weed isn't harmless....

dutch

 

Yeah, basically. The West has no culture aside from buying things and then flaunting them as if doing so is some kind of an accomplishment or actual statement about oneself; we don't understand Faith in the way that a lot of the rest of the world does (altruistic Jedeo-Christian once-a-week hobbies do not amount to faith in this case, by the way).

That said, the underlying war here is a "Holy War" in the sense that the Consumerist West is (and has been) directly imposing itself upon the Fundamentalist Middle East. The West is fighting for its freedom to profit at the expense of the rest of the world via transient products, while certain sects embedded in the Middle East are fighting tooth and nail to keep KFC's and Burger Kings from infecting their culture (nevermind how 'backwards' it appears to the West).

The West may continue to pull diplomatic strings to keep the economical side of things more or less in check, but we'll almost certainly ultimately fail as a result of having virtually no identity with which to forge a strike in the name of ('freedom' means very little as it continues to be weighed more and more in dollar amounts). My guess is that we'll continue down the path of infighting to the point where we slowly burn ourselves out, gradually making 'adjustments' and 'accomidations' until we're left with a situation that, if immediately imposed here and now, would be considered dire.

The course of humanity has been taking this path in cycles for thousands of years; just because we have TV's, cars, and neat looking bongs doesn't leave us immune to that trend (the post-industrial age is still in its infancy, even in the grand scheme of an already augmented period of time).

 

how am i a push over. i never said that the war is right, and i never said that what the US is doing to the middle east is right. All i was trying to argue was that religion plays a role in a lot of violence that has occurred throughout history. somehow that got portrayed as me being prowar or some shit.

 

Bend over.

 

i say as soon as the oil runs out well get out asses out of the middle east. why would the west give a shit about the area if they didn't have anything to gain?

and i would fight to keep kfc and burger king out of my area too if i could. but to say that capitalism and consumerism is alltogether a bad thing is hard to do. throughout the course of history, man lived it pretty much the same conditions for thousands of years. the individual amount of personal wealth didn't ever really change, and the quality of life was pretty shitty. with the industrial revolution and the advent of capitalism, personal wealth and standard of living increased so much, that if you look at the information on a graph, the line moves at a right angle; from straight with no improvements, to a straight line upward as personal wealth and standard of living increase for everyone across the board. thats pretty cool. but where it becomes a problem is when you get the kfcs and the burgerkings, and the united states pushing in on areas that aren't interested, and the consumer way of life is put above the human element. the most important thing is keeping that human element, otherwise, what is the development for?

 

Employing the advancement of technology as a means to increase our access to knowledge and heighten our standard of living is not at all bad in and of itself; technology as a unifying force, on the other hand, is.

It's true that life has been no picnic throughout most of our history, but removing most every facet from what that 'human condition' once consisted of is just about as insane as replacing the void that doing so creates with the products and subsiqent profits that the West collectively salivates over.

The "Human Element" that you speak of cannot co-exist with Consumerism since an ingredient of the latter is the abolition of the former.