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02-27-2016, 07:52 AM   #31
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QuoteOriginally posted by normhead Quote
Most of the western religions promote strength through an expanding population base. You literally want to out reproduce your rivals.
The key to evolutionary success: the organism or individual within a species that leaves the most descendants has won. If the Smiths have 101 children to the Jones' 100, given time everyone will be a Smith.

02-27-2016, 08:00 AM   #32
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The unfortunate corollary to that is, if smart people have less than 2 children on average and dumb people have 6....

It seems to be an evolutionary constraint, you can have too many smart people. Hence the Republican distrust of the educated. They are on to something, an evolutionary imperative, that could lead to our extinction.
02-27-2016, 08:05 AM   #33
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I note that China has backed off of its one-child policy, even encouraging its citizens to have more children, for the sake of the national economy.
02-27-2016, 08:34 AM   #34
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Don't pressume my sentiment or opinion about these issues.

In a stable population and a flat economy competition for resources (whether social resources, mates, power, services or goods) demands there be takers and taken-from. In a growing 'economy' there can be 'some growth' and 'more growth' so long as everyone works. It isn't zero-sum, and winners needn't impoverish losers.

In a flat economy, all progress must come from improvements in efficiency, which displaces people from people-work, making the displaced more or less wards of the state.

Everyone points to oil as a limiting factor. Not an issue - ever. At some point our capacity to increase food production will peak, primarily limited by access to water, but also by nature's way of fighting back against pest control and nitrogen fertilizers. That's the issue - peak food (peak water), not peak oil.

The next global war will be fought to obtain and control arable land (probably over control of central Africa). It remains to be seen whether loss of life in such a war is a form of self-correcting outcome.

It's OK to be acquisitive. It's OK to decide to take risk, expect reward, to work hard, to exercise self-denial in the present and save, so you can spend in the future. Unfortunately these Calvinist ideas are presently associated with dead white men and have dropped out of favor.

What we've forgotten is modesty. There really IS an 'enough,' but permitting the State to set the limit is dangerous. In the past most people stopped when they decided they had reached their own target. They were modest about and generous with wealth. Modest and generous. My father always said, "Leave something on the table for the next guy."

We've forgotten about the next guy. In return, the State is going to step in and 'remember' the next guy for us.


Last edited by monochrome; 02-27-2016 at 09:30 AM.
02-27-2016, 09:21 AM - 1 Like   #35
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QuoteOriginally posted by WPRESTO Quote
The key to evolutionary success: the organism or individual within a species that leaves the most descendants has won.
I disagree. Your statement only works in a static ecosystem and we don't live in anything like that. In a static system, as soon as one player gains an advantage, however small, everyone else gets crowded out. Static systems are like an unending game of checkers, eventually you end up in a stalemate. Fortunately, the world we live in is frequently hit by unpredictable events and what was an advantage yesterday is a handicap tomorrow. It isn't the strong that survive, it is the adaptable. That unpredictability allows for diversity in nature (including human beings) and sustains imperfection.

Fortunately for me, my belief system embraces imperfection. It gives me hope for the future and allays my fear of what is happening in the present. To go in a slightly different direction, I saw a billboard in Greenville, SC for a restaurant called Saskatoon that features wild game on their menu. The slogan was "There's plenty of room for all God's creatures... Right next to the mashed potatoes."

---------- Post added 02-27-16 at 10:26 AM ----------

QuoteOriginally posted by monochrome Quote
My father always said, "Leave something on the table for the next guy." We've forgotten about the next guy. In return, the state is going to step in and 'remember' the next guy for us.
You got it. Too bad the state is being run by people who have the same problem with greed that the rest of us have.
02-27-2016, 09:33 AM - 1 Like   #36
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QuoteQuote:
We've forgotten about the next guy. In return, the state is going to step in and 'remember' the next guy for us.
Unfortunately some of us think "remember the next guy" means the next guy who is part of my church or my religion or my country. Look after the next guy is currently tempered by, "look after your own first", and for some, they just define everyone else as "not one of my own."

Much of what you've posted is cultural, not in any sense universal, and definitely not fact.

In Native North American culture and in many "primitive cultures" you gained influence not by how much you accumulated, but by how much, what percentage of your wealth was devoted others. So if you killed 20 deer and gave 19 of them away, you're a great hunter. In our society accumulation of wealth confers status. IN native society, generals didn't order others around. They sat in council and persuaded everyone else that what they proposed was the best thing to do. Then they led the charge. The Euro-americans who conquered them need to out number them about 7 to 1 to defeat them, because the fighters they faced, understood the plan, signed on to the plan and were dialled in, as opposed to conscripted or forced by economic circumstances to join the army, out of the loop in terms of decision making, and just following the orders of someone who knew the plan, but was probably several steps removed from whoever created the plan.

