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A friend and I were having an intellectual discussion, like we do every morning - Chinese like to walk backwards in the morning to accelerate the mind, I choose conversation, both are effective. The discussion usually topics cosmos and humanity, mathematics, subjects which us young guys are trying to understand, but really just have a passion for debates and information. During our talks we say what we want, however we want, in whatever way we want to, without fear of error or looking stupid. This morning 5 minutes in, subjects rapidly went amok and we were chatting on everything, more or less time capsules was the main topic. To clarify, I am not talking about your archie comics and and a pet rock burried in your backyard, but more of planets and the secrets they hold.
Words and ideas became more intense and we started speculating planets in our own system, such as our neighbors, Venus and Mars. Although life on other planets may still be debated among humanity, it is almost certain in my mind comets are the bringers of life and death. Even if you have one planet, in one system, in one galaxy that has life on it, not even intelligent life, this means you can have an infinity planets with life. Earth is an example of life on one planet, and in fact, so happens to inhabit intelligent life.
The universe is infinite as we know - there has been lots of speculation and different ideas about the size of the universe. In fact, a large supported theory is that the universe banged out faster than light defying our laws of relativity and is progressively slowing down, but continuing outwards as always. This goes against our laws, but remember, they are OUR laws; subject to change if physical properties are different than ours.
How can planets be time capsules? Perhaps planets are more than just rocks, gases, magnetic fields. Perhaps planets hold pieces of the puzzle. A planet may have had life, intelligent life, with structures, massive steel buildings, nuclear power planets the size of small towns, million pound steel birds flying in the sky littering traces of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. But, with time, all traces have been extinguished.
If this may be true, surely there would be a piece of evidence, a scrap of a house, man-made materials left behind. Or would there be? While life on earth has been present for billions of years, what is there to show of our ancestors? Tools hidden in ice or caves, fossil almost entirely embedded in rock, large pyramid structures perhaps meant to show future generations the past. Just a few thousand years - remember the earth is 4 million+ millenniums old - we recover artifacts set in stone that are almost completely eroded from wind, sand, water, and other nature. I remember reading in national geographic years ago, that if all intelligent life were to leave earth; animals, humans, conscience beings, nature would only need a few hundred years to consume and dominate the Earth once again, almost leaving no trace of humanity behind, with exceptions of stone pyramids, and Buddha heads, caves etc.
The main thought my friend pondered was not if humanity would be discovered from other races; I hope we can all agree that in time other life may not even know we existed on planet Earth. But will humanity stay present long enough to be discovered? Some may even say, will we be around long enough to explore other planets and maybe WE will discover life and WE will be the Superior.
What an awesome prospect. Unfortunately, the answer is almost present, and the results aren't what you want. In just a few thousand years of intelligent civilization, the human race has been quite successful. We have dominated the planet, found resources that drives technology, and now, slowly starting to understand and unveil our encrypted code, our secrets of biology, cosmos, mathematics, made great strides in medicine, both understanding and practicing. I should also mention, we have started countless wars, murdered, exploited, raped, basically as ruthless as nature, but by choice. In a nut-shell the human race has become the ultimate weapon, choice to either take life or give it, a populous that has the power of artificial selection, perhaps some may look at this as the Hand of God.
Our general pattern has been almost monkey-see-monkey-do from the books of nature. Everything we do seems to be cyclical, including wars, civilizations, even technology - moore's law.
Have you ever wondered why things move in cycles? A cycle is a perfect system, a wondrous complex mathematical equation teeming with bio machines, DNA, instructions, and evolution. Nature has truly out done herself by creating a machine that not only cleans, lubricates, self-maintains, grows, evolves, and frankly, so complex that humans may never truly understand her, but think they may do. This is why cycles are important, why nature selected this path, with future in mind. Incredible. Alas, perfection always seems to be exaggerated, and eventually we see that nature has weak spots; trust. Nature trusted humans with intelligence, gave us superior problem solving skills, physical attributes to accelerate our dominance, and most of all, our own playground. Our own canvas to paint a world where WE can be nature. A world where we can design our own utopa. Maybe, some day we can return the favor, give back what nature gave us, and continue its glorious cycle - maybe, just maybe, we can create biomachines so advanced, they too get a chance at a new cycle, and hopefully a much better world than what we painted. The Earth is nature's Library of Alexandria. For all the knowledge we need of ourselves, we CAN find right here on earth.
