quote:Originally posted by Ventriloquists Got Shot: I think we are all overlooking the fact that Shik is dying.
We can band together to provide comfort and care during these troubling times.
Explain to me these concepts of comfort and caring.
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Daniel Butler
I'm a Singapore where is my boat
Member # 1689
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Shik: Kardashev's scale of civilizations.
Type I: Uses the power of their entire planet. I don't just mean 'builds wind generators,' I mean controls the weather, earthquakes, ocean currents. Actually uses the *entire* power output of the planet - geothermal, hydrological, etc.
Type II: Uses the power of their entire star. I'm talking playing around with solar flares and coronal mass ejections like we play around with burning oil and coal. *Creating* their own stars from large planets or nebulae. Possibly even causing stars to destabilize and explode. They would actually use the *entire* power output of the sun - EM, heat, magnetic, acoustic.
Type III: Uses the power of an entire galaxy. Can create black holes and baby universes in the lab. Black holes would in fact probably be their primary power source. These would be the builders of Dyson spheres, Klemperer Rosettes of stars, time machines. They'd use the power output of every star in the galaxy and have godlike powers � la the Q.
We....are Type 0. We burn dead plants and animals.
quote:Originally posted by Shik: You're not sidetracking, they are. I think it's possible to HAVE that unified world governement without having it be the single pervasive culture that we've been doing for 10 millennia & that they show on the show. The example of the Hodensaunee League shows that.
Admittedly I am going by a 5-minute glance at the Wikipedia page on the Iroquois Confedaration, but I hardly think that you can extrapolate from them to a World government. Mainly because apparently they had a population of about 30,000, living in a sustainable manner in an area so large that they would never be driven in direct competition for food or resources. Plus it sounds like they had quite a lot of common culture to start with.
Contrast this to what a current world government would have to deal with. 6,000,000,000 people plus, many of whom (city dwellers) are completely dependant on others (farmers) for their food supply, plus are in direct competition for resources (Particularly money, which in terms of International Development money can be thought of as a resource). Not to mention the HUGE differences in culture just within Europe, let alone the rest of the world. I don't think the two compare very well. The real crunch point is the huge inequalities that exist between and within nations - it doesn't sound like the Iroquois had to deal with half of their people living in comparative poverty. Working together is easy to do when everyone is in roughly the same size boat and no-one is sinking.
However, this is not to say that international co-operation cannot occur in the Science and Engineering arena. The ISS and CERN I think are much better examples of different groups working together. But these are isolated projects with a narrow remit, and if you look even slightly into the bickering that goes on behind them you'd be amazed anything ever happens, and that's with 60 years of (kinda) peace between most major powers.
(FYI - I currently work in the European Space Industry so know a little bit about the politics behind these projects. Luckily I escape in a week to go do something else!)
Registered: May 2005
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OnToMars
Now on to the making of films!
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quote:Originally posted by Shik: Y'all are kind of missing the point here. Things like "politics" & "religion" are staples of THIS culture & none other.
On the contrary, politics and religion are at the very heart of any culture. They are the fundamental beliefs and attitudes from which the rest of societies and cultures grow.
I've likewise been fascinated by what Shik describes. First by starships, then Starfleet as an organization, then the Earth and the Federation as a whole.
I have long meant (and in a recent bout of sort-of-insomnia, begun) to write out a whole treatise on the Star Trek utopian ideal - what it is or might be exactly and how it might be achieved. I am a liberal progressive - I believe this world (and country) has problems, but that these problems are solvable and are capable of being solved. That is humanity's success; it's enormous success at problem solving.
So if the goal is to create a society where there is no hunger, poverty, prejudice, corruption, crime, injustice, disease, want, or greed - a society where everyone receives the help they need and has the opportunity to live their life in a way that will make them fulfilled and happy, my question is then, "How do we get there?" And, "What will it look like?" I intend to spend my life figuring that out.
I've just read an excellent book called, "The First Idea" which puts forth a theory about emotional and intellectual development in children and how this developmental path might relate to the development of society and civilization. Sadly, for those of us who try to model ourselves on the Vulcan ideal, the book postulates that intelligence is an extension or outgrowth of emotions. The authors say our minds progress in a way something akin to, "WANT!" to "Want this!" to "I want this." to "How can I get this?" to "Why do I want this?" to "What is it about this thing that makes it so desirable?" They go on to talk about this process proceeds from a polarized to a graduated thinking, from LOVE/HATE and JOY/DESPAIR to many, many nuanced and layered emotions ranging a gamut that produce introspection and reflection in varying degrees. When applied to groups, the pattern holds, with groups being relatively stable or unstable depending on the emotional development of its members and the group as an entity.
In order to segue back into my original train of thought, I'd kinda have to keep going for awhile, so I'll end there and leave it at just a quick overview. But it's helped me think about these issues, and I can kind of intuit how they relate to each other, though I'm not sure I can put it to words just yet...
Anyway, it's very interesting reading that I recommend, especially if you're looking at getting a better grasp on the nuts and bolts of these bigger issues.
-------------------- If God didn't want us to fly, he wouldn't have given us Bernoulli's Principle.
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Shik
Starship database: completed; History of Starfleet: done; website: probably never
Member # 343
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quote:Originally posted by OnToMars: On the contrary, politics and religion are at the very heart of any culture. They are the fundamental beliefs and attitudes from which the rest of societies and cultures grow.
