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United States40776 Posts
On May 24 2019 09:53 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On May 24 2019 09:48 JimmiC wrote:On May 24 2019 09:29 GreenHorizons wrote:On May 24 2019 09:25 JimmiC wrote: We are still waiting on how a revolution fixes the problems and how it happens with out accelerating climate change.
My position is that we should have world peace, share everything and make love the new currency. If you'd actually like to know I suggest you read the plethora of literature/history on the subject. Marx articulates the basic framework and the Russian revolution the example to learn from though if you want an idea of where to start. Technology and the world haa changed mightly since then. Duh. Show nested quote + And the USSR was the opposite of good for the environment, way worse then even the US. Based on...? Show nested quote + Hell if people didnt act against the goverment the whole continent might already be extinct. Democracy has its faults no doubt, but the other option is far worse. Uhhh... what? I'm arguing in favor of a communist revolution, you may not be familiar, but democracy is integral to that. The USSR was an environmental catastrophe. The single worst man made environmental disaster was the Aral Sea, for example. Chernobyl wasn't great either. Dictatorships with command economies just have more potential to do damage in my opinion.
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They always seem to end up in a place where they only care about improving the situation for the people on the top and the prestige of the country and leader. The talk is always about making it better for the people but it never happens, at least not long term. Other than literacy, authoritarians do a great job with that because it is easier and more impactful to indoctrinate your people when they can read. Heck the process of learning to read itself can be (and usually is) an exercise in indoctrination.
Has there been a recent (like last 200 years where we have a pretty good history.) Of an ambivalent Dictator that bettered his people at least as much as he did himself? I fully believe the power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
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I think one of the more obvious things you're missing is that what It means to be conservative moves left over time.
It's really really dumb to keep insisting that conservatives will die out and young people will take over. Nothing should make you eye roll harder then "blank has a liberal bias".
Basically you're trying to attach static definitions to dynamic terms. Stop that
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On May 26 2019 03:13 JimmiC wrote: They always seem to end up in a place where they only care about improving the situation for the people on the top and the prestige of the country and leader. The talk is always about making it better for the people but it never happens, at least not long term. Other than literacy, authoritarians do a great job with that because it is easier and more impactful to indoctrinate your people when they can read. Heck the process of learning to read itself can be (and usually is) an exercise in indoctrination.
Has there been a recent (like last 200 years where we have a pretty good history.) Of an ambivalent Dictator that bettered his people at least as much as he did himself? I fully believe the power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I mean Castro maybe?
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On May 26 2019 03:16 Sermokala wrote:Show nested quote +On May 26 2019 03:13 JimmiC wrote: They always seem to end up in a place where they only care about improving the situation for the people on the top and the prestige of the country and leader. The talk is always about making it better for the people but it never happens, at least not long term. Other than literacy, authoritarians do a great job with that because it is easier and more impactful to indoctrinate your people when they can read. Heck the process of learning to read itself can be (and usually is) an exercise in indoctrination.
Has there been a recent (like last 200 years where we have a pretty good history.) Of an ambivalent Dictator that bettered his people at least as much as he did himself? I fully believe the power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I mean Castro maybe?
He is the one interesting case I have thought of, because he certainly did do some really good things as far as health care and education. And the negative stuff about him it is so hard to separate what is terrible that he did and what was in response to the US. It is also hard to know if the wealth figures associated with him are true or not as well. While it is fairly safe to say it is not a great place to live for many, I mean how many people have risked their lives to escape on rafts. But again is that Castro or the US sanctions? I think all the secret police and elimination of political rivals so on is pretty clearly not "good".
Depending what happens on the island and how the US political system changes, as things become declassified maybe we will have a better idea. I think you are right that he is at least the "best". It is really too bad that the US fucked with them so hard because it is really hard to tell what is Castro and what is them? Also, if Cuba was wealthier without the US would Castro be way wealthier or would his people?
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On May 26 2019 03:03 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On May 24 2019 09:53 GreenHorizons wrote:On May 24 2019 09:48 JimmiC wrote:On May 24 2019 09:29 GreenHorizons wrote:On May 24 2019 09:25 JimmiC wrote: We are still waiting on how a revolution fixes the problems and how it happens with out accelerating climate change.
My position is that we should have world peace, share everything and make love the new currency. If you'd actually like to know I suggest you read the plethora of literature/history on the subject. Marx articulates the basic framework and the Russian revolution the example to learn from though if you want an idea of where to start. Technology and the world haa changed mightly since then. Duh. And the USSR was the opposite of good for the environment, way worse then even the US. Based on...? Hell if people didnt act against the goverment the whole continent might already be extinct. Democracy has its faults no doubt, but the other option is far worse. Uhhh... what? I'm arguing in favor of a communist revolution, you may not be familiar, but democracy is integral to that. The USSR was an environmental catastrophe. The single worst man made environmental disaster was the Aral Sea, for example. Chernobyl wasn't great either. Dictatorships with command economies just have more potential to do damage in my opinion.