How dare we disrespect our mother like this. Respecting our elders is a life choice, not a habit and most forget that the ultimate elder is mother nature, our oldest relative other than the vast great cosmos. When we slay forests, obliterate species, irradiate wetlands, we in fact are slaying our children, obliterating OUR species, and irradiating the cycle of life. Humans have been self-destructing for a long, and perhaps too long - maybe too late.
Mathematics can prove a lot, if not everything. Politics is by far the most influential system on human beings, other than religion of course - I AM NOT DISCUSSIONG RELIGION AND NEVER WILL. I will say this: God is too complex not because of the subject, but because of all the different opinions. Religion is a set of beliefs based on faith, where politics is a set of beliefs based on facts. With facts you can hammer out and solve any problem, but with feelings and faith, you may only listen to yourself. If one wants to solve the problem 'God', they can do so with mathematics, but never with religion. So, if we just look at our race as a human 'equation', we can see that if we do not break out pattern, self destruction is imminent. Ideas like mine are pushed under the carpet or labeled left-wing extreme, but in reality an overflow of right-wing ideas over the centuries has unbalanced human politics, and we're driving each other dead.
I admit I am left-wing and I have had my toils with right-winged nut jobs, but I am reasonable. Although my opinions must stay strong, I also have the intelligence to realize a time of comprise must occur. Never will the world agree as one mind, and never should it; we need a little bit of everything, a balance of right-wing left-wing.
There is a catch-22. In order to balance the world, a mix of the correct amount of right-wing left-wing must happen, a socialistic system if you may. The world has been driven too long by war generals, right-wing diplomats, greed, and because of that we need much more left-wing ideas than right-wing. Let me use a pot of stew as an analogy to explain my next point. The stew consists of certain vegetables and meats. If you have too much of meat, your stew is ruined and you will not be able to taste the vegetables very well, maybe too much meat to chew even.
If the world is your pot, and you have too much right-wing influence on the world, the taste of the world is going to be, of course, right-wing. This may be a very odd and unsettling example, but Adolf Hitler's political and social views were very strong and actually quite viable and reasonable - please use common sense, Hitler was a genius, but mentally unstable. Clearly some of his views were obnoxious like creating an aryan race, just one of many. Unfortunately, Hitler's way of obtaining these ideas were disgusting, ruthless, illegal and more or less right-winged, but the ideas, where socialism is now society, products are cheaper - eliminating fat cats and capitalistic imbalances; poor poor poor, I mean, I have nothing poor, but 15 minutes of driving to the suburbs you will see houses the size of projects. Where fair is fair, but you still have opportunity to grow and become something special.
Before we continue, you may start to get a feeling where I am some psycho left-wing. I just want to clarify, I am not, I do believe in a social political system, but why shouldn't everyone? OK, now you may feel enranged, and it may seem I am trying to assimilate, but in fact, you have already been a part of social politics all along. What do you figure a police academy is? Medicine? The mail system? Fire fighters? These are all systems in place for people by the government, and in most cases are free services or very cheap - excluding America and other large countries who rape their people everyday . I am sorry if I upset any right-wing with my opinions, but hypocrasy is embarrassing and if a right-winged politician tells me the government is a poor choice to believe in, then why did I see you wearing a cast, or hugging a firefighter when they saved your cat? Certain countries have a social system in place with a mix of capitalism - Canada and America. One country will diagnose a sick man and give him medication for free, another will take an emergency patient in, only to find out the man didn't meet financial requirements, and is literally moved off hospital grounds. One country has the greatest power and wealth, even has enough influence to take the world to war, one has a very strong economy, a great health system, strong unemployment systems and has a fraction of the population and resources of the prior. I never said which one is which, but we both subconsciously labeled each country correctly.
