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Anti-Civilization

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  Quote pekau Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: Anti-Civilization
    Posted: 07-Sep-2007 at 18:35
Originally posted by Adalwolf

Originally posted by pinguin

There is a more simply argument in favor of civilization these days. Without mechanization, chemistry and modern medicine, this planet couldn't stand the 6 billion people it has right now.

If civilization stops. If all the trains, trucks and ships that transport food from the farms to the cities stop suddenly, and if mechanization in the farms stops, the world simply wouldn't have enough food to feed its people. Mass starvation would follow.
 
With the hunter gathering methods, the planet could hardly support more than one hundred million of human beings, more or less. There are 60 times more on the planet already.
 
 
 
 


Your right about the planet not being able to sustain us without agriculture. There isn't enough food for 6 billion people without it, but is how we are living now sustainable? Is it in the best interests of the planet to keep going as we are now?

More and more species are becoming extinct or being driven close to the edge. The world becomes more and more polluted, and people become more and more dislocated from the world, more isolated in the hell-holes known as cities, dependent on the system for survival.
 
As a human being, I have to stress out the importance of survival. Civilization helped human beings to maintain and increase chance of survival on Earth. Everything else becomes considered afterwards.
 
Civilization is not harmful to Mother Earth. Civilization is merely a system that human beings use to ensure our survival and increase the effectiveness of economy and enrich our society. What harms the Mother Nature is that this benefit permits population explosion because it is efficient. We can have civilization with controlled population and secure our chance of survival and keep the environment healthy. But that doesn't occur because people are greedy. We want more and more. Government encourage population boom to have more labors and tax income. People encourage baby boom to stay majority in certain area. Colonization, war and unreasonable hunting for money are few reasons why people seem to be the threat to environment.
 
 
     
   
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 07-Sep-2007 at 21:47
Originally posted by pekau

Originally posted by Adalwolf

...
Your right about the planet not being able to sustain us without agriculture. There isn't enough food for 6 billion people without it, but is how we are living now sustainable? Is it in the best interests of the planet to keep going as we are now?

More and more species are becoming extinct or being driven close to the edge. The world becomes more and more polluted, and people become more and more dislocated from the world, more isolated in the hell-holes known as cities, dependent on the system for survival.
 
As a human being, I have to stress out the importance of survival. Civilization helped human beings to maintain and increase chance of survival on Earth. Everything else becomes considered afterwards.
 
Civilization is not harmful to Mother Earth. Civilization is merely a system that human beings use to ensure our survival and increase the effectiveness of economy and enrich our society. What harms the Mother Nature is that this benefit permits population explosion because it is efficient. We can have civilization with controlled population and secure our chance of survival and keep the environment healthy. But that doesn't occur because people are greedy. We want more and more. Government encourage population boom to have more labors and tax income. People encourage baby boom to stay majority in certain area. Colonization, war and unreasonable hunting for money are few reasons why people seem to be the threat to environment.
 
 
 
I agree with Adalwolf in this point and I dissagree with Pekau. Civilization is harmful to Mother Earth, even more, human beings are harmful to Mother Earth... It is well known that the first human beings that entered to Australia and the Americas caused the extinction of lot of species. Every time polinesians conquered a new island a massive extinction followed. Europeans did the same.
 
The problem is not that I guess. Our planet is doom to have less and less variety of natural species so we are converting our house in a quite poor place... However, there is a bigger problem which is if we are going to survive in the LONG TERM...
 
With the population explosion in Africa, the development of Asia (and the polution that follows) and the global increase of standard of living, besides the endless destruction of the environment worldwide, there is a chance we alter our planet so much that we are wiped out of earth surface, literarily.
 
We have a hole in the ozone layer already. It hasn't closed and we got it right on top of us, down under.
 
Global warming is going on, and there is no reason to believe it will stop anytime soon. Do you imagine the chaos of immigration of hundred of million people changing the continent they live because everything is destroyed already?
 
Actually, I don't believe things will going to get easier in the future at all.
 
Pinguin
 
 
 
 
 
 
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  Quote gcle2003 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 09-Sep-2007 at 08:29
Originally posted by Adalwolf

Originally posted by pinguin

There is a more simply argument in favor of civilization these days. Without mechanization, chemistry and modern medicine, this planet couldn't stand the 6 billion people it has right now.

If civilization stops. If all the trains, trucks and ships that transport food from the farms to the cities stop suddenly, and if mechanization in the farms stops, the world simply wouldn't have enough food to feed its people. Mass starvation would follow.
 
With the hunter gathering methods, the planet could hardly support more than one hundred million of human beings, more or less. There are 60 times more on the planet already.
 


Your right about the planet not being able to sustain us without agriculture. There isn't enough food for 6 billion people without it, but is how we are living now sustainable? Is it in the best interests of the planet to keep going as we are now?
 
Possibly not. However, who gets to pick the 5.9 billion people who have to die?
 
I guess a good start would be to kill off everyone under 35 or possibly 40. That would help especially because it would lead naturally to a reduction in fertility, and also make humanity less able to dominate other species.


More and more species are becoming extinct or being driven close to the edge. The world becomes more and more polluted, and people become more and more dislocated from the world, more isolated in the hell-holes known as cities, dependent on the system for survival.
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 09-Sep-2007 at 14:42
Originally posted by gcle2003

... 
Possibly not. However, who gets to pick the 5.9 billion people who have to die?
 
I guess a good start would be to kill off everyone under 35 or possibly 40. That would help especially because it would lead naturally to a reduction in fertility, and also make humanity less able to dominate other species.