Aral sea is pretty bad (worst? probably?), worst dmg came after the fall of the USSR, but the dams themselves are definitely on the USSR.
I don't know how we'd measure but exxon valdez, Deepwater Horizon, Three Mile Island, and years of the highest per capita carbon footprint make me skeptical it's easy to declare the USSR obviously worse environmentally. I'm sure you know I was just looking for supporting information though.
On May 26 2019 03:16 Sermokala wrote:Show nested quote +On May 26 2019 03:13 JimmiC wrote: They always seem to end up in a place where they only care about improving the situation for the people on the top and the prestige of the country and leader. The talk is always about making it better for the people but it never happens, at least not long term. Other than literacy, authoritarians do a great job with that because it is easier and more impactful to indoctrinate your people when they can read. Heck the process of learning to read itself can be (and usually is) an exercise in indoctrination.
Has there been a recent (like last 200 years where we have a pretty good history.) Of an ambivalent Dictator that bettered his people at least as much as he did himself? I fully believe the power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I mean Castro maybe?
Castro is probably the baddest man in recent history if for no other reason than surviving more than 50 attempts on his life from the most powerful country on the planet that was a raft ride away with a minuscule fraction of the budget they used to attack him. That he helped his country discover a vaccine for lung cancer, dramatically increased literacy (higher than the US), and returned tons of acres of Cuba to it's residents rather than US corporate owners who fought to keep it is a bonus.
Doesn't really matter how much blame for the problems of Cuba one puts on Castro or the US, Castro pretty easily beats out many US presidents without hesitation imo. Carter is probably the only one that's even close in living memory.
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It is not really fair to use things that happened 20 years after the USSR fell unless you can also use some pretty awful Russian things as well. But even if you say the USSR is slightly better, which I think would be a stretch but sure, I would still say that thinking that that form of government is going to save humanity from global extinction is naive. I mean hell China is the worst now (in total not per-capita) Russia is pretty terrible and yes so is the US, pretty big range of governments, all doing shitty jobs protecting the environment.
It is not going to take any form of government, it is going people globally to understand what is at stake and make better choices. And btw if you are actually this concerned I hope you use no single use plastic, don't drive a car, and don't live in a single family home, create little to no food waste and compost what you have. These are all changes that can make that will make a difference, and they don't require small arms, millions dead and the environmental damage that a revolution requiring small arms would do.
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On May 25 2019 11:29 ShambhalaWar wrote:Show nested quote +On May 25 2019 10:21 Nebuchad wrote:On May 25 2019 09:37 ShambhalaWar wrote:On May 25 2019 05:46 Nebuchad wrote:On May 25 2019 02:35 ShambhalaWar wrote:On May 24 2019 11:32 Nebuchad wrote:On May 24 2019 11:24 JimmiC wrote:On May 24 2019 11:14 Nebuchad wrote:On May 24 2019 11:12 JimmiC wrote:On May 24 2019 11:09 Nebuchad wrote: I agree JimmiC, the problem is that you want a simple solution that will fix it all. That's this drive that is pushing you to reject any plan for worldwide change if it contains risk, as if you could create worldwide change without risk, and as if staying on course wasn't risky, when it quite obviously is.
This isn't about who is bad or who isn't, including business. This is about the drive under capitalism being profits. That's an amoral state of things. This isn't about bad people, this is about a bad system; more specifically, a system that is badly designed to face the specific challenge that it is facing right now.
