Ruminations: Faith and Humanity

Organized religion is only partly related to spirituality. The degree to which they are related rises and falls over time and at this point it is hard to imagine it getting any less related. In the US organized religion is now dedicated, if they know it or not and most don’t, to finding someone to pay the price for ongoing decline.

To the extent the decline is anywhere near the scale envisioned by TAE, or Kuntsler and the like, the amount of suffering that will rain upon the chosen victims is going to be stupendous. The apotheosis of spirituality is at hand.

I actually line up with Ash on this one, for a change. Somewhere between 2. ‘probably doomed’ and 3. ‘faith’ might save some of us.

Also, Candace is asking the right question and alfbell is on the wrong track. Regarding the latter, it doesn’t matter, ironically, if one believes in Evolution theory or Creation theory. Both explain why humans are so evil. With Christianity it is ‘original sin’.

With evolution it is almost as basic. We evolved into this because it has permitted the species to survive and continue to reproduce.

Interestingly, a study of naughty penguins conducted in 1910 has only recently surfaced. It was buried due to the shocking depravity. “Levick, fearing to expose the reading public to the horrors of penguin homosexuality, necrophilia, masturbation and rape he witnessed, coded his report in Greek so that only highly educated gentlemen would read and appreciate the depth of depravity of penguins in the Antarctic wild.”

Read more: https://www.digitaljournal.com/article/326597#ixzz1xj2kVFLm

Point being that humans aren’t much different than lowly animals. Only problem is that we now have nuclear weapons to ram up someone’s behind, instead of lesser weapons.

What alfbell wants to turn off is humans. That is what we are, unfortunately. Hard to believe there is a small spot on the brain that can be removed that would turn off all the ugliness.

Perhaps the coming depression will instill some humility in the race, but I sort of doubt it. Who knows.

@ Patrick Patrick you are describing an unfortunate and tragic development destroying some human beings in a hopeless situation. I am talking about the human race which made it from the caves to the moon and now has about 7 billion members. There is something about that trajectory and the great exceptional people that it has produced that makes me hesitant to predict it’s imminent demise.

Requirements for a reasonably decent long term existent include, IMHO:

1. A correctly calibrated value system.
2. The desire to care about others equal (not more, not less) than oneself.

BTW, that’s the Bible in two sentences – so it isn’t original thought on my part.

Neither of those things will happen, so humanity is absolutely doomed… except for the supernatural intervention of on who possesses…

1. A correctly calibrated value system.
2. The desire to care about others equal (not more, not less) than oneself.

Again, not original to me.

Holy Cow!

Nice Triv,

The question is a bit too broad for me. I have a difficult enough time with the concept of faith in daily issues of my life, to measure my faith in humanity and its future. My faith is too local to range that far.

Faith is a strange word. It’s like the air we breath and the ground we stand on. Even Atheists need it. Faith suggests to me an approach to what is coming down the tunnel. It’s a matter of where you are putting your focus.

You don’t really need to have faith in God. If there is a God It’s got a universe on its plate. And If God can balance all that, well great then, we have nothing to worry about.

You have to have faith in yourself primarily and given that we live in an addiction oriented society that is constantly telling us all the ways we are inadequate, it’s difficult to do. Instead people put a lot of faith in their stuff (toys and gadgets) that are an extension of their identity. But stripped of all that where will they put their faith?

We need to have faith in the people around us. In that way faith is similar to trust. Trust in my mind is the plural of faith and involves a contract between people. We trust that the people behind the counter at the sandwich shop aren’t going to poison us. ‘I’ve eaten here so many times before what could possibly go wrong.’

I suppose faith’s opposite is despair. The shock of loosing faith could easily lead you there.

And perhaps the only antidote is for us to be faithful to the people we love and spend the rest of our time crushing our enemies. OOPs.

Patrick said, “At the risk of insulting anyone; faith is simply silly. As we understand it, faith is that which transcends reason. It is something we prefer to believe rather than what evidence-based reason compels one to believe.”

God (or similar) exists or He doesn’t, at least not any more than a concept. Case 1-He exists as more than a concept. In this case, I’m tapping into a power and a strength that can see me through tough times.

