a certain element or material. Unfortunately, it seems that corporations would much rather keep this propensity going for as long as possible so they profit on this specifically scarce material. Again, here is a prime example of how flawed the monetary system really is, as profit will almost always come before human concern.

I believe that if we maximise technology to the fullest potential possible in this current moment in time, we would be able to create abundance on mass - however it is important to take note that this can not be done for the time being, for as long as there is a monetary system, the more this sort of progression is held back.

If we are to ever wake up and achieve a resource based economy globally, it would be many years ahead of us and I look at this current society as the grassroots for this change to be brought about in the correct ways possible.

  beneboi said:

  mr maha said:

There is no difference between a Gandhi baby and a Hitler baby. If I took a new born Adolf Hitler, moved him over to an Eskimo civilisation, there is a high probability that he will become a great fisherman and will conform with their way of living. Conditioning has played a vital role in who we all are today.

 

well that isn't true at all, infact that is one of the oldest arguments ever. didnt you read lord of the flies in high school?

Absolutely, but could it not be argued that the children in the novel adopted their attitudes on that remote island due to the scarce environment and their surroundings?

Is this now about tabula rasa and nature vs nurture?

Is there really any neuroscience to support either theory?

  Al Hounos said:

maybe it isn't utopian, but it's so far-fetched it might as well be. take as an example the election of obama - a very moderate democrat, fairly similar to Bill Clinton, yet look at what started this thread. people actually believe obama is a socialist bent on turning the US into the USSR. if a painfully moderate politcian gets that kind of reaction, how do you think people will react when you propose that we basically rewrite our DNA and do away with money?

 

i like your ideas, i think most anyone would, but you need to spend more time away from academic discussions and more time around the 'common man' to get a little grounding. if we ever get to your civilization, it will be through a very slow evolution.

The problems that we have in society today are not due to DNA or biological reasons, it's the environment that we grow up in. I can not see us getting anywhere progressively if we meddle in DNA and the biological make up of human beings - it's completely immoral and unnecessary. We need to understand that the monetary system has many conflicts on social behavior.

One example I'd like to comment on is the very root cause of crime itself. If a policeman catches and arrests a mass murderer and an interview is conducted with the policeman involved in the investigation, you will probably hear them say something that goes like this: "We caught him/her, god only knows what drove that man/woman to commit those atrocious crimes on humanity" - well, the criminal is now locked up, society is protected. Hold on a minute though, ask yourself do I see any care or thought go into the psyschological state of mind that criminal must have been going through? > Instead of throwing someone in prison and waiting for them to die in a cell, why don't we advance this situation and conduct research on this individual? Is it not important for us to understand how and why this person commited the crimes they have inflicted on society? Unfortunately, civilisation looks the other way and takes the easy route out of the situation by throwing this person into jail and not wanting to look into this any further which is a great shame.

If you were to eliminate the theoretical notion of money, I must emphasise that most crimes will fade out. If we bring about a resource based economy, and we create mass abundance using technology advanced to its fullest potential - petty crime will dissolve. Let's take robbery for example, if you can not sell the item stolen, then how is that beneficial to the thief in this situation? If availability is there for all basic needs of all human beings to be fulfilled, then what basis does the robbery have? People do not study the root causes of crime in our current society, instead, they call them an anomaly when really the anomaly is the money system that we perpetuate. People are a victim of their environment and conditioning.

theft for barter...

  mr maha said:

Let's take robbery for example, if you can not sell the item stolen, then how is that beneficial to the thief in this situation? If availability is there for all basic needs of all human beings to be fulfilled, then what basis does the robbery have?

They'll do it for the rush, the adap... never mind.

  mr maha said:

Let's take robbery for example, if you can not sell the item stolen, then how is that beneficial to the thief in this situation? If availability is there for all basic needs of all human beings to be fulfilled, then what basis does the robbery have?

tion and the general back....nevermind.

Throughout this thread, people seem to be very quick to criticise new ideas, which is good from my stand point as I take into account all information presented by others, however, it seems there are no solutions to the problems and criticisms that are being made. If you spot what you think is a problem, why not point out a solution?