Individuality is forever important, and you MUST look out for #1, this is hardwired into our brains. What is #1? Humanity or you, decide. All the sacrifices, all the time, all the heartships, wars, dynastys, all the effort of evolution and the people before you, or you can have a/c in your SUV, listen to your iPod, maybe watch a flat screen. Continue in the way of capitalism and feed what is coorporate America and enjoy the great benefits that the strong nation of America has to offer; but the latter choice yeilds great danger for the future.
Ask yourself, do I have to continue following a broken system, in fact a system that points to ultimate self destruction via massive wars, cheating, death, plain out sheer competition? Have I not evolved from screaming monkeys that base their politics on who has more bananas or a bigger crown. Can I not decide for myself if I wish to change the world? Why must I conform when I am capable of deciding for myself?
Ladies and gentlemen, cattle are born into a political system; dictator. They have a set of rules they must abide by, they have one scheduled task, and nobody says anything, all the way until the slaughter house. A poor judgment would be to say the cattle do this because they have no intelligence, no say in any matter, no knowledge of the slaughter to come. If humans have intelligence, plenty of say, and even have knowledge of complete devastation in the near future AND we are even left with the OPTION to correct our wrong doings, why do we continue?
When I leave you with this thread, I must leave you with a question that concluded my morning brain stimpack; Are we really any different than cattle?
- side note: this is just my view on how something present can drastically fix our world, with very little effort and lots of brain power, a different political system all together can unite our diversities, make it bareable to live next to each other, dispite opposite beliefs.
Here is something interesting: Collisions of free electrons in a strong electric field releasing "new" electrons to undergo the same process in successive cycles, this is what happens when a chain reaction occurs. In theory, this can be applied to everyday life. If you were to buy a homeless man lunch or open a door, a reaction may occur. The homeless man may run into some luck, become successful someday and start helping people at a grand scale. Perhaps the woman you opened the door for, really appreciated that, and instead of walking by the homeless man every day, she bought him lunch. You see how quickly things CAN happen, but chances are the homeless man ate his sandwhich and continued begging, and the woman said a hollow thanks, and that was that. Why did this great equation stop so suddenly??! Even the most insignificant action, can turn into some wild turn of events, and keep in mind this applies for both good and bad.
If you want to change this world, you can do it by just helping out at an individual level, eventually things chain and you have higher chances of educated people coming together and changing the world at grander scale - I believe there is a public group that even does something like this everyday called the yes men.
 
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I think it's fantastic you are getting your brain going.
I think you are extremely well intentioned, but very very far from the mark.
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i read all of that!
alot of it sounded like mad ranting.. but i read it all.
couple suggestions.
1. organize your thoughts in a more presentable and orderly fashion so that your concepts can be clearly conveyed in a manner that isn't like a mad man rambling on about the end of the world.
2. Research some of your content a little bit more.. there are some statements in there that are pretty wrong..
3. Canada sucks and Hitler wasnt a genius
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16968 Posts
If humans have intelligence, plenty of say, and even have knowledge of complete devastation in the near future AND we are even left with the OPTION to correct our wrong doings, why do we continue?
It's because some of us were lucky enough to be born into privileged backgrounds, and are too selfish/indifferent to care about changing things because being more selfless isn't worth the added inconvenience.
As for your point on whether or not intelligent life will know we were here when we're gone, it probably depends on how closely they're willing to look and how far in the future they come from. If they do detailed enough analysis of Earth's crust/strata, I'm sure they can find traces of our existence (plastics, etc., that take forever to break down). However, if they come from far enough in the future, everything humans made, even things like very durable plastics and other synthetic materials will have been broken down. I suppose they can then look for certain radioactive isotopes with long half-lives that aren't found naturally, but what may be found naturally on Earth may not be what's found naturally elsewhere (for example, elements heavier than uranium are commonly found naturally...just not on Earth, but in certain extreme systems).
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so on one hand you express your concern how the only things that remain from times long past are things like the pyramids (which were created by one person exploiting the ability of many for his own selfishness) and that as a result it would seem that there is little way for humanity to leave an impact save for those remnants.
on the other hand you argue that people are being selfish and that this is bad if we want to leave an impact for society.
