World Crissis??

[SoCal LS-L]

Originally Posted by MadMaxSvx

You forgot the ALIEN INVASION!

Aliens land on Earth, coming in peace. While Aliens deliver unity speech, Kanye snatches the mic from the alien viceroy, causing an inter-galactic incident. Aliens pummel Earth with blaster-rays, take the body of Michael Jackson back to home world for burial?

[MadMaxSvx]

Originally Posted by SoCal LS-L

Aliens land on Earth, coming in peace. While Aliens deliver unity speech, Kanye snatches the mic from the alien viceroy, causing an inter-galactic incident. Aliens pummel Earth with blaster-rays, take the body of Michael Jackson back to home world for burial?

Lol... The blaster rays arent too bad, Michael Jackson coming back is the apocalypse...

[MadMaxSvx]

By the way, this page deeply explains the Limits of Growth, updated 30 years after its release.

http://www.mnforsustain.org/meadows_...pdate_2004.htm

[svxfiles]

Originally Posted by MadMaxSvx

You forgot the ALIEN INVASION!

You forgot big @ss asteroid/meteor!

[MadMaxSvx]

Originally Posted by svxfiles

You forgot big @ss asteroid/meteor!

Lol.. We are screwed...

[shelfy]

bohica 123

[Sov13t]

What does this red button do?

Teh end.

Post count +1 BOHICA

[shelfy]

Originally Posted by Sov13t

What does this red button do?

Teh end.

Post count +1 BOHICA

i'm reminded of the cute Genesis video for Land of Confusion. TH

[MadMaxSvx]

What does this red button do?

Teh end.

Originally Posted by shelfy

i'm reminded of the cute Genesis video for Land of Confusion. TH

This reminds me of the Dexter´s sister, Dee Dee, always pushing the red buttons..

[NikFu S.]

There is supposed to be a couple revolutionary breakthroughs in fusion power coming soon, along with the advance of "free" energy which can run desalinization plants. Inner-city vertical skyscraper farms, awesome energy-efficient architectures and vehicles are just coming into the world... unless all of this fails I just don't see any crisis coming about that does not already exist. What all this really rests on is whoever is willing to spend (or not spend) the money required to make it happen.

Concerning world-wide change and potential catastrophe, the only thing that really makes me worry is rising sea level, and from what I can see the experts are not fully agreeing on whether we can expect a 20 foot rise, or a 20 inch rise. I've seen some prototypes for floating neighborhoods but actually being able to live like that seems far-fetched to me. Hundreds of millions if not billions of people would be displaced in an event like this, with less land to go around. That to me seems worse than a country exploding (whether by weapons or geologic or extra-terrestrial (not aliens, asteroids) activity) or going hungry.

[Sov13t]

Hmm... okay.... some interesting points so far... want to throw this one into the mix:

Due to all these advances some of you have mentioned... we are seeing the so called "Social Contract" dissolve... Which pretty much leads to chaos in any modern society. Technology replacing labor... people losing jobs... and the inability to restructure... might (according to some economists) lead to some uncertain times.

It is an interesting area of study, my friend has written a couple of papers on this and I had the chance to read over them... this can affect a whole lot of things... and some say this can be more devastating than anything else... at least to the Western/European world (sorry third world, you guys are used to living without one).

Some food for thought...

[SilverSpear]

It would be nice if you can shed some light on the keypoints of this study Sov13t so that we can discuss. I would love to read about it...

[BoxerFanatic]

The only perrenial world crisis is human nature, as it pertains to controlling other people. Tyranny, which by definition takes up residence in governments, where it can acheive effectiveness.

Tyrannical government that quashes it's own people's ability to adapt, and subjugates it's own people out of their ability to provide for themselves, and adapt to change. The concept of constant change is the only unchanging constant, which is one of the ironies, and genius strokes of the universe.

Climate always changes. And according to the same science that claims a consensus on human induced climate change, also claims that this planet has endured FAR greater changes without human involvement.

I trust computer models exactly not at all, and I work with computers for my job. Statistical models, no matter how sophisticated that humans think up, are not as self-supporting as the natural systems. Science doesn't know everything, otherwise discoveries would have stopped at some point.

So the modelling is woefully under-sophisticated, regardless of the computer that runs the numbers. The equations, assumptions, and data points are inadequate. They cannot predict the future any more than Miss Cleo could.

Most computer models of past data cannot extrapolate actual measured results from the present or past, just as a check, with much accuracy.

Discoveries are still made, sometimes that change our understanding of what we thought we knew. Gestalt shifts will continue to happen.

The only thing that can stand in the way of advancement is human arrogance for control. We cannot control most things, but what people can control is the subjugation of other people. Tyranny and the rule of men over other men is a historical trend, to which the United States Constitution and Declaration of Independence are prominent exceptions. Yet even here, the encroachment of government over people's freedom is impeding the people's ability to go about their business.

Part of that business is adaptation to circumstance. Necessity is still the mother of invention. Invention without necessity usually generates uselessness, or puts foodstuffs in fuel tanks, instead of in the mouths of people who need to eat. And fuel is consumed hundreds of times faster than food, per pound or bushel, or whatever unit of agricultural input. It is not necessary, and ends up being detrimental, as most unnecessary meddlesome policies do.

