I think this is the beginnings of an economy based on perpetual growth and fossil fuel energy running headlong into geological energy constraints. Basically I see an undulatory downward path for the rest of my life. From here out, I think any rallies in our economic condition are going to be met with spiking commodity prices that knock us right back down.
I wonder if it's the poeple who always rely on some unidentified 'they' to sort everything out, are the same ones who always manage to identify some 'them' to blame all the bad stuff on.
It must be bliss, being one of us.
As in "Why is it they never do anything about those bloody them"
"They" are "all" of "us". Sad though that diffusion of responsibility increases with the amount of people charged with that responsibility. I like to ask people who refer to "they" who "they" are. Usually there is a pregnant pause... yet they continue to use the word. _________________ -Dac
Winners never quit and quiters never win, but those that never win and never quit are idiots.
Posted: Wed Jul 20, 2005 10:45 am Post subject: Re: who is "they"?
seldom_seen wrote:
Does anyone know who they is?
In using the “they” in the manner you have described, you seem to point to a “they” that permeates the mindset of people of this culture. This culture encourages helplessness because its members believe that they have found the “One True Way” to live. For every problem that people face, our culture tells them to “not worry” because “someone” (scientists, government, the market, or some other abstraction) will correct their problem for them and thus encourages affected individual to go back to sleep and not to try to find a different way of living to solve their own problems. It doesn’t matter what the problem, the culture conditions people to respond with this idea that “they” will solve the issues for us.
The founders of this culture put forth the idea that they had found the “True” way to live, that all others must live this way, and that this way involves the endless exploitation of the environment to give the humans in this culture endless pleasure. People of this culture believe that by doing MORE of the same thing every year will ultimately solve all problems, even though this has proven itself false many times and as we consume more of the environment and crowd more people together we see even more problems with this method of living. However, the culture does not allow any other way of going about things and this notion that “they” will solve YOUR problems for you serves as one of the cultural meme’s self defense mechanisms.
This relates not only to Peak Oil but any other problem that society faces as a whole. Now that you have noticed it in the Peak Oil case, you should look for it elsewhere in this culture. You will find this notion everywhere. This should give you an idea of the magnitude of the problem. Of course, once you see this as a mere thought pattern that the culture imposes on people, and come up with your own vision of how to live your life, you free yourself from the cultural influence and can begin to learn how to change other people’s minds.
Eventually, everyone will come to understand this or we all will perish. So don’t worry about those who stick their head in the sand now. Once a critical mass of people begin to understand that the belief that they have the “TRUE” way to live has no merit, other people will come around due to the bandwagon effect. Your job, then, involves getting at least 10 others to change their minds and readying them to help 10 more people to free themselves from this meme as well.
If we follow this path we can perhaps find a way through this mess. Or at least we can die knowing that we did our best to prevent the oncoming catastrophe. _________________ EntropyFails
"Little prigs and three-quarter madmen may have the conceit that the laws of nature are constantly broken for their sakes." -- Friedrich Nietzsche
what i'm more interested in, is why people who post on the internet always spell the word 'lose' - as in 'i've lost my cat' - with two letter o's - thusly : 'loose'.
loose means e.g. 'i'm wearing loose fitting clothing'.
where did this come from? arrrgg!!!
Perhaps they (OMG, I said it, didn't I) actually mean "I am going to loose my cat upon you and she will scratch your eyes out."
I am with you - I am appalled at the spelling and grammer problems that run amok on the internet!! I made issue of this in another forum, and was essentially told "this is the internet, so what." Whatever, dude. And from a supposed graduate from UC Berkeley. Somebody else told him he should sue his university, and especially the English department. Ahhh, but that is neither here nor there.
One should also note that spell check does not catch improperly used words that are spelled correctly (like loose). And I thought Bill Gates was going to save us all...sigh.
Cheers, and keep up the crusade for correct spelling! _________________ Ignorance breeds concrete.