You then revert back to the liberal idea of personal responsibility, which you are entitled to I guess. But I'm not sure how you reconcile this idea that it's all about people being reluctant to do the right thing with the notion that we've just explored, that just 100 companies are responsible for 71% of emissions? Don't you think that this is perhaps a larger problem than people not being willing to do the right thing? I would love a simple solution but what you are talking about is not revolution in the sense of traditionally but a revolution in the sense of globally changing a huge % of peoples psychology. So Im all for it, now how do you do it? What are you talking about? Im asking how do you think you implement your system? And how in practice does this system work? Elect the most leftwing candidates in the countries that matter so that the Overton window gets pushed to the left as much as possible, be openly criticial of liberalism, not only of conservatism, so that we stop accepting liberal framing of economic issues and it stops being easier to envision the end of humanity than the end of capitalism, use a strategy that as much as possible includes rational points rather than moral points; probably some violence at some points. But mostly I don't think we're going to make it, for the record. Sadly I think I agree we aren't likely to make it at this point, but maybe we are like cockroaches. The overton window is a neat idea, but in an oligarchy I don't think it holds true. Money nullifies or freezes it, technology might do the same, in regard to its ability to influence the public. Public opinion is now surpassing in many ways the current state of events and people with money are able to halt congress from enacting any meaningful legislation for the change in public opinion. In regards to guns, healthcare, climate, etc... So as the window shifts (public opinion shifts), it still doesn't enact meaningful change. Politicians are learning now, that if you can lie (no matter how big the lie) and just repeat it over and over, you will win some portion of the population. I don't think the overton window matters as a concept. Public opinion has been on a long and large arc of positive growth, making slow but generational positive changes, but abuse of power/money halts or slows that process. Greed and lust for power imo is somewhat of a cancer in parts of society, which shifts to the focus from the well being of everyone (the system, the organism) to the well being of a very small portion of the system (the rich). You could imagine a body in which the cells no longer function for the whole of the body, but just for the well being of the right finger, no matter how much it destroys the rest of the person. That is basically where we are now in a societal sense. Part of the human problem, is that we have evolved in a way that hasn't corrected for this, or maybe it has over time, but somehow the problem still exists. It seems to me there must be a better way, and maybe we are moving toward that. If the US system holds against the test it is going through now, then maybe that will demonstrate something to the rest of the world, but the global trend toward authoritarianism suggests that we are all pretty stupid at the end of the day. Or at least vast amounts of people can be fooled by rich and powerful people that what they are doing is in their best interest, while they continue to get fucked by the very same people. I agree that the influence of money in politics is a huge problem but think it has more or less the same solution. There is almost a consensus on this question amongst the electorate, almost everyone thinks that money shouldn't have this oversized influence, so the only reason why nothing is fixed there is because the people who are already here like it that way. Elect the most leftwing candidate possible and that position will become harder to maintain; you already have people running grassroots campaigns free of corporate money today. A sidenote but the influence of money on politics is also one of the main reasons why capitalism is ill-equipped to deal with a threat like climate change. The Overton window matters in terms of what solutions are perceived as acceptable. If something like milquetoast social democracy is considered "extreme" because the Overton window is shifted to the right, it's a major obstacle to doing something radical that goes in that political direction. The same goes for the fascist solution: before you go ahead and let it be known that your solution to climate change is to reinforce borders and let migrants die off elsewhere, you need a certain type of opinions about migrants to be well accepted in the mainstream. I appreciate your comments, and somewhat agree. However, my opinion is that the natural arc of history (human growth) bends toward liberal ideology. I would say the word "liberal" is more just a label for the naturally occurring phenomena of how life evolves. The word "Conservative" is created just in opposition to that, because people find comfort in dualities (if not comfort, they find something, such as ground). There are certainly regressions, but over the arc of history I feel like everything moves generally to the left. The overton window implies the idea that things can actually shift back to the right, I would argue that isn't true; with the exception becoming some complete reset of humanity, like a nuclear winter or disease wiping out the majority of humanity. If we manage to lose to much of our history or understanding of what has happened in the past, maybe there can be some massive regression, but barring that... We generally don't make complete regressions as a species. *I believe gay rights are a prime example of this... no matter how much a small amount of people want to change the fact that homosexuality is becoming more and more accepted in the world, they cannot do anything to stop that process. Tthere is nothing that can stop gay people from moving toward equal rights. I would argue this for all discussions of equal rights (a liberal point of view) Younger generations don't even see the issue as an issue anymore. Another example, conservative views of the life (religion) were always meant to explain why life was the way it was. Now, science has come along to be the new "god" of our time, science's explanation of the world is farrrrrrr more accruate than religion, therefore most all people have come to adopt it. When someone gets sick we go to a doctor (non-conservative or liberal), not to pray at church (conservative). As the older generations die off, this will become more so the case. There is no overton window in regard to this "shifting public opinion back", it will never shift back, people are too smart to let it. You have accepted that in specific instances the Overton window can shift right, so I take it that you wouldn't contest that specific contexts