Come on! We need confidence. The future is bright. Please tell me why. Positive replies are welcomed. You are thanked and blessed beforehand. Hauk
well this isn't the immediate future we're talking about being any brighter then the present until we realize how dumb some of the things we've been doing are and stop doing them. but since a: our species survival may depend on this + b: our species has a tendency to have survived; therefore = yes this will probably happen. but for those who survive the trouble we've been making for ourselves, which very well may itself make it impossible or at least unlikely to continue doing so, then their future will be very bright indeed. what will force us to wake up are things we can already see comming: fossle fuel depletion, increasingly sever effects of what is called global warming, possible colapse of internationa monetary based economics. these things themselves won't immediately make our future brighter, but can and very like will force major chainges in core values and perceptions which then in turn will. nature may also come up with something that actualy works to lower human firtility and thus correct human over population. any process other then long term attrition will likely be painful, but the world at the end of it, with air once again clean and rivers running clear, abundant diversity of living creatures but without all knowledge of such tecnologies as are environmentaly sustainable having been lost, yes i would call that a very bright future. how dark the road between here and there of course remains up to the decisions we make and the priorities we choose now. we haven't gone over to making them wisely yet, but even as adamant refusal to makes popular headlines, advances are made and pervading society at an almost underground level ignored and shunned by corporate media yet not happered, and perhapse even helped by this going unnoticed. for example solar panel sales are way up and like to continue to be. other positive signs can be found too if one knows where to look. =^^= .../\...
The future is bright because people are starting to realize that we need change, and I think that once we all realize that things don't have to stay the way they are, that change will start to become a reality! ~Nova
confidence? that may somehow actualy help. who knows? more then that we need good sense, and we don't lack the capacity for it either. the future isn't the self fullfilment of a collective death wish because believe it or not, everyone hasn't bought into it. togather we make 'the' future. we're doing so all the time. with each and every thing each and every one of us do. every solar panel that's installed makes the future brighter. every family that stays small makes the future brighter. every time someone doesn't drive a car makes the future brighter. conservation measures are good but the're not the most leveraged end from which to attack the problem. encouraging policies that favor more naturaly harmonious tecnological and infrastructral development are. there's no absolutely what IS going and not going to happen, but there is absolutely our collective intigration of our individual choices of actual priorities we live by, more then any other single influence, determining the motivations and incentives that steer future events, situations and conditions. the future is as bright as we make it bright, and we make it bright by using our good sense. better sense then either public or market based pollicy has tended to for a long, but like even the oldest tree that eventualy falls, time. the future is bright because the effort it takes to screw ourselves may indeed soon, once and for all, be seen for what it really is. an effort that a little honest thought could avert entirely. we have been litteraly slaving to collectively kill ourselves, and yes we will, at some point, stop doing so. =^^= .../\...
the future is bright because oil and coal aren't for ever. there are efficient ways to propell mechanical transportation that don't involve the use of combustion. and likewise to produce such energy as is needed to run refrigerators and perhaps this internet or something like it. there won't be gas stations and without them little incentive to pave roads, but transportation on an intimate enough scale to be almost as personal as what we have with the automobile is very possible without them. we won't likely be consuming more energy then can be produced with the combination of wind, solar and hydro, if only because there won't likely be any other ways of producing it. but that's ok. it'll give nature a chance to recouver for one thing. that may of course be a ways off as there's still a couple of hundred years worth of coal in the ground, even if only about 40 worth of oil. none of those estimates are absolute certainties either. they could be off quite a bit either way. neither good nor bad are in any way inevitable of course. a lot, everything to do with human society in fact, remains up to the kind of priorities we actualy live by and the kind of incentives they in turn collectively create. diversity is pretty certain though. i put my faith in that. in not everything ever beeing all any one way. tyrannys rise and fall, like every other sort of organizm, or even species. we're about due, overdue if anything, for another sort of mini golden age, like we had in the 60s and 70s on college campuses and other gathering places of young people in the u.s. i don't know how we're going to get another unexpected election resault like we had with kennidy in 59, but then, comming out of mccarthyism, it seemed just as all but impossible that it could happen then, yet it did. really there is more hope in diversity then people can immagine and more diversity then we realize too. even if it brings us a lot of what we don't want at the same time. it really doesn't matter about that. diversity is what there is whether we want it to be or not. and along with everything else it brings us real hope and always does, has and will. =^^= .../\...
Humans are going to kill themselves off because of their own stupidity. We will make the planet uninhabitable for our species soon.