I'll just point you to the rather questionable thought process that is called warm glow theory and go merrily on my way. http://ideas.repec.org/a/ecj/econjl/v100y1990i401p464-77.html
there was a quote that I once read somewhere. If a human was to extend his arm to another, while both would be equal, neither would be seen from far away. Only if humans were to climb on-top of other humans will humanity be seen.
But even this analogy requires that people need to extend arms to each other in other to support those at the top. While only the person on top may be recognized, the fact is that that person is the culmination of other people's efforts. So I suppose your points are valid, but your absurd hate of "right-wing" without actually defining what your definition of right wing is hurts your argument somewhat.
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Shoot I guess I should have said this isn't a paper or school work so in fact is a rant lol so coag you are correct haha 
On August 13 2010 05:55 Empyrean wrote:Show nested quote +If humans have intelligence, plenty of say, and even have knowledge of complete devastation in the near future AND we are even left with the OPTION to correct our wrong doings, why do we continue? It's because some of us were lucky enough to be born into privileged backgrounds, and are too selfish/indifferent to care about changing things because being more selfless isn't worth the added inconvenience. As for your point on whether or not intelligent life will know we were here when we're gone, it probably depends on how closely they're willing to look and how far in the future they come from. If they do detailed enough analysis of Earth's crust/strata, I'm sure they can find traces of our existence (plastics, etc., that take forever to break down). However, if they come from far enough in the future, everything humans made, even things like very durable plastics and other synthetic materials will have been broken down. I suppose they can then look for certain radioactive isotopes with long half-lives that aren't found naturally, but what may be found naturally on Earth may not be what's found naturally elsewhere (for example, elements heavier than uranium are commonly found naturally...just not on Earth, but in certain extreme systems).
Oh absolutely. I was looking at more of our approach. From outer space, but clearly if we are on the surface, we have lots more techniques to use. We observed mars for a long time, but as soon as we physically had a piece of mars to look at, things were much easier to determine.
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I'm going to quote Mos Def because your questions of "are we just cattle" and ideas like "We can make a difference and stuff!" are more like cutting the rose from the stem instead of uprooting the thorns.
Me, you, everybody, we are Hip-Hop
So Hip-Hop is goin where we goin
So the next time you ask yourself where Hip-Hop is goin
ask yourself.. where am I goin? How am I doin?
Til you get a clear idea
So.. if Hip-Hop is about the people
and the.. Hip-Hop won't get better until the people get better
then how do people get better? (Hmmmm...)
Well, from my understanding people get better
when they start to understand that, they are valuable
And they not valuable because they got a whole lot of money
or cause somebody, think they sexy
but they valuable caause.........??
Hip Hop = anything you want. Politics, human rights, arts etc.
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On August 13 2010 06:05 Caller wrote:
there was a quote that I once read somewhere. If a human was to extend his arm to another, while both would be equal, neither would be seen from far away. Only if humans were to climb on-top of other humans will humanity be seen.
But even this analogy requires that people need to extend arms to each other in other to support those at the top. While only the person on top may be recognized, the fact is that that person is the culmination of other people's efforts. So I suppose your points are valid, but your absurd hate of "right-wing" without actually defining what your definition of right wing is hurts your argument somewhat.
That's some powerful stuff, can you recall who wrote that?
You're right, right-wing is tricky to define, but more or less I define left to right as; left being more country devoted big picture, than the individual, where right-wing is individual freedom before taking care of the big picture, country. I suppose if you need an example, the most popular choice of right-wing celebrity in our modern time is George W. Bush, where an extreme left would be someone like Nelson Mandela.
Again, I know I'll clash heads with right-wing and I expect to, but I also clash heads with extreme left wing too, which is why I stated a mixture is the correct recipe, and this isn't anything new.
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On August 13 2010 06:38 Chunkybuddha wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2010 06:05 Caller wrote:
there was a quote that I once read somewhere. If a human was to extend his arm to another, while both would be equal, neither would be seen from far away. Only if humans were to climb on-top of other humans will humanity be seen.
