[onlooker]

What went wrong?

I have been thinking and have thought about the state of the world. In fact like any thoughtful human I believe has and is doing. Yet not just the present but the past. True we have achieved much technologically. However, socially where have we been and where are we now. We bought into a system of hierarchical power and decision making and our leaders for the most part throughout history have led us poorly. We have created very unequal , unjust and mostly unsustainable societies ecologically speaking. We have created in the modern age a voracious beast of an economy which devours all and spews out waste. We have spread an ethos of greed and competition around the world with it’s concomitant vices of inequality and injustice not to mention worse vices such as drugs and arms. We remain in many countries backwards in our tolerance of each other and our differences. Certainly at this time, some regions are barely livable such as the Middle East, Africa and Central and South America. We remain divided in a multitude of ways, by religion, by race, by material status, by gender etc. Is not progress finally realizing that we are all human beings and we have so much more in common then we have as differences. So to not continue too long , I pose that question to the intelligent surfers and members of this site. Looking forward to read the responses.

[jedrider]

A bit too much Creative Destruction. There were things worth preserving that we did not preserve, such as the environment.

[Shaved Monkey]

The pyramid scheme/religion called Capitalism is based on slavery ,cheap polluting and greed,and we are all seduced by the shiny idols.

[dissident]

What went wrong is what has been going wrong through all of human history: the incessant attempt to follow the path of least resistance. As an example: it's cheaper to pretend fracking does not contaminate ground water so we are told it is safe and the government officials who are supposed to follow our interests let this happen. They respond to their immediate needs and not the fickle, semi-passive masses. Why exert effort to do the right thing, when it is so much easier and financially rewarding to follow the bidding of those with the money. To save some old growth forest requires massive amounts of effort to fight the government and its corporate puppet masters. In Ontario some tiny fragment was opened to logging because a few local jobs would be lost if it wasn't. This is the crap on a silver platter thinking that is rampant amongst the deciders. More jobs are lost elsewhere and nobody does anything and these logging jobs are going to be temporary anyway since this was not some 100 year supply of pine. This pattern is repeated on all levels.

The net result of such decision making is that resources are squandered and there is no evolution in the system to deal with long term problems. Society is an organism that exists on a very small planet. But it acts like it is in an infinite reservoir of all that needs to survive. You cannot get the macro scale behaviour of the system to exhibit features fundamentally at odds with its micro scale behaviour.

[Pops]

I don't know that anything went wrong. Our evolution is a blinding success; upright walking, tool making, abstract thinking, terraforming beasts that we are. This is our niche.

Granted it would be nice if there weren't so many of you out there using up my resources and spoiling my countryside.

I think a person would do well to get a little perspective on all the seemingly important topics of the day - all the made up little soap operas on the nightly news are just manifestations of our knee-jerk opinions institutionalized and written large - in our imaginations anyway. We contrive to justify the subconscious imaginings of our outsize brains by believing we actually have some idea of truth and reality, when in actual reality all any of us can grasp is the made up world imagined between our ears. LOL

Religion? A manmade game institutionalizing made up rules about made up reality, or in other words; knee-jerk opinion.
Politics? Made up facts about made up reality defending knee-jerk opinion and/or religion.
Government? Another imaginary human construct made up to defend religion and politics and especially knee-jerk opinion.

So essentially my knee-jerk opinion is most of the things we think went wrong are just things that don't conform to our knee-jerk opinion of what constitutes right. For example, what is the difference between our species ravaging the planet and Sol going red giant? Or our own personal dirty snowball extinction event? Or Ebola as imagined here hourly the last couple of weeks?

Do I wish my grandkids could live a nice full life without toil and trouble, full of nature walks and selfies and clean air and water? Sure, I do. Am I kind of an existentialist, yeah. But what I don't seem to have is the seemingly stylish angst regarding the evils of human activity that occurs on this board so often. It would be nice if we all did the "right" thing, which, to put it more bluntly, is the thing that conforms to my knee-jerk opinion.

[onlooker]

Great post Pops, getting to the essence of what world we “think” we have created. I myself do not like to judge others in so much as truth and morality is so subjective when it comes to the human world. But, nevertheless I do firmly believe that it is incumbent upon all of us to ascertain as best as we can what actions are right and what actions are wrong. You can call it morality yet it is more akin to a symbiotic behavior that may benefit all or at least harm the least amount of persons. The adage “Live and let live” is a simple way of seeing this concept. So, I for one cannot turn a blind eye to the nature of the world that has been and is , in so much as many have been harmed, mentally and physically. Their well-being rather than enhanced , diminished. Inequality, Injustice, law of the jungle , survival of the fittest all these concepts are in different degrees understood by most persons. So if throughout time people have been deprived of their “well being” then the world “we” created is not a good world or worth living in. That is my point in asking what went wrong, that I firmly believe something went wrong and is wrong and certainly is being set to be wrong in the future with the problems and challenges we all on this site know will exist in the future for all human beings.

[jedrider]

So essentially my knee-jerk opinion is most of the things we think went wrong are just things that don't conform to our knee-jerk opinion of what constitutes right.

That's the 'knee-jerk' interpretation of human folly. That is a far more depressing interpretation that we cannot help being who we are. Considering all the intellectualization we perpetually participate in, you would think we could do better?

[careinke]

That is my point in asking what went wrong, that I firmly believe something went wrong and is wrong and certainly is being set to be wrong in the future with the problems and challenges we all on this site know will exist in the future for all human beings.

What went wrong? In a word, Agriculture.