Case 2. Doesn’t exist, except as a concept. In this case, I’m ignoring empirical evidence and believing in a power external to myself, and it that way I’m letting of a portion of the ugliness in me. Note that this ugliness is in all humans. It is part of our evolutionary legacy, or ‘original sin’, if you lean that way.

What is so horrible about case 2? How else can we possibly solve Candace’s riddle? Through science? Possibly, but look where the science budget is being spent!!!

Try to be brief …

We are all immersed within two powerful dynamics: industrialization and pop culture. These two social dynamics have become co-dependent and mutually reinforcing. The idea is of business commerce as a satisfactory replacement for ______________________ (everything).

Consequently, we have two groups managing our affairs, businessmen and pop artists. We’ve tried other systems which have all failed: totalitarians, emperors, ‘machine-states’, hyper-militarism. Meanwhile, pre-existing systems that functioned more-or-less satisfactorily for centuries have been rendered useless or obsolete: hereditary monarchies, theocratic administrative states and clan- or tribal hierarchies. The latter have proven to be more durable in the face of modernity, rather at the margins where industrial modernity is unable to reach.

Non-systems simply don’t exist. In any vacuum, a system emerges or is imposed from the outside.

That we haven’t blown ourselves up with nuclear weapons indicates we can act outside the dynamics imposed upon us by our systems. It isn’t up for discussion whether we can or cannot adjust our behavior, we have done so and continue to do so right up to this minute.

Industrialization is powerful because it can transform capital in very short periods of time, in ways that other tools cannot. Pop art is powerful because it humanizes the transformations: from man-to-woman (or vice-versa), from star to convict, from heiress to street bum, from street bum to tycoon. Transformation allows for the creation of simple, accessible ‘one size fits all’ myths. The various iterations of ‘doom’ are pop art myths: the transformation of suburban consumer to a ruritanian: the myth is older than the Bible: Exodus.

Of course, there are products you need to buy: gold, guns, freeze-dried food, etc. A successful doomer needs that ‘right kind’ of flannel shirt, the right kind of water filter. The idea of success itself (Horatio Alger story) is a part of the larger pop art myth; of outwitting/outmaneuvering the dim-witted ‘masses’ (and becoming avant garde ‘doomer-hipster’ as the outcome of the process).

Success is that fifteen-ten billionths of a second of fame, however much is ladled out these days.

Pop culture is hegemonic and intolerant. Whatever you encounter in today’s world is a form of advertising or support for business activity. Pop art: the subject of the artist is commerce and money. Included within the categories of art (for sale) are the various forms of spirituality.

A key strategy of pop art is appropriation. Ideas are stolen then reconfigured, given new (commercial) meanings: this is considered ‘artistic license’. Most of the foundational big ideas that were central to ‘America’ have been transformed into hollowed out pop myths, emptied of any real meaning then put on the shelf for ordinary consumption. These include growth, capitalism, morality, education … free markets. You are indeed free to choose Coke or Pepsi, “any color you like as long as it is black”.

Business exists to serve the interests of business owners only: pop art makes this service ‘hip’ and ‘trendy’, offering a cultural Ponzi scheme that rewards shills, motivating others to become shills themselves.

Go anywhere in the world and it is the same, the same TV shows are everywhere, the same products, the same desires, the same dominion of the businessman and the subjugation of everyone and everything to currencies and interest rates in the name of abstract progress.

The fleeting grasp at progress is why people riot in Cairo and London, die in the streets of Benghazi or Homs, why indebted college students battle the cops in New York and Madrid. They want what they have been promised by business, by popular culture and its instruments, TV, internet, movies, ‘celebrities’.

Pop-art itself is nothing more than a fashion, a trend. All trends have their own story arcs, they become exhausted (this is clearly illuminated by pulp-fictitious politics both in the US and elsewhere). At the same time, industrialization has reached the point where it has no more low-cost capital to transform. What now?