But even this analogy requires that people need to extend arms to each other in other to support those at the top. While only the person on top may be recognized, the fact is that that person is the culmination of other people's efforts. So I suppose your points are valid, but your absurd hate of "right-wing" without actually defining what your definition of right wing is hurts your argument somewhat. That's some powerful stuff, can you recall who wrote that? You're right, right-wing is tricky to define, but more or less I define left to right as; left being more country devoted big picture, than the individual, where right-wing is individual freedom before taking care of the big picture, country. I suppose if you need an example, the most popular choice of right-wing celebrity in our modern time is George W. Bush, where an extreme left would be someone like Nelson Mandela. Again, I know I'll clash heads with right-wing and I expect to, but I also clash heads with extreme left wing too, which is why I stated a mixture is the correct recipe, and this isn't anything new.
that may seem to be the generally defined version of left vs. right today. But you also defined Adolf Hitler as being a very right-wing person. If anything, Hitler was staunchly anti-individualist and was definitely more of a big picture guy, favoring the growth of Germany (at the cost of millions of lives and scarring Europe forever). So this would seem to suggest, if anything, that Hitler was left-wing rather than right. What do you think Hitler falls into under this definition?
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I don't think right-wing/left-wing are the proper terms; you're more looking at communitarianism vs. individualism -- right and left wing usually refer to things on the political spectrum (which is exemplified in your examples of political figures like Bush and Mandela), whereas communitarianism and individualism are sociological issues, and though they may sometimes apply to political issues, they do not fall within the same categories. For instance, the political "right" is usually against government regulation and pro-tax breaks, which would seem more individualistic.
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If you want a true appreciation of why people are right-wing study some economics at university before making up your mind. The economic ignorance of the majority of the left-wing is ridiculous.
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A friend and I were having an intellectual discussion, like we do every morning
Good for you! The world would be a better place if everyone exercised their minds regularly.
Even if you have one planet, in one system, in one galaxy that has life on it, not even intelligent life, this means you can have an infinity planets with life.
Not sure what you mean here. While space is infinite, the mass of the contents of the Universe is finite (yes it's huge beyond comprehension, but finite nonetheless) but perhaps by "infinity" you just meant "extraordinarily large". My best guess is that you're saying that since life evolved here, and there are so many other planets in the universe, then life could have developed in any number of them as well.
If that's what you meant, then I agree (somewhat). Our telescopes are improving steadily, and in the past years we've finally been able to observe planets (as opposed to stars). The results so far indicate that the large majority of solar systems do not have planets that can sustain life as we know it. Obviously there could be life there that is so different from ours that we can't imagine it, but there's no evidence either way so the point is moot. Nevertheless, if you consider the sheer number of stars, galaxies, clusters and so forth, I think it's quite likely that there is a great deal of life out there. However, that's pure conjecture.
A planet may have had life, intelligent life, with structures, massive steel buildings, nuclear power planets the size of small towns, million pound steel birds flying in the sky littering traces of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. But, with time, all traces have been extinguished.
If you're referring to Earth, then I disagree. We've done a pretty good job of digging up artifacts and fossils all over the planet, and there's nothing at all to indicate an industrial civilization prior to ours. I'm not going to entertain the idea that such a civilization existed, advanced far beyond ours, and then used their advanced technology to completely remove all traces of themselves so we wouldn't find it. That's a non-testable hypothesis, right alongside the hypothesis that we're in the Matrix.
nature would only need a few hundred years to consume and dominate the Earth once again, almost leaving no trace of humanity behind
I think the key word here is "almost". Styrofoam doesn't decompose for millennia. Large cities would also have many components that would maintain shape (proving intelligent creation) underground. And I wouldn't even hazard a guess as to how long the metallic equipment left behind on the Moon would remain.
In a nut-shell the human race has become the ultimate weapon
I don't really know what you're getting at in that whole paragraph, but as far as that sentence is concerned, I disagree. A weapon is a tool used by someone for the purpose of doing harm. Calling Humanity a weapon suggests there's something using us to do harm, which I have to frown at. You can call Humanity a plague or a curse, but I don't think we're a weapon.
Everything we do seems to be cyclical, including wars, civilizations, even technology - moore's law.