can become more conservative; and I mean, we have a ton of those examples, for example Iran was more liberal in the 1950s than it is now, and the Weimar Republic was so liberal that it even had a full library on sex studies including trans studies that the nazis got to burn afterwards. So, okay. We're talking events on a larger scale. Even taking that into account I don't really see a reason why we should assume that humanity is always going forward. That's my main gripe with marxism btw, it posits historical materialism and that's nonsense to me. It takes major events for rightwing shifts to occur, but major events happen quite often, it's not nuclear winter level. For example the fall of the USSR caused a rightwing shift in Europe. At least in France, in the 1980s it would have been unthinkable for a far right party to get 25% of the vote and be the major opposition force to the government. It is now. I suspect we can say the same for a lot of european countries where the far right is strong. In the US you had the rise of the Tea Party, a much more further right version of the rightwing. I can't say that I know exactly how it rose, I suspect 9/11 had to do with that. But it did. If they are transformational enough, political events influence the political discussions that you get to have. Honestly I think that this notion that, it's okay, in the end we're going to win, is dangerous. Because it allows us to believe that we don't have to fight, and we do. I say nothing in my argument about not needing to struggle and fight for this change, only that the people struggling and fighting, in the end, will be doing so to move left. If you zoom in on history enough, you can probably see some very convincing "shifts right", but only if you view them with enough zoom. If you zoom out to a very large scale macro picture, I believe the trend is always left. In regard to your examples of governments changing, I would say first that what happens in government isn't a reflection of the opinion of the population, only of the rich or powerful (usually). Take the US as a primary example, the government is moving in opposition to public opinion, because of the influence of money in politics. The overton window speaks to public opinion, if I understand it correctly, which is why I was the premise of it is false. The public is never like, "man we tried science and that shit is scary... I just want my jesus back." Take your example of Germany, even with the dramatic shift to Nazism, after it was all said and done they are back to a liberal position on most things (definitely more so than the Nazis). So while something dramatic happened (the death of their economy), eventually they course corrected to a position left of the US. I would say that is a strong statement in support of what I'm suggesting. If you look at the arc of human history from the time of cavemen, to today... I think we've come a long way (overall). Though we still might kill ourselves. The bigger point... is that we will likely move more away from a view like Christianity (conservative) and more toward a Science (liberal) based view... Until we expand our understanding even more... and then we will still move even further away from Christianity.
(We might have to take it to PM at some point if we continue)
I think what both GH and I perceive is that the consequence of what you think is that struggle isn't really necessary. If there is a direction to history, if we go from a more conservative point to a less conservative point no matter what and when the rightwing wins it's just an accident that will correct itself over a sufficient amount of time, then the left wins regardless of how much you fight for it, and therefore it seems to follow logically that there is no requirement to do anything.
I take your point for the US, it's perhaps not the best example because public opinion and government policy don't interact very well (or at all). I absolutely do not take your point for Germany though, because... well, it wasn't a given that we would beat the nazis. So yeah the course corrected in this particular case, but we have no basis from this to say that it had to. It didn't.
I feel bad working against your optimism but it's a little more complicated than scientific vs religious. There is a resurgence of "race realism" these days for example. It's nonsense but it presents itself as scientific, which allows for a whole set of beliefs to continue to exist in spite of a greater reliance upon science. Not long ago Sam Harris was very popular, and one of his arguments was about how when Israel kills a bunch of Palestinians for no reason, we should have the moral clarity to remember that Israelis are better than muslims, and therefore criticism is unwarranted. Rhetorically, online, you'll often find shitlords who tell you that social justice and feminism and other stuff like this are ideologies, and ideologies function as religions; so as we become more rational and less religious, we should abandon those ideas. Looking at all these examples it doesn't strike me as contradictory that rightwing beliefs could make a resurgence even as the world becomes less religious. It's not that hard to come up with other justifications if you're motivated.
Another line of attack that I could have used is that of anti-intellectualism and the capacity to ignore inconvenient facts as "fake news". If the evil professors in universities are going full cultural marxism on us and trying to breed a new generation of leftists because they hate free speech or something, we can easily dismiss everything academicians say. And that's a whole line of science that disappears. But I suspect you would say these types of arguments aren't impactful enough to set us back in our evolution, and that could be right.
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So what's next? Ban the butter knife, the spoon, the pen, the vehicle? What about the kitchen accessories?
The gun is not the issue, automatic assault weapons or otherwise.
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United States24342 Posts
On May 26 2019 10:13 aeligos wrote: So what's next? Ban the butter knife, the spoon, the pen, the vehicle? What about the kitchen accessories?
The gun is not the issue, automatic assault weapons or otherwise. This seems like an argument for unbanning chemical weapons, nuclear weapons, biological weapons, and cruise missiles for private citizens. We've actually discussed this issue a lot in this thread. Some things are dangerous but we still allow people to use them, with some restrictions (e.g., cars). Some things are dangerous and private citizens are just not allowed to own them at all (e.g., nuclear weapons). Arguments can be made on both sides for why to treat guns like, spoons, like cars, or like nuclear weapons. Your two liner post doesn't really have sufficient analysis to add anything to the discussion.