The arrogance of people who say that they know better how to control people than a free people can control themselves, will lead to tyranny. It is. It always has, and it will continue to. And all it will do is prevent people from achieving their potential, and using that potential to adapt.

That is why political and economic freedom go hand in hand, why they cannot be separated, and why they are so inherently important. The morality of politics and economics rests with the responsibility and morality of the people acting in those roles, as a reflection of the morality of the culture they come from, and the societal expectation for moral standards and personal responsibility.

Those come from the nuclear family as a cellular unit, as a part of an integrated community, and a larger integrated culture and society. From the ground up, not from the top down. Some, including myself, would also assert that those qualities that keep families and communities together are personal values for every person, and those personal values come from a belief in something greater than one's self, and an objective moral order, not just a random relativistic set of emotion-driven decisions that each person makes. Some, like myself, would argue that values and moral order, and the establishment of the inherent order of the universe that science makes it's study of, is not random, that such complexity cannot come about randomly, and is in fact created, inherently necessitating the existence of a Creator, the one who establishes order, and creates value in everything everywhere. That tends to be a textbook definition of the role of God, despite the human arguments over the timelines and circumstances of that creation process.

Those moral and ethical standards and expectations of personal responsibility do decay without vigilance, just as entropy as decay into chaos is the foil of order, and balances it out, just as good balances evil, and they define each other.

They are decaying, just as the nuclear family dies, and the communities are segmented and falling apart. Our leaders are subject to that decay, as are the voters that vote for them. The quality of the leadership decays, the responsibility of the populace decays, the leadership seizes power, and the citizenry asks them to provide for everyone, to nullify the expectation of responsibility. Tyranny and the destruction of freedom and liberty ensues.

Leaders that want to keep their powerful status quo at any cost become corrupt, and a populace that just wants to be taken care of by the government embrace the simplicity of being told what to do, without responsibility, but also without creativity, and both are in absolutely no position to be proactive about adapting, and they stagnate.

Socio-political entropy working against humanity adapting to it's circumstances.

THAT will be the world crisis, if there is one. Entropy and Evil are to be fought against. Goodness, Righteousness, Civilization, and Order are to be a constant goal, and the best way to fight is to know truth, and actively seek it in everything. Not to deny what you don't like or want. Not to attack other viewpoints, but to reconcile any or all viewpoints to what we know of the truth, and constantly testing what we know to be true, but accepting what does support truth even when it means changing our outlook on what we though we knew.

Most controversy, most conflict in our society, culture, political, social, and economic arenas tend to be from people set against each other, where some are unwilling to reconcile with the truth, if it means they might have to change their position, and might have to admit they were wrong. Others have to reconcile what they've gotten right with being humane and responsibly gracious to those who may have been wrong.

[Francis]

Originally Posted by svxfiles

You can drink water now!

hahahah, i used to drink beer , i ll try water by now

[K_Dub]

I should learn to stay out of these threads as I usually come off as as opinionated jerk, but here goes:

I think the crisis has already happened. When we look at the course of human history we see a cycle of highs and lows that were for the most part sustainable and reversable. There have been major fluctuations in this path, such as the "Dark Ages" and "Renaissance" in Europe but for the most part we've been doing the same thing since we started walking upright, or whoever it was created everything decided this planet needed humans. And then BAM! French revolution cut the heads off of "God's earthly manifestation" (Albert Camus, The Rebel), thus placing human kind at the top of the pyramid for the first time. This shift in thinking not only affected governance, but also the entire world view. The world (previously thought of as God's, and we were merely renting) became a tool for the newly mutated concept of progress for the all powerful mankind. The industrial revolution followed shortly after, and here we sit in our collective pickle.

The question becomes this: Would a reversal of 250 years of "progress" really be a crisis, or should we just realize that our current path has a dead end coming up fast and we need to reverse? Is the cure to our current crisis more "progress"?

I love my SVX, but could I still maintain a fulfilling life without it? What about my computer? Light bulbs?

Looking back at my life the most gratifying days I've had were camping, hunting with my father, working construction as a teenager. Now I've got the dream job I've wanted since I was a child, and I push buttons for exactly eight hours per day in exchange for paper which I can trade for shrink wrapped food created by folks working eight hours each day in exchange for similar paper. Now compare that idealized reality with one in which if you don't find food in eight hours, you keep looking until you do.

I'm proud of my accomplishments in life, and will continue to play the hand I've been dealt by being born in America at the end of the 20th century, but I'd trade it all for that alternate reality where I travel with the herd, and live off the land as suggested by Gary Snyder in the book Turtle Island. Sure I'd never have seen the ocean, or known the thrill of traveling over land at speeds over 100mph, but I imagine I'd find a way to smile either way.

Crisis? Bring it on and may those who can dress game, and build shelter pass those skills onto the children who survive.

-Written not from a shack in Montana, but from an edit bay in Santa Monica.