It would but how? How do you get rid of peoples desire to want stuff?
Brainwashed from birth that communism is the only answer? North Korea is a lovely place.
Take away a humanās instinctive desire to want things and you might as well stay in bed and drink yourself to death. Itās that desire that drives and ultimately damages. The reason we donāt still live in caves is because we wanted something better, something more.
The Apache and Sioux had a better way of living, maybe? But did they ever make any progress? You could argue they had a perfect society that was utterly in harmony with nature and caused no damage.
Their wifi was shit though and Iām NOT listening to long wave radio!
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Curbing our instinct to want stuff, STUFF, MORE STUFF is not North Korea. There is a perfectly pleasant pathway to living that respects the boundaries we have no choice but to live with.
There are two main problems with your statement, firstly wanting to raise living standards and provide a better quality of life does not equate to wanting more stuff. There is plenty of evidence that itās actually the opposite. Our carbon intensive lifestyle that currently on the verge of rendering the planet inhospitable for most life is also leaving us depressed, spiritually bereft, lonely and physically ill. It isnāt good for the planet, but itās profoundly bad for us too.
Second there is no negotiation point for us on this. We canāt sit the earth down and explain how we really, really need that new car. The Earth is a physical system that obeys the rules of chemistry, physics and biology, and we live on it. We canāt go anywhere else. We adapt to the reality of what we know, or we die.
Personally, while I have days where I think the Earth would be better off without us, on the whole I think Humanity is worth saving. The more we learn about the Universe the more we come to understand that intelligent life - life capable of considering itself and the universe - is exceptionally rare. We may be alone. Thatās worth preserving.
And humanity never lived in caves. Thatās a myth.
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Even if we are the only ones in the whole cosmos?
I feel these things work in cycles which is kind of worrying considering no ones ever been in touch, then again in my view I feel that might be more about not being the same as others in the cosmos.
The fluke about our design is very specific you couldnāt recreate it, one small change and we look completely different.
Anyhow off on a tangent, there are real commitments we can make as a world, but those actions are being if Iām honest erroded.
Thatās why the elections in the next 5 years are vital in every part of the world, starting with the US, if Trump wins thats it in my view.
Do any of you feel/see any indication/impact of climate change in your life???
The most dangerous thing about climate change is that it changes very subtly. I have realized that Dhaka has become a lot hotter and drier place in recent years. Summer was always hot in Bangladesh, but we are now regularly recording 42-45C in Dhaka. And thereās less rains even during monsoon.
If thatās the case then we are phenomenally precious and must be saved at all costs. Hello Elon.
If you remove the drive for stuff in the first place, humanity goes nowhere. Yes thereās a happy medium but thatās the case for all human emotions. What sets us apart from animals is our ability to control them. Sex, food, violence etc.
As for the caves, youāre either on the wind up or live in one.
Weather here in the UK certainly has changed and Iād go as far as saying that the speed of change is noticeably faster over the last few years
Itās now become more extreme but also warmer. We seldom get snow anymore. We get a load of pretty vicious storms coming through now as well and flooding is becoming more prevalent. Basically, our Summers are becoming dryer and Winters, warmer and wetter.
Yep. When I was a kid, we had four distinct seasons, each lasting approximately three months. Now we have one week of sunshine, one week of snow and fifty weeks of mind numbing greyness in between.
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This is the problem. We can look at noticeable changes in weather patterns and appreciate they are in line with the predictions, but it is too small a time scale to say that it is definitely due to the large issue of climate change.
But, friends of mine just recently moved back from Houston, a City that most people are surprised to find out is the 4th largest in the country in terms of population. They were there for 5 years and in that time experienced 4 different floods that were rated as being a once in 100 year flood. A lot of this is bas city planning (too much concrete in low lying areas so there is no where for the water to drain), but it is devastating and it is really difficult to see that pattern and write it off as short term fluke.
First of all, I consider communism in their Stalinist and Maoist versions as one of the most horrible and tragic failures one could consider. In no way, shape or form do I condone any form of hardline communism. I also donāt believe that it is the state who will take care of all our problems. Any exaggerated concentration of power will result in disaster.
However, I donāt share the current credo that itās about the individual only. An individual taken alone is nothing and will be blown away at the first difficulty. So, nowadayās hard-line individualism pisses me off to no end, because itās as much as an illusion as the one which wanted people to believe that father state could take us all to paradise on earth. The propaganda driving it home through advertisement these days is every bit as detestable as the state-driven propaganda in communist states.
Specialisation has allowed us to become more efficient collectively to produce the amounts of wealth we crave for, but it has rendered each one of us less complete, and much, much more fragile. In comparison, if you take the time to understand how they live, the guy who wrote that open letter and his people live a more complete and self-sufficient life than ours, one which is intimately intertwined with their natural surroundings. That is, until they are robbed of everything, thanks to brutes like Bolsonaro and his sponsors, the big multinational companies preying on natural ressources.
I for one believe in the strength of small-scale actions, taken by smaller groups of individuals, villages, neighbourhoods, families. Taken together, they will transform society much more efficiently. As Mascot says, the call is not to āgo back into our cavesā, but to develop a new balance. Having a good, more complete life (not having plenty of stuff, thatās something else) and developing a new-found respect and love for every manifestation of life on earth, and caring for it. Itās a call for everyone of us.
People still living a life intertwined with nature can help us a lot to understand it, and to develop our lives into something more valuable and sustainable in the long-term.
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The State system is the number one enemy of the environment and primary driver of climate damage; factories pay tax/wage/tax creates carbon deposits. And repeat; rinse impossible.
Letās face it: peopleās desire for stuff is essentially to make up for a basically shit life. If you live in a flat in a city somewhere, have to commute during three hours a day to go to your uninteresting workplace, where you sit in front of a computer and get progressively burnt-out or bored-out while doing a job you doubt it has any use, then you probably feel the need to at least surround yourself with some stuff to make it a bit less unbearable.
Imagine a Sioux looking at the life of a majority of people these daysā¦ heād scratch his head in disbelief, and declare that we arenāt real humans anymore. And I guess heād be right about that.
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Yep, I wouldnāt disagree. But Iām tied to this life by a mortgage, by choice obviously. Sometimes I think that is daft.
In many ways I am as guilty as the next person but I do believe that it could be better if there was proper focus from the government on this kind of stuff.
We all have our part of guiltiness, and at the same time, we are the products of this society, mate!
Governments have their role to play of course, but at the end of the day, itās us who will make them move and change. We have to find a better balance in our lives. If our life is less shit, weāll need less stuff to make up for it. Not easy, I knowā¦
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[quote=āKlopptimist, post:32, topic:267, full:trueā]
If you remove the drive for stuff in the first place, humanity goes nowhere. Yes thereās a happy medium but thatās the case for all human emotions. What sets us apart from animals is our ability to control them. Sex, food, violence etc.[/quote]
I donāt even know the point you are trying to make.
We live on a planet and that planet is the only place we can live. If we alter it we wonāt be able to live on it, and thatās the end for us.
The ācavemanā idea is a myth. Early Humans used caves for spiritual ceremonies as such, and may have used caves as refuges in times of crisis. Never lived in caves though.
Bangs head against a wall. So you think that nobody in the history of man has ever lived in a cave? Of course not all ācavemenā lived in them but, ah, I canāt be arsedā¦