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Things are getting serious. Options
 
Jees
#121 Posted : 3/31/2020 5:30:51 PM
BundleflowerPower wrote:
...Perhaps it would take awareness of people, of the biosphere of the planet for example, to change what they purchase...
The customer has huge impact, powers-that-be rely on manipulating the gusto of the customer, advertising, seducing etc.

I hope we outgrow our self endangering but I'm afraid it will always be a balancing exercise.
Not failing is not supported by nature at large. Both natural and artificial intelligence comprises a ton of fails along the way, there is no existing without. On that bases and on the risk of being called a whitewasher I tend to put into perspective the humans-are-guilty tendency.
 
benzyme
Moderator | Skills: Analytical equipment, Chemical master expertExtreme Chemical expert | Skills: Analytical equipment, Chemical master expertChemical expert | Skills: Analytical equipment, Chemical master expertSenior Member | Skills: Analytical equipment, Chemical master expert
#122 Posted : 3/31/2020 5:47:34 PM
gotta get out of the convenience lifestyle, which was advertised since the 1950's, post-WWII.
Get back to a more DIY ethic, featuring self-sustainability. Conveniences brought about wastefulness and apathy. I had been brooding over this for the past couple years, and have seriously curbed my wasteful spending. I don't frequent large franchises, and I support local small businesses. My reasoning is oligopolies rely on other oligopolies for distribution. I'd rather deny them the money, and give money to the people who actually care about people, and sustainable business.

To me, a mixed-economy system is ideal...when gov't does their part in protecting consumers (and the environment) from corporate corruption. But as you can already see, politicians are bought out, and the gov't is corrupted too.
"Nothing is true, everything is permitted." ~ hassan i sabbah
"Experiments are the only means of attaining knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." -Max Planck
 
BundleflowerPower
#123 Posted : 3/31/2020 6:10:44 PM
Jees wrote:
BundleflowerPower wrote:
...Perhaps it would take awareness of people, of the biosphere of the planet for example, to change what they purchase...
The customer has huge impact, powers-that-be rely on manipulating the gusto of the customer, advertising, seducing etc.

I hope we outgrow our self endangering but I'm afraid it will always be a balancing exercise.
Not failing is not supported by nature at large. Both natural and artificial intelligence comprises a ton of fails along the way, there is no existing without. On that bases and on the risk of being called a whitewasher I tend to put into perspective the humans-are-guilty tendency.


Exactly about advertising. I’ve had quite a time over the last couple of years healing the programming from the advertisement industry. Like deodorant and perfumes and cologne for example. These days it’s the general assumption it seems that a person must wear deodorant, or that they need some fragrance to attract a mate. So much so that many humans no longer attract each other naturally. I was thinking not long ago that perhaps that’s one reason why there’s so many divorces and so many children grow up with single parent homes. People attract mates with smells which cover there naturalness, while natural human odors apparently contain pheromones which signal compatibility.. There’s all sorts of examples like that in modern life.
 
dragonrider
Moderator
#124 Posted : 3/31/2020 7:29:33 PM
benzyme wrote:
gotta get out of the convenience lifestyle, which was advertised since the 1950's, post-WWII.
Get back to a more DIY ethic, featuring self-sustainability. Conveniences brought about wastefulness and apathy. I had been brooding over this for the past couple years, and have seriously curbed my wasteful spending. I don't frequent large franchises, and I support local small businesses. My reasoning is oligopolies rely on other oligopolies for distribution. I'd rather deny them the money, and give money to the people who actually care about people, and sustainable business.

To me, a mixed-economy system is ideal...when gov't does their part in protecting consumers (and the environment) from corporate corruption. But as you can already see, politicians are bought out, and the gov't is corrupted too.

And the irony is that comfort is killing us.

In modern industrialised societies, the life expectancy is way above that of more primitive or poorer societies. But i personally believe that the great benefit of comforts provided by modern societies is only, that it helps the body and mind to recuperate from rough experiences, from exertion.

But we still need those rough experiences and exertion. If we replace exertion with comfort, it no longer contributes to our good health. And then comfort only kills.
 
