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Well good for you then. There are plenty of good men who recognize they are sons of women, and love and respect and cherish them. I have them among my own family and friends, flung far and wide in all kinds of lands and times far away from "the more advanced modern parts of the world."
Unfortunately human greed fears anything that it perceives as threat to its grubby hands. That does not change however man “slowly matures.”
I dare say that as I have read about the history of the world, the plight of women has been much the same all over the world up until some people in some parts of the world began to view women in a little better more enlightened manner. This became more the case in the modern world as compared to the lesser advanced parts of the world that are still lagging behind in these regards today. What's happening in Afghanistan is a modern day example of the medieval ignorance that still persists in some parts of the world today. Thank goodness for the other parts of the world where our progress as humans has allowed women's rights (civil rights) to become better established, and thank goodness so many of us are not still dealing with that kind of ignorance personally.
Delusion is a wonderful thing. It allows one all kinds of freedom. Such as to imagine that US has somehow ratified civil rights for women which in fact it has never been ratified. This means the US never ratified that women and men have equal rights to this day.
[SIZE=3]Both of these amendments were fighting for women's rights. The 19th Amendment was ratified and then women were allowed the right to vote. The Equal Rights Amendment wanted to get rid of gender based discrimination. Many people were against the ERA because they believed that it would open doors for women that shouldn't be opened. People were against the ratification of the 19th Amendment because they didn't want women messing with the government. Fortunately, the people fighting for women's rights over ruled those who opposed. The Equal Rights Amendment was not so lucky in this sense because it didn't gain the right amount of votes to be passed. [/SIZE]
So that is the story in " in the more advanced modern parts of the world.". Women everywhere have always fought for their rights, it was never simply given to them by 'the slow maturing of man." Except in the world of the deluded.
Delusion is a wonderful thing. It allows one all kinds of freedom. Such as to imagine that US has somehow ratified civil rights for women which in fact it has never been ratified. This means the US never ratified that women and men have equal rights to this day.
So that is the story in " in the more advanced modern parts of the world.". Women everywhere have always fought for their rights, it was never simply given to them by 'the slow maturing of man." Except in the world of the deluded.
Please stop with the kick boxing nonsense...
I never wrote anything about anything getting ratified, and I've never done anything but point at some of the progress while much progress remains to be made. I've mostly been referring to the history of the world. Know and understand even the basics of this history, and it is simply not true that "women everywhere have always fought for their rights." Not true at all for a wide variety of reasons. In fact only a rather rare group of women were more typically at the forefront of fighting for women's rights DESPITE most other women (and their men of course).
Never wrote anything about anything "simply given to them" either! Really. What in the heck is wrong with you? Are you just looking to quibble over your own straw man arguments just to give you something new to beef about? Another chance to throw out another childish insult about who is deluded?
True...humankind has not "evolved" as regards to reason & wisdom.
The prime example of this is not "witch-hunts". That kind of thought is what's *not* evolved.
How many witch-hunts has anyone actually witnessed...and what infinitesimal percentage of the population has died because of that?
But I constantly see those that equate STEM advances as indicative of humans "evolving".
But this fails to recognize that STEM advances are what has produced all the environment/climate destroying entities, as well as all the advanced weaponry (including NBC weapons) that are the only things (other than a asteroid strike) that have the potential to wipe out many species, including Homo sapiens.
Many actually view the very thing that could result in the end of the species, as the thing that denotes humans greatest evolutionary advance. THAT shows how much the maturation of humankind has slowed.
Yes, good post Gldn. I often think that technology and industry is very much a double edged sword.
I'd love to corale off half the planet so that those who prefer to return to a more simple life and appreciate the beauty of the planet could do so. I often pine for simpler times. If only we could have two planets.
LearnMe, I'm not sure 'Man' is maturing at all.
(Perhaps we should use 'humankind' to avoid confusing with 'Man' as a collective noun, since I assume we are including everyone. )
I think no matter how much information you throw at people, you are always going to get a large proportion of stupid people.
It's kind of depressing honestly.
Encyclopedic information at everyones fingertips, yet some people simply refuse to accept what's right in front of their eyes. Human brains are curious things, that's for sure.
LearnMe, I'm not sure 'Man' is maturing at all.
(Perhaps we should use 'humankind' to avoid confusing with 'Man' as a collective noun, since I assume we are including everyone. )
I think no matter how much information you throw at people, you are always going to get a large proportion of stupid people.
It's kind of depressing honestly.
Encyclopedic information at everyones fingertips, yet some people simply refuse to accept what's right in front of their eyes. Human brains are curious things, that's for sure.