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On May 26 2019 10:25 micronesia wrote:Show nested quote +On May 26 2019 10:13 aeligos wrote: So what's next? Ban the butter knife, the spoon, the pen, the vehicle? What about the kitchen accessories?
The gun is not the issue, automatic assault weapons or otherwise. This seems like an argument for unbanning chemical weapons, nuclear weapons, biological weapons, and cruise missiles for private citizens. We've actually discussed this issue a lot in this thread. Some things are dangerous but we still allow people to use them, with some restrictions (e.g., cars). Some things are dangerous and private citizens are just not allowed to own them at all (e.g., nuclear weapons). Arguments can be made on both sides for why to treat guns like, spoons, like cars, or like nuclear weapons. Your two liner post doesn't really have sufficient analysis to add anything to the discussion.
I feel like you're not appreciating the mind-blowing revelation we were just gifted as much as you should. Has anyone considered the dangers presented by blenders and other kitchen accessories? Kitchens in the US send over a million people to the emergency room every year and in the UK the situation isn't much better.
**Sarah Mclachlan plays**
There were 621 major injuries in kitchen environments and 3773 injuries which were actually serious enough to keep employees away from work for more than three days. That’s approximately 13 people getting injured daily in commercial kitchens across the UK – or is it? The Health and Safety Executive conservatively estimate that only just over half of all injuries actually get reported at all, so let’s double all the above numbers and see where we are.
Without serious kitchen appliance reform lives will continue to be lost.
+ Show Spoiler +/s and workers being at risk of serious injury is a serious issue and neglected animals for that matter but I had to get a laugh, I'll delete this post if it bothers anyone
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United States40776 Posts
On May 26 2019 10:13 aeligos wrote: So what's next? Ban the butter knife, the spoon, the pen, the vehicle? What about the kitchen accessories?
The gun is not the issue, automatic assault weapons or otherwise. Guns are a tool for killing. Butter knives are a tool for buttering. They're not really comparable. It's not like there is a problem of people buttering other people. If murder by buttering was a serious issue I would however be open to the banning of butter knives. For now though I think we're good.
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On May 26 2019 10:13 aeligos wrote: So what's next? Ban the butter knife, the spoon, the pen, the vehicle? What about the kitchen accessories?
The gun is not the issue, automatic assault weapons or otherwise.
If we allow posts by people with usernames starting with A, then what's next? Allowing posts by Adolf Hitler?!
I wonder if my time would be better spent dressed up as a referee, handing out red cards for egregious fallacies.
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On May 26 2019 11:22 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On May 26 2019 10:13 aeligos wrote: So what's next? Ban the butter knife, the spoon, the pen, the vehicle? What about the kitchen accessories?
The gun is not the issue, automatic assault weapons or otherwise. Guns are a tool for killing. Butter knives are a tool for buttering. They're not really comparable. It's not like there is a problem of people buttering other people. If murder by buttering was a serious issue I would however be open to the banning of butter knives. For now though I think we're good.
If there was a problem with buttering people, I'd much rather be spending my time in that thread.
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Canada10904 Posts
On May 24 2019 09:59 Sermokala wrote:Show nested quote +On May 24 2019 08:38 GreenHorizons wrote:On May 24 2019 08:31 Sermokala wrote:On May 24 2019 08:24 GreenHorizons wrote:On May 24 2019 02:13 Sermokala wrote: I don't believe you guys haven't been around long enough to understand GH's shtick. He doesn't really care for the causes or effects of anything he talks about or advocates for. He believes that the act of advocating for it and talking about it is the beginning and the end of his responsibility. Its just yet another of his "abolish the police" bullshit line of arguments. He doesn't understand the chaos that canceling police service one day would cause, but that doesn't really matter to him because he doesn't care about that he only cares about having better police and sees restarting the whole thing as the most direct path.