Nobody knows, we’ve never had a post-industrial society before. All the ‘old(ish)’ models are unworkable. The pre-industrial models have been forgotten or are proto-industrial and counterproductive. This is the ‘why’ behind the ‘industrialize or live in caves’ meme. We cannot see what the future holds because the pop art myths that served business interests so well for so long — ‘democracy’, flying cars and hand-held medical scanners — have been too successful. They leave behind scorched earth and a few rusty relics.

I see people groping for something outside of popular culture, finding/forming new and more useful sets of myths, something outside of ‘getting rich easily’ or ‘spending the night in the drunk tank with Lindsay Lohan’. The alternative is new uses for the older myths: ‘getting rich by conserving energy’ or inventing new ways to live that are more fun that watching others live on television.

The new regime? We’ll see …

Ashvin breaks down 3 Categories of Doomers:

Ashvin wrote:
There are generally 3 types of “Doomers”, or realistic thinkers, out there:

1) Those who believe humanity is doomed to extinction or near-extinction no matter what we do at this point in time.

2) Those who believe humanity is probably doomed to extinction or near-extinction, but there is a slim chance we can avoid such a fate if the appropriate measures are taken and all the stars align in the right places.

3) Those who have FAITH that significant portions of humanity will make it through its numerous trials in the near future, difficult and painful as they may turn out to be.

Going back to debates on this topic held on TBP a little over a year ago, in my Frostbite Falls Daily Rant I broke down Doomers into 2 categories, Doom Lite and Full Doom. I later added a category of Uber Doom.

The categories break down as follows (more detail in the FFDR article)

Doom Lite– These folks see difficult days ahead, but feel we will eventually come through it with similar technology to today.

Uber Doom– This group sees our current problems leading to an Extinction Level Event for Homo Sapiens

I’m a Full Doomer, currently leaning toward Paleolithic levels of tech in the long term for Homo Sapiens. This is based on the work of Richard Duncan, Albert Bartlett, Marvin Harris and assorted other anthropology and history out there.

Where does Faith really play into this? For me its basically an accounting here of what is likely and what is not likely to occur. You base what you do on the Most Likely possibilities, while also preparing back up plans for some of the less likely ones.

The one you cannot prepare for at all is an ELE. If Yellowstone is going to Blow, a Near Earth size asteroid is going to collide with GAIA or the pH of the Ocean is going to drop to the point the phytoplankton cannot live, we are all toast and its end of story for Human Sentience. So even though this possibility seems more likely all the time, it’s not one I concern myself with in terms of trying to prep up for it.

Doom Lite seems increasingly less likely all the time. To be able to maintain even a facsimile of what we currently have requires techno-fixes that even if possible are not being undertaken fast enough to stop population knockdown and the inevitable chaos that will result from that.

So IMHO, Full Doom is the the best theory which overall fits the facts as we see them unfolding right now. Having Faith that it will improve doesn’t strike me as a credible plan of action.

What is credible are some of the Solutions presented by people like Urban Scout Peter Bauer, and our own Peter on the Doomstead Diner. Typical Ag Based Solutions such as Farming on the Amish model to me have some credibility also, but less so than the previous mentioned ones.

Finally, the toughest thing to deal with in terms of Prep is the Political consequences in the near term here of increasing Fascism, the likelihood of War and Conscription coming down the pipe and how to negotiate that shitstorm while it is underway. Finding good solutions to that is much tougher than just the paradigms for living afterward if you survive are.

RE
https://www.doomsteaddiner.org

I echo what someone else said – ‘this is a breath of fresh air’. And more than the freshness of it is the call to look for an arrow pointing us to constructive thought and activity.

Ash said
“As you may have guessed, my version is not the EASY one to follow. It is not even the one I practice in most aspects of my own life, because I find it much too difficult. Yet, it is still what I believe to be true. Faith is not about a care-free attitude or an unquestioning, dogmatic belief in certain laws or truths. It is about time, effort, logic, critical examination, emotional stability, and, ultimately, free will.”
If you want to have faith in the survival of humanity through these trying times, you must be dilligently intent on acquiring it through your thoughts and actions”.

