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The principle of "those I disagree with need to be rendered powerless" I understand; we are all believers in that, including those currently holding the power LOL.
The exact hows/wheres of that 'rendering powerless' process is pretty much where it all hits the fan though. How to not become what we hate in order to do to them what they are trying to do to others is a bit of a dilemma.
And I worry that much like some political philosophies, it would have a built-in flaw: those who in turn became the controllers might by nature end up with the same perspective as those they replaced, because even the common man, given power, ceases to be "the common man" anymore.
Originally posted by Zepherian
reply to post by RedCairo
We could, with clarity of thought, of intention and some cooperation, solve the majority of our environmental problems quite quickly.
There's a number of things we do wrong, no doubt, but it's not because there is too many of us.
It seems there is a lot of us, because elitist memetic systems have herded us into towns and cities.
it's done that way so as to make an elitist landgrab possible.
This is where the overpopulation meme comes from, so your example using overpopulation as an issue is something I can't go along with. If this current economic crisis results in a few hundred million going back to their ancestral farmlands people will realise that the land still feeds everyone. It might not sprought BMW's, but it still feeds everyone.
‘Snakes in Suits’ unmasks corporate psychos
Why do rising stars turn into employees from hell? In their book, Paul Babiak and Robert Hare explain office psychopaths.
TODAY
updated 2:40 p.m. ET, Tues., June. 6, 2006
In popular culture, the image of the psychopath is of someone like Hannibal Lecter or the BTK Killer. But in reality, many psychopaths just want money, power, fame, or simply a nice car. Where do these psychopaths go? Often, it's to the corporate world. In their new book, “Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work,” Paul Babiak, an industrial-organizational psychologist, and Robert Hare, a psychopathy expert, study office psychopaths. The modern, open, more flexible corporate world, in which high risks can equal high profits, attracts them. They may seem like superstars and corporate saviors, but they can alienate other employees and leave companies in shambles. Babiak and Hare were invited on “Today” to discuss their book.
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/cbe0a144456f.jpg[/atsimg]
Source : MSNBC
The reason that electric vehicles and batteries (themselves toxic and more) are being pushed as the answer is the same reason a GM designer once privately laughed to me that they could make 100mpg cars many decades ago but "there are other reasons we never will so why go there". Entrenched technology; show me the money, who makes that stuff, who has any gov't funding/contracts (even indirectly) and I'll show you why most gov't sponsored technologies are "more of the same". Wait, I'm off topic. Back to the point.
I think mostly it means we'd find a common enemy. Human nature is pretty predictable that way. We aren't allowed to hate people for race, gender, sexuality, religion or nationality anymore. Hey, maybe we should hate them for being fat. That prejudice is pretty openly supported I think. Bit of a bummer for the native americans, bit of a blessing for the asians (genetically I mean). It's always something!
The way I see it all emotions are part of a fractal structure that branches up from the basic duality of fear and love. Our society is dominated by fear based emotional profiles, despite there being little objective statistical reason for it to be, excluding the all embracing fear of death (and perhaps even this fear is not warranted, but that is another metaphysical thread). Fear based memetic emotional structures manifest what we commonely call evil. Love based memetics manifest love. At it's core it's as simple as that.
Since our psychopaths are either devoid of emotions or sociopathically fear based, and since fear is a state of absence of love, they also manifest evil, with the added seriousness of being an evil based on the control of others through fear based psychology, which is the same as fear based emotional manipulation.
Hence the war on terror, the exageration of the pedophilia phenomenon on the news, the nanny state, the economical crisis and all the other negative language we are bombarded with by the mass media, with only the odd panda birth of backflipping dog to give us a chance to breath. Memetics are ideas and ideas all have an emotional charge, positive or negative (or a mix of both).
The solution is of course love based memetics
Progress is not always linear. I don't really expect this to happen in my lifetime, if at all. Humanity seems hellbent on denying nature, on trapping itself in it's own technology. Perhaps when we've cut ourselves enough on the sharp edges of our own tech we will start to see more clearly that technology should compliment nature, not superseed it...
Love is the physics of life, fear is denial.
Originally posted by Zepherian
reply to post by DangerDeath
While there are a few minor differences here and there overall I think we agree on the basics. Emotions are energy states, and as energy have atraction. At the very basic level there is bipolarity, love and fear, positive and negative, and people are either sucked into the latter or uplifted by the former.
I hope you're right about humanity finding love in my lifetime, one can but hope.
So what we have now, and I think you would agree it feels like it, is an entropic society, where everything feels like it's falling apart.