[Pops]

That's the 'knee-jerk' interpretation of human folly. That is a far more depressing interpretation that we cannot help being who we are. Considering all the intellectualization we perpetually participate in, you would think we could do better?

But it's a thouroughly considered knee-jerk, based on many self-inflicted, knee shaped black eyes; mostly spouted regarding "facts" that turned out not to be.

LOL.

The older I get the more I realize how much of what I thought was reality was just opinion that came from... I don't even know where; something I picked up dreamed up made up. Right now my thought is we're all just winging it and none of us can truly put ourselves outside our point of view; all the intellectualizing is just us trying to convince ourselves of our own illusion.

So yeah, I don't think we're "bad" - just human.

[Ibon]

It is quite simple. If we were within carrying capacity we would be more tolerant of each other and the earth would be more tolerant of us. There are simply too many of us and we consume too much. We intuitively and consciously know this. We also know that we are on the downward slope of correction. This is a time when we all try to maintain some dignity as we fight or share an ever shrinking pie and a biosphere less benign that will try shake itself free of 7 billion humans.

The historical reasons are well understood. The cultural ethics lacking of why we exceeded carrying capacity is also understood and have been discussed on many threads on this board. Elaborating further on that does not contribute one iota toward correction.

We are locked into the downward slope. But it is up to each individual whether that puts you in a downward pessimism. Take the consequences coming our way as tragic or the greatest cultural learning opportunity. Collectively we are all in this together. Where individuality still remains vibrant is how each person deals with it.

[dissident]

Back in the "good old days" of nomadic survival humans were constrained to behave in ways we want them to behave today. Get rid of the constraints and you see what we have now.

In the agricultural society of the past people would treat neighbours as a support network and not see them as a nuisance. This sense of community has faded in urban society. The me, me, me generations are a demonstration of this social evolution/devolution. I think all societies have a life cycle. They grow and then they die. But people expect them to be some sort of vehicle to achieve a miraculous utopia.

It will take the fall of civilization to restore social values that have been lost. Humans do not have enough instinct constraints and need external constraints to keep them on the "right path".

[onlooker]

I wonder about "external constraints", can we not learn to behave the "right" way. Certainly, I believe it is achievable but sometimes needs to have some great upheaval as the catalyst. We certainly are on track for a great upheaval. If we can transition from this turbulent period ahead, I think we will have "learned our lessons". So if this an example of external constraints then it falls in line with what you are saying dissident. I think though collectively humans must do some soul searching as to what is our individual contribution to a well functioning and stable society. So, I would say we must adopt a code of values that supersedes any transitory set of rules, laws or regulations. We must in turn set these "VALUES" as sacred and fundamental to our civilization henceforth for as long as we exist.

[Quinny]

We ignored Marx.

[Keith_McClary]

What went wrong?
...
We have created very unequal , unjust and mostly unsustainable societies ecologically speaking. We have created in the modern age a voracious beast of an economy which devours all and spews out waste. We have spread an ethos of greed and competition around the world with it’s concomitant vices of inequality and injustice ...

Things went Right (politically).

[Sixstrings]

Have things really gone wrong?

Actually I'm pretty stoked by tech, lately. All the promised "future stuff" is coming to pass. Google's driverless car system is coming in a few years. That'll be nice -- I'd love to hop in for a long road trip and not even have to drive / just get on the computer in traffic instead of dealing with the traffic, turn the driving over to google. And that one simple advance will save so many lives every year, 30,000 Americans die in auto accidents annually. And 300,000 Chinese.

And all these robots are coming online, now. You can get a robot that can mow your law, scrub your floor, and clean your pool -- all in the same robot.

And 3d printers, that's such an exciting field too.

I'm just sorry I wasn't born a bit later.

Do you guys realize we may actually be the last generation to which effective immortality isn't an option?

Give it another fifty years, and people may be living forever if they have the cash for it. They're working on growing organs with stem cells, right now. So many advances. It's pretty interesting.

We'll have fully sentient AI by 2050. I hope sooner, I likely won't be around in 2050 or I'll be too damn old to care or senile.

Look at everything Elon Musk is doing -- we're at the dawn of a new age of expansion into space. Reusable rockets are the key to it. Making it cheap.

[Quinny]

Elon Musk ROTFLMFAO!

[Sixstrings]

Elon Musk ROTFLMFAO!

If he actually gets those reusable rockets done, stages that can land on a dime and just be refueld, then that will make him one of the greats in history. Right up there with Edison and Tesla and Ford.

You guys don't realize how revolutionary that is.

Other advances will more directly improve our lives though, like autopilot in our cars.

Don't you realize how much that helps the environment too? It will mean faster moving traffic, and safe, and so much more efficient and that means fewer highways built. More people will use taxi-like ride share services, too, with it being so easy.

You'll be able to push a button on your phone app and a driverless car shows up to pick you up.

They actually have a company like that right now, with an app like that, and they use human drivers. And guess what? That company is global already and worth a gazillion bucks, on such a simple idea -- just tweaking the concept of a taxi and having a phone app.

Guys, the "cool future" stuff just goes on and on.

A random example: I haven't been in a line of work in many years where I had to deal with foreign language speakers. Recently I had the need though, and downloaded the google translate app. (I'm sounding like a spammer with all these endorsements I swear Im not lol)

But Jesus H. Christ, that thing is like the universal translator from Star Trek! All you do is speak into your phone and out comes what you said in the other language (in voice, not just text). And that person speaks their language and the phone says it in English.

It's one thing after another like that, the driverless cars, the robots, the 3d pritners, and software getting so good like with voice recognition and translation, and robots doing surgery now, and it won't be long before organs will be grown to order.

[Quinny]

More fucking floss!