@ scones to die for - A resource based economy allows for resources of the world be at the common heritage of man. Food, water, raw materials, musical instruments, radios, household appliances etc etc.. are all created in abundance through technological methods, free to everyone.. if this is so, what psychological rush would someone get out of

taking something that is in abundance, can not be sold and is free to everyone without barriers.

A resource based economy utilizes existing resources rather than commerce. All goods and services are available without the use of currency, credit, barter or any form of debt or servitude.

The aim of this new social design is to free humanity from repetitive, mundane and arbitrary occupational roles which hold no true relevance to social development while encouraging a new incentive system that is focused on:

- Self-fulfillment

- Education

- Social Awareness

- Creativity

as opposed to the shallow and self-centered goals of wealth, property and power which are dominant today.

The monetary system was created thousands of years ago during periods of great scarcity. Its initial purpose was as a method of distributing goods and services based on labour contributions. It is not at all related to our true capacity to produce goods and services on this planet.

  mr maha said:

@ scones to die for - A resource based economy allows for resources of the world be at the common heritage of man. Food, water, raw materials, musical instruments, radios, household appliances etc etc.. are all created in abundance through technological methods, free to everyone.. if this is so, what psychological rush would someone get out of

taking something that is in abundance, can not be sold and is free to everyone without barriers.

What if they simply do it for the adaptation? Or merely for the general backwardness of the act?

  mr maha said:

Throughout this thread, people seem to be very quick to criticise new ideas, which is good from my stand point as I take into account all information presented by others, however, it seems there are no solutions to the problems and criticisms that are being made. If you spot what you think is a problem, why not point out a solution?

 

@ scones to die for - A resource based economy allows for resources of the world be at the common heritage of man. Food, water, raw materials, musical instruments, radios, household appliances etc etc.. are all created in abundance through technological methods, free to everyone.. if this is so, what psychological rush would someone get out of

taking something that is in abundance, can not be sold and is free to everyone without barriers.

 

A resource based economy utilizes existing resources rather than commerce. All goods and services are available without the use of currency, credit, barter or any form of debt or servitude.

 

The aim of this new social design is to free humanity from repetitive, mundane and arbitrary occupational roles which hold no true relevance to social development while encouraging a new incentive system that is focused on:

 

- Self-fulfillment

- Education

- Social Awareness

- Creativity

 

as opposed to the shallow and self-centered goals of wealth, property and power which are dominant today.

 

The monetary system was created thousands of years ago during periods of great scarcity. Its initial purpose was as a method of distributing goods and services based on labour contributions. It is not at all related to our true capacity to produce goods and services on this planet.

Humans don't care about humankind - humans generally only care about 1 human, themselves. On occasion, they slightly give a shit about a few others as well, but that's usually just greed in another sense, in regards to their relationship (mutual greed for companionship?). We each have 1 life to live, and it's pretty damn short, so most people are trying to make that 1 short life the best they can, and that usually means looking out for number 1. And there is nothing wrong with that (until your means for taking care of #1 means stepping on everyone else (feel free to insert "#2" joke here)). Altruism is a crock of shit. I'll continue to be a greedy prick in your eyes as I strive for a better life for myself and those around me that I care about (the reward for a better life is my motivation, and motivation gets things done)... the rest of the planet can keep waiting for some altruistic soul to come along and give them a handout.

  EDGEY said:

Humans don't care about humankind - humans generally only care about 1 human, themselves. On occasion, they slightly give a shit about a few others as well, but that's usually just greed in another sense, in regards to their relationship (mutual greed for companionship?). We each have 1 life to live, and it's pretty damn short, so most people are trying to make that 1 short life the best they can, and that usually means looking out for number 1. And there is nothing wrong with that (until your means for taking care of #1 means stepping on everyone else (feel free to insert "#2" joke here)). Altruism is a crock of shit. I'll continue to be a greedy prick in your eyes as I strive for a better life for myself and those around me that I, on occasion, slightly give a shit about (the reward for a better life is my motivation, and motivation gets things done)... the rest of the planet can keep waiting for some altruistic soul to come along and give them a handout.

Fixt.