Praxis.
Senior Member
#125 Posted : 3/31/2020 10:57:13 PM
Some recent news I thought was relevant to the discussion:

Amazon Workers Strike Over Virus Protection

It's likely nothing will come of this but it'll be interesting to see if it gains any momentum at all, and may be worth considering as we decide where to spend our money in the coming weeks/months. Amazon is one of the largest employers in the United States and the most highly valued company on earth, despite not paying any corporate income tax for the last 2 years. Although to be fair they did pay a whopping 1.2% of the $14 billion they made in 2019... Rolling eyes

While we should absolutely encourage eachother to flex our buying power as much as possible, I'm also of the opinion that the scope of the problems some of you bring up require much larger systemic responses from around the world... something I don't see happening anytime soon. If it were as simple as buying green/locally we would've saved the world back in 2008 when farmers markets became trendy and everyone started changing their lightbulbs (that's a joke lol). The fact is that a very small percentage of people and corporate interests are directly responsible for the existential threats facing our time (runaway climate change and rampant ecological devastation, growing wealth inequality, expanding militarism, etc...), and it's in their best interests to continue business-as-usual. There's only so much we can do as consumers to demand change at whatever pace the market is able to provide it without falling in on itself.

I think the economic disruptions we're beginning to see unfold as a result of the pandemic are the closest we'll ever get to the domino effect we need for critical mass to take place. Just from what I'm seeing locally, people who have otherwise been entirely non-political are having real conversations with their neighbors about what it means to survive collectively without relying on the larger economic system. People who've never cared about where their food comes from are scrambling to learn how to grow produce sustainably and for a lot of people. The community garden in my neighborhood has always had empty plots leftover that go unused every year, and yet last I heard they're quickly running out of space as more and more people keep signing up. And while it almost certainly won't happen, ordinary people are talking about indefinitely canceling rent for everyone in the city. I think that's a huge deal.

I honestly don't believe we're going to see the sort of immediate global coordination needed to "win" a more egalitarian society; unfortunately I don't think humans get to have a Disney ending to our story. But as crises like this become more commonplace we will be forced to adapt at the local level, and humans happen to be great at adapting. My hope is that we'll develop more resilient and sustainable communities that may lack many of the creature comforts we enjoy now, but at least keep afloat amidst the fallout of late stage capitalism, or globalization, or rapture, or whatever words your preferred ideology uses to describe the moment we find ourselves stuck in. Big grin
"Consciousness grows in spirals." --George L. Jackson

If you can just get your mind together, then come across to me. We'll hold hands and then we'll watch the sunrise from the bottom of the sea...
But first, are you experienced?
 
Jagube
#126 Posted : 4/1/2020 9:54:57 AM
TB vaccine in childhood may offer Covid-19 protection

Quote:
The new study found Covid-19 cases and deaths are higher in countries that do not have or have discontinued universal BCG vaccination of children, such as the US, Italy, Spain and France, compared to countries with universal and long-standing immunisation policies, such as India and China.


https://www.bloomberg.co...apon-against-coronavirus :

Quote:
The bacillus Calmette-Guerin, or BCG, shot has been used widely for about 100 years, with a growing appreciation for its off-target benefits. Not only is it a common immunotherapy for early-stage bladder cancer, it also seems to train the body’s first line of immune defense to better fight infections.

With an immunization specifically targeted against the pandemic-causing Covid-19 disease at least a year away, the World Health Organization says it’s important to know whether the BCG vaccine can reduce disease in those infected with the coronavirus, and is encouraging international groups to collaborate with a study led by Nigel Curtis, head of infectious diseases research, at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne.

“It can boost the immune system so that it defends better against a whole range of different infections, a whole range of different viruses and bacteria in a lot more generalized way,” [..]

Studies in infants in Africa have shown that the BCG vaccine offers protection against TB and other pediatric infections, probably by enhancing the body’s innate immune system -- specifically white blood cells that target non-specific pathogens before an antibody response has kicked in usually days later.


From Forbes:
Quote:
A separate large-scale study is planned to include older patients and health care workers at several hospitals in Germany and similar trials are in the works in the Netherlands, the UK and Greece.


The original study: https://www.medrxiv.org/...01/2020.03.24.20042937v1

I'm lucky that the country I was born in did / does have a universal TB vaccination program, and everyone receives BCG not just once, but several times at various stages from infancy to early adulthood.

But the country where I currently live doesn't do that.
 
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