HikerHauk Thank u for continuing occams thread http://www.hipforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=157088 The future will be the 99% of our story that hasnt happened yet. from 50 thousand bc to now was the FIRST STEP. Occam
I'm wondering why some people keep sounding like losers. Instead of believing that they live in a miserable state, I think they are living too well, or living on others. I dislike lazy people. Being cynical is much easier than being progressive and making a contribution.
contributions aren't always a good thing. expecialy when too little thought is given to what they are REALLY contributing to. people who open their eyes and see this are not being cynical to be objectiely honest about it. the intillectual lazyness is when they jump to the conclusion of inevitability from this premis. there is no inevitablity. but there is a reality of incentives collectively created by the priorities we actualy live by. too little OBJECTIVE attention is payed, even by many who both mean well and put their sweat where their intentions are, or rather, believe themselves to be doing so. it would cause less harm for those who give too little thought to what their sweat is buying for themsleves and others, then to continue doing so without the responsibility of objective assessment of REAL causality, not just what a familiar belief, or whatever assumptions happen to be popular or dominant at the moment claim it to be. those who avoid causing harm at inconvinience to themselves are the truely noble, even if they have to sleep under a bridge in order to do so. far more noble then those who measure only sweat as nobility with little reguard to the kind of world it is ACTUALY contributing to creating. =^^= .../\...
Hiker Hauk A difficult one to answer. so occam will say what he thinks. There are no 'losers' A miserable state is a subjective position. what some call such might be a paridise to others. There are no lazy people there are just people, and others people who call them lazy. Those with good observational powers and a method are called cynics by those with neither. [or 'cynics are what idealists call realists'] Being cynical/realist is MUCH harder than being 'progressive.' Dont fit with your post ?.. dont worry.. occam knows where you are comming from. Could it be you dont want humans to be egotistical fools that call ourselves 'civilised' Dont want us to be the ignorant nations and proles that consume consume consume? Heart wrenching is it not.? Occam
Hiker Truely sorry. Did occam say something to spin u? No.. none of us knows.. But we can relate. We can share, and in sharing... grow wiser. All of us walk a path that can be a horror , a waste , a lie. maybe u and occam and others can get together and speak of a future where we all help eachother get past these fears of the mind. So many there are , and far more in the world of human politics. Our race scares occam. not because of its strength. but its ignorance. But still, it will survive and grow. Our evoution has now become the admission and reduction of our ignorance. Occam
the future is bright because no matter what goes wrong, thing will only move forward. in history, things have always gone straight ahead never backwards, so i can gaurantee that the future will be the same way. right at this moment, they are developing cures for cancer, aids, and ever other concievable disease. 50 years ago, uncurable diseases are now easily treated distractions. In another 50 years, cancer and aids will be the same way. gas and oil will soon run out, leaving the space for the obvious path forward. new ways are found, and they will be 100% better than the old ways. Gas powered cars will seem like an outrageously idiotic invention. and thats why the future is bright, in my opinion
Obviously gas and oil are not big problems. In my campus, many professors are driving self-made battery-driven cars. Though they can't drive them on the road, the day is not far away.
i can only go 50-50 with you on that one. each thing that becomes no longer practical does leave room for something different then itself. history is not however a 100% streight line "forward" chainge ziggs and zaggs all over the place, and yes, sometimes in directions that are as much or more "backwards" as "forwards". everything that replaces something else, ISN'T always better because it does. chainge is however something that is built into existence to keep happining, even when what we expect or hope to see chainge doesn't immediatly or visibly happen nor in some desired direction. but you are right that many of the current causes of real harm can only at some point force themselves to chainge and the running out of mineral petrolium is one excellent example of this. and really it IS this that i see as the one certain brightness to our future at some point. that and diversity eternaly being the nature of reality, that being the one thing that either does not chainge at all, or if it does, on a scale beyond even the quite possibly infinite universe itself. there is really nothing inevetable about chainge other then that it occurs, but observationaly the universe we are surrounded by certainly appears, yes even intuitively, at least to me, to be one of probabilities. and i see as a far greater probability then only worsening, that certain things, that directly effect how we feel about our experience of living, will indeed get much much better. =^^= .../\... on another i note, i don't claim to "understand" where anyONE is comming from, but i can and do open my eyes and look to see how things work. i'm no uber genius and don't claim to be, but by doing everything i can to reduce self deception i can get what seems like a wee bit of understanding into what is going on and the hows and whys of it. =^^= .../\...
