After seeing your responses, I realize just how much we agree! My main disagreements are few.

First, jamie, I agree with everything. I said, we shouldn't seek to travel into the stars without first learning to live sustainably, and in harmony with the Earth. We won't get there any other way. Also, I agree, we have traded one set of knowledge for another. We traded the practical knowledge of what we can eat, how to make things, how to build dwellings, etc for another set of knowledge. To me, that shift is a necessary progression in our expansion of consciousness. We have changed from using our brains solely for the sake of survival, to expanding to why. Why anything? Why is the biggest question, and it is important.

I also agree about our political system. There's no way I can see what we have now being a good system for a space faring people. I honestly wonder if humanity is capable of governing itself in a way conducive to this goal.

Doodazzle,

I see your point, about how I came off sounding inconvenienced. It's not the inconvenience that gets me, it's the work itself. I am drawn to the idea that we can create machines that would automate our lives. We would no longer need to work. I feel like our system is dependent on the idea that everyone must have a job, and work, and "make a living". Why? Why can't we make our own Eden? I think technology may be an answer. At the moment, yes you are correct, you cannot have factories build sustainably. There are fumes, and chemicals, and so on. But there are new technologies which may hold the key. One such example is 3D printing. Why do we need factories to build things when you can just run a program on a printer? When you're done with what ever it is, a machine could mechanically separate and pulverize the plastics and metals down to beads, which could then be used to 3D print again. This is by no means the savior, but merely one example.

I am drawn to a society where people are truly free. They are free from needing to work, make a living. Yes, many will become fat, lazy, and worthless. There are plenty of others who just by their very natures would be drawn to higher causes. They'd be drawn to science, civics, art. The motivations for such things, which I find interesting, are not out of necessity of making a living, or otherwise. My motivations are of pure curiosity. I think a society where people could be free to be lazy, or pursue their own interests, would be the freest system humans could have. Yes, this is incredibly idealistic, but I feel it is something worth pursuing.

So, my point I guess is that, technology may be the key. I know, many will disagree, I concede that there is no sure way to know this, but technology has brought us many great things. It has brought us many terrible things.

I did not mean to imply that you and Handel don't have work ethic. What I meant is what I said, which is that you two don't seem to be willing to work toward that goal because you have other goals. I think we should distinguish between that and a particular goal being impossible.

I think that any goal is possible if enough time and effort are applied. So when you say that such and such will never happen, I have to translate that to myself. I assume that what you mean is that you can't conceive of the time and effort required to accomplish that particular goal. I understand that you're not willing to put forth the effort needed to accomplish that goal because that goal does not appeal to you. I'm not implying that you and Handel are not a hard workers. If anything, I'm implying that you lack imagination.

This post is filled with amazing ideas

I think a lot of the problem is we don't have a shared vision, if there was ever a vision of human destiny I could get behind it is this. A lot of people don't know what why they're working or the consequences of their actions, so education toward sensibility and sustainable living would likely yield a future such as this one. I actually believe this is where we are headed, the evolution of life on earth is going through a shamanic initiation currently, a trial of illness and ignorance that we are slowly healing as we become aware of our interconnectedness.

> If anything, I'm implying that you lack imagination.

Or, that we have too much of it, and we can see better than you do the dangers of the things you dream about.

Man, anyone who has seen terminator....or the matrix....or the borg episodes of trek can easily see those dangers. Better yet, look out your window and extrapolate--a techno-utopia is utterly rediculous.

Whenever I suggest tribal living I get accused of being utopian which = idealistic and niave.

techno-utopia somehow does not get called niave nor idealistic?

Hixi--my bad. I understand now that you were not calling me lazy.

MrPeabody....do you really think the native americans had to work harder than modern americans do? really? become self-employed, you attitude towards work just may change drastically. Mine did. last year i only worked 3 months--and was phat paid. yeah, I'm rather good at what i do. Also, my work was performed way more sustainably than the average in my industry. not perfect though. this year I've worked a lot more than last, for less pay....and I am happier this year by far. My beliefs and my actions are congruent with each other (more congruent with each other now than they were the day I started this thread actually) and that feels pretty fantabulous.





Imagine all the people, living for today-ay-ay

That is certainly possible.


In my extrapolations, as in those movies, the world is at least a utopia for the machines that have taken over. My goal is to pave the way for that transition, which I think is still hundreds (if not thousands) of years down the road.

Let's say I do drop out and live in a thatched hut somewhere in the forest with a garden, water source, etc. What if, one day, I decide I want to add a room to my thatched hut for storage. I have to collect more resources in order to do this. Let's say I want to build another room in which to build a bread oven or loom or whatever. Am I being overly ambitious? I would need to collect resources that would otherwise be used by wild animals and plants, and thus I am putting my ambitions before the wild things in taking those resources. I don't see where that justification becomes immoral between building the extra room and, later down the line, building advanced computers.