I agree there are always patterns to human behaviour, but I think you're simplifying way too much by calling it cyclical. Cyclical refers to repeating symmetry. Let's take technology, for example. Technology improves as time goes on. But it doesn't do so at a constant rate. It does so at an exponential rate, in fact. And it doesn't always improve, there are rare instances of technological regression, like the Dark Ages. But even then, we didn't lose everything (in fact, if you consider a large enough time-frame going back to, say, the wheel, then we didn't lose much at all) before we got back on our feet and starting improving again. There's no perfect cyclical symmetry here.
why nature selected this path
Selection comes from choice, which requires thought. You're creeping into the domain of religion here, or at least supernaturalism.
How dare we disrespect our mother like this
You sound like Sephiroth.
Respecting our elders is a life choice, not a habit and most forget that the ultimate elder is mother nature, our oldest relative other than the vast great cosmos. When we slay forests, obliterate species, irradiate wetlands, we in fact are slaying our children, obliterating OUR species, and irradiating the cycle of life. Humans have been self-destructing for a long, and perhaps too long - maybe too late.
That's going too far. Yes, humans are short sighted and self-destructive. But everything else in there I strongly disagree with. I think you're wrong about respecting elders. An elder does not deserve respect simply for being old. The *wisdom* an elder may possess, however, is worthy of respect. I think you need to separate the knowledge from the corporeal here. As far as killing our children by destroying forests, yes we are creating problems for our descendants. I can only hope they have the sense that we didn't, just as we fixed the previous generation's problems. This is a pattern of human behaviour, and I take comfort in knowing that so far it's gone well for us. We're still here.
Politics is by far the most influential system on human beings, other than religion of course
No. There are a great many such "systems" as you put it, such as politics, religion, economics, science, arts, psychology, sociology, etc. Every civilization is different, and each is constantly changing with time. Trying to quantitatively compare them is an impossibility, short of psychohistory, of course. If you're not familiar with the term, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychohistory_(fictional)
I AM NOT DISCUSSIONG RELIGION AND NEVER WILL.
Really? Because it seems to me like you already have (albeit peripherally) and now proceed to do exactly what you said you wouldn't .
God is too complex not because of the subject, but because of all the different opinions.
You're pre-supposing that there is such a "God", which is in itself a hotly debated an controversial idea. Personally I don't think all the various religions are that complex, frankly.
Religion is a set of beliefs based on faith, where politics is a set of beliefs based on facts.
I think this sentence works much better with the word "science" inserted to replace the word "politics". Politics refers to policy, which is made by people, which sadly is not always based on facts.
So, if we just look at our race as a human 'equation', we can see that if we do not break out pattern, self destruction is imminent.
I agree the world faces serious problems right now. The one that worries me most is overpopulation. Indirectly, almost all the other problems stem from this. I am strongly in favour of addressing and dealing with the world's problems (too many to list) but even if we do have wars, famine, plagues (it always comes down to those three, for some reason...) Humanity will survive. When the Roman Empire fell, the world "ended" and Humanity was diminished, but it survived. When the bubonic plague was ravaging Europe, the world "ended" but Humanity survived. We're hard-coded to live and breed.
The world has been driven too long by war generals, right-wing diplomats, greed, and because of that we need much more left-wing ideas than right-wing.
I think you need to look at history to put your point in context. Western civilization as a whole has been moving more towards "left-wing" as you put it for a very long time. A right-winger of today would be equivalent to a left-winger of a century ago. Take the great liberals, for instance: Voltaire, Rousseau, Locke. Even they only spoke of equality between men, to the implied exclusion of women. By our standards, that's a reactionary viewpoint. For their time though, it was groundbreakingly liberal. Given time, our views of today will (hopefully) be seen by our descendants as repressive and right-wing.
There will always be those who oppose progress, either because they fear it or because they stand to lose from it, on an individual level.
One country has the greatest power and wealth, even has enough influence to take the world to war, one has a very strong economy, a great health system, strong unemployment systems and has a fraction of the population and resources of the prior. I never said which one is which, but we both subconsciously labeled each country correctly.