While many here refer to religion for their guide, I look at Free Will and Diligence as the best ways to Faith. Actually I don’t think we need an unreasoned Faith, but a rounded look at our fellow humans. Some see evil and self-serving power hungry humans, the “Illuminati”, if you will, but I more often see neighborliness, community cohesiveness and generous sharing of time, if not resources. For me the whole Occupy movement is a sharing of the pain of all levels of our society as we drop from middle class to unemployed. Out of this movement I have been allowed to see what I think are the seeds of the next urban step of salavage and sharing in the Squatters in vacant buildings.

Bot said
“We need to have faith in the people around us. In that way faith is similar to trust. Trust in my mind is the plural of faith and involves a contract between people……I suppose faith’s opposite is despair. The shock of loosing faith could easily lead you there…And perhaps the only antidote is for us to be faithful to the people we love….”

BotBlogger has focused on the real Faith – in people. I agree.

Community and people are the best answer. I think we have lots of evidence that shows how important the social aspect of humanity is. Unfortunately too often the power/greed aspect of war and the ‘rich getting richer’ is the focus of history, yet what we don’t see is all the multitude of day to day co-operation and social enjoyment among people – that doesn’t make the news or the history books.

Luk said
..We do need to believe in the possibility of a fair society, that impossible dream from the new testament : ‘a community of believers, sharing everything’

I don’t know that we all need to live in communes, but the co-operative spirit is very much alive in the Occupy Movement. When the UC Berkeley Farm was occupied, many many people from the nearby parts of Berkeley and Albany came out to donate food and supplies to the farmer/occupiers.The local Transition Town elists forwarded info on events at the Farm. for me this is the icon of the ‘I Can’ of Occupiers.

Fuzzy said
Building an artificial cage (natural ones seem to work on occasion) to keep anyone from getting too much power and subsequently wrecking society might be possible, but without taking this trait into account I feel as though we’re basically taking a shot in the dark.The only other solution I’ve been able to think of so far is to get enough people to really understand this, making them freely choose to limit the power they compete for and to act as a normative force whenever someone takes more than they should.’

That’s why laws and regulations are necessary – to limit people with power. Certainly self-regulation of Banksters has failed. The imperfections of greed will continue, but when people co-operate the scarcity mentality of greed is less necessary. Our media and capitalist consumerism promotes that “need” for goods, that addiction. When the coming Crash hits the fact is we will just go ‘cold turkey’ and money for the unnecessary dries up. Probably most of us here on TAE have quit buying on impulse and are using our cash for prepping. All those people whose unemployment has run out or who have taken early retirement sure have tightened the belt. I agree with Ash here –

Ash said
The key thing to understand is that we all have the tools necessary to change, and to free ourselves from our material desires and addictions, constantly reinforced by the system.
…but I think there are good reasons to believe that humanity’s most trying times could produce its most passionate push for personal freedom and love towards one another.

These ‘trying times’ will likely bring out some interesting responses to what RE says below.

RE said
“Finally, the toughest thing to deal with in terms of Prep is the Political consequences in the near term here of increasing Fascism, the likelihood of War and Conscription coming down the pipe and how to negotiate that shitstorm while it is underway. Finding good solutions to that is much tougher than just the paradigms for living afterward if you survive are.”

I expect that the social side of people could turn into ‘underground railroads’ for the issue of prisons and conscription like it did in the 60s & 70s. In city neighborhoods where there are a lot of vacant/foreclosed on houses, already neighbors are supporting the squats and recommending good places to use. The hardest challenge will be prison camps for squatters and occupiers. Perhaps we can hope that the economics of it all will close down prison for victimless crimes.

Sorry if this is rambling, but there were lots of good points I wanted to respond to.

It is fine to have faith. It is a blurred lens with which to view the world. Scientifically verified reality seems better. If you suspect or believe that it is likely some humansd will survive the coming catastrophe, don’t confuse that with reality. Reality exists today and beliefs about the future are not currently verified or verifiable.
Argument about “faith” seem more appropriate to some other blog.
Thanks and God Bless

This post, the comment that inspired it, and many of the comments to it constitute what has to be among the most disturbing things I have read in a long time.