Joined: Feb 03, 2005 Posts: 134 Location: Austin, Texas
Posted: Wed Jul 20, 2005 7:48 pm Post subject:
I am one of the posters guilty of spelling "lose" with two o's...ie. "loose," and I am a pretty decent speller. I have no excuse but I do think this is a tricky grammar/spelling issue. The correct spelling "lose" actually looks wrong to me. It is an irregular English pronunciation that would normally be pronounced, l(oh)s.
Another tricky and very common mistake:
- Using "it's" for the possesive of it, when it actually stands for the contraction of "it is." I see this one in print all the time - packaging, magazines, etc.
I used to be a pretty horrible speller so I try to cut people a great deal of slack, especially if their content is decent. However, there are a couple of mistakes that drive me crazy, one of them being:
- Using "there" for the possessive of they, "their" or the contraction of "they are."
But really, these are very minor errors compared to some of the ghastly mistakes I see on the internet.
Examples:
- I frequently see people who spell the word "almost" as "omost" and the word "probably" as "probly."
I think one of the problems is that many people try to spell English words phonetically which is frequently disastrous. A second, increasingly more common problem is that people no longer have or take the time to proof their writing. _________________ There shall in that time be rumors of things going astray, and nobody will know where lieth those little things with the sort of raffia-work base, that has an attachment, seen only just the night before, about eight O'clock --Boring Prophet, Life of Brian
English is a pathological language. After all, I teach it.
I love speech mannerisms, accents, slang. Speech is a different beast than writing. Speech is alive, evolving,
But writing. <sigh>
English history goes back to Old German. Then came the Norman invasion in 1066, and the poults started running with the chickens, the beef with the cows, and the little porques mit der Schweine.
English grammer,<oh frig, I did it too> was codified in 17th century London, which is especially galling for American speakers of it.
Did you know the word "KNIGHT" used to be pronounced "kuh-NEEESSHHT," or something like that?
Bernard Shaw has a great joke on English orthography (spelling):
GHOTI.
Know what that spells? FISH.
The "gh" from "enough"
The "o" from "women"
The "ti" from nation
And you wonder why you can't spell?
Those of us that can are retarded. We can't balance checkbooks. _________________ "By the time individuals discover that remaining resources will not be adequate for the next generation, the next generation has already been born. " David Price
Last edited by killJOY on Wed Jul 20, 2005 8:16 pm; edited 1 time in total
I had a student today say "aren't they fixing it?" meaning social security. I told her to have a half million or million in a retirement account by the time she retires.
There's nothing "we" can do, only "they" can fix the problem. I think that's how it goes. Discharge of personal responsibility in a world where we feel increasingly powerless to change things.
No wonder the world's screwed up, we've been leaving it all to "them".
There's nothing "we" can do, only "they" can fix the problem. I think that's how it goes. Discharge of personal responsibility in a world where we feel increasingly powerless to change things.
No wonder the world's screwed up, we've been leaving it all to "them".
Exactly. It just serves as another form of selfishness. “I don’t want to do unpleasant things or make unpleasant choices!” And we have done this for a very long time. We have begun to reap what we have sown. _________________ EntropyFails
"Little prigs and three-quarter madmen may have the conceit that the laws of nature are constantly broken for their sakes." -- Friedrich Nietzsche
'They' is Santa Clause and his horde of elves who give us nice things if we behave.
Unfortunately, Santa's compound fell into the ocean because of climate change and all the elves drowned.
Santa's corpse washed up on the shore of greenland and they figured he was an ancient viking that was frozen in an ancient glacier.
'ho ho ho. merry peak oil. thanks for ruining my climate.' -santa _________________ "It's a lot easier to get someone who's never been burnt to jump in the fire.." -me
Joined: Jan 04, 2005 Posts: 62 Location: Rome, Italy
Posted: Sat Jul 23, 2005 1:33 pm Post subject: Re: who is "they"?
entropyfails wrote:
For every problem that people face, our culture tells them to “not worry”
because “someone” (scientists, government, the market, or some other
abstraction) will correct their problem for them and thus encourages
affected individual to go back to sleep and not to try to find a different
way of living to solve their own problems.
Yes, but we have to admit that the world has became more and more
complicated, so the people are led on to trust engineers, plumbers,
brokers, politician, scientists... and so on.
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