I could armchair general about how the small arms revolution works and how its legitimate if thats what you want. This is how it usually happens. Someone distorts or completely fabricates a position and then argues against that and laughs at how stupid it is even though it's a position they've made up, not one I've presented. It's remarkable really. To be fair GH you present arguments like a dog chasing cars. You really wouldn't know what to do with one if you caught it you just chase. You don't get to just forsware the consequences of what you advocate just because your morally correct for advocating them. Politics isn't just about having ideas its about the followthrough and result of those ideas. A revolution in the united states wouldn't solve the issues we face today with climate change. It would only cause cascading wars across the earth only after recovering from which will people change their focus to the issues at hand. A better argument would be about gun buybacks disarming predominantly black and other minority groups for some imaginary race war. Maybe revolution is hopeless (this is kwarks position) but folks should recognize the alternative isn't "a better buyback program" it's human extinction and the correct course is to save yourself for as long as you can. It's like people want to have that position without owning it's implications. I should point out that even if people think guns are pointless to the cause (I think thoroughly refuted by history), we still need a revolution. Our politicians are undeniably letting the climate (and related fallout) destroy humanity starting with the most marginalized and defenseless. So keep shitting on revolution if one must, but recognize that it's a selfish position that only portends disaster. You never state how revolution will solve anything. We keep telling you how it will not solve anything. Yet you keep insisting that revolution is the only option. You need to acept that we're not good people. We're all just monkeys and deserve to die as monkeys. He might be on to something with revolution in regards to climate change. If you look at those most effective methods to combat climate change as an individual: https://phys.org/news/2017-07-effective-individual-tackle-climate-discussed.html
Which is based upon this study: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541
It suggests the main ways discussed are not very effective, whereas plant-based diet and no car are among the more high impact methods, having one less child is through the roof as far as high impact. Mainly because one additional human does all those other things that cost the environment. They figure, if you teach +800 teens to recycle for the rest of their lives, it's counter-acted by one additional human.
However, as, for instance, my province is already at 1.6 babies per one, dropping one additional child would amount to having every other woman having a baby- very unlikely.
This is where revolution comes into play: revolutions, particularly of the Communist Russian sort is very good at killing a lot of people in a hurry (just look at the mass starvation in the Ukraine after they collectivized the farms, meaning the cities got some and the Ukraine got none.) Add to that the death count from the civil war from direct combat action, death to mass starvation and disease that follows a war, plus death from the gulag system and we'd probably really start rocking our ability to fight climate change.
(I, of course, do not advocate violent revolution. But I am increasingly pessimistic that we humans can solve this problem short of mass death or the living standards/ economy reduced to the middle ages. Neither is acceptable, so we might have to start learning from the Dutch.)
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On May 28 2019 18:22 Falling wrote:Show nested quote +On May 24 2019 09:59 Sermokala wrote:On May 24 2019 08:38 GreenHorizons wrote:On May 24 2019 08:31 Sermokala wrote:On May 24 2019 08:24 GreenHorizons wrote:On May 24 2019 02:13 Sermokala wrote: I don't believe you guys haven't been around long enough to understand GH's shtick. He doesn't really care for the causes or effects of anything he talks about or advocates for. He believes that the act of advocating for it and talking about it is the beginning and the end of his responsibility. Its just yet another of his "abolish the police" bullshit line of arguments. He doesn't understand the chaos that canceling police service one day would cause, but that doesn't really matter to him because he doesn't care about that he only cares about having better police and sees restarting the whole thing as the most direct path.
I could armchair general about how the small arms revolution works and how its legitimate if thats what you want. This is how it usually happens. Someone distorts or completely fabricates a position and then argues against that and laughs at how stupid it is even though it's a position they've made up, not one I've presented. It's remarkable really. To be fair GH you present arguments like a dog chasing cars. You really wouldn't know what to do with one if you caught it you just chase. You don't get to just forsware the consequences of what you advocate just because your morally correct for advocating them. Politics isn't just about having ideas its about the followthrough and result of those ideas. A revolution in the united states wouldn't solve the issues we face today with climate change. It would only cause cascading wars across the earth only after recovering from which will people change their focus to the issues at hand. A better argument would be about gun buybacks disarming predominantly black and other minority groups for some imaginary race war. Maybe revolution is hopeless (this is kwarks position) but folks should recognize the alternative isn't "a better buyback program" it's human extinction and the correct course is to save yourself for as long as you can. It's like people want to have that position without owning it's implications. I should point out that even if people think guns are pointless to the cause (I think thoroughly refuted by history), we still need a revolution. Our politicians are undeniably letting the climate (and related fallout) destroy humanity starting with the most marginalized and defenseless. So keep shitting on revolution if one must, but recognize that it's a selfish position that only portends disaster. You never state how revolution will solve anything. We keep telling you how it will not solve anything. Yet you keep insisting that revolution is the only option. You need to acept that we're not good people. We're all just monkeys and deserve to die as monkeys. He might be on to something with revolution in regards to climate change. If you look at those most effective methods to combat climate change as an individual: https://phys.org/news/2017-07-effective-individual-tackle-climate-discussed.htmlWhich is based upon this study: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541It suggests the main ways discussed are not very effective, whereas plant-based diet and no car are among the more high impact methods, having one less child is through the roof as far as high impact. Mainly because one additional human does all those other things that cost the environment. They figure, if you teach +800 teens to recycle for the rest of their lives, it's counter-acted by one additional human. However, as, for instance, my province is already at 1.6 babies per one, dropping one additional child would amount to having every other woman having a baby- very unlikely. This is where revolution comes into play: revolutions, particularly of the Communist Russian sort is very good at killing a lot of people in a hurry (just look at the mass starvation in the Ukraine after they collectivized the farms, meaning the cities got some and the Ukraine got none.) Add to that the death count from the civil war from direct combat action, death to mass starvation and disease that follows a war, plus death from the gulag system and we'd probably really start rocking our ability to fight climate change. (I, of course, do not advocate violent revolution. But I am increasingly pessimistic that we humans can solve this problem short of mass death or the living standards/ economy reduced to the middle ages. Neither is acceptable, so we might have to start learning from the Dutch.)