“No system will ever be successful”

It all depends on how you define success, doesn’t it? The present system has been very successful at controlling people for thousands of years, in part because people it has trained people to insist on systems to control them. And when the “old” system breaks down a “new” system arises that is cosmetically different but materially, and for all practical purposes, the same.

Let’s expand the quote to its full glory:

“No system will ever be successful until the human mind, and the spiritual being that utilized it, have been isolated and fully understood. Psychiatry, psychology, psychoanalysis, et al. have failed in this area as well. Very too bad because THIS is the key to man’s future survival.”

The human mind has been well understood for thousands of years. Plato and Aristotle clearly understood the human mind, as did the author of the Tao Te Ching. The problem is that this knowledge is not generally shared but is, instead, used to exploit the masses through the very type of “system” you insist upon like a slave pleading to be shackled.

In very simple terms, all modern states are based on four things: myths, laws, ethics and hidden truths. The first three are for the masses, who are conditioned to them through our social institutions. The hidden truths, the esoterica that Aristotle insisted to Alexander could not be found in his public writings, are what transform the first three things into a lie that allows the masses to be controlled. From the Roman Empire to the Roman Catholic Church to Classical Liberalism to Neoliberalism, in each case there has been the realization by the masses that their myths, laws and ethics are being used to chain them, but they are so conditioned to being chained that they insist on a new set instead of questioning why they are chained.

“Find the source of evil and destructive intentions; the need to dominate; the need to destroy what another creates; man’s inhumanity to man; man’s illogic; man’s low level of morality; man’s “animalistic” tendencies; man’s inability to predict consequences; etc. and you will save mankind.”

False certainty is the source of evil, and it is precisely what you seem to want. Human beings are very simple creatures: they compare what they observe to what they expect and react based on the magnitude and direction of the perceived difference between what they just saw and what they expected. If you define “rational” to encompass how human beings actually reason, then human beings are clearly rational, and what is irrational is to insist that human beings reason like mathematical machines.

The only thing that is certain in this world is uncertainty. Unfortunately, we have been trained to insist on false certainty which leads us to engage in acts– often evil– to force our world to conform to our expected “true” vision of the world. Anybody who insists on false certainty will construct their “truth” and tyrannize those around them to make that truth reality, and damn the consequences.

The new boss will be the same as the old boss. In the meantime, people will suffer and lament at their lost innocence. If they’d only embrace that lost innocence and accept the uncertainty of the world and what it means to us as a species, you might have the beginnings of a system that does not exploit the masses because it cannot be created or controlled by sociopaths, con men and women who sell us false dreams.

Wow, this is really a great ink blot. We are all seeing different things or perhaps just different parts of the elephant.

Not surprisingly I see community efforts, while others see the owners tricking the sheeple.

I think the “discensus” (as coined by JMGreer) here is a good thing, like a variety of hybrid seeds blowing in the wind. Our diversity will be needed, since there is apparently no “answer” to our predicament.

Dear Automatic Earth and readers

I don’t pretend to understand half of what is talked about on this site, but I do enjoy reading it, because I too have ‘doomer’ tendencies somewhere in the 2 – 3 bracket.

I believe there is a way humanity can save itself from itself, and that is through an instinctive understanding of the true nature of the mind.

At base we are the ability to know. This is the most incredible thing! What we do however is train ourselves to notice the things that we know and continually overlook the magnificent facility/ability that we are. This is so universal that it appears to be a human fact. It is in the world of ‘the things that we know’ that all negativity and positivity take place. Our true nature is inherently peaceful and loving, just look at a new born baby. It is in a shift of attention towards this common reality where I place my hope for the future.

Towards this end there are now a few people and organisations making some progress, the most notable of which in my opinion is http://www.balancedview.org/ .

Please spend a bit of time getting to know what is being said on this site. It is not about faith or religion or spirituality, it is about what we really are before we give attention to those ideas and is so germane to all the pressing issues occurring right now.

I am not a representative of this organisation any more than you are.

Mike

davisherb – “Argument about “faith” seem more appropriate to some other blog.”