I'm Canadian as well so I empathize with the point you're making, but to be fair our economy is largely dependent on the American economy. 85% of our exports go to the USA. As they suffer, so do we. I wouldn't be bragging about our economy while we're in recession. And our health care system has problems. I'm completely in favor of public health, don't get me wrong, but our system has its problems too.
Individuality is forever important, and you MUST look out for #1, this is hardwired into our brains. What is #1? Humanity or you, decide.
What you're addressing here is the paradox of individualism versus collectivism. Some actions are harmful to the individual, but beneficial to the society (and vice versa). Take our current recession for example. On an individual level, everyone should conserve their funds, since income is scarcer now. On a collective level, everyone should spend their funds to revitalize the economy. Yes, the world would be a better place if everyone chose collectivism, but if only some do, then those who did will suffer and those who chose individualism will prosper. Paradox.
Are we really any different than cattle?
There are similarities and differences. Like animals, humans tend to have leaders and followers. Unlike them, we have advanced reasoning. How "cattle-like" we are is subjective, and based on arbitrary lines each person draws. This isn't a strong answer, but it's impossible to have a conclusive answer to your philosophical question.
If you want to change this world, you can do it by just helping out at an individual level, eventually things chain and you have higher chances of educated people coming together and changing the world at grander scale - I believe there is a public group that even does something like this everyday called the yes men.
What you say is true, the butterfly effect tells us that even small actions can have far-reaching consequences. Of course, small actions are far likelier to simply have small impacts.
I approve of people trying to make the world a better place. Personally though, I have realistic expectations of my actions. For example: when the beta was in full swing, I wrote a long and detailed post on the Bnet forums wherein I described the flaws in SC2 and Bnet 2.0 that I saw. I did so politely, thoroughly, and quite certain that my post would be read and swiftly ignored. I wrote my post anyway for the same reason that I vote: I accept that I won't single-handedly change something massive, but I do what I think is right for my own sake. It gives me a clear conscience, and the satisfaction of knowing that I've made a positive contribution. But I didn't expect to change Blizzard's policy, and I don't expect to be the deciding factor in an election.
Overall I enjoyed your post. I imagine my post appears quite critical of yours, but that's just my style. I believe in attacking new ideas constructively, and if it survives the attack, then I know it's solid. Like a thesis defense, for example. Thank you for posting and reminding me that there are other humans who think beyond their immediate surroundings.
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You might enjoy some of the topics discussed over here:
http://www.freedomainradio.com/Podcasts.aspx
This guy gave up his software big money job to talk on the internet for free and live off donations. Although some of his ideas may be controversial, he is very articulate and has a large following. From your blog post I think it would also provide further good meaty topic discussions with your friend.
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First of all: Hitler was not a genius. He was a great orator, but he was stubborn, his actions were mostly driven by emotions and his ideology and too often uncalculated and on top of that he was rather uneducated. The only thing he ever did right was seizing all power. A lot of his success can be attributed to other very important figures like Goebbels or Goering.
Quoting you: "please use common sense", this man destroyed the country he ruled and the people in it in every possible way.
+ Show Spoiler +The reason why I started my post with this is that it really pissed me off and I was just about to stop reading any further after it. Beside that, it is just plain wrong.
I kind of dislike the use of terms like "right" or "left wing" for the sole reason that there isn't any definition of both. Just ask somebody from the US, Germany and China about those terms and I guarantee you completely different answers.
However, I do agree with you that humanity has problems - far too many to discuss here.
Also something I strongly agree with you is that people should try to be nice to eachother whenever possible. Even if it is small things like holding the door for somebody, smiling at people in the cashier in the store or saying "thank you" when shopping. I believe that this would make our society just a tiny bit better. I've been at places where people would help me politely when I had a question, but also places where people always had a grim look that it basically felt like you are disturbing the storeclerks upon entering the store... Of course when you have financial problems in your life, it's not easy have a positive behaviour...
By the way, I think it is a great habit to exercise your mind in the morning!
And some obligatory nit-picking:
+ Show Spoiler +
"...we both subconsciously labeled each country correctly."
Well, I did not. I actually used my knowledge and due to it reasoned what you might be meaning.
And you most certainly did not label "each country correctly" subconsciously, since you were obviously implying something.
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EPT
