steve1 5
QuoteI believe we are too. It is depressing and sometimes I wish I didn't care so much. It is quite overwhelming at times. I believe our bodies are crying out (in the form of depression and psychological problems) to return to a more balanced relationship with nature. Or the "real world" as I call it. But instead people base their entire lives, and their families lives, on illusions such as money, time, religion, private property, death, materialism, etc. I think that we will be our own undoing. Remember of every species that has ever walked this planet, 6% went extinct do to a cataclysmic event of some kind. The other 94% died off because they were either A: Incapable of genetic adaptation or B: They were not in complete balance with an incredibly fragile planet. Look around. Anybody who thinks we are in balance with nature is insane. Literally insane. Well, we are all kind of insane as we are all in a "prison system". Our unbalance is so bad that we are affecting the balance of MILLIONS of other species. 200 species a day go extinct (real fact, look it up). That is 1000 times the natural rate. Anybody who wants to watch it, watch "What a way to go: Life at the end of empire. Pretty depressing but true. I do not think people will ever voluntarily give up the dangerous linear production/consumption cycle they have. They dont have too. In time the very finite, geobiochemical planet we live on will take care of the infestation. I hate to call my own species (including myself) but it's true. We need a change in consciousness. A paradigm shift. New programs wont fix it. Efficiency just increases production and consumption, evening out or worsening the situation. We can do our best to educate and promote awareness or just sit back and watch the world burn. Either way we're in for a wild ride.
>All that you said makes perfect sense to me. I wish I could put on some rose colored glasses and pretend that things aren't really this bad, but they are!
It's too bad that we are all so hung up on having more and more of everything (including kids).
I'm not saying I'm any better than anyone else. I'm a greedy bastard too. I just think that many people in America aren't as happy as they should be, and that many crave a simpler life, without all the gadgets, and material things that end up complicating your life.
Right now I have two big shops, packed full of crap that I probably don't even need. I own three houses and a fair amount of land. I should be really happy right. It seems like the more stuff I have the less time I have to do anything....It's crazy.
In the future I'm going to work hard to simplify my life. That involves getting rid of stuff I don't need, and living a simpler life.....closer to nature. Maybe that's not for everybody, but it makes sense to me...
pirana 0
Common sense is a misnomer. It implies a common understanding (as in everybody agrees) of what something is, or means, or does.
Personal sense would be a more accurate label; because what we refer to as common sense is really every individuals personal perception of the way the world is based on their life experiences.
For many simple things we do have general agreement about what is meant or what is going on - for example that the stars are humongous flaming balls of hydrogen. But some believe they are God's windows to the world. For someone that was raised with the later belief, the humongous flaming balls of hydrogen tidbit is definitely not common sense.
Racism is another touchy one where one person's common sense (or a whole group's common sense) is another person's pariah.
Bottom line is that common sense for every individual varies, as a result of, and is the distillation of, their lifetime accumulation of experience.
Experience leads to perceptions which create beliefs which generate behaviors which yield results that are our new experience . . . . .
We are all unique, just like everybody else.
Personal sense would be a more accurate label; because what we refer to as common sense is really every individuals personal perception of the way the world is based on their life experiences.
For many simple things we do have general agreement about what is meant or what is going on - for example that the stars are humongous flaming balls of hydrogen. But some believe they are God's windows to the world. For someone that was raised with the later belief, the humongous flaming balls of hydrogen tidbit is definitely not common sense.
Racism is another touchy one where one person's common sense (or a whole group's common sense) is another person's pariah.
Bottom line is that common sense for every individual varies, as a result of, and is the distillation of, their lifetime accumulation of experience.
Experience leads to perceptions which create beliefs which generate behaviors which yield results that are our new experience . . . . .
We are all unique, just like everybody else.
" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley
pirana 0
QuoteAccording to his argument, shouldn't we just let those people at the bottom just fall off the face of the Earth and not "help" them?
You can not fall off the bottom of the Earth any more than you can fall off the top, . . . I think.
" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley
A whole lot of misconceptions in this post but I didn't want to copy & paste the whole thing.
First of all, the vast majority of native americans had abandoned the nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle many centuries before Europeans showed up. They were living off of farmed land and had permanent buildings, barns, silos, forts, etc. In fact when the Pilgrims arrived they were able to set up their village in an area that had already been cleared of forest by the Indians. The Indians had cut down the forest in that area years earlier to make room for farmland, but had recently abandoned that village due to a devastating smallpox epidemic.
Secondly, among hunter-gatherer societies, everything is not as la-dee-da as you make it out to be. Some hunter-gatherer societies are pretty peaceful, others are pretty violent. Others are in between. It varies.
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