There was a time when all humans were tribal. If that lifestyle is so satisfying, then why is it that modern technology happened in the first place? It happened because people are ambitious. They want to build, create, and inovate, and that tendency will not go away just because we all go tribal. If we did go tribal, I think we would slowly improve our primitive methods and tools until, thousands of years from now, we have developed advanced technologies all over again.

Regarding the plants and animals, they are consuming as many resources as possible. If a bear could take my resources, it would not hesitate. It would take my life if it felt like it. In the wild, survival of the fittest is the only law. We are on top (and perhaps choking mother nature) because we were once ruthless and selfish as all animals are. It is in our nature to utilize whatever natural resources we can. If doing so is to our detriment later down the line, then the human population will be cut down by the resource deficiencies that we created for ourselves, but that sort of population dynamic is common among all predatory animals. The predator-prey cycle (or in our case the consumer-resource cycle) is natural, as is extinction, evolution, and all of the other "consequences" of human technological expansion.

This is simply not true. Plants and animals take what they need to survive and stop when their desires are fulfilled. Human greed is seemingly infinite and fueled by minds and egos. Animals also play the survival of the fittest game more fairly than man.

Man will destroy an animals' ENTIRE eco-system for the idea of profit. Man will attempt to exterminate animals that bother him. [wolves are a good example] Animals only kill for food or in defense of territory.

Ishmael by Daniel Quinn and most of his other books are about these ideas [good read(one of the leading factors in changing me from a transhumanist)]



This is a scarey attitude toward the future! Not saying it's a bad one though, all things give way to something else...

I'd hope our creations would take mercy on us and help solve all our problems before they go on to do whatever mechanical intelligence does, having some kind of affection for their "parents".

When you're aiding our machine overlords I'll be sure to be leading the last vestiges of humanity in resistance.

I don't expect the future of technology to be so grim. I think that a symbiosis will exist between humans and AI. By expressing my acceptance of even the grim possibilities, I am trying to convey my dedication to the belief that AI will far surpass that of humans.

Doodazzzle is your anti technology/electricity manifesto a personal adventure or do you wish it for the entire world"s population? If it"s the latter, unless you are willing to compromise, you can count me out. Windmills and HEP? Or is the carbon footprint of copper mining too much for you to bare?
Either way i admire your cojones for giving an anti technolgy rant while using a computer on an internet forum. I personally wouldn"t have the nerve!

Please stop romanticising "nature". It only detracs from your argument.

Here's why, in a few quick examples:

Foxes are notorious for killing and taking away only the heads, leaving the corpses to rot.

Elephants have been known to murder rhinoceroses, apparently for no better reason that "to test their strength".

"Ants are the only species besides humans that carry out wars and enslave their own. And by enslave we mean pulling out the ant whips and putting the other guy to work against his will.

When they're not doing that, they like to tear each other limb from limb.
Less violent ants prefer to fight their battles via choreographed display fights where specially chosen ants have something like a dance-off to decide which side wins.

The victors raid the other nest, capture any survivors and steal all the eggs. Survivors and newborn ants are then forced to work for the victors' nest as long as they live; or at least until their new masters get a craving for some fresh slave ant, and devour them."

"If there is one thing lions love to do, it's moms. Unfortunately, female lions don't like to put out when they're raising a kid. So, when the lions want some but the kids are in the way, they walk up to the little brats and maul them to death. Then, to add insult to injury, they bone the mother ten ways till Sunday."

"...What happens is female cuckoos lay their eggs in some other birds' nest, where the little baby cuckoo, already born in full-asshole-mode, will try to get rid of the nest owners' real chicks and eggs by kicking them out of the nest, sending them plunging to their doom. That way, the nest owner will feed the intruding little psychopath instead of actually raising their own young."

"Besides also being among the smartest things on Earth, dolphins share another characteristic with humans: they're the only other animal that will kill for fun.

Back in the late nineties, marine biologists began to find lots of porpoise carcasses that had seemingly been punched in the gut until they died. After rounding up the suspects, putting them in the line up, the porpoise widow pointed at the guilty party: asshole bottle-nose dolphins.

Porpoises don't attack dolphins. They don't even eat the same food, so they can't be fighting because they hog all the good fish. And the fight is not for territory, since porpoises are't just chased away but actually stalked and then killed.

There are only two explanations left: either "Because dolphins think killing is freaking hilarious" or because "Dolphins kill porpoises as training for when they have to kill baby dolphins."