So, for those of us who have made an effort to understand different civilizations and ways of viewing the world, the above is a narrative a different culture, a culture that over powered everyone else largely through having the manpower to out number everyone else, or the technology to overpower everyone else, but now is totally dependant on the idea of new technology and numbers are the only way to safety.

During the Korean war the Chineese basically over ran the American forces, in many cases by just throwing people at the Americans until they ran out of ammo. If you have enough people, this is a viable strategy. The essential brutality of life can only be voluntarily over come. Having a war to reduce population would certainly be a correction, but a very primitive one. If in the end that's what happens, the only point that will be proved will be, in all the millennia of human existence the one thing we haven't learned is how to change human behaviour to adapt to not needing mass destruction to maintain a healthy population level. To date we haven't proved that it can be done. We are still operating large instinctively as primitive creatures, who happen to have made some technological advances but who basically are governed by the same instinctive impulses of waring tribes and hunter gatherers, The veneer we put on top o those instincts to try and convince our selves we are in some way better than the Romans or Attila the Hun, are pretty thin. It doesn't take long until we find an excuse to go back to really primitive behaviour.

Last edited by normhead; 02-27-2016 at 09:45 AM.
02-27-2016, 09:35 AM   #37
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QuoteOriginally posted by RGlasel Quote
It isn't the strong that survive, it is the adaptable.
Of course, whoever is in power at any moment wants to conserve the status quo, and whoever is out-of-power wants to be 'liberated'. Adaptation favors the insurgent, not the powerful.

Which is why I favor conservation of liberty.

[EDIT:] I accept much of what Norm writes above - however, the Europeans who fought with the natives on this continent still used military tactics created under feudal monarchies, in which the nobility 'owned' its serfs, drafted them, expended them and, when victorious, took ownership of their cousins' former serfs.

QuoteQuote:
Unfortunately some of us think "remember the next guy" means the next guy who is part of my church or my religion or my country. Look after the next guy is currently tempered by, "look after your own first", and for some, they just define everyone else as "not one of my own."
One hopes to assume the behavior of others will match one's own behavior, else 'society' cannot exist. Responding positively to cultural cues is a shorthand form of interacting with trust and confidence; it is efficient.

Of course one chooses his associations - that's society's way of punishing deviation from shared social norms. Of course one should be tolerant of others' differing norms - just tolerate mine too, and agree on the big stuff. In our current 'anything and anyone goes' society, nothing can be safely assumed, there is no longer a shared social norm.' We no longer agree even on the big stuff - ergo one either forgets the other guy, remembers the other guy who it is currently fashionable to remember, or becomes very circumspect about remembrances. It is a real challenge today to defend birthright liberty. B. F. Skinner is winning his point.

Selfishness is a natural but not expected consequence of the lionization of cultural diversity. Of course, the State stands ready to mediate modesty and generosity on our behalf since the individual seems incapable of so doing.


Last edited by monochrome; 02-27-2016 at 09:56 AM.
02-27-2016, 09:54 AM   #38
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QuoteOriginally posted by monochrome Quote
Of course, whoever is in power at any moment wants to conserve the status quo, and whoever is out-of-power wants to be 'liberated'. Adaptation favors the insurgent, not the powerful.

Which is why I favor conservation of liberty.
Liberty is just another meaningless catch phrase. Some would say liberty means everyone has a job, enough to eat, decent living conditions and good health care. Others think liberty is the right to own a gun and take anything that belongs to the government they think should be theirs. It a term that mean " I want to be left alone to do what I want, no matter the negative consequences to others, because if i can't do that, I'm not free. " No one is ever completely free. Even the biggest worst tyrants of all time eventually find the limits to their freedom.

Freedom of is one of those motivating myths used to pacify populations. You may be poor destitute , not have nought to eat and can't afford a doctor, but at least you are free. Not like those other guys. Liberty is equally undefined.
02-27-2016, 10:08 AM   #39
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QuoteOriginally posted by normhead Quote
Liberty is just another meaningless catch phrase.
Here we come to our non-negotiable point of disagreement. If you were an American you might understand, but you are not. America is exceptional - which is why the world can no longer tolerate America.
02-27-2016, 10:10 AM - 2 Likes   #40
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Ok, you guys know politics and religious discussions are forbidden, and since you are taking the thread in that direction, I'm closing it rather than handing out infraction notices, especially since some of you have already been cited for that and should already know better.
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