Ishmael Fleishman Posted May 30 Share Posted May 30 (edited) ... Edited August 16 by Ishmael Fleishman Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fyzygy Posted May 30 Share Posted May 30 Humans will go on slaughtering animals, mutilating their children, eating the future, and pushing unsafe/ineffective GMOs as "vaccines" ... for the foreseeable future. They will probably colonise space with more of the same (although machines will have superseded us, by that point). The world would be a better place without us, it often seems to me. Alas, even if we were to suddenly go extinct, our toxic effects would persist for (geological) ages. StarLink will continue its orbit around a dead planet, indefinitely. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ishmael Fleishman Posted May 30 Author Share Posted May 30 (edited) ... Edited August 16 by Ishmael Fleishman Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
saguaro Posted June 16 Share Posted June 16 It does seem that way. I know old a 70-year old who dumps motor oil into the soil because he believes it costs money to dispose of it (despite me repeatedly telling him it doesn't). I believe he just cbf going to the tip and recycling it. Single bad eggs like this can counterract 1000s of people's good efforts, and this is one person out of billions. We have people causing long-term damage out of convenience, greed, laziness and malice. One disgruntled person could start a bushfire. This scenario is writ large in the macrocosm with industrial scale pollution. We have not even begun to realise the consequences of our actions. Systematically the majority of people are forced to be complicit in it. Wearing second hand clothes may make me feel like you are on the right side of history, but individual-scale actions really do nothing. We would need to restructure production globally and more or less regress in development, which will not happen. I don't think we are fucked, I just think subsequent generations will suffer more the deeper we get into our endless growth delusion. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fyzygy Posted June 16 Share Posted June 16 Too bad this thing called "the economy" is all but worshipped among (transnational) political elites. Covid-19 showed that the solution to technology's toxic excesses is -- precisely -- more of the same. Our current planetary infrastructure, from electronic telecommunications to "forever chemicals," will outlive the life of the species. Our machines will be our successors, even in outer space. I am appalled at the hubris of a species that views the planet -- home to so many "insignificant" others -- as a supermarket and garbage dump. Whatever life that survives us won't be anything like us. And that's probably a good thing, sorry to say. But maybe we will be forced, for our own good, into reducing our collective ecological footprint, rather than wallowing in the fantasy of infinite "growth." Inequality is rising, exponentially. Human rights, endangered. World governments are currently competing for the dubious honour of fastest population growth. So I won't be holding my breath. The only thing I'm certain of is that (political, economic) "business as usual" -- the status quo -- spells disaster. But at any rate, who cares? The culture of late capitalism breeds meanness and self-centredness, not compassion and social affection. Beggar thy neighbour, if thou can. Or die trying. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ishmael Fleishman Posted June 16 Author Share Posted June 16 (edited) ... Edited August 16 by Ishmael Fleishman Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fyzygy Posted June 18 Share Posted June 18 ^ looks like I missed a good post. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wood Chuck Posted June 20 Share Posted June 20 A better life for your children, is often thought of as financial and if we fuck up this planet, we will just shift to another planet and fuck it up and when we fuck it, move to another and so on, we need a mindset change to look after what we have got. Obtaining power from a product we can`t dispose of properly, micro plastics, climate change, etc are born from money, that is an evil necessity and that has no limits. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ishmael Fleishman Posted June 20 Author Share Posted June 20 (edited) WITHDRAWN Edited August 16 by Ishmael Fleishman Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fyzygy Posted June 21 Share Posted June 21 Two things give me cause for hope. One is seeing demonstrations of everyday compassion (like a YouTube video documenting care of an abandoned, congenitally deformed dog that I saw recently). The other is being exposed to attitudes of ecological respect and humility, such as among First Nations cultures. Occasionally, I am still taken by surprise at the compassion, generosity and humility in this world. There is goodness in people, as evidenced "behind the scenes" of this very forum. But none of that, apparently, is very newsworthy. I think our modern culture is addicted to -- we feed on -- crisis of one sort or another. As suggested above, the so-called "extraterrestrial imperative" is the very definition of a cynical, fake (and potentially genocidal) optimism. It's toxic toys for billionaire boys, a black hole of interplanetary vandalism that sucks in even the brightest of minds. In any case, we shouldn't really despair. For as Alan Watts says, a chicken is merely an egg's way of becoming another egg. (Even if humanity's goose is cooked, so to speak.) It -- and perhaps even life -- goes on. Is it possible to change the title of this thread? I don't wish to be constantly reminded of the sentiment. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ishmael Fleishman Posted June 21 Author Share Posted June 21 (edited) ... Edited August 16 by Ishmael Fleishman Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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