[ReducedToZero]

Humans have always dreamed and idealized about the posibilities of a time machine.

I was sitting around thinking tonight: If I jumped into a time machine during Peak Oil, and fast forwarded, say, centuries, millenea, beyond, would the mistakes and themes of the 19th to 21st century repeat themselves? Would sustainability be necessity or would we eventually revert by some other means to an overshot species?

Would the Oil Era be considered the "Height" of the human race?

Clearly this question has different answers depending on the aspect of humans that is focused on:

Morality
Technology
Population

[patience]

Can't change history, as far as I know, but it would be nice to get some direction now so we don't screw it all up so badly.

[Heineken]

I think the human race reached its height during the classical period, thousands of years ago.

It's been downhill ever since.

[vision-master]

Would the Oil Era be considered the "Height" of the human race?

NO!

Would sustainability be necessity or would we eventually revert by some other means to an overshot species?

YES, sustainability will be necessity!

[vtsnowedin]

I think the human races best days are ahead of it.
Unfortunatly our worst days may well lie between now and that brighter future.
I would like to think that the low point in our history was Dunkirk in WWII but with a nuclear armed Russia thrashing around Europe at the start of Peak Oil the worst maybe yet to come.

[Heineken]

I think the human race's best days are ahead of it.

Why? Or better yet, How? Are we suddenly going to wake up one morning on our irretrievably damaged planet and be rational beings?

[vision-master]

I think the human race's best days are ahead of it.

Why? Or better yet, How? Are we suddenly going to wake up one morning on our irretrievably damaged planet and be rational beings?

Pole Shift coming. Everything will change. Hope to survive. Will happen within one day.

[vtsnowedin]

I think that the population/energy/food problem will be solved one way or the other hopefully not by nuclear war.
Post population decline where I expect we will get down to a world population of about two billion the strain on the enviroment will be greatly reduced. No need to over fish or farm marginal soils. The portions of the earth that are no longer being exploited by four billion people will quickly heal to a stable and productive state, We may abandon arid areas like the Los Angelels basin entirely.
And I think further advances in technology will let us live quite well using only renewable solar energy with no net pollution .
So the hunting and the fishing will be better, the food will be good to eat, the air will be clean and the need for war will be gone.
Now if we can just find an easy way past that annoying population problem ??

[Kingcoal]

The "Golden Age" is always just around the corner. What stands in our way? That's the $64 question. Maybe it has something to do with human ignorance en mass. There have always been enlightened ones - true enlightened ones, not those whole think they have to turn enlightenment into a secret society. The problem has always been with the "great unwashed masses," in their hands is the fate of mankind. It's always been that way and it always will be. The rulers of this planet have always been far outnumbered and that scares them to death. Their solution has always been to scare the masses to death and thus into submission through control which begets war. It's an on going cycle and when and if it ever stops, utopia will truly blossom. The masses think they are sheep and thus think that they need a sheep herder. In that way, they debase themselves and pave a personal road to hell for themselves. The ultimate truth is that the only thing that mankind has ever needed is personal responsibility. We are absolutely free and that requires integrity, intelligence and wisdom. Unfortunately, the masses just don't ever seem to wake up to the truth. It is everyone's personal choice as to which master they serve; if any. It's always been that way and it always will be that way.

[mos6507]

Pole Shift coming. Everything will change. Hope to survive. Will happen within one day.

I can't wait until 2012 is over so this kind of thinking goes the way of the Year2K anxiety.

[vision-master]

I can't wait until 2012 is over so this kind of thinking goes the way of the Year2K anxiety.

This event will not happen 12,21 2012, nor in 2012. Quit watching all them youtube doomer flicks. But a pole shift is in progress.

Maybe you need to vist your Rabbi.

Ignore back on. Over an out.

[TWilliam]

Pole Shift coming. Everything will change. Hope to survive. Will happen within one day.

I can't wait until 2012 is over so this kind of thinking goes the way of the Year2K anxiety.

Who said anything about 2012? Barring a 'self-fulfilling prophecy' effect, I largely expect 2012 to be a non-event. However that does not negate the reality that emergent phenomena --rapid and profound shifts to higher-order gestalts-- can and do occur, or that pole shifts likewise occur (the geologic record makes it quite clear that they do); the relevant question is whether or not the one can or will induce the other. But as far as 2012 is concerned, I simply believe that such macroscopic events cannot be predicted with any degree of human-scale accuracy.

On the other hand, calendars are generally based on some form of natural cycle, so the fact that the Mayan calendar 'ends' (or more accurately, 'resets', just as ours 'resets' each January 1st) is likely significant in some cosmological sense. Whether it means anything important as far as human experience is concerned, wellllll... guess we'll find out in a few years eh?

[doodlebug2]

I think it will be a slow , almost inperceptible decline. Ignorance of the people and not seeing the signs leads me to that conclusion. Plus, the idea that people feel that something wonderful will apprear or be invented (hydrogen et. al and oil shales etc.) that will clear up the worlds problems. It seems every year the ocean get worse and worse and nothing is every done about it.

I still do not understand how with population growing and peak oil around the bend we will feed everybody???IMO.

[Opies]

I don't know whether it will be a peak in morality or technology, but I would definitely say this will be the peak in human population. Barring some incredible discovery, we will never have even close to 6.7 billion again

[aldente]

2012 is subject to constant misinterpretation. After Jose Arguelles brought attention to the Maya calender, lesser minds decided to interpret what they could not understand (meaning that the calender ends) as the end of the world as we know it. Doomsday in other words.

Time, as we generally define it, is a constant. What if it develops a dynamic of its own?

Per Terrence McKenna in one of his mind-excursions, a breakthough possibly could happen if a message sent from the here and now would reach the future. This, obviously is not an option at current standards. However, if the overall capacity of intelligence is boosted (with the help of our silicon friends the computers), and if a mind should 'touch the future', be it organic or artificial, a short circuit with the future, or more accurate an implosion of the static time model would occur. The dog that finally bites his own tail.

Mc Kenna visualizes a 'time' where you don't choose to live at a certain address, but rather where you pick the 'time' as an address of your choice.

However:

Time travel is not possible before such a short-circuit, meaning, if 2012 (which was determined by McKenna independently from Arguelles) should indeed be the annihilation point (of time as we define it), we will never be able to return to the time that we are in right now. So, you better savor the moment, since it will be lost forever!

[Dezakin]

Would the Oil Era be considered the "Height" of the human race?

Yes.

One thousand years from now humanity will be irrelevant.

[vision-master]

Would the Oil Era be considered the "Height" of the human race?

Yes.

One thousand years from now humanity will be irrelevant.

Spreading the fear, are ya.

Is taht what your crystal ball(s) says, huh?

[Dezakin]

Would the Oil Era be considered the "Height" of the human race?

Yes.

One thousand years from now humanity will be irrelevant.

Spreading the fear, are ya.

I dont see anything to fear from it. A thousand years is a long time.

Is taht what your crystal ball(s) says, huh?

Without a doubt.

[Kristen]

Its interesting that someone mentioned 2012 and I just finished the novel 2012 by Whitley Strieber. Its totally fiction and about parallel universes and such, but a good read.

As far as this pole shift business, won't south just become north on our compasses?

[vision-master]

Its interesting that someone mentioned 2012 and I just finished the novel 2012 by Whitley Strieber. Its totally fiction and about parallel universes and such, but a good read.

As far as this pole shift business, won't south just become north on our compasses?

No