I think you'll find that if we don't do anything, a vast amount of people are going to die anyways, so a bloody revolution isn't really necessary in that regard. The idea is to try to fix our planet without that happening.
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I wish it was socially acceptable to talk about not having children as a genuine meaningful political movement for change. Its one of the few things that is still truly taboo imo. Most of my friends don't/won't have kids, some for personal reasons but some genuinely understand the harm that overpopulation is going to do to the world. Its a choice that has to be made individually, but its also something we should be increasingly speaking openly about. How many generations are we going to have until overpopulation creates a series of horrifying disasters?
You can't even post this kind of content on Facebook, for example, because most people just don't think like this and don't want to feel bad about having kids. That's fair in a way but we're getting to the point as a species where offending parents is going to be the least of our worries.
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On May 28 2019 18:22 Falling wrote:Show nested quote +On May 24 2019 09:59 Sermokala wrote:On May 24 2019 08:38 GreenHorizons wrote:On May 24 2019 08:31 Sermokala wrote:On May 24 2019 08:24 GreenHorizons wrote:On May 24 2019 02:13 Sermokala wrote: I don't believe you guys haven't been around long enough to understand GH's shtick. He doesn't really care for the causes or effects of anything he talks about or advocates for. He believes that the act of advocating for it and talking about it is the beginning and the end of his responsibility. Its just yet another of his "abolish the police" bullshit line of arguments. He doesn't understand the chaos that canceling police service one day would cause, but that doesn't really matter to him because he doesn't care about that he only cares about having better police and sees restarting the whole thing as the most direct path.
I could armchair general about how the small arms revolution works and how its legitimate if thats what you want. This is how it usually happens. Someone distorts or completely fabricates a position and then argues against that and laughs at how stupid it is even though it's a position they've made up, not one I've presented. It's remarkable really. To be fair GH you present arguments like a dog chasing cars. You really wouldn't know what to do with one if you caught it you just chase. You don't get to just forsware the consequences of what you advocate just because your morally correct for advocating them. Politics isn't just about having ideas its about the followthrough and result of those ideas. A revolution in the united states wouldn't solve the issues we face today with climate change. It would only cause cascading wars across the earth only after recovering from which will people change their focus to the issues at hand. A better argument would be about gun buybacks disarming predominantly black and other minority groups for some imaginary race war. Maybe revolution is hopeless (this is kwarks position) but folks should recognize the alternative isn't "a better buyback program" it's human extinction and the correct course is to save yourself for as long as you can. It's like people want to have that position without owning it's implications. I should point out that even if people think guns are pointless to the cause (I think thoroughly refuted by history), we still need a revolution. Our politicians are undeniably letting the climate (and related fallout) destroy humanity starting with the most marginalized and defenseless. So keep shitting on revolution if one must, but recognize that it's a selfish position that only portends disaster. You never state how revolution will solve anything. We keep telling you how it will not solve anything. Yet you keep insisting that revolution is the only option. You need to acept that we're not good people. We're all just monkeys and deserve to die as monkeys. He might be on to something with revolution in regards to climate change. If you look at those most effective methods to combat climate change as an individual: https://phys.org/news/2017-07-effective-individual-tackle-climate-discussed.htmlWhich is based upon this study: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541It suggests the main ways discussed are not very effective, whereas plant-based diet and no car are among the more high impact methods, having one less child is through the roof as far as high impact. Mainly because one additional human does all those other things that cost the environment. They figure, if you teach +800 teens to recycle for the rest of their lives, it's counter-acted by one additional human. However, as, for instance, my province is already at 1.6 babies per one, dropping one additional child would amount to having every other woman having a baby- very unlikely. This is where revolution comes into play: revolutions, particularly of the Communist Russian sort is very good at killing a lot of people in a hurry (just look at the mass starvation in the Ukraine after they collectivized the farms, meaning the cities got some and the Ukraine got none.) Add to that the death count from the civil war from direct combat action, death to mass starvation and disease that follows a war, plus death from the gulag system and we'd probably really start rocking our ability to fight climate change. (I, of course, do not advocate violent revolution. But I am increasingly pessimistic that we humans can solve this problem short of mass death or the living standards/ economy reduced to the middle ages. Neither is acceptable, so we might have to start learning from the Dutch.)