Ash specifically solicited viewpoints on faith and humanity, so I think this thread is appropriate. If you find the subject out of your interest zone (or off-topic for the blog), its a pretty simple matter to just skip this discussion, yes? At least, that’s what I do.

The word “faith” has a number of definitions. Many people have unfortunate reactions to the definitions that are tied to God or religion. I think Ash was using some combination of the following two definitions:
1. confidence or trust in a person or thing
2. belief that is not based on proof

Glennda:
I’m sorry if I wasn’t entirely clear, but I see laws and regulations AS a cage. In our case, when banks became self-regulating it was just another step as they escaped the laws put in place to keep the Great Depression from happening again.

I like to think of it like Jurassic Park, where the pessimistic mathematician expects that the dinosaurs will inevitably escape from their pens: “Life finds a way.”

Ashvin:
I see what you’re saying, but I worry that it’s too easy to forget. One or two generations might learn this lesson, but if they succeed in creating a better society, the generations that come after just won’t have the experience or the motivation to get them to understand.

I suppose there’s a possibility that with some obvious damage to the world and a good narrative we could change how we organize ourselves. It’s interesting reading Collapse and comparing how a number of North American societies would expand in a series of wet years – not remembering how dry things normally were in their area – compared to Iceland, where the moonscapes there are a permanent reminder that they need to take good care of their soil.

Just remember, no one, no one, makes it out of this alive. Everyone will bite the dust sooner or later. And we can’t take that nice house or nice car or a single solitary penny with us when we go.

If there is actually an existence beyond this one, all we can take with us is our legacy and any wisdom gained. So pick your sides carefully as they define you. Make your choices to advance your understanding. Winning and losing is not nearly as important as discovering yourself and developing some wisdom.

I will be posting this tomorrow on my own blog, but, as an unwonted display of courtesy I will post it here since it is sort of a rebuttal.
I always take the time to read “The Automatic Earth” and the wonderful commentary and articles that make it a treasure. The post in question is “Ruminations on Faith and Humanity“. But I was genuinely shaken to see the following quote expounded upon by the reader “Alfbell” in the most recent post.

No system will ever be successful until the human mind, and the spiritual being that utilized it, have been isolated and fully understood. Psychiatry, psychology, psychoanalysis, et al. have failed in this area as well. Very too bad because THIS is the key to man’s future survival.

Find the source of evil and destructive intentions; the need to dominate; the need to destroy what another creates; man’s inhumanity to man; man’s illogic; man’s low level of morality; man’s “animalistic” tendencies; man’s inability to predict consequences; etc. and you will save mankind.”

Wow, where do I start? Just another go at having a particular, parochial set of thoughts shoved down the throats of others in a sincere, open-hearted attempt to “help”

The human condition is quite simply not one of perfectibility. That is not the point of human existence. The point of human existence is the messy striving and learning and other such unpleasantness that makes up our sin-stained existence. In a very real sense, the world defined by Alfbell is not one where I wish to live.

We are not proto-gods, trying to build ourselves into perfect, luminous creatures. We are a bunch of apes who are trying to get along in a world where we have overshot (by a large margin) the constraints placed on us by a limited world. We are now just getting this little factoid through our collective thick skulls. What is proposed by the oh-so sincere readers of the Automatic Earth is a more thorough understanding of the animal nature so that we can save mankind. Well folks, I think that it is pretty easy to figure out that a pretty complete understanding of human nature is quite possible. Just ask the folks on Madison Avenue.

An individual has a chance of figuring out how to rid himself of illogic, to control his baser desires, to use analytical skills to better produce desired outcomes for himself, etc., etc., etc. But that ability is located solely in the individual. The ability for an external effect to change or “make right” an individual is laughably limited. But that doesn’t mean most people don’t want to give it a try. But what most people want is for the great mass of other folks to just do whatever the person speaking wants them to do. There is no particular moral suasion that is de facto “right”. There are only personal preferences. What most folks want is to die well-fed and comfortably in bed with a minimum of fuss and bother and pain.

Yet individuals such as “Alfbell” request and beseech over and over again for “more study” to be put into the nature of mankind so that the unwashed masses can made civil and subsequently be invited in for high tea. What will be done with the “additional study” will be what has happened every time. Those who desire power and influence will use that same information to garner their heart’s desire.