Hardly. But then as Sol pointed out, I'm a tmerped neotribalist of sorts.
quote:Originally posted by OnToMars: I believe this world (and country) has problems, but that these problems are solvable and are capable of being solved. That is humanity's success; it's enormous success at problem solving.
So if the goal is to create a society where there is no hunger, poverty, prejudice, corruption, crime, injustice, disease, want, or greed - a society where everyone receives the help they need and has the opportunity to live their life in a way that will make them fulfilled and happy, my question is then, "How do we get there?" And, "What will it look like?" I intend to spend my life figuring that out.
Solveable by every marching foward to the enactmment of vision we've been marching to all this time? Well, you ARE right after a fashion: we'll be dead. That's a solution of sorts.
Those elements you mention...only 4 of them are artificial: povert, prejudice, corruption, & crime. They're products of the way we work. They've got nothing to do with "human nature" because there are plenty of cultures that don't have these things. The rest--hunger, disease, want, & greed--are part of basic human nature & can be found anywhere. But no one exacerbates it like we do.
quote:Originally posted by Lee: I refer the honourable gentleman to my previous statement: now what? As in, what's going on now? With you?
I'm just going to go the Jimmy Carter route & say "a general sort of malaise." I don't intend to whinge about it here; that's what I've got a blog for.
Daniel: That's pretty interesting. A complete load of shit, but interesting nonetheless.
-------------------- "The French have a saying: 'mise en place'—keep everything in its fucking place!"
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OnToMars
Now on to the making of films!
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tmerped?
Also, yes, if one were cynical, one could say that the elimination of those ills can only be achieved by creating a state where no individual freedom or personal liberty remain. A 1984 or Brave New World-esque version of the future where all social ills are removed, but along with it goes all our humanity.
I don't think that's the case though. I believe it's possible to achieve a state where those problems can be eliminated and the population still enjoys something we would recognize as freedom. Granted many of us would argue about the extent of that freedom. "
You mean I can't smoke wherever I want to? I'm not free!"
"No, you cannot damage the health of the people around you, regardless of whatever you may want to do to your own body."
My roommate and I are fond of saying, "Communism/socialism would work if everyone just followed the rules!" Which, of course, holds true for any societal architecture, but it's still what it all largely boils down to. There will be rules, which themselves will boil down to, "Just don't be an asshole to other people" but it will require the maturity of the constituents to follow the rules (and, of course, change them when they are unjust).
And if cultures don't have those things (examples, please?), then it's because they've found solutions for those problems. And for the ones you claim are everywhere (again, citation please), that doesn't mean there's not a solution. If it's a problem, it has a solution, is my philosophy. And just because it's big, or it's everywhere, or it's always been around, or there doesn't look like there's a solution, or you can't possibly in a million years imagine what the solution might be, or nobody on the planet has even conceived that such a massive and overwhelming problem could ever actually be solved doesn't mean that there isn't, in fact, a solution. That is the essense of progressivism.
Granted, I don't know what those solutions are. Granted, they may not come up in the next ten years, fifty, hundred, thousand, or ten thousand. But the solutions exist.
-------------------- If God didn't want us to fly, he wouldn't have given us Bernoulli's Principle.
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Shik
Starship database: completed; History of Starfleet: done; website: probably never
Member # 343
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Tempered, tmerped, it's all the same.
I can't really have this dialogue over the internet, or at least not on a forum. The need for realtime is too great.
-------------------- "The French have a saying: 'mise en place'—keep everything in its fucking place!"
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OnToMars
Now on to the making of films!
Member # 621
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Agreed. Well, hit me up if you're ever inclined. I think my AIM is in my profile. If not, I'll put it in there.
-------------------- If God didn't want us to fly, he wouldn't have given us Bernoulli's Principle.
Registered: Jun 2001
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Shik, you've made another point. The instant gratification problem consuming the world.
-------------------- "You are a terrible human, Ritten." Magnus "Urgh, you are a sick sick person..." Austin Powers A leek too, pretty much a negi.....
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Daniel Butler
I'm a Singapore where is my boat
Member # 1689
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If you're referring to Generation Y's lack of patience, Ritten, I think it could be a strength. We don't waste our short lives. Or rather, we wouldn't if the things we jammed our lives absolutely full of with no wasted time weren't things like American Idol and cheeseburgers. Or y'know, Big Brother and fish and chips, whatever. Granted it seems rather sick when you see WHAT we fill our lives with, but I still maintain its a good thing that we don't like to sit around waiting, or doing nothing. We don't live long enough to have that luxury.
Registered: Jul 2005
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Daniel, I couldn't agree less with you. The instant gratification of my generation is leading to problems. I know I'm generalising, perhaps slightly too much, but I see many of my peers who are unwilling to work towards something that might pay off in the future. They want it now, preferably yesterday. Hence the rise in people getting themselves into serious debt problems, and people borrowing 5 times their income to buy a house in their early twenties. What ever happened to saving? For anything? And it's not just money - I know people who make quite a bit of money writing essays for students who either are incapable or unwilling to put in the work to pass their uni course. Finally, to me, the greatest symbol of it all is...Deal or No Deal. I think I could feasibly construct a several page essay on how that programme represents the absolute worst elements of UK society. If I roped in Celebrity Big Brother and Pop Idol I'd fill an entire book.
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