Yes, I mean man as in everyone and the progress I'm referring to is the progress that can only be seen as a result of comparing one generation after the next going back to the beginning. Over the course of human history. Hard to see this through the lense of our present day and/or current lives.
Though stupid people will always be an impediment to the progress I'm referring to, progress has and is still being made. That there will always be stupid people should not be cause for depression. That stupid people prevail over the collective wisdom can be depressing, but over time I think it's been the other way around. This or we would still have women "barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen" and blacks still working as slaves for whites...
Seeing the progress despite the stupid is not depressing to me. It's the opposite!
There's a hypothesis that rings true about why there's no reason life isn't likely to be uncommon in the universe, yet we have had zero encounters with other sentient species, and zero detection of the signatures of industrial or technological civilizations. It states that there's a "hard evolutionary stop" that few -- possibly, no -- species get past. Wherein our technological progress outstrips our relational maturity and character development and self-control, and we can't help but destroy ourselves. In the most commonly posited version of this hypothesis, humanity has not yet reached this hard stop, but is working on it.
I believe you are generally referring to what is known as the Great Filter - that one of many steps between non-life and space-faring, radio-broadcasting life that is an exceedingly difficult one to surmount. This is that unknown barrier that is a solution to the Fermi Paradox; one of those solutions is self-destruction.
I acknowledge that growth is often slow, progress is often slow, and that fits and starts abound. My concern is that between the climate, the pandemic, the resurgence of authoritarianism basically everywhere, and ideological polarization, we're kind of out of time on a lot of things that need fixing. I feel that the time to have started working on a lot of this stuff was like 100 years ago.
While many aspects of the current state of humanity concern me on an immediate level, they do not do so existentially. There are currently about eight billion of us in every nook and cranny of the globe. A planet 10 degrees hotter, and the subsequent ecological collapse that presumably would entail, might only be able to sustain half that number (or a tenth, or a 100th, etc.). But even then - 800,000,000 people, 80,000,000, and so forth, represents numbers for a megafauna species that would still be unprecedented for any other species.
The pandemic is a blip, only barely slowing down our growth rate.
Authoritarianism seems to be cyclical, and the progress of the cycles moves ever forward with norms moving in the right direction. We haven't reversed the tremendous progress since 80 years ago (Hitler, Stalin), Mao in the couple of subsequent decades, the collapse wholesale of communism after that.
Even a hypothetical full-scale exchange of nuclear weapons, while immediately horrific, wouldn't be an end-game but merely a setting back of civilization some decades (centuries?).
I think it's easy to write off humanity in the moment, but there are stark differences between the fates of we individuals that currently live, of our societies, and of human civilization as a whole. World War II, the Black Death, the 4.2-Kiloyear Event... these apocalyptic events come and go. The thing about humanity is that it is unprecedented in its diversity of range, of diet, of forethought. Or, to put it another way, we are a vermin that would be maddeningly difficult to eliminate (that's descriptive, not a value judgment). Even setting us back a thousand years really wouldn't work, because most of the accrued knowledge of that time would remain, as would the principles by which its details were discerned.
All of that said... there's some reason why we're alone, or at least why we seem to be an extremely rare sort of development in the universe. And that reason is unknown. The we-destroy-ourselves is not the most convincing to me, but it is a legitimate hypothesis. (and some of the other ones are just as unpleasant)
I believe you are generally referring to what is known as the Great Filter - that one of many steps between non-life and space-faring, radio-broadcasting life that is an exceedingly difficult one to surmount. This is that unknown barrier that is a solution to the Fermi Paradox; one of those solutions is self-destruction.
While many aspects of the current state of humanity concern me on an immediate level, they do not do so existentially. There are currently about eight billion of us in every nook and cranny of the globe. A planet 10 degrees hotter, and the subsequent ecological collapse that presumably would entail, might only be able to sustain half that number (or a tenth, or a 100th, etc.). But even then - 800,000,000 people, 80,000,000, and so forth, represents numbers for a megafauna species that would still be unprecedented for any other species.
The pandemic is a blip, only barely slowing down our growth rate.
Authoritarianism seems to be cyclical, and the progress of the cycles moves ever forward with norms moving in the right direction. We haven't reversed the tremendous progress since 80 years ago (Hitler, Stalin), Mao in the couple of subsequent decades, the collapse wholesale of communism after that.
Even a hypothetical full-scale exchange of nuclear weapons, while immediately horrific, wouldn't be an end-game but merely a setting back of civilization some decades (centuries?).