What I see in this post is a strong case that revolution is necessary and it's best to figure out how to reduce the already ongoing bloodshed the current system mandates.
Revolutions can't be bloodless imo because they spring from populations already incurring massive suffering, violence, and death.
What "bloodless" means in my view is "no one like me has their life (or QoL) endangered", which is why working within the existing system is so appealing. It preserves the benefits of that exploitation while providing the mental relief of pursuing (but never finding) remedies.
It's also part of what allows capitalism/ists to see the massive suffering and death around the world in their interest not as a consequence of capitalism, but an unavoidable fate of humanity that capitalism is the best at staving off (despite knowing it's accelerating climate change, not saving us from it).
On May 28 2019 18:33 Jockmcplop wrote: I wish it was socially acceptable to talk about not having children as a genuine meaningful political movement for change. Its one of the few things that is still truly taboo imo. Most of my friends don't/won't have kids, some for personal reasons but some genuinely understand the harm that overpopulation is going to do to the world. Its a choice that has to be made individually, but its also something we should be increasingly speaking openly about. How many generations are we going to have until overpopulation creates a series of horrifying disasters?
You can't even post this kind of content on Facebook, for example, because most people just don't think like this and don't want to feel bad about having kids. That's fair in a way but we're getting to the point as a species where offending parents is going to be the least of our worries.
The "overpopulation" argument kinda grosses me out. It takes an issue of a handful of people producing the vast majority of pollution (for their own personal benefit) and puts the blame on the masses they exploit to get it.
That said, I've chosen not to have kids because seeing these stranger's kids begging for their lives in the street to self-deafened politicians, populations, and parents is hard enough for me.
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On May 28 2019 18:40 GreenHorizons wrote:
The "overpopulation" argument kinda grosses me out. It takes an issue of a handful of people producing the vast majority of pollution (for their own personal benefit) and puts the blame on the masses they exploit to get it.
Yes I can see why that is. It grosses most people out. Unfortunately if you're first instinct in a worldwide climate emergency is to worry about who is getting blamed I find that kinda sad, and indicative of a political worldview that puts blame ahead of solutions. I agree that there is a handful of people creating the vast majority of the problems, but a much larger proportion of the population is complicit in that. Simply blaming the rich powerful people is great for achieving political change, but not solving the actual emergency. The fact is that the world is already overpopulated. Feeding the 7-8 billion humans takes alot of dirty, polluting work, regardless of profit. Your revolution won't fix that. It'll just make people feel better about wrecking up the place.
EDIT: I might create an 'environmental issues' thread where we can discuss this stuff. Maybe Nettles can come and tell us why climate change is a liberal socialist plot to take land off farmers or something. It'll be fun.
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On May 28 2019 18:54 Jockmcplop wrote:Show nested quote +On May 28 2019 18:40 GreenHorizons wrote:
The "overpopulation" argument kinda grosses me out. It takes an issue of a handful of people producing the vast majority of pollution (for their own personal benefit) and puts the blame on the masses they exploit to get it. Yes I can see why that is. It grosses most people out. Unfortunately if you're first instinct in a worldwide climate emergency is to worry about who is getting blamed I find that kinda sad, and indicative of a political worldview that puts blame ahead of solutions. I agree that there is a handful of people creating the vast majority of the problems, but a much larger proportion of the population is complicit in that. Simply blaming the rich powerful people is great for achieving political change, but not solving the actual emergency. The fact is that the world is already overpopulated. Feeding the 7-8 billion humans takes alot of dirty, polluting work, regardless of profit. Your revolution won't fix that. It'll just make people feel better about wrecking up the place.
It's not about "blame" in the esoteric sense it's about responsibility/impact (which should be prioritized imo if one seeks to fix the problem). You're argument is squeezing it's solution from the people most exploited by the problem to the benefit of the exploiters without a tethering to actually resolving the problem.
Less people just means wealthy people can pollute more while exploiting those suffering the consequences of their pollution, it doesn't address the problem at all from my perspective.
I might create an 'environmental issues' thread where we can discuss this stuff. Maybe Nettles can come and tell us why climate change is a liberal socialist plot to take land off farmers or something. It'll be fun.
This also crossed my mind and support it but the reason this is topical (if anyone's forgot) is there's a hegemonic assertion that guns and revolution are relics of bygone eras and offer no solution or protection and I'm fleshing out the counter argument to that.
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