More and more species are becoming extinct or being driven close to the edge. The world becomes more and more polluted, and people become more and more dislocated from the world, more isolated in the hell-holes known as cities, dependent on the system for survival.
 
Jesus! You are calling for a new hollocaust in global scale! I know that you are kidding though...
 
In my opinion a good measure is to work hard in stopping the population explosion in Africa, and put more strenght in places like India and the Middle East. That has to be done quickly, otherwise we could end up easily with 12 billion people instead of 6.
 
For the rest of the countries, it is quite obvious the population boom already passed and that population decline in the horizon. However, those developing countries that have contain population growth are usually in better economical shape... which mean people will start to consume at the scale of Americans quite soon and polution will skyrocket!
 
There is not an easy way out of this mess. It will take centuries to constrain population growth and encourage population decline, and also to clean the large environmental mess that is just starting now. There is a chance that people survive that but there is no certainty. What is clear is that the world of the long term future will be quite different than today's, with people having few children, lot of senior citizens and the continuos menace of extinction because lack of reproduction. Besides, our "natural" environment won't be more than poor and chear artificial parks.
 
A good point is that cheap labour won't exist anymore, and employees will have to pay what people deserves.
 
Pinguin
 
 
 
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03-Jun-2008 at 19:05
Originally posted by Eusebius

I think someone should define what is meant by "civilization" in this thread.  Aborigines and Native Americans were used as examples of non-civilizations... why?  I would have considered them civilizations.  They maintained small communities -- i.e., cities, which in the Latin is civis... hence civilization.  I believe their civilization was "primitive" in comparison with Western Europe, but it was still civilization.
 
Any thoughts?
 

civilization is based on people living in cities with populations dense enough to require the importation of food stuffs and other nessesities. the aborigini and native americans lived in communities that were small enough to be sustained by the land that they lived on. so no, they wernt civilized.... which is a good thing

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  Quote Odin Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 23-Jun-2008 at 17:05
Transhumanists such as myself are disgusted and dismayed by the anarcho-primitivists. The problem is not civilization, the problem is not progress, the problem is not economic growth. the problem is that we have become so technologically powerful that we have become a force of nature and thus we need to learn to use that power wisely, using it as a force for creation instead of destruction.

It is true that initially technology led to centralization and class stratification. But, as time went one it started going in the opposite direction. Technology, especially communications technology in recent years (the Internet, blogs especially), has led in the opposite direction, towards less centralization and hierarchy.

It is true that technology got us into the environmental mess we are in, but it will take even more technology to get us and the biosphere out of this mess. We need to creat an infrastructure of power plants, rail, airplane, ship, and automobiles that is almost totally free of fossil fuels via the use of nuclear energy, renewables, and electric vehicles. We need to use biotechnology in order to reduce the need for oil-based fertilizers. I have read of ideas to build gigantic floating "islands" to grow crops on. We could mine asteroids for their metals. There are currently experiments working on growing meat in the lab, such experiments may make raising livestock unnecessary.

Soon it will be time for the Children of Gaia to set sail on the cosmic ocean and go on our way to the stars.
"Of the twenty-two civilizations that have appeared in history, nineteen of them collapsed when they reached the moral state the United States is in now."

-Arnold J. Toynbee
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 24-Jun-2008 at 01:57
Originally posted by Odin

Transhumanists such as myself are disgusted and dismayed by the anarcho-primitivists. The problem is not civilization, the problem is not progress, the problem is not economic growth. the problem is that we have become so technologically powerful that we have become a force of nature and thus we need to learn to use that power wisely, using it as a force for creation instead of destruction.

It is true that initially technology led to centralization and class stratification. But, as time went one it started going in the opposite direction. Technology, especially communications technology in recent years (the Internet, blogs especially), has led in the opposite direction, towards less centralization and hierarchy.

It is true that technology got us into the environmental mess we are in, but it will take even more technology to get us and the biosphere out of this mess. We need to creat an infrastructure of power plants, rail, airplane, ship, and automobiles that is almost totally free of fossil fuels via the use of nuclear energy, renewables, and electric vehicles. We need to use biotechnology in order to reduce the need for oil-based fertilizers. I have read of ideas to build gigantic floating "islands" to grow crops on. We could mine asteroids for their metals. There are currently experiments working on growing meat in the lab, such experiments may make raising livestock unnecessary.

Soon it will be time for the Children of Gaia to set sail on the cosmic ocean and go on our way to the stars.
 
The problem is that "progress" is not created by will but economics. If something don't produce money is not manufactured.
 
Our planet is in a mess because we use "the cheapest technology possible". That's why we keep burning oil for transportation and hydrogen is not used widespread. We preffer to build cheap nuclear power plants rather than adventure with solar power sattelites.
 
Even more, the Children of Gaia are stuck at the ground. With such a junky technology like today's space shuttle we won't get to the stars, Mars and not even the Moon! Fourty years have passed since the last Moon landing and we are still waiting for the next trip. Fourty years ago rich people could fly at supersonic speed in a Concords, but that's not possible anymore!
 
Of what progress you are talking about? i-pods?
 
I am afraid the problems of today won't be solved by just injected a little more tech. There is a change of mentality going on and ecology is our only chance to survive.... while the scientists figure it out new techs. You know, they have been studying nuclear fusion and atomic rocket during 60 years... perhaps in 600 years more they'll find the solution and we will escape to the stars. Hopefully is not too late.
 
 
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