I think it's easy to write off humanity in the moment, but there are stark differences between the fates of we individuals that currently live, of our societies, and of human civilization as a whole. World War II, the Black Death, the 4.2-Kiloyear Event... these apocalyptic events come and go. The thing about humanity is that it is unprecedented in its diversity of range, of diet, of forethought. Or, to put it another way, we are a vermin that would be maddeningly difficult to eliminate (that's descriptive, not a value judgment). Even setting us back a thousand years really wouldn't work, because most of the accrued knowledge of that time would remain, as would the principles by which its details were discerned.
All of that said... there's some reason why we're alone, or at least why we seem to be an extremely rare sort of development in the universe. And that reason is unknown. The we-destroy-ourselves is not the most convincing to me, but it is a legitimate hypothesis. (and some of the other ones are just as unpleasant)
Reading what you write here reminds me a bit of the book, "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed," by Jared Diamond. A book I have recommended a few times before in this forum...
While I can easily agree about all you describe on a more macro long-range basis, I think we all share some concern about apocalyptic events that can affect our lives directly. For example, it may be some of the 8 billion inhabitants will live on despite a "full-scale exchange of nuclear weapons," I/we could care less about that if one of those nukes happens to land in our back yard or the back yard of those we love.
What really catches my attention is this last comment of yours. I don't think I understand it. "And that reason is unknown. The we-destroy-ourselves is not the most convincing to me,"
Is our ability to destroy ourselves considered a reason we're alone? Not sure I've ever heard that one before...
Reading what you write here reminds me a bit of the book, "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed," by Jared Diamond. A book I have recommended a few times before in this forum...
I enjoyed Collapse very much.
Quote:
Originally Posted by LearnMe
While I can easily agree about all you describe on a more macro long-range basis, I think we all share some concern about apocalyptic events that can affect our lives directly. For example, it may be some of the 8 billion inhabitants will live on despite a "full-scale exchange of nuclear weapons," I/we could care less about that if one of those nukes happens to land in our back yard or the back yard of those we love.
I indicated specifically that I was speaking of the fate of humanity and not of individuals. The Black Death arrived in England in 1348; by the end of 1349, roughly half of the population of the country was dead. In 1361, it returned and killed another 20%. The Holocaust annihilated in some cases entire families but for one person. Yet in those cases and so many others (other plagues, famines, other genocides, wars, and so forth), many people soldiered on. They did not roll over and give up - they endured, they lived, in many cases they thrived. Populations are full of such individuals. In fact, horrific crises specifically select for them. I see no reason that a full-scale nuclear war would be any different.
Quote:
Originally Posted by LearnMe
What really catches my attention is this last comment of yours. I don't think I understand it. "And that reason is unknown. The we-destroy-ourselves is not the most convincing to me,"
Is our ability to destroy ourselves considered a reason we're alone? Not sure I've ever heard that one before...
In the early 1960s, Frank Drake formulated his famous equation in an attempt to estimate the number of communicating (interstellar, via radio or other means) civilizations at any given time in the Milky Way through variables - the number of total stars, the fraction of which were suitable for life, the fraction of those which had planets or moons suitable for life, the fraction of those that developed life, the fraction of those that developed intelligent life, and so forth. One of the parameters was the time that a civilization remained communicating. The reasons that a civilization might stop communicating were varied: a loss of interest, technology that did not bleed into space, disasters not of their own making (nearby supernova, bolide, etc.) and self-caused collapse. The latter might be Malthusian, war, social disorder of some sort, environmental degradation, etc.
Brin addresses the issue in some depth in his class 1983 analysis, The Great Silence (see page 13 of the following PDF, halfway down that page, the section titled The (homeworld) lifespan of technological species - factor L: http://www.brin-l.com/downloads/silence.pdf
One of the problems with this solution, and most others, is that it requires complete uniformity among all civilizations. Brin notes that even if just a small percentage of civilizations (such as 1%) made it through the 'self-destructive phase', there should be numerous mature civilizations out there. But if there are, we see no trace of them.
Yes, good post Gldn. I often think that technology and industry is very much a double edged sword.
I'd love to corale off half the planet so that those who prefer to return to a more simple life and appreciate the beauty of the planet could do so. I often pine for simpler times. If only we could have two planets.
I was born about a couple hundred years too late.
But, then...here I am on the internet...so....
Technological comfort, convenience, and fun are addictive. We shoulda squashed it upfront. Especially the high-tech weapons of war.
Our desire to "travel" distances quickly and with very little effort is a selfish desire that is destroying the environment and changing the climate. And Western Countries are already tainted with landfills.
We are "evolving" into a polluted garbage dump. Some "maturation".
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