Folks, there is a reason that there are different disciplines for psychology, sociology, and economics. There is also a reason why all must be taken into consideration when anyone who is intellectually honest makes any call for action in the world of men. We are not fragments of the divine encased in a vulgar shell. We are messy, somewhat greedy apes with the odd bit of potential showing through. The actions of the individual are different from the actions of crowd and different still from the sciences of greed. Taking all three together and trying to make some “Grand Unified Theory” has been a fruitless and sterile bit of research for going onto 12,000 years.

Folks who come to the Church of the Doomer and its silly assortment of motley priests and deacons are partaking in that oldest of human traits, the tribe. When they do so and folks start coalescing around a one set of sect-leaders or another, they are just looking for the seed to create a movement to shove their flavor of the truth down the throats of an unwilling world. Consider another quote from the same article:

Candace asks…

“What I’m trying to figure out is if we all fail to be our best selves at least some of the time, are there any structures we can impose on ourselves that will at least keep us from causing massive damage to ourselves and the planet?”

Folks, my real and true belief is that, barring alien intervention or a sudden insight into the laws of physics which allows a shortcut around the second law of thermodynamics, our descendants will be living in a world populated by around a billion and a half people by 2200. Now, some of the faint of heart might immediately start shrieking and gibbering and pulling their hair and begin mouthing loaded words like “near extinction”. Nonsense. It will just be Professor Ehlich contentedly having the last word. The earth will abide.

The train has already left the station on the current overpopulation on “Mam Gaia” and the concomitant damage to the environment. The work-arounds and patches that have allowed the current state of affairs are beginning to fray pretty badly. The downslope is now ahead of us. No amount of “spiritual” effort will help anyone in the long run except as helping in the crossing we will all make.

Economics boils down we all want more than our share. Sociology boils down that when you get us together in large groups, all bets are off. Psychology boils down to the fragile and flawed set of tools that we have developed to understand a world well out of our control. When you begin tacking words like spirituality, what you are trying to do is grab some shred of an erstwhile moral high ground and use it as a tool to shove your desires and expectations down the throats of others.

@Degringolade,

“Wow, where do I start? Just another go at having a particular, parochial set of thoughts shoved down the throats of others in a sincere, open-hearted attempt to “help””

Excellent start, but you get bogged down.

“Folks, there is a reason that there are different disciplines for psychology, sociology, and economics. There is also a reason why all must be taken into consideration when anyone who is intellectually honest makes any call for action in the world of men.”

This is where you get bogged down. Those three disciplines used to be one and the same. Just put “political” in front of psychology, sociology, and economics, and you have the basic outlines of the reality of our forefathers (who just called all of it “political economy”). The further division of intellectual labor since then has not changed the nature of politics or power.

“An individual has a chance of figuring out how to rid himself of illogic, to control his baser desires, to use analytical skills to better produce desired outcomes for himself, etc., etc., etc. But that ability is located solely in the individual.”

Sophistry. Every individual alive today is define primarily by what society teaches him or her. Societal institutions can easily teach everyone how “to rid himself of illogic, to control his baser desires,” but that is not the goal of the modern (or even ancient) state.

“Economics boils down we all want more than our share. Sociology boils down that when you get us together in large groups, all bets are off. Psychology boils down to the fragile and flawed set of tools that we have developed to understand a world well out of our control. “

But the economics, sociology and psychology you define are all based on explaining and maintaining the current status quo. That’s a major problem for your worldview.

@Candace,

I think your assumptions about human nature are fundamentally unsound. We are not all of us greedy and self-destructive. The vast majority of us just want to be left alone to the joy we can eke out of the hand that we’ve been dealt.

Most adult humans are just like children: innocent. They don’t understand the way of the world in the same manner as the real “grown-ups” do. There is hope, but it lies in sharing the unspoken knowledge that those who rule rely upon to rule. Marx proved that sharing that knowledge quickly undermines the position of the powerful. The problem is that Marx shared that knowledge through the language of the powerful and, thus, was co-opted.