It turns out porpoises aren't the only animals turning up floating in the sea after meeting dolphins; the other ones being baby dolphins themselves. Some marine biologists believe adult dolphins kill babies for the same reasons lions do, to bang dolphin moms, except that there are reports of female dolphins also killing dolphin babies, which either destroys the theory or makes it much, much sexier.

To make matters sound even worse, dolphins use their sonar to pinpoint their victims' vital organs so that they can cause the most damage when they hit them."

"Being almost people, it's no surprise chimps regularly kill other chimps for territory and natural resources, with entire chimp tribes going at it. But to make it onto this list, they had to do something that goes beyond regular animal savagery and right into horror movie stuff. The horror movie in question is of course Italian classic, Cannibal Holocaust.

"Chimps, you see, have a tendency to suddenly grab a baby chimp from its mother's arms and chow down, sharing the meal with the entire group. Well, except for the mom, who presumably prefers to stay in a corner screaming: "Holy shit! Holy shit!"

It's even freakier when you find out that chimps normally are not all that much into eating meat."

"A pack of dogs has killed about 100 animals in the past three months in northeastern Washington state while eluding law enforcement and volunteers. ... Authorities are warning residents to take whatever steps are necessary to protect their families and animals because the dogs appear to be killing for fun rather than food. No humans have been attacked, but officers fear that could happen."

JBArk

@JBArk

Don't you think that humans just go a bit further than the examples you have stated? Humans do everything on a much larger scale eg. mass production of animals. The way we waste on such a huge scale is something to worry about. In the natural cycles you talk about nothing actually gets wasted. The corpses which are left over are used by other organisms and fully recycled. Humans have not yet arrived at this point.

Plus I think that humans have the possibility to choose otherwise unlike any other animal which gives us more responsibility towards our actions.

If we truly want to go ahead into space like Jamie stated (what I find a truly beautiful idea) I think we have a long way to go. First of all we have to get rid of the monster called economy on which nowadays everything is based on together with it's good friend greed.

On this topic I suggest the documentary "I AM Tom Shadyac".

Perhaps, but i was reacting to a statement by No KNowing that affirmed unequivocally that "Plants and animals take what they need to survive and stop when their desires are fulfilled" and "Animals only kill for food or in defense of territory." Both statements are false. Had he worded it as you have, I would not have called him on it.

"In the natural cycles you talk about nothing actually gets wasted. The corpses which are left over are used by other organisms and fully recycled. Humans have not yet arrived at this point."

And what waste specifically that humans make are not used by organisms and fully recycled? Maybe uranium, but the rest, more or less, is recycled over time. It's just that what we produce and the amount of it creates an unsustainably long recycle "cycle" - generations and generations, if not thousands of years. No argument there.

Cheers,

JBArk

PS - that list was a 3 min search on google. There were many other examples, but I think I already listed too many to underline my point.

touche JBark....I had not heard of many of those examples. Sorry for my airy-fairy new age statement.

But, I think we can all agree that humans take this to a NEW level that is dangerous for entire eco-systems and the planet as a whole. This level is not really achievable by any other animal.

I agree that the earth would probably recover over time, as long as single-celled life remained, evolution would build back up to complex or even intelligent life.

Though, surely, millions of years of Nuclear winter or planetwide toxemia, with the only life being within rock or near vents at the bottom of the ocean would be boring.

No airy-fairiness or new ageism there.

Just fact checking for you. Nature encompasses us, and is far more brutal and senseless and barbaric than many like to admit - though I am quick to admit rarely on the scale of humanity. Except perhaps in the case of viruses. Or bacteria. Or insects. Or small rodents...

Unless you believe in a grand plan.

ENTER RELIGION.



JBArk

[quote=jbark][quote=Elpo]@JBArk



And what waste specifically that humans make are not used by organisms and fully recycled? Maybe uranium, but the rest, more or less, is recycled over time. It's just that what we produce and the amount of it creates an unsustainably long recycle "cycle" - generations and generations, if not thousands of years. No argument there.


actually some organism eat radiation, maybe not uranium directly but still feed on radiation

radioation feeders

My benefit of the doubt stands corrected. I did not know that. So one day there will be NO trace of us here. Just a bad dream, all of it.

JBArk

@JBark and the rest of you all. This conversation has really freed up some thinking of mine.

One thing I have been mulling over lately: Is thinking humanity will live infinitely into the future just as naive as thinking that our own personal ego will live forever?

As individuals we have to die, so why wouldn't the human race, culture, society die at some point?

Or maybe we are destined to evolve into infinite hyperspace, I could see it going either way

Something to think about.

Depends what you consider YOU are, and what you consider WE are.