Re: Everything Won't Be Alright

[rlmrdl]

ashvin post=5063 wrote:
Simply BEING is not a belief system to be tolerated. The choice to be content with who you are and what you have (and have not) achieved is a personal one faced by every single person regardless of his or her belief system. No, this is not about belief systems or lifestyles, but about being human. Who am I- and who are you- to demand that others strive for something they don’t want or need? The fact of the matter is that those who call for the perfecting of humanity really want to make everybody else be more like them.

Can we get away from all the psychobabble and back to the issues that this site deals with please?

This is a debate about the distinction between maximisers (be all you can be, fulfil your potential etc) and optimisers (enough is enough)

In prior times, maximisers were valuable, they sought out new lands, new resources, new ways and places to live. In those times such searches were inherently dangerous and many such maximisers died in their attempt and kept in balance the genes in the pool.

But we are now working on the limits of resource capacity, we have probably overshot it. That means we are now working in a zero sum game. Every time, every single time, that someone maximises their own potential they demand more of the resources than are needed to keep them alive. Those resources are immediately taken from someone else who necessarily has to deal with less than they need.

Now those who choose to maximise their potential by retreating to a world of meditation and spiritual conquest, inherently, minimise their demands on the physical resources of the community. So it was in places like Sikkim and Bhutan, and to an extent in pre-20thC Britain where third and further children entered the monastery to create spiritual wealth and welfare and, not coincidentally, to renounce breeding and to act as a store or human resource should there be some family disaster.

We are playing a game that will decide the future of human survival on the planet and we are into injury time. The maximisers will lead us right off the pitch, we will only be allowed to keep playing if the optimisers predominate. The key problem is that the rules and the psychology have been created by the maximisers because one of the roads to personal maximisation is through politics and economic power.

Now, I’m really open to the conversation about how those of us trying to build a bridge to a sustainable human population on this planet, can apply the resources we have to manipulate or enforce that change.

[ashvin]

rlmrdl

You quoted someone else, and attributed it to me erroneously, and then said that everything stated was a bunch of “psychobabble”, and that we need to get “back to the issues that this site deals with”.

Yes, you are exactly the problem. Re-think what you said and why you said it, please. Use a